VOY: “Lineage”

Date: July 19, 2021

Season 7, Episode 11

Music Video of the Day:

Interstellar News: This weekend was a lot of fun. My sorority spouse came to visit and we had a great weekend. Then a good friend and her husband came over for dinner and game night and we played a few fun games.

TL;DR: Torres and Paris find out they’re expecting a tiny human-Klingon. Paris goes to Tuvok for fatherly advice while Torres has flashbacks to her tortured childhood. Torres wants to alter their daughter’s genes to make her more human and less Klingon, but the EMH, Janeway, and Paris are all against it if it’s not medically needed. Torres goes bonkers and reprograms the EMH so she can have the procedure anyway, but Paris stops it. Torres and Paris talk, decide they’ll make it work, and then apologize to the EMH and ask him to be the godfather.

Favorite Quote:

Paris: Is it a girl or a boy?

Torres: No. Don’t tell. I want to be surprised.

Paris: We’ve already been surprised.

Torres: I just don’t see any reason to have to label the baby. I don’t want to know the gender. I don’t want to have to pick a name yet.

Paris: Okay, okay, Mommy knows best.

Torres: Mommy?

Paris and Torres being adorable. I agree with her not wanting to label the baby. A person’s a person, no matter how small.

“Offspring can be disturbingly illogical, yet profoundly fulfilling. You should anticipate paradox.”: This was an incredibly difficult episode to watch. It had the worst bits of being an outsider and having other people make a decision about a woman’s body. Torres says “When the people around you are all one way and you’re not, you can’t help feeling like there’s something wrong with you.” Though Paris says there are other non-humans on board, the majority of the crew is human and that has got to be hard for the others on board. While there may not be racism by way of color of skin, there’s still racism in subtle ways against those who are non-human.

Now for the hard part. Torres wants to alter the genes of her child to make her less Klingon, but in the end it’s two men and an authority figure telling her she can’t do something with her body and it rubs me completely the wrong way. Paris is wonderful here, he only ever tries to help, but he’s in over his head. Also, blaming this on her hormones was just seven kinds of ick and I just felt uncomfortable watching the episode most of the time.

I did like how Icheb thought the baby was a parasite (I mean, he’s not entirely wrong), how news traveled so fast on the small ship, and getting those flashbacks into Torres’s childhood to understand how she was feeling a bit better. I also liked the end where Torres and Paris have their heart-to-heart and how Torres owns up to her mistakes. However, I just can’t bring myself to rate this episode.

TA Out!