#96, Lineage, Voyager, Season 7, Episode 12

"You don't have to bring a Bat'leth to every argument, you know." — Tom Paris

Our second episode of Voyager in the countdown of the Top 100 Episodes of Trek, and the second one that is Klingon-centric.

Your enjoyment of this episode is entirely dependent on whether or not you like the characters of Tom and B'Elanna. Because pretty much all this episode is, is a character study of those two and their relationship. Particularly B'Elanna, and her self-loathing of her Klingon half.

Your milage may vary, but, I like them enough to find this episode really interesting.

B'Elanna discovers she's pregnant and upon her medical exam, comes to find that there's a complication with the pregnancy. The child has a degenerative spinal disease, passed down from her Klingon side. The Doctor can alter the child's DNA, removing the Klingon genomes causing the disease. And once she realizes that she can remove any trace of her Klingoness from her child, B'Elanna goes to a dark, dark place.

For someone who has always struggled with their mixed heritage, everything B'Elanna went through as a child — her being ostracized for her alien half, her feeling guilt for her father leaving her and her mother — she projects onto her unborn child. Her solution is extreme, to the have the Doctor rewrite the child's entire gene sequence and remove any trace of Klingon. When she learns that doing so would potentially change her daughter's personality, and entire being, B'Elanna pushes anyway. And when the Doctor refuses, B'Elanna goes so far as to reprogram the Doctor to comply (the implications of which is terrifying).

In addition predicting cellphones with the communicator, Trek also predicted the selfie? 

What they're talking about in this is the ethics of genetically modifying a child in the womb before birth. How far can you change someone before they stop being themselves? How far is too far? Where is that line? Who decides where that line is? What say does the father have? The questions proposed is not a subtle one. And, let's be clear, the episode is heavy-handed for sure. But they're tough questions. B'Elanna's diving into dangerous waters, tampering with the DNA of her child with unknown consequences, changing the fundamental personality of one of her shipmates to get what she wants.

The episode demands more of Dawson and McNeill as actors than perhaps any other Voyager episode. Are they up to the task? I'm going to say, mostly. Dawson's B'Elanna usually doesn't have more to do than growl in frustration and stomp around engineering. Granted, she does occasionally smile. But here... she pushes herself as a performer to make B'Elanna's plight sympathetic, and not just, well, crazy. McNeill has to set aside his imitation-Kirk-swagger to try and convince B'Elanna not only of the beauty of their child, but her own beauty. Their relationship has felt forced at times (I even recall an episode where the impetus for their relationship may have been the alien influence), but here it comes across as honest. Tom does love her. He does believe that B'Elanna is beautiful, not despite of but because of her Klingon side. Because it's who she is, and he loves who she is.

There's some klunkiness as the episode finds other things for the rest of the crew to do. Neelix wants to be the godfather. The Captain weighs in on the fact that she can't really weigh in because it's a family matter, and the other crew. Seven of Nine recognizes the irregularities in the doctor's program. Chakotay exists.

I'm wracking my brain to think of another episode of any Trek that is strictly a character study with no subplot to speak of. You could count the flashbacks of B'Elanna's childhood, but those tie directly to her emotional state in the rest of the story (again, this episode was not subtle). There's no exterior threat. Nothing external making the characters act out of character. No 'B' plot to speak of. Just taking these two characters, putting them in a moral conflict and seeing what happens.

And that's awesome.

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Next up, the Next Gen with The Most Toys.