Episode Review - Lineage
Reviewed by Andy Taylor

Synopsis
Torres starts off her new day in a happy mood – everything is going great, until she encounters Icheb in Engineering as he is there without her permission. Seven explains the misunderstanding, but Torres’ attention is elsewhere when she becomes dizzy and suddenly drops to the floor. Icheb becomes alarmed when he detects a lifeform inside her, suggesting that she has a parasite inside her. However, Seven delivers news that, perhaps, is not as shocking – Torres is pregnant. In sickbay, The Doctor confirms that she is with child, and tells her that she probably fainted due to a clash between her human and Klingon metabolisms. The foetus is healthy, though The Doctor warns Torres that she will probably experience behavioural volatility.

Paris and Torres have trouble keeping the happy news to themselves – before long the rest of the crew has found out, and Neelix and Chakotay are both battling to be accepted as godfathers. Janeway then offers Torres time off work, though she is determined to continue her duties, insisting that she can handle them. Paris, however, is becoming increasingly anxious about fatherhood, and even asks for the advice of Tuvok, who has 4 children himself (and therefore four times more experience as him.) Later, he lays out a special candlelit dinner for him and Torres, who is already extremely annoyed at Janeway for practically relieving her from duty. Tom unfortunately then makes a comment about her being a Klingon mother, leading Torres into one of the warned of behavioural volatilities – she is able to calm herself down, but then The Doctor calls the two of them to sickbay.

The parents-to-be discover that their newborn will have a deviated spine. However, a genetic modification will correct the problem. He also reveals that the child will be a girl. Paris then asks if he could put up a holographic representation of what their child will look like. This is done and Paris instantly thinks she is beautiful. Torres, however, is concerned that the child has very pronounced Klingon ridges, even though she is only one-quarter Klingon. The Doctor informs her that the Klingon traits remain dominant in genes for several generations. At this point, Torres has a flashback to when she was a child herself, on a campout with some other children and her father. She remembers him telling her just how much she looked like her mother. Later, in ‘reality’ Paris and Torres go to bed and Torres continues to think about the campout – when she was young she never wanted to go hiking with her human cousins, believing that they did not like her because she was Klingon.

In the morning, Torres reports to sickbay so that The Doctor can give her baby the genetic treatment to correct the deviation. Whilst lying on the bed, Torres has another flashback – one of her cousins puts a worm in her food, and also teased her about being a Klingon, therefore causing her to leave. The Doctor completes his surgery, and Torres leaves for a visit in the holodeck – she projects an image of her unborn baby and accelerates her to 12 years old. After her forehead ridges disturb her, Torres begins to meddle with the genetic makeup of the child, deleting certain genes from the display. Eventually, Torres makes her child look human – she then saves the changes, and restricts access to the file to herself only.

Torres then returns to sickbay, hoping to convince The Doctor to make the necessary changes to ensure her child looks like her new holographic image. He is totally against the idea, suggesting she talk about it with her husband. When she finally talks to Paris about her idea, he is also against it. However, he realises that it is not an issue about the child’s health, but her appearance. He tells Torres that he will make sure that the child is not treated like an outcast. However, they fail to agree and turn to Janeway to mediate the argument. Torres says that she wants to make physical changes in the best interests of her child, just as Janeway once did for Seven. Janeway says that it seems the problem is a marital one rather than one of ethics, but also says that she will not overrule any decision The Doctor makes. Torres is incredibly unhappy at Paris getting his way – soon enough, he finds himself round Kim’s quarters looking for somewhere to sleep for the night.

As Torres lies in bed, she remembers even more of her old campout memories – after running away, she finally returns and tells her father, John, that she wished she were not Klingon as everyone makes fun of her. Her father tries to reassure her that she is not hated, but she chooses not to sit with the other children and reads. It is clear that even now, Torres feels the isolation that she felt back then.

In Engineering the next day, Torres remembers even more of the event – she overhears her father talking to her uncle about how moody and argumentative she has become lately – just like her mother. He remembers his parents’ reservations about him marrying a Klingon woman, and that how he was now living with two of them. Later, Torres finally meets up with Paris and they make up their differences. They have no time to be alone though, as they are both summoned to sickbay once more.

The Doctor informs the two that he has reviewed the data on Torres’ pregnancy and has come to the conclusion that the genetic alterations that Torres previously suggested actually need to be carried out – the clash between the human and Klingon metabolisms is much more severe than he first thought. The child could experience a complete failure of metabolism; therefore her Klingon genetic makeup needs to be erased. The Doctor says that he can perform the needed procedure the next morning. Paris is disturbed by the revelation – later he talks to Icheb and shows him The Doctor’s calculations. Icheb, however, spots an error. Seven runs a diagnostic on The Doctor’s programme, and finds that it has been tampered with. Paris tries to contact Torres but she is already in sickbay – she has already agreed to the procedure with The Doctor.

With communications to sickbay, and access to The Doctor’s programme blocked, Paris gets Tuvok to meet him outside sickbay. They manually open the door and then find a forcefield in place around the bio-bed. Paris tells The Doctor to stop the procedure but Torres tells him to ignore him. Eventually, Tuvok gets the forcefield offline and informs The Doctor that his programme has been tampered with – he deactivates himself until the situation can be dealt with. Tuvok leaves, so that Paris and Torres can sort out the situation between them. The two argue, and in the heat of the moment Torres reveals that her issues are with her father. She talks to Paris about how her father and her grew apart. During the camping trip, she told her father that if he cannot stand living with two Klingons that he should just leave. A few days later, he did. Paris sees that Torres has been blaming herself for what happened with her father, and fears that the same thing will happen to her again. He assures Torres he will never leave her, and that he wants even more children with her. Later, Torres is able to reverse the alterations made to The Doctor’s programme, and whilst apologising for what she did, she feels her baby kick – however now she is happy that she has a Klingon inside her. She asks The Doctor to be the baby’s godfather, who is ecstatic and accepts.

Summary
More ethics? After ‘Flesh and Blood’ I was surprised to see another ‘issues’ programme, but this was filled with so much emotion, so much raw feeling and revolved around a non-technical story to the point where I just didn’t care – this was wonderful – I loved every minute of it. I could whinge about the young B’Elanna being too old to be rejected by her father (surely she’s told stories before of her being six or seven years old when that happened?) but seriously, this was a pleasure to watch.

Making Paris and Torres a conjoined character (I mean, look at ‘Drive’ – that was also a good episode featuring not just Tom or B’Elanna, but both) seems to have paid off – not only is one of the best Star Trek relationships getting more air time, but it is developing into something really nice. Whilst this episode’s main focus was the relationship, it seems that for the rest of the season we’ll be treated to snippets of the Tom/B’Elanna relationship as a means of breaking up the action along the way. This episode just seemed to cement the fact that nobody will really mind if the relationship gets more screen time – in fact, personally I can’t wait till the next relationship show.

Well, I can’t go on about how nice it was for a page, there was a whole episode that just aired! One of the main issues raised here is that of genetic engineering. First of all, I like the hope that Star Trek always instils in its episodes – here we saw B’Elanna and Tom’s baby with a spine deviation, yet it was easily cured by The Doctor’s expertise. This always slaps a little hope onto ‘real life,’ indicating that we too, one day, can rid society of horrible defects – it particularly hit home for me as I am affected by someone close to me experiencing a horrible situation that would have been described as a defect before she was born and when she was young. Basically, it was a similar type of situation explored in the Enterprise episode ‘Terra Nova,’ when Dr. Phlox is able to cure a woman of cancer at the click of a switch.

Anyway, before I deviate too far from what I want to talk about, there is the issue of genetics. It was nice too see B’Elanna’s troubled past haunting her to the point where she wanted to change her child’s identity. This situation is truly tragic, and really develops the character to a point where I really feel something for her now. In fact, it felt so realt that it made me wonder that if someone from an ethnic minority found themselves in a similar situation, and with the technology available that B’Elanna had, would that person ever consider doing what B’Elanna wanted and change their appearance (or something similar)? Given the problems facing society in the world today with racism, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually would consider it. Personally, however, the use of genetic treatment is something I would restrict to health problems (like B’Elanna’s baby) rather than trying to cure the problems of racism (and changing someone’s identity before they are even born, for that matter.) Anyway, this is an issue that I won’t go into further detail on, though it was nice that this episode gives the audience the opportunity to raise such debates, which is certainly something that makes a good Star Trek episode.

Rather than leave the review on a bit of a negative point, I’ll move back to looking at the other good points about this week’s offering. I loved the start of the episode – everything going so well for Tom and B’Elanna. The way they went about their business for the morning all seemed so realistic and therefore fun. I liked Icheb’s naivety about B’Elanna’s parasite/baby inside her – he’s a character that has grown on me a lot since his debut in ‘Collective.’ Back then I think I hated just about all of the kids (I’m not a ‘Star Trek child character,’ if you haven’t gathered ), but in the episodes he’s appeared in since, including ‘Imperfection’ and ‘Nightingale’ (ahem – even though I haven’t seen all of the latter) he’s developing nicely and is interesting rather than annoying.

Another thing I liked about this episode is that the story involved no new ‘guest characters’ – well, apart from B’Elanna’s dad and family (though that was all in flashback and didn’t affect the characters – apart from B’Elanna – in the ‘present’ timeline.) It was nice to have a story concerning only the characters that matter to us most (i.e. the principles) and therefore enhancing the emotional pull of them.

One final thing I liked was the simplicity of the plot. With all this talk of genetics, you think I’d be bogged down with our friend, Mr. Technobabble. Instead, we followed a simple plot and watched some superb acting bring to life an emotional story that pulled some resonance with me at least! It was great to have a story like this, and sits on top of the pile of this season’s good episodes, above comedy such as ‘Body and Soul,’ the recent nostalgia trip, ‘Shattered’ and the ‘other’ ethical issues episode, ‘Critical Care.’ Season 7 is really shaping up to be some of Voyager’s best stuff. I look forward to the last half of the season.

Final Opinion
Beautiful story, emotionally trying and brought to life by Roxann Dawson’s brilliant portrayal

9.5/10