B’Elanna is a one-woman Eugenics War.
“Lineage” continues the frustrating patterns of Star Trek: Voyager‘s seventh season: introducing and then bypassing a complex moral and ethical issue, and letting a character escape any consequences for their actions beyond an awkward conversation.
First, Tom and B’Elanna are knocked up
I quite enjoyed this early part of the episode. Yes, it’s gross that Icheb is being weird about this whole pregnancy malarkey, but it’s extremely in-character that he wouldn’t recognise the pregnancy for what it is, while Seven delivers the news in the least sensitive possible way.
I was pleasantly surprised that, unlike most pregnancies in Star Trek — the ones that aren’t the result of rape, which is a number higher than zero — this one is not the result of a contraception failure. Instead, Tom and B’Elanna stopped using birth control because they wanted to start a family; the surprise is that they did not expect to conceive without medical intervention.
Are they allowed to have their feelings about this in private? Of course not. But that is, once again, because of Icheb, who is young and naive enough that this makes sense. (Although you really have to hope that someone — the Doctor, if not Seven — is going to walk him through basic etiquette real fast.)
Is it weird that everyone is clapping and cheering for Tom because his sperm penetrated B’Elanna’s ovum? Yes. But that weirdness is something that happens in the real world to this day, and at least Janeway’s first reaction is to offer B’Elanna maternity leave? Admittedly in a condescending way, but it’s an improvement on the thinly-veiled panic with which she received the news of Samantha Wildman’s pregnancy six years ago.
Multiple men vying for the role of godfather, and no women for the godmother job, is … well, it highlights a certain gender imbalance in this series, but it’s also cool to see so many men volunteering for a nurturing role, along with Tom turning to Tuvok for advice.
Okay, that’s the stuff I liked out of the way
B’Elanna’s deadbeat dad
Truthfully, I also liked the flashbacks to B’Elanna’s horrible camping trip with her dad. I felt like writer James Kahn really captured the way parents can marginalise their children, even unintentionally.
When John “possibly the worst dad in all of Star Trek, and yes I know that category includes Worf” Torres complains that B’Elanna has become moody and argumentative, I was like, yes, your daughter is on the cusp of adolescence. As with so much in B’Elanna’s life, it feels like normal feelings and behaviour are being pathologised through the lens of her Klingon identity. I don’t know if that was Kahn’s intention, or if he was even aware of this, but he nevertheless produced something very true.
See, for example, the way John Torres dismisses his nephew’s bullying of B’Elanna. He doesn’t come out and say “Boys will be boys,” but he immediately declares that B’Elanna has overreacted and is too sensitive — while Uncle Carl, who seems like a decent guy, ends up talking to his son about how that was wrong. You can see moments where Carl seems to be disappointed in his little brother, or at least is aware of his failings. Frankly, if John had waited a couple of years before leaving, B’Elanna might have been ready to get him out of her life.
Instead, he left at an incredibly vulnerable time for B’Elanna, and she has never been able to process that experience with the perspective of an adult. And it’s very natural that becoming pregnant would trigger B’Elanna and have her reliving that trauma.
Some women will rewrite their friend’s code and their child’s dna rather than go to therapy
B’Elanna’s impulse to genetically engineer the Klingon out of her daughter is understandable on an emotional level. Where I think the episode falls down is the sudden ramp up to melodrama. The domestic arguments between Tom and B’Elanna are already fraught and compelling — but then we have her rewriting the Doctor’s code, and then having the procedure done now, and locking everyone out of sickbay. We go from A LOT to TOO MUCH, and it feels artificial.
I mean, obviously B’Elanna is wrong, and on some level she knows that. The increasing uncanny valley quality of the computer-generated daughters, each one less Klingon and more white, almost brings an element of horror into the story. But the story is heightened to a point that the resolution — an emotional, heartfelt conversation which, of course, pierces B’Elanna’s trauma bubble and brings her to her sense just in time — feels unsatisfying.
And, of course, there are no consequences. B’Elanna has just harmed the Doctor and come perilously close to harming her unborn child via DIY genetic alterations — frankly, the consequences for those actions are almost too big for a show which avoids heavy serialisation or ongoing conflicts between its characters.
Not that I want to see Tom and B’Elanna split up, but remember, Janeway demoted Tom and gave him 30 days in the brig for disobeying orders in order to save a civilisation. So far this season, Harry has broken the Prime Directive, the Doctor has … also broken the Prime Directive … a bunch of times … and now this. And the consequences have been “apologies” and “stern talking-tos.”
I’m not saying that B’Elanna should face some sort of heavy punitive action for potentially harming her child, because that is some “2025 Texas” malarkey. But she also reprogrammed the Doctor, endangering not only herself and her foetus, but potentially anyone else who needed medical care, and that’s before we touch on the personal violation of his autonomy and personhood.
It feels like everyone agrees that this incident should be written off as Crazy Pregnant Lady Stuff, and that feels … dismissive. Obviously pre- and post-partum psychosis are very real, and diminish a person’s capacity, but B’Elanna herself says she was completely aware of her actions and choices. I wish the script had managed to find a middle ground between “severe, series-changing consequences” and “nothing”.
At least this episode actually knows what eugenics is
Stand back, because I’m gonna say something critical of Star Trek: Discovery.
There’s a point in season 1 where Admiral Cornwell, Queen of my Heart, refers to Stamets injecting himself with alien DNA as “eugenic manipulation”.
At the time, I waved it away as a sign of the heavy shadow the Eugenics Wars cast over the Federation in this era, and the strong taboo against genetic manipulation that it triggered.
But there’s been a lot of new Star Trek since 2017, and at this point, I have to conclude that many of the people writing it simply do not know what eugenics is.
Consider “Ad Astra Per Aspera”, the second episode of Strange New Worlds‘ second season, in which Una is on trial for concealing her status as a genetically engineered Illyrian and joining Starfleet under false pretenses. The script uses Una’s identity as an allegory for queer and diverse identities (obviously SNW does not think queer people can simply appear as themselves in a story), but is so busy exploring that and the future history canon wankery of the Eugenics Wars that no one actually stops to talk about the real impact of real eugenics on real people.
I actually think that a culture which treats genetic enhancements as morally neutral is an interesting thing to explore, but that’s because it stands against the actual history of eugenics: the Nuremberg laws, forced sterilisations, the testing of the contraceptive pill on unknowing Puerto Rican women, Australia’s Stolen Generations.
“Lineage” doesn’t overtly refer to any of this either, and that’s disappointing, but at least it understands that eugenics — even when driven by trauma — is wrong.
Other observations
- Chakotay has a small role in this episode, but I’m struck by how good Beltran is. I know he went through a lacklustre period in the middle era, but his work this season is great.
- Tom and B’Elanna may be the only people in Star Trek who have a comfortable bed with thick blankets and fat pillows.
- I’m intrigued by the choice to put B’Elanna in loose boxer shorts in the final scene. Yes, they look comfortable, and are less revealing than other underwear options for a scene that’s not meant to be sexy, but I keep picturing all that fabric bulking up beneath her uniform.
In conclusion
Well-acted, well-written in parts, overall deeply frustrating. Two and a half worm sandwich microaggressions out of five.