“Favorite Son” is episode twenty of season three of Star Trek: Voyager.
Voyager is passing a trinary star system which Chakotay thinks will make a good reference point. Harry asks if they didn’t already pass a trinary system Chakotay doesn’t think so. Harry thinks it looks familiar. Tuvok suggests a long-winded explanation which the captain shortens to Deja vu.
A ship approaches and hails them. The commander, Alben, says he’s never seen a ship like them before. The captain says they are not from around there. In that case. Alben welcomes them to Nasari space. Harry is sure the ship is going to fire, even though no threat is detected. So, Harry transfers phasors and shields to him and opens fire.
The captain believes Harry of duty but the Nasari ship isn’t willing to talk now. After warp engines are knocked out, and B’Elanna is injured, the captain orders Voyager to target the Nasari’s weapons. They are hit and the Nasari moves away.
Harry insists that the Nasari were about to fire and they could have been destroyed. Sensors didn’t show that. Harry detected something he was sure was a weapon system powering up, and the whole welcome routine was a trick. Only, he can’t explain how he knew. He needed to protect the ship. Whilst Tuvok checks to see if there is anything to Harry’s hunch, Harry is, in the meantime, suspended from duty and ordered to sickbay.
B’Elanna is currently being treated for burns and the Doctor says she will be alright. Harry thinks it’s his fault she was injured. He was sure he was doing the right thing. Now; not so much. It’s fading. That night, Harry has a dream, including himself with an illness as a child and of a planet., When he gets up, he sees a rash on his face in the mirror.
The Doctor can’t find any infection, but he doesn’t know what caused the rash. Harry mentions his dream about his childhood illness and wonders if it could have returned. The Doctor has never considered dreams as a diagnostic tool before. Harry’s blood chemistry has been slightly altered, which isn’t consistent with that illness. Harry also asks about psychological effects, recounting his feelings of Deja vu and opening fire without orders. The Doctor considers that to be atypical behaviour. B’Elanna regains consciousness; she thinks Harry looks cute. Like a speckled targ.
When Harry goes to see the captain to take full responsibility for what happened, it turns out he was right. The Nasari ship was charging weapons. They would have been taken completely by surprise. Harry just knew the Nasari were trouble. Which leads to the important question: How? Harry has felt for the past few days that he had been in this area of space before. He’s considered a variety of things. Then Tuvok contacts them from the bridge; there are three Nasari ships approaching. They lack the means to outrun them and are in no shape to fight. Harry looks at the local star charts and says to head for a system. They will be safe there. He’s sure of it.
Harry recognises a planet in the system from his dream. It’s called Taresia. Another ship approaches and disables the three Nasari vessels. Then contacts Voyager. The woman doing so has the same ‘rash’ as Harry, and says their sensors detected him abord the ship. He’s one of their people. Taresian.
Beaming down to the planet, the Taresians explain that Harry’s Taresian genes are becoming active. He was conceived on Taresia as an embryo, put into stasis, then taken to Earth and implanted in the womb of an Earth woman. Everyone on the planet was born on other worlds, and they make their way back home. The children are born of alien parents – they sound rather like the Midwich Cuckoos – and bring back new genetic material and knowledge. Coded into their DNA is a desire to explore space. They always find their way back, using genetic memory. Harry is one of them. He can feel it. Males are very rare on Taresia; the population is 90% female. Tom finds that interesting. The Nasari probably attacked because they detected Harry on board.
The Doctor says that he has found a positive match in Harry’s DNA for Taresian DNA. The fragments had been disguising themselves. Implanting genetic memory in the DNA is plausible, but would be a feat of genetic engineering.
The Nasari are still out there, so Captain Janeway decides to see if they are willing to talk without Harry on board. Harry himself has many questions. One of them perhaps should have been, How did my father take me so far across the galaxy? The Taresians are definitely not what they seem.