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So I decided to start a thread about missed opportunities in various Star Trek episodes, whether it involves a different way an episode could have been written or a different way a character could have been used, I thought it would be interesting to compile them in a thread.
I'll start with "Favorite Son", the last of the "trilogy of terror" in Voyager's third season, where Harry Kim is slowly transformed into a Taresian and drawn to their home planet to be harvested for genetic material. I think there was a real opportunity to explore the Prime Directive in changing the motivations behind the Taresians acquiring alien DNA. Rather than it being an effort to 'sustain their species', a rather flimsy idea at best as it was, they could have been acquiring alien DNA to try to modify their species to change their gender ratio to be sustainable without the need to kill their males. They would still keep the ruse about Harry being a Taresian from birth, but once the ruse was discovered, the truth of their efforts could have added a new wrinkle to the story. The Taresians could have started by trying to convince Harry that letting them harvest him would help prevent this from needing to happen again. He likely would counter that they could turn to cloning to provide more males, since their genetic engineering capabilities were so advanced. The counterargument might be that their cloning technology would be unreliable or too prone to an attack from the Nasari. But even if some method were established that would allow Harry to help the Taresians to cure their reproductive problems without dying in the process, he'd still be forbidden from doing so due to the Prime Directive. It would have made the episode a little more bearable and the Taresians a little more relatable than the soul-sucking harpies they were portrayed as.
EDIT: It could also have been a nice way to mention ideas such as veganism or the philosophy of Vulcan logic as attempts to overcome biologically-ingrained tendencies that would later be seen as distasteful or dangerous to their respective societies.
I'll start with "Favorite Son", the last of the "trilogy of terror" in Voyager's third season, where Harry Kim is slowly transformed into a Taresian and drawn to their home planet to be harvested for genetic material. I think there was a real opportunity to explore the Prime Directive in changing the motivations behind the Taresians acquiring alien DNA. Rather than it being an effort to 'sustain their species', a rather flimsy idea at best as it was, they could have been acquiring alien DNA to try to modify their species to change their gender ratio to be sustainable without the need to kill their males. They would still keep the ruse about Harry being a Taresian from birth, but once the ruse was discovered, the truth of their efforts could have added a new wrinkle to the story. The Taresians could have started by trying to convince Harry that letting them harvest him would help prevent this from needing to happen again. He likely would counter that they could turn to cloning to provide more males, since their genetic engineering capabilities were so advanced. The counterargument might be that their cloning technology would be unreliable or too prone to an attack from the Nasari. But even if some method were established that would allow Harry to help the Taresians to cure their reproductive problems without dying in the process, he'd still be forbidden from doing so due to the Prime Directive. It would have made the episode a little more bearable and the Taresians a little more relatable than the soul-sucking harpies they were portrayed as.
EDIT: It could also have been a nice way to mention ideas such as veganism or the philosophy of Vulcan logic as attempts to overcome biologically-ingrained tendencies that would later be seen as distasteful or dangerous to their respective societies.
