Unexpected

** (2 stars out of 5)

On a Xyrillian ship, resequenced photons create holographic illusions. Grass grows on the floor, food grows on the walls, and babies grow in the menfolk! It's a topsy-turvy, candy-dandy gumdrop world! And before you ask, yes, Red Dwarf did "Pregnant Man" first and better. It goes without saying that it was also funnier.

But the teaser is great. There's a whole star there just for Archer's awkward moment when the gravity goes out in his shower. So while we're on the subject of making a potentially deadly, dangerous, serious accident silly, embarrassing, and inconsequential, what if Trip got knocked up?

Engineer Ah'len, a Xyrillian from Thera, asks some perfunctory questions about Trip's beard and immediately makes telepathic finger contact in a box of granules. Bingo, bango, bongo, Tucker grows wrist nipples and a blastocyst in his pericardium. Couldn't he keep his fingers in his pants where they belong?

"You may be putting those nipples to work before you know it," Phlox chirps. Well, why should T'Pol be the only one? Speaking of: does T'Pol's mood seem more disgusted, contemptuous, or jealous? And are we SURE she's a Vulcan?

Klingons attack because... uh... because they're Klingons, that's why! SHUT UP! Captain Vorok's ship is top of the line- it even has the tractor beam and working torpedoes that Archer's ship doesn't. Perhaps the outclassed humans can take comfort in the fact that this exact ship design will still be in use by the Klingons for at least the next two centuries. Innovation, thy name is... well, not Klingons. In fact, when the opportunity arises to seize cloaking technology from the Xyrillians, Vorok nabs HOLODECK technology instead. Are we SURE he's a KLINGON?

All's well that ends well when it turns out that the lizards who can't fix their own engines, or even make water, can transfer fetuses from father to father with the greatest of ease.

"Unexpected" is a quirky idea awkwardly presented, and the funniest scene they created was deleted. In which T'Pol (innocently?) recommends a nauseated Trip might like to suck a Rigellian sausage. Well, I liked it anyway. In case it ever comes up (and it won't- no one ever saw the Xyrillians again) UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES HOLD HANDS WITH THEM IN A CAT'S LITTERBOX. If it ever comes up.

The Abandoned

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Jake Sisko's dabo girl steady Mardah from Bajor looks forward to dinner with his dad.

Speaking of dads, Quark avoids his chance to be one when Boslic femme fatale Rionoj sells him a bunch of Gamma Quadrant salvage... including a squalling infant in a box.

Ben Sisko coos over the foundling, but in a twinkling it becomes a tween, then a teen! He's the product of some very advanced genetic engineering or too much sugar cereal.

Speaking of growing up too fast, Jake is 16 and Mardah is 20. Ben's not so keen, but mellows when he learns his son is a writer and a dom-jot hustler (calm down, that's pool, remember?).

Kira brings Odo a housewarming plant. He no longer sleeps in his bucket, reverting to his gelatinous state anywhere in his new quarters. Might want to child-proof the EPS taps... or put down a tarp.

The abandoned kid is a Jem'Hadar, a killer with a severe enzyme deficiency, loyal to changelings at the genetic level. So Odo tries to make a connection, rather than let the kid end up in a lab.

Bashir starts pumping the loyalty drug into Punchy the Reptile Boy at the neck. Odo wants the kid to understand equality and self-determination. In response to his desire to know more about his people, Odo shows the recordings. Snuff videos: is that really the best idea ever?

Odo gives the kid a holosuite combatant to stab with Andorian knives, if he will agree to be restrained and peaceful in the real world.  It's not working, maybe because the kid was designed without ears? Also, his invisibility power blossoms... he pulls a gun on Sisko and flees.

Though Odo offers to go to unexplored space together if it means the youngster doesn't have to be a soldier- it really is the only thing he wants. Killing inferior species is every page in a Jem'Hadar book, it seems.  

"The Abandoned" was, in the eyes of director Avery Brooks, a metaphor for young brown men, raised only to be fighters and hooked on drugs from the very first. To me, if there's a trait where Ben Sisko proves himself above Kirk and Picard, it is as a loving, devoted father. Whether to his underlings constantly asking 'Dad' if they can borrow a runabout, to his actual son Jake given enormous leeway to make his own mistakes, to abandoned babies with nothing in their hearts from minute one but death and hate. Starfleet might not see Sisko's compassion for the enemy as an asset in the face of what's to come. But I sure do.