Lineage

**** (4 stars out of 5)

As the Talaxians say: "Good news has no clothes". Now Tom and B'Elanna have some good news!
Klingon pregnancies are typically 30 weeks, but with mixed species it can be much quicker. (Which, as you'll recall, could be a good explanation for Alexander Rozhenko.)

B'Elanna and her mother each had corrective surgery in infancy for hereditary spinal curvature, but the EMH can now genetically modify the fetal spine and save the hassle. Unfortunately, Torres starts brooding about other possibilities for gene modification...

Klingon traits remain dominant for several generations, so Baby Paris-Torres will have forehead ridges. Mommy proposes something the Doctor finds very dubious: she wants to delete gene sequences for redundant organs like her third lung and such... but mostly she wants to have a little blonde human rather than an ugly, ugly Klingon.

B'Elanna grew up feeling the sting of human discrimination even from her own relatives. And despite the Bolians, Vulcans, Talaxians, and Bajorans aboard, there are still 140 humans. And the cream is white!  In fact, once the Doctor has a sudden, conveniently engineered change of heart, Baby Torres may turn out white, too.

"Lineage" offers a lot of insight into B'Elanna's heart. The pain of her parent's divorce, her difficult path  as a daughter of two races. Humans may have put their racial differences behind them in this future (to the point where the meanest name kids called B'Elanna's father was "John SNORE-es". But merging cultures is not and never will be easy. It takes a village and this kid would have a doozy: Bolians who think being born near a warp core is good for the disposition. A space-faring Indian for a spiritual advisor. And a hologram for a godfather.

Muse

*** (3 stars out of 5)
Kelis the Poet found inspiration in his writing at last- and tied it up so she wouldn't escape.

As we all know, Star Trek shuttles crash almost as often as texting drivers. Today's crash left B'Elanna Torres in the alien version of the ancient Greek theatre-in-the-round with a pinch of Misery. For Kelis to please his Patron, Torres must spin 1,0001 Tales-- such as "Naomi's Big Adventure", "Borgs By The Bushel", and "That Time Everyone Turned into Salamanders".

Like Slurms MacKenzie (The Original Party Worm), if she's not the life of the party all night, every night, she's fired. And if she's good, Kelis will treat her injuries with more leeches, speaking of worms.

How unhappy will Kelis' girlfriend have to get before she wonders what he's hiding, and why Torres is ridged for his pleasure?

How quickly will the corpulent, bacon-fed audience tire of the adventures of the godly 'Voyager Eternals'? Six seasons? Seven at most?

But underneath my cynicism, I still love the last line of the episode quite a bit:

"And Voyager will continue on her journey to the gleaming cities of Earth- where peace reigns and hatred has no home."

"Muse", not to be confused with 'The Muse' (another Trek story about an obsessed scribe), has an unfortunate sense of self-referential self-pity. By nature, a writer wants to change the world, or even a single heart, with words. But writer's block won't ever be effectively cured by happenstance, kidnapping, and plagiarism. And as the metaphors dry up, the writers literally walk out on stage and shrug: We're Out of Material.

Drone

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Transporter malfunction: Tuvix-class! You got your 29th Century Shoulder Brooch on my Borg Nanoprobes! No, you spilled your nasty nanoprobes on my future dingus! Before you can say "Urk! Ugh! Get it out!" Father Mulchaey's descendant is necked for his DNA stew. Before you can say "unplanned parenthood" Mulchaey, Seven and the EMH have made the original Frankenstein's monster.

He's a Borg, but wireless! He's got no strings to hold him down, make him fret, or make him frown. Future Boy is armoured with poly-dutonic alloy. Tricked out with internal transporter nodes (for when you REALLY have to go). A mobile emitter brain stem. Add a pumpkin for a head and you've got yourself the perfect Halloween.

He's grown too fast to abort, so Janeway assigns expert nurturer Seven of Nine to be his mommy. Uh, really? I'm not sure I'd trust Seven to water a PLANT. And Neelix delivers "schoolbooks" to the Patchwork Borg. Why Neelix? I like the guy, but you have half a hundred first contact specialists, engineers, scientists, and security officers to handle these sorts of things. Well, someone had to name the boy! And what an exciting name it is. One. (If it wasn't already a boring Voyager title, it would be THIS episode's boring title.) One should get a medical degree. Then he'd be Doctor One- Dr. One the Drone. Move over, Dr. Acula.

One's a nice kid, but he's got a lot of identity questions and they'd rather he didn't learn about the Borg on the street like they did. Next thing you know there'd be some terrible unavoidable tragedy with One single innocent life snuffed out.

"Drone" is a heartwarming Pinocchio tale. A Niles Crane Monster created by a mash-up of 'The Child' and 'I, Borg'. And it's so well performed that I find it only slightly hamstrung by having seen it all before.

With the exception of B'Elanna Torres in a Towel. THAT was new! And before she complains that the ship's doctor is a dirty old peeping tom, the real ENGINEERING question should be: Who builds a viewscreen directly opposite the sonic shower? The answer forthcoming... Perverts. Thank you, perverts. You guys make three star episodes into four.