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Episode
541
The Disease
Love is certainly in the air when Harry Kim falls for an alien living aboard a generational starship. Everyone should be thrilled for him, except that he ignored Janeway’s orders and caught something more than “the feels” in the process. The Disease goes into the Mission Log.
Hosted by John Champion and Holly Amos
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How did “Consider the risks and exercise restraint” not come up in the MMMs? It was a slam dunk. The EMH even spells it out. I feel like the entire episode is all about how difficult, yet how necessary, it is to manage risk in romantic relationships.
In this particular example, the risks are so astronomical that they really should have been discussed on the pod: Tal could literally *die* by being separated from Harry, and yet she knew separation was inevitable when she started the relationship. It is deeply stupid of her to do that in the first place, and monstrous of her not to inform Harry of her personal risk before making their relationship sexual. As written, Tal is an awful, awful person. And her solution at the end? “I’ll take medicine and hope it works.” WTH?? If anyone I cared about approached their sexual life with that attitude, how could I remain silent about it and still claim to love them?
And far from being “mature”, Harry acts more immature in this story than ever before. Like a child, he wants all the benefits, love and protection of his community, without any of the responsibility or interference from it. That’s not mature behavior.
Harry and Tal’s relationship was personal and private, but their decisions had potentially huge ramifications for their respective communities, ramifications they gave zero consideration to. This entitles their loved ones both to have, and express, concern and opinions on the matter. Calling what Janeway et al did here “gossipy” is a huge stretch, as the majority of any discussion by humans on the subject was done either with Harry himself or in an official capacity.
In point of fact, nobody is the bad guy here. What Harry and Tal did, while stupid, is also easily understood by any person of feeling. Often, what we SHOULD do and what our feelings are screaming to do are two very different things, especially when it comes to love and sex. Exercising restraint over our emotions until the risks have been weighed is a very basic level of adulting that I’d like to see Harry be capable of. That’s what we should be rooting for for him, not castigating all his loved ones for being concerned about his immature and risky behavior, especially when it may affect them all personally as well.