By Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Tuesday, August 29, 2000 - 2:17 am:

Another old gag used with little regard for reality. While the adults playing and children playing adults is okay in Comedy or Fantasy, it should only be used in Science Fiction with some serious explanation. Are we supposed to believe that these people are born as big as adults, or do they start off small, get big, then start shrinking again? If they are born big, how are they delivered? Or does the process of 'birth' on this world take most of the adult's mass leaving them tiny? This would certainly explain why the 'female' adults don't resemble Sharpei dogs with tons of loose skin, but what about the 'male' adults? Considering that death is just them vanishing, perhaps when they reach a certain age their bodies start consuming themselves and they begin shrinking? Personally, I feel that the writers just didn't think this one through.

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By Anonymous on Thursday, September 14, 2000 - 5:38 am:

I liked this episode because it featured Tuvok, but my big nit with this episode is: I assume that the Voyager crew is communicating with the Drayans by using the Universal Translator – what are the odds that the Drayans would speak English? Okay, in that case, why, when describing the beings on the planet (that look like children to us) would the UT interpret whatever word the Drayans used to describe them (which would more likely be something like ‘old ones’ or ‘simplified ones’) as ‘children’? Only one reason – to fool us.

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By George on Thursday, September 21, 2000 - 11:46 pm:

I originally posted this in the second season's comments section because the board for this episode hadn't been up yet.

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By George on Saturday, January 22, 2000 - 07:32 pm:

In the episode, "Innocence," does anyone have any comments on how the Drayans'
"reverse-aging process" is supposed to work?

How is a child or teenager supposed to give birth to an adult-sized humanoid? The Drayans don't
appear to be any different than most other humanoids, in terms of size, so how would this
happen?

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By Desmond on Saturday, January 25, 2003 - 9:18 pm:

This premise was used in an old episode of "Buck Rogers" as well. It was called either "The Golden Boy" or "The Golden Man." It features two gold-skinned people--a bright, resourceful boy and a simple-minded man. We learn, eventually, that it's the "boy" who is the adult, while the "man" is just a child.

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By Desmond on Saturday, January 25, 2003 - 9:19 pm:

Not to mention, of course, that it was this same premise that allowed (I believe) Johnathan Winters to play Mork and Mindy's son. Remember when Mork laid that gigantic egg?

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By John A. Lang on Saturday, May 22, 2004 - 9:12 pm:

Why doesn't anyone heed the Prime Directive until the end?

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By Thande on Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 2:04 am:

Desmond - it was "The Golden Man".

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By LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 2:15 am:

Because they needed that substance for their ship, John.

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By John A. Lang on Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 7:14 am:

That may be true, Luigi...but they could've gotten that substance & still obeyed the Prime Directive by having the aliens give Voyager the substance they needed and left their "sacred planet" alone.

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By LUIGI NOVI on Sunday, May 23, 2004 - 10:57 pm:

Oh, wait, I thought this was the Resistance(VOY) board. My bad. Why did they violate the PD? I don't recall the exact events of the last Act or two, but didn't some contingency of the situation arise that compelled Janeway to do so?

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By John A. Lang on Monday, May 24, 2004 - 6:30 pm:

If I recall correctly, (and I may be wrong) is that the shuttles landed on these planets BEFORE Janeway was informed about the sacredness of the "death planet". What should have occured was for Janeway to talk to the aliens about EVERYTHING their culture believes in BEFORE taking any shuttle down to any of their planets. And if the aliens consider one of their planets to be "off limits", then Janeway should've given the order to stay away from that planet and have the aliens themselves go down there and get whatever Voyager needed to press onward.

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By Thande on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 3:53 pm:

Actually, John, it was a 'death moon' (pick, pick, pick!)

Tuvok giving, what he perceives, a child a type-II phaser, nice one security chief and father. Being proficient with a phaser, he may need it more than her, and if he simply gave her something to and still closed the door she'd probably be just as appeased. Although there would've been no ep, oh darn, if the Drayans were more forthcoming instead of practically xenophobic there would've been no problem, as JAL states.

The idea of aging backwards comes from "The Counter-Clock Incident" (TAS)

Only human and Vulcan arrogance would assume that all people age the same way! Sheesh... that's the attitude I got from the Drayans.

On a side note....the Drayan digestive system works in reverse too. Yuck!

Interesting form of senility, too. They become truly child-like, lose higher technical knowledge, develop child-like fears, are physically robust and enjoy playing.

I wonder if Tuvok handled his own little ones this way!