4-3. Day of Honor.

B'Elanna and Tom are left stranded in space.

THE PLOT

B'Elanna Torres is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. She overslept; her shower malfunctioned; the plamsa coolant is leaking in Engineering; Chakotay has ordered her to allow Seven of Nine to work in Engineering; and Tom Paris won't stop badgering her about the "Day of Honor," a Klingon ritual in which a warrior reflects on how honorable he or she has been over the past year. B'Elanna has scorned the ritual in the past, as she has all things Klingon, but cut off from home she is doubting her decision to divorce herself so completely from her mother's culture. 

At the same time, Voyager encounters a refugee ship belonging to the Caatati. Its captain, Rahmin (Michael A. Krawic), humbly begs for aid, which Janeway is happy to provide... at least, at first. But as Voyager offers more and more supplies, Rahmin oh-so-humbly pushes for even more, observing the "luxury" in which the Starfleet crew live. When an accident in Engineering cripples the ship, the Caatati appear in force, demanding to strip Voyager of everything they can make use of.

The accident has left B'Elanna and Tom outside the ship, adrift in spacesuits. As Janeway prepares to either talk or fight her way through the Caatati, B'Elanna and Tom realize that any rescue will need to come soon: They have only thirty minutes of oxygen, and it's dwindling rapidly!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Janeway: After the Engineering accident, she feels bound to investigate the possibility of Sabotage by Seven of Nine (which is what B'Elanna suspects). She admits that she wants to believe Seven, but that she needs to ask her in any case. She does believe the former Borg when she says she is innocent, and eventually enlists her help going through the data to find exactly what did happen. 

Torres: She resents the intrusion of Seven of Nine into Engineering, referring to her as "the Borg," and making it clear that she neither likes nor trusts her. When the Caatati reveal that they became refugees after their homeworld was assimilated by the Borg, B'Elanna challenges Seven - and is appalled when the former Borg calmly states that "guilt is irrelevant." When stuck in space with Tom, B'Elanna admits to him that she does push people away, and is afraid that she'll die alone because of it. As the episode ends, she tells Tom she loves him... Which should lead to some interesting character interaction in the next couple shows.

Tom Paris: Particularly since Tom, for all of his pushing to get closer to her, doesn't actually reply in kind. He makes a remark about how she picked a great time to tell him that, then does pull her in for as much of a hug as the bulky spacesuits will allow... but he doesn't actually say that he feels the same. That could create some character conflict in the short term, should the writers choose not to just gloss over that. With regard to Seven, Tom makes it clear that he will not judge her on her past with the Borg. He has first-hand experience at being judged based on past mistakes, and he refuses to do the same to others. He even makes a point of telling Seven to ask if there is anything he can do to make her transition easier. 

Seven of Nine: She reacts to the hostility of certain crew members without emotion - but when Janeway asks if she had anything to do with the Engineering accident, we see that she is not immune to the feelings of those around her. "You're like the others," she says with clear disappointment, "You see me as a threat." She believes that the Voyager crew is far less efficient than the Borg, but she does appreciate Tom's offer of help and indicates she has been impressed by "surprising acts of compassion." 

I do think that the series is moving Seven's integration along a bit too fast. I would have liked a couple of "Seven-light" episodes between The Gift and this one. It just seems too soon for her to be working in Engineering a mere one episode after trying to send a transmission to the Borg and two episodes after being an active enemy. I'm enjoying her as a character so far - but it might be a good idea to push her to the background for a few episodes now that she's been established, lest this start to feel like "The Seven of Nine Show." 


THOUGHTS

Though a relatively mild episode, Day of Honor is exactly the kind of show Voyager needs more of: a well-made episode focusing on the characters, fueled less by external threat and more by the dynamics of the regulars. 

B'Elanna's bad day is less individual little things that go wrong and more her feeling particularly. She is split between the human heritage she's always insisted on claiming and the Klingon heritage that she's denied; at the same time, she is split between the safety of being alone and the emotional risks of a relationship with Tom. As is true of anyone during a turbulent time, minor mishaps that might otherwise be brushed aside become major problems, as it's clear her bad day is less about oversleeping and her shower malfunctioning than it is about her emotional state. It does actually take being removed from everything else, left only with Tom in the void of space, before she will allow her anger to drop away to talk sincerely with him.

Seven of Nine is definitely looking like a strong addition so far. Her very presence sparks character conflict. B'Elanna doesn't trust her; Tom does want to trust her, which creates potential conflict between Tom and B'Elanna; Janeway also wants to trust her, but as the captain has to maintain a certain caution. She's doing exactly what could have been done with Suder, had the production staff not decided to kill him off in Basics - She's a character who contributes to the ship, but her background makes her someone whose interactions with the crew are less than completely comfortable.

The Caatati plot is not very interesting on its own, but it does its job in supporting the emotional arcs of both B'Elanna and Seven. The Caatati's turn toward aggressiveness serves the plot functions of stranding B'Elanna and Tom in space, while convincingly keeping Voyager occupied long enough to allow the Tom/B'Elanna scenes to play out. As survivors of the Borg, they also push Seven's issues to the fore. The story is substantial enough to provide a framework, but simple enough that it doesn't take screentime away from the more interesting character material.

That said, the Caatati themselves are irritating beyond measure, and the way in which they respond to a ship that has already provided them with significant assistance makes them so unsympathetic that I was actively rooting for Janeway to open fire.

All told, Day of Honor manages to maintain Voyager's run of relatively strong episodes. After two very weak seasons, is it ridiculous of me to hope that the series might be finally finding its footing?


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: The Gift
Next Episode: Nemesis


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