Attention on heck! Don’t try to adjust your viewscreens, person-hell and boo-tenants! What you’re seeing isn’t a creepy clone, a hellish hologram, or a strangely specific alternate universe! For the month of October, we’ll be taking a spine-chilling stroll through Trek’s most horror-iffic outings and spooky adventures! Now why don’t you sit back and try not to let that green blood of yours run cold! If things get a little too intense, don’t hesitate to ask Scotty to SCREAM you up! Hehehehehehehehehe!
Star Trek: Voyager – Season 6, Episode 5
Stephen King’s Christine is a spooky tale of a demonically-possessed car that puts its owner under its thrall to serve its evil will. Star Trek: Voyager’s “Alice” borrows heavily from King’s novel as well as several other internal references to other Trek episodes. It’s not a mind-blowing episode and it suffers from some of Voyager’s consistent flaws, but it displays the series’ willingness to journey outside of its bounds to tell a different kind of story.
The hapless guy that gets victimized by the evil vehicle is none other than Tom Paris. He’s the most logical choice for this kind of story, both because of his fascination with piloting and because of his hyperfixation on hobbies and projects. “Alice” shares a lot of similarities with the infamous “Threshold,” as they’re both stories about Paris that dive a little bit into his character but unfortunately bog themselves down with sci-fi weirdness. “Alice” doesn’t come close to being as historically bad as “Threshold,” but that’s also kind of a downside. Everyone remembers the salamander episode! This one… not so much, I’m sure.
While cruising along, Voyager encounters a space junkyard run by an amiable alien rando named Abaddon. I’m definitely aging myself, but this reminds me so much of Space Quest I – all the different ship designs and headed by an enthusiastic alien salesman. Ask your grandpa about it sometime!
The Voyager crew looks over Abaddon’s stock to see if there’s anything worth trading for, and Paris immediately sets eyes on a run-down shuttle. He convinces Chakotay to purchase it as it possesses some interesting technologies, including a “neurogenic” interface. Connecting your brain to an alien thingie? This will end well, I’m sure!
The latter half of Voyager seemed to lean heavily into Paris being A Total Dude, which is exactly as charming and compelling as it sounds. Like a lot of character work on Voyager (outside of Janeway, Seven, and the Doctor), it generally resulted in a lot of pretty broad and silly plotlines that gave the sense that the writers were tired of writing Star Trek and daydreaming about working for Everybody Loves Raymond or King of Queens. Hey, what if Tom was super fascinated by late 20th century Americana for totally organic reasons? What if he worked on holographic cars in a modern day garage for totally thematic purposes? What if Tom’s girlfriend replicated him an old-style TV set, so he could watch that instead of listening to her while drinking beer and mindlessly going “uh-huh” as she prattled on? I wonder if anyone in the writers’ rooms of Seinfeld or Friends were conversely trying to steer the tones of their shows towards heady science fiction that explored philosophical issues of right and wrong? The line must be drawn here, Kramer!
Anyway. This episode isn’t as weird as those other examples, but it does lean into that same dude-ical territory for Tom Paris. As soon as he gets his hands on the alien ship, he completely disappears into obsession over fixin’ ‘er up and neglects most every aspect of his life – his best friend, his duties, and of course, his girlfriend. Paris started out as one of the most interesting characters and a unique signifier about the new possibilities this Trek show had. It’s pretty disappointing that his character would get reduced to a series of inane personal hobbies and not much else.
Hot take: I kind of feel that Bashir and O’Brien went down a similar path, and showcased Trek‘s (be it Voyager or Deep Space Nine) predilection for presenting masculinity in a very lowbrow sitcom way (admittedly, its track record with femininity could be much, much worse).
That general sense of frustration with Tom “The Dude” Paris is woven throughout this episode, and not in a good way. He’s not very likable at all here, which could have made for an interesting character study and an opportunity for growth. Perhaps an incisive critique of men’s predilection for burying themselves in hobbies while leaving their emotional lives malnourished? Unfortunately, the writers’ room of Voyager did not have the wherewithal for that sort of compelling, uh, writing. Or maybe they were too busy fantasizing about what working on Just Shoot Me would be like to do their own, actual jobs properly. [laugh track]
Anyway (for realsies this time). Paris gets elbows deep in his new project (with Harry helping him out), and it’s clear that the ship needs a lot of love. Unlike your friends, job, and girlfriend, amiright? [audience cheers] Paris has named the ship Alice, after a failed romantic conquest from his youth. This time will be different, though! He’ll surely get to second base with this Alice! [male half of audience hoots and hollers while the female half silently reconsiders a lot of things]
The design of the ship is cool, and I appreciate the effort of building out a full-scale prop. Looks like something you’d select in F-Zero. Paris tests out the neural interface of the ship – as he sits in the pilot’s seat, an ominous metal plate slides out over his forehead and he can actually feel the various systems of the ship. As Paris quits for the day and exits the shuttlebay, the ship’s computer activates and dives into a neural scan it apparently took of his brain. It then matches its own voice to the one of Alice from his memories.
Later in his quarters, Tom hears a faint female voice calling after him. Following it outside and down the corridor, he catches fleeting visions of a woman walking ahead of him. It of course leads him back to the shuttlebay where Alice is waiting for him. In an interesting shot, he asks who she is and she simply replies “Alice.” He walks towards her and out of the frame. The camera stays on Tom without showing the source of the woman’s voice. Ha ha, cool beans. I predict a long and fruitful partnership with this evil haunted ship of death.
The next day, Tom dives in to fixing Alice and we get a montage of him doing repairs, wiping down her windshield, and lasering off soot from her hull. He also changes into a new silver jumpsuit (replicated from a design in Alice’s database) that does absolutely nothing for his figure. Girl, where did your waist go???
He’s now taken to talking to the ship directly and leaves Harry hangin’ on one of their holo-dates. One of the somewhat silly aspects of the plot is that Tom already built a shuttle from scratch in Season 5 – the Delta Flyer. So it’s a little repetitive for the show to once again focus on him building up another. To its minimal credit, the episode does point out (through Chakotay) that Voyager has a bunch of shuttles in addition to the Flyer already. But Tom needs yet another ship? I’d say this is about 50/50 “lazy writing endemic to Voyager” and “a potentially interesting character thread that isn’t explored fully – or at all, really (also endemic to Voyager).” Again, it relates back to Paris’ Dude-eriffic character direction in that he’s just a guy who gets lost in his dorky hobbies. I mean, I’ve been known to spend my weekends antiquing for vintage TV reviews and spending many hours in my garage souping them up with aftermarket puns and not-quite-street legal modern expletives. Andy Griffith, you’ve never fucked harder, jabroni.
And it’s not like someone with a hobby like restoring old cars finishes one and is just done with that activity forever. It’s always onto the next one, and the next. As I discussed in “Threshold,” there’s a faint sliver of an idea presented that Tom’s need for speed points to a darker impulse (heh) within him – that he’s an adrenaline junkie in need of the next fix. Idle hands are the devil (shuttle)’s workshop and all. Maybe this is his way of managing the inherent troublemaking, self-destructive urges that got him into so much trouble in the past. The inner turmoil at the heart of every addict is an energy that can’t be destroyed, only redirected.
Of course, this is 100% me projecting my own interesting ideas onto the show, and not at all the credit of any of the writers. They’re too busy writing spec scripts for Home Improvement than to follow up on the tantalizing threads episodes like these suggest. Hey, what if Tom gave Alice… more power? [simian grunting]
After having mostly finished his repairs to Alice, Tom stops by the mess hall to replicate some champagne and has a little chat with Neelix. They bond over their mutual ships, and it’s actually some decent writing. It recalls a similar-ish scene of the two of them from “Live Fast and Prosper” and has the unintentional effect of reminding us how more interesting Neelix used to be. Back when he was a nomadic scrapper and not the obsequious lapdog with the most horrendous jammies in existence he would quickly become.
Torres accompanies Paris to his christening, and as they almost kiss, a convenient little alarm on Alice’s dashboard goes off. Tom of course gets completely distracted by it and ruins the mood. Torres seems a little weirded out by the soft and sexy voice of Alice’s computer, and by Tom referring to him and his ship by “we.” She gets zapped by the door thingie as she storms out, and Paris barely cares. LOL, you lunkhead. Who wants to have sex with your sexy sex partner when there’s a new toy in the garage?
But Alice still needs more parts to be flightworthy, and Paris unsuccessfully hits up Chakotay for them. Chakotay can’t spare them since they’re essential backups, nor are there enough energy reserves at the moment to replicate them. Chakotay’s role in this episode isn’t spectacular, but I guess it’s nice he’s getting a little more screen time instead of Janeway. Plus it makes sense that these kinds of mundane tasks are more his purview than the captain’s.
Paris is pretty agitated about not being able to get what he needs at the moment and complains about not having anything to do. And Chakotay is like, well, how about your job, dude? You haven’t been getting your regular hijinks done – I want some weekly mirth on my desk by 0800!
Paris stomps back to the shuttlebay and whines to Alice about Chakotay being a doo doo head. Except this time she appears in human form as a beautiful woman with a jumpsuit that matches Tom’s. She pressures him to forget about his responsibilities to everyone else and convinces him to rest by hooking himself up to the ship’s interface. She has this creepy, unflinching gaze that’s always locked in on Paris when they talk.
Under her influence, Paris pushes forward with repairing her by stealing existing components from Voyager. While removing a power cell in a Jeffries tube, Alice senses his mixed feelings. This is by far the best scene of the episode and the only one that really dives into Paris’ character in a substantial way. It’s framed in an uncomfortably intimate way with Alice’s face inches away from Tom’s and shot in a single take. It’s a good visual representation of how intrusive her influence on him is. Claire Rankin’s performance is multifaceted enough to keep Alice interesting, despite how clearly malevolent she is. Although Alice’s fixation on Tom is weird and intense, Rankin puts a lot of softness and seemingly genuine affection into her portrayal. It’s a story choice that moves the episode beyond its straight Christine influence into something more interesting and personal for Paris. It’s obvious that she’s up to no good, but playing her as a sweet and doting siren gives the episode some welcome nuance and appeal.
Paris feels guilty about compromising Voyager’s systems, but Alice is insistent that no one on the ship understands him like her, in particular his thirst for velocity. She senses him thinking about his first flight and asks him for the full story. Paris recalls his dad taking him up in a shuttle at the tender age of eight and turning over the controls to him. Despite his initial terror, Paris describes the moment of clarity when everything fell into place and he was truly flying. And although he’s piloted many ships since then, he’s never been able to recapture that sensation.
This is such good writing (and a great performance from McNeill), almost enough to redeem the flaws in the rest of the episode. That yearning that’s at the heart of Tom Paris comes across so well here, and it connects with those kinds of exciting, formative experiences we’ve all had in our youths. The sad truth is that this kind of childlike wonder and discovery becomes increasingly hard to recapture as we grow older, and perhaps gets all the more impossible the harder that we try.
I keep referring to Paris as a thrill-seeking addict and a selfish manchild, but maybe that’s the most pessimistic reading of his character. The more positive interpretation is that he’s a sky-minded explorer who wants to journey into not just the unexplored reaches of space, but also past the limits of his own sensory experience. He yearns for personal freedom. Maybe that’s at the heart of why he shirks his duties and relationships to fixate on his hobbies and passions. In the previous season, he gets so involved in a Jules Verne-inspired underwater adventure that he gets himself demoted and in a month-long time out for his trouble. In both “Thirty Days” and “Alice,” Paris throws off the shackles of his daily drudgery and responsibilities to chase something epic and liberating from his childhood. It’s certainly not the adult thing to do and he can’t really beat the man-child allegations, but nurturing that youthful flame of exciting discovery is something I can identify with.
Voyager can be a frustrating show because so much of it is mundane and milquetoast, but it occasionally has moments like this where a character’s uniqueness comes into focus in such a compelling way. This one scene is everything that “Threshold” should have been, instead of all the crazy-brain mutant gobbledygook that it’s infamous for. I might be hyperbolizing, but this could be Tom Paris’ best scene in the entire show because it dives straight into the core of who he is in such an aching, emotional manner. Ah, well.
But the insidious thing is that Alice is playing off of all of this so that he does her bidding. Rankin does a great job of drinking in Paris’ anecdote and feeling it along with him. Alice promises that when they get the ship up and running, Paris will get to experience that free-floating feeling once again. And the nice detail about the plot is that she’s actually being honest – because due to the ship’s neurogenic interface, Paris will be directly connected and be one with the ship. So in essence, he will be flying through space without anything getting in the way. That’s what makes it such a compelling siren call and a more positive point of difference from Christine. Instead of a muscle car that encourages aggression and bloodlust, it’s a starship that wants to give Tom what he’s always wanted and set him free. Who could resist?
In a more low key scene, Torres complains to Kim about Paris’ pattern of behavior whenever he gets a new hobby. Kim amusingly replies with the Five Stages of Acquisition coined by the Ferengi (of course) – Infatuation, Justification, Appropriation, Obsession, and Resale. Heh. Deep Space Nine was the series that did the most work in fleshing out the Ferengi, but Voyager occasionally threw in some decent material like this.
Less low key is that Torres discovers the several components that Tom, ah, appropriated. Instead of confronting Paris, she goes down to the shuttlebay where Alice is. The only real reason to do this is for the plot – so that Alice can try to kill Torres. And how! While Torres is inside of Alice ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), the door gets shut, life support immediately turns off, and it interferes with communication so that she can’t even cry for help. It’s honestly a pretty terrifying little moment with Alice circumventing the normal channels for help and trapping her in an airless box to suffocate.
But Paris conveniently enters at this exact moment and opens the door to let Torres out. She’s predictably furious about the ship trying to kill her, and Paris speed runs through all the man-isms he’s capable of – you must be mistaken, you’re overreacting, aren’t you just KMS-ing? OK, maybe not that last one. But he was going to say it, I know it!
Torres reveals that she knows he stole Voyager’s parts, and he tries to sidestep the issue. She goes to spill the beans to Janeway, and in a really ugly moment, Paris grabs her and screams in her face. We really get the absolute lows and highs of Thomas Eugene Paris here. Awesome sauce. [uncomfortable audience silence]
Alice appears, and Paris also grabs her and gives her a good screaming so she doesn’t feel left out. Oy. Also, it kind of punctures the conceit that she’s not physically there if Paris is putting his hands on her. But maybe I’m overthinking it. He yells at her for trying to kill Torres. Oh, B’Elanna was right, now that she’s out of earshot? Paris is undoubtedly following the Chauvinist Certainty Principle – a woman can be right, or she can be occupying physical space with you – but not both.
Alice is all like, yeah I tried to kill her, but she was going to find out about us! Paris finally comes to his senses and heads for sickbay. Rankin’s performance changes into the more malevolent persona we’ve been expecting, and she lambasts him for being a sissy quitter. He seems steadfast in separating from her, until she starts doing some lovely fucking shit with his head veins. Ouch. I love the way Rankin is playing Alice here – she’s not like over the top evil while she’s torturing Paris, but is gently ordering him while still keeping that wide-eyed death stare on him. Like, “Please stop making me squeeze your brain, baby. This hurts me too, in some way, probably.”
We get to the low point in the episode, which features one of my bottom least favorite story tropes – characters not believing other characters and thinking they’re blowing something way out of proportion. I fucking haaaaaaate that shit so much. Here, Janeway seems totally incredulous that Tom acted in an untoward way against B’Elanna. Not only is it unsettling because Torres is a woman speaking up against a man acting violent and unstable towards her (which has already happened to her!), but this is so out of tone for Star Trek. It’s one of the nicely wholesome things about the franchise that characters always believe one another, no matter how incredulous their claims are. If you saw some weird shit that sounds ridiculous, Picard is still going to take it seriously and run all the scans to prove or disprove it.
But instead, Janeway (also a woman, which makes it more disturbing), just kind of chuckles about it with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Tom assaulted you? Hmm, what were you wearing, hon’? Couldn’t this actually be your fault in some way?” Torres persists, and when she mentions that Chakotay and Kim have also noticed Paris’ weird behavior, that’s when Janeway starts to take it seriously. Wait, two men can verify your hysterical claims? Oh shit, I had no idea! Red alert, everyone!
I hate it so much.
Annnnyyyyway. Janeway decides that Tom needs a medical workover and is about to tell Torres something else when they get interrupted by an unscheduled shuttle launch. And I just want to know so badly what Janeway was going to say. Because I can tell that she’s using this “exasperated mom who thinks both sides are probably wrong” tone. Maybe something to the effect of – “OK, Tom might be unstable and abusive right now, but please try not to be so mouthy to him. It’s not very ladylike.” [audience boos]
Aboard Alice, Tom has broken free from Voyager, but they’re able to snare him with the ol’ tractor beam. Alice implores Paris to make the final interface connection, which causes a bunch of colored tubes to suddenly plug into his suit. With a more direct line to the ship’s systems, he’s able to simply think what he wants Alice to do and escapes Voyager’s clutches. I love how Alice is sprawled out alongside Paris in the pilot’s chair, just burning a hole in his head with her unblinking eyes. BPD ships are the downfall of every hotshot pilot!
As Paris and Alice travel through space, we get a bright and evocative first person perspective of the ship moving at warp. I wish the episode delved a little bit more into the physical sensation of what it would be like to be hooked up directly to a starship. It would help sell how Paris is losing himself in this connection and how seductive it is. As the camera pulls back, we see that those ship tubes have become hilarious overgrown around Paris. So much so that he can’t seem to move his body anymore. The sci-fi horror of being jacked into a computer system while your body atrophies and withers away is one that’s popped up in many different places, including Star Trek. It seemed much more en vogue in the 90’s, although it’s way more applicable nowadays. It’s like, we’re just disappearing into our phones, maaaaaannnn….
Alice is back to sweet-talking Paris again, and casually mentions the legend of Icarus. Just to make things super-duper clear.
In an odd backtrack, Voyager returns to the junkyard to try and compel Abaddon’s assistance with the ship he sold them. Abaddon is much less genial this time around, but Neelix is able to finagle his help by returning an item of great value. Hey, good job being useful, buddy.
Abaddon claims that the ship is haunted and relays tales from previous owners. As he’s talking to the crew, a visage of Alice appears before him, but appearing as a member of his race. He seems terrified of her and quickly collapses unconscious.
The Doctor is able to treat the cerebral hemorrhage that Abaddon just had, and he wakes. He explains that Alice can’t fly herself, she needs a biological pilot. Apparently Abaddon didn’t cut the mustard in that regard, and that Alice berated him because of his pilotical inadequacies – she needed a real man to fly her. I wish I was making this up. LOL, cucked by a haunted shuttlecraft! Fucking brutal, man.
The resolution of the Doctor’s quick cure for Abaddon’s hallucinations is pretty pat, because it’s a disturbing idea that the episode shoos away too quickly – that this evil ship mentally scars every pilot that has tried to drive her. She lives on as this immaterial harpie embedded in their heads for the rest of their lives. There’s something kinda Lord of the Rings-esque about it. One shuttle to fly them all!
Seven is able to reconstruct Paris’ course, and they discover that Alice is leading him into an anomaly known as a particle fountain. I love all of these wacky anomalies that Voyager invented. What is a particle fountain? Who knows, but it’s big and it sucks. But enough about your mom. [audience brays boorishly for 30 seconds straight]
Alice and Paris (the name of my insufferable Trek-themed on location white girl romcom series) have arrived at the particle fountain, and she simply describes it as “home.”
Wait, what?
Like, that’s literally all the explanation we get. Alice, an evil sentient spaceship considers a hugely destructive spatial anomaly her home. Was she born there? Is she actually a non-corporeal life form that is just inhabiting this spaceship? Is the fountain actually a portal to another realm/universe? Don’t know, no idea, and shut up nerd!
Surprisingly, the central premise of the episode – a haunted spaceship – is one that I found myself swallowing whole (ahem). Unlike, say, Enterprise’s “Dead Stop,” where the existence of a similarly evil space station (that also required life forms to support it by connecting to it) and its origins seem to introduce way more questions than it had answers for. For some reason, I was totally on board with the premise of “Alice” until this moment. Like, c’mon writers. I know the siren call of Mad About You is luring you away from your tedious tasks on Star Trek: Voyager, but you gotta give me a little bit more than this.
For some reason, Voyager is able to instantly catch up to them, despite all the backtracking and talking to Abaddon they did. OK. Alice must not be the fastest ship in the quadrant, if you catch my drift. [audience chuckles]
They open fire on Alice, and Tom reacts in pain. Because he and the ship are one now, damaging her means hurting him. The crew comes up with another way of separating them. The Doctor is able to plug Torres into the neurogenic interface somehow and transmit her into Paris’ head while Tuvok tries to hack into Alice’s mainframe. Like putting too much spooky into a spook-filled pumpkin!
“No one’s ever gotten me this close before!” Alice says happily. Well, um. You’ve never had a real pilot like Tom, that’s why! It not the size of the shuttle that counts, it’s how many personal and professional bridges you can burn in order to hook yourself up to it and fly into a suicide anomaly. Also, oral. A more daring series probably would have explored the psycho-sexual nature of their connection in more lascivious detail. I know Enterprise would’ve!
Torres is now appearing over Paris’ shoulder instead of Alice. She implores him to let go, but Alice appears in front of Tom and tries to get him to choose her instead. I commend the producers for resisting the urge to turn this climactic emotional battle into a literal catfight between the two attractive ladies. Because who would want to see that nonsense! [male members of audience quietly sob]
Instead of actually realizing the extent of his mistakes and choosing to go with Torres, Paris just screams at both of them to leave him alone. Uh, not quite the heartwarming climax I was expecting. As planned, Voyager is able to disrupt Alice‘s systems enough to beam Paris out. She cries out to him as her ship flies into the particle fountain and is destroyed. It would have been nice if Paris’ love and connection to Torres was enough to snap him out of his fever, much as how Susanna was able to bring Geordi back in “Identity Crisis.” But instead he gets dragged out of certain death with his psycho side piece kicking and screaming. Now that’s the kind of guy you hold onto with both hands, B’Elanna baby.
My personal theory is that the fountain was a gateway to somewhere else, and Alice needed a pilot to keep the ship’s shields operating so that they could survive the journey into it. She mentions them being able to fly into stars with their shields, so it’s implied they could be protected from the crazy forces they’d be assaulted by. Otherwise, it would be a moth-to-a-flame-like suicide run, and Alice seems more intelligent than that. In The Next Generation’s “The Loss,” the ship is caught by a bunch of two-dimensional lifeforms heading towards a certain death anomaly, only for it to turn out to be their home. This episode steals that premise but doesn’t flesh it out enough to make sense. Haunted ships be crazy, man.
Back on Voyager, the Doctor treats Paris and he seems none the worse for wear, physically speaking. If this episode were truly committed to its horror premise, it would end with Paris still being tormented by visions of her in some trippy dream-within-dream sequences. OK, that’s just the ending to Event Horizon, you got me. But where we’re going, we won’t need… originality.
Instead, Tom seems super bummed out (despite the absolutely adorable get well soon card Naomi Wildman made for him) and clearly feels bad for how he treated B’Elanna. McNeill plays it really well, and he’s so ashamed he can’t even look her in the eye. It makes sense from an emotional perspective, but still feels a little incongruous in the same way that “Empok Nor’s” somber ending did. That episode was also about one of the characters going nuts because of an outside influence and doing some heinous shit. As I’ve said before, this is a Trek Trope I’m not a fan of since there aren’t any substantive consequences or character revelations for the afflicted parties. They always feel bad for acting badly, since they’re good people, and their friends hand wave it away because “it wasn’t really them, it was the ______.” It always feels perfunctory for that reason and a pointless exercise overall.
In this case, it would be more daring to not brush it all aside, and for the episode to contend with the fact that although Alice’s influence took Tom way too far off the deep end, it was still a ruinous journey he enthusiastically undertook of his own free will. In Season 4’s “Vis a Vis,” Paris neglects B’Elanna in favor of a holographic car he’s restoring. On the holodeck. In the end he comes clean and apologizes for his messed up priorities. Rest easy, ‘Lana – you’re not the first awesome woman to come in a distant second to some dumb video game.
But two seasons later, he’s back at it again. That the ship ended up being evil is an additional layer, but the personality flaws are still present. This is just Voyager’s general style (or lack thereof). It’s like they have a big story-character wheel that they spin every week to see who gets what. Chakotay likes boxing now? Sure! Seven is also forced to do boxing now? Why not! Paris ignores Torres to work on a vehicular passion project? Didn’t we already do that one? Yeah, but the wheel says we have to, so…
“Alice” borrows liberally from King’s Christine, but makes enough changes to turn it into a distinctive story that fits into Voyager’s framework. As is often the case, the show isn’t interested in fully exploring the implications that it raises. But there are glimmers of a more intelligent story woven around a spooky tale of an evil ship. Though humanity of the 24th century has outgrown the need for physical riches, “Alice” shows that unchecked possession is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways.
Stray Observations:
- Chakotay says they have a full compliment of shuttles, but I believe the destroyed shuttlecraft count was like 10 by this point in the series. Maybe they started off with like 30 or 40?
- Neelix’s ship is one of those random details that Voyager never did much with or barely acknowledged. In the seven seasons of the show, it appeared like four times. And three of those appearances were in the last season.
- The episode begins with a “playful” scene of Kim and Paris trying to learn Tuvok’s age. For some reason, Tuvok just doesn’t want to say. Which is his right, but seems weird for a Vulcan to hide/be ashamed of. And of course the two knuckleheads are annoyingly persistent about it. Aren’t people’s service records and basic bio info available to crewmembers? Spellbinding stuff, Voyager.
- When grumbling to Paris about his slacking off, Chakotay asks him to get back into uniform and shave. Whoa, since when are beards against Starfleet regulation? Next you’re going to tell me that mounting a chair is against the law! We gotta LIVE, Chakotay. WHY WONT YOU LET US LIIIIIIVE?
- Presented without context:
