A Day of Honor
7/9 makes a request to work more. She is having a hard time being alone. B’Elanna is having a hard time at work. She has a series of problems not go well for her, and is in a pissy mood. It only got worse when Chakotay assigned 7/9 to engineering. Janeway talks 7/9 into using a less cumbersome name; Seven, which she accepts.
Voyager encounters a ship, which lost most of its people to the Borg. They appear to be very humble and apologetically ask for help. B’Elanna is quite hostile toward Seven, which is understandable. Suddenly, the crew is asked to befriend and take in an enemy. While in the mess hall Neelix offers to be B’Elanna’s exploding board; a place where she can blow off steam without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings. Neelix had prepared a special dish for B’Elanna for the Klingon Day of Honor ritual day. She seeks Neelix’s advice on whether or not she should go through with the ceremony. After speaking with Neelix she decides to go through with the ritual and she gulps down the blood pie. While in the holodeck she goes through the ritual ceremony. She has to eat and drink some interesting things for glory. After a few difficulties she decides to back out of the ceremony. In her quarters, she and Paris get in a fight and Paris storms out.
The directing member of the alien race speaks with Janeway and is kind of rude. He tries to accuse her of not wanting to help, and Neelix sticks up for Janeway. On the way back to his ship he spots Seven and gets very angry and emotional. In the meanwhile, the ship is trying to incorporate some of the Borg technology in order to make the ship function better. While doing so the Warp core breaches and they have to eject the warp core. B’Elanna is struggling with her bad day, and to make it worse while in the shuttle trying to find the core they encounter the Caatati salvaging their core and fire on the shuttle. B’Elanna and Paris transport out of the struggle in their space suits and are basically lost in space at the moment. While they are trying to work on contacting Voyager they have a great conversation filled with hints based on feelings and sexual innuendo. (Is it me, or has Paris’ acting in the last few episodes seemed bland and somewhat monotone?)….
Janeway speaks with Seven to see if she had anything to do with the accident in engineering. Seven feels that the crew is contentious and inefficient, but filled with random acts of kindness. B’Elanna and Paris continue to have a very touching conversation. However, they only have ½ an hour left of oxygen and things are getting dangerous for them. I like it that Seven seems to be receptive to Janeway.
The Caatati go to Voyager and threaten them. As part of the underlying message of the episode, Seven offers herself to the Caatati as a random act of kindness. When Janeway points out that she just performed a random act of kindness she smiles. She seems pleased that she did something good.
Paris and B’Elanna are about to die and B’Elanna tells Paris that she loves him with her last breath. This was actually quite touching and dramatic. This whole episode had several elements to it that were complicated and not just surface stories, but parts of a larger story.
Favorite part: I liked the emotional aspect to this episode. We saw it with the story with the Caatati and Seven, with Seven’s activities on the ship and her interplay with Janeway, and with Paris and B’Elanna. It was part of a more complicated story and it enhanced the arc.
Least favorite part: Paris' acting on a whole, particularly I did not like Paris’ response to B’Elanna after she proclaimed her love: “Now, is the time you chose to tell me”….