“Day of Honor”
Written by Jeri Taylor
Directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño
Season 4, Episode 3
Production episode 172
Original air date: September 17, 1997
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. For the second episode in a row, we open in the Borg-converted cargo bay, where Seven is meeting with Chakotay. She wishes to have a duty assignment, as being stuck in the cargo bay alone is driving her binky bonkers.
Torres is having a terrible horrible no-good very bad day. She overslept, her sonic shower broke, two of her staff called in sick, and the coolant injector failed. Paris gives her a helm report and asks if they’re still on for tonight, but Torres doesn’t commit. Apparently today is a Klingon holiday, the Day of Honor, kind of a Klingon Yom Kippur, where Klingons reflect on how honorable they’ve been over the past year. Torres had discussed doing a Day of Honor ritual on the holodeck with Paris, but now she’s changing her mind because of her terrible horrible no-good very bad day.
Chakotay informs Torres that Seven will be working in engineering trying to use Voyager’s engines to open a Borg-style transwarp conduit and maybe get them home faster. Torres thinks it’s a terrible idea and doesn’t want to do it, right up until Chakotay makes it clear that he didn’t come to discuss it with her but to give her an order.
Buy the Book
To Hold Up the Sky
Janeway tells Seven that she’ll trust her enough not to post a security guard at her side at all times in engineering, but that Seven must follow Torres’ orders.
A Caatati ship approaches. It’s in pretty rough shape, and according to Rahmin, the captain of the ship, his beat-up vessel is one of about thirty that is all that is left of the Caatati after being assimilated by the Borg. Janeway offers to help them with some supplies they can spare, particularly thorium isotopes, which is the primary basis of the Caatati’s ships’ power systems.
Neelix brings Torres a blood pie because it’s the Day of Honor, but Torres says she’s not celebrating it. However, her conversation on the subject with Neelix turns her around on the subject, and she decides to go through with it after eating the blood pie. (And thank goodness she did eat it, since I can’t imagine anyone else on board would want it.)
However, the holographic Klingon who queries her about how honorable she’s been over the past year is unimpressed with her answers, and, after she gets beat up a bit and beats the Klingons up a bit, she storms out of the holodeck—leaving it running, so Paris wanders in on a pissed-off Klingon. He tries to talk to her about it, but she blows him off.
Another Caatati, Lumas, speaks to the senior staff and tries to guilt them into giving more supplies up. Janeway offers more food and medical supplies, but there are limits. Lumas’ gratitude is less than enthusiastic.
Tuvok escorts Lumas to the transporter room, but they bump into Seven and Paris en route, as they’re headed to engineering. Upon learning that Seven is an ex-Borg, Lumas goes batshit.
Seven, Torres, Paris, and Vorik work to open a transwarp conduit. They’re just going to keep it open for a bit to study it as a first step. However, something goes wrong, as tachyons start draining into engines, destabilizing the warp core. Torres is forced to evacuate the engine room and eject the core.
Voyager falls to sublight speed and is now drifting, as the impulse drive was also damaged by the tachyons. The good news is, ejecting the warp core got it away from the tachyon leak, so it didn’t breach. But Voyager can’t move, so Paris and Torres take a shuttle to track down the warp core while Vorik makes repairs to the impulse engines.
Unfortunately, by the time the shuttle arrives at the warp core, the Caatati have already turned up and are tractoring it away, claiming it as salvage. Torres tries to stop the tractor beam, but the Caatati retaliate with antimatter feedback that causes the shuttle to explode, though Paris and Torres are able to escape in EVA suits before that happens. But the two are now drifting in space, and have to plex together their suits’ communicators to try to contact Voyager.
As part of the investigation into the accident, Janeway questions Seven about what happened. Seven realizes that Janeway suspects Seven of sabotage. However, Seven barely even has a concept of deception, as the Collective is so intermingled that prevarication isn’t really possible. Seven admits that she’s having trouble adjusting to the different social structure of individuals, though she is intrigued by the “surprising acts of compassion.”
They continue to investigate, only to discover that there was no malicious intent—the tachyon leak was, indeed, an accident. Vorik gets the impulse engines up and running and Chakotay reports a signal from Torres and Paris.
However, before they can go rescue the pair, a dozen or so Caatati ships show up. Lumas says he has their warp core, and will only give it back if Voyager provides them with all their food supplies, all their thorium, and also Seven.
Janeway won’t give in to those demands, even though Seven is actually willing to be their prisoner. Then Seven presents an alternative: she can create a device that will replicate thorium. The Caatati had that technology, but none of the survivors know how to create it. Seven, however, has the knowledge that the Borg assimilated. She offers to fabricate one, which they can use as a prototype to fashion more of them. Lumas agrees to give back the warp core in exchange for this game-changing technology, impressed by the surprising act of compassion.
Just as Torres and Paris are about to run out of air, Torres admits that she loves Paris, and then Voyager shows up to rescue them in the nick of time.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Tachyons leaking into the engines are bad. We also, for the first time, see an actual ejection of the warp core.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway wants to trust Seven, but it’s a process—she lets her go to engineering without a prison guard, as it were, but still suspects her of sabotaging the ship. She also wants to be nice to the Caatati, but they make it difficult, and she’s not at all willing to bend over for them just because they have Voyager’s warp core.
She also wants to call Seven “Annika,” but Seven would rather be called “Seven.”
Half and half. The Day of Honor ritual includes eating the heart of a targ, drinking mot’loch from the Grail of Kahless, and being hit with a lot of painstiks. Torres makes it through the first two, but passes on the third.
Torres never thought much of the Day of Honor or any other Klingon ritual, but it has more appeal now that she’s been trapped half a galaxy away from home for three years.
Resistance is futile. Seven feels absolutely no guilt about the Borg’s assimilation of the Caatati. She is trying to adjust to life as an individual and trying to become part of the community of the ship.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix recognizes that Torres has a tendency to bottle up her anger for long periods of time until it explodes. He offers himself up as a punching bag of sorts: he’s willing to let her take out her anger on him with no fear of reprisal or consequence. Torres does not take him up on it (which I’m sure disappointed more than one viewer), but she does appreciate the gesture, and it steers her toward trying out the Day of Honor.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Torres re-creates the Day of Honor ritual on the holodeck. It’s just a cave with Klingons in it, which is kinda dull, though that may just be Torres not wanting to go all-out with the decorating.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Torres finally admits that she loves Paris. Even though Paris has obviously been willing to admit that he loves her a lot longer, he doesn’t say it back, the shit.
Do it.
“There are many people on this ship who have similar feelings toward me.”
“I’m afraid you’re right. Does that bother you?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not one of those people. We all have a past—what matters is now.”
“I am uncertain what you’re trying to say.”
“That if there’s any way I can help you adjust to your life here on Voyager, please ask me.”
“I will remember your offer.”
–Seven and Paris discussing the Caatati reaction to her and Paris sympathizing about being the asshole outsider nobody likes.
Welcome aboard. Stunt performer and swordmaster Kevin P. Stillwell plays the holographic Klingon, while the two Caatati are played by Michael Krawic and Alan Altshud. Krawic previously played Samuels in DS9’s “The Maquis, Part I” and will play Stron in Enterprise’s “Carbon Creek.” Altshud previously played the sandal maker in “False Profits” as well as one of the terrorists in TNG’s “Starship Mine” and a Yridian in TNG’s “Gambit, Part I.”
Plus we have recurring regular Alexander Enberg for his first of two fourth-season appearances as Vorik; he’ll next appear in “Demon.”
Trivial matters: This is only the second time that an episode was inspired by something that happened in the tie-in fiction. (The first was TNG’s “Where No One Has Gone Before,” which was based on the novel The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane, who cowrote the episode with Michael Reaves.) In 1997, Simon & Schuster published the “Day of Honor” crossover, which had Kirk’s Enterprise (Treaty’s Law by Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch), Picard’s Enterprise (Ancient Blood by Diane Carey), Deep Space 9 (Armageddon Sky by L.A. Graf and the YA novel Honor Bound by Diana G. Gallagher), and Voyager (Her Klingon Soul by Michael Jan Friedman, who also wrote a novelization of this episode), all celebrating the holiday in various ways. (The TOS book and adult DS9 book both featured Kor; the TNG book and both DS9 books all featured Worf.) S&S editor John J. Ordover, who conceived the series with Paula M. Block, was already working with Jeri Taylor on her novels Mosaic and Pathways, and he mentioned the crossover to her and the holiday it was celebrating, and Taylor ran with it, using it as a way to develop Torres’s character.
Roxann Dawson was approximately three months pregnant when this episode was filmed. Unlike, for example, Nana Visitor’s pregnancy, but like Gates McFadden’s, it was not written into the storyline but written and filmed around. This was the first episode that proved a challenge due to Dawson having to do action scenes on the holodeck and especially putting on the EVA suit.
The EVA suits are the same ones that were seen in First Contact.
In “Cathexis,” Janeway stated that Torres didn’t have the authorization to eject the warp core on her own, yet she does so on her own in this episode.
The shuttlecraft Paris and Torres take out is the Cochrane, the same shuttle used to go warp ten in “Threshold.” It’s destroyed, bringing the dead shuttle tally up to six, and the second episode in a row where a shuttle goes blooey. Prior shuttles were lost in “Initiations,” “Non Sequitur,” “Parturition,” “Unity,” and “The Gift.”
Set a course for home. “Welcome to the worst day of my life.” I like the idea of the Day of Honor, when Klingons look back on the prior year to see if they’ve been sufficiently honorable and how they can improve that performance the following year. It’s very similar to a lot of human new year’s rituals, and yet also very Klingon.
And it’s a chance for Torres to confront her own feelings. She’s always been an outsider, never fitting in as a human or as a Klingon. She washed out of Starfleet Academy. Unlike many of the other Maquis we’ve met, she doesn’t seem to have any particular personal crusade for their cause. It feels like she joined because they were the outsiders.
But now she’s on Voyager for what may be the rest of her life. Whether she wants one or not, she’s got a family, a community, that she’s never had. She’s actually developing relationships, and even falling in love, and it obviously scares the living crap out of her. We saw in “Faces” that her Klingon arrogance is constantly butting heads with her very human insecurities.
Would’ve been nice if Paris actually fucking told her he loved her back. It was especially annoying because mostly Paris was good in this episode, though his best scene wasn’t with Torres, but rather with Seven. His telling Seven that he understands what she’s going through, because, like Torres, and like Seven for that matter, he’s the outsider trying to find his place in the enforced community of Voyager, though Paris’ status is his own damn fault. Still, I like that he tells Seven that he’s there to talk to her about it and doesn’t prejudge her the way so many others, from the Caatati on down, have.
Speaking of Seven, I do like the fact that they didn’t take the lazy way out and make her feel guilt over what happened to the Caatati, because that wouldn’t make any sense, at least not this soon after leaving the Collective. But she does see the value of compassion, especially since in this case it’s rewarded by Voyager getting their warp core back without violence.
A good episode about the struggles of fitting in and figuring out your place in the universe, especially when your universe has been reduced to a single ship zipping its way home.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest novel is To Hell and Regroup, a collaboration with David Sherman. The third book in David’s “18th Race” trilogy of military science fiction novels, this concludes the alien-invasion tale begun in Issue in Doubt and continued in In All Directions. The book is on sale now in trade paperback and eBook form from eSpec Books.
I always liked this episode. I love B’Elanna (and felt that she kind of got the short shrift in later seasons, as plotlines that used to feature her now used Seven), and I love that she is such a complicated person. She works through things in a way that is unique to her, both as someone who is half-Klingon, someone who is a Maquis, and someone who has felt out of place since she was a kid (and we see this again when they receive the news about the rest of the Maquis). Out of all the people on Voyager, she always struck me as the one who was really just doing the best with what she had, and making it work.
Although this episode was inspired by the novels, it interprets the Day of Honor differently. In the books, it was a holiday where Klingons acknowledge the honor of their enemies (inspired by the interaction between Kirk and Kor in the TOS installment, which showed the origin of the holiday — since heaven forbid anything exist in the Trek universe that isn’t connected to an Enterprise captain somehow). Here, it’s for reflecting on their own honor. I suppose it could be both at once, or maybe there’s an orthodox practice and a reform practice, or something. But it goes to show that even when a canon does borrow an idea from its tie-ins, it tends to put its own spin on it.
What bugged me about the warp core jettison subplot is that the ship cutaway graphic at the back of the bridge shows that there is a backup warp core stored in Voyager‘s secondary hull, basically a spare in the trunk in case they lose the main core. But this episode presumed the jettisoned core was the only one they had.
@2 I guess the graphic designer has a better grasp of emergency maintenance than the writers. It could have been covered by a few lines, too. Since they’d still want to go out and fix the old warp core immediately and wouldn’t have time to install the spare before the bad guys showed up.
I also like Seven not feeling guilty about being a Borg. Though thinking about a drone’s complicity or agency in the actions of the Collective makes me wonder if we’re supposed to see the Queen as a manifestation of the collective will or as a separate directing intelligence? Is she a unity from the top down or from the bottom up?
@2 it always bugged me that Voyager is supposed to have a spare core but never referenced it when the main core was ejected.
It’s like the aeroshuttle that could have been used before they decided to build the delta flyer
@krad: Would Torres really spend the rest of her life on Voyager, though? I don’t know how half Klingon/half human physiology functions, but I’m still assuming they live longer than your average 24th century human. Kor was still alive and kicking all the way to DS9’s final season. Now granted, 70 years would still be a long time for Torres, enough for her to live a fulfilling life on Voyager, but she would still have a long life left to live, after getting home.
Day of Honor reminds me a bit of season 1’s Parallax, as it establishes the new status quo for Voyager, and also happens to be centered around B’Elanna Torres. But this is the better episode, since it’s not nearly as dependant on technobabble (despite the whole Warp Core eject plot) and far more willing to address Torres’ deeper fears and hangups.
It also makes good use of Seven by integrating her into the ship’s activities. It doesn’t feel forced or that the narrative is cutting corners to give her the spotlight. It’s a well balanced mixture of plot and character.
My only complaint with this one is with the Caatati. Delta Quadrant alien species tend to not only be underdeveloped, but also geared towards causing problems for Voyager, even if it’s not in their nature. In this case, we’re once again faced with the same problem we got in season 3’s Displaced: refugee-phobia. I’m sure Taylor didn’t mean to paint them in such a fashion, but the fact that they’re given so little screentime hurts their credibility. While the ending of this plot redeems them somewhat – thanks to Seven’s selfless actions – they’re still underdeveloped. Since the episode is really about Torres having a bad day and spending a lot of time floating in space, we’re left with little room for the Caatati.
But overall, this is a fine episode that advance Torres and Paris and gives us the new Voyager standard with Seven officially on duty.
@3- Is she a unity from the top down or from the bottom up?
Personally I find the latter idea more interesting, but I wonder if it would have resulted in the Borg as we know them? After assimilating enough people who thought that forced assimilation was a damned rotten trick to play on a fellow, you’d think the collective might rethink it.
I think it’s more likely that there’s a central intelligence, whether that started with a single queen-figure or a small-scale collective like the one in Unity, which strips out or suppresses any aspects deemed threatening or not-useful of it’s assimilees while incorporating only what it finds useful into itself.
I actually like that Tom didn’t say “I love you” back in this situation.
He’s always been the one trying to move their relationship forward while she’s been digging her heels in while occasionally dangling a bit of bait to make sure he doesn’t lose interest (which isn’t surprising, as she probably had no frame of reference for her own emotions before the self-examination in this episode). B’Elanna had already had a moody hissy-fit at him that day and was constantly reiterating that she was in a bad mood and wanted the day to be over.
A sudden “deathbed” confession of love is really not something Tom was expecting or emotionally ready for. If he’d just said it back it would have been little more than parroting and she’d have had just as much reason to doubt his sincerity as he had to doubt hers given the whole “seconds away from death” thing. It would also have felt really cheesy for me as a viewer. It’s not as if Paris’ past words and actions haven’t made his position much clearer than hers.
As it is, we get them not speaking to each other for three days then they resolve the situation with an awkward encounter outside the mess hall, which feels much more true to the characters and their situation.
@7 I didn’t mind it either. Tom has made it abundantly clear that he only wants a relationship if she is 100% on board with that. Not under the influence of pon farr, not saying things when she thinks she is going to die and is suffering from oxygen deprivation. It made total sense to me that he would wait to tell her he loved her until he was sure she really did feel the same way.
I haven’t rewatched this episode yet, at least not in its entirety but in general I remember liking it and the further development of the Paris-Torres relationship as well as Seven as an individual. And the jettison of the warp core, I think the first time we see that on Star Trek, seems like an event of important catastrophic significance so that was very dramatic when that happened.
Not sure how Seven has no concept of deception though when in the prior episode having been disconnected from the Borg, she purposefully attacks others and tries to use the ship to contact her former “friends” before Kes stops her.
Seven feeling guilty would be like a blood cell feeling guilty for the blood clot that killed the person. She was just a drone.
Christopher mentioned last week that he noticed an increase of full body shots once Seven came aboard and now I can’t help but notice it. This if the first episode to feature the Seven in her catsuit and there were several full body shots of her. Not complaining, just noting the difference in framing.
garreth: She didn’t deceive anyone. She fully intended to cooperate until she saw the subspace relay, and then did what she said she would do when she asked Janeway for access to a subspace relay.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Re: spare warp core. I always interpreted that as if they were in Fed space then the loss of the primary core wouldn’t be a huge deal… they could slip in the spare and head off to a starbase to grab another one. But being so far away from a Fed star base and without a guarantee of compatible technology, they need to do everything possible to keep the primary and spare.
Also I love the conversation between Paris and Seven. Not only for the “outsiders band together” aspect but it shows how much Paris has changed in 4 years. Season 1 Tom Paris TOTALLY would have skeeved on Seven
That’s the trouble with near death confessions of love, or whatever, there’s always the chance you’ll live to face the consequences.
@3/ @6. The Borg Queen has specifically stated she “bring[s] order to chaos,” which would indicate a top-down structure as well as the elimination of any feelings of discord among recently assimilated drone
“Why is it that we have to get beamed into space in environmental suits before I can initiate first contact procedures?”
I must admit that, while I remembered this one involved Paris and Torres being stranded in space while trying to retrieve the warp core, I’d completely forgotten the whole Day of Honour plotline that leads up to it and gives the episode its name. (And even got its own Pocket Books tie-in miniseries!) Torres spends at least the first half of the episode lashing out at those around her: Paris is the main target, although Seven gets a bit of it as well (Seven’s blunt “No” when Torres tries to needle her about the Cataati is a nice rejoinder). Neelix offers to let her take it out on him: Oddly, she doesn’t take him up on it. It does indeed take being stranded in space with Paris for her to be honest about how she feels about him, but it’s to the episode’s credit that the relationship is finally allowed to move forward, rather than having her interrupted or taking it back. And indeed, that Paris is too taken aback to give the obvious response, but just hugs her instead. It’s a nice touch that we don’t directly see Voyager when it comes to rescue them at the end, just see the ship reflected in Torres’ helmet and hear Janeway’s voice.
She’s not quite as prominent as I remembered, but this does feel a bit like a third episode to introduce Seven. In a way, it’s needed: We’ve kind of been given a two episode origin story but this is our first real chance to see what she’ll be like as a member of the crew. Reports that the actresses didn’t get on are legendary, but it doesn’t seem to affect the on-screen relationship between Janeway and Seven. Janeway does seem to have adopted Seven as her latest personal project, now that Kes is gone and Paris is pretty thoroughly domesticated. She already views her as part of their group to be protected, and there’s a distinct amount of pride in the smile she gives after Seven’s “You’re welcome” to the Cataati leader.
Ah yes, the Cataati. If “Displaced” could be interpreted as having an anti-refugee subtext, then this episode almost has an anti-refugee text, presenting us with a group of genuine refugees who, after Voyager gives them all they can spare, respond by coming back in force and demanding everything that’s left. But perhaps there’s a more sympathetic way of viewing them. Maybe, for all Neelix’s indignation when the Cataati leader points out they live in luxury, these Federation people, who are, in a sense, refugees themselves but still have their comfortable sonic showers, replicators and holodecks, really can’t identify enough with the desperation of those who’ve lost their homes, their families and their ability to be self-sufficient. Maybe Janeway’s gifts to them, well-meaning though they are, are simply a drop in the ocean much like such similar charitable donations in real life. And maybe it takes Seven to realise that the only way to really help someone is to give them the ability to help themselves.
(However, it probably doesn’t help that the characters are so interchangeable that it’s only by looking at the transcript and Memory Alpha after watching the episode that I’ve discovered that the one that comes aboard Voyager is meant to be a different character to the one they first spoke to on the viewscreen. So that’s something else they’ve got in common with the Nyrians, where I only realised there were two different males when they appeared in the same scene.)
First appearance of Vorik since “Blood Fever”. Paris again claims to outrank Torres and this time she doesn’t argue. Another shuttlecraft lost, only one episode after the last one. There were rumours prior to the season starting that Paris and Seven were going to get together: I’m not sure how much truth there is in it, but the scene where Paris tells Seven he doesn’t care about her past could be a relic of a discarded idea.
This isn’t appearing as the most recent episode on the Voyager rewatch on the sidebar, so the post may not be reaching the full potential audience.
“Ah yes, the Cataati. If “Displaced” could be interpreted as having an anti-refugee subtext, then this episode always has an anti-refugee text, presenting us with a group of genuine refugees who, after Voyager gives them all they can spare, respond by coming back in force and demanding everything that’s left. But perhaps there’s a more sympathetic way of viewing them. Maybe, for all Neelix’s indignation when the Cataati leader points out they live in luxury, these Federation people, who are, in a sense, refugees themselves but still have their comfortable sonic showers, replicators and holodecks, really can’t identify enough with the desperation of those who’ve lost their homes, their families and their ability to be self-sufficient. “
So they were able to help the Cataati here because Seven happened to have the arbitrary tech knowledge to fix their reactors. But, absent that, Neelix is right. If they give food and medicine to every hard luck story they come across, then they’ll starve. Are they supposed to despoil their own ship until the living standards are equalized between the Cataati and themselves? The Cataati can be as outraged as they like but, bottom line, Voyager owes them nothing– which is exactly the same calculus you or I engage in when we decide to buy a cup of coffee or a device to read the internet with instead of providing food to the poor. Helping people is hazardous, sometimes they’re grateful, sometimes word gets out that you’re a resource vendor and aggressive sorts aren’t shy about demanding loot. The Cataati are a better than average antagonist by Voyager standards, usually the motivations and actions of the one-off villains are a lot less nuanced.
@16 – The post has now been added to the series index. Thanks!
“Torres never thought much of the Day of Honor or any other Klingon ritual, but it has more appeal now that she’s been trapped half a galaxy away from home for three years.”
Torres is half-Klingon and half-human … so how come we never see any holidays or rituals for her human half? How much more would the episode have meant if, instead of going for the Klingon ritual in this episode, we find out Torres is half-Mexican and it was a Mexican holiday (Dia de Muertos or something) and it was her rejection of BOTH sides of her heritage that left her feeling alone? Or any other human cultural holiday?
I know, I know. The TV audience was way more interested in Klingons back then, so that’s what the show runners leaned into. I just think they missed an opportunity to have everyone assume it was a Klingon thing, but have it turn out to be a human thing instead, especially if it helepd make Janeway and the others re-evaluate their assumptions about their crew, including Seven.
“If they give food and medicine to every hard luck story they come across, then they’ll starve.”
Or…they’ll go to the replicator and order some more. Yes, I know we keep being told that power supplies are limited, replicators are rationed and they need supplies to supplement them, but we see precious little evidence that they ever go short.
It is, as you say, a dilemma that us “haves” always have with regards to the “have-nots”. As a rule, we at most give them a token gift that’s well within our means and won’t make any real difference to either of our lives: We pat ourselves on the back and tell ourselves we’ve done our good deed for the day, but the other party is still poor or hungry or homeless and relying on the next person to be similarly generous. We could, as individuals, do more to help other individuals but very few of us have that much generosity in us. Making large scale changes are beyond most of us and we rely on organisations to do that for us. Again, Voyager is hampered by their solitary nature. The Federation could probably find the Cataati a world to settle on if they were around, but Voyager seem to see that as someone else’s problem, too consumed with their own affairs to do anything more than feed them for a day.
@19/cap-mjb: The idea of Voyager having power shortages and rationing replicator use fell by the wayside by season 4, I think. Aside from one stray (arguably erroneous) reference in “Equinox,” replicator rations are never mentioned after season 3 except in contexts where the ship is suffering greater shortages than usual, e.g. “Night.” Indeed, in “The Void” in season 7, rationing replicator use is mentioned specifically as something they need to start doing in response to being trapped in the void, making it clear that it’s no longer normal procedure.
So presumably by this point they’ve repaired or replenished their power systems and resources sufficiently that replicator use no longer needs to be routinely rationed. Which is good, because it’s around this time that shuttle losses become more frequent events, and replicating the parts to build new ones would take a lot of power and resources.
@22/CLB:
I concur. It’s not a difficult fan-save — the Starfleet database presumably contains complete instructions to bootstrap several kinds of industrial infrastructure (machine shop, 3D printers, matter-energy replicators), but doing so required extensive raw materials, special training and undivided attention; hence, time.
–BUT! it seems that some viewers take an initial condition, assume it pertains permanently, and interpret any change as a contradiction. That is, “the writers are disregarding their own premise as inconvenient” — certainly this happens (see: VGR and the holodeck) but it encourages a “once burned, twice shy” bias. Even if the show periodically stated that conditions have changed, possibly in a throwaway log entry or C-plot (“we’re celebrating start-up of our second industrial replicator, which has taken six months to assemble by hand”), such reminders would be easy to overlook relative to a large-scale in-your-face change in status (core cast, bridge furnishings, recurring antagonists).
When I saw this episode, the Caatati reminded me unpleasantly of a couple of people I encountered at work. Both of them had hit hard times and ended up taking charity and living for a while in homeless shelters. Both of them apparently decided they were comfortable with that system and even became demanding, always trying to get more out of people or flat out telling them to get better stuff next time. One of them was let go after a short time as they didn’t care to do much work. I’ve seen the other recently and they don’t seem to have changed much. I hope the Caatati aren’t that bad.
Given that we’ve seen human enjoying various Klingon culinary delights at the Klingong restaurant on DS9, why assume that no one else on Voyager would enjoy blood pie. Assuming that it is what is says on the tin, blood pie isn’t that different from various human dishes like “black pudding” and “blood sausage” which are both blood based dishes that are popular in the UK and Germany respectively. Not to mention Maasai drinking of cow blood.
@22/CLB: There’s a reference to replicator rations in “Warhead” as well: Maybe the show was going through a period of remembering “Oh yeah, that was meant to be a thing, wasn’t it?” We’re only a few episodes into Season 4 here, but if they really do have unlimited access to replicators at this point, that just reinforces my point about whether or not there’s a limit to what they can give the Cataati.
It seems this episode should mark Voyager running out of shuttlecraft. The ship gets the signal from Torres & Paris, figures out they’re in trouble, but they decide to wait for the impulse engines to come back on line – which they’ve been told could take another hour. It would make more sense to send another shuttlecraft on a rescue mission, or to at least find out what danger caused problems for the first one. I did like the character work in this episode, but it’s a shame the setup for the Torres/Paris stuff felt a bit contrived.
@27/Geekpride: There’s no reason a starship with functioning replicators should ever “run out” of anything, providing they can get energy (they’re surrounded by countless solar power sources) and raw materials (space has trillions of asteroids waiting to be mined). And we’ll see eventually in “Extreme Risk” how they build new shuttlecraft. However, it’s conceivable that as of this episode, they only had one intact, working shuttlecraft and the others were all under repair or construction.
You know. One thing about Star Trek that I always found interesting is the fact that they make the Warp Core this devastating object. Warp Core detonations are worse than torpedoes. I have never seen any system that ejects the Antimatter Tank. That’s what I am most afraid of. As far as I can tell, the Warp Core is only dangerous when an Antimatter particle is passing through it. Or at the time of annihilation.
But it makes sense from a TV point of view. The big pulsing, glowing thing that is essentially the ship’s reactor. That goes, bad things happen. And visually more impressive than an oblong tank punted out the back.
“Are you sure it safe to stand so close to that?” -Hoshi
Voyager or no starship for that matter in the 24th century ever runs out of anything.
TV Trek writers like Ron Moore have lamented the invention of the replicators on Star Trek because the technology robs the show of a lot of potential drama as it can pretty much create everything you can possibly want and need such as unlimited food and endless shuttlecraft! There could have been a lot more drama and tension mined on Voyager if it didn’t seem so damn comfortable all the time.
Likewise, the holodeck, for all of its great use in episodes like “Ship in a Bottle” and “Elementary, Dear Data” on TNG also became a lazy story crutch on other series when we spend whole episodes with the cast having some fantasy adventure instead of actually exploring space like their characters are signed up to do.
@30/garreth: “TV Trek writers like Ron Moore have lamented the invention of the replicators on Star Trek because the technology robs the show of a lot of potential drama”
Yeah, but… we already have 3D printers just a couple of decades later. And of course, the replicator is the logical outgrowth of the transporter, in the same way the video player is the logical outgrowth of television — the same process with recorded data rather than a live transmission. So it would be bad worldbuilding for them not to have replicators.
And Moore was looking at it the wrong way. Any given technology may eliminate certain story-generating problems, but it also creates new ones. So instead of complaining about how you can’t write the way you used to, you figure out the new problems you can focus on instead. Writers today can no longer tell stories about people being in trouble because they couldn’t find a pay phone, but cell phones have created their share of problems too, like bad guys tracking your location through your phone GPS, say.
“Likewise, the holodeck… also became a lazy story crutch…”
Rather, it was a budgetary necessity, serving the same purpose as TOS’s Earth-duplicate alien worlds by allowing the reuse of existing set pieces, costumes, etc. Of the two, I find holodecks far less absurd.
I always felt that replicating an entire shuttlecraft was a little extreme. That’s a lot of complicated parts and machinery. Does that mean a starship could, conceivably, be replicated?
@32- I imagine that starships are replicated in pieces, and then assembled. There may be specific components or materials that cannot be replicated, or would be prohibitively energy-expensive to do so, hence the need for the occasional mining colony or dedicated manufacturing facility (or how it’s viable for Kasidy Yates to run a cargo ship doing anything besides smuggling industrial replicators to the Maquis.
@32/Austin: Sure, why in the world not? If you have the technology to instantly manufacture anything to precise molecular specifications as long as you have the pattern for it stored, why wouldn’t you use that as your primary manufacturing method from then on? I mean, a human body is even more complicated and intricate, but a transporter can recreate it perfectly. And we’ll see entire shuttles beamed aboard later in Voyager, and for that matter we saw the Voth transport the entire ship and crew in “Distant Origin.” And as I said before, a replicator is just a transporter drawing from a stored pattern rather than a live subject. The only limitation is the resolution of the data storage.
Even today, we’re already using 3D printing to manufacture auto parts, medical devices, buildings, and yes, spacecraft parts. You can create far more complicated, lightweight, intricate machinery if you can design it virtually and create it molecule by molecule. So hell yes, absolutely, replicators would be ideal for making spacecraft.
If anything, Star Trek has greatly understated the power of transporter/replicator technology, not overstated it.
@32 I always assumed that capacity was the major limitation for replicators. Most of the ones we see in regular use are pretty small, and seemingly used to replicate mostly food, clothing, and other small household items. We know that industrial replicators exist, which are, presumably, able to replicate much larger things- like parts for ships, industrial equipment, etc. I think DS9 was stated to have industrial replicators (although don’t quote me on that), and it would make sense to me that all large starships would have at least one, in order to be able to replicate large replacement parts.
Don’t the shuttles have warp drives, though? Is that easily replicated, too?
@33/Benjamin: Yes, that’s what we see them doing in “Extreme Risk,” basically — the parts are replicated separately and assembled by the crew. In theory, a larger facility could surely replicate a whole shuttle or ship in one go, but I suppose including people in the process is an added quality-control safeguard. And that way, if there’s a defect in one part, you can find that out and replace it before it’s buried deep in the ship’s inner workings.
But there’s no reason to doubt that the parts themselves would be computer-designed and replicated.
@35/wildfyrewarning: And of course there could be even larger industrial replicators in ground facilities like factories or shipyards.
@36/Austin: Again, given the sheer subatomic intricacy you’d need for warp drive components, I don’t see any other way they could be manufactured except by designing them in the computer and manufacturing them atom-by-atom with a replicator or some other form of nanofabrication. I mean, it’s sure as hell not gonna be turned on a lathe or banged out on an anvil. And again, obviously we’re talking about replicating the individual parts and then assembling them. The only part that couldn’t be replicated in a warp engine is the actual antimatter, but you add that afterward, just as you’d add gasoline to a 3D-printed car engine after it was assembled and installed.
@34: They’ve already established whole shuttles can be transported (which presumably explains what happened to all those ones left on a planet’s surface, eg in “Tattoos”). I think “False Profits” was the first example when they beamed the Ferengi shuttle aboard.
“…after eating the blood pie. (And thank goodness she did eat it, since I can’t imagine anyone else on board would want it.)”
Yeesh. As @25 said, what’s wrong with a blood pie? Many of our real life cultures eat dishes made from congealed blood, so it’s already unfortunate that it is treated as something that would repulse the audience, and all the more disheartening to see it being actually received as such.
The episode itself was fairly okay. I wish Seven had taken some more time to come around but alas, the status quo should be reset. They could have at least not started woth the moral lessons so soon. Give the girl a chance to breathe! (The actress too, for that matter) It would have been interesting to have Seven just be an observer for some episodes, making wry comments left and right to cover up her loneliness in midst of the crowd, and then choosing to aid in ship’s functions to integrate with the crew instead of to feel useful (I know she actually says she felt lonely when she asks for the job assignment, but the way the episode plays out undercuts that). I suppose the episode itself can support this reading too if you consider that we miss the observer stage, but it would have been interesting to see that in the actual episode.
Also, it just occurred to me, but doesn’t Torres’ Klingon program seem a bit….. hokey? I mean, yeah Klingons are shown a tad too fond of the painsticks (painstiks?) but usually they are not this over-the-top. Though, Voyager so far hasn’t been particularly nuanced with the Klingon portrayal, what with those Klingon delinquents in ‘Real Life’. Maybe they just don’t know how to do Klingons!
Still, for some reason I find it hilarious that Paris helped Torres create that program. So now my personal headcanon (Beta canon, what?) is that Torres knew the outline but not the specifics of the festival (the episode supports this) and Paris designed the whole thing, taking inspiration from the ship’s database and his own limited (and severely exaggerated) understanding of the Klingons and that’s why the program seems off. Basically what I’m proposing is – Paris is to the ‘Day of Honour’ Klingon program what “Jamake Highwater” (Jackie Marks) was to the Chakotay-centred episodes.
@41/Mani: The exaggerated nature of the Klingon holoprogram was the point, narratively speaking. It had to be unpleasant to underline how frustrating and unsatisfying B’Elanna found it, how it just made her mood worse rather than offering any solace.
@42/CLB: That makes sense.
I suppose my actual problem is not with the holoprogram specifically, but with Voyager’s view of Klingons both in-universe and otherwise. As I said in @41, Voyager has been struggling with presenting Klingons with any nuance. Of course, both times were in holoprograms so it can just be that holoprogrammers don’t really get Klingons or consciously write them in an exaggerated manner, in which case a similar meta argument can be presented for the writers of Voyager.
I also have a lot of thoughts about how weird it is that religious or cultural practices are treated as an “all or none” thing in Trek. I mean, I get that it’s a creative decision made to produce more stories in this vein, but it would be so much more satisfying to see someone who is on a cultural crossroads like Torres, Spock, and even Worf taking an entirely new route by developing their own subculture that’s a mix of both (or all) their cultures. Although, I think older Spock in Reunification and Star Trek (2009), and Worf in later TNG did follow this path to an extent, so I hope B’Elanna gets to do that too. Except, I am not that hopeful because, well, Voyager.
Why is the opening Caatati’s delivery so stilted? Day of Honour predates Gravity (the movie, not the VGR episode) but it’s not one tenth as good, I’m afraid. It’s the first in a trilogy of episodes where Torres must engage in a lot of soul-searching (and it always seems to be at this point in the season), but I think I would have preferred if Ronald D. Moore had written it seeing as how he’s Star Trek’s resident expert on the Klingons.
Maybe Torres couldn’t authorise a core dump in Cathexis because she hadn’t been Chief Engineer all that long and had to earn the right to do so. It’s strange to see Paris so hostile towards Seven of Nine in Revulsion after his offer of support in Day of Honour (the first standalone episode since Worst Case Scenario).
4: If Voyager does have a spare warp core, why didn’t they give that to the Hierarchy in Renaissance Man instead of the whole charade of the Doctor masquerading as different members of the crew? 7: Day of Honour, Nemesis and Revulsion must have been very close to one another if it’s been three days since Paris and Torres have spoken.
8: I don’t think we learned that Paris loved Torres until the S5 episode Gravity (and even then we had to hear about it from the Doctor!). 9: Yeah, I don’t know what Seven was talking about. Twice in as many episodes, she tried to deceive the Voyager crew. It’s no wonder Torres didn’t want to work with her.
10: Jeri Ryan started wearing the catsuit at the end of The Gift, but at least that one didn’t stick around for long. 12: Skeeved on Seven or hit on Seven? 13: Like the Doctor at the end of Renaissance Man. 15: Ryan and Mulgrew hated one another but it did add a touch of friction to their episodes together (never a bad thing).
22: I assumed they built the Delta Flyer because fans weren’t sure how they kept replacing all of these shuttles they go through and so needed a hardier one. 27: Good point – why didn’t they just send out another shuttle after them? 31: Cell phones have also created they’re fair share of cliches, low battery; can’t get a signal, etc.
34: In Meltdown, my favourite episode of Red Dwarf, the crew travel to Waxworld by using a matter transporter that converts the crew into bits of data and reconstitutes them elsewhere. Is that how the transporters work on Star Trek? 37: The crew are able to replace the Delta Flyer rather easily after it’s destroyed at the end of S6. In fact, it all happens off-screen with the type of sleight of hand VGR is so fond of.
38: The transporter’s capabilities seem to swap and change depending on whenever the plot requires it, but we’ve known as far back as the TNG episode The Hunted that they can beam things as large as an escape pod aboard. 43: I’ve always thought it unusual that Torres added Klingons to the Doctor’s simulation what with her disdain for all things Klingons and the best writer when it came to Klingon stories was always Ronald D. Moore.
I just want to say that goddamn is Seven of Nine’s outfit ridiculous. This is the first episode where you really get a good look at it, and it’s just awful that they made the actress wear that thing.
I don’t buy the “compassion” thing of Seven providing the tech the Caatati would jump for. I can try and headcanon it as, Seven sees this is the logical way out of the situation – and cynically claims it is compassionate – but surely she wouldn’t be such an individual at this point to think about being cynical, ironic, and so on.
OK, I can’t buy it. She (the script for her) displays way too much understanding of the concept of “compassion” at this point. Surely compassion is irrelevant.
The Caatati are interesting. We’re supposed to find them contemptible for how they act, and then consider, “but if I were in their shoes?” See also the ex-Borg collective a few episodes back, who did what they had to.
Good job, episode.
I’d have preferred it if Paris had been the one to break down and say “I love you”. Both for feminist reasons, but also, it’d be so much fun to see Torres try and handle it.
The bit about her suit was “also damaged I only have half hour oxygen left” was jarring. Made no sense, and so trivial to make reasonable – “Damn, my suit is also leaking… at this rate, it’ll last 30 minutes”. OK maybe Torres explained it badly – but she’s an engineer.
I confess, I think of the Cataati as basically the cannibals from THE LAST OF US or THE WALKING DEAD. Maybe the Raiders from FALLOUT 3 and NEW VEGAS. Their refugee status becomes immaterial when they are engaged in piracy and threaten torture on Seven. I have no sympathy for them because real life refugees don’t become murderous pirates on everyone around them so these particular ones are just what we call people in the real world who attack aid workers (as we can classify Voyager): bandits.
Not one of my favourites. I still hadn’t forgiven Seven for not being Kes by this stage the first time I watched Voyager, and my main reaction to Tom and B’Elanna’s heart to heart while stranded was that they are very chatty for people who need to conserve their oxygen.
How does Lumas even recognise, in passing, that Seven isn’t just another human in a non-uniform outfit? It seems incredibly contrived that he should pick up on her that sharply
@49/Colin H: Lumas doesn’t recognize Seven as a Borg; he asks what species she is, and Tuvok replies, “She is a human who lived as a Borg.”