Friday, May 9, 2008

5.03 extreme risk

B’Elanna is spending her time on the holodeck, space-diving from 300,000 meters with the safeties off; at work, she is doing the minimum required and seems disinterested and distant. When the Meilon attempt to steal one of Voyager’s probes, Tom Paris suggests they build a better shuttlecraft – the Delta Flyer – which can go into the atmosphere of the gas giant and rescue the probe. But the Meilon also want the probe, and sensor scans of their vessel reveal they are also building a craft – prompting a ‘space race’. B’Elanna is searching for a way to cheer herself up; a visit to the mess hall to have Neelix replicate her some banana pancakes (when she was a child, her grandmother used to serve her this favored dish) doesn’t work. Paris is worried and disappointed that B’Elanna – in what could have been a dream collaboration project for them – seems uninterested. When it is revealed that B’Elanna has been injuring herself repeatedly on the holodeck, Chakotay investigates and discovers that she is grieving because of the death of the Maquis. With a jolt from Chakotay, she springs out of her funk, and accompanies, Tom, Harry, and Seven on the maiden voyage of the Flyer. Initially launched after the Meilon shuttle, they use the sophisticated Borg weaponry to force the Meilon craft off course, and they retrieve the probe. In the final scene, B’Elanna shows she is starting to feel better when she first playfully threatens to break Chakotay’s neck if he ever investigates her holodeck behavior again, and then, after replicating some more banana pancakes, she tries some – and smiles and laughs with the joy of being able to feel again.

Nit: It’s one thing to fly and maintain a starship, and quite another to build one. I seriously doubt if Voyager would have the tools, materials, and expertise to build such a craft from scratch.

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