Bored with her enforced isolation now she's severed from the Collective, Seven of Nine requests an assignment to Engineering to make herself useful. The Chief Engineer is not happy, least of all because B'Elanna Torres is facing her own issues — today is the Day of Honor, an unwelcome reminder of the Klingon heritage she has rejected. Meanwhile
Voyager runs into a race of desperate refugees from a Borg-assimilated world.
This episode contains the following tropes:
- Abandon Ship: Tom and B'Elanna have to get into EV suits and beam off the Cochrane after the Caatati damage the shuttlecraft.
- Almost Out of Oxygen: Ion turbulence damages the EV suits, so they have to share oxygen. There should be enough for 24 hours per suit, but there's only a half hour supply left.
- Angst? What Angst?: In-Universe; B'Elanna isn't happy with Seven's lack of guilt over the Caatati's desperate situation.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Only their imminent death through oxygen deprivation gives B'Elanna Torres the courage to tell Tom Paris she loves him. Next moment they're beamed to safety.
- Answer Cut: Chakotay asks Seven if she has any idea where she wants to work. Of course she does — cut to Engineering.
- Berserk Button: Lumas flips out when he's told Seven is a Borg, demanding to know what happened to his (presumably assimilated) family.
- Birds of a Feather: B'Elanna is furious when Tom says she's running from her past. "Who are you to tell me that?"
- Blunt "No": Seven's response (after thinking about it for a bit) when B'Elanna asks her if she feels any remorse upon meeting people like the Caatati, whose lives she helped ruin as a Borg drone.
- Call-Back:
- Vorik's presence in this episode is likely a deliberate call back to "Blood Fever", the episode where the Torres/Paris Ship Tease really took off.
- The Day of Honor ceremony is similar to Worf's Rite of Ascension in "The Icarus Factor".
- Janeway asks Seven if she tried to access the deflector dish, referring to her attempt to communicate with the Collective in "The Gift".
- Tom once more jokes that, despite them both being Lieutenants, he technically outranks B'Elanna.
- Cannot Tell a Lie
Seven: You believe I'm responsible for the accident. That I deliberately sabotaged the ship. You are like the others, you see me as a threat.
Janeway: I won't lie to you. Part of me is suspicious. We've dealt with tachyon fields before and never had this kind of problem.
Seven: Captain. I am unaccustomed to deception. Among the Borg it was impossible. There were no lies, no secrets, and I assure you I had nothing to do with the accident in Engineering.
- Change the Uncomfortable Subject: B'Elanna tries this when Tom asks her about the Day of Honor program, but he won't let her. She finally yells at him to Get Out!
- Cross Through: The episode was inspired by the Day of Honor novels by Pocket Books.
- Cute Monster Girl: Despite looking nothing whatsover like a drone, Lumas apparently recognises Seven as Borg purely from her facial implant.
- Discontinuity Nod: B'Elanna says they don't know anything about transwarp technology, despite helping Tom develop a Warp 10 drive in "Threshold". Tom also says he's never navigated a transwarp conduit, though this may be a means of crossing the transwarp threshold without turning into a salamander. Another possibility is that what Starfleet thinks of as transwarp and how the Borg do it are entirely different.
- Do Anything Drone: Seven's habit of solving a Problem of the Week using technology assimilated from Species X starts here.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Caatati are refugees IN SPACE!
- Double Entendre: Tom thinks up a Techno Babble way of boosting their Distress Call.
B'Elanna: Let me access your controls.
Paris: I thought you'd never ask.
B'Elanna: (wry smile) This would be a lot easier if I had a hyperspanner. Hold still.
Paris: Why is it we have to get beamed into space in environmental suits before I can initiate
First Contact procedures?
B'Elanna: Why is it that if we're alone for more than thirty seconds you start thinking about contact?
Paris: Ah, that is not fair. The other day in Engineering
I must have gone four minutes before I started thinking about it.
- Friendship Moment: Oddly enough between B'Elanna and Neelix, when he offers to let himself be an emotional punching-bag for B'Elanna when she needs to blow off steam. B'Elanna rejects the offer out of kindness rather than because she doesn't take it seriously. Faced with fear and hostility from the other members of the crew, Seven of Nine is offered no-strings-attached friendship from Tom Paris, which she doesn't treat with contempt either.
Seven: I am finding it a difficult challenge to integrate into this group. It is full of complex social structures that are unfamiliar to me. Compared with the Borg, this crew is inefficient and contentious, but it is capable of surprising acts of compassion.
Janeway: Unexpected acts of kindness are common among our group. That's one of the ways we define ourselves.
- Heel Realization: B'Elanna confesses that her actions have been cowardly because she Cannot Spit It Out.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: The Caatati race have been reduced to thirty ships and a few thousand refugees, reduced to beggary and denied sanctuary because they've nothing to offer.
Rahmin: Captain, I want to assure you, my people were once proud and accomplished.
- Humiliation Conga: After the disgrace of walking out on her own Day of Honor ceremony, B'Elanna ends up ejecting the warp core, effectively stranding Voyager.
"Welcome to the worst day of my life."
- Infinite Supplies: For once Voyager comes up against their limit, being unable to provide all the supplies the Caatati demand. They also lose a shuttle and (temporarily) a warp core.note According to the manual Voyager does have a spare core, but stored, not ready for use.
- Jerkass: Granted, B'Elanna could have come up with a better objection to Seven working in Engineering than "I don't trust her and I don't want her here", but Chakotay still comes off like a dick for ignoring one of his closest friends' concerns and telling her she is going to let it happen.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The Caatati go from sympathetic refugees to jerkasses real fast, roughly around the time they blow up Tom and B'Elanna's shuttle and steal Voyager's warp core.
- Leave Me Alone!:
Paris: I care about you, but if you're going to keep pushing me away then there's no point in my staying around, is there?
B'Elanna: Fine. Just leave me alone.
Paris: Oh, don't worry. If this is the way you treat people who try to be your friend, you'll be alone, all right.
- Ludicrous Speed: Seven helps in an attempt to create a transwarp conduit without turning everyone into catfish.
- Mama Bear: With Tom and B'Elanna already in dire straits, Janeway decides to stop talking and get dangerous after Seven offers to hand herself over to the Caatati. Fortunately Seven comes up with a non-violent solution.
- The Needs of the Many:
- At this stage in her development Seven doesn't really understand the concept of Heroic Sacrifice. It's simply logical to hand herself over to the Caatati to protect her new Collective on Voyager.
- The Caatati justify their highway robbery of Voyager by asserting that the booty will do more good for them, a large group of desperate refugees, than the ship's small crew.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Voyager helps the Caatati without asking for anything in return. They demand more, holding the ejected warp core to ransom.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Averted — Chakotay is shown actually doing the day-to-day job of Number One, managing the crew instead of just taking orders on the bridge or providing counsel to Janeway. He'll continue to help Seven of Nine settle into the crew over the next few episodes. These scenes tend to be ignored by fans opposed to their Last-Minute Hookup on the grounds that Chakotay tried to have Seven Thrown Out the Airlock in "Scorpion". Whatever his doubts on Janeway's decision to have Seven join their ranks, Chakotay still does his job.
- Power of Trust: Seven is given leeway by Captain Janeway to roam Voyager without guards, and by Chakotay to work in Engineering. B'Elanna thinks he's a Horrible Judge of Character and even Janeway has doubts after the accident, but satisfies herself that Seven is not at fault.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: Janeway gives Seven the Gooey Look when the Borg comes up with an "unexpected act of kindness". It will be
the first of many. - Security Blanket: After she walks out on her Day of Honor holoprogram, Tom finds B'Elanna in her quarters, cuddling a blanket.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: B'Elanna on hearing of The Three Trials she must endure.
Moklor: A warrior must endure great hardship. To test your mettle you will endure the ritual of twenty pain-sticks. After that, you will engage in combat with a master of the bat'leth. Finally, you will traverse the
sulphur lagoons of Gorath!
B'Elanna: You know, I don't think so. I didn't want to do this before you described it. Certainly not now. I'm leaving.
- Space Is Slow Motion: Tom and B'Elanna move this way after they're forced to beam out into space.
- Status Quo Is God: Voyager's external appearance has gone back to normal with all the Borg armour removed from the hull. Averted with B'Elanna's Love Confession — in "Revulsion" Tom gives her an opportunity to back off from what was supposed to be a Dying Declaration of Love, yet B'Elanna sticks by what she said.
- Take a Third Option: Fight the Caatati, or hand over Seven and all the supplies they demand? Seven comes up with the technology to replicate the energy they use for their engines.
- Taking Advantage of Generosity: Done for a Rule of Three. The Caatati get increasingly aggressive in their interactions with Voyager. The first time, they're plaintive and sympathetic, and Janeway willingly donates food and supplies to them. The second time, they play themselves up as victims and shame Voyager into donating more. The third time, they take the warp core hostage to force Voyager to hand over more stuff, as well as Seven so that they can punish her for what the Borg did. As Jim "Reviewboy" Wright puts it:
When someone holds out a hand for a donation, and holds out the other hand with a gun pointed at you, it's not called begging.
It's called robbery.
- Take That!: As part of the episode's jabs at the poorly-received Season 2 outing "Threshold", the shuttle that Tom used to cross the Warp 10 barrier in that episode gets destroyed here.
- Tempting Fate
Paris: Well look at it this way; how much worse can it get? Dumping the warp core has to be the low point of any day.
- Test of Pain: B'Elanna backs out of the Day of Honor ceremony almost as soon as she hears it begins with the Ritual of Twenty Pain-Sticks. The holodeck simulations start jabbing her with the pain-sticks anyway, so she unleashes an offscreen beatdown on them.
- That's an Order!
- B'Elanna flatly states that she's not going to have Seven in Engineering. Chakotay flatly states that she doesn't have a choice in the matter, complete with a Death Glare to drive his point home.
- B'Elanna orders Seven out of Engineering when there's an imminent warp core breach. Tom helps instead. "You can't order me, I outrank you."
- That Child Is Dead: Seven of Nine isn't interested in going by her previous human name of Annika. She settles on Seven as "imprecise, but acceptable".
- Waif-Fu: B'Elanna knocks down Moklor, even though he's twice her weight. Looks like she's a worthy Klingon warrior all right!
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: While retrieving the warp core, Tom and B'Elanna wonder if things could get any worse. So, of course, they do.
- Window Love: Tom and B'Elanna can hardly embrace as they're stuck inside their EV suits, though they make the best of it.
