“Extreme Risk”

One of the things that really bothered me about this episode--aside from what Jammer already pointed out--was Neelix' clueless reaction to B'Elanna's emtions. He is constantly prying into people's personal lives if they show the least bit of discomfort, yet when she comes to the mess hall and behaves distracted, vacant, and despondent, all he does is replicate banana pancakes.

But one good thing remains: Two weeks ago I first trief this recipe for banana pancakes with cream cheese and blueberries for breakfast. Absolutely amazing, tastes even without putting something on it. Never heard of those pancakes before!

pancakes!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgalX6GEV3M

The hour we saw spanned events over several days. The past events they discovered had been going on some time but had heretofore not been germaine to various scenarios we'd seen. It worked for me.

You know what, I could've done without the whole "disturbed Torres" tripe. Dealing with emotional scars should be done on Oprah, not Star Trek. But let's agree to disagree.

One thing that REALLY peeved me off about the Delta Flier was Paris's 20th-century-Earth nonsense. He build parts of the helm based on Capitain Proton straight out of the 1930s. WTF?!? Do today's N.A.S.A. engineers build space shuttles featuring technology from the days of Joan of Arc!? Why this harking "back" to the 20th century Earth? Why no obsession with the 15th century Volcan or 22nd century Earth? Ah, that would take a bit of creativity and imagination! Much easier to just get Paris to poke around a 1950s hot-rod in a 1950s garage (q.v. one of the episodes from Season 4). It's sheer laziness on the writers' part.

And a post-scriptum: Harry "Who??" Kim's middle name should be "There's-Some-Sort-Of-Dampening-Field-Around-It." Honestly, in every other episode, when he yet again manages to NOT be able to beam someone or something, that's the phrase he utters *GROAN*

What really irked me was near the end, when Chakotay says to Janeway that the Malons have trouble getting their shuttle-craft out of the gas giants atmosphere, then they smile/chuckle and depart immediately.
Isn't there a real chance they will die there if they can't get out.... and then they even chuckle at it? That's not very starfleet of them.

Was that Wesley's repulsor beam from "The Naked Now"?

I too found the MacGeyver scene all but ridiculous--clearly meeting some producer's (ahem, Berman) standard that the DF needed to be shown off. However, I find your assessment of Torres' emotional recovery a bit faulty. I've known a few people who've been in emotional ruts, bordering on suicidal behaviour. While, of course, no one recovers instantaneously from that kind of depression, there is usually a turning point, a very sudden one in fact, which brings them "back to life."

The goofiness of Torres' epiphany means the deduction of at least half a star to be sure, but the idea behind it is not unworthy and it really gave Dawson a chance to shine as usual.

High 3 stars from me.

Yes, it would have been more interesting to see Torres' mysterious behaviour from "Hunters" onward (similar to what they did with Dr. Franklin's use of stims on Babylon 5), and have the solution come gradually rather than suddenly.

But you gotta love Tuvok's one-liners!

As to the continuity, I'd guess that this was the writers way of trying to explain Dawson's very limited screentime and occasional absences (due to her pregnancy) within the show.

That's all I'll stand up for. This episode was pure drivvle.

I can't bring myself to dislike this episode, because self-harming is a worthy subject and Roxann Dawson's performance is excellent.

The ending, however, does bother me a great deal. In taking on an issue as serious as self-harming the writers also took on the social responsibility to treat that issue as realistically as possible. Which they did fairly well up until the MacGuyver/banana pancake ending.

I have 3 teenaged daughters and self-harming among their peer group is quite common. One of their friends is actually in the psychiatric ward of the local hospital because she self-harms, and her recovery will depend on a lot more than Mom's home cooking. It will depend on many factors, not the least of which are love and support from her family and friends as well as a commitment on her part.

There's no quick fix to this sort of thing and "Extreme Risk" does a disservice to its audience in even remotely suggesting that there is.

Hmm...i didnt like this one, but I will say, why cant you just enjoy the hour that is on without over analysing??

Its a decent hour, things will happen off screen, this is the story that has been told competently. Maybe we should look at it this way, instead of the writes not continuing the story in late episodes, we should use our imagination for ourselves?? Rather than being spoon fed everything....

Im not necessarily an advocate of this, im just playing devils advocate and seeing if anyone might agree with that...?

The main problem with this episode and, indeed, Voyager as a whole, as well as most Star Trek that takes place on a ship (i.e. not DS9) is that pretty much every episode is self-contained. You can do an episode with character development or have an interesting person pop up but that person and that character development will be gone by the next episode. And that is simultaneously its biggest problem as well as one of its strengths. Because every episode is self-contained, a new viewer can come in and watch it without having to have seen any previous Star Trek (with the possible exception of The Best of Both Worlds and some others), thus exactly what a studio wants to boost the ratings. I think it's no coincidence that shows like Battlestar Galactica and DS9 had lower ratings in their initial runs because they have a long running story. It's difficult for new people to come in and watch an episode so producers don't like those types of shows.

However, this episodic format is not necessarily a bad thing. Look at Doctor Who. Look at Firefly. But Star Trek more often than not has episodes that are so self-contained that when you try to tell a serious story, it's all erased by the next episode. And that is extremely frustrating for long time fans. And that's the main problem with this episode. It introduces a problem that we've never seen before and solves it within one episode. The reason DS9 worked so well was that it introduces problems that didn't have such easy solutions. We didn't get an easy resolution to our problems at the end of each episode.

That's not to say that ship themed Star Trek doesn't have some incredible stories, it does. Star Trek has some of the greatest stories I've ever witnessed. But the main problem is that all of those stories are so self-contained that you don't have to have seen any other stories to watch them.

Ideally they wouldn't have wanted to wait so long after Hunters to deal with this, but I imagine Roxann's pregnancy had more than a bit to do with it. You can't exactly do an episode like this and use the creative filming they used in the second half of Season 4.

And I found it a little strange that the Doctor could determine that a wound was healed "with the skill of a first year nursing student". All that's involved from what we've seen is waving a contraption over a wound that apparently emits some sort of healing beam.

Am I the only one that found it odd that the Delta Flyer breaches on a bulkhead, when there are all those...windows? Even if they're transparent aluminum, they would still have to be the weak spots.

It's hard to reconcile Torres' behavior here even with the two previous episodes...she figured prominently in Drone and seemed just fine...and interested in the idea proposed in that episode that would become the Delta Flyer. And before that, the long duration that Voyager was in the void area in "Night" surely would have seen Torres' issue come to a head at that time. As someone said above, the reason they couldn't do this episode in a timely fashion is because Roxann was pregnant, but that being so, they really missed their window of opportunity for this to make any sense...they just should have given up on the idea.

The last scene in the Delta Flyer with the crew handing off components for Torres to play McGyver was painful to watch. It would have been better for Torres herself to scramble putting it together while the other crew members keep the ship from blowing up. Still would have been weak, but watching each crew member playing hand-off the gizmo was silly.

Agree 100% on the writers' laziness in making Paris a 20th century tech and culture fan. Why did they have to pander so? It's such lazy writing and a slap in the face to Trek fans who watch the show to explore different cultures, not to be reminded of the time we are currently living in. Like the other poster said, make Paris a fan of 22nd century Earth, or medieval Vulcan, or Renaissance Cardassia, or whatever else.

One of the big problems with Voyager is its vanilla writing. The writers relied on cliches and tropes, rather than trying to stake out new ground. What a missed opportunity and eventually it poisoned the franchise to where we have no Trek on TV today and a new film series that has erased the canon and become a space action saga.

@W Smith and Michael, in all fairness, pretty much all Trek shows have the problem with characters loving 19th-20th century Earth, especially the next generation-era stories. Why is Picard in love with 1940's detective stories, Riker with 20th century jazz, Data with late-19th-century Sherlock Holmes, Troi and Alexander with the "ancient West" (mostly 19th century America)? Why did Data choose "Joe Piscopo" as a hacky 1950's-ish comedian to learn humour from? Sisko *and* Kassidy are crazy about the dead sport of baseball, Bashir with 1960's spy stories, Bashir & O'Brien with the Battle of the Alamo from the 1830s, and everyone loves 1960's lounge music, not to mention that the Prophets apparently chose 1950's sci-fi pulp to inspire Benjamin in "Far Beyond the Stars." Even the Napoleonic uniforms in "Hide and Q" are 19th century. There are exceptions in terms of references to Earth's past outside the 1800-2000 range, mostly Shakespeare. But it is hardly a Voyager invention to lean on the 20th century as inspiration.

Of course, I do agree that Paris getting the idea how to build the Delta Flyer from 1950's hot rods is a silly conceit. But that's a more specific problem than the criticism of characters loving 20th century Earth too much (and the not-that-far-off 19th).

"...pretty much all Trek shows have the problem with characters loving 19th-20th century Earth..."

As a tangent, I'll mention that lately I've been tempted to compile a supercut of Trek scenes where characters express fondness for the past. Starting, for instance, with Samuel Cogley's book fetish in "Court Martial." Rather than illustrate the writers' laziness, the motif could be read as portraying a futuristic longing for old ways.

I'm throwing this supercut idea out there because I probably won't actually get around to making it. But anyone who does a video essay on this topic now has a starting point with William B's list of examples.

I just wanted to add I agree with Elliots' comment about the way people suffering from depression can often turn that corner to break out of the numbness quite suddenly, depression is like a endless cycle of days when you can keep your head above water and days when you just get swallowed whole. I fortunately don't speak from personal experience but a lot of people close to me struggle with it so I understand it all too well. The episode did a respectable job in protraying the numb emptiness, if the ending had been more subtle and done more to suggest the every day struggle even on your good days; this may have been worthy of more praise. In all honesty they should have at least given the issue an entire episode, something akin to DS9s' Only A Paper Moon, the writers would be on to some powerful relevant stuff (which is what Star Trek is all about). Another thing, the Doctor really wasn't much help to Torress at all, I would have thought he'd be there for his patient a lot more instead of being so distant and

*unhelpful. The same can be said for Neelix, you'd think from what he went through in Mortal Coil would make him the perfect candidate for helping Torress through her difficult time. The rest of the crew at least have the excuse of not understanding and being too caught up in the mission, the more I think about it the more convinced I am that this needed at least one full episode in order to adequately cover such a relevant and important issue. It would be like trying to seriously cover a cancer story in a subplot, then abruptly ending it with "good news the alien of the week cured you!" *roll credits*...

Exactly, Jay. If micro-fractures don't occur in transparent aluminum, why don't they just make ship exteriors completely out of transparent aluminum?

@Procyon: I really laughed at the end.

Janeway: And the Malon?
Chakotay: They're a little preoccupied. Seems their shuttlecraft's having a problem climbing out of the gas giant's atmosphere.

As they smirked at each other, I half expected Janeway to say, "Well, f*ck them! Get us out of here, ensign! Warp two."

I imagined Voyager going in and just blasting the struggling shuttle and the freighter to bits. Now that was a funny thought.

I liked this episode a lot. I thought B'Elanna's mental health state was handled so much better by the script writer's than Janeways depression/guilt in Night.

Some problems though-built a new shuttle in a week? Who are they kidding? The writers seem to have poor attention to detail.

Another thing is that the writing has seen a gross lack of subtlety in every episode so far this season. It seems the writers think the audience won't get their concepts unless they shove them in their faces over and over. Just one example from this episode is the incessant warnings from the computer about how dangerous it is to turn the holo safeties off. There are many other examples from this and the previous two episodes but I don't feel like enumerating them. I'd think writers of a sci-fi show would hold their audience in higher regard.

" Am I the only one that found it odd that the Delta Flyer breaches on a bulkhead, when there are all those...windows? Even if they're transparent aluminum, they would still have to be the weak spots."

" Exactly, Jay. If micro-fractures don't occur in transparent aluminum, why don't they just make ship exteriors completely out of transparent aluminum?"

Actually Jay and LT, transparent aluminum is not that unrealistic or far off, and would resist fracturing. As most people know carbon under extreme pressure creates diamond. But not as many know aluminum oxide under extreme pressure creates sapphire, which is nearly as hard. There has been a lot of R&D into creating sapphire windows for high heat and high pressure applications.

So "transparent aluminum" windows in space craft is not far off, and while it can resist fracturing, I'm sure it wouldn't be suitable for the entire Air (space?) Frame where weight savings and even a degree of flexibility are needed.

Next time the Borg attack, have Neelix replicate a huge batch of banana pancakes, is there anything they can't solve?

This episode was written by someone with the screenwriting expertise of a first-year film student.

Roxann Dawson was its only saving grace.

Jammer nails the review here. This is classic episodic Voyager, where we're supposed to believe there was setup to a big problem (setup that we didn't see) and that the big problem is still big even though it will be solved by the end of the episode.

Also, the fact that a crew with such limited resources (at least, based on the first couple seasons and some later episodes) would have the ability to build (essentially) a runabout? Where did they come up with the warp core?

The crappy thing about this series is that, other than Garrett Wang, all of the actors are pretty good or very good. I actually think some of the series's best moments come from Beltran, who is all but marginalized in the later seasons. Picardo was great, Ryan was good and even Mulgrew -- who had to deal with terrible writing for her character -- was a trooper.

I realize that Voyager was really before the serialized drama revolution that came with "The Sopranos," but it's still amazing that the premise of this series was used so poorly.

To Keiren. Yes, I'm with you on this one. The episode we see is not the whole story. Just because the episode ends with Torres eating banana pancakes and smiling does not mean she has finished being depressed; it only means that she has begun to deal with the problem. Just because the previous and following episodes do not mention her depression does not mean the depression was not there; she could have been dealing with it without the camera being on her. Voyager supposedly took place over 7 years which works out to over 6000 hours. Of that we see
170 45-minute episodes, a total of about 125 hours which is less than 2% of 6000. As Keiren says, can't we imagine the rest for ourselves?

Know what made the 'we must build a new shuttle' plot redundant? they already have a Runabout equivalent sitting beneath the saucer section, it's called the Aeroshuttle.

I haven't watched any of the relevant episodes lately, but I was reading Bernd Schneider's reviews over at Ex Astris Scientia. On the episode "Juggernaut," he says,

It is already hard to explain that the Malons are encountered thus far away from last time. ... I have the impression the episode was originally scheduled for the early fifth season. This would also explain B'Elanna's violent behavior like in "Extreme Risk" that never showed up again in the meantime. ... Although this is a custom-tailored episode for B'Elanna, there is only a small amount of character development, as if a following episode, namely "Extreme Risk", were to further elucidate it.

So--would that work? What if "Juggernaut" *were* watched in between "Night" and "Extreme Risk," rather than much later where it doesn't seem to make sense? Could that improve *both* that episode and this one, and effectively complete a little B'Elanna arc? Is there actually any on-screen reason not to do this, if one is not beholden to broadcast order?

Dawson's performane is pretty good in itself but it's also so unrestrained that it makes the lack of lead-in or foreshadowing in prior episodes really too much and too incongruous. I agree that "Juggernaut" would make for a pretty good, at least much better, lead-in and make this episode feel more natural and satisfying.

Way back when Prey appeared, I complained that the Maquis destruction was practically ignored by Torres after her original outburst. So because of that, I'm glad that it's back. And sure, it's certainly a bit silly that they went this long without mentioning it, but the whole point was that Torres was hiding it from everyone (which is perfectly justified). And, heck, maybe this explains her mysterious weight gain and then disappearance last season...

Also, the way Torres tries to feel alive, by taking risks, throwing fights in the hologram, feels right to me as well. After all, K'Eyhlar enjoyed blowing off steam through her adrenaline as well, so it must be part of the Klingon nature. Chakotay's hands on approach to solving the issue, as was Janeway's conversation with Paris and Chakotay (as her two closest friends on Voyager), also worked as well. So on the whole, the episode has a lot going for it.

Until the ending. We had the cheesy "I need to do this" line from Torres, with no explanation, no reason, no true change of heart for why she had to join the ship. Maybe Chakotay should have been more blunt about Torres, told her that there was a good chance that her other family (Paris) was gonna die if she didn't snap out of her funk. Maybe instead of her silly technobabble solution they could have done... uh, something, I don't know. I hate all the special little endings like that. And instead of the pat ending where all is better, maybe have her break down and have an emotional moment with Paris at the end. After all, they did a great job building up to their relationship, but (as so often is the case in entertainment), didn't seem to do anything with it once they got together. This was a perfect chance to give their relationship some actual weight... and they completely missed it.

So it was a good idea, just fell slightly at the end, but I'm glad they did it nonetheless. Especially since it was a very well acted piece by Dawson, and every one of her scenes (until the end) was so good. Ignore the bad ending and the fact that this plotline suddenly appears out of nowhere, and this could be considered excellent.

By the way, one of the things I liked about the episode is that the overarching plot was so mundane. No space-time anomalies, no vertigo particles or tetrarch radiation, no silly technobabble. Just "hey, our probe is stuck in a gas giant and we want to get it out." It's nice to see something simple for once.

Deserves a lot of credit for even trying to bring up the issue of depression and self-harming, and actually for the most part treats the issue with some sympathy and delicacy. Until we get to the great dropped ball of the conclusion, which really does just seem to suggest that everything is just fine again and we can all move along.

Plot wise this is a whole bunch of nothing, and also gets to see the Malon again, which I'm sure I was not alone in thinking we could have done without. But more worked than didn't, and it took a brave path, so 3 stars.

I don't think this is quite as bad as Jammer indicates. I will say this could have been a couple episode arc...

I will agree that this episode really started strong, then someone like me took over the writing. It's so apparent watching this.

At least we get a Torres centered episode where Roxann can once again show her acting chops. Sadly they don't do enough of these. She's awesome.

I'll go 2.5 stars.

I had never seen this one before a few mintutes ago and actually it was pretty good. They had me guessing for a while on just what was wrong with B'Lanna and I really had no idea. I thought maybe this was the episode where she found out she was pregnant and started freaking out, oh well.

Charity was actually GOOD in this one too for once! That was very surprising, as I feel he's usually a big weakness in this show during the episodes I've seen. I'll admit that ending and the reason why she was doing all this came out of nowhere and I would have hoped it was something else- anything else- but honestly I don't know what else to suggest they would've used instead.

Hey, I was entertained for an hour and for VOY it was pretty good (and Roxanne Dawson did a great acting job) so I'll give it 3 stars, why not.

"What really irked me was near the end, when Chakotay says to Janeway that the Malons have trouble getting their shuttle-craft out of the gas giants atmosphere, then they smile/chuckle and depart immediately.
Isn't there a real chance they will die there if they can't get out.... and then they even chuckle at it? That's not very starfleet of them."

I was expecting them to offer assistance to the Malon shuttle! When they took off I was very surprised too. Picard would've made the offer, even if he knew they'd refuse it. I totally forgot about this part until I read the comments section.

Watchable. (*)

I don't like Torres. Never have, never will. So any episode centred on her is going to annoy me. This one did so more than any other I can remember. An arrogant bitch who treats people like shit, and a whiner as well. Mind you I don't think much of Worf either. Is it racist to hate Klingons?

Give me Neelix any day.

"Is it racist to hate Klingons?"

Probably not IRL. In-universe it is.

"I've never trusted Klingons, and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy."

The thing about not liking a Trek race is that they are often extreme caricatures of a single quality, so if that quality annoys you then... ya. On the other hand I think I liked Torres because she was way more multi-faceted than most Klingons.

I did not like her in this episode or this episode though. This and Barge are the only two Torres episodes I don't like.

@Robert: ugh, don't even get me started on Barge.

I'm not usually inclined to dislike a character, but I think what you said makes sense.

Have you got an explanation for Jar Jar Binks?

I thought it was very weird how, towards the end of the episode where B'Elanna needs to fix the microfracture in the Delta Flyer, the rest of the crew (Seven of Nine, Tom, and Harry) just don't seem to react at all. Like, what was their plan once they got the probe? How would they have survived if Chakotay had come along instead of B'Elanna? I know this is kind of typical on Voyager but in this episode it really, really bugged me how she's desperately putting together some kind of forcefield to save all their lives and everyone else is just staring at their consoles without a care in the world.

I agree with most of the comments above, and certainly Jammer's review.

However! As a depression sufferer, I feel Dawson's performance was riveting. The writing hit all the right personal notes for me. Her portrayal was believable and relatable. I saw my own presentation in her performance.

I'm not concerned with the delay between cause ('Hunter') and effect. Depression sufferers understand that their condition can present years after a stimulus/trigger event. And sometimes there is no such event. It just happens. And often you soldier on in a manner where nobody around you would suspect that anything was 'wrong' until the straw breaks the proverbial camel's back. So to it was with Torres. That's how I choose to see it anyway - and I respect that others find it a bit tough to swallow.

I give top marks for the episode as the only entry in the Trek canon where a series regular (or anyone?) has openly been diagnosed with depression. O'Brien's one-time PTSD in Hard Time is not quite the same thing (though it's in the ballpark), nor is T'Pol's substance abuse in Enterprise season 3. Torres' struggles were more rooted in the context of everyday shitty things life throws at us - loved ones dying etc - and was thus a bit more relatable.

I didn't have the issues that you did. I just found it utterly lacking

1.5 stars

Tom said they "could use an extra hand", so Chakotay was going to go, but B'Lana decided to go instead.

But then...Vorik left. So the net number of "hands" never changed.

I know a lot of people dislike this episode, but I have to point out that this is representation of what depression is like. I know people don't like to talk about because of the stigma it has.
I have depression and anxiety and it is a lot like Dawson's acting in this episode. Obviously you can't recover from that quickly because it sticks with you and haunts you. I see people bashing on Chakotay for dragging her to the holodeck but that was a hell of a thing to do. You have to face it face to face and you sure as hell do not want to face the demons but you got to. You have two options either fight and win or fight and die trying and that's what I think is trying to be conveyed.

More later, but I found the tech plot agony to sit through this episode. Who cares about the stupid probe? What possible reason is it worth risking the lives of four crew members by going in a rickety, untested ship to get it back? That's in addition to the dozen or so Malon who die over the course of the ep trying to get it, presumably including the crew of that shuttle they send in which apparently was unable to escape from the gas giant, leading to Janeway sociopathically smiling. Blow it up so the Malon don't get it and move on; surely they could shoot it or something, or have a self-destruct option or something? Strap a warhead to another probe and send it in if they genuinely have no other ideas. And even then, the no tech sharing rule has already been bent, and they attempted such with the Malon no less, so maybe they should just let them get it rather than throwing another shuttle and four senior staff members at it. I wondered watching this ep whether the grinding boredom and apathy and desperate need to feel anything else I experienced in every scene where they talked about the probe was a trick by Biller to get me to feel what B'Elanna was feeling. If so, very clever. I am joking and exaggerating, but not that much.

I should clarify -- I like Skeptical's point that the probe is a mundane problem. My problem is that the continued treatment of he probe recovery as an unquestioned necessity, after the Delta Flyer was suggested, is bizarre and seems unfounded, especially once they get to the stage where they are clearly risking lots of lives over it. It was such a strange mundane/high stakes combination that I was finding myself both bored and frustrated. Which, again, maybe fits the B'Elanna plot; it is certainly the kind of tech plot that would be extremely difficult to keep oneself going through while in a depressive spiral.

Anyway, I was all set to go to bat for this episode, and then I actually rewatched it. I don't think the B'Elanna material is bad at all and I have a lot of respect for what they were trying to do, and I can understand people who think it succeeded. To me, it sort of succeeded most of the episode and then fell apart at the end. And even there, I can, again, see what they were going for; I just don't think it worked.

The basic idea here that B'Elanna is that since the Maquis revelation, some parts of B'Elanna have shut down and she's had a sort of high-functioning depression with some extreme risk-taking self-harming behaviour in private, undertaken largely to help her maintain her daily functioning. I'm not sure if Dawson sells all the nuances here, but the attempt to generate fake enthusiasm over a flat affect more or less works and feels authentic, and (particularly because the tech plot is so boring) I think that the experience of feeling one has to fake enthusiasm and joy in order to avoid having to deal with others' concern and attempts to solve a problem which maybe can't (and maybe shouldn't) be solved felt very real and relatable to me. She feels nothing at the loss of the Maquis, so either means that she is on some level shutting down her feelings, in which case she can anticipate a huge surge of pain and loss once her defenses go down and she's terrified, or else she's simply become a terrible person who, as it turns out, didn't love her friends anyway, in which case she's also terrified. The way the episode tries to play things so as to be consistent with the portrayal of B'Elanna from Prey through Drone is to imply that she's been able to maintain a basically believable facade for several months, but it's finally starting to crack now. This does and doesn't work; honestly I didn't feel as if previous episodes portrayed her as all that emotionally numb, and the implication that she has been less irritable lately doesn't quite seem to work, although even within this episode there are moments in which we learn that B'Elanna actually still is quite irritable, but at random times. (I'm thinking specifically of the moment where she yells at Vorik to "turn that damn thing off.") The self-harming, risk-taking, addictive behaviour makes sense to me as someone whose only way of feeling comes from the survival instinct popping up when she encounters the possibility of death; and it's also a way to play with her own fear of death and loss in what seems like a setting that's just barely safe enough, but also dangerous enough to make her feel she's experiencing something of what her fellow Maquis may have encountered when they were mass-slaughtered. There's some survivor's guilt in there too, and in general a PTSD-type inability to adapt to a "normal" life where the reality of death is pushed to the background in order to focus on day-to-day functioning.

But it's not entirely implausible that she's been mostly externally functional in the intervening time, especially because in fact there was very little B'Elanna material after Hunters anyway, largely due to Dawson's pregnancy. I think had the episode emphasized that B'Elanna has been less able to maintain her composure *lately*, leading to more and more extreme behaviours on the holodeck culminating in her injury, would have given a greater sense of why exactly it's clear to everyone (including the audience) what is wrong in this episode, but was not clear at any point before now. The big question mark is the relationship with Tom; in Vis a Vis, the show went to big trouble to show B'Elanna trying to make things work and Tom pulling away, and this episode reverses it, while seemingly attempting to suggest that B'Elanna was already in this stage in this episode back in that episode. Vis a Vis was already unconvincing, and so to retcon that on top of that episode, B'Elanna was also already consciously feeling nothing for Tom and pulling away, but that this somehow didn't show up when she was trying to convince him to let her into his life, just seems especially unbelievable. Not only that, but the episode fails to have any real resolution for B'Elanna and Tom, besides I guess her saving him in the Flyer. It's not that their relationship has to be the most important thing to her, but Day of Honor was the main Torres episode the previous year and that really pushed the relationship front-and-centre, and the way in which this episode fails to resolve that aspect is overall disappointing. In general and with Tom specifically, the episode could easily have tied things into Night and emphasized that B'Elanna was managing to hold herself together until they hit the void, and then her ability to present herself in a functional way unraveled when crew morale in general started to fall apart.

I guess Janeway giving the go-ahead to investigate B'Elanna's holodeck programs isn't a grave violation of privacy under the circumstances; whereas in DS9, the Holosuites are private (and I think Julian even says something to Garak in Our Man Bashir about it being illegal to break into someone else's program without permission), the holodeck on Voyager seems to be one that people can walk into at all times, and anyway B'Elanna engaging in life-threatening behaviour does probably become Janeway's business. And I guess Chakotay is the first officer. That said, for her to encourage *Tom* to go with Chakotay to investigate B'Elanna's logs reads to me as particularly inappropriate. I think as her boyfriend, he maybe abstractly has a right to know what's going on with her, but that is something B'Elanna should decide (provided he's not in danger) -- or, if she refuses to tell him, he can leave her, but I don't think putting him in the position of investigating her makes sense, especially before the root of B'Elanna's problems become clear.

Chakotay's method of getting through to B'Elanna is not recommended to try at home, but I think it makes sense on a character level that Chakotay would make that call, and as Jammer says it fits with previous depictions of "the Maquis way." I don't think we need to "approve" to see that it's his judgment of how best to reach her, and to get her to admit what's going on with her and maybe examine it. The scene between the two does seem to me to be effective, and is sort of the emotional climax, and it mostly works -- her grief and and the suggestion of some of the underlying truth breaking through that she fears might lose her family again breaking through, and Chakotay's reassurance that he can't promise nothing bad will happen, but that she has to realize that she's not in the same kind of unstable situation she was in earlier in her life. And then --

And then, yeah, the ending. I think I get what they were going for. After talking to Chakotay, the spike of pain at confronting those feelings she's afraid of, after Chakotay gets through to her, sparks her to action. And the action involves an actual life-threatening, risky situation, and I think it also helps resolve some of her problem because she actually does get to experience "extreme risk" in an *appropriate* setting -- i.e. one in which she gets the chance to risk her life for her loved ones and even save them, rather than one in which she continually risks her life purely in order to satisfy some emotional needs she can't understand. Not only that, but the Flyer's "microfractures" causing a hull breach which B'Elanna can cover up using a force field is a metaphor for her own self-saving; the "microfractures" of despair finally lead, through Chakotay's forcing her to see her friends murdered again, to a whole part of her being forcibly blown out, and it's only then (and when their lives are threatened on the Flyer) that the omnipresent but invisible threat she feels becomes a problem she can go into problem-solving-mode to combat.

And yet -- first off, Voyager gets regularly threatened with destruction, and so I'm not sure why this particular event triggers the transformation for her; and on some level her sudden realization that she wants to go on this mission also strikes me as somehow forced. The main way it makes sense for me is if B'Elanna really believes that if she doesn't go on the mission, her friends will die, and she gets a chance to repeat the trauma of losing her Maquis friends but this time she can do something about it -- and that's probably what is intended, especially with B'Elanna's "if that hull breaches..." line. But just a few minutes prior, she was still intent on moping in the holodeck while Chakotay was called to the bridge. Was she listening in on the comm channel? How did she know where Chakotay was?

And maybe more importantly, this actually goes down to structural flaws in the script, which seems as prone to devastating "microfractures" as the Flyer is: if the Flyer is in such danger of the hull breaching, then they *shouldn't launch*. It makes Tom (in particular) and the crew in general look like idiots for going ahead. And the justification that they need to get the probe back remains flimsy at best -- without any particular reason to care. And even if we imagine what Janeway et al.'s reasons are to be willing to risk lives to get the probe back, it seems clear that Tom's reason is purely that he wants to test out his new ship, and is willing to take huge risks for *that* reason alone. That's really stupid and reckless -- and in fact, is actually much more reckless and self-destructive than anything B'Elanna does in the holodeck. The only way it works is if Tom and Janeway (at least) believe that the microfracture threat is not a real risk to the shuttle, and they happen to be wrong. But we know Tuvok considers it a grave risk, and I'm not sure what changes between the scene of Tuvok snarking about the Captain Proton elements of the ship's design and the actual launch that would override Tuvok's opinion, as the senior officer working on the project, whether it's Tom's baby or not. Really, given that the episode didn't supply a plausible reason for taking the risk to getting the probe back, it's necessary for the emotional arc of the episode to have Tom (as pilot), Janeway (as approver of the project) and the rest of the crew on the Flyer to believe that the microfractures are no grave risk, to be willing to go even with B'Elanna having been switched out, AND to have B'Elanna believe that the microfracture risk is potentially catastrophic and could destroy the ship. And then to buy that, we also have to believe that B'Elanna was so out of it that she didn't even say outright how risky the whole endeavour is until the very last minute, after Chakotay's pep talk, and also that Tom apparently doesn't let his discovery his girlfriend's months of self-harming behaviour interfere with the schedule of his vanity project. Further, the construction of the Flyer, already a difficult task, is not even halted when the chief engineer working on the project was revealed to be psychologically unfit throughout the period of time in which the ship was constructed. (I want to underline this. Shouldn't the crew have to go over all of B'Elanna's work to make sure that she didn't make a mistake because her mind has been elsewhere throughout the project?) The ending relies on the type of situation where her friends' lives depend on B'Elanna opting in AND B'ELANNA APPARENTLY KNOWS IT, but no one else seriously seems to think that B'Elanna's presence or absence is a significant change in the project's feasibility, including B'Elanna literally right before she decides she needs to go after all. And it's not impossible; we can say, for example, that perhaps all the simulations showed that the hull would not be damaged by the microfractures and Tom was confident, but wrong, and B'Elanna had some kind of "engineering instinct" that warned her that the shuttle wouldn't survive when she actually came around, and that B'Elanna was so depressed that before the shuttle launch was imminent her mind didn't even work through the actual likelihood of a hull breach, or something like that. Or, it's hard to evaluate the likelihood of a hull breach, and so B'Elanna went on the off chance that she would be needed, and it turns out she was; so in this case, it was actually really unlikely that the microfractures would cause hull problems, hence why it was just, like, that one panel that had a problem, and B'Elanna "got lucky" that her services were actually required so that she could get her necessary catharsis. The latter is probably what they were going for. But somehow the tone of it still feels wrong to me -- the stakes seem out of whack. The thing is, of course, having something higher-priority than a probe (like, say, a crew member) would make more sense of the absolute need to take risks to get it back...but then, that would have the effect of risking making B'Elanna look unsympathetic for being so blase and (apparently) uncaring about the shuttle. So I think the problem is that the show is attempting to play things two ways, which are mostly (though not entirely) contradictory -- starting with "mundane, non-life-threatening shuttle-building plot is too much for B'Elanna in her depressed state" and turning to "actually, the shuttle-building plot is life threatening and that allows her to get the emotional catharsis she needs to get better," and in the process just looking incoherent.

I think what the script maybe needed -- if they were going to go the route they did -- was some sort of escalation that transformed the Flyer project from a fun, semi-serious diversion where they might just have to not launch, into some sort of crisis where they absolutely needed to go. I'm thinking of something like TNG's Hollow Pursuits, where a slowly-brewing crisis only became unambiguously dangerous in the final act, and it's there that the protagonist's ability to solve the technical problem (which also mirrored his emotional problem) became important and gave some sense of resolution to the emotional plot through metaphor. The space race with the Malon kind of does that, but while the ticking clock provides urgency it doesn't provide any sense of why this is important, which is what we really needed. As is, either Tom et al. are reckless idiots, or B'Elanna got very "lucky" that something did go wrong, neither of which is satisfying.

Banana pancakes scenes: one of my favourite movies of the 2010's, if not exactly a "good time," is Lars von Trier's Melancholia, and in one scene, the depressed co-protagonist Justine gets her favourite dish and bites into it, and declares with horror, "it tastes like ashes!" We get something similar with B'Elanna's disinterest in her favourite dish early in the episode, but at the end, she orders it again...this time with maple syrup. Ah, so that was the missing ingredient all along! :) I kid, and I don't hate that final moment, and I don't think it necessarily implies she's "all better," and, yes, sometimes there are subtle signposts/shifts in the way people get out of depressive periods in their life that defy analysis. Mostly, though, I don't buy it, but it's not really the scene's fault; it's that I don't buy the Flyer scene, and so don't buy the joyous coda afterward.

This ended up getting really negative, I know, but it's mostly that the climax on the Delta Flyer was so unsatisfying. I'd actually maybe say 3 stars for the whole of the B'Elanna plot, and something like 1 for the probe plot; the former is clearly more important and has more screen time so I'd maybe give the whole episode a low 2.5.

Last beat: I'm not sure which episode to blame this on, because I suspect that the relevant dialogue was thrown into Drone after Extreme Risk was written, but I find it very funny that in Drone, there was a little exchange about how bad class II shuttles are, and Seven makes a vague "you should design a NEW shuttle" and everyone looks at each other with interest, as if this idea had never occurred to anyone before; and then in this episode, when Tom brings up the Flyer, Chakotay and Harry complain that Tom has been bringing this up again and again, meeting after meeting. So the scene in Drone which was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to set up this episode gets contradicted. Oh well.

This is going to seem like an anti-American rant, which it isn't, but this episode is pretty typical of American "pop psychology". Here in the UK we are deluged constantly with glossy, perfect shows featuring glossy, perfect people who all look like models, all of them with 20+ episodes per series (or "season"), all of them from America. The amount of mcguffins, plot devices, simple characterisation and rampant deus ex mechanics seen in American shows is just ridiculous, insulting the viewer's intelligence. Voyager is not really any different from the thunderstorm of new series which explode from the USA in these respects.

Hollywood is the bottom of the barrel film producer and American television networks are the absolute dross of the TV entertainment world. Occasionally we get something brilliant, including the many,many episodes of Voyager which had decent writers and decent directors. But people expect miles too much from this show, because they fail to consider who made it. This episode is extremely flawed, and Torres has always been weakly written and poorly portrayed, making her one of the least popular Trek characters. But at least Chakotay got something to do, and overall, bearing all of the above factors in mind, this episode wasn't bad. The bit where she turns a phaser into a force field was ridiculous though - I mean how? Just how? Kudos for obliquely referencing the Dominion War.

Holy cow @William B!

How you wrote so much about such a crapfest, I don't understand. I laud you for it, but for me this was an intensely shallow, pointless episode, with no meaning at all.

I don't for one second ever care about Torres in this episode. It's a problem that came from nowhere, and ended with a hokey contrived resolution.

Same for the plot with the probe. Who cares? It's a probe. Whoop-de-doo.

Why would the Malon follow the probe into the planet's atmosphere? They had to know they would all die. This episode was stupid from the outset.

And the Malon and Voyager both take exactly the same amount of time to build some super shuttle? They finish within minutes of each other. Right. Whatever.

And of course Janeway left the other Malon in their shuttle to die. She murdered a whole crew of them a couple episodes ago. She obviously doesn't care about them in any way.

Terrible episode. 1 star.

This really shows how close greatness and failure can be in VOY. I love how it tries to tackle the topic of depression or PTSD or whatever that goes vaguely in that direction, Roxann Dawson is clearly the best-suited cast member to pull it off, I found her all-but seeking death touching. At times I had the feeling this was going in the direction of a 3.5/4-star episode.

But how the whole thing was resolved was a fucking joke. It's already been said a hundred times, no need to repeat it. There we are back again in 1-star territory. The whole "lets just build a super flyer with Captain Proton controls" thing didn't help either. I want to give this episode 3 stars for the stuff mentioned above, but overall it does too much too wrong to deserve more than 2.5.

One thing though: I'm perfectly aware that the reason why B'elanna's mental troubles suddenly appeared out of nothing is because it was only the plot for this one episode. But I disagree with the notion that it's implausible because there should have been a build-up over the time stretch since she learned about the Maquis tragedy. That's not necessarily how depression (or again, something similar) works. The trouble can be eating up people from the inside while they still manage to keep up normalcy on the outside, and no one notices. Until it becomes too much and the person breaks down, often much later.

A zero star to one star episode. Typical dumb plot where everyone (on the suttle) almost dies but saved at the last minute by nonsense technobabble.

B'Elanna is a character I never liked that much, and her weird suicidal depression seemed out of character for her.

Whatever the (numerous faults) of the episode, Dawson’s portrayal of a depressed character experiencing anhedonia was pretty close to the mark.

Right down, might I add, to her ability to put up a semi-convincing facade when B’Ellana tries to pull the wool over Janeway and Chuckles’ eyes.

Don't understand why starships don't just have a giant replicator onboard so they can just make more shuttles the same way they do everything else. Replicate them. Not build them by hand.

I suppose that wouldn't make very interesting viewing.

Paris - "Let's make a badass new shuttle"

Janeway - "Computer, create a brand new badass shuttle"

"Poof"

Computer - "Done"

Such wild fluctations on Voyager as to how important it is to not leave their technology around fro anyone to get it.

The show had it right early on, when it was such a no-no that much of the conflict with the Kazon (and later Seska) was centered around it.

But by the end of Season 2, there seemed to be complete 180, because all indications are that in Resolutions, all the stuff beamed down that Janeway and Chakotay were living with was left there when they came back to Voyager.

And now here, we're back to the probe MUST be retrieved.

@ Brian C

They clearly do make torpedoes that way. They've gone through far more than the 38 they had when they left DS9.

They used like 12 just in "Night" alone.

The "this has been going on for weeks or months" theory is undermined by the scene with Neelix in the mess hall. Neelix acts like Torres not insulting his cooking is a out of the ordinary - that day.

B'Ellana has a bad case of survivor's guilt, and the ep does a decent job of exploring it.

It's a short ep, so yes, it's overly simplified, but facing the fact you've got a problem, and also finding a purpose and a reason to focus outside yourself, can really help address this kind of issue.

It's not the greatest ep, but Dawson did a good job portraying the feelings and behavior of a person feeling overwhelmed with grief and guilt.

Chakotay did do a pretty good job, as did Beltran of playing him, of somewhat-ambiguously combining his roles as B'Elanna's friend, comrade and superior officer.

Dawson as Torres must be a joy to work with for the writers and she's one of the most interesting characters on VOY, but this apathy thing just did not work for me. It was frustrating to watch and not believable when ultimately she reveals that she doesn't feel anything. And then when she prevents the Delta Flyer from a hull breach with bubble gum / duct tape, she's all better and smiles at the end. Just not good enough.

I did like Chakotay's forceful approach -- it works with Torres because of their Maquis past and it shows that he's the only one who can understand her on that particular level. Tom Paris (and everybody else) was useless to her in this episode.

But what I was wondering when Chakotay allowed Torres to go on the probe rescue mission is -- he didn't say anything to Janeway who still should believe that Torres was confined to her quarters or sickbay. Instead he strolls onto the bridge and Janeway's like 'no problem'. There was something wrong and missing here.

And like Jammer mentions, how does this depression/apathy just pop up out of nowhere when the event that triggered it happened several episodes ago? So the timing of such an episode is poor and that this issue with Torres just pops up randomly doesn't make sense.

I guess I also have some trouble believing the Voyager crew could create a super shuttle - the Delta Flyer - in fairly short order. That it became a race with the Malon to build it and retrieve the probe was dumb -- just silly urgency.

2 stars for "Extreme Risk" -- if this is supposed to be some examination of depression, apathy, it didn't work. The writers didn't give Torres enough to work with -- and Dawson can hit it out of the park when given the fair chance ("Faces", "Barge of the Dead", "Blood Fever" etc.) Not even worth discussing the probe rescue and the "competition" with the Malon, although I did like Janeway going head-to-head with her Malon counterpart.

Rahul,

"I guess I also have some trouble believing the Voyager crew could create a super shuttle - the Delta Flyer - in fairly short order. That it became a race with the Malon to build it and retrieve the probe was dumb -- just silly urgency."

Well, I kind of thought that was the best part of this episode. the Malon are the easy bad guys.... you know, causing universal warming and all :-)

@John-

"But by the end of Season 2, there seemed to be complete 180, because all indications are that in Resolutions, all the stuff beamed down that Janeway and Chakotay were living with was left there when they came back to Voyager."

They left the shelter, but i assume the reason they packed up everything else and had it sitting in a huge pile of containers outside was not so they could just leave it behind.

I'd give the episode 2.5-3 stars. That seems fair for handling B'elanna's depression fairly well. And it's never said that she is magically "fixed" by the end. She's merely confronted her problems, and not by herself, for the first time. She has started down a road of healing.

Very strong episode with a top notch performance by Roxann Dawson. When I started watching VOY I would never have guessed that B'Elanna would become one of my favorite characters, but just as Kira grew on me in DS9, the chief engineer is impressing me more and more for every season.

People have been on and on in the comments about the lack of follow up in VOY. Janeway's irrational sides, the failed response from B'Elanna and Chakotay about the maquis extinction etc.. In the last three episodes we get excellent angles dealing with those issues. To some, however, it's not enough...

Frustrating in how close it gets to hitting the mark. Dawson is great and while I'll even defend the McGuyver moment, the numerous other problems are just too much for this to be anything more than an admirable effort.

Elsewhere, we check in with the Malon again. Okay! Voyager's choices when it comes to recurring villains of the season is yet again bizarre, with this year featuring, um... intergalactic garbagemen? Also, the fact that it's apparently quite easy to replicate a snazzy new ship is... odd. Why isn't everyone doing this all the time, and why has it taken until now for Voyager to try? Eh, who knows. Cool shuttle though.

You'd think the ability to mass-produce ships like this would come in handy during, say, the Dominion War. Guess not.

I thought this was a good episode. The Malon/probe segments were a little boring and uninspired but the vast majority of the episode was about B’elanna dealing with depression and the building and premiere of The Delta Flyer. I would easily give this episode three stars I enjoyed it.

This one's very nearly a four-star episode in my book. B'Elanna's depression and detachment from her life is good material for the character, and it's well played. I agree that evidence of B'Elanna's emotional turmoil should have turned up earlier, but better late than never. I'll give credit to the writers for addressing this issue in the end, and it did need to be addressed considering that some of the last Maquis still alive are present on Voyager. And I did not take the end of the episode as implying that everything was going to be rosy from now on, just that after her friend Chakotay's intervention, B'Elanna's healing process had begun. The problem has not been solved, but she's started down that road.

Good to see the Delta Flyer finally make its debut on the show.

Pancakes!

https://youtu.be/EoKCFI292j0?t=2620

The pancakes moment in this episode reminds me of that moment in Melancholia when badly depressed Justine has her childhood favourite food, French toast, and exclaims "It tastes like ashes."

Sometimes the simple things help and sometimes they don't, in conclusion.

There's nothing quite like watching an episode of "Voyager," enjoying it and then coming on here and learning about all the reasons it wasn't actually good! LOL.

I thought it was a good -- but not great -- episode on all counts. And I still think "Voyager" had the best look and visuals of any Trek show or movie. I love the alien ships and vibrant colors.

And I like the Malons as pollution villains.

Interesting how my perspective on Torres' introspection changed since a decade ago. Back then I found it to be extraneous, soporific fluff. A heartbreaking divorce that brought me to the brink of ending it all since, I sympathized with her emptiness and angst. I just wish a two-minute pep-talk from a superior officer was all it took to "snap out of it" and reestablish oneself, one's self-confidence, one's self-worth, one's raison d'etre...

A very interesting episode, which certainly spoke to me. THe sci-fi component was good also.

I do not care much for the character of B'Elanna's very much and I was hoping that this focus on her this episode would change that. It did not, despite the tackling of a very real topic of depression. Her acting was good but the antagonistic attitude (even when not depressed) gets tired quickl.

That bein said, the way Chakotay dragged her into the holosuite had me on the edge of my seat. At last, I thought, that Chakotay was being given a personality with an edge, and I am sorry more time has not been spent on fleshing out this former leader of the Marquis, other than whispering ancient stories and an annoyingly polite disposition with every alien they come across. This guy should be leading more away-team missions instead of the Captain as William Riker did, and with more of a rough-around-the-edges style. What a wasted character his has been in 4+ seasons.

"Extreme Risks" had much more in it than many of the reviews imply that it had. Great exchanges occur in the episode which are not to be dismissed so casually.

First. There's what I would call a fantastic scene set in Sickbay, which begins when the Doctor says to B'Elanna "The captain asked me to keep you here." I love the sound of the automatic doors opening, immediately afterwards, because I know that Janeway is going to be furious. However, ir's better than that because Mulgrew plays worried anger that's so controlled it sends chills down one's spine. The camera makes excellent use of closeups to allow us to feel how adept Janeway is at projecting authority as those eyes of hers drill directly into B'Elanna's brain.

It may be a "bottom-of-the barrel" Hollywood "absolute dross" American show (NoPoet, Nov. 28, 2017) done in 1998, but that scene is one I can watch again and again. Sorry rest of the world, it just happens to be excellent.



In my opinion, one should focus on scenes with good dialogue and just take in quality portrayals a bit more.

​It is also impossible to overlook the quality of the scene (more of a chess game) which takes place between Chakotay and B'Elanna immediately preceding the famous visit to the holodeck when he actually forces her through the door to confront her self-destructive behavior.

Chakotay: "You have been running holodeck programs without safety protocols."

B'Elanna: "A few....But I haven't put anybody else at risk, and it's nothing that I can't handle."

Chakotay: "Tell you what...why don't you and I pay a little visit to the holodeck and you can show me some of the programs you've been running.

B'Elanna: "Right now?"

Chakotay: "Sure." Maybe if I see what you've been up to, I can convince the captain that there's nothing to worry about."

B'Elanna: "She's taken away my holodeck privileges."

Chakotay: (smiling) "Consider them restored."

B'Elanna: (silent dismay...knowing she's been undone).

Robert Beltran just nails it. His grin lasts half a second but it's pure gold....checkmate! Roxann Dawson's reactions are equally effective.

Chakotay (with B'Elanna outside the holodeck) "Computer...Activate holoprogram Torres 801."

It's just a great scene and during the age of the Pandemic, I can't escape the irony of the line "I haven't put anybody else at risk, and it's nothing that I can't handle." .....Sure. Nice try.

Been going through a Voyager rewatch and just caught this one. This episode is like the epitome of the entire series for me -- some really quality moments, some really neat ideas, some good characterization, and then it's just like, ok we have two minutes left, let's wrap everything up into a neat little package and reset to status quo where it's all good again.

The worst part about Voyager is how much great potential it had. Torres is a great character and Dawson is a very capable actress, and we get stuff like this that piques the interest and then just lets the material down. It's really unfortunate. The scenes with her and Chakotay are excellent and compelling, it's real character drama and far more exciting than just some dumb space battle with exploding consoles. But then we need to have the wham-bam ending and the false resolution where it's all good. As I said, just so frustrating.

What's the most unfortunate about this series as a whole is how everything that makes it unique and special basically becomes a hinderance for the writers after even just the first few episodes. It's sad because there are great characters in here and some of the best episodes of the franchise, but it's just constantly betraying those character and the original source material but having episodes wrap up like this one.

I agree with the 2 star rating for this episode. I found it watchable, yet forgettable. I'm not sure how entertained I was, but I didn't feel the need to turn the TV off.

I do like that we are reminded that there are Maquis on board, its good to see that someone was struggling with the annihilation of all their old friends.

So the Voyager crew could build a new state of the art shuttle craft within days in order to salvage their "only multi-spatial probe," yet they couldn't just make a new probe?

This could have been a poignant narrative about self-harm, but it all gets erased in the end when B'Elanna welds metal to a hull breach and makes a force field, yippee! And of course, all is well by the end of the episode, and by the next episode there is nothing more to say about. Typical Voyager reset button.

It would've been great if her depression was a character arc that continued for the rest of the season, or even the series. For that matter, why isn't the Voyager crew having more mental health crises by these point? They've been stuck in the Delta Quadrant for years and suffered many traumas. Nobody shows any signs of PTSD and they all remain consummate professionals, just like if they were in the Alpha Quadrant fulfilling a mission given to them by Starfleet HQ.

It's weak sauce and I can't even attribute it to the era that this aired in. The writers could have done so much better, but as Ronald Moore pointed out when he worked on DS9, the studio didn't want to go there. At least DS9 touched on some of the darker shades of the hard life. VOY was a missed opportunity. They could've added more Battlestar elements to the show, like the never-ending drudgery of space.

But no... it all had to remain pretty, polished and fairly one-dimensional.

Unbelievable.

This is one of the most cogent depictions of mental health in all of Star Trek, with maybe the best Dawson performance yet. It's damn good TV drama with understated character moments alongside a snappy action plot with believable stakes.

Of course Jammer doesn't like it.

3.5/4

As a recent psychology major college graduate, I can agree that the mental health depictions are mostly accurate. What Torres was doing is called "Passive Suidical Ideation" where one isn't directly trying to kill themselves, but not really caring if they die either, hence not taking any safety precautions. In real life, this could take the form of reckless driving for example, taking more chances even if not trying to commit suicide at the moment..etc

Anyway, I find the whole shuttlecraft thing laughable. You're telling me you can just build a Spacecraft with fully functional computer systems, controls, shields..etc in a week, from SCRATCH? Using spare components on a ship that's already running low on everything, they can make a smaller ship that's better? Give me a break. And the whole thing with heat-sealing the panel to plug the hole. Reminds me of that episode with the water planet and Tom sticking shit in the hole to stop the water from pouring in when they were miles underneath the surface. The pressure differential in either case would rupture the walls and flood the craft in seconds, whether with the gas or with water. Then as everyone mentioned the whole superhero scene with slipping together some random relays to make a forcefully was kind of ridiculous. Like even if you could how could you perfectly align it with the bulkheads in those few seconds. Not to mention the whole premise is contradictory, if you can so easily build a state of the art shuttlecraft out of spare parts, just make another probe.

I know that this is many years after Voyager finished, the show is running again here in the UK, and it does not hold up well. This episode made me feel depressed. Just how did the crew manage to build a brand new shuttle, they are supposed to be stranded in the Delta quadrant, thousands of light years fro m home, with no help and no star bases, they just manage to build a shuttle from what? Who needs shipyards? It goes to the heart of why so many fans found the show so disappointing it's like the writers didn't care.

When I watched this show as a kid, B’Elanna was hands down my favourite character. I remember this episode strongly resonated with me then. I don’t think at the time I fully understood what it was trying to portray other than she was hurting and needed help. In the 15 or more years since then, I’ve gone through similar experiences as hers with depression, etc, and I find that it still resonates just as much.

I don’t know if this writing team would have been able to pull off carrying this on over several episodes, though I agree it would have been nice to see it play out more. I still regard it as one of my top favourite episodes.

"I don't think we have been introduced; I'm Captain Janeway." - great line delivery by Kate Mulgrew

I pretty much agree with the mixed opinions on this one, but there's one thing I am definitely not impressed by: That was the most pathetic excuse for a "stack" of pancakes I ever saw.

A good episode. The depression of B'lanna is upsetting to watch. Sadly, many people in real life engage in such self-destructive behaviour too. We are all suffering from different problems, but having a relationship with God is the solution to helping us cope. That and having faith in the future promises outlined in the Bible. Still, the way B'lanna behaved seems pretty realistic to how some act when faced with trauma

Yeah, I'm sure B'Elanna will find lots of comfort in the embracing arms of Khaless. Sto-vo-kor seems like the place to go when you are traumatized or want to become traumatized.

Hopefully, it does not need to be said that being traumatized is serious mental condition that has to be treated by therapists and often medication, not Bible verses.

@Sean

While I think this episode has its issues -- you make a very valid point about the need for "having a relationship with God" or as I'd broaden it - some spiritual or moral anchor grounded in tradition in today's world. It's definitely something that can be helpful for folks going thru what B'Elanna displays here. One of the many problems with atheism is taking away that source of hope, which then leads to becoming more vulnerable, easily manipulated etc. etc.

So I appreciate how VOY tries to tackle some of these types of personal issues (here depression) more than other classic Trek series but too often it lacks finesse. I go back to part of my prior comment: "And like Jammer mentions, how does this depression/apathy just pop up out of nowhere when the event that triggered it happened several episodes ago? So the timing of such an episode is poor and that this issue with Torres just pops up randomly doesn't make sense."

Not myself getting into the religion discussion right now.

Re: episode timing, because of Dawson's pregnancy we saw little of B'Elanna between Hunters and this episode, so I found it plausible that she had been secretly shut down/in self-destructive mode without it being obvious to the audience. I also think it's plausible that it escapes the notice of most of the crew because B'Elanna shutting down emotionally is the opposite of her usual more explosive method of dealing with problems, so they didn't know what to look for. Tom probably should have noticed something, and it's not a great sign that he didn't until now.

I think the episode was ambitious but I agree it could have used more finesse.

@Rahul I completely agree as can be seen in the world today. As people become more ungodly, violence, immorality and unnatural and distorted behaviours become more and more rampant. This too is prophecised, but also said to be a sign that soon God's Kingdom will end this wickedness around us. I take a lot of comfort in that-including the evils of sickness in all its forms (mental, physical, emotional, etc)

Rahul, just for you. You, my never disappearing brown shadow.

Christians (mainline protestants are excused and some others) got rid of abortion so more than 65000 women have been forced to carry a baby to term. The baby of their rapist. So yeah, thanks for that. Those rape victims are already deeply traumatized, why not add a few crippling traumas on top. *Jesus slow clap*

And to add a little science to the myrrh haze. Religious people on average are not happier.

Humanism does it with reason and the often overlooked strong Human compassion.

Here is another fun fact. Religious people are on average far more intolerant towards well anything, more anti democratic, show stronger support for political violence, far more often support increases of military budgets and were far more in support of all the recent US wars. You know, because that was what Jesus wanted. What did he say:"For all who take the sword will perish by the sword." How many "swords" have Christians taken up during the last 30 years. Tens of millions. Billions?

Atheists on the other hand are more generous towards Christians than vice versa, open minded, support policies benefiting the poor, are more often against the death penalty and have a lower opinion of the military. Oh and Atheists are 40%! more accepting towards LGBT people. Kind of seems like the atheists are more like Christ than the Christians.

Lets listen to the words of one of those socialists. Nelson Mandela:"No one is born hating another person, people learn to hate; they can be taught to love, because love comes more naturally to the human heart."

Maybe next time Christians, when you push hate against LGBT people, think about why you are so much more hateful than Atheists. Maybe reread the parable of the good samaritan. The only thing that matters is how good a person you are. Not what group you belong to.

If you want listen to Mandela saying the quote himself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UXUict0jME

Their new hypermetallic hull plating + borg shield designs or whatever prove to fail standing up to the pressure inside the gas giant when the wall caves in, but Torres little jury-rigged forcefield she slops together on the floor holds up just fine! And christ how long does it take to get back out of the gas giant? Isn't this a new and improved faster shuttlecraft, why is it taking minutes and minutes to ascend out of the atmosphere? Beam the probe in and go to warp, or at least put in some technobabble like "z particles reactions from the gases in here are interfering with forming a stable warp field" or whatever. Oh and the Malon garbage scow just so happened to have all the spare parts to build a ship and beat Voyager to it, get outta here lol

Lack of setup aside, I thought most of this episode was fairly good. On multiple occasions I thought "I know that look" or "I've been there" - credit to Dawson, it felt right. Then it all magically is better after the delta flyer moment and some pancakes? Ehhhhhhhhhhhh. For a depiction of depression aired in the 90s I guess I'll cut it some slack, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Jeff, 7 years is around 61,000 hours. Which is technically over 6,000 I suppose. Strengthens your point if anything since we're seeing only one fifth of one percent of their time.