Parallax

Janeway has to make a key personnel decision.

This is an enjoyable episode with some decent character exploration.

At the beginning the Captain holds a meeting to do some general planning and organising for Voyager's situation and this is the best part of the episode for me as it flows quite naturally and feels plausible.

The plot is focused around Janeway, B'Elanna and Chekotay developing their characters further and establishing the dynamics between the Voyager and Marquis crew members. It does this very well in a number entertaining exchanges.

There is a sci-fi aspect to the story that is technobabble heavy and made me zone out a bit. However, Neelix and Tom Paris almost break the forth wall in their efforts to connect with the layman, which is quite funny.

How Janeway's dilemma resolves is contrived storytelling, but it's done in a positive way that (true to Star Trek) celebrates a character solving problems using intelligence.

All performances are solid, especially Katie Mulgrew, Roxanne Dawson, and Robert Beltran.

Parallax brings science to the equation but it might too early for this kind of story when they should be exploring an unknown region of space.

The Voyager encounter a unidentified vessel and sends out a message to them. Only to find themselves trapped in time. The spaceship they saw was actually the Voyager.

It is like being trapped underneath an icey pond, they need to push themselves out. It is B'Elanna Torres who has the answers as she and Captain Janeway work together.

The episode explores the initial teething issues between the Maquis crew and the Starfleet crew.

The hot headed Torres hit her coworker on the nose. Yet Chakotay wants her to be Chief Engineer when she does not have the temperament.

You do have to wonder if the Maquis crew are always destined to be second best. There are a lot more of the Starfleet personnel.

I'm afraid that my lack of scientific knowledge leaves me a bit confused by the various spacial obstructions encountered by these starships. In this one, there is an anomaly that has to do with the time/space continuum. It presents a formidable obstacle for the a ship that has just found its way out of a previous engagement. The focus here, however, is the role of chief engineer being coveted by Torres, who lets her emotions get the best of her at times. The episode starts with her breaking the nose of the current chief of engineering. This is a well constructed episode, demanding that Voyager be used as a battering ram. Good human encounters, but it is still pretty preachy. Like Kirk in he original, we often pause and listen to the Captain deliver something pithy.

The first episode of this series to revolve around the character of B'Elanna, it shows us the tensions arising among crew members as the members of both Starfleet and the Maquis struggle to get along. B'Elanna herself clearly knows her way around an engineering room, but is going to have to learn restraint, for as the episode opens, she's decked her superior officer, Joe Carey (Josh Clark). Chakotay is aware that she needs more discipline, but knows full well her abilities, and recommends a promotion for her.

But everybody's abilities are about to be tested when the Voyager tries to save a spacecraft caught inside a "singularity".

Sometimes the script does get bogged down in technical talk, which could potentially fly over the heads of some viewers, but the upshot of the scenario is very sound: these are level-headed characters who know they're facing a very serious situation, and are trying to think their way out of it. Commendably, we do have Neelix on hand to explain *some* things for the audience, such as what a singularity is in the first place (a star that's collapsed in on itself).

Roxann Dawson is excellent as she takes us through this tale and allows us to get to know her character better (which is one of Janeway's intentions). We find out that she'd attempted Starfleet training, but had given up early; only later does she learn, from Janeway, that more people were in her corner than she realized. She IS extremely knowledgeable; she just has to learn how to deal with people.

Not that it's *entirely* serious: there's some very funny comic bits of business as The Doctors' image control malfunctions, resulting in a priceless final shot.

Good entertainment.

Eight out of 10.

Early on in the series, Lt. Torres sure looks like a much angrier version of Tasha Yar. She was so angry that the character seemed a bit ridiculous--and this is all part of the teething process in introducing her character. She certainly is not subtle in this particular show! This affects the overall quality of the show as does the fact that there are no aliens in this episode--just a 'quantum whatchamacallit' and a mirror image Voyager. Kind of dull stuff compared to other episodes, though I did have a laugh watching the Captain and her reactions to Torres. All in all, not a bad episode at all and it shows promise--but also one that is a bit tough to love.