Star Trek: Voyager — 1x03 — Parallax
Synopsis
Tensions rise between the merged Starfleet and Maquis crews.
Remarkable scenes
- The first scene, with Carey bemoaning about Torres having broken his nose.
- Torres throwing something at Chakotay as he enters.
- Chakotay and Torres arguing.
- Janeway's reaction to Chakotay suggesting Torres as the new Chief Engineer.
- Neelix referring to the doctor as an "electronic man", enunciating as he speaks it.
- The captain designating Tom a field medic, much to his displeasure.
- Chakotay arguing with Janeway about the Maquis.
- The doctor bemoaning about his new job.
- Kes' first scene with the doctor.
- The shrinking doctor calling Janeway.
- Tuvok: "I will never cease to be amazed by the human capacity for hyperbole."
- The doctor's grudging report.
- Janeway and Torres finally beginning to hit it off and Carey making an ass of himself at the briefing.
- Tom: "Wait a minute, wait, wait a minute. Let me get this straight. We were cruising along at warp seven, then we pick up a distress call and moved in to investigate. But now, you're saying that the other ship is just a reflection of us and that the distress call is actually just the captain's opening hail. But we picked up the distress call before she sent the hail. How could he have been seeing a reflection of something we haven't even done yet? Am I making an sense here?" Janeway: "No. But that's okay. One of the more difficult concepts to grasp in temporal mechanics is that sometimes effect can precede cause. A reaction can be observed before the action which initiated it."
- Torres to Janeway regarding the decision to pick the real ship: "If you're wrong, we're going to have a long time to debate it."
- Carey and Torres making up.
- The shrunken doctor.
Review
This episode was ill constructed, but still highly entertaining. The primary plot about the black hole ended up becoming secondary to the Federation vs. Maquis conflict. This is mostly a good thing, frankly the Federation vs. Maquis conflict is far more interesting anyway. The major problem with the episode is that the science surrounding this black hole is utter nonsense, among other annoying bits of technobabble. See the problems section regarding the black hole. Beyond that, it's a great episode. I loved seeing the doctor get more and more annoyed with being ignored, and I enjoyed seeing Torres and Janeway beginning to hit it off. The final scenes where Torres and Carey make up are gratifying as well. The whole episode just came off "correctly" with regards to the Federation and Maquis people integrating. Of course we will be seeing more conflict, but I'm glad that they're wrapping most of it up right away instead of letting it dominate the stories. That said, if the science were better in this episode, I'd have given it a much higher rating.