#Dreadnought (episode)

[spockvarietyhour]

V "Dreadnought" (1984)

[thresholdbb]

Canon bombshell B'Elanna Torres

[elbiotipo]

It is good that South America invented fútbol in the early XX century so we could spend all our national rivalries into kicking a ball instead of spending a quarter of our GDPs to build giant battleships to see whose dick is bigger (it's Argentina's btw)

[the-promise-has-been-made]

I watched Rebel Moon and I don't know exactly but it feels like there was a kernel of a really great movie trapped in a lot of chaotic writing and poor character development and A LOT of slow motion shots?

[trillscienceofficer]

thoughts cooking in my head about how B'Elanna asking Seven if she feels any guilt for her time in the Collective in “Day of Honor” is SO revealing of B'Elanna's mentality and the way guilt permeates every aspect of her life. Every B'Elanna-centric episode is somehow about a different flavor of guilt—the way she talks about quitting the Academy, the ‘what have I done’ in “Prototype”, the ‘when Dreadnought disappeared in the Badlands I thought, thank God it's over’, “Extreme Risk” being about survivor's guilt, and of course the main episodes about B'Elanna's impossibly large guilt, “Barge of the Dead” and “Lineage”, for both her parents whom she thinks she's failed. And never mind that with time Seven will come to understand her own complicity and responsibility as a former Borg drone, and will feel all the weight of it and then some. The real kicker is that B'Elanna can't see the commonality between her and Seven in this. She can't see that the way Seven was assimilated as a child and coerced to assimilate others was a tragedy as much as it was a tragedy for B'Elanna to be subjected to constant racial harassment, pretty much because I don't think that on Voyager she's ever at the point were she can honestly say, ‘what others have done to me was fucked up’ and believe it. She is so convinced, again because others only reinforce that belief, that there is something wrong with her, that seeing someone who (apparently) doesn't hold that conviction (and should, to her) can't not make B'Elanna lose it. I think this is ultimately what drives her dislike, to B'Elanna Seven has no business pretending she's so perfect all the time. I think B'Elanna can see all too easily that Seven is far from perfect, in fact, but Seven's attitude just gets under her skin so much that it's impossible for B'Elanna to get past it and empathize with Seven's constant struggle against her own limitations. It would require for someone to recognize that no, B'Elanna did not deserve any of that and most importantly that none of it was her fault, for things between her and Seven to change. But no one ever offers that to B'Elanna and so their journeys, so often paralleling one another, remain definitely separate.

[autistic-pebbles-au]

... suns was in a dreadnought...

Can warhammer be cannon in this just going on in the background?

Better not...

I don't want this to be some Endgame episode

[unit3947]

i can’t believe how underrated prototype, dreadnought, and the muse are as solid b’elanna episodes— greek tragedy of killing your creation, seeing the self in technology, mythos, lacanian mirrors, romanticism. b’elanna is not just creating/destroying, she’s building her own mythos, her own story and lore, looking right at herself in the face of it all, through the Other.

[lostyesterday]

An interesting thing I noticed is that almost every single time Voyager does an evil/rogue AI episode (where an artificial intelligence of some kind is the primary antagonist), B’Elanna is a major part of the action. Obviously “Prototype” and “Dreadnought” are both B’Elanna-focused episodes, but even in rogue AI episodes focused mainly on other characters, B’Elanna is also there. “Revulsion” and “Flesh and Blood” are both primarily focused on the Doctor, but B’Elanna is the secondary character in both cases who has a lot of interaction with the AI antagonists. “Warhead” is a Harry episode, but B’Elanna is the other character held captive, and the same is sort of true for “The Thaw”. Even in “Alice”, B’Elanna is a central part of the narrative by being involved in the weird love triangle thing with Tom Paris and that spaceship. I feel like this can partly be explained by the fact that B’Elanna’s the chief engineer and therefore using her in the plot in connection with AI makes sense, but it’s still a coincidence. I guess the writers just thought B’Elanna and rogue AI made a good combination.

[stra-tek]

Why you should watch Star Trek: Hidden Frontier

Hidden Frontier is a long-running (seven seasons, plus multiple spin-offs!) series of Star Trek fan films following the U.S.S. Excelsior, a 3-nacelled Galaxy Dreadnought in the post-TNG/DS9/VOY Trek universe. It's really janky, shot entirely on greenscreen in low-resolution, with iffy homemade costumes, zero camera movement and their main theme is nicked from Galaxy Quest, but it's full of heart and so watchable. Writing and editing is super crisp, everything moves at a super brisk pace and as they go on they improve exponentially. Episodes are only about 24 minutes long. Lots of TNG-style standing and talking and lots and lots of DS9 style massive fleet battles with decent CGI.

Oh yeah, and it had gay characters a decade before TV Trek did!

Here's the YouTube channel

[leohtttbriar]

dreadnought is like a metaphor for a lot of things but one of those things being a "b'elanna before she really knew chakotay" is deeply affecting to me. the fact that she recalls, in that conversation, his voice being "soft", that she's saying it to tom who only seconds before in the episode had also gotten a gentle reprimand from chakotay, and not once in the whole episode do we see chakotay blame b'elanna or even exhibit any sort of bitterness or anger that dreadnought is what it is. it's like b'elanna is tasked with looking her own lonely reactions in the face and finds herself capable of it because janeway and chakotay and everyone else just let her do exactly what she can--and in the end janeway had no intention of allowing b'elanna to jump in front of the bullet b'elanna had fired herself. so of course b'elanna has to win because chakotay has earned her loyalty as has janeway, and b'elanna is a better thinker and engineer for it. where dreadnought's single-minded distrust of everything is what allows b'elanna to tunnel through its defenses while it's distracted by a competing perspective in its own programming. and also because chakotay trusts her to do it.

[morns-fevered-dream]

Well I've tried to avoid spoilers but their are a few things I know going in the appearance of a character from ENT I'd originally guessed Trip Tucker because he died in a weird way and in non-cannon he did things after his "death" but a sci fi news article discussing Daniels gives me a feeling it's him makes more sense though and I saw two images one of a old Burnham and one of Burnham and Moll standing in front of some light on a cliff or something due to a current boycott of Paramount and Paramount+ I'm watching this from a pirate cove and I'd encourage you to do the same and without further ado live blogging of Star Trek Discovery and as always 🌟SPOILERS🌟

Season 5 Episode 10

I'm still sad this is the last episode of DIS

Well I'm glad it's longer then a regular episode but part of me was hoping for a 2 hour finale but considering it wasn't known until after shooting that it was the last episode and then reshoots that I'm sure are the extra length of this episode

I wonder if we'll see the Breen that went in before Moll and Burnham?

Huh Burnham had the same thought

Nooo Burnham

Oh there's one of three Breen cracked like an egg

And their is the other Breen not a happy one either maybe if the Breen had sent scientists instead of Soldiers they'd be more willing to work together Burnham

Damn that was a football tackle

About to be pulled away by a hurricane and still trying to punch damn Burnham is right "STOP IT"

Lots of slow mo

Damn the Breen is back

Why is Moll flying with a gun?

Why did Moll shoot the Breen? I mean the Breen is under her command

No wonder the Breen was so mad their own boss killed the other Breen like a cracked egg I'd be pissed too

Damn Moll is not likable even for a villain

Yeah that's what I thought

Now thinking about it I definitely thought that Detmer and Owosekun would be back by now tbh

Yeah Nhan stepping up suck it admiral

"At least the Breen have a vested interest" didn't you just kill your own Breen soldiers?!

Return of the spinning camera and a surprise appearance of shaky camera

Since it's the last episode I want to say I think DIS has my favorite Engineer crew out of all the Trek shows between Stamets, Adira, Reno and the occasional Booker, Tilly or Culber it has my favorite dynamic

There's one of the images that was spoiled them standing in front of whatever that ripple thing is

Oh they aren't fighting Tahal yet? Then what Breen Is Discovery fighting oh is it the Ruhn Breen Dreadnought or whoever runs it now Moll or that Asrisar Breen

"Ambassador Saru are you insane?" Is hilarious

Just like her Breen colleagues don't turn your back on Moll

Moll isn't very smart Burnham told you the clue and you didn't even use it

What was that scream Moll that was some serious yelling in lower case

Yes trust the good doctor odd visions or whatever

Damn Seru that was cold as ice

I swear Burnham is like the perfect Federation Captain because I would have been pissed

I kind of like that the most powerful tech in the universe is represented with some simple glass triangles

Ancient humanoid appearance!

Something before the progenitors? Mmmh interesting I know Q and the Guardian Of Forever were before the ancient humanoids I'm pretty sure but not much else is known

I love that it's Booker that's with Hugh others would try to explain or theorize but Booker is just like "damn that's crazy" the same nonchalant attitude when Hugn decided to join in the shuttle in the first place

Wow that's a lot of camera spinning

Separate the what?

Damn the ancient humanoids really trying to put this technology off on someone else

A TNG Enterprise D style saucer separation WOOOOOOOOOOO BABY

Is that the Breem Scout ship it looks nice

Ain't no way they just spun that colossal giant Dreadnought like a bayblade that was totally cool

Damn the Progenitor really gave Burnham a crash course on almost all of existence huh?

Honestly I've been thinking all season that kind of technology needs to go permanently

I'm sad Stamets won't get his legacy dream the spore drive program was canceled and made secret, spore drive didn't replace the regular warp drive in the 32nd century and now unable to study the progenitors tech what I'm really sad about is that this arc for Stamets won't be resolved because this is the finale

Picard Wine, Geordi old visor and a baseball presumably something to do with Sisko interesting

Kovich was Daniels all along?! This isn't what I thought the returning ENT thing was gonna be I'll be honest I was actually surprised

Yes! The Saru x T'Rina wedding what everyone was hoping for

Talaxian pirates? Mmmmh

All of the dress uniforms and fancy wedding clothes look great

Old Burnham and old Booker look like themselves but with gray hair I look forward to seeing irl old compared to TV old like they did for TOS, TNG and DS9 episodes where it showed a older version of a character and then people put up a image of them later irl when the actor was actually older

Burnham 33nd century civilian clothes look like she ready for the wild west I guess some fashion just comes around huh

Admiral you say

Oh that's a alien deer cool

Ooooo another uniform

They got kid in Starfleet already wow future jumps do that though

I like these even further in the future 33nd century uniforms that admiral one is nice I like the line going down the pants but I also liked that on the PIC S3 uniform too so I guess I'm just a sucker for that uniform design choice

I also like the new 33nd century Starfleet logo

For future versions of the Starfleet logo post ST Nemesis I think this new one and the Future Imperfect TNG one from the fake future are probably my favorites

Damn how many refits has that ship undergone to be still be in service

For a minute I thought she was about to pass down Discovery to her son

So a short explanation of Calypso but I still don't understand why Zora had to wait for Craft or the importance of Craft tbh and poor Zora has to wait 1000 years alone is so strange I also assume it was a life or death thing with the crew abandoned ship rather then this whole red directive thing its just kind of odd

Ah Detmer and Owosekun finally returned for the last few minutes of the finale

Ah a impressive fleet shot I do love the Merian Class, Kirk Class, Courage Class of my personal favorite out of the 32-33nd century ships the Eisenberg Class

So that's it the end of Discovery it had its hurdles but it also started Nu-Trek I personally am indeed a fan of the show this and Lower Decks are definitely my favorite of the Nu-Trek shows I am sad to see it go

It started my tradition of watching Nu-Trek and drinking canned Guayaki Yerba Mate late at night and it started many fond memories I've never said this online before but I never watched the last episode of ENT until the pilot of DIS came out I waited years to watch it but I couldn't bring myself to "finish" Star Trek until a new show was announced so I waited years to watch that last episode of ENT and after years of waiting and it was terrible but luckily this finale was better then that

[spockvarietyhour]

Jane Badler as Diana in V's "Dreadnought"

[grissomesque]

As a follow-up to the Let's Get Together, Yeah Yeah Yeah poll,

[elbiotipo]

Honestly surprised the rest of south America doesn't hate Brazil. We were such pieces of shit in the 19th century lol. Constantly installing puppet governments in Uruguay and Argentina, killing 80% of Paraguay's male population, etc. Real empire stuff lol

It was a big deal between the mid XIX and early XX century, the Argentina-Brazil rivalry today is mostly fútbol but back then it was a real geopolitical thing (see the South American Dreadnought Race, one of the stupidest episodes of the continent). I'm not sure when the modern sense of Latin American unity started to develop (since the idea predates independence) but I think it was in the period of relative peace in the XXth century. Perón is one of the first Argentine leaders of note who especifically talks about an union with Brazil to overcome imperialism.

When I look back at the sad mess that was the XIX century and the wars of independence and "national organization" it only reinforces my belief that you can't understand Latin American history without taking it as a whole. Brasil intervened in Argentina, Argentina intervened in Brasil, Chile with Bolivia and Perú, Colombia with the Caribbean, and all with the interventions of the European powers (IIRC Spain tried to invade Perú as late as the 1840s) and the US, it's all connected.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: B’Elanna Torres

By Ames

Get ready to have an honorable day as we swivel our character spotlight over to the Voyager’s chief engineer this week on A Star to Steer Her By. Every day is an identity crisis for B’Elanna Torres, whose half-Klingon, half-human pedigree serves to frequently explore mixed heritages, familial disputes, and issues of self loathing as the series goes on. But mostly, Torres is just a wildly creative and intelligent character who is so frequently pushed to the brink, as is this show’s wont.

So grab a fork and dig into a whole freakin’ blood pie as we take a deep dive into Torres’s complex character and rich backstory. Read on below for some choice moments and listen to our recitation of the Klingon plea for the dead over on this week’s podcast episode (warp over to 54:21). Qapla’!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Did we just become best friends? Early in the series, Torres has a lot to prove, both as one of the Maquis terrorists that joins the integrated crew and as a character who clearly has a permanent chip on her shoulder about all things Starfleet. So it’s a wonderful moment of bonding with Janeway when they work together in “Parallax” to escape the event horizon of a quantum singularity using science!

Me, myself, and identity crisis It always amazes me that “Faces” is slotted in season one of Voyager because it is so successful at exploring the dual nature of Torres’s makeup while her character is still getting her footing. When she is split into her Klingon and human halves, she really gets to take a closer look at herself (literally!) and how her two identities make her whole (also literally!). Early character work for the win!

Nothing, just talking to myself For the first (but not last) time Roxann Dawson voices a homicidal computer, we are treated to Torres figuring out how to disarm the Dreadnought in “Dreadnought.” She’s prepared to sacrifice herself to stop this weapon from taking out a planet, but it’s a triumph to listen to her argue with herself until she succeeds, even if she did create the weapon in the first place…

Prototype Unit 0001 is ready to accept programming We totally missed mentioning this one on the podcast, so I’m squeezing it in now because it’s such good work from Dawson. In “Prototype,” she tries so hard to help the automated units find a way to reproduce, creating sentient life in Prototype Unit 001, which is impressive on its own! So that makes it all the more devastating when she has to deactivate him, her first child.

A more honorable Klingon than Worf We gave Worf some stink for refusing to donate blood to the dying Romulan in “The Enemy,” and in “Lifesigns,” Torres goes the other way. When Danara Pel needs some of her Klingon tissue, Torres looks past the trauma that Vidiians inflicted on her and sees that Danara is an individual. Lumping everyone of a species together is not the Starfleet way. Worf, take note.

Learn the truth for yourself There’s a lot that we like about “Remember,” and a lot of that comes down to some stellar acting from Roxann Dawson. Torres won’t stand by quietly as the Enarans sweep their problematic history under the rug and pretend they’ve been a moralistic society all along. She steps up for learning from the past, acknowledging where we’ve come from, and being better for it.

You’re not going to learn anything from being with these lollipops Another instance of Torres not letting someone take the easy way out comes when she meets the Doctor’s The Sims family in “Real Life.” She reprograms his bubblegum characters to have something closer to agency of their own, challenging the Doc to learn to compromise with and respect his fake wife and fake kids. Ya know, skills that he can use with his actual crew!

B’Elanna and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Honorless Day I’m a sucker for the quiet reflection and character study that we see in “Day of Honor” when Torres and Paris are on the brink of death, floating in space helplessly in EV suits. In confronting what could be her final moments, Torres finds some clarity in her existence. And it’s just a touching admission for her to voice her love for Tom, kicking off their romance arc.

I’m going to have to deactivate you It’s telegraphed from pretty early in the episode, but it’s still impressive when Torres takes out Dejaren with an isomimetic conduit in “Revulsion.” We do give her credit for trying to help the wayward hologram in the first place, but she’s also smart enough to see through his facade and keep herself alive when he predictably goes nuts and tries to kill her because she’s corporeal.

Where’s the boob tube? This is a smaller detail but it’s indicative of the Torres-Paris relationship. When Tom returns from a two-week away mission, B’Elanna surprises him with a classic TV set in “Memorial.” It’s surprising Tom didn’t already have one, so it’s a good touch to see that B’Elanna knows exactly the kind of thing that would make his day, like a loving and thoughtful partner would.

We’re still alive and I’m still asking Star Trek overall is hit or miss when it comes to character relationships (one day, we’ll cover them all!), but Tom and B’Elanna just work. Sure, they both do stupid things sometimes, and you’ll see them in our Worst Moments lists, but Torres marrying Paris in “Drive” is weirdly right. It’s a joy to see how much they complement and expand each other’s characters. <3

Not every Cardassian is arrogant and cruel Wow, Torres gets held hostage by holograms a lot, doesn’t she? The thing I like most about “Flesh and Blood” is Torres’s interaction with the Cardassian hologram engineer Kejal. As we’ll see below, Torres has a bit of a tiff with Cardassians, but like she did with Danara Pel in “Lifesigns,” she’s able to treat this one like an individual and work together to save the day!

—

Worst moments

I know this weapon very well You know I love it when the same episode pops up on two lists. Even though Torres did a great job disarming the Cardassian missile in “Dreadnought,” don’t forget that it was her fault that this thing was careening around in the Delta Quadrant in the first place. She knows this thing like the back of her hand because she was the one that reprogrammed it for the Maquis!

No means NO! I will shit on pon farr every opportunity I get, the same way I shit on oomox jokes. So even though Torres herself isn’t to blame for contracting pon farr in “Blood Fever,” it sure is the writers’ fault. It’s just so gross to watch this strong character lose her agency because of that creep Vorik, and it’s even worse that she tries to rape Tom even when he rightly tells her no.

No PDAs next to the warp core The Torres-Paris relationship is quite cute, as we stated up above, but their constant making out in the middle of engineering in “Scientific Method” is unprofessional. Guys, your coworkers on the first floor can totally see and hear everything, and we know how loud Klingon mating is, so keep it in your quarters when you’re off the clock before Tuvok writes you up.

If thoughts could kill… Even compared to other Klingons, Torres’s temper is substantial. The strength of the violent mental image she concocts in “Random Thoughts” pushes the Mari who experience it into committing murder. So really, how bad must it have been if it had such an exaggerated effect on people that their police force wanted to lobotomize her? Nightmare fuel, no doubt.

Try to remember that we are not just a bunch of drones Ever since Seven of Nine first joins the crew in “The Gift,” Torres is a major bitch to the former Borg. She’s opposed to working with her in “Day of Honor” because of her background even though Seven is recuperating, and it’s not until Chakotay orders her to chill out on the poor woman in “Message in a Bottle” that Torres shows her any respect at all.

Where’s Counselor Troi when you need her? We will say on the podcast that Voyager badly needed a counselor until the cows come home, and “Extreme Risk” is the perfect example of that. Torres is clearly coping with trauma, among a lot of other stressors, but instead of coping with it in a healthy way, she opts for the dangerous solution of getting herself injured in the holodeck all the time. At least program a Freud puppet!

As far as I’m concerned, they’re all cold-blooded killers Somehow, even though Torres was able to put racism aside in “Lifesigns” to help Danara Pel, she won’t give an inch to Cardassians in “Nothing Human” to save herself. And this Cardassian isn’t even real! It seems like a weird hill to literally die on for Torres to be so stubborn and willfully naive to refuse care. At least ask the Doc to reprogram Moset’s face first!

You must learn to master your emotions So most of “Juggernaut” is a Best Moment for B’Elanna but I ran out of slots above, so here we go. Even though she successfully figures out the whole Malon ship problem and discovers the true identity of the Vihaar, so much of the episode feels like a regression because Torres spends so much of it angry and violent – a backpedal for how far she’s come as a character.

Death becomes her Speaking of character regressions. This show can’t seem to decide where Torres ever stands in her relationship with her Klingon culture, and “Barge of Dead” goes all in on mystical claptrap. Despite five previous seasons of keeping her roots at an arm’s length, Torres uncharacteristically jumps into this dangerous death ritual with both feet. What the Gre’thor?

Such a Mary Sue It’s sweet that Torres is so nice to Kellis the playwright while he writes his Voyager fanfiction in “Muse.” But she crosses the line when she decides to improv an ending for Kellis’s play just because she’s so egotistical that she doesn’t want him to kill her character off, beaming out in front of the whole audience. It might be the most selfish reason for breaking the Prime Directive yet!

I’d say you’re capable of a lot more than delivering PADDs, if you know what I mean I blame this one more on the writers than on B’Elanna, but it still made me uncomfortable. Icheb gets it into his hormone-fueled head that Torres has taken a romantic interest in him in “Nightingale,” which is just peak adolescent boy fantasy. Unknowingly, she leads him on, and what I’m sure was supposed to be a joke just feels cringe. Really, she should’ve decked him.

Genetic modification is the treatment of choice Close to the end of the show, we’re back to Torres’s fraught view of her Klingon genes when she learns her unborn daughter will have head ridges in “Lineage.” Torres falls yet again into a spiral of self-loathing, assuming Tom will leave her the way her father did, and she tries to trick the EMH into surgically altering the fetus to remove any Klingon attributes. That is without honor!

—

Let’s restore some honor to this post before we move on to our next character spotlight. Keep watching here as we go through the whole Voyager crew and also keep following along as we’ve finally reached season 4 of Enterprise over on the watchalong podcast at SoundCloud or whatever listening app you like best. You can also bond with us about science over on Facebook and Twitter, and if you’ve got Klingon rage problems, maybe talk to the EMH about it.

[trillscienceofficer]

from Cinefantastique Volume 28 #4-5, November 1996

KLINGON ENGINEER: Roxann Biggs-Dawson as B'Elanna Torres gives heart to the hard-working Maquis engineer.

By Anna L. Kaplan

A bedroom scene between B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Biggs-Dawson) and Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) appeared in the second season VOYAGER episode, "Persistence of Vision." This scene provoked a very loud and negative response from fans. A surprised Biggs-Dawson laughed and said, "So many people gave me so much flak about that, as if I had written it. It was amazing, the letters, and the comments. Mostly the women really spoke out strongly against it, and felt that it was a weak cop-out. I totally disagreed with that."

In the episode, an alien was able to subdue the crew and put them into trance-like states by mind control, whereby each individual believed himself to be with someone extremely psychologically important. Tuvok, for example, joined his wife on Vulcan, while Tom Paris saw his father. B'Elanna, hard at work in engineering and determined to save the ship, found herself talking to Chakotay, apparently, who convinced her to stop work and join him. While she knew it was not really Chakotay, and said so, B'Elanna succumbed to the temptation.

Noted Biggs-Dawson, "I felt that the strength of that alien, the way he could get to us as humans, was that he understands the deep need, whether you're a Vulcan, or a half-Klingon or whatever, that we all have to love and to be loved. The things that would put us into those trances were those very deep needs. I think for B'Elanna, it wasn't a reflection of a direct attraction to Chakotay. He represents so much to her, a father figure, a mentor, her teacher, her coworker, and he is an attractive man. I think it was a desire to give in to a side that she does not give into easily, and that was what caused her particular trance. I don't think that necessarily means that he is always on her mind. It probably took her by surprise as much as it did the audience. It was more of a reflection of her need to please, to fulfill, all of these things are very real, very human.

"At [STAR TREK] conventions, a lot of people [were] feeling that the writers just felt that the only thing B'Elanna was about, was being in love with Chakotay. That wasn't what the message was at all. I didn't read it that way when I read the script. It did say something about all of the characters who succumbed to those needs of wanting to love and to be loved, those things that we shove away, and push away, and don't want to deal with." It is readily apparent that Biggs-Dawson thinks a lot about B'Elanna Torres and what makes her the person she is. She noted about the second season, "I think it's been interesting. I've had some interesting costars, one was a computer, and one was a mechanical man. I'm waiting for them to give me a real person to play off of." She laughed. "I keep joking. I had an episode last season where I played opposite myself, then opposite a machine, then opposite a machine with my voice. So it's obviously a theme. Hopefully [this] year I get to talk to a real person. The second season episodes the actress is referring to were "Prototype" and "Dreadnought." She noted more seriously, "When I saw both 'Prototype' and 'Dreadnought' they scared me a bit, because it was going to be difficult to pull off. I think the end result was that we found some interest- ing themes I didn't know were there in the beginning." In "Prototype" Torres repairs a robot whose creators are gone. The robot then wants her to make new robots. Biggs-Dawson observed, "So much of 'Prototype' was the only way B'Elanna could deal with her own mothering instincts and creation [instincts]. At this point in her development, probably the only way that she can confront her feelings and herself, is through the creation and adoption of a mechanical being, of a robot, and to be as excited about that as some people [are] about children or other kinds of creation."

In "Dreadnought" Voyager encounters a Cardassian missile whose computer Torres had reprogrammed when she was a Maquis, using her own voice for the computer. She has to stop it from destroying a highly populated planet. Said Torres [sic, the author meant Dawson], "'Dreadnought' was an interesting challenge because it was very much dealing with who B'Elanna used to be, confronting her former self. She was forced to see how much she had changed, and who she was at the time. She was forced to battle that in a very, very tangible way. That I found to be the most interesting: think I had most of my revelations when I went in to do the computer voice. As I was recording that side of the episode, later on, there was a real sense of growing to understand who I was before, who B'Elanna was who was actually programming all that stuff into the computer."

Biggs-Dawson likes B'Elanna Torres. She said about B'Elanna, "She makes mistakes. I love that the writers allow her to be flawed and fallible. I think that's what makes her so interesting. So often on television you have these characters that are playing all good or all evil, and they battle it. Here you've got this character that is a little bit of both, which I think we all are. Her decisions and her struggles, what makes them so human, in a way, [is that] there is often not a definite right and a wrong. There's a lot of gray area in there, and I think that's where B'Elanna lives." Biggs-Dawson has some ideas about how to explore her character, but hasn't yet approached the show's producers or writers to discuss them. "We can say whatever we want, whether anything's ever done about it, that's another story," she said, laughing. "They're very open to listening to us. I actually haven't felt the need to discuss the future of my character with them at all, because I feel like so far they've been very much in line. It's only been in the last few weeks that I've had some desires or thoughts that I might want to approach them about. But it's really been the first time in this two year process that I might want to go to them and say, 'Why don't we look at this side of her character. We want to explore this.' I think in the beginning, they hand you a character. They know so much more about this character than you do. Now it's been two years and she's starting to meld vith me. I think they understand that. As we play these characters, we start to almost take them, and they become ours, and our insights mean that much more."

The versatile and talented Biggs-Dawson, who played Diana in A Chorus Line on Broadway, has film credits which include DARKMAN II and GUILTY BY SUSPICION, and has appeared on such television shows as MATLOCK, THE UNTOUCHABLES, and POINTMAN. As B'Elanna Torres in VOYAGER, she hopes to inspire and teach, something that has always been possible on a STAR TREK series. She speculated about the future on VOYAGER, "It's important, as relationships develop, and I hope they will, that being a strong woman doesn't mean that you can't have a partner, or you can't show romantic feelings toward the opposite sex. I think that the rules have to be redefined. To think that in order to be strong you have to be alone the rest of your life is kind of frightening, and I hope that STAR TREK will be at the forefront of showing a new kind of woman, who will redefine the love relationships between male and female. I'd like to see that."

But facing the hiatus before third season, she is ready for some time off, which she said she will use, "Mostly to relax. I've go a few conventions, and a couple little vacations planned. But I think mostly to relax, it goes by so quickly."