I can't help it, I either like something 100% or I hate it 100%, very rarely do I go halfway. I have been watching Voyager for the first time since I saw it first-run, my memories of these episodes don't jibe with what I am seeing now.
In fact, I don't remember seeing this one, it slipped through the cracks. A friend of mine, when missing an episode of some show we were watching would always say "I'll catch the Re-Runs this summer" - But that doesn't happen anymore, and I don't think it was happening much during Voyager's first Run through UPN13-space.
As far as this episode goes, I like the way it has been told "In Flashback". Tom is being properly sanctioned and demoted due to rank insubordination.
This is something I would have expected to happen in the first season when he was still a bit disorderly, but in fact, his behavior from Voyager's first day in the Delta Quadrant had been exemplary.
In Season Two, he took on a role of insubordination but we finally learned it was a trick to get Info from our Favourite Cardassian Mole, Seska.
So that it happened here in the middle of the 5th Season was something of a surprise. I had figured he had done something completely irascible, but that is not the case.
As far as "Out of Character" goes, Harry, innocent little Harry, has a Date with the Delaney Sisters in Tom's "Captain Proton" Holo-Serial. I wonder if Republic made those? Actually it's just another example of Harry picking the Wrong Girl to go Bugsputz over (again). A Dead Girl, Seven, an Alien Chick who made his skin glow, this is par for Harry's long line of infatuations. But The Delaney Sisters looked great, didn't they?
Voyager finds an Ocean floating in Space, meet a race of people who have been living there. Nobody knows how it got there, until they send the Delta "Flying Sub" down to the core and find a huge reactor that's holding the Ocean in place, but not much is holding the reactor in place.
In fact it is failing because the people who live there are ruining the ecology, so it is not a matter of 'if' the whole place will dissipate molecule by molecule, it's a matter of when this will happen, which will be soon.
Tom befriends one of the scientists of this race, who shares his concern, and they conspire to blow up one of the Oxygen-Mines which is wrecking the place.
Janeway, as much as she agrees, cannot interfere and has to stop him. This is a very different Tom Paris than the one we met in the Pilot Episode, that man did not care about anything, not even himself. But seeing this floating Ocean has ignited his love of all things Maritime that he had since Childhood, and he is compelled to act.
Some times we just have to do things that are not strictly legit. I understand Tom's desire to preserve something wonderful that had been created long ago. But when the race of people who would ultimately benefit from this do not care one iota, it is not clear if this kind of action is warranted. But we know this is something Tom had to do, even when it meant being Demoted to Harry's Rank.
So now B'Elanna can order Tom around.
More than anything else, this is character development- If Tom will sacrifice his rank to benefit someone other than himself, then maybe being on Voyager has changed him irrecoverably from that guy who didn't give a veQ 'ay'
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