30 Years on, Voyager’s B’Elanna Cut up Episode Stays Fascinatingly Fraught

Star Trek has all the time been fascinated with the thought of characters pulled between two worlds. Spock’s exploration of his human heritage, Worf’s standing on TNG as an early instance of post-peace Klingon integration with the Federation, even Sisko’s place as a Starfleet officer thrust into the simultaneous roles of guiding diplomat, navy chief, and spiritual emissary—time and time once more the collection has been drawn to this character archetype throughout concepts of race and standing.

Early Star Trek Voyager was no exception with its curiosity in B’Elanna Torres, one of many present’s early breakout characters. The Maquis insurgent turned chief engineer who embodied this trope not simply via her personal journey as an ex-guerrilla, but additionally as a half-Klingon lady—and the present’s first actual try to discover that latter, 30 years in the past in the present day in “Faces,” needed to tread fertile, but extremely contentious floor.

“Faces” was the 14th episode of Voyager‘s debut season, and noticed the return of the Vidiians, a race of aliens compelled to reap organs and physique elements from different species to attempt to keep away from being ravaged by a horrifying plague. Having captured a handful of Voyager crew whereas they have been on an away mission, B’Elanna included, a Vidiian scientist wanting to discover the potential impression of regenerative parts in Klingon DNA in battling that plague makes use of his folks’s superior medical expertise to succeed in an unorthodox conclusion: break up B’Elanna into two folks. Fully separated all the way down to the genetic degree into separate human and Klingon people (each performed by Torres actress Roxann Dawson, with the assistance of photograph double Pleasure Kilpatrick), each B’Elannas in the end have to beat their variations to discover a strategy to escape the Vidiians alongside their fellow captured crewmates.

The thought makes literal Star Trek‘s aforementioned fascination with characters who battle to reconcile being from two very totally different backgrounds, however by making B’Elanna’s first actual exploration of her biracial identification on the present so literal, “Faces” has to skirt some fairly wild traces that it may by no means actually fairly interrogate. A lot of the battle between the human B’Elanna and the Klingon B’Elanna is derived from what’s in the end introduced by the episode as genetically derived traits. Human B’Elanna is bodily and emotionally weaker, repeatedly incapacitated by concern as she struggles to adapt to being held prisoner by the Vidiians. Klingon B’Elanna, in the meantime, performs up the established Klingon caricature of violence and anger points, an underlying vanity that sees her search battle earlier than the rest.

It’s made particularly fraught given the post-TNG re-imagining of the Klingons away from their unique (and similarly racially fraught!) depictions and towards a race of just about completely dark-skinned humanoids, alongside different Afro-inspired traits like textured hair. The picture of a slight light-skinned human B’Elanna (for what it’s value, Dawson is of Puerto Rican descent) cowering within the presence of her aggressively framed, dark-skinned Klingon self is introduced up time and time once more in “Faces,” as the 2 argue with one another over being “cursed” with the adverse traits of the opposite, human B’Elanna lamenting her Klingon mood as being the rationale she in the end left Starfleet Academy. Regardless that by the top of “Faces” the 2 come to an understanding, and the Klingon B’Elanna is allowed to sacrifice herself to guard the human B’Elanna she had admonished as her lesser, it’s nonetheless introduced in additional of a method of the noble savage trope than it’s a significantly enlightened re-imagining of their bond.

However whereas “Faces” in the end concludes that the 2 B’Elannas work higher collectively, it doesn’t precisely interrogate the racialized aspect at play between them in presenting her inside battle over her biracial identification as an exterior one. Even the climax of the episode, when B’Elanna has reached that aforementioned understanding together with her Klingon self, handles it in a compromised method—her re-embrace of her Klingon aspect is finished as a lot out of any sort of acceptance as it’s the truth that she’s informed that she has to re-integrate together with her Klingon DNA, with out which she received’t survive. The episode’s remaining moments are intriguingly framed: the still-human-appearing B’Elanna tells Chakotay as she sits in Voyager‘s sickbay ready to bear surgical procedure that whereas she now appreciates and admires features of her Klingon self, she can also be reckoning with the truth that she is going to struggle that model of herself for the remainder of her life, earlier than stroking her clean brow in solitude for one final time earlier than the bodily reminder of her inside battle returns.

For a lot of the remainder of Voyager, the collection’ exploration of B’Elanna’s racial identification shall be explored via her broken relationship together with her Klingon mom, relatively than her personal inside attitudes to being part-Klingon. That’s, with one vital, equally wild exception: the season seven episode “Lineage,” which sees a newly pregnant B’Elanna try to genetically alter her little one in-utero to make sure they’re born totally human.

It’s fascinating that a lot of the present’s exploration of her identification is bookended with these episodes which can be broadly in dialog with one another, and never essentially in the most effective of how. “Lineage,” whereas offering a degree of understanding for B’Elanna’s decisions, is a minimum of way more definitive in its view that her apprehensive view of being part-Klingon is misguided, and her actions within the episode are equivocally within the flawed. Maybe then, “Faces” walked so it may run—and provide an opportunity to do a bit extra proper by a personality Voyager had been deeply concerned about from its earliest beginnings.

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