#B'Elanna's so cute in this ep - it's a good episode for her & Chakotay's friendship she really goes to bat for him~!!

[bumblingbabooshka]

'Maneuvers' Wherein both Tuvok & Chakotay get in trouble.

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s2 ep 17: Dreadnought

Another B'Elanna episode, thank god! I'm surprised there were two so close together, but maybe they were rewarding us for sitting through so much crap this season? Idk, but I'm here for it! And this one is a really good one too.

We find out that when the Caretaker scooped up Voyager and the Maquis ship, it brought along a Cardassian missile that B'Elanna had reprogrammed to go after a Cardassian target instead, and it's been wreaking havoc on the Delta Quadrant unbeknownst to them all this time. Now it's headed toward an inhabited planet, and they have to stop it before it gets there.

The idea of a missile that has adaptive technology that learns as it consumes more input, and can potentially lock out it's own programmer, is surprisingly timely for a show from the 90s. With ai suddenly being used nearly everywhere, it's actually quite a scarily relevant cautionary tale for the present day

There are still some nice lighter moments though; B'Elanna calls Harry 'Starfleet' again in this one! We also get a nice little comedy scene with Ensign Wildman getting her checkup in sickbay while Kes and the Doctor try to help her come up with baby names. It had nothing to do with the rest of the episode, but it told us more about the characters, and it was cute.

Chakotay gets some points back for being a decent friend to B'Elanna here, since he doesn't tell everybody that B'Elanna made Dreadnought herself, without his permisson. (Though I'm not sure why he would have been upset about her doing it when they were Maquis, since it was a damn good idea, and would have really helped the Maquis cause. Maybe he's jealous that he didn't think of it lol.) But then Chakotay gets on Tom's case again, and tells him to show up dressed properly for staff meetings, but he literally is dressed properly- he's in a regular uniform, it's not even unzipped lower than usual, so what the hell? Maybe there was a late script change and a miscommunication with the wardrobe department, because that didn't make any sense.

I'm sure this must be the Tom Paris undercover mission subplot going on now, because we have Tom showing up late for the staff meeting, and B'Elanna asking what's up with him turning in sloppy reports and picking fights with people, which are definitely not normal Tom things. (I can't get over bad punctuation being the sign that a Starfleet officer is clearly spinning out of control, lmao) While I like that we get to see Tom and B'Elanna starting to build a friendship, and that she's genuinely concerned about him, it sucks that they gave him a storyline where he has to lie to everybody now that the crew clearly do all care about him, and know that he's not really like that.

We get a lot of interesting character stuff for B'Elanna as she tries to deal with a problem she created; it's almost like she's facing off against her pre-Voyager self as she faces off with Dreadnought's computer, which she reprogrammed with her own voice. We see her grappling with the guilt, but also her determination to take responsibilty for her past recklessness and protect that planet full of people at all costs. She and Janeway clearly think alike, because they just about end up playing chicken with each other to see who'll be the one to blow themselves up to stop Dreadnought from detonating on the planet. Tom's reluctance to leave the Captain after she orders him to an escape pod, and then telling her 'thank you for everything', was a direct hit to the heart, as was Tuvok choosing to stay behind with her.

Meanwhile, we get some majorly tense, nail biting scenes as B'Elanna is aboard Dreadnought, losing life support, and doing everything she can to shut it down with only minutes left. (All the kudos to Roxann Dawson for basically creating that tension single handedly, since it's just her in a room alone, with nothing else going on except for a recording of her own voice, which she probably didn't even have while filming because they usually do voice over stuff in post, as far as I know.) She disarms it at the last second, Voyager rescues her, the planet is saved, Voyager makes a friend in the Delta Quadrant (which we never meet again, but oh well!) and all is well.

There wasn't a single scene in this ep where I was bored or uninterested, and I feel like it did a good job with giving little moments to all the characters while maintaining the tension of the main plot.

Tl;dr: A taut, well written episode that provides yet another opportunity for B'Elanna to shine.