518. Blood FeverFORMULA: Amok Time + Meld + Fascination
WHY WE LIKE IT: Sexy, sexy B'Elanna.
WHY WE DON'T: The Doctor's sexual healing.
REVIEW: Blood Fever retreads familiar ground by undergoing pon farr much like Spock did in Amok Time. The twist is that he has zero chance of getting back to Vulcan in time and must choose a mate aboard Voyager. The marriage proposal is amusing, but it quickly turns into sexual harrassment and B'Elanna is somehow "infected" with pon farr. Oh, those crazy telepathic races!
From then on, B'Elanna isn't quite herself, but the challenge is making her unusually aggressive when she's a pretty aggressive character already. Dawson does a good job, actually, her impatience coming off as ebullient rather than hostile at first. It also allows her to show real, breathless, savage passion for Tom Paris. His attraction to her has been made plain in the previous episodes, but at least they go so far as to say she knew and ignored him on purpose. And yet, who does she go to when she needs to mate? Voyager has had some ridiculous and badly set up relationships, but this isn't one of they, and this is a key episode. I've got to say however that for a guy with a bad boy reputation, Paris is a real gentleman. Rain Robinson understood him best as a nerd-hunk, I think.
Vorik's pon farr will end in ritual combat just as Spock's did, and his fight with B'Elanna is well choreographed and violent. A better solution than the Doctor's, who makes a glorified blow-up doll for him in the holodeck. This is a pretty icky premise despite being Quark's obvious use of holosuites in DS9. I doesn't work either, and probably in part due to the telepathic link that must occur in Vulcan mating (impossible with a hologram). Good thing it didn't, too, because the Doctor seemed way too happy with the idea of programming porn for every member of the crew.
A few other details... The guest aliens had an interesting camouflage make-up, though they disappear a little too suddenly at the end, but the real alien star is the Borg drone corpse found on the planet. Yes, we've reached Borg space, which should provide some excitement. And if you're keeping count, Vorik mentions 73 males on the crew, so that must mean 70 females and 1 hologram (I presume) because we're currently at 144. So not a girl for every boy. (And among these girls is untouchable Janeway and baby Naomi.)
LESSON: Love is both blind and angry.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Certainly not perfect, but a good episode for B'Elanna and holds the promise of things to come.
Comments
And that was officially the geekiest thing I've written in a long time.
Jay: Embrace it. ;)