Customer Reviews

Star Trek - Voyager, Episode 14: Faces [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Certainly, this episode is one of the most important to the character development of B'Elanna Torres. In this episode, B'Elanna discovers how important her Klingon half is...and comes to peace with the part of herself that she's always struggled with most.

I also feel that this episode is the real beginning of the friendship between the characters of B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris...very important to the future storyline of the show.

Personally, I feel that it is a "must see" from Voyager season one.

I can't believe some people didn't like this episode! (Or am I remembering the other reviews wrong?) I think this was one of the greatest episodes as far a characterization goes . . . . or that could just be me because B'Elanna's my favorite character. Anyway, I liked having a look at her Klingon side and her human side! Wow! She's actually kind of cute when she cries (what am I talking about? She's always pretty) and it's really sweet how Tom's always trying to comfort her (foreshadowing to . . . ah . . . Blood Fever, Day of Honor(my fave), Vis a Vis, Alice, Drive, etc, I could go on & on) Anyway this is a great episode and I think I'm gonna buy it so I don't have to wait for UPN to show it and it won't get taped over after a week!

B'Elanna Torres, Voyager's Klingon-hybrid Chief Engineer, has resented and resisted her warrior heritage all her life. In this, the best Klingon episode of the series, she has an opportunity to reconcile with her two "faces". Torres and some of her crewmates are captured by the villainous Vidian, an alien species which has suffered for generations from a loathsome flesh-eating plague called the Phage. In their efforts to combat the disease, the Vidian have developed medical technology far in advance of the Federation's. But whatever morality they might have once possessed has been long abandoned, as they raid the Delta Quadrant "harvesting" other inhabitants' tissues and organs as replacements for their own. To the Vidian's delight, the Klingon physiology, with its exceptional hardiness and unique redundancies, promises new breakthroughs in finding a cure. So they separate Torres' Klingon half from her less valuable Human half. For a while there coexist two distinctly different B'Elannas, who must join forces to rescue their crewmates and escape their captors. The Klingon doppelganger is brawny and brave, but brash. The Human entity is brainy, but wimpy and annoyingly whiny. Unlike the Vidians, B'Elanna's comrades, (including her boytoy-to-be, Tom Paris) prefer the timid Torres over her volitile counterpart. Personally, I believe the writers missed their golden opportunity to dump the hybrid character altogether and keep the more impressive full-Klingon version. What they did not miss was the opportunity for some leering innuendo about Klingon females' indiscriminate sexual mores, which have provided a sophomoric source of titillation for the Franchise. And of course, the fate of the formidable warrioress was totally predictable -- Klingon women have replaced the unfortunate "red-shirts" in token Trek expendability. Ultimately, Klingon B'Elanna had little impact on the character, the series, or the Star Trek mythos. But for her sole episode, she was pretty terrific, and so popular with the fandom, that she even got her own collectable action-figure.

If you remember the first season episode "The Enemy Within" from the original "Star Trek" series, then the main idea behind "Faces" (Story by Jonathan Glassner & Adam Grossman, Teleplay by Kenneth BillerAired May 8, 1995), Episode 14 of "Star Trek: Voyager." The Away Team of B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Biggs-Dawson), Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), and the expendable Lt. Durst (Brian Markinson) has disappeared on the planet "Voyager" is visiting, which leads to a second Away Team consisting of Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Tuvok (Tim Russ), and Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) to go down and investigate. Of course this puts the entire command crew in jeopardy, but this apparently does not worry Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). However, the trail leads to some caves where a force field stops them from proceeding further. Meanwhile, on the other side of the force field a Vidiian scientist named Sulan has created an all-Klingon version of Torres. Searching for a cure for the Phage (See Episode 5, "Phage") Sulan's plan is to inject a pure Klingon with the deadly disease and see if that works (pretend this makes sense). Meanwhile, an all-human version of Torres ends up in the cell with Paris and Durst.

Not only do we have two Torreses for the price of one, it seems that Sulan is attracked to the Klingon version. So much so that he finds a rather gruesome way of having Durst help the Vidiian scientist more attractive. Since several seasons later Torres will marry Tom Paris and have a baby in the final episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" this thing between Sulan and the ship's Chief Engineer is not going to work out. Aside from watching actress Roxann Biggs-Dawson play her split personalities (one with considerably more makeup and the other with virtually none) the resolution is rather easy to anticipate and the lesson in "Faces" has not changed since Captain Kirk went through the same thing (It does make you wonder what what would have happened if they had tried this with Mr. Spock). The result is rather entertaining and allows the Torres character to get some needed depth, but is not a great episode. However, Torres will address being half-Klingon and have-human again, most notably during her pregnancy ("Lineage").

Its pretty nice to see Torres as a Human but on the other hand when shes all human she does not give you that appeal. I guess shes more facinating when shes half human and half klingon. Anyway this episode is pretty good. You really dont expect Torres to cry when shes all human. It just makes you wonder. It a episode to watch but there are much better episodes.