S3 E16: Blood Fever

Vorik, a Vulcan who has had a line or two in the background of several previous episodes, delivers a dispassionate, but clearly throughly considered, marriage proposal to Torres (I particularly like the line about Vulcans being one of the few species on board who were strong enough for Klingon sex). She is flabbergasted, and turns him down; he quickly becomes angry and violent, so Torres is simply required to dislocate his jaw. The Doctor deduces that Vorik is going through pon farr - the Vulcan mating drive that occurs once every seven years - but Vorik is reluctant to discuss it, and opposed to any medical treatment to stop it, requesting that he instead be confined to quarters for meditation. Consulting Tuvok does not get the Doctor much further, as Tuvok is similarly reticent on the subject.

Torres, Neelix, and Paris enter a series of caves in the mines below, and when Neelix's equipment malfunctions, Torres flips out, biting Tom as she runs off into the caves. Turns out that, when Vorik attacked her, he telepathically induced pon farr in her as well. After a run-in with the natives of the caves, Paris and Torres are stranded together, deeper in the caves. Torres is literally throwing herself at him, and Paris barely fending her off. Once they escape from the caves, and meet up with Tuvok and Chakotay, they discover that, for some reason, they are cut off from communicating with Voyager. Torres' situation has become dire: according to Tuvok, not allowing her to either (a) have sex, (b) fight someone, potentially to the death, in a duel, or (c) exercise precise Vulcan meditative techniques would kill her. That being the case, given Torres' disinclination towards meditation and very violent temper, Paris is essentially ordered to do his duty as a starfleet officer, and pursue option (a).

The Doctor had been working on "meditative aids" for Vorik in order to help him through this tough time, and had seemed to have achieved a degree of success with a holographic Vulcan with whom Vorik could... relieve his stress. However, his efforts were ultimately a failure, as it was Vorik who had cut off communication with the away team, in preparation for claiming Torres in person. He catches Paris and Torres in each others arms, and challenges Paris. Torres won't stand to be left out of a fight, so she takes Tom's place, and she and Vorik beat each other senseless until their pon farr drives are satisfied.

Hrm, three paragraphs of plot recapping. Must attempt to be less wordy in the future.

I like the relatively subtle jabs at abstinence only inadequate sex education. Vulcans are as reasonable a species as any to do it with, since their distaste for (or, at the very least, sublimation of) emotions would naturally lead them to be hesitant to discuss pon farr, particularly with outsiders. Presumably, Vulcans in the alpha quadrant have many more Vulcan authority figures to turn to when they are in the throes of it, so the silence probably at least appears to be more adequate there. Here on Voyager though, the shortcomings of the deal-with-it-when-you-get-there policy are highlighted clearly. However, the Doctor's evaluation of the Vulcans' methods as "victorian" also turns my attention to the general topic of Sex in Star Trek.

Unlike certain other sci-fi or fantasy shows, Trek tends to "suggest" that sex occurs with sly scene cuts, typically during commercial breaks. That's okay with me: as much as I appreciate that Battlestar enjoys not pulling any punches, not every show needs to do that, especially with non-cable censorship being what it is. Plus, plenty of people in TNG and DS9 manage to get busy off-camera - sex in general seems to be a pretty casual thing in Trek. Sure, it is rarely outright discussed*, but that's part of what gives it that casual air, that it is such a non-issue that no one has anything to say about it. Personally, I think that's a pretty brilliant way to make a comment on the issue... without making a comment so that there's nothing to be censored.

*I guess there's Worf and his conservative Klingon views on it, but even that part of that relationship's culture-gap isn't beaten into the ground. It's just a small part of the road towards compromise and understanding for that pair.

So far though, Voyager has been extra chaste. Aside from Janeway and Paris' lizard-form baby-makery, instead of the cut-away we've had the cut-off: either someone is called away just in time, or they make some discovery that distracts them. Even here, amidst all the fanservice-y Torres/Paris bits, Tom plays the nobleman until he is ordered to fornicate, then gets cut-off. Voyager, so far, has occupied a strange space in the Trek-Sex continuum, since it still has the sex-appeal female character (Kes, whose lack of character direction in the beginning of the show was the probable result of the writers not having one for her except to stand there and look pretty), and will again with Seven of Nine, but is being extra shy about characters performing the act. Heck, Neelix and Kes don't even share quarters. Maybe the writers are just that afraid of losing their giant Salt Lake City audience.

Well, Vorik does have sex with that hologram, which is the first time someone actually uses the holodeck for such a purpose (more caveats: it is assumed that that activity was commonplace in the holosuites in Quark's bar, but I can't recall any times it was nearly so directly alluded to). The Doctor certainly has nothing against recreational sex in this case. Maybe I'm wrong, and this episode is a return to form, not just a ratings-grab. We'll see.

Watchability: 4/5

Bottom Line: Generally happy with getting more info on pon farr, and the episode itself is pretty fun. Despite all that raving about Voyager being chaste, and the Paris/Torres stuff being fanservice, I think it was a tastefully done walking-of-the-line. I also enjoyed the teaser at the end about the return of the Borg, Lost in Space-style.