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Seized Opportunities
So, remember how half the crew was supposed to be from this Maquis ship? Torres does, and she's just about the only one. Chakotay certainly left his terrorist ways behind the second he came aboard. Several episodes used some background Maquis crew members who would only show up in that one episode; the only character I can think of that had any sort of adjustment time and some screen time after becoming a member of the crew is Hogan. Yes, Hogan, the guy who got eaten by a land eel.
Torres not only actually used the show's Maquis premise, she used it well. Many of the one-offs were just used as a vehicle to say how awesome the Starfleet way is, but Torres' plots were more complicated than that. A friend once asked me if I had a choice between an incompetent co-worker who was easy to get along with and a competent co-worker who was a complete jerk, which one I'd choose. It's an interesting dilemma – I think, at baseline, I'd rather take on more work myself than have to deal with someone I can't stand. Not everyone feels that way of course, and Torres is the captain of the opposite viewpoint. As I mentioned in the first season review, she's the Dilbert, only Klingon, abrasive, female, and a member of a terrorist organization. What's best is that, while the show doesn't always side against her, it also doesn't always side with her. That kind of balance is missing for other characters.
The show's maintenance of her outsider status also allowed her to have a real reaction to the death of all the Maquis in the alpha quadrant. That should have been a show-defining moment when that news got out, with half the crew learning that Voyager is more their home than anywhere in the alpha quadrant could be. It wasn't, for anyone who wasn't Torres at least. Torres couldn't completely save the lost opportunity for the rest of the crew, but her character did at least take full advantage of it.
Torres is the show's woman of two worlds in a lot more ways than Seven. She's half Klingon biologically, half Klingon culturally, a Maquis crew member with some Starfleet Academy experience, an engineer and a warrior, independent and with child. Each conflict gets at least one full episode dedicated to it, so they are neither overdone nor underexplored. Torres' complexity makes her the show's character who was most capable of surprising me without doing something that seems out of character.
Missed Opportunities
Here's Torres' biggest weakness – she was the biggest offender in the crew when it comes to the Voyager style “two steps backwards, one step forwards” character development. She was constantly making progress by the end of an episode only to have all of her development erased for the next one. If there is one saving grace for this annoyance it is that each one of the episodes centered on her did take her in a slightly different direction, which kept her character somewhat fresh.
Every episode other than every episode with her relationship with Paris, that is. Every scene with those two was the same note, played over and over again. “They fight all the time, but they still looooove each other!!” See, there are several interesting dysfunctional relationships in sci-fi (most of them in Galactica), but even Saul and Ellen Tigh were happy together sometimes. Even though Lee never really loved Dee back, there were some good times in their marriage. Paris and Torres are never happy together except for 30 seconds at the end of the episode and that one time in Thirty Days.
The Actress
Honestly, I never really thought about the job Roxanne Dawson was doing as an actress during the run of the series, which is probably a good thing. If I'm not thinking about the person who is playing a character that I'm watching, they must be doing a good job, right? Well, she was never given much of a challenge in her role here – regardless as to what's going on, Torres acts like Torres. In her later, more demanding performances (I'm thinking particularly of Lineage here), she certainly acts circles around Duncan-MacNeil, but that's like saying a person using a spoon won a soup-eating competition against a person using a chopstick. I guess what I'm saying is, she could be awesome, and she played one of the more interesting characters on the show, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I'd be interested to see her in some other show, playing a different type of character.
Final Thoughts
There are no flat-out bad Torres episodes. She is the only character who doesn't have a single episode below a three, and one of two not to have one below a two. I was consistently impressed with the stories she was in, and her unique personal reactions to the events in those stories. The show was balanced in its approach to her, and that payed out big in the end. I'd easily place Torres as at least my third favorite character, and she gave Seven a serious run for her money for second place.
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