Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57233 in VHS
• Released on: 2000-02-01
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 106 minutes

Amazon.com
The first post-premiere episode of Voyager finds Captain Janeway's forced experiment with merging Starfleet personnel and Maquis rebels aboard her starship a rocky affair indeed. Case in point: B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Biggs-Dawson), the fiery half-Klingon and Starfleet dropout-cum-terrorist, is routinely punching out colleagues. Despite that, First Officer Chakotay (Robert Beltran), himself a Maquis leader, presses a dubious Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) into putting Torres in charge of engineering.

Everybody gets behind a common problem, however, when Voyager encounters a black hole and detects the ghostly presence of another vessel trapped within--which turns out to be, rather ominously, a time-warped reflection of Voyager itself. Written by series producer Brannon Braga (from a story by Deep Space Nine contributor Jim Trombetta), "Parallax" makes the most of an inherent tension among the characters in the early days of the show. But there's also comic relief from the holographic doctor (Robert Picardo), whose malfunctioning program is causing him to shrink, and the juicy revelation that Chakotay and his former Maquis comrade Seska (Martha Hackett) were once lovers. Ah, 24th-century gossip. --Tom Keogh

From the Back Cover
As the crew tries to adjust to the merging of Starfleet and Maquis personnel, the ship is suddenly jolted. Voyager has come upon a quantum singularity- a star that has collapsed in upon itself, creating a powerful surrounding energy field. The crew believes another ship to be in jeopardy and tries to save it from destruction, only to trap themselves in the singularity. After several failed attempts to escape, Janeway and B'Elanna discover that the other ship caught in the distortion is just a mirror image of Voyager. The rip in the singularity that they entered through must be found and exited before it collapses, forever trapping them.

Customer Reviews

Great kickoff!
This is the episode of STAR TREK: Voyager that people would have seen the second week of the series. It's considered the third episode because the first episode was a two-parter, but this is really Voyager's first one hour episode. I think it helped Voyager start off with a bang. This episode involves some quantum physics, but they make it understandable and even poke fun at it when Tom Paris attempts to ask a question about it. But the real story in this episode is who's going to be chief engineer of Voyager... either Lt. Carey, who's next in line among the Starfleet officers, or B'elanna Torres of the Maqui. First officer Chakotay wants Torres and this causes some tension between him and Captain Janeway. It's great to see how this problem is resolved and why Janeway makes the decision she does. I also found myself laughing throughout the episode, especially at the shrinking Doctor! Definately an enjoyable early episode of Voyager.

The Maquis get some respect
I enjoyed this episode very much and feel that it is one of the key episodes of Star Trek Voyager's first season.

In this episode, we see the combined Starfleet and Maquis crew settling into life together, and we witness the emergence of former Maquis officers Chakotay and B'Elanna Torres as respected members of Voyager's senior staff. This is important viewing, especially for fans of Deep Space Nine, who might have a residual distrust the Maquis!

Additionally, the developing partnership between Janeway and Chakotay is forged during some very frank discussions that take place during this episode. For that reason as well, I consider it to be a "must see" among season one Voyager episodes.

"Lieutenant Carey is an IDIOT!!" --B'Elanna Torres
I must whole-heartedly agree with the other reviews here that the plot of "quantum singularity crushing ship and crew" is not very interesting. Of course they're not all going to die, and of course Janeway and B'Elanna will choose the "real" ship at the end--they can't kill the captain in the third hour of the show, right? In this first one-hour episode, you'd think the writers would have set a "discovering new life" tone to the series, not an "avoiding bad phenomenon" tone. Fortunately, this episode isn't about plot; it's about a character. B'Elanna gets some great moments, including the dialog between her and Chakotay in her quarters. Roxann Dawson is as fiery a Klingon as anyone could ask for, and Janeway's dilemma of integrating the two crews is well presented and well played by Kate Mulgrew. Already foreshadowed--in the third episode!--is the problem of "one-hour plot that we really don't care about," but this time the character moments make up for it. This one is a must-see for all Torres fans.