Star Trek Voyager: 4 best B’Elanna Torres episodes

Roxann Dawson starred as B’Elanna Torres in Star Trek: Voyager.

It’s Roxann Dawson’s birthday! Many fans will remember her as the half-human, half-Klingon named B’Elanna Torres. Dawson played B’Elanna for all seven seasons during Star Trek: Voyager’s run and had a brilliant run on the show.

She started off as a Maquis member, serving alongside Chakotay on the same ship that would get stranded in the Delta Quadrant alongside Voyager. Over time she’d work her way up to be Chief of Engineering and would have some amazing storylines.

Being a daughter of both humanity and Klingon alike, her struggle to understand who she is and how she fits with not just the crew of Voyager but her own home life made her one of the more outstanding characters on the series.

Because of this, we’re looking at the four best episodes that featured her.

These are the four best episodes of Voyager featuring B’Elanna Torres

Barge of the Dead (season 6, episode 3)

The episode opens with B’Elanna technically dying and finding herself on the Barge of the Dead, heading to the Klingon version of hell, because she dishonored her Klingon heritage. This means her mother must take her place in Gre’thor (hell). She’s ultimately saved but it’s put back into a medically induced coma to try and save her mother. It’s a non-stop tug at the heartstrings as B’Elanna tries to find a way to reconcile with her mother, even though what B’Elanna is experiencing may not entirely be real.

Faces (season 1, episode 14)

In the first few seasons, B’Elanna wasn’t really sure how she felt about being half-Klingon and in this episode, got to find out what it was like to not be anymore. The Vidiians show up and genetically separate B’Elanna, Superman III style, with one half being human, the other half being Klingon. At the end, she realizes she needs her Klingon half for a variety of reasons, but mostly because she didn’t feel like herself otherwise (and she’d, you know, die, and stuff). It’s a wonderful episode about accepting yourself, and it’s worth a watch.

Day of Honor (season 4, episode 3)

B’Elanna is having a terrible, rotten, no good, very bad day in Day of Honor. The title of the episode is taken from a sacred Klingon holiday that B’Elanna is indifferent about. After a run-in with an alien race, Voyager is forced to eject its warp core and Tom Paris and B’Elanna go after it in a shuttle. The aliens destroy the shuttle and Tom and B’Elanna are left floating in space with only their EV suits to protect them. While on the brink of death, something happens that’s a huge turning point for the two.

Drive (season 7, episode 3)

Yeah, the third episode usually went to B’Elanna based stories, who knew? This one is simple, B’Elanna feels that she and Paris will only ever be “fun-buddies” and she wants more from him. She thinks he won’t commit so she plans to break up with him. On the flip side, Paris enters an intergalactic drag race of sorts with the Delta Flyer and B’Elanna is enlisted to be his co-pilot. Eventually, they get to the root of the problem and the episode ends in a rather surprising fashion.