Gravity

Synopsis:

Stranded on a desolate planet with a beautiful female, Tuvok struggles to ignore the emotions his Vulcan master taught him to suppress.

When Tuvok and Paris crash their shuttle, their signal to Voyager is bounced back by the distortion field that drew them into the gravity well. Stranded on a planet stuck in a pocket of deep space, they meet a female named Noss. She is attacked by an alien species of scavengers, but Tuvok overpowers them and befriends her. Once she brings them to the wreckage of her ship, Paris reactivates the Doctor's mobile emitter and brings him on-line to translate Noss' language. She tells them she has seen many ships fall from the sky, but none have gone back up.

As Noss learns their language and begins communicating with them, Paris shares stories of Voyager with her. When he notices that she likes Tuvok, he encourages his friend to pursue his mutual feelings for her. However, Tuvok remembers his schooling with the Vulcan master. He was taught that love is the most dangerous emotion, and that all emotions should be suppressed.

Back on Voyager, the ship is almost pulled into the sinkhole. When Janeway realizes the shuttle must have succumbed to it, she prepares to send in a multispatial probe to investigate. Suddenly, a vessel approaches, and they are hailed by Yost. He informs them that eleven of his ships have been lost in the distortion, and it will be sealed the next day. Chakotay locates the shuttle's distress signal, but he also finds that Tuvok and Paris are experiencing a temporal differential. A day to Voyager could mean weeks or months to them. In addition, the planet's gravitational distress is increasing, and the sinkhole is on the verge of collapsing.

After Tuvok and Paris are ambushed by the scavenger aliens, Noss lovingly tends to Tuvok's wounds. When she kisses him, he stoically rebukes her advances and hurts her feelings. Later, Tuvok tries to explain to Paris that his time with the Vulcan master trained him to ignore his illogical emotions. Meanwhile, Torres modifies the probe into a transporter relay and manages to send a communication signal to Paris and Tuvok's distress beacon. They receive the transmission telling them a transporter beam will be sent in 30 minutes, which is a little over two days in the differential. As they wait for their rescue, aliens surround them.

Tuvok and Paris are barely able to fend off the photon grenades of the aliens before Voyager's transporter relay beams them to the ship. Noss is taken to her homeworld, but before saying good-bye, Tuvok employs a Vulcan mind-meld to show her the feelings buried deep inside him.

Overall Rating: A good episode, even with the lack of scenes on Voyager and the fact that we have to suffer through  Paris. Tuvok is an interesting character and it is too bad that tptb never used him to his potential. There was not much real chemistry between Lori Petty and Tim Russ but we fans should be used to that with Paris and Torres. 

Subtext Rating: None to speak of though I wonder what might have been happening back on Voyager had B'Elanna knew Paris's attitude towards fidelity?  

Tape worthy?  Yes, it is an interesting episode and Lori Petty is a guest star.