Episode Synopsis : Season 6
BARGE OF THE DEAD
Episode 123

 

Klingon spellings and pronunciation are from 'Encylopaedia' and 'The Klingon Dictionary' by Marc Okrand, except for "grethor" which is spelt phonetically and as per ST Monthly. Essentially in this story B'Elanna Torres mentally struggles to resolve her rebellion against her Klingon heritage. She ends up in this inner struggle because she has been thinking a lot about her mother lately: it is an anniversary for it was ten years ago that she last saw and spoke to her mother. She attributes her rebellion against her Klingon heritage to her mother's enthusiasm for Klingon ritual and behaviour. That enthusiasm had caused her father to abandon her mother, and also to abandon Torres when she was a child (five years old is stated in [#7 Eye of the Needle]). We see Torres bringing in a damaged shuttlecraft to Voyager's Shuttlebay, having disobeyed orders to return in order to recover the ship's multispatial probe - she decided to disobey orders as Voyager only has one multispatial probe. Chakotay brings her an artefact: a monkey wrench she ran into with the shuttlecraft. It turns out to be Klingon, raising the question of how it got to the Delta Quadrant. Neelix throws a Klingon party to celebrate and because the artefact also represents the Alpha Quadrant. At the party Torres and her crewmembers are slaughtered by a Klingon and she wakes on the Barge of the Dead, the Klingon transport vessel to ghe"or (pronounced in this episode "grethor"), the Klingon hell. When branded, Torres' face does not take the brand. She sees her mother arriving on the Barge of the Dead. Torres wakes in Sickbay. Hence we realise that the events of the last paragraph took place in Torres' subconscious, while she was in a coma. But she still has a wound she sustained on the Barge of the Dead! Torres shows Paris an ancient Klingon scroll, whose eleventh tome relates the tale of Kahless returning from the dead "with a wound from the afterlife, a warning that what he experienced wasn't a dream, ... and the only reason that Kahless was in the afterlife was to rescue his brother from the Barge of the Dead and deliver him to Sto'vo'kor." Torres believes her mother is on her way to hell, rather than Sto'vo'kor, due to Torres' dishonour. "I found out why my mother is on her way to grethor. It's because I sent her there. ... The sins of the child. She's being punished for my dishonour. I turned my back on everything Klingon and now she has to pay the price." Aiming to save her, Torres persuades Janeway to let her recreate the conditions suitable for her to return into her subconscious. She successfully "awakes" on the Barge of the Dead and exchanges her life for her mother's. She enters grethor, to find that hell is eternity on Voyager. There she finds her mother is in grethor too: Torres misunderstood what was necessary. Torres is thrown a bat'leth (traditional Klingon battle-blade) and challenged by the main crewmembers. She demands to know what they want of her: "Tell me what you want me to be - a good Starfleet officer, a good Maquis, lover, daughter? Just tell me what you want from me!" They reply that they only want her. "I'm so tired of fighting," says Torres and, in a dramatic symbolic gesture, hurls the bat'leth into the sea. This resolves Torres' inner struggle: her mother says farewell and agrees they will meet in Sto'vo'kor, "or maybe when you get home". At last Torres wakes in Sickbay.      TORRES TO PARIS, ABOUT BEING KLINGON: I inherited the forehead and the bad attitude, that's it.