Roxann Dawson credited as playing...
Lt. B'Elanna Torres
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: [going through Torres' Academy record] Four disciplinary hearings, one suspension... You had quite a turbulent couple of years, didn't you?
- B'Elanna Torres: Yeah, I guess you could say that.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: What do you think the problem was?
- B'Elanna Torres: The problem? The problem was a system that didn't give anyone a chance to breathe!
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: We work under that same system on this ship.
- B'Elanna Torres: Then I guess maybe this is just a bad idea!
- [she turns to leave]
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Why did you quit the Academy, B'Elanna?
- B'Elanna Torres: I didn't want to have anything to do with Starfleet then; and I'm sorry that I have to now.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I want to apologize for losing my temper. In your ready room. I think maybe you were hitting a little bit too close to home, you know? I respect Chakotay, but he's wrong. I'm not officer material and we both know it. The truth is, I quit the Academy because... I realized I couldn't make it in Starfleet. And believe me, no one was sorry to see me go.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Professor Chapman was.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: What?
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: He put a letter in your permanent file saying that, should you ever reapply, he would support you. He thought you were one of the most promising cadets he'd ever taught.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I fought with him almost every day. I was always questioning his-his methods, his assumptions, and he was always slapping me down like some upstart kid. I-I was surprised he didn't help me pack my bags.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Some professors like students who challenge their assumptions, B'Elanna. And so do some captains. Professor Chapman wasn't alone. Many of your teachers thought you had the potential to be an outstanding officer. You had more friends at the Academy than you realized.
- Commander Chakotay: There they are - your staff.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I'll try not to break any of their noses.
- Commander Chakotay: First order of the day: the Captain wants the warp drive back on line by 1300 hours.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: 1300? That's impossible.
- Commander Chakotay: Then maybe you need to go break a few noses - or at least... bend a few.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I'm gonna be counting on you, Lieutenant. I'm not up to date on the latest Starfleet protocols and... I know that you're probably more familiar with the quirks of this warp engine than I am right now. I hope... that I can depend on you.
- Lieutenant Joe Carey: I assure you, you'll never get less than my best. - Lieutenant...
- [he offers her his hand]
- Lieutenant Joe Carey: Congratulations. And welcome aboard.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Emitters online. I'm rerouting the damping field through the deflector grid.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Open a channel to the other ship.
- [as a channel opens, they hear the garbled transmission]
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Ramping up field intensity.
- Ensign Harry Kim: It's working. We're cutting through the distortions.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: [hearing the transmission is still garbled] Re-modulate the EM band. See if you can clear it up a little more.
- Ensign Harry Kim: Compensating for amplitude distortion.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: This is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Starship Voyager to the vessel near the quantum singularity. Do you need help?
- Commander Chakotay: That's your hail.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I'm applying the damping field to our visual scanners. I'll see if I can clarify the image.
- Lieutenant Tom Paris: [seeing the other ship] It's the Voyager. It's us.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Think of it like this. You're sitting at the bottom of a pond, which is frozen over, and you look up at the surface and you see a reflection of yourself. Now, you might think you're looking at another person sitting at the bottom of another pond looking back at you.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: And in this case, we'd be staring up at the surface of the event horizon and seeing a time-delayed reflection of ourselves.
- Commander Chakotay: Are you saying... we're the ones trapped in the singularity?
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Unfortunately, yes.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: You're right. It's the only theory that explains everything that's happened to us. We've probably been in this singularity since we felt the first jolt.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Mr. Tuvok, take the main deflector offline. Mr. Kim, reroute the port and starboard plasma flow to the main deflector. We can use it to generate a warp field.
- Lieutenant Tuvok: Deflectors offline.
- Ensign Harry Kim: Initializing plasma flow.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Release the warp particles.
- Lieutenant Tom Paris: Scanning the singularity.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Anything?
- Ensign Harry Kim: Not yet. Warp particles at full intensity.
- Lieutenant Tom Paris: I'm picking up something; a slight irregularity. It could be a rupture in the event horizon.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Put it on screen.
- Lieutenant Tom Paris: It is a rupture, Captain. It's 50 meters by... ten meters.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Oh, it's too small. It must have collapsed since we first passed through it.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: We found the crack. That's the important thing. Now, how do we make it bigger?
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Put a wedge in it and force it open.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: One of the more difficult concepts to grasp in temporal mechanics is that sometimes effect can precede cause. A reaction can be observed before the action which initiated it.
- Ensign Harry Kim: So, what do we do to get out?
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I'm not sure, but I do know one thing. That as we slide deeper into the singularity, the spatial distortions are increasing. According to my calculations, within nine hours, they'll crush the ship.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: If your analogy's correct, how do we get through that sheet of ice?
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Look for a crack.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Or make a crack. Take something and smack it into the ice until it buckles.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Wait a minute. What if we've already made a crack in the ice?
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: When we first entered the event horizon.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: If we could find our entry point, we might be able to slip out the way we came in.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: So, we'd be looking for a subspace instability in the event horizon. What would make it show up on our sensors?
- Captain Kathryn Janeway, Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Warp particles!
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: If we saturate the event horizon with warp particles, we might be able to see them escaping through the rupture we made when we entered.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I just want you to know that I have personally gone over every emitter relay again and refitted four of them myself.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: No one blames you for what happened. Commander Chakotay thinks very highly of you. He's recommended you for Chief Engineer.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Well, um... we've, uh, we've been through a few scrapes together.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Do you think you're ready?
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Ready?
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Ready to be chief engineer on a starship.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Well, I think I know my way around an engine room, if that's what you mean.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I was just thinking about the problem with the Doctor's holographic projectors. It seems like the spatial distortions might be interfering with the projector's phase alignment.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: That was my guess, too.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: If that's the case, I could screen out those distortions by setting up a localized damping field around the projectors.
- Lieutenant Joe Carey: Is our priority here really the medical holograph system?
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: My point is that if the spatial distortions are also interfering with the transmission we received from the other ship...
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: We could set up a similar field around our external sensors, and communicate with them.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Exactly. And they may know more about what's going on than we do.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: [seeing two Voyagers] Well, this is a problem.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: One of them is a temporal reflection, but which one? I'm getting identical readings from both ships.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Captain, the rupture is starting to collapse again. If Voyager doesn't get through it within the next five minutes, they'll never get out.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: That means we have one chance to pick the correct ship.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Simple choice; port or starboard?
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Starboard.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Port. The port ship is more likely to be the real one. It's closer to the rupture. That means...
- [the shuttle rumbles]
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: ... that means they're holding position as close as they can to the rupture, waiting for us to dock before they head out.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: No. It may be closer to the rupture, but it's facing the wrong direction. The starboard ship is facing away from us. That means they're trying to give us easy access to the shuttle bay.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: There has to be some way to tell them apart besides which direction they're facing.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: The starboard ship's thrusters are at standby. They're holding position. But the port ship is moving toward the rupture.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Then I was right. It's the port ship. They're heading out.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Don't you see? Voyager did move toward the rupture 20 minutes ago when we first discovered it. That's why the port ship is moving toward it now. It's a time-delayed reflection of what we did before. The starboard ship's the real one. They're waiting for us.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: If you're wrong... we're gonna have a long time to debate it.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: [considering B'Elana for chief engineer] I'm not sure I'd be doing you a favor by putting you in charge down there. There'd be a lot of hard feelings toward you from many of the Starfleet people.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: I'm not bothered by what people think of me.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: And the job requires knowledge of Starfleet protocol, experience with Starfleet methodologies.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Listen, Captain, if you don't think I'm right for this job, just say so.
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: I'll be honest. I'm not sure whether you are or not. That's why I wanted to meet, try to get to know you a little better. I've been studying your Academy record.
- Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Where did you get that?
- Captain Kathryn Janeway: Thanks to Tuvok, we had the names of your entire crew by the time we left DS9.