VOY: Barge of the Dead

         I didn't hate this episode despite it having two strikes against it. First and foremost I don't like hallucination episodes and while this may or may not be a hallucination some parts are no matter how you cut it. Second of all even though I loved Klingons as a kid I find them a lot less interesting as an adult. Especially the spiritual side of them. I do still enjoy a good honor struggle here and there, but I don't really care about their afterlife. I did like that we get a lot more background on B'Elanna than we ever had before. The opening hallucination was actually more interesting than the barge of the dead stuff. Seeing the crew made Klingon was pretty cool. 
         We open with Torres returning with a badly damaged shuttle. She half crashes into the shuttle bay and Paris finds her in bad shape. After she gets patched up Chakotay shows up with an object found lodged in her shuttle, a piece of a Klingon ship that is several centuries old. That night Torres sees the chunk of metal release a bunch of blood and hears Klingon voices. She takes it to Kim to analyze but he isn't interested at 3 in the morning. Neelix walks in all excited about Klingon history to tell her that they are having a Klingon heritage party that night in her honor. She meets with Tuvok for meditation training but he cuts her with a bat'leth and tells her she has no honor. At the party B'Elanna is uncomfortable and when Janeway gets to her speech everything slows down and Klingon warriors appear and kill all the crew including Torres. She wakes up in the barge of the dead, the boat that takes disgraced warriors to the Klingon hell.
         Torres doesn't seem to think she believes in such things but the boatswain seems to think she does. He also tells her it isn't her time to be here yet and just before she wakes up on Voyager she sees her mother appear on the barge and realizes she is there because B'Elanna is a bad Klingon. She wakes up in sickbay, it seems she never made it to Voyager and almost died. Torres becomes obsessed with her experience on the barge and the idea that she has to save her mother. She talks Janeway into having the Doctor put her in a coma so she can go back and save her mother. She finds herself on the barge and offers herself as a trade but the boatswain realizes it is a trick and tells her she can only save her mother if she actually dies. She agrees and goes to hell but finds she is on Voyager. I think she is supposed to realize she is only really fighting with herself and then is told it isn't her time again and wakes up back on Voyager.

         Review: Not terrible overall and some good character parts, but also some seriously weak parts that drag it back down to average.

5 out of 10