You sure you wanna look in there?
The Voyager crew enjoy the hospitality of the Mari, an extremely open-minded, telepathic species, but as always, not everything is as it seems...This episode provides examples of:
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Involving Tuvok as a Scary Black Man who effortlessly curb-stomps Guill.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The violent thoughts of B'Elanna (and later Tuvok) are too much for the Mari thought-addicts to handle.
- Berserk Button: When peoples' violent thoughts have been suppressed for so long, this becomes so much easier to press.
- Beneath the Mask: Tuvok lets Guill see what lies beneath all that Vulcan control.
- Beware the Mind Reader: The social enforcement version.
- Big "NO!": When Guill's buyers realize that their meal ticket is going away, they use this then attack Tuvok. Three, then two onto one... Tuvok's going down.
- Black Market: It turns out that violent thoughts are a valuable commodity in certain circles in this society. The police force has no knowledge of this at all, and Nimira is shocked when it's revealed to her. But the evidence for this becomes so much stronger when an old woman who was not even around B'Elanna at the time of her violent thought kills poor Talli for dropping fruit. And then, B'Elanna, during a Mind Meld, remembers that Guill, the merchant, gave her a distinct creepy feeling when he wanted something terrible from her right after the violent thought...
- Bold Explorer: Janeway explains to Seven why they're not just taking the shortest route to the Alpha Quadrant.
- Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Mari society favors engrammatic purges to keep its society free of projecting and receiving violent thoughts.
- Break the Cutie: Neelix does his best to ensure this doesn't happen to Talli, after she witnesses the beating. Too bad that later, she's broken in a more literal fashion.
- Brick Joke: Nimira doesn't approve of Voyager's 'barbaric' brig. After the case is wrapped up, Tuvok informs her that Guill has been imprisoned there.
- By-the-Book Cop: Tuvok tells B'Elanna that if she had been guilty, he would have obeyed Starfleet protocol and let Nimira go ahead with the engrammatic purge.
- Call-Back:
- The TNG episode "Justice", where a crewmember inadvertently commits a crime, evoking Disproportionate Retribution according to the planets' laws.
- One of Tuvok's memories is a Kradin soldier from the Voyager episode "Nemesis".
- Nimira asks Tuvok if he has experience investigating murders. Why, yes, he does.
- And speaking of "Meld" (featuring one of the murders that Tuvok investigated), Lon Suder mentioned how a mind meld can be used to kill. That very nearly becomes Guill's fate.
- Commonality Connection: Tuvok identifies with fellow law enforcement officer Nimira, and the Mari struggle to control the violence in their society, which mirrors that of Vulcan. When he meets Guill, Tuvok uses the "Not So Different" Remark to convince him he's genuine in wanting to exchange violent images. Tuvok even learns to relate to Half-Human Hybrid B'Elanna's struggle against her violent Klingon side.
- Continuity Snarl: One of Tuvok's memories uses a POV shot of the Borg driving back Enterprise crewmembers in Star Trek: First Contact. The trouble is Voyager doesn't make contact with Starfleet again till "Message in a Bottle" later this season, so he shouldn't know about the First Contact-era uniforms, since they were introduced almost 2 years after Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
- Cool Chair: Tom is surprised when Chakotay invites Tom to sit in the Captain's chair. Apparently Janeway isn't as fussed on that matter as Picard. However, when Tom gets up to leave, Chakotay reminds him that Janeway is still The Captain.
- Crapsaccharine World: It's a beautiful planet, full of beautiful people, active commerce and no crime... but it's a telepathic dystopia as peoples' violent thoughts are suppressed, and having such a thought is punishable by neural reprogramming. While the people mostly appear happy and content, it turns out that at least some of them are distressed enough to maintain a black market in violent thoughts.
- A Day in the Limelight: B'Elanna kicks off the plot, but this episode is mostly centered on Tuvok's investigation.
- Dirty Mind-Reading: Fortunately the woman concerned isn't bothered that Neelix wants his whiskers tugged.
- Distracted by the Sexy: When it's time to leave, Neelix hasn't finished, uh, examining the produce of a lovely, rather endowed young fruit seller he's enamored of.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Guill's buyers seem like drug addicts in their desperation for his product. When Tuvok is going to arrest Guill, they attack him in a murderous rage.
- Do You Want to Haggle?: Janeway shows you can do it even if the seller can read your mind.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Tuvok has to expose himself to getting beaten and Mind Raped to find the true perpetrators, but they are brought to justice. And while we don't find out what happens to Guill and Frane back on the Mari planet, Torres and Tuvok are just fine, and Seven hopefully has a better understanding of why Voyager doesn't just go straight back to the Alpha Quadrant instead of stopping to explore.
- Evil Wears Black: B'Elanna is taken away to be confined by a mook in blackshirt and high boots, in contrast to the colourful clothes the other Mari wear.
- Fantastic Arousal: So Neelix likes having his whiskers tugged, eh?
- Faux Affably Evil: Guill is polite even when he is surreptitiously releasing Tuvok's emotional control, and also runs a Black Market of sorts for violent thoughts.
- Foreshadowing: Tuvok offers to teach B'Elanna some Vulcan techniques for self-control. B'Elanna responds sardonically but takes him up on his offer in later seasons.
- Hate Plague: B'Elanna's stolen thought creates violence as it's passed from one person to another. Nimira is so alarmed she asks Tuvok to aid in the investigation, despite their dispute.
- Idiot Ball: Much like TNG's "Justice", the episode requires Voyager crew visit a populated planet and interact with the general public, apparently without bothering to learn the basic laws of the society, or the punishments for failing to obey them. Lampshaded by Seven when she criticizes Janeway for seeking new civilisations while knowing little of them.
- Incredibly Obvious Tail: Guill quickly works out that Tuvok is following him, but Tuvok just pretends that he's reconsidered Guill's offer.
- It's What We Do: Janeway explaining to Seven at the end that being Bold Explorers is simply in their nature, and just because they're trying to get home doesn't mean they won't satisfy their curiosities and gather as much data as they can. This response leaves Seven decidedly cold.
- Lie Detector: Nimira interrogates the Voyager crew in a chair that can record their thoughts.
- Mind Meld: Tuvok reads B'Elanna's mind for more clues to what happened. When Guill takes Tuvok prisoner and insists on probing his violent thoughts, Tuvok uses a meld to give him exactly what he wants.
- Mind Rape:
- The engrammatic purge, basically a lobotomy.
- Guill tries this also, to extract Tuvok's violent thoughts, but Tuvok turns it back on Guill, and if Tuvok didn't need Guill as evidence to exonerate B'Elanna, Guill would likely have been lobotomized himself.
- My Skull Runneth Over: Tuvok gives Guill a big dose of a Vulcan's latent violent impulses, which damn near breaks his mind in two.
- Motive Rant: Nimira gives a heartfelt one to Tuvok, causing the latter to reveal, again, that he is Not So Stoic.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: Neelix mourning Talli's sudden death.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Frane gives it good to the poor, clumsy man at the beginning, supposedly because he got the violent impulses from B'Elanna, and she is arrested for it, letting us know it's NOT the perfect, violence-free society the Mari would have us believe.
- No Social Skills: Seven enters Janeway's ready room without signalling first and leaves without asking for permission.
- "Not So Different" Remark:
- Tuvok equates what is happening to the Mari to what happened to his own people in the distant past; only, the Romulans, a genetic offshoot of the Vulcans, were unable to suppress their emotions and left their progenitors.
- Tuvok exploits this with Guill to gain solid evidence, by Nimira's standards anyway, of Guill's Black Market.
- Not So Stoic: Tuvok replies to Nimira's Motive Rant with the low tone he usually reserves for barely restrained emotion, in saying he must conduct his own investigation before B'Elanna is lobotomized like her 'victim' Frane was four times previously.
- Percussive Pickpocket: It's easier to do when you're just stealing a thought.
- Perfumigation: Neelix asks former ladies' man Tom Paris for advice on dating Talli. Tom says to just Be Yourself and go easy on the talchok musk.
- Psychic Static: Tuvok overcomes the attempt to steal his thoughts by concentrating on the worst, darkest thoughts in his mind.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Nimira's questioning of Torres takes this tone as, in her mind, Torres becomes a hardened, willful criminal.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: An aversion with Nimira, because she is part of a society that condones suppression of thoughts (of any type), not to mention lobotomies for 'offenders'.
- Removing the Earpiece: Guill insists that Tuvok remove his commbadge before he'll risk exchanging illicit thoughts.
- Scary Black Man: Tuvok in his Battle in the Center of the Mind; involving Kubrick Stare, Punch Catch and even a Psychotic Smirk.
- Stock Footage: Tuvok's violent thoughts include scenes from the Paramount movie Event Horizon, news footage, clips from Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, as well as from past VOY episodes such as "Unity", "Fair Trade", and "Nemesis".
- Take That!: When announcing Torres' punishment, Nimira references quite harshly the fact that humans lock people up, based on what she saw of the brig on Voyager. Tuvok gets her back at the end when he tells her that they have the real culprit (Guill) locked up in the brig for her to claim.
- Technical Pacifist: The Mari General Examiner, Nimira, believes her race is Actual Pacifist, and is willing to submit those with violent thoughts to a lobotomy procedure to keep it that way.
- Telepathy: Tuvok employs this sometimes with Chief Examiner Nimira; her position is most like his on Voyager, so they'd naturally have a lot in common.Nimira: [telepathically] You prefer speaking aloud. Why is that?
Tuvok: [telepathically] I've grown accustomed to it over the years. There are very few telepaths in Starfleet.
Nimira: [aloud] Whatever makes you comfortable. - Temporary Love Interest: Neelix wanted things to progress with Talli, but a telepathic, enraged woman with a sharp object had other plans...
- Thought Crime: It's discovered that the Mari employ this because of their extreme sensitivity to telepathic impressions. Not such an awesome society after all, huh?
- Title Drop:Tuvok: It seems you have a more serious problem than the random thoughts of a single alien.
- Transferable Memory: Though in this case an illicit version.
- Violence Is Not an Option: Paris wants Chakotay to come up with a plan for breaking B'Elanna out, but Chakotay turns it back on him, perhaps as a lesson in how to avoid unnecessary violence, as the Mari are a pacifistic people.
- We Will Spend Credits in the Future: Janeway mentions being unfamiliar with using coins.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- After Tuvok defeats Guill, we don't see what happened to the two underlings that were holding Tuvok, as he only brings Guill back to Voyager. Presumably they were smart enough to run like hell, after seeing what Tuvok did to their boss.
- Chakotay suggests to a frantic Tom that he come up with a rescue plan for B'Elanna, in case all else fails. We never find out what Tom ever came up with.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Seven says, in concluding that B'Elanna's crime was based on ignorance, that Voyager's goal, and that of the Federation as a whole as reflected in the other Star Trek media (and actually said verbatim in Star Trek: Enterprise), is to "seek out new civilizations," which without knowing much about those civilizations beforehand, often results in conflict. However she then goes on to say that assimilation is a far more efficient method than exploration.
- Worf Had the Flu: Tuvok is overpowered by three Mari despite them being a pacifist race with no real experience in combat, and Tuvok being a super strong Vulcan who was a combat instructor for Starfleet Academy and is proficient in many forms of martial arts. Justified since he wanted to be captured as part of a Trojan Prisoner strategy. The Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs: A sudden violent attack at close range when you're outnumbered can overwhelm any person, regardless of their strength and training. Also, since they had been trading in violent thoughts for some time, it's likely this group has a bit more experience with combat than the typical Mari.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: B'Elanna's response when Nimira tells her to relax as she's being dragged to the brain-wiping chair.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: What Tuvok does to Guill in the mind meld, Guill physically feels.Tuvok: We are locked in a Vulcan mind meld. You don't know the truth about violence. Its darkness. Its power!
