Tom Paris under the mind-control of "Alice" (that or he's super baked, it's hard to tell).
The crew of Voyager comes across a merchant named Abaddon who is selling all sorts of items in his derelict ship junkyard. Through the search of the junkyard, Tom comes across a shuttlecraft that he thinks is a real beauty and is worth selling off his jukebox to acquire. Unfortunately for Tom, this seemingly innocuous ship is hiding a huge secret.This episode provides examples of:
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: The Doctor figures out how to insert B'Elanna into the neurogenix link between Alice and Tom, so she can talk (or yell) some sense into him.B'Elanna: I'm not sure how I feel about getting inside Tom's head.EMH: Maybe you'll be able to explain a few things when you get back.
- Big "NO!": Tom, during the B'Elanna/Alice fight in his head.
- Brain/Computer Interface: Alice comes with one and it ends up messing with Tom's head when he tries it.
- Call-Back: Abbadon bought the ship from a Haarkonian, the same species that conquered Neelix's homeworld. The homeworld which by this point in the series is at least 20,000 light-years in the other direction. Either Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale again, or Alice was forcing the Haarkonian pilot to take her way off his home turf. Abbadon thought he'd Gone Mad From The Isolation, so this could well be the case.
- Chekhov's Gun: The beryllium crystal that Neelix and Seven find in a bunch of junk purchased from Abaddon is later used as a bribing tool to get Abaddon to reveal more information about Alice, since the beryllium crystal turns out to be a valuable trinket.
- Companion Cube: Tom and Alice, particularly when the ship produces a female avatar he can interact with. At the end of the episode, he semi-jokingly renounces any future relationships with other spacecraft, telling B'Elanna that he and the Delta Flyer are just good friends.
- Death Glare: Almost literally — when Tom tries to escape Alice's control, she gives him a glare that almost makes his head explode.
- Derelict Graveyard: The junkyard version IN SPACE!. This is where Alice is found.
- Evil Costume Switch: Tom Paris goes from wearing his Starfleet uniform to wearing a dark grey flight suit as he gets further and further controlled by Alice — not that he completely turns evil, but he does things that he says would get him busted down from Ensign to Cadet. He also notably forgets to shave.
- Evil Counterpart: In a way, Alice is one to Voyager, as a a lost ship trying to get home.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Alice projects herself as an attractive woman that only Tom can see. Abbadon sees her as a woman from his species as well.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: The symbolic version when Tom has Alice as the Bad Angel and B'elanna Torres (who appears beside him through a mental comm link) as the Good Angel on either shoulder, struggling for control of him.
- Got Volunteered: Tom claims that Harry volunteered to help restore Alice. Harry is not amused.
- Hard-Work Montage: Shown when Tom is restoring Alice.
- Homicide Machines: Alice tries to kill B'Elanna by sealing her up inside the ship and cutting off all the oxygen. It also tries to do the same to its pilot by having Tom drive the ship into a particle fountain.
- Honest John's Dealership: Abaddon's Repository of Lost Treasures, where "all trades are final". Sure enough he sells the crew a vehicle without revealing it's seriously dodgy, though he was under her influence when doing so.
- I Call It "Vera": Apparently, Alice is named after a girl from the Academy Tom was attracted to, who wouldn't give him the time of day.
- Icarus Allusion: When Alice tells the story of Daedalus escaping the labyrinth, she leaves out the part where Icarus falls to his death. Tom calls her out on that.
- Infinite Supplies: Chakotay is reluctant to purchase Alice because they already have "a full complement of shuttles" despite having lost several in previous episodes.
- Inspiration Nod: The shot of Alice alone in the shuttle bay suddenly lighting up is a clear Shout-Out to a similar scene in the film version of Christine.
- Karma Houdini: Abbadon sold Voyager a ship he knew was intelligent, homicidal, and capable of mind control. Not only does the Voyager crew save his life and undo her link to his brain, they even trade him a crystal worth a fortune to get him to talk, meaning he came out of the whole thing rich. Though in fairness Alice was mind-controlling him as well, so he didn't have much choice.
- Mind Rape: Alice inflicts control over its pilots by restructing their brains and causing brain hemorrhages to keep them in line.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Alice tries to kill B'Elanna by trapping her in the ship and venting the oxygen supply so she can have Tom for herself.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The "particle fountain" that Alice almost makes Tom fly into. Janeway notes a similar one destroyed a dozen Federation ships in the Alpha Quadrant.
- Open-and-Shut Case: B'Elanna says this word-for-word when she sees that some Technobabble gadgets have gone missing and figures out that Tom swiped them.
- Recycled In Space: Christine as a shuttlecraft.
- Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony: Tom replicates a bottle of champagne for the christening ceremony of the nearly-complete refurbished Alice. However, with B'Elanna's prompting, Tom decides to share a toast to the shuttle with her instead of breaking the bottle on its hull. They do manage to spill a bit of champagne upon the upholstery inside the shuttlecraft.
- Say My Name: B'Elanna shouts "Tom Paris!" when she goes to find him after she gets a clue that he's stealing parts from Voyager to fix up Alice.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Or in this case, Sealed Evil in a Shuttlecraft.
- Sentient Vehicle: Alice, though she still needs a pilot.
- Spaceship Girl: Alice chooses to present itself as an attractive woman to the pilots she mind controls.
- Suddenly Shouting: When B'elanna escapes suffocation and confronts Tom about his behavior, Tom responds with heaping helpings of this (being mind-controlled and all).Tom: LISTEN TO ME!!
B'Elanna: Are you out of your mind?!
Tom: STAY OUT OF THIS, B'ELANNA!
B'Elanna: Or what? You'll sic Alice on me again? - Synchronization: With Tom and Alice linked, firing on Alice hurts Tom as well.
- Time-Passage Beard: Tom goes a few days without shaving and grows a small beard.
- Title Drop: The title is the same as the frequently-referenced-by-name ship.
- The Unreveal: So why was Alice so hell-bent on getting to that particle fountain, anyway? When asked, she only states that it is "Home".
- Vague Age: Tom and Harry have fun trying to guess Tuvok's actual age, which he refuses to divulge. Considering that this information should be in some Starfleet records, they're probably doing it just to mess with him. In "Fury" however, Janeway jokes about the lengths she went to find Tuvok's birthdate, so maybe it's a confidential matter for Vulcans.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Christine, complete with the episode being named after the malevolent vehicle and said vehicle attempting to kill her owner's girlfriend.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: The random junk Abaddon cons the crew into buying includes a beryllium crystal. He and the crew dismiss it as worthless, but Seven reveals that in a nearby section of space that uses such crystals as currency it represents enough wealth to purchase an entire fleet.
- Yandere: Woe befall whoever stands between Alice and her pilot.
