THIS MIGHT BE THE MOST âTHESE WOMEN ARE ALL DEEPLY UNWELLâ VOYAGER DIALOGUE EVER
I can't believe I entirely forgot about it until now, rewatching âLineageâ. God.
The fact that B'Elanna has obviously a clear idea of what would made her daughter âsafeâ in a way that she wasn't and it's giving her blond hair and no visible Klingon trait (esp. the forehead ridges) which is so, so painful to witness even outside the Klingon metaphor
the fact that before going to have it all out with Janeway, B'Elanna clearly thought about how to defend her intentions regarding her daughter and what B'Elanna landed on was a reverse-uno-card âwell Janeway made Seven into a recognizably human (and blond) woman so I'm justifiedâ and she's not entirely wrong to bring that up but also it's obvious that
it's well known among the Voyager crew that Seven had essentially no choice in determining the way she now looks but in B'Elanna's (deeply misdirected) cause-consequence thinking it was all worth it in the end because âSeven's life is much betterâ
Janeway obviously defends her own choices re: Seven saying that there's no comparison between the two situations and well... I'm not sure the show manages to make her rebuttal very effective, to be honest
Again, this thing where the show always frames Janeway as Seven's mother figure but I can't even be mad at that here because it's SO fucking insane how it's brought up. âYou molded her into what you thought was best for her and it turned out to be good for her, so I'm going to do the same thing for my daughter.â BUT WAS IT REALLY GOOD?? HAVE ANY OF YOU ASKED SEVEN??
The way this dialogue makes it obvious that the way B'Elanna was hurt and still is by the racist harassment she encountered and encounters is THEE reason why here she can't see Seven's situation as anything similar to her own, because Seven was re-made into a (white, blond, blue-eyed) human and whatever difficulties she still finds adapting to a life free of the Collective, in B'Elanna's estimation she will always have a place on Voyager, while B'Elanna (and her daughter by extension) occupies a much harder and more precarious space within the ship (in the previous scene B'Elanna told Tom that he couldn't possibly know how it was like to be the one who's different among a group who are all one way). And this is true diegetically! ! ! ! ! ! !
And granted here B'Elanna is reacting more than thinking and I don't think this reveals any kind of deep conviction of hers. Panic in response to old trauma does not make any of us better thinkers, and B'Elanna's idea and reasoning are obviously deeply ill-advised. But the fracture between how she sees herself vs how she sees Seven's situation on the ship is also, imho, something she clearly had considered before.
I'm going to throw myself off a cliff goodbye
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