Paris/Torres - When did that Relationship Start

[tomalak301]

I was watching Blood Fever tonight (Been on a Voyager Binge lately) and started thinking about this relationship and I don't really know when it all started. I know things got cemented kind of in Day Of Honor (especially the space scene) but did Blood Fever sow the first seeds or did it happen before that? This was one of the better developed Trek relationships but it seemed like it "just happened" instead of actually developing at first.

 

[Lady Conqueror]

Paris asks B'Elanna out in "The Swarm" which is the first official hint then there's some flirting in "Macrocosm" & "Alter Ego". Then from "Blood Fever" onwards it gets more official screentime til they admit it in "Day of Honour"

 

[Guy Gardener]

But then there's Revulsion right after day of honour, where Tom assumes that no woman could love him and she is going to back out of all her promises and he starts backing up the truck, even goes so far as to ask Seven of Nine on a date...

Lots of screaming later and she's yelping about how she is into him and it wasn't the adrenalin and he shouldn't be such a dick and have some fricking faith in himself and now apparently "them".

After such a good start I completely forgot they were together when I saw their quicksilver duplicates getting married in the opening sequences of Course Oblivion...

Although I knew it was serious after she made him a TV set.

Find me a more sincere way to say "I love you", and I'll give you a dollar.

 

[Timewalker]

A more sincere way? Some guys would say the TV is a nice start, but they'd also like a cold beer and a sammich. B'Elanna didn't get him a beer and sammich.

I always had a wish that Tom would create a holodeck program right out of the 1950s - he and B'Elanna married, and her as the stereotypical housewife, complete with full-skirted dress, apron, high-heeled shoes, and pearl necklace (of course, don't all women wear high-heeled shoes and pearl necklaces when they do housework?). The possibilities for comedy and a way of examining whether male/female roles have changed much over ~400 years would have been great.

Hmm... there's a fanfic in there...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Speaking like a woman who doesn't have a TV.

Everyday men, handsome, eligible and intelligent men don't give you television sets.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

(It's %50 about that the set was a home-made gift. I'd appreciate a woman who brewed me a beer more than a woman who bought me a beer... Maybe?)

Oh.

Great shades of Donna Reed!

What about that garage he was repairing that car inside? Surely that had a 50s contemporary universe attached to it outside some window.

Although, wouldn't Maquis homesteading ideology reject holodecks as ridiculously idle?

 

[Timewalker]

Speaking like a woman who doesn't have a TV.

Everyday men, handsome, eligible and intelligent men don't give you television sets.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

(I think it's %50 about that the set was a homemade gift.)

The reason I don't have a TV set is severalfold:

1. I couldn't afford to keep up the cable payments.

2. Without cable, there is nothing good to watch - even the news.

3. I got used to not watching TV but did miss it at times, like during the Olympics.

4. I figured that since I didn't watch the TV I had, why keep it (especially since it was old enough to be troublesome when it came to hooking up a DVD player)...

5. So I gave it away. And used the space to put more books, craft patterns, and Star Trek 'zines.

And one of the nicest gifts any guy ever gave me was a set of craft knives. I don't go for the flowers and perfume nonsense.

Oh.

Great shades of Donna Reed!

What about that garage he was repairing that car inside? Surely that had a 50s contemporary universe attached to it outside some window.

I hadn't noticed that - it's been years since I saw that episode. If you mean the truck from the episode with Amelia Earhart, that couldn't have been any later than the 1930s.

Although, wouldn't Maquis homesteading ideology reject holodecks as ridiculously idle?

Chakotay doesn't seem to mind holodecks. And Tom was never a Maquis deep down. It was an attempt to find a place for himself where he could fit in after his Starfleet fiasco.

And the B'Elanna on the holodeck wouldn't be the real one - she'd be a hologram. When the real B'Elanna found out...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Did I forget to mention that it's almost 5 years since I last used my TV to watch TV?

I'm in a similar place.

I use the internet to substitute for terrestrial transmissions and cable quite well.

I'd have a vicious reaction to advertising at this point.

It was a 1936 Ford, abut technically it couldn't have been later than 1937 for titular reasons.

But the garage set was from much later in season 6 or 7.

George Burns had a marvellous pick up line back in the day when he was on the pull... "I'd like to buy you a house with a maid."

Replacing the woman he loves with a third rate pared shadow?

Tom would never do that to B'Elanna!

Paris made a brothel on the holodck and all he ever did was play pool.

And he'd never do that to himself.

Turkey Platter appreciates a challenge.

 

[Timewalker]

Well, it's just a scattered idea at the moment. However, the more we toss ideas and opinions back and forth, the more I'm thinking this might be a worthwhile idea to attempt. Since every time I attempt to write a serious Star Trek story it always veers off into satire anyway, might as well establish that at the get-go.

I recall an episode of "Who's the Boss" where Tony and Angela had a life back in the old neighborhood where Tony and Samantha lived. Angela was a typical housewife - pregnant and usually in the kitchen. At some point I guess I envisioned some incident where B'Elanna outshines Tom professionally, orders him around (she did outrank him while he was an Ensign), or maybe just has a Klingon screaming fit. So maybe Tom thinks "I wonder what it would be like if B'Elanna were a little softer, a little more feminine, not so competitive, like in the old days..." and so begins the tale.

As I said, it's a way to indulge my preference for satire, along with examining some aspect of characters' relationships. And Tom and B'Elanna are far more fun to experiment with than Janeway and Chakotay.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Weren't they divorced in Endgame?

One of them did something horrible and the marriage dissolved.

Who knows, maybe in this timeline it's his fault?

It would be kind of hypocritical that Tom might go in search of a more yielding version of his wife after he made that big speech about how she wasn't allowed to surgically cut the Klingon out of their unborn child because he loved who she was and that he wanted to see her inside their child.

Not that Hypocrisy isn't a fine catalyst for drama.

50s costuming is charming.

As a boy (5 years old, younger?) I didn't really understand that M*A*S*H* and Happy Days were set in the distant past, it just seemed like what normal was since TV defined for me what was acceptable and good.

 

[Timewalker]

I don't think they were divorced - just that because of B'Elanna's work, they weren't living together at the time.

I really don't think Tom truly would want a softer, more "agreeable" B'Elanna - but my idea is just to explore a brief fantasy - a "what if" scenario. Because if any married man on this forum says he hasn't fantasized at least a little about his wife being a different sort of person (whether temporarily or as a really permanent change), I would accuse him of lying (and vice-versa, too - but this is Tom's fantasy I'm talking about, not B'Elanna's).

 

[Guy Gardener]

Men. They're just like dogs, y'know, except for the loyalty.

I googled to confirm the divorce, but I must have come across pages about a novel or fanfiction. I think I've read that novel. It was awful.

**Grumble, grumble, grumble**

I can imagine Tom's excuses.

"Well I built this really boss hotrod, and I had to make sure that we'd both fit in the back seat, and then i had to make sure that we wouldn't get stuck, and then i had to make sure that that we didn't stick to anything and th..."

Which is when she punches him in the mouth.

And no court in the universe would blame her.

 

[Lilyful]

I think the kindling's of it started in the first season when B'Elanna called Tom a pig in "The Cloud"

 

[Guy Gardener]

But it was Harry and B'Elanna that shared caretaker-herpies in the pilot.

Nothing bonds like sharing a pottle of medicated cream in the unisex bathroom.

According to the series bible and some interviews before the show started, Tom was supposed to be the leading man and live happily ever after with the leading woman in short order.

Season 2's Before and After is an important episode to mention since according to that glimpse into the future, Tom and B'Elanna were completely destined to live happily ever after until the Krenim killed her ass.

 

[Agenda]

P/T was a bust.

Torres should have gone for Seven of Nine. Those two had a perfect love/hate chemistry.

 

[Guy Gardener]

"Why do people bother getting married, when they should just find someone they detest and give them half their money?"

Seven was a child.

Imagine you expressed subtly an interest in some one, and in response, in a public area, they took their clothes off and started to... I want to say "rape" but remember I am describing Sevens "assault" on Kim in Revulsion.

Harry Kim was too sophisticated for Seven of Nine's most tactful advance.

Then again Icheb thought he was man enough for B'Elanna even though he looked twice as old as he seemed aftr spending a few years incubating in a maturation chamber, so maybe paedophilia isn't exactly the same thing it is now that it is in the future because children are hiding and preying on adults?

 

[Timewalker]

There's some rather steamy Seven/B'Elanna fanfic around...

Seven was emotionally a child, and not sufficiently socialized to understand that she was behaving inappropriately. That's what happens when adult physical attributes and theoretical knowledge occur in an emotionally and psychologically immature person.

Same problem with Icheb; however, are we ever told what age he really was, or at what age Brunali males are considered adult?

 

[Guy Gardener]

When he met his parents, they said that he looked much taller than the last time they saw him, and someone explained that away with the Borg stowing him away in a maturation Chamber. Even if Icheb was supposed to be Ten years old that still gave him twice the life experience of Anika Hansen, but I don't think he did more than skip a year or two, so he probably did all that ever so important spin the bottle/seven minutes in heaven fumble at those dread middleschool parties we all remember fondly.

By year four on Voyager she would have caught up, filled in the gaps in her life experience, sure, but in the beginning when she was fresh off the Cube, c'mon!?