Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About B'Elanna Torres
8. Face, Off
As Star Trek Voyager: A Vision of the Future points out, Star Trek has always sought to hold a mirror to its audience through the use of archetypal characters, one of which is the (half-)alien in prosthetics. In the episode Faces, Trek took that aspect of its storytelling to its highest expression by physically splitting B'Elanna into her Klingon and human halves — one became the mirror for the other, making manifest B'Elanna's internal struggle with the two sides of her lineage through the externalised conflict between the characters. The same couldn't be said for poor Lieutenant Durst, though!
Roxann Dawson admitted to a degree of trepidation about the episode upon first reading the script, feeling that she didn't yet know enough about the character to face the challenge of playing two of her. Dawson certainly succeeded in inhabiting both roles, however, receiving the "greatest compliment" from her own mother, who commented after the episode had aired: "Well, you were good, but the girl who played that Klingon was really great."
That wasn't the last time Dawson would have to act against herself in Voyager either. In Dreadnaught, B'Elanna has to outwit a computer she programmed with her own voice, and in looping, the actress had to find a way of keeping the AI half of the self-conversation different, but not too dissimilar.