Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About B'Elanna Torres

Seeing the relationship between Tom and B'Elanna grow and evolve, face challenges and setbacks, but ultimately come through stronger for it, is one of the finest aspects of Star Trek: Voyager. It never felt like a done deal, an inevitable progression to wedded bliss: "I'd rather take my chances with Freddy Bristow," as B'Elanna put it to Tom when he proposed a date on the holodeck in season three's The Swarm. Or, as Roxann Dawson noted in the Voyager season five DVD extras, "If you look at B'Elanna from the beginning, she seemed like she would be forever alone. To end up married and with a child at the end of seven years is quite a trip".

It seems like the writers and producers had intended some semblance of a relationship between these two characters from the very beginning, however. As the Voyager Series Bible states for Tom Paris, "He has an affection for B'Elanna, seeing in her a soul at war and reminding him of himself". For B'Elanna, the Bible is even more direct, saying, "She turns many heads, but the person she has designs on is Tom Paris".

It was in Day of Honor that the pair finally admitted their true feelings for one another, having danced around the topic in season three. There's nothing like floating in the vacuum of space with your oxygen running out to make you get down to the essentials! The 'Day of Honor' idea was itself taken directly from a novel series of the same title, with the third, Her Klingon Soul, focussing on B'Elanna.