Random Thoughts (Voyager episode)

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Star Trek: VOY episode
"Random Thoughts"
B'Elanna lashes out
Episode no.	78
Prod. code	178
Airdate	November 19, 1997
Writer(s)	Kenneth Biller
Director	Alexander Singer
Guest star(s)	Gwynyth Walsh as Nimira Wayne Pere as Guill Rebecca McFarland as Talli
Year	2374
Stardate	51367.2
Episode chronology
Previous	"Year of Hell"
Next	"Concerning Flight"

Random Thoughts is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the tenth episode of season four.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Plot

Voyager is orbiting the Mari Homeworld, as her crew trade for supplies. While Captain Janeway and B'Elanna Torres are negotiating for a resonator coil, someone bumps into Torres, momentarily irritating her. She calms herself, shrugging it off as an accident. Later that day, several of Voyager`s crew witness a fight in the market place between two Mari. After questioning the crew, the Mari constable determines B'Elanna's angry thought earlier that day has been transmitted telepathically to the aggressor, and thus she is the more guilty of the two. She is sentenced to undergo memory modification to remove the thought, as is the aggressor. Janeway protests, as the modification process carries the risk of neurological damage. Before Janeway can unearth enough evidence the try to get Torres out, another attack occurs with the same memory, indicating that it is still in circulation. Unfortunately this attack ends with a murder. Tuvok goes undercover and finds an illicit memory trade in which the salesman of the resonator coil is a key figure. He determines that B'Elanna's memory was goaded from her in order to be resold, but it was too violent to contain, and thus the outbursts among the Mari. Torres is released due to this new evidence, just moments before her brain was to be probed.

[edit] Notes

This episode uses footage from previous Star Trek films Generations and First Contact as well as the otherwise-unrelated film Event Horizon during the mind meld scene in which Tuvok relays the darker elements of violent thought.