Welcome To Tom's Pizza Palace

Janeway: Find me a pilot who’s talented, insubordinate, and deeply annoying. Owen: Good, take my son. He can be your problem now. Paris: I’m only co-operating because prison is boring. Janeway: Excellent. Let’s go find my missing Vulcan bestie and also ruin your life further.

Kim: Wow, my first day in Starfleet! I hope nothing traumatic happens. Stadi: *dies* Cavit: *dies dramatically* Caretaker: *banjo noises* Surprise! You’re all in the Delta Quadrant now. I'll be stealing your new kid, k thx bye!

Doctor: I’m a hologram, not a therapist, but I can tell morale is already terrible.

Neelix: Hello strangers! I will now attach myself to your crew like an enthusiastic parasite!

B'Elanna: I hate you, Starfleet. Kim: I kind of like you, Maquis.

Kazon: Give us water or we’ll shoot you. Janeway: Here, have some water Neelix: No, no water for you! *shoots the water* Kes: Please take me with you. I’ve been imprisoned for having opinions and terrible taste in men.

Chakotay: Paris, I hate you. Paris: Great, because I hate me too.

Caretaker: I’m dying. Also, I may have accidentally doomed an entire planet. Oops. Caretaker: I couldn't get Harry Kim pregnant so everyone's really screwed now *dies* Tuvok: Captain, fuck that dead rock - we can use the array to return home. Janeway: Or - and hear me out - we could blow it up and strand ourselves forever. Tuvok: That is… a choice.

B'Elanna: This fucking sucks. Chakotay: Not gonna lie, I'm quite happy with this arrangement

Paris: So, am I still a criminal? Janeway: Yes, but now you’re my criminal. Chakotay: And I’m your first officer because you need someone to do the paperwork? Janeway: Kind of? You also give me legitimacy with your crew… and you're kinda hot Chakotay: … Who's the dude in that photo with you? Janeway: … Who?

It’s pretty explicit that nearly every member of Voyager’s senior staff has little or nothing to return to on Earth, and from this we get a couple of narrative and emotional poles: Chakotay + B’Elanna, Janeway + Paris, Neelix + Seven, and Harry + Tuvok. If Janeway + Tom form one axis (ship as home), then Harry + Tuvok are their opposite (Earth as home). Between them, B’Elanna, Chakotay, Seven, and Neelix occupy various points of displacement, and the entire series traces this line between duty and belonging, and the illusion of “home” versus reality.

To begin with, the Maquis have every reason to expect imprisonment when they get back to Earth. Later, they find that whether or not this is indeed still the case, their war is over, lost, and their friends dead or imprisoned. B’Elanna and Chakotay represent a fairly narrow spectrum, here: Chakotay, at least, still has ties to his relatives. As far as B’Elanna knows, she does not. Chakotay also re-embraces Starfleet almost immediately, while B’Elanna resists, but both wake up every day and work toward a place—“home”—that no longer exists for them, conceptually and, in certain cases, materially.

Janeway’s fiancé marries another woman, which, yes, is a blow— except that she admits in ‘Hunters’ that she didn’t actually expect Mark to wait for her. She admits, too, that none of her hopes were anchored in this relationship anyway; rather, she has been using him as “a safety net” in order to keep a safe emotional distance from her crew. You can J/Cify this or not, but either way this thread is pulled all the way through to ‘Night’, where she finds a way to thoroughly isolate herself without the excuse of loyalty to her fiancé.

I would argue that Janeway tries to resist the notion of Voyager-as-home for as long as she can in order to keep motivation to return to Earth as high as possible. This is what Chakotay challenges in ‘Scorpion’ when he suggests turning around, and it’s why she feels so betrayed by the idea. It's why she's insane in 'Year of Hell'. The crew have already said, in ‘37s’, that they want to keep going. So she must keep going. Even if Chakotay is right, here, that it would be easier in a thousand ways to stay.

so many more words under the cut:

there’s an interview in which john mcnamara mentions a flashback of tony and ziva going to a couple’s boot camp. and in some of the trailers there’s a clip of tony and ziva arriving at a cabin of sorts and joking about having a getaway. originally i figured it was just another safe house while they’re on the run BUT now i wonder if that’s the boot camp.

anyways HEAR ME OUT. there’s also a shot in that trailer where it looks like there’s a ring on ziva’s finger. i tried not to read into it and thought maybe cote accidentally left her ring on. but WHAT IF: tony and ziva were actually engaged in the past 😭

Janeway and Chakotay end up contracting a disease from an insect bite and have to be trapped on a planet so that the disease does not evolve. And the episode exists because someone decided to make a fanfic. The thing is, you don't know why the hell only the two of them got stung.

(Later, they'll find out (in Coda) that going on a mission together might be a terrible idea, and that these romantic escapades always end in tragedy. So after that, they'd rather go to the holodeck for a moonlit boat ride or something, a risk-free romance.)

Janeway is resilient about it, but Chakotay was already super ready to have a family life with her and create a family with 10 children is even more resilient.

look at his eyes, he's already thinking about how beautiful she would look in a wedding dress

Meanwhile, you can see how shaken and deeply saddened the crew is. (Seriously, they are, it's not irony). Some are mutinying, others are lying in the fetal position crying after a tantrum (right, Harry?), and Tuvok is probably dealing with a massive Vulcan headache.

(But Tuvok will later vent all his pent-up Vulcan rage in the most common way people express their anger: by stopping others from having sex. And he does this a few times during Resolutions.)

As soon as they arrive on the planet, Janeway tells Chakotay to call her Kathryn, and the way he reacts makes you wonder, "Did he get 'call me love' instead of 'call me Kathryn'?"

The fact is, from the look on his face, you can tell he started planning their wedding at that moment.

Janeway and Chakotay don't seem too shaken by the fact that they'll spend their entire lives together on that planet. Which would certainly change if Neelix or Tuvok were in their place. Janeway is more optimistic and believes that she'll find a cure and, after that, the two will embark on an Adam and Eve adventure through space, with two children on a ship as they return home. But Chakotay is more of a dreamer and wants to live and build a family there, where it's more comfortable.

And then he builds her a bathtub as a wedding gift. But since not everything is rosy, a rival monkey appears in the game. And Kathryn is very interested in this monkey, no, not romantically! The monkey would be their pet and the key to the cure. At least that's what she thought. Chakotay didn't like the monkey very much, but since it gave him a moment of Kathryn totally relaxed in a towel, he started to thank the monkey for it.

The truth is that Chakotay is a gentleman and very patient, but… after Resolutions, we had a new definition for the phrase "he looked at you like he was dying of thirst and you were the last Coca-Cola in the desert."

Chakotay is also the perfect husband, and he makes that very clear to her. He builds not only bathtubs, but headboards, gives massages, cooks, and builds huts and boats. Kathryn felt a little uncomfortable that Chakotay was already planning their life together so quickly, and he began to worry that she would reject him, since the ring was almost finished. So he had an idea: if he hung the ring around the monkey's neck and made him come to her, she would never say no.

Then, out of nowhere, a plasma storm happens and destroys their house. The ape tries to warn Janeway, but she is too distracted by Chakotay's biceps and skillful hands, so she is late getting home while the ape nearly kills himself to warn her that a storm is coming.

"Hey little monkey, are you following me?" "No, damn it! Look at the fucking storm, are you stupid?"

In the end, she understands and tries to go back, but gets caught in the wind on the way, where she is saved by Chakotay's wonderful and very strong arms.

They go back to the cabin and hide like a honeymoon couple under the table. Boy, is he protective!

After this, Kathryn momentarily gives up her obsession with the cure and Chakotay realizes that it is time for the proposal. But he controls himself and waits a little longer. In the meantime, he tries to train the monkey to carry the ring and makes plans to build a big house and also a boat.

"She touched my hand, oh my God! Very married!"

After living a life as a couple, Kathryn realizes that things were getting too intimate. So she put on the pajamas that covered 90% of her body because she felt like she was setting the parameters. No, she wasn't afraid of Chakotay at all, she did it so she wouldn't risk taking her clothes off and jumping into his lap. The pajamas were difficult to take off and would give her enough time to think about what she was doing before taking them off completely.

But Chakotay doesn't care what she's wearing, because he's not that kind of man and because Kate Mulgrew could be attractive even if she was dressed in a potato sack.

Then her shoulders hurt and guess what? Coincidentally, he's a masseur. So he offers to give her a sensual shoulder massage. And she loves it.

But things get out of hand, and while she seems to be doing some sexy faces and imagining what would come next, Chakotay is drawn like a magnet to smell her hair.

And then, of course, they would have sex. But Kathryn wakes up, as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on her, and remembers that she has a fiancé. And at that moment she thinks: "Shit!"

She thanks him and says she's going to sleep, but a few minutes later, Chakotay notices her rolling around in bed, because lust and guilt won't let her sleep. So, she goes to talk to him and says that they need to have parameters and can't feel so much lust for each other.

So Chakotay tells her an ascient legend to tell her he loves her. And she cries, why? Why does she cry? Because, you know… She loves him too. "Oh my God, how cute, she cried because they are such good friends!" No, my friend, she cried because he was the most amazing man in DQ and she really wanted to have sex with him, but she couldn't. I would cry too, wouldn't you?

So they hold hands like this and then have sex.

Meanwhile, the Voyager crew lives in chaos and Tuvok, after dealing with the Vidians, possible mutinies, low crew morale and Harry lying in the middle of the bridge crying, considers retiring.

But Janeway and Chakotay are very happy… He finds her as a happy wife planting tomatoes and falls even more in love, he loves her like this, working the land and growing his food, after all he plans for the family to grow soon.

So he invites her to see and give her opinion on his new projects, first a boat, and then he would talk to her about the project for the bigger house, he wanted to know how many children she wanted to have so he could plan the bedrooms.

But it turns out that while they were living this fascinating love story, Tuvok had already pulled out half of his own hair while dealing with the riots, the Vidians and Harry lying in the middle of the bridge, kicking and screaming because he wanted his mother back.

So Tuvok decided to take revenge again, doing what he liked most, with an evil Vulcan laugh in mind: Stop them from having sex (again).

Then, Tuvok delivers the news and in the scenes above, we can see how happy Kathryn and Chakotay are that they are cured and returning to Voyager.

Look how super happy she is.

So they clench their fists because they can't punch Tuvok.

And when they return, she once again assumes the position of the tough Captain, and with the end of the chapter, it seems that this Adam and Eve or Romeo and Juliet romance ends here. But the truth is that the two will spend the next 5 years eating each other with their eyes and crazy to have sex… And of course, flirting shamelessly in front of anyone.

The funny thing, kids, is that even today, we still see people saying they were just friends. Strange, right?