B’Elanna is held hostage by a writer needing inspiration.
Whenever a writer appears on screen, you can know that you’re in store for some self-referential circularity about the sheer awesomeness of writing. This is worse than most, with the rant in the middle about ‘writers who just want to write excitement, rather than good story’ being the most blatant moment.
But what we do get is a chance to look at familiar characters through another lens, and it’s nicely done. We learn more about Tuvok and Vulcans from this one writer who’s never met one than we get in ten normal episodes. Although it appears the writer of the episode hasn’t ever met a Vulcan either, from the way Tuvok is written in the (brief) Voyager-based scenes. The resolution was a bit pat, but it was also nice to see an episode that paid attention to the prime directive without making it the driving plot point.
607 down, 130 to go.