Food Fixations - Season Three

The Chute

• The food cakes that the Akritirians feed to their prisoners may not look like much, but the prisoners are hungry enough that they're willing to kill for them.
• To fight off the irritability of the clamp, Tom Paris and Harry Kim try to focus on something positive... and Kim suggests that a seven course dinner might be a good start. So they trade food fantasies:
  - Paris opens the bidding with crown roast of lamb, with a bed of wild rice and a 2296 Chateau Lafite Rothschild.
  - Kim counters with shrimp with fettran sauce, flambé noodles and fudge ripple pudding.
  - Paris raises with barbecued T-bone steaks, with baked Risan beans and cherry pie for dessert.
  I fear that Voyager's pilot is a junk food junkie... although as befits someone who did much of his Starfleet Academy training in France, he's as much of a real alcohol connoisseur as Jean-Luc Picard, without the benefit of having grown up in a vineyard.
• Paris and Kim are in desperate straits alright, if they're warming to leola root! Kim tells Paris how attractive the thought of Neelix's leola root stew has suddenly become, and Paris agrees with him.
• Kim offers to trade his boots for (among other things) a litre of water and two food cakes. When that offer doesn't work (Zio says he doesn't like the colour, but it's probably that they're made of non-edible materials), he offers a share in his escape route instead.
• To celebrate their rescue and to cheer Kim up, the two go off to blow a week's worth of replicator rations on staging their fantasy banquet for real. Paris suggests a steak dinner, or baked potato, with a big mound of deep-fried onion rings, and grilled mushrooms. When last seen they are debating the relative merits of cherry pie versus fudge ripple pudding...

Future's End: 1

• Henry Starling puts a bottle of Chateau Coeur champagne on ice to celebrate picking up an extraterrestrial signal. Since he obviously knows it's a Starfleet signal, it has to be assumed that what he's actually celebrating is the possibility of stealing more future technology from the ship. Rain Robinson offers to chip in with the six-pack from her fridge in case ET prefers beer.
• Tuvok and Tom Paris break into Rain Robinson's office while she's out in pursuit of pizza.

Future's End: 2

• Tuvok buys a breakfast in 1996 Los Angeles which further confirms Rain Robinson's hypothesis that he and Tom Paris are from another planet: chilli burritos, hot dogs and Goliath Gulps.

Warlord

• Neelix serves up Gallia nectar as the speciality of the house in his holodeck recreation of the luxurious Paxau resort. The blossom from which it is distilled only grows near one lake on Paxau, and blooms once every six years. Despite its scarcity value however, Tom Paris is unimpressed enough to reprogram the drinks as Rekarri starbursts.
• Neelix declares that you can't have a party without food, and decides that spicy paraka wings are what is required.

The Q And The Grey

• Janeway helps herself to coffee at the camp fire in the Q rebels encampment. In view of the fact that her ship was in serious danger of destruction when last she saw it, she's been dragged to the Q Continuum against her will, and is being pestered by Q to mate with him and have his child, she's probably in serious need of it.

Macrocosm

• Neelix brings Janeway coffee in the shuttlecraft.
• Paris, acting as volunteer cook while Neelix is away, manages to incinerate a 12 kilo pot roast. In his defence, one of the bioneural gel packs is suffering from the macrovirus, and has caused the heating array to overload.

Fair Trade

• Neelix puts on a special Klingon breakfast buffet. It doesn't impress B'Elanna, who apparently prefers not to start the day with a bowl of cold gagh. Much to Neelix's disappointment, the rest of the crew agree with her.
• And once you get into the habit of denial... Chakotay and Paris don't have so much as a moment's hesitation in turning down the offer of reludian crystals, despite their promised ability to make days of tedious travel seem like moments of exquisite rapture. Now if the drug dealer had promised them coffee granules instead, he might have had a deal!
• Wix Aban claims that the tavern on the space station serves the best Toffa ale he's had in years.
• While in the Hubian prison, Wix claims to have had to eat worms to stay alive. It may even be true.

Favorite Son

• Malia, one of the Tauresian women, offers round some spiced hatana, which it seems she's hand prepared in Harry's honour. Spices notwithstanding, Paris observes that it looks good, but Harry doesn't seem to have an appetite. Perhaps his stomach was turned by all the predatory groping and caressing going on. I know mine was.

Before And After

• Linnis offers to get Kes some tea.
• Neelix makes a Jibalian fudge cake for Kes's ninth birthday (see Twisted), commenting on the fact that he hasn't made one since he became a security officer. Tuvok suggests that perhaps he might want to go back to being cook, but I suspect it's more in the vain hope of getting Neelix out of his own territory than because he misses the adventure that used to be mealtime.
• One of Kes's jumps back in time takes her to a turning point in Voyager's gastronomic experience, and we get to experience Neelix singing the praises of his angla'bosque (see Caretaker) all over again. Once wasn't enough?
• The crew drink champagne (or at least something fizzy in the right shape glasses) to celebrate Kes's temporal stabilisation and rediscovery of her memories. She certainly remembers that Harry owes her a month's supply of replicator rations alright.

Real Life

• Even the holographic Doctor seems to be addicted to caffeine! His holographic wife, Charlene, replicates him a new blend of coffee from Paxor 3 to which he gives his approval.
• Charlene took a course in continental cuisine so that she could cook interesting meals for the Doctor. I guess that as a hologram he's never had to experience Neelix's efforts and is therefore unaware that interesting is something to be avoided at mealtimes! In any case, Charlene's wild mushroom pilaff is appetising enough for B'Elanna Torres to have two helpings before declining to take more.
• Neelix serves up the same casserole (pleeka rinds and gruk meal) for the fourth day in a row. Paris, who's blown all his replicator rations, is obliged to eat it anyway. Later, while he is collecting plasma particles to boost Voyager's energy reserves, he observes that it may save them all from the pleeka rind casserole (see also Scientific Method), and Janeway is heard to echo that sentiment.
• The shuttlecraft ride through the wake of the astral eddy is bumpy enough to make Paris wish that he hadn't had a second helping of french toast that morning.

Distant Origin

• Gegen takes a light snack while in pursuit of Voyager, snagging a fly daintily on the end of his exceedingly long tongue.
• Tuvok asks for an organic test subject for the Voth personal cloaking device. He undoubtedly expects one of those bio canisters Starfleet use for testing transporters and the like; what Paris actually provides for him is an apple.

Displaced

• The Nyrians give the captive Voyager crew food dispensers programmed with selections from their own computer files. Neelix puts the dispensers to better use by stealing parts from them to help Tuvok cook up some improvised weaponry.
• Charleth, their neighbour from the prison environment next door, expresses interest in the food provided for the Alpha Quadrant natives. So Janeway waves a couple of baskets of what look like bread rolls and fruit underneath his nose until he gives in and trades his knowledge of the portals between environments in return for the goodies.

Worst Case Scenario

• Neelix offers Paris and Tuvok a fresh pot of coffee to keep their creative juices flowing... or so he claims. What he really wants though, is the chance to join the Insurrection Alpha writers' conference.
• It's not mentioned what the senior officers are drinking in the Mess Hall at the end, but from the mugs in use it certainly looks like they're toasting the safe completion of the holonovel in coffee! It makes a certain amount of sense; caffeine was almost certainly Janeway's co-plotter in her revisions to Seska's revisions.