Summary
- Star Trek: Voyager's season 4 episode "Day of Honor" featured 3 small Easter eggs from Star Trek: First Contact.
- The episode reused EV suits from the film and referenced specific dialogue related to the Borg.
- Voyager's writers incorporated First Contact Easter eggs into Voyager season 4 to honor the film and tie the two projects together.
An early episode of Star Trek: Voyager season 4 had three small Easter eggs from Star Trek: First Contact. First Contact was the second of four movies featuring the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and premiered in November 1996 during the middle of Voyager season 3. Although the two projects were about two very different points on the Star Trek timeline, the film and the show had several important connections to each other.
Voyager seasons 3 and 4 built on lore First Contact had established about the Borg and the Borg Queen, and First Contact even featured two members of Voyager's cast of characters, Robert Picardo and Ethan Phillips, as side characters. These were the biggest crossovers between the two projects, but given how much Voyager season 4 owed First Contact for its Borg storylines, the series didn't stop there. An early episode of season 4 included some surprising First Contact Easter eggs.
"Day of Honor" relied heavily on First Contact
Voyager season 4, episode 3, "Day of Honor" focused on Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill) and B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) stuck out in space in EV suits after a shuttle explosion, and these suits were where Voyager and First Contact came together. Not only were Tom and B'Elanna's specific suits reused from the film, but Tom said the words "first contact" while flirting with B'Elanna, and suggested that they "interplex the comm systems" to contact Voyager. In First Contact, the suits are worn to stop the Borg from creating an interplexing beacon to reach out to reinforcements.
"Day of Honor" is notable for being the episode where Tom and B'Elanna finally begin a romantic relationship, one that would continue for the rest of Star Trek: Voyager 's run and result in their marriage and the birth of their daughter in the finale.
Likewise, B'Elanna stated that zero-gravity environments made her feel "sick to my stomach," echoing a similar sentiment expressed by Worf (Michael Dorn) during First Contact. Having B'Elanna as another Klingon character say the same thing as Worf was a funny coincidence, and also another small way to tie the two projects together. Although these references in "Day of Honor" are all relatively minor, the amount of them is noticeable and raises questions about why Voyager would tie this particular episode of First Contact so heavily.
Voyager didn't choose First Contact to reference arbitrarily
As previously stated, Voyager season 4 and First Contact didn't air too far apart. First Contact had premiered less than a year before "Day of Honor", and interviews with Voyager's creative team at the time indicated that the film was heavily on their minds during the transition between seasons 3 and 4. Besides the fact that creative teams for Star Trek movies and TV shows often overlap, Voyager's writers were also keeping in mind a lot of things First Contact established about the Borg so that they could incorporate the most up-to-date facts into the show.
With all this in mind, Star Trek: Voyager 's writers seem to have simply added a few fun First Contact Easter eggs for eagle-eyed audiences to pick up on.
Although "Day of Honor" itself wasn't as heavily Borg-related as the previous season 4 episodes, it's fairly clear from the dialogue that First Contact was still at the forefront of Voyager's creative teams' minds. This was probably helped by the fact that the EV suits were reused from movie to show, creating a more tangible link between the two. With all this in mind, Star Trek: Voyager's writers seem to have simply added a few fun First Contact Easter eggs for eagle-eyed audiences to pick up on.
