“Muse” is episode twenty-two of season six of Star Trek: Voyager.
A play is being performed somewhere and the chorus is reporting the captain’s log, about how B’Elanna and Harry took the Delta Flyer to look for dilithium, when a wave as high as a mountain struck the Delta Flyer. Harry left in an escape pod and B’Elanna was thrown on the rocks of this very shore, where the narrator, Kelis the Poet, found her broken and dying, where she told Kelis her story as Kelis has now told the audience.
A man, better dressed than the rest, starts to applaud and everyone else follows suit. The man tells Kelis it’s an excellent conceit that he discovered B’Elanna himself, and asks what will happen, what will Janeway do. Kelis replies that who can say. The man hopes Kelis can; he wants to see more of the Voyager Eternals. Kelis has one week to come up with a new story. Kelis tries bargaining for more. It doesn’t work. He then asks if his patron has noticed how thin his performers have gotten. The man removes a gem from his consort and tosses it to Kelis. Kelis shows the others and says they will do another Voyager play, as soon as he can write it.
The Delta Flyer has crashed and there are candles inside when Kelis arrives. He takes out a knife and heads to a bound B’Elanna, who hits him and demands to know who he is. Kelis the poet. Her servant.
Kelis tells B’Elanna that he can’t let her go, else she fly from him like inspiration always does. The wounds on her arm are from Kelis letting the fever out of her veins. B’Elanna talks Kelis into getting the medkit and the dermal regenerator and heals the wounds. Kelis says Eternals can make the ground open up and the sky to fall as the ancient poets said. Kelis has been playing the logs about Voyager, B’Elanna’s clan of Eternals, about whom no poets have made stories.
Kelis found B’Elanna 8 days ago after witnessing her crash. He treated his wounds. So far, he’s got one play from her and his patron was impressed. Kelis doesn’t want to let her go because his patron wants another play and that he needs B’Elanna to get more details. He did save her life, after all. B’Elanna says if he cuts her free, she will tell Kelis more. Instead, when he does, she takes a phasor and tells him to leave and never return.
B’Elanna is trying to communicate with Voyager but has too little, and then no, power when Kelis returns with food. She tells him she isn’t a poet, she’s an engineer. She fixes things. Kelis doesn’t think she’s doing too well at that. He3 wants to exchange knowledge for food. B’Elanna does that until Kelis asks if she’s in love with Tom Paris.
Taking him inside the Delta Flyer, B’Elanna activates a database and asks Kelis if he’s seen dilithium before. Winter’s Tears, yes. B’Elanna wants some; Kelis realises this is the dilithium from the log. The only place nearby is in the hunting grounds of Kelis’s patron. The patron would execute Kelis and would love to catch an Eternal and force them to fight against his enemies. B’Elanna tells Kelis to get dilithium, or not another word. Lightning strikes at the end of the sentence, with good timing. Kelis returns with dilithium and says he has an idea for the next play. The Rescue of B’Elanna Torres.
On Voyager, a meeting of the senior staff ends. They don’t know where B’Elanna and Harry are.
After some problems performing his play – Kelis told his lead actress she is supposed to be playing a Borg, the scourge of the Eternals, not a shy bride on her wedding night – Kelis returns to the Delta Flyer and tells B’Elanna that the Eternals of Voyager are not like anyone he’s ever met and he doesn’t understand them. B’Elanna has restored some power but it blows out the communicator. She asks Kelis about their metallurgy, as she needs a plate of metal. In return, Kelis wants to know about the Vulcans.
Kelis faces a number of issues with his performers as he tries to get them to act like those of Voyager. He’s also struggling to write a suitable ending for his play, and to finish it in time. In addition, Kelis’s patron is going to war and Kelis wants to stop this from happening with his play. Voyager, meanwhile, is still trying to find Harry and B’Elanna.