| File:TalCeles.jpg | |
| Name: | Tal Celes |
| Gender: | Female |
| Species: | Bajoran |
| Actress: | Zoe McLellan |
| File:Delta Flyer Aft (Good Shepherd).JPG | |
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Tal Celes was a Bajoran Starfleet crewman who served aboard the Federation starship USS Voyager, which became stranded in the Delta Quadrant in 2371. (VOY: "Caretaker"). By 2376, Celes was a grade three sensor analyst assigned to astrometrics under Seven of Nine. (VOY: "Good Shepherd")
In the Academy Tal had great difficulty with her Starfleet training courses and worked three times as hard as everyone else in order to keep up with her classmates. She had to pull all-nighters nearly every night to pass her training. She believed that she was graduated from training due to sympathy over her homeworld's conflict, and the desire of Starfleet to have Bajorans in the service. Her forced habit of pulling all-nighters continued even after she was assigned to Voyager.
During her time on Voyager Celes had severe doubts in her ability to perform her duties, often with good cause. Her work, which consisted mostly of sensory data analysis, a task Celes found very difficult, often contained so many errors it had to be constantly double-checked by her co-workers and her immediate superior, Seven of Nine, to Seven's immense irritation. Often, Celes had to call upon her closest friend on Voyager, crewman William "Billy" Telfer, to help her with the analyses. In turn she helped him with his hypochondria.
In 2376, Seven of Nine conducted an efficiency analysis of the ship's operations. Her results, presented to the senior staff in a briefing, indicated that Celes, Telfer and a third crewman, Mortimer Harren, were not performing at acceptable levels, and were reducing the efficiency of the ship's operation. Celes was unable to meet the requirements of her duties, Telfer's hypochondria was putting a strain on sickbay and interfering with his duties, and Harren chose to work in the plasma relay room, which was a function far below his abilities.
Due to her difficulties with the inefficiency of handling Celes as a subordinate Seven suggested that Celes should be assigned to far lesser duties, preferably not in astrometrics, while Commander Chakotay suggested that perhaps all three should be relieved of their duties as Starfleet officers and be allowed to pursue other interests on board the ship, since normally in Starfleet any crewmembers with problems like theirs would not be allowed to work on a starship past their first year anyway. Captain Janeway decided that they should not be pushed aside simply for falling through the cracks of the system. She hoped that by taking the three on a simple survey mission with Delta Flyer they might become more confident and desire to perform better as Starfleet officers. The mission was to conduct a simple field analysis of a Class T cluster. Janeway assigned Celes the task of analyzing the sensor data, despite Seven's warning that this could endanger the team members' lives and that the mission would be better served by more experienced crewmembers.
While on the mission Celes offered to get lunch for everyone and while she was in the aft section of the ship she spoke with Telfer and expressed her displeasure of having the captain constantly looking over her shoulder to check her work. She joked with him about abandoning ship in the escape pods so they could return to Voyager.
During the mission the Delta Flyer became severely damaged when a piece of the hull was torn off and the ship lost most of its antimatter supply. Harren suggested that the damage had been caused by a dark matter proto-comet and that they should dump their remaining antimatter supply to avoid another impact. Captain Janeway refused to do this without concrete evidence that it had been indeed such a comet. Celes suggested that they beam aboard the piece of the Flyer that had been sheared off by the initial contact to try to determine the cause of the impact by scanning it for a quantum signature. Though Celes' plan did not offer any conclusive evidence Janeway told her that unconventional ideas like those that were the reason why Janeway had brought her on board. Celes explained that despite Janeway's confidence she believed she was not really suited for starship duty. She expressed severe doubts in her abilities and that it was very stressful for her to function as a Starfleet officer.
Celes helped Telfer into the Delta Flyer's biobed after he had momentarily disappeared into an alien realm and returned with an unknown lifeform trapped in his body. Celes tried to scan whatever it was that was inside of Telfer but the sensors could not detect anything. Janeway deduced that what had damaged the ship were actually dark matter lifeforms of some kind and that one of the aliens was unfortunately stuck in Telfer's body. Janeway ordered Celes to stay with Telfer while she and Harren tried to increase power to the engines. She was unable to stop Telfer when the alien lifeform took control of his body and he walked right through the forcefield around the biobed. She helped Telfer regain his footing after Janeway stunned him to stop the alien.
However, despite all her insecurity and difficulties Celes proved herself not lacking in bravery later on in the mission when Janeway ordered her, Telfer and Harren to abandon the Flyer when a swarm of dark matter lifeforms was advancing on the Flyer. Along with Telfer she firmly refused to do so, stating that, misfits though they were, they were the crew and "a crew does not abandon its captain." She and Telfer subsequently helped Janeway rescue Harren after his fool hearted attempt at diverting the aliens. (VOY: "Good Shepherd")
Later that year, Voyager was boarded by an electromagnetic lifeform. The lifeform's home, a Class J nebula, had destabilized and dissipated due to Voyager mining it for deuterium. The alien caused ship-wide power outages and system malfunctions. Before the reason for the failures became known, Seven of Nine accused Celes of causing a power shortage in astrometrics on finding her performing maintenance on the power systems near astrometrics. Celes stated that she couldn't be responsible because she had not even begun her maintenance check yet. Seven was forced to admit she had erred in accusing Celes after even more malfunctions began to assert themselves. Later, as the malfunctions became even worse and lights failed, Celes wandered the corridors of the ship alone for a number of hours, looking for other crewmembers. Terribly frightened, she believed the ship had been taken over by hostile aliens, such as Hirogen or Borg. She eventually ran into Ensign Harry Kim but when she saw his shadow approaching in her frightened state she believed him to be an alien intruder. She struck Kim in the stomach with the equipment case she was carrying. After Celes realized who he was, Kim managed to calm her down and took her with him to a temporary command post that had been set up in main engineering. (VOY: "The Haunting of Deck Twelve")
Tal Celes' personnel file displaying her name
In 2377, Celes and the rest of the crew were brainwashed by a species known as the Quarren. The Quarren altered the memory engrams of the entire crew, replacing their memories with false ones of voluntarily coming to work for the Quarren. They then put the crew to work as industrial workers on their homeworld, Quarra. Celes and the crew spent approximately three weeks in Quarra's largest city, where she worked at a fusion reactor with Ensign Mulcahey. The entire crew was eventually rescued and their memories restored. (VOY: "Workforce")
Background Information
Tal Celes shared her quarters on board Voyager with an unknown female crewmember but it was never stated or shown who this roommate was.
She was referred to as Crewman Celes (implying 'Celes' is her family name), and only Billy Telfer called her Tal (implying 'Tal' is her personal name), therefore her name would be Celes Tal according to traditional Bajoran naming. In TNG: "Ensign Ro", it was noted that some Bajorans changed the order of their names for the benefit of relations with Humans.
Celes was portrayed by Zoe McLellan in both of her appearances.
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