The shuttle craft was named for Valentina Tereshkova, the Soviet cosmonaut who was the first woman in space.
In this episode, Seska is wearing a blue sciences division uniform but is sitting at the engineering station on the bridge. She appears in a yellow operations division uniform in later episodes. Martha Hackett has since stated that, in this episode, she was mistakenly costumed in the wrong color uniform.
Tuvok is wearing the pips of a Lieutenant Commander even though his rank in the first season was Lieutenant. He was not promoted to commander until much later.
47-references: the Doctor has been designed with the experience of 47 individual medical officers. Also, monitor input 47 is the Captain's emergency medical holograph channel.
This episode is a bottle episode, the first such installment of Star Trek: Voyager.