An encounter with a peculiar nebula suddenly leaves Chakotay brain dead and unconscious. The crew is left with a mysterious but powerful force of energy onboard that can take over the minds ... Read allAn encounter with a peculiar nebula suddenly leaves Chakotay brain dead and unconscious. The crew is left with a mysterious but powerful force of energy onboard that can take over the minds of the crew members.An encounter with a peculiar nebula suddenly leaves Chakotay brain dead and unconscious. The crew is left with a mysterious but powerful force of energy onboard that can take over the minds of the crew members.
- Lt. B'Elanna Torres
- (as Roxann Biggs-Dawson)
- Command Division Ensign
- (uncredited)
- Lt. Susan Nicoletti
- (uncredited)
- Lt. Ayala
- (uncredited)
- Kurt Bendera
- (uncredited)
- Ensign Brooks
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFirst appearance of Captain Janeway's "Ancient English Holonovel," which seems to be a mash-up of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Henry James' Turn of the Screw. The latter was also the basis for a previous Star Trek production Sub Rosa (1994). The Holonovel returns in Learning Curve (1995) and Persistence of Vision (1995).
- GoofsRanks change arbitrarily: Tuvok's rank insignia changes between Lieutenant and Lt Commander several times. Tom Paris' rank insignia changes between Lieutenant JG and Lieutenant several times.
- Quotes
[Torres tries to bring Chakotay back with his people's medicine wheel]
Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: The wheel represents both the universe outside and the universe inside our minds as well. They believe each is a reflection of the other. When a person is sleeping or, or on a vision quest, it's said that his soul is walking the wheel. But if he's in a coma or near death, it means that he's gotten lost. These stones are signposts... to help point the way back.
[she places one stone on the wheel; the Doctor sighs]
Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres: Not exactly standard medical procedure, I know, but...
The Doctor: You've placed the coyote stone at the crossroads of the fifth and sixth realms, which would divert Commander Chakotay's soul, that is his consciousness, into the mountains of the antelope women - according to his tradition an extremely attractive locale. He might not want to leave.
- ConnectionsReferenced in Star Trek: Voyager: Virtuoso (2000)
This episode isn't even close to the same kind of story.
We get Tuvok and Chakotay, back from an Away Mission, both of them appear to have been assaulted but Chakotay is in bad shape.
If you want to relate this to an original series episode, it would probably be more similar to "The Day of the Dove"- but only in that there is a mysterious presence on the ship, floating from room to room.
Early on in the episode, we discover that people had been doing things that they could not remember doing. The ships course is changed. The doctor is mysteriously accosted.
What could be going on? The only clue that we are given is that we are shown the point of view as if we are flying from one person's brain to the next. It was just a little bit of exposition that was simply performed to give us the concept of what was actually happening on the ship.
And then Chakotay is in sick bay, visited by Torres, who had brought all of his Native American accoutrements including something that looks similar to map. Which is appropriate for a later part of this episode, "File for future reference". Voyager was a good show for remembering details because they would crop up later.
Also this Voyager episode is less similar to any original series episode and more related to a TNG episode, particularly, "Times Arrow".
Because of the "Triolic" properties of an entity. But these entities are not capable of taking on human form, although they are capable of influencing a human.
I simply don't want to give away any of this to anybody who has not watched it, there is something rather interesting going on, and we of course try to figure it out as the episode progresses. Personally, I could not figure it out, not until Torres does something completely crazy, that's when the pieces started coming together. I had to ask myself why would she do that? Well, she wouldn't.
But I am bringing up this episode because of one scene where there is a struggle on the bridge, which includes the use of a phaser.
I think this is the first time in any Star Trek show of the 90s, where they show the use of a phaser in "wide beam" configuration... Tuvok uses it this way, it comes in handy.
There are so many other episodes of TNG, DS9, maybe even Enterprise, where the use of a phaser in this way would have been extremely convenient, but yet it had only ever been done in this one episode. Actually, Seska threatens to use a phaser in this configuration in "worst case scenario"... but it doesn't actually show her doing it.
It was good in this one episode to break up a tense situation, but the fact that the phasers had never been used in this fashion after this, well it would have solved quite a few conundrums in other shows.
I don't know if this concept had just been forgotten, or, it just never came up in any future episodes of Voyager or other Trek shows.
People forget that writing for television shows, sometimes you don't get to revisit things that would have made a difference later on sometimes you just have to drop a subject. For instance, they never rescued Thomas Riker from Cardassian prison.
I know that the various showrunners have wanted to do a lot more when it comes to revisiting things that we have seen in one episode like this, but time constraints, and in the case of Voyager, blatant network interference, prevented it from happening.
- XweAponX
- Jul 16, 2022
Details
- Runtime46 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
- 4:3