The Fight

I think these lower budget "filler episodes" were the main thing I disliked about 90s Trek. You can tell they were low on ideas, budget, and had to go with a less than stellar idea for an episode. Now, don't get me wrong, I am actually a fan of Chakotay and I like him as both a character and actor. But seriously, anything with vision quests just... no... they're not good. The sort of Akutchi Moya fake Native Generic American thing never worked. It would have been cooler if Chakotay was Native American and owned that but we never heard pan flutes or had to deal with spiritual stuff.

Star Trek works when there's less spirituality and more science. This kind of episode just doesn't work in most ways.

...rated lower than the one where Paris and Janeway have slimy amphibian sex -- and seem remarkably blase about the whole thing when they are technobabbled back into human form -- you know you aren't winning love from the audience.

That's all I had to say. I just needed to point out that somehow this was a less-beloved episode than an episode involving Human-Salamander coital relations. That's...that quite an accomplishment.

I'm at this point re-watching Voyager and, reading all these negative reviews I tried watching this episode paying more attention, giving it a chance.

My opinion is, if you make the effort, it's not so chaotic, even though it IS a bit chaotic, but there are a lot of TNG episodes that felt this way earlier many years ago when I saw them (a re-watch is scheduled after Voyager).

Anyway, I can see how the writers wanted to tell this story and it can be followed, it's not a bad episode, it's like a longer prog metal song, you need to listen to it a few times to be able to understand and appreciate it.

Especially comparing the experience to the previous episode, which I skipped deliberately because I hate it, it's a waste that the duplicates die and nothing remains, the probe with the data they've gathered over their lifetime is lost, as if they had never existed, like, ever. So it's a waste of time for me to watch it.

This one at least has some depth added to Chakotay's shallow-ish character.

I'm giving this episode a solid 8/10. First time I saw it I didn't understand what the hell was happening, I guess I wasn't paying enough attention, now that I've rewatched it I get it. This is a kind of episode where you need to pay attention, the premise is quite simple. Voyager gets stuck in a spacial anomaly called chaotic space, in that space there are aliens that are trying to make contact, chakotay has a dorment gene that they activate so that they can make contact, but that gene gives Chakotay hallucinations and blurred messages.... this episode is vastly underrated.

It's just so DULL. A waste of Ray Walston as the guest star as well.