The Fight

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

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.

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.

So Chakotay has his turn as the principle character again. Voyager has entered chaotic space where everything is all bent and distorted. They can't proceed because it is unpredictable and dangerous. Chakotay seems to have some boxing chops and he is quite masculine. He goes on one of his vision quests and tries to figure out how they can get out of their predicament. He hears voices and needs to interpret them to figure out what to do. Mostly it is one oddity after another. Perhaps it should be called "Chaotic Plot."

...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.