Unforgettable

Chakotay falls in love with a lady from a race who produce a pheromone that affects the memory.

Themes of falling in love and the consequence associated with memory erasure of the relationship was done very well in 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', but although the sci-fi premise here is similar, the love story does not work for me.

I do not think it is badly written or acted (as some have suggested), as there is only so well you can portray two strangers falling in love in one episode. It suffers from the usual issues that blight love stories for regular characters. I personally could not invest in the relationship and they never convince me of the love. I spent a large part of the episode suspicious of Kellin and her motives because they are hard to take at face value given the twisting nature of so many Trek plots.

Robert Beltran and Virginia Madison do a great job with the material. In one scene in particular, their chemistry is great, but the script calls for Chakotay to suddenly decide that he is in love which is difficult for any actor to pull off.

Yes, this episode has many plot holes and reviewers are rightly frustrated that little detail is offered about Kellin's biological processes that render others' memories unable to capture her. But I don't think it is fair to ask for less focus on the love story.

Chakotay has gotten the short end of the stick with personality-expanding episodes, or maybe it just feels that way because of how stoic he is. Because of his unemotionality, the Vulcan Tuvok actually gets a lot of attention surrounding his emotional reactions to events. Chakotay has certainly been the star of multiple episodes by this point late in season 4, but he has been fading into the background, seeming more impassive even than the Vulcan. He is a stalwart piece of furniture on the bridge.

Chakotay's major traits are his loyalty and strong work ethic, so much so that the only times viewers see him passionate are when he cares deeply about solving an engineering or diplomatic problem his own way. When we discover he had a fling with Seska, it is only relevant because his work ethic and loyalty cause him to want to protect Voyager all by himself.

If anything, "Unforgettable" did not offer enough scenes of this man feeling feelings.

Or stun mode on phasers?

This reminds me of that Riker episode in TNG where he falls in love with someone and also mysteriously forgets about stun mode.

Well, the story itself sounds promising: A woman claims that Chakotay and her were in love but no one on Voyager remembers her. Then Chakotay falls in love with her again but loses her a second time.

To make this story work though, the writers had to come up with lots of unbelievable explanations. Like the pheromone this species produces which wipes the memory of each other species they encounter. Or the computer virus that erased all evidence of her in the systems.

First: There are life forms on board of Voyager that this species never encountered before: Humans, Vulcans, Klingons... even a former Borg drone. Yet we should believe that this memory erasing pheromone works on all of those species (what a marvelous evolution). Apparently on the doctor, too.

Second, obviously this species messes with the computer, too, to plant a virus there that erases each and every information about them. What sane captain, chief of security, chief of operations or chief of engineering would allow a stranger to tamper with Voyager's systems? And wouldn't Seven of Nine remember something due to her Borg implants or are they suddenly connected with the ship's computer? By the way: this computer virus thing, that has to work on a completely unknown alien operating system was stupid in Independence Day already. And don't even start with other non-digital traces: Written letters, DNA residue on objects etc.

And how comes, they haul the damaged alien vessel in, which is equipped with cloak technology that allows firing under cloak (something not even Klingons or Romulans were capable of) and also has advanced proton cannons that cut through shields, but don't try to investigate this technology and make use of it? Also no one tries to research this species, their pheromones, their personal cloaking ability, their unique culture. Janeway claims that they are explorers but yet, they hardly explore alien life forms in their entirety. Aren't there some xeno-biologists on board, or anthropologists, linguists, bio-technologists...?

As others already pointed out: I also did not feel any chemistry between Chakotay and Kellin and I doubt that both would have fallen head over heels in love with each other.

It also hurts to see how Chakotay just watches when the tracer shoots an energy beam at Kellin. Why didn't he use his phaser or jumped at him?

And Kellin tries to convince Chakotay for several days that they both were in love after the first time they met. She puts quite a lot of effort into it - romantic settings, the right situations, good storytelling. And then, after her memory was wiped by the tracer, Chakotay tries to convince her that they were in love and he takes about a minute or two to do so, just standing there without any romantic feelings at all. Not even an injured dog would have jumped into his arms to be rescued by him after that sort of emotionless of speech. He completely blows it there. But that's Voyager: You can't keep a love interest for more than one episode because viewers are too dumb obviously to remember all those new characters that might play a role in future episodes.

Virginia Madsen stars as Kellin in this very unusual episode of "Star Trek: Voyager". After she has a brief fight with another ship very close to Voyager, Kellin contacts Voyager and asks for help from Chakotay specifically. Oddly, however, Chakotay doesn't recognize her. Soon you learn why--she's from a species that doesn't want outside contact and they go to very extreme lengths to keep it that way. If anyone leaves the planet, they are tracked down and anyone having contact forgets and their computers are wiped! Kellin insists that she'd spend a lot of time on Voyager and then proves this DID occur. So why, then, does she return? Well, it seems that Mr. Super-Sexy, Chakotay, has stolen her heart and she's here to seek asylum.

The notion of a world that goes to such extremes to keep its existence private is pretty unique. My only complaint is that having a cop whose job it is to bring in runaways then falling in love and wanting to defect is a bit hard to believe. Additionally, she KILLED her own kind in escaping and no one seemed to remember this or care. Odd...but still a good episode.