Unforgettable

This is not a bad episode. Tonally it's on point, dealing with the ephemeral nature of love and attraction.

The problem is the terrible casting of Chakotay's love interest. To describe her as wooden is an insult to forests.

This might be forgivable, but for the fact that she also has all the warmness and charm of a block of ice. The chemistry between Beltran and her registers at around absolute zero. A pretty tough hurdle to get over when they are supposed to fall in love multiple times.

In other words, forget it.

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.

I would like to use the neurogenic emitter in me to forget that I watched this episode

No pun intended. This was a very forgettable episode. First of all, there is the absurdity of the premise. An attractive woman asks for asylum aboard Voyager. Once she is there, she speaks of a love relationship with Chakotay. It turns out she is from a planet where the beings are forgotten by anyone with whom they've had contact after a short time As it happens, the two fall in love again, but there is a problem on board. It's so far fetched, even for this series, that I was happy when it ended.

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.