Waking Moments

.... and I wonder how the universal translators work in their dreams?!! ;)

The Yoyager crew experiences a series of nightmares which all seem to have one thing in common: An unknown alien observer is present in any of those dreams. When some crew members don't wake up anymore, Chakotay enters a state of lucid dreaming to find out what's going on. After that experience the boundaries between dream and awake seem to vanish.

The concept of this episode is quite intriguing: An alien race that enters the dream worlds of other species and fights them there without ever setting foot on their vessels or being in danger. Similar to the movie Inception, neither the viewer nor the characters always know if they are still dreaming or if they are back in reality. Chakotay uses a special image to guide him through his dream world. Just like the spinning top in Inception, Chakotay's talisman is an image of the earth's moon. When you just thought, everyone is awake again, a moon appears as a reflection in a window or a computer screen and tells you, that it is still just a dream.

The only problem I have with this episode is the motivation of the aliens. Obviously they act on self defense after they had negative experiences with strangers before. Yet, Chakotay made clear that they will tolerate their wish to leave their territory and even was about to fly away. There was no reason for this dream attack.

Voyager crew members encounter aliens who visit their dreams.

This a reasonably good episode with a decent concept regarding this particular race and the narrative unfolds in crafty way not unlike 'Nightmare on Elm Street' (minus the horror).

I like the humour, especially the scenes involving Tuvok and Harry's awkwardness around Seven following the events of his dream.

That being said I do not think the writers used the concept to its full potential. The aliens do not appear to be hugely threatening, Chakotay's native culture aspect feels a bit tiresome, and for me the ending is an anticlimax.

Most actors are on great form, with Robert Beltran and Tim Russ standing out for me.

It's a 6.5/10 for me but I round upwards.

When the show begins, crew members are all having very strange dreams. This is pretty weird. But what is alarming is ALL of the dreams culminate with the same alien showing up in it unexpectedly! Obviously, some race is reaching out to the crew from their dreams. This is a nice first contact situation, right? Nope. Some of the people WON'T awaken and soon everybody on the ship falls asleep en masse. It clearly is because this alien and his people are taking over the ship. The only hope is Chakotay who has sent himself to sleep deliberately and is using some American Indian mumbo-jumbo magic to control his dreams. Can Chakotay be the crew's savior or not?

If you can ignore the mumbo-jumbo aspect, this is a dandy episode with a super-creative sort of threat. Well worth seeing...even if you don't have a wind-catcher or peyote to help in your enjoyment.

I do enjoy when the writers come up with a unique concept. Dreams versus reality is a classic, so why not implement it on board Voyager? As it turns out, an alien culture lives its life in slumber and what we would call awakening is their other state. Soon nearly the entire crew drops into a dream state and slips in and out, confusing us a bit. Chakotay uses his Native American methods to find solutions but isn't all that sure himself. What's hard to follow is why the aliens are so afraid of the Voyager crew. They could have just let them head out. I suppose they felt that becoming known would lead to other insurgencies. Anyway, it was pretty entertaining. I particularly liked the opening nightmare sequence.