Welcome and have a seat. What? Well, obviously I meant a figurative "seat," since you're already sitting down. Huh? You don't think so? What are you, some sort of troublemaker? This is a review of the Star Trek Voyager episode, "Cathexis," buddy, not some Star Trek chat room. We try to be polite to each other around here, so the hell with you!
Wait, where was I? Sorry, everyone, this page can get a little stressful at times. This is a pleasant and spoiler-filled review of --
Hey! I heard that! You wanna step outside? That's right, you and me, bozo! Bring your friends along!
A FEW MINUTES LATER....
Well, the jerk is now licking his wounds over in MedHelp. I might feel better about this, except that I'm beginning to wonder if he were only acting like such a jerk because some sort of aliens took over his cyberbody.
Anyway, it's definitely time to be getting on with this review. If you've decided you're tired of the whole thing, or maybe if you're not a fan of Voyager despite its being an extremely excellent show, may I suggest you step outside as well?
As for the rest of us, let's get to it.
INITIAL VIEWER EXPERIENCE
Janeway is getting an introduction to her new job as Mrs. Davenport, British nanny to Lord Burley. The housekeeper, Mrs. Templeton sneers a bit and we have the gothic romance novel version of chest-thumping. Burley himself enters and demands that Janeway/Davenport never go on the fourth floor.
Kim interrupts this dreary holo-novel by signaling that Tuvok and Chakotay's shuttle is returning, but that both of them are hurt. In Sickbay, the Doctor reports that Tuvok is severely concussed, and that all Chakotay's neural energy has been extracted. He's brain dead.
Tuvok recovers and reports that he and Chakotay were returning from their trade mission with the Illidarians when the shuttle encountered a dark matter nebula. A ship emerged from it and fired on the shuttle. Tuvok only had time to get the autopilot on line and see the ship return inside the nebula before he passed out.
If the Doctor's going to help Chakotay, he's got to study the weapon that did this to him, so Janeway sets course for the nebula. Tuvok tells her that all the shuttle's logs have been wiped out by the weapon, and Janeway is distressed that her scans of the distant nebula are not revealing.
She's even more distressed, however, when Voyager suddenly alters course and they're headed directly away from the nebula. The course change came from the con, but Paris insists "It wasn't me!" They all run a diagnostic and set course again for the nebula.
Looking a little uncomfortable with the whole thing, Torres sets up Chakotay's medicine wheel above his bed in Sickbay. She explains the purpose of the wheel, guiding Chakotay's spirit back to his body, to the Doctor, who knows more about the wheel than she does.
In her quarters, Kes becomes aware of some sort of presence, and the camera gives us a hazy, looming p.o.v. to prove she's right. Something is flying around the ship.
Voyager changes course again, and this time the command came from navigational control. Paris was just there, but once again he claims he didn't do it. Torres is contacted and she says Paris was in there. He says he wasn't, and Janeway sends him to Sickbay for a quick memory check while Voyager gets back on course once again.
We meet Lieutenant Durst, but he doesn't do much of anything.
Paris waxes nostalgic for his family doctor while Voyager's Doctor finds nothing wrong with him. However, Tuvok enters to announce that Paris' fresh DNA was found in navigational control. Paris is confused, and the Doctor says he'll scan him some more.
Janeway and Tuvok plot a course into the nebula, but before they can enter it, Torres shuts down the warp core. The ship is plunged into semi-darkness and no one's going anywhere. When Janeway asks Torres why she's done this to the ship, however, Torres doesn't know what she's talking about.
The Doctor finds evidence in both Paris and Torres' memories that they have been taken over momentarily by an alien. Tuvok sounds "intruder alert" while Janeway realizes this alien has been trying to keep them away from the nebula. The alien could take over anyone, including Janeway herself, but it couldn't get to the Doctor. If it could access the computer directly, it would have done it by now.
So Janeway transfers her command codes to the Doctor so that he can act as a fail-safe, then heads to the bridge with Chakotay and Tuvok. Kes joins them, explaining the she's felt a presence on the ship. Tuvok suggests that he mind-meld with Kes to help her focus her awareness of this presence, and the two of them go off.
Durst and Kim discuss the problems of tracking down this presence and discover Tuvok and Kes in a turbo-lift, unconscious.
In the still-darkened conference room, Tuvok explains that he and Kes were overcome by an energy discharge. Pairs suggests that they could locate the alien presence with the magnaton scanner, and Torres refines the suggestion by arranging for a magnaton flash scan so they can check the entire ship at once. She asks Kim what he thinks, and his momentary distraction has them all freaked out. Janeway says they need to keep calm.
To demonstrate why staying calm is a good idea, we get to watch Neelix at his most annoying, pointing paranoid fingers at different crew members until the Doctor's patience runs out. Neelix exits and Tuvok enters to reconfigure the sensor arrays. The Doctor explains to Tuvok that Kes' injuries are nothing like Chakotay's. She seems to be suffering from some sort of nerve fiber trauma.
Tuvok reports to Janeway that the magnaton flash scan will be ready in two hours, and that it will cause severe dizziness in everyone when it's implemented. He also tells her that Kes was physically assaulted. Maybe by you, she says. Maybe, he says. I could have been under the influence of the alien.
Janeway calls the Doctor, but his program has been disabled and encrypted. Looking mighty suspicious now, Janeway decides that she needs to split her command codes between herself and Tuvok, and goes onto the bridge to announce this. However, the alien floats into her and she tries to attack Tuvok. Paris stuns her and the alien goes into Kim. Paris knocks him down. The alien now goes into Durst [it seems to me it really should have gone into Paris], but then Tuvok stuns everyone with his phaser.
Janeway and the others recover in Sickbay with Paris once again acting as make-shift medic. Back on the bridge, Janeway learns from Torres that the shuttle's logs weren't wiped out by a weapon, but erased. Moreover, what remains of the logs clearly shows that while there was a dark nebula, there was no ship. The energy discharge came directly from the nebula.
They have another fifteen-twenty minutes before they can run the flash scan.
Suspicious like crazy now, Janeway talks to Tuvok, who says he has found the ion trail of the ship that attacked the shuttle. It leads into the heart of the nebula. Paris shows up to whisper in her ear that Kes was hurt by a Vulcan neck pinch. Janeway asks Tuvok how this could be. Maybe the alien made me do it, he says. Janeway replies that this so-called ion trail he's found into the nebula is crap, and she thinks Tuvok's been lying to them all along. She knows one thing for sure, however: they're not going anywhere in that nebula.
Tuvok draws his phaser and claims that this is what the alien presence has wanted all along. The captain has been taken over by the alien, and everyone should follow his orders now. Kim hesitates, then tells Tuvok to stuff it. The Vulcan responds by telling them that his phaser is set on wide beam to kill. He shoves everyone into the corner and starts taking Voyager into the nebula.
Lifeforms approach, and Tuvok says they're the Komar, who want to eat the crew's neural energy.
The alien presence meanwhile floats into Torres and she ejects the warp core. Janeway realizes Torres couldn't do that on her own, and asks the computer who authorized the warp core ejection. Nurse Chapel -- I mean, the computer responds that it was Chakotay. Janeway realizes the alien presence has been Chakotay all along, trying to keep them from going into the nebula. Tuvok's alien control is from a completely different alien.
Tuvok gets the thrusters going, but Janeway ducks down and sets off the magnaton flash scan. As everyone gets dizzy, Paris grabs Tuvok's phaser, and Tuvok falls to the ground, glows, and then has some sort of light (presumably the alien) leave him and zip out of the ship.
The alien's friends outside are starting to get through the shields, and the crew can't figure out how to get out of the nebula, since the dark matter is screwing around with their sensors.
Neelix is taken over by the alien and rearranges the stones on Chakotay's medicine wheel. He tells Janeway he's done and she brings the wheel up on the bridge viewscreen. It's a map, she realizes, and they super-impose a chart of the nebula over it so they can follow the path Chakotay has indicated. With a little ship rocking and suspenseful music, Voyager escapes the nebula.
Voyager retrieves it warp core and the Doctor retrieves Chakotay's neural energy, putting it all back in our first officer where it belongs. Chakotay describes his mind-out-of-body experience. Janeway welcomes him back, and Chakotay says it feels like he never left.
CHARACTER
Character development is often somewhat scarce when people are acting under alien influence.
Paris seems determined to be the hero whenever he can. Kim decides to trust Janeway over Tuvok...and takes a little too long to make up his mind, if you ask me. It's fun to find out that the Doctor's program includes the desire to publish papers. Kes' mental abilities seem to be increasing.
Is it really a good idea to keep Torres from having the authorization to eject the warp core? Perhaps Janeway is still in doubt from her behavior in "Prime Factors."
THOUGHT
I don't like this whole holo-novel idea. I've read that they're going to run through a series of stories as a sort of running sub-plot. Attention Star Trek writers: We don't care what happens in the holodeck! We don't want to watch a meaningless story (and a pretty silly one at that) while we could be on the bridge! I can only hope that the whole thing will just fade away in time.
[What the? Hey! Julia here. I was just in the middle of intense disrupter fire with a bunch of Klingons. Somehow this must have caused a rupture in the time-space continuum. Wow. How peaceful everything is here. What was I talking about so long ago in this distant past? The holo-novel thing? Oh, you poor primitives who had to deal with that Bad Idea of the Week. Don't worry, my ancestors, a few installments and it's history. In fact, everything here is history! What's that? Hey! There's some jerk here who's making smart-alec comments about taking a seat! Oh yeah! I remember you! You wanna step outside? Hey! The temporal disruption is opening again. Yo, jerk! Let's hear you say that to the Klingons!]
[Hey! I can't believe I'm back here again! It must be...Q! What are we doing here? This is getting to feel like "Parallax."
Oh, that's right, I was busy back then trashing the holonovel premise. Hmm. Seems I was a mite bit hasty there, since at the end of season three the holonovel was turned into a sort of interesting thing with "Worst Case Scenario." And I've kind of gotten into the whole thing now. So, I guess I sort of maybe have to take back some of the things I said back then (now?) about the holonovel.
But I hate the whole governess thing!
And, uh, Q? Can we go find that guy again so you can turn him into a toad-shaped chair?]
The idea of free-floating neural energy brings up an interesting question: What, exactly is the difference between free-floating neural energy and a ghost?
Answer: Technobabble!
Seriously, we've had the idea of extractable neural energy for some time now, but I'd still like a better explanation of how come Chakotay isn't just eaten right away, and how come he can just float around like that. Is he in some sort of neural energy baggy, being kept Ziplock-fresh until the aliens need a snack?
SPECTACLE
The dark matter nebula looks nicely uninviting, and that's one serious prat-fall everyone does when Tuvok stunned the bridge crew.
DICTION
Two good lines from the Doctor:
"You might have asked before adorning my Sickbay with animal remains." -- Doc to Torres about the medicine wheel.
"I'm just pointing out that you're acting a little paranoid. In fact, one could say that you're acting a little too paranoid." -- Doc to Neelix, who doesn't get the joke.
SONG
The real musicians turn in another fine score.
And now for the baggage...
STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (OR I, ANYWAY) LOVE
Alien take-over stories. I mean, it's not like you get to see that kind of thing on ER, is it?
STAR TREK ELEMENTS WE (I OR, ANYWAY) HATE
The holo-novel.
Well, that's one jerk taken care of and one more review in the can!
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