113 – The Fight

Grade: D

Summary

Chakotay almost goes nuts, trying to communicate with some unseen and misunderstood aliens, while the ship seems to be stuck in “chaotic space.” His condition continues to deteriorate, and he wants the Doctor to sever the link he has with the aliens who live in this part of space. Oh, and Chakotay was a boxer in the academy. Say what?

Commentary

Ugh. This was boring and confusing. Whenever I thought I had this thing figured out, it threw some other random wackiness into it, just to throw me off. The really crazy thing is, though, by the time it was over, it turns out that I had it all figured out all along after all.

I hated it that the episode started out in flashback form. Actually, I have never liked that style, but sometimes it makes sense to do things that way. In this episode, it seems to have only been done for effect – as if the writers don’t think we’ll be interested in the story without some gimmick. It turns out that the story is really tedious.

There’s the standard Vision Quest, and the requisite phony Native American music and then there’s lots of symbolism for the sake of confusing the viewer. In addition to that, there’s lots of overacting and nonsense. This is an episode you should skip. There literally is nothing to see here.

Of Note

In this episode, Chakotay says that Boothby trained him in boxing while he was at the Academy. Yet in “In the Flesh”, Chakotay doesn’t know Boothby. Maybe he knew that wasn’t the real Boothby, but there’s no evidence of that. I think what really happened is that they’re making things up as they go.

This is also the very first (and probably only) time that we hear of Chakotay’s interest and prowess in boxing.