81 – Waking Moments

Grade: C

Summary

Everyone seems to be having nightmares in which they see a strange-looking pointy-headed alien. The crew starts to realize that this can’t be a coincidence because everyone ends their nightmares seeing this same alien. What’s worse, a few of the crew members stay asleep and despite the doctor’s efforts, he can’t wake them up. Eventually, everyone will be like that, unless they can find a way to stop these aliens.

Commentary

This isn’t such a bad episode. I give it high points for creativity, seeing how these aliens are very different from the average alien we’ve met so far during Voyager’s trip back to Earth. These aliens are nocturnal – they’re active in the dreams of their victims.

But that’s as far as the interesting parts go. It doesn’t make much sense to me that these aliens would give everyone the same dream that reveals their plan and their takeover of the ship. Wouldn’t that only serve to make their victims more determined to find a way to fight them? It would make more sense if they could make them dream about something meaningless.

The writing is actually pretty bad in this episode. There are several really cheesy one-liners said by many of the crew, but especially Janeway. One line that was particularly bad was when the evil alien said “now it is you who will be destroyed” or something like that.

At the end, Chakotay insists on going down to the planet, but in order to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep, the Doctor has to give him a bunch of injections. I’m wondering why Chakotay didn’t send the Doctor down to the planet instead. After all, he wouldn’t need any sleep. Hmm.

It’s not terribly memorable, doesn’t make much sense, and though there are some very nice images and concepts, it really amounts to a big dud.

Of Note

I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but it is kinda funny that Harry Kim’s nightmare is of passionate kissing with Seven of Nine. Oh how horrible!

In one scene, the Doctor mentions he needs to request a larger sickbay. I’m sure Starfleet will get right on that as soon as Voyager makes it to the nearest starbase.