Summary[]
As Voyager is about to enter Bothan space, where starships are rumored to have disappeared, Janeway takes a break and runs her holonovel. Back on duty, she suddenly encounters objects and characters from the novel on the ship. Kes seems to share her hallucinations. While the Doctor runs further examinations on Janeway, Chakotay negotiates a possible right of passage with a Bothan official. But the Bothans appear with more ships and surround Voyager. In the following, more and more crew members are incapacitated by hallucinations induced by a psionic field created by the Bothans, leaving only the Doctor and Kes. In engineering, Kes works on completing the generation of a warp pulse that B'Elanna initiated to disrupt the psionic field. But "Neelix" appears and tries to stop her. Kes manages to reflect the psionic energy and thereby disables the Bothan posing as Neelix. Janeway threatens to lock up the Bothan, but he disappears without trace.
Errors and Explanations[]
Internet Movie Database[]
Plot holes[]
- When Voyager is attacked by the Bothan, Janeway calls for Kes to join her on the bridge, and Kes acknowledges with "Right away." However, Kes never shows up; in fact, she never even leaves sickbay, as can be seen later. Although Janeway was influenced by the Bothan at the time of her call, she was not yet fully delusional, and nothing indicates that her communication with Kes was not genuine. This could be a symptom of the Bothan's influence.
- At the end of the show Captain Janeway says that they cannot be certain that the alien was ever even on the ship. Although people were hallucinating, and while under that influence they could be feed incorrect information from the ships computer as part of that hallucination, telepathy does not affect technology so once everyone was no longer under the influence of the alien a quick check of the ships internal sensor logs should have shown if there had been an alien intruder or not. The Bothan may have been able to alter the logs to remove any proof.
- Scene 1: At sickbay, Janeway saw the girl from holonovel standing in front of her. She asked doctor to check if he can see anyone around. The doctor looked around, but could not see anyone else.
Scene 2: Towards the end of the show, when Kes was at the engineering, attacked by hallucinated Neelix. The doctor reminded Kes to look at the hallucinated Neelix, "look at him, remember the mirror?".
How was the doctor not able to see Janeway's hallucination right in the sickbay, but was able to see Kes' hallucination via Engineering monitor? Perhaps the camera providing footage for the monitor was also under the Bothan's influence, but the EMH was immune?
Continuity[]
- Near the end, when Janeway gets in the turbolift to go from the Bridge to Engineering, she looks over and sees Chakotay in the catatonic state, but when the turbolift doors open, she is the only one inside. While the figure of Mark is understood to be her hallucination, there's no indication Chakotay was, as well. There is no indication that it wasn't!
Nit Central[]
- The Mad Bothan on Friday, May 31, 2002 - 1:35 pm: Noticing that Janeway is somewhat stressed, the doctor said that he checked Starfleet regulations and found out that the doctor of the ship has the authority to relieve her from duty, and told her to relax in the holodeck. Wouldn't he be programmed with these regulations anyway, considering they're medical related? He shouldn't need to do any checking! He may not have had any reason to check them before now.
- Anonymous on Tuesday, September 17, 2002 - 4:49 pm: Out of all the options Janeway mentioned to stop the bad guy at the end, she misses one: Execute him. He assaulted her crew, and ship, what he did to their minds was nothing short of a type of rape. He was a threat to any other ship that was in that region of space. If she had decided to execute, she could have said self defence and she would be technically correct, so why doesn't she even mention that option. Two problems with that suggestion; 1) The rest of the Bothan civilisation would have attacked Voyager in order to avenge the death. 2) Janeway would have to submit to court martial when Voyager returned home.
| Voyager Season 2 |
| Projections I Elogium I Twisted I The 37's I Initiations I Non Sequitur I Parturition I Persistence of Vision I Tattoo I Cold Fire I Maneuvers I Resistance I Prototype I Death Wish I Alliances IThreshold I Meld I Dreadnought I Lifesigns I Investigations I Deadlock I Innocence I The Thaw I Tuvix I Resolutions I Basics Part 1 |