CATHEXIS
Episode 13

 

SUMMARY: An encounter with a strange nebula leaves Chakotay brain-dead and the crew battling an alien force that takes over their minds. Janeway is enjoying a new holodeck program, a gothic holonovel set in Victorian England in which she plays the role of a newly-appointed governess to the two small children of recently widowed aristocrat Lord Burleigh. She encounters the holographic characters of the housekeeper Mrs Templeton who resents her presence, and she meets the mysteriously troubled Lord Burleigh. She is interrupted when she is urgently called to Sickbay. Janeway comes into the gothic mansion from the storm, shown the way by Mrs Templeton, Janeway with the portrait of the dead Lady Burleigh behind her, she meets the mysterious but compellingly handsome aristocrat When Chakotay and Tuvok return from an away mission, Janeway is shocked to discover Chakotay is apparently brain-dead and Tuvok is injured. After being treated for his injuries, Tuvok explains that their shuttlecraft was attacked by an unidentified ship which emerged from a dark matter nebula. The Doctor explains that the attacker has somehow drained all the bio-neural energy from Chakotay's brain. The prognosis looks grim, but Torres places a Native American medicine wheel near Chakotay's bed, in the hope that it will help her friend "find his way home" from his illness. Chakotay apparently brain-dead, and Torres placing stones on the medicine wheel Janeway orders Voyager to head back to the nebula to investigate, but before they reach it, the ship changes course. The navigational computer implicates Paris, but he denies making the course change. A short time later, Torres initiates a warp core shutdown but, like Paris, she cannot remember doing so. When the Doctor examines the pair, he discovers that a mysterious brainwave pattern was superimposed on them during the tampering incidents, which could mean that an alien entity momentarily seized control of their minds. As a precaution against this happening to more senior officers, Janeway transfers the ship's command codes to a non-organic source - the Doctor. When Kes reports that she has been "sensing" an alien presence on the ship, Tuvok suggests that he perform a mind-meld with her to help her focus her telepathic abilities. But shortly afterwards, the two are found unconscious in a turbolift en route to carry out the mind-meld. The attack on Kes resulted from an energy discharge similar to the one that hit the shuttlecraft, according to Tuvok. Left: The mysterious brainwave pattern displayed on a Sickbay monitor. Right: Kes and Tuvok are found in a turbolift by Kim and Durst A short time later, someone disables the Doctor's program. With him inactive, the command codes revert to Janeway, who decides to divide them between herself and Tuvok. The unseen force tries to take over Janeway, but the crew incapacitates her. It jumps to Kim, and then Lieutenant Pete Durst, before Tuvok finally stuns everyone on the bridge with a phaser set on wide-beam. as the alien takes over control of Janeway and makes her start to draw her phaser, Tuvok orders someone to stun her (which they do), and later Tuvok is compelled to stun everyone left standing A series of clues turns up in quick succession, all of which imply that Tuvok has been lying to the crew. There was no ship in the nebula, and Kes' injury now appears to have been the result of a Vulcan nerve pinch (Paris incorrectly calls it "neck pinch"). Janeway interrogates Tuvok who realises he is under increasing suspicion. Suddenly Tuvok pulls out a phaser and seizes control of the Bridge. He steers it into the dark matter nebula, where he reveals that the Komar - others of his kind - await the ship so that they can tap the crew's neural energy for years to come. But before they can get there, something takes over Torres' mind and makes her eject the ship's warp core. Since they now know that Tuvok, under the control of the Komar, has been trying to bring them all to the nebula all along, who has been acting against him, trying to keep Voyager out? All signs seem to indicate that it is Chakotay. the Komar entity leaves Tuvok's body and disappears through the bulkhead Janeway temporarily distracts the alien controlling Tuvok by initiating a shipwide magneton scan. Tuvok slumps to the ground and the lifeform leaves his body to join the others of its kind in the nebula. Voyager's crew needs to leave the area, but since the possessed Tuvok plotted the course in, they do not know the way. Down in Sickbay, Neelix is suddenly compelled to re-arrange the markers on Chakotay's medicine wheel. When he is fully himself again, he reports this to Janeway who realises that it is a message from her First Officer who cannot be brain-dead after all. He has given them this makeshift map showing them the correct course. They escape from the hostile Komar's nebula just in time. Left: The medicine wheel with a star chart superimposed on it, as seen on the Bridge's main viewscreen. Right: Voyager flees the nebula Later, the Doctor re-integrates Chakotay's displaced neural energy with his body (using a technique pioneered by the famous historical Starfleet figure Dr Leonard McCoy). Chakotay revives at last. Janeway and the crew are delighted to have him back, while he is pleased that he was able to help protect them despite his disembodied condition.      HOLO-BURLEIGH TO JANEWAY: "One thing above all I must demand: you are never, under any circumstances, to go onto the fourth floor. Is that clear?    JANEWAY: If you're right, and there is an alien here, it seems intent on preventing us from going back to the nebula. What's more, it seems to have the ability to jump from person to person. If that's true, it could be in any one of us, controlling our actions without us realising it.