This episode felt pretty strongly like a TNG episode, but not like it was a copy of one. Voyager is particularly in love with having the alien observers be invisible to the crew so in that way it does feel pretty Voyager. I liked the subtle hints that something is wrong with the captain in the form of her hair not being as perfectly put together as usual. By the time Seven got to see the captain with her special borg vision it wasn't a surprise at all that the aliens had inserted probes into her head. It was nicely TOS for the resolution of the episode to be Janeway threatening to destroy the ship by flying into a pulsar than to technobabble their way out of the crisis.
We open with Torres reprimanding Seven for messing with the ships systems without asking permission. Seven agrees to ask next time. Cut to Paris in sickbay begging off to "turn in a report" but actually to go make out with Torres in a Jefferies tube. Ominously we see them from an unknown perspective which seems to be scanning their physiology. Next the captain is getting a massage from the Doctor who is lecturing her about not getting enough rest and such. She is happily interrupted by a call to the bridge for binary pulsars. Paris and Torres are back at it in engineering but get caught by Tuvok. They head to briefing and are called out by a still clearly agitated Janeway. Chakotay heads to his quarters and finds his hair falling out and his hands shaking as we finally get to the actual plot.
It seems Chakotay has aged rapidly due to something about his DNA. The Doctor and Torres work on a super scan of it and find a tiny alien marker on his DNA which is giving off power. Torres collapses when her DNA is damaged and the Doctor's program is attacked turning off his mobile emitter. Paris can't figure out what happened in sickbay but the Doctor somehow manages to talk to Seven. He gets her to come to the holodeck where he modifies her vision so she can see the invisible aliens. She finds the crew have lots of equipment attached to them and there are aliens wandering all over the place messing with people.
Not shockingly then it seems Janeway has a bunch of stuff stuck into her head which is why she has been so stressed. Seven tries to modify the power system to destroy the implants but Tuvok stops her so she is forced to shoot one of the aliens to bring it into our reality or whatever. For some reason she only shoots one though. They take the alien to the captain who refuses to be part of their science experiment. The aliens kill a crewmember when they refuse to go along so Janeway sets a course into the pulsars that only she can change. The aliens flee and they barely escape between the stars.
Review: A very creepy episode that felt like it had a bit more filler than I would like. Not terrible but a bit bland on the execution of a genuinely creepy and interesting idea.
4 out of 10
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