I am once again on the road so yeah, this write up may be a bit shorter than normal. I admit I find the idea of a race that has evolved so that no other race can remember them more than a few hours is silly, but it is also an interesting premise to explore. This episode also makes it a bit deeper by having the story be about falling in love with someone you can't remember and them coming back and trying to convince you that you are in love with them. I liked the twist in the end where she loses her memory and Chakotay tries to get her to love him again but she can't understand how she would have ever done that in the first place.
We open with the ship being hit with weapons fire from an invisible ship, it seems two invisible ships are fighting. One explodes and the other is briefly visible before cloaking again. They get a hail, voice only, and the female voice asks for Chakotay to help her. They can't get a lock to beam her over and the ship is dangerously unstable so of course they decide to beam over. Chakotay finds the woman, whose name we later learn is Kellin, trapped under debris but he is able to rescue her and beam them both to sickbay. She doesn't show up on scanners but the Doctor is able to treat her anyway. As soon as she is alone with Chakotay she tells him she was on Voyager a few weeks earlier but her species has special pheromones or something that make it impossible to remember them and she implanted a computer virus that erased the records of her being there. She tells him she was there to track down a fugitive and worked with Chakotay to do so. And they fell in love with each other.
Chakotay isn't sure how to take this and spends some time getting her back story and making things line up before he believes her, but he eventually does. And lucky too, just then they are attacked by her people. She explains they are a closed society and no one is ever allowed to leave. And she wants to and has asked for asylum. If she is ever caught they will erase her memories of the outside and take her back. Kellin helps them target her people ships and after one blast they flee. She and Chakotay have dinner in his quarters and talk about their relationship which ends with them kissing.
The next day though she is getting paranoid. Her people use cloaking devices in such cases and she is sure she is being followed when she finds a broken vase in her room. She calls for Chakotay and sure enough, a tracer (the people who do the job she used to have) appears in her room and hits her with the memory erase beam before Chakotay can stop him. She loses her memories slowly and makes Chakotay promise to tell her about them falling in love. But after her memories are gone it is like she is a different person. She can't understand why she would ever want to leave her people and refuses to get involved with Chakotay again. She leaves with the tracer after he implants a virus again to remove all trace of the two of them. To save his memories we end with Chakotay taking written notes and getting advice on love from one of the worst people he could get it from, Neelix.
Review: I have mixed feelings about this episode. I do like that the twist didn't turn out to be that she was just a spy or something and as rough as it was for Chakotay, having her decide to leave on her own in the end made it a more compelling story.
6 out of 10
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