When the episode opened with Tom getting in trouble with Chakotay I was kinda annoyed that we were going down this path again. But even before revealing how much of a fake out that was they have Chakotay show that he has gained trust in Tom by letting him go do the job he wants to do repairing the alien vessel. This just proves what I have always said which is that I think Chakotay would be the best boss on earth or anywhere in space. Not so sure about Janeway sometimes, but Chakotay is that perfect combination of patient, fair, but also willing to do what needs to be done discipline wise. I also enjoyed the idea of a body stealing alien leaving a wake of people in the wrong bodies behind, not something I have seen before.
We open with the Doctor interrupting Paris at work on his holocar in the holodeck. He is there to remind Paris that he is supposed to be training in sickbay. Tom gets called away to the bridge though, they have encountered a ship coming out of a spacial distortion that Paris recognizes as using a coaxial warp drive. He is able to stabilize the warp field and save the ship. Paris gets called to Chakotay's office and apologizes for not going to sickbay, he is just sick of the Doctor and requests the job of fixing the coaxial ship. Chakotay lets him do it recognizing that Paris is really making an effort to improve himself. Paris and Steth, the alien, hit it off and get working on a plan to fix the ship, but there is something wrong with Steth, he keeps changing shape but hides it from Paris. That night Paris misses another date with Torres and she is sick of it. He has apparently been skipping out on her for the holodeck and hasn't even told her what program.
Paris has an idea about making a carburetor to fix the problem with Steth's ship and it works. Steth offers to take Paris with him, but Paris likes his life too much. So Steth knocks him out, switches bodies or something and then sets the coaxial ship to fly off after he beams back to Voyager. And it works out about as well as you would expect. People don't suspect a body swap since that isn't something you would think of, but everyone notices immediately that something is wrong. In the ship Tom is immediately confronted by aliens who demand he give one of them back her body. Steth in Tom's body is eventually confronted by the Captain who calls security. Tom is taken to the brig just as the coaxial ship appears with both Tom and the lady whose body Tom now has and they explain the body swap. But the captain doesn't by it and says she is going to sickbay but instead goes to a shuttle bay were she shoots Seven before stealing a shuttle that Tom had modified with a coaxial drive. Actual Tom pursues and manages to take out the coaxial carburetor and gets his body back.
Review: A really fun episode that explores the body swapping alien trope in a way I haven't seen before. Especially nice to see how briefly he is able to keep up the illusion of actually being Tom.
7 out of 10
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