When I started this episode I assumed it was a Halloween episode, but no, it came out in mid-May which seems odd. I was totally prepared to hate this episode, it is about as tropy as an episode can be, but it still managed to be interesting. I like the idea of the unreliable narrator helping the story along. We do get confirmation at the end that the story is essentially true even if it suffers a bit in the telling. Probably my all time favorite Neelix episode and I guess it helps that he is the narrator. From that perspective he is more interesting because he sees himself as incompetent in some ways (clearly true) which the writers are too terrified to have any of the other characters want to deal with.
We open with a creeped out Neelix turning off the lights in the mess hall and being startled by Seven as she enters. On the bridge they are preparing for a ship wide shut down, but we aren't told why. Neelix gets the job of entertaining the Borg kids who are awoken from their regeneration by the shutdown. He decides to entertain them with a story told around a lantern. The Borg kids are convinced deck 12 has a ghost so his job is pretty easy. He starts by telling them about how a few weeks earlier they were gathering deuterium in a nebula when something discharged energy into the ship forcing them to flee. Systems started having problems around the ship but it all seemed unrelated. It starts with replicator problems but soon the sensors stop working and they start flying in circles. Then they lose all helm control and why Tom tries to shut down the warp core he is hit in the face with a nasty plasma discharge.
Chakotay heads to engineering to find out whats going on and is almost killed in the turbolift. Torres is already on it, but every lead they get turns out to be false. It keeps getting more serious as Seven is almost killed by toxic gasses showing up in astrometrics. Eventually they figure out there is something alive in the ship and these things aren't accidents. But by then they have been forced off the bridge and there are many injuries. Janeway figures out a way to talk to it and it shows her that it wants to go back to the nebula but she can't help it so it threatens to destroy the ship and everyone by Janeway flees in the escape pods. It almost kills her trying to force her to help, but eventually gives in and lets her get the crew back and they flew to the nebula. This is where they are now and the cargobay shakes as the creature leaves the ship. The lights come back on and we conclude the episode.
Review: My summary skipped the nearly constant interjections by the kids, but honestly those are what really help make this a fun episode. On its face it is kinda boring, but the way it is told makes it decently above average. Also I didn't hate Neelix terribly in it which is something.
7 out of 10
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