star trek voyager the fight

The Fight (episode)

• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 2 Log entries
• 3 Memorable quotes
• 4.1 Story development
• 4.2 Cast and characters
• 4.3 Production, music, and effects
• 4.4 Continuity and trivia
• 4.5 Reception
• 4.6 Video and DVD releases
• 5.1 Starring
• 5.2 Also starring
• 5.3 Guest stars
• 5.4 Special guest star
• 5.5 Co-star
• 5.6 Uncredited co-stars
• 5.7 Stand-ins
• 5.8 References
• 5.9 External links

Summary [ ]

On USS Voyager , Chakotay is lying on a biobed in sickbay , shouting and thrashing about. Also present are The Doctor , Seven of Nine , and Tom Paris . Paris asks The Doctor to give Chakotay something for the pain, but The Doctor refuses, saying that they could lose the chance to make contact with the aliens . Suddenly, the ship shudders.

Captain Janeway calls from the bridge , asking if they've made any progress. The Doctor replies that they haven't. B'Elanna Torres tells Janeway that if Voyager doesn't find a way out of chaotic space soon, they are all going to die here.

Act One [ ]

Chakotay calls The Doctor. He's tired, he wants to sleep. However, The Doctor again won't let him. If he loses consciousness, he could sever the link to the aliens who live in chaotic space , and who may know a way out. Chakotay doesn't want to talk to them, as he's afraid he may end up like his grandfather, a "crazy old man". The Doctor tells him the aliens are reconfiguring his neural pathways in an attempt to communicate with him. He makes Chakotay concentrate, and remember when he came into sickbay after he had been injured in a boxing simulation on the holodeck .

In a flashback, Chakotay is in a holodeck simulation of a boxing ring. Chakotay is in the ring, fighting a Terrellian . Boothby , who used to coach him as a cadet , is in his corner. At the end of the third round, Chakotay returns to his corner where he is chastised by Boothby for not allowing his opponent to land some punches and tire himself out, saying that boxing is as much about heart as technique. Round four begins, and Chakotay sees a disturbance forming in the corner of the ring, right before he is knocked out.

" How many? " " Three. " " Good guess. "

Chakotay wakes up in sickbay, where he argues with The Doctor over the merits of boxing, which The Doctor describes as "pointless violence". The Doctor nicknames him " The Maquis Mauler " to further his point. Chakotay complains of a headache , and tells The Doctor about the disturbance he saw before he was hit. The Doctor initially dismisses this as hallucinations, but further examination shows that the ganglia in Chakotay's visual cortex are highly active. The ship shudders, and Chakotay is called to the bridge as the doctor instructs him to return for further tests.

Chakotay arrives on the bridge, where a spatial phenomenon is interfering with the ship's sensors . Apparently, it shifts position every few minutes. Then the ship shudders again, and a distortion similar to the one seen by Chakotay in the boxing ring envelops Voyager . Seven of Nine calls Janeway to astrometrics , where she informs her that the Borg have been aware of this phenomenon for many years. It is called chaotic space, a zone where the laws of physics are in a constant state of flux. Changes in the gravitational coefficient cause shear forces along the hull , shields offering only temporary protection. Due to the shifting of the physical constants, sensors can't function. Janeway orders the sensors to be reconfigured.

Chakotay, while alone in his quarters , hears noises, such as Boothby shouting and the end of round bell. He sees a pair of boxing gloves on a chair, which disappear when he looks away. Tuvok calls him to the bridge. With the sensors useless, Voyager can't move safely. While Tuvok and Paris argue about what to do, Chakotay starts to hallucinate again. He hears crowd noises, and sees a pair of boxing gloves at the sensor station. Tuvok asks him if he is all right, at which Chakotay swings at Tuvok. Tuvok uses the Vulcan nerve pinch to render him unconscious.

Act Two [ ]

In sickbay, The Doctor has discovered that Chakotay's hallucinations are due to a genetic marker for sensory tremens , a cognitive disorder. Symptoms include auditory and visual hallucinations. The gene was suppressed before Chakotay was born, but now it has been activated, possibly due to chaotic space. The Doctor orders Chakotay to remain in sickbay, where Chakotay tells him his grandfather suffered from similar hallucinations, but he refused treatment.

Meanwhile on the bridge, Harry Kim has managed to reconfigure the sensors, and Voyager starts to move forward slowly. However, before the ship moves very far, a starship appears on sensors. The log from the damaged ship reveals that the captain and an engineer both suffered from hallucinations. The ship was trapped in chaotic space for almost a year before the hull was breached. Janeway notes that it is no coincidence that both the aliens and Chakotay suffered similar hallucinations. The dead captain's body is beamed over for an autopsy .

Scans of the alien's brain reveal that optical and auditory neurons have been partially stripped of their protein insulation, leading to hallucinations. The Doctor concludes that the gene responsible for producing protein insulation was shut down – something in chaotic space altered the DNA . The Doctor discovers that he can control the hallucinations using a neural suppressant.

Chakotay wants to go on a vision quest , to find out more about the hallucinations. The Doctor disapproves, but relents when Janeway gives the go ahead. In the vision quest, Chakotay sees a forest, and then his grandfather walking among the trees. He tells him to take his medicine, but his grandfather refuses. He goes in to a cave , where he hears boxing noises again. Suddenly, he is in a boxing ring, a strange ring that has only three sides.

When he awakens, he tells The Doctor that the aliens were watching him, trying to tell him something, but he's afraid to listen to them, afraid he'll lose his mind. The Doctor reassures him and a moment later Chakotay, apparently paraphrasing the Chaos entity , falteringly explains: "chaotic space intersects ours at the 18th dimensional gradient. Voyager entered through a trimetric fracture. We must escape by altering the warp field to a rentrillic trajectory ". However, Chakotay refuses to listen to "them" anymore as he doesn't want submit to cognitive impairment, as did his grandfather.

Act Three [ ]

The Doctor tells Janeway that Chakotay definitely made contact with the aliens, but Janeway says they need more information. She convinces Chakotay to try again. Chakotay is back in the ring with his opponent " Kid Chaos ", who has his back turned. Also there is Tuvok and a security detail, with phasers . Tuvok wants to fire on Kid Chaos, but Boothby warns Chakotay not to let him, that it won't work. Chakotay orders Tuvok to stand down. Then Chakotay is in the ring, dressed in boxing gear. Paris tries to stop the fight, citing the odds, and then Neelix enters the ring and leads Chakotay out. He says that Chakotay isn't ready for the fight.

Chakotay is then on the bridge, punching a punching bag, where Kim, Janeway, and B'Elanna Torres all try to stop his fighting. They all act as if he will not return, and he claims he is only doing it for them. Finally, The Doctor tries to scare him into not fighting by telling him the fight will cause him to lose his mind. Chakotay and his trainer, Neelix, run through engineering where Torres glares at them.

Chakotay is then back in the cave from the vision quest, where he sees his grandfather again. He tells him they'll get in trouble if they don't go home. His grandfather refuses. He says " this is a nice place to call home ". He tells Chakotay there is a lot of "them" out there, and that "they" are coming for Chakotay. When the sounds of the boxing ring return, Chakotay's grandfather hears them too. Then he's back in the ring. He tells Boothby he's afraid, before The Doctor steps into the ring, and says the fight has been canceled on medical grounds.

Chakotay comes out of the vision quest, which he was stuck in. He wants to get back in the ring, and accuses The Doctor of stopping the fight. He becomes hysterical, yelling for them to let him back in the ring. In order to stop him, The Doctor is forced to sedate him.

Act Four [ ]

On the bridge, Kim is trying to navigate the ship by dropping stationary beacons , but Voyager ends up going around in circles.

In astrometrics, Seven has found an isolinear frequency in the energy signature of chaotic space. It does not respond to any of the standard language decryption routines. The source is unknown, but Janeway recognizes the frequency as the nucleotide resonance frequency from an examination question she answered incorrectly during her time at Starfleet Academy . The signal was designed to activate DNA, and realigned Chakotay's molecular bonds.

Meanwhile, Chakotay is in an altered state of reality. He recognizes the captain, but is still angry at The Doctor for ending his fight and "ruining his career." Chakotay describes the alien he saw in his vision. However, he is thinking of them in terms of the prize fight. The Doctor explains that the holodeck simulation is still fresh in his memory, so it is the primary source of imagery for his hallucinations. Aliens that the sensors can't detect are inducing the hallucinations. Their only means to communicate with Voyager is by altering people's senses, as they did with the people on the damaged ship. In this case, the aliens tried a vague semi-telepathic way to communicate with Chakotay by activating his Sensory tremens gene which caused him to hallucinate and those hallucinations provided memories, images, and words for which the aliens could speak through.

Chakotay reminds Janeway that Voyager does not frequently avoid making first contact with newly-discovered lifeforms and hull pressure is increasing, so despite The Doctor's warning, Janeway tells The Doctor to send Chakotay "back in the ring".

Act Five [ ]

On the bridge, it is obvious that Voyager cannot survive for much longer inside chaotic space. Janeway orders The Doctor to begin. The Doctor fully activates the gene, and Chakotay is back in the ring. He tells Boothby he's worried, but Boothby reassures him and gives him advice. Chakotay removes his robe adorned with The Doctor's nickname, "The Maquis Mauler", and turns to Kid Chaos. Kid Chaos turns to face Chakotay. He has no face, just a starfield . The aliens speak using a montage of words said by the crew up to this point. They tell Chakotay they live in chaotic space, and that Voyager must escape by realigning its sensors.

Back in sickbay, Chakotay wants to stop, but The Doctor pushes him, until Chakotay starts to understand what the aliens want him to do. He runs to the bridge and pushes Kim out of the way. He has to make the modifications himself; he can't explain how to do it. He reroutes the deflector through the sensors, and then puts the deflector on line, at full amplitude. Kim says the sensors have found a course through chaotic space. Voyager flies out of chaotic space at full impulse . Janeway orders Paris to resume course for the Alpha Quadrant , before Chakotay collapses.

Janeway gives Chakotay a few days off, which he uses to get in some boxing practice on the holodeck.

Log entries [ ]

• " Chief medical officer's log, supplemental. Despite my efforts, Chakotay's condition continues to deteriorate. "

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Tuvok tells me you've got a mean left jab. " "Never spar with a Vulcan. "

" Begin round one. "

" He said his spirit was in pain, but that the wound must be honored. "

" It's not so bad... when you get used to it, they're not so bad. They're just a lot of talk. Sometimes I wish they were more quiet. I'm too tired [to come home]... this is a nice place to call home. "

" Pick 'em up, son. It's the fight you've been waiting for! "

" Victory, defeat, knockout, TKO, it's all beside the point. We know how it really ends: a crazy old man... "

" Your opponent wasn't firing on you with an energy weapon, was he? " " Just his gloves. "

" In this corner representing the Alpha Quadrant, Earth and Humanity, the challenger Chakotay! "

" You haven't had the time to train, you're not ready! If you fight now, you'll be destroyed! "

" Why are they after me? " " Because you have the gene! " " The crazy gene?! " " Yes, the 'crazy gene'. "

" Who am I to dispute logic? "

Background information [ ]

Story development [ ].

• This episode evolved from the first Star Trek story that Michael Taylor contributed after joining Star Trek: Voyager 's writing staff. Scriptwriter Joe Menosky recalled, " There was a guy living in the 21st century , and feeling himself becoming unhinged, because there are aliens trying to make contact. We were telling the story with Chakotay suffering a mental breakdown as a result of a first contact happening in our Voyager time. That was the story that Michael Taylor wrote. " The outline of the plot was overly thorough, however. " It was an extremely well-written document, " Menosky remarked. " I don't know if he actually put footnotes in it, but he might have, it was so detailed, and so intellectual. [Executive Producer] Rick Berman read the story, and he could not believe it. He just went off on, 'These goddamn people like Mike Taylor, you need a subscription to the 'Journal of the American Medical Association ' to understand his goddamn story.' Rick just threw it out. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 50)
• Subsequently, Executive Producer Brannon Braga replotted the story. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 50) According to Cinefantastique (Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 50), it was Chakotay actor Robert Beltran who posited the idea about his character boxing. However, Beltran himself explained that the idea was suggested to him by Kenneth Biller , Brannon Braga , and Joe Menosky, while all four were having dinner together. According to Beltran, the idea came up that evening after he, at their request, pitched them a few episode concepts that ultimately weren't developed. " Then they said, 'What about a boxing episode?' And I said, 'I like boxing, OK, let's do that. Just give me about two months heads up so I can get in really good shape, so I can look like a real boxer.' And they said 'Okay, we will do that.' But then one day I get a call saying they were doing the boxing episode the next week, " Beltran commented, with a laugh. [1] At about the same time as the idea of doing a boxing episode was conceived, Joe Menosky wrote the episode's script, which incorporated both that plot point as well as the concept of first contact requiring a mental breakdown. After filming the installment, it was discovered that the story was too short, so the sickbay frame story was added to the episode's narrative. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 50)

Cast and characters [ ]

• According to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (pp. 299-300), Robert Beltran requested several weeks' notice to prepare for this episode, so that he had time to work himself into good shape for the installment. Due to a fire earlier in the fifth season, however, Beltran was not allotted the three weeks' advance warning, only being notified the usual ten days before the outing entered production. The actor himself recalled, " It was an episode I really liked, but I didn't feel the bare-chested thing would be a smart thing to do because I was in good shape, but not boxing shape. Those guys are in incredible shape. I was working with former World Champ Carlos Palomino who I had seen box and was a great fan of, a Mexican fighter. His body and mine were a little different, " Beltran laughed. [2]
• In this episode, Ray Walston makes his last appearance as the recurring character Boothby .

Production, music, and effects [ ]

• The scenes showing the aliens communicating with Chakotay was shot much like the Orb experiences in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . ( Delta Quadrant , p. 300)
• The last day of production on this episode was 29 October 1998 . ( Star Trek Magazine  issue 132 , p. 53)
• The music for this episode makes use of some thematic, Chakotay-centric musical content from VOY : " Tattoo ". ( Delta Quadrant , p. 300)
• According to the book Delta Quadrant (p. 302), the vessel encountered by Voyager in chaotic space was designed to resemble a giant flea .
• The model used for the chaotic space hulk was later reused as both an unidentified craft at a Ledosian spaceport in the seventh season episode " Natural Law ", and (much more prominently) as two identical Romulan drone ships in three episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise .

Continuity and trivia [ ]

• For this episode alone, Chakotay has a new hairstyle, similar to that of an evil Chakotay hologram in " Living Witness ". ( Delta Quadrant , p. 300)
• Chakotay's boxing pseudonym, "The Maquis Mauler," was changed to "The Tattooed Terror" in the Season 6 episode " Tsunkatse ".
• During Chakotay's vision quest, his grandfather bears the tattoo of the ancient Rubber Tree People . He apparently took the mark late in life, after his son ( Kolopak ) returned from his expedition. Chakotay himself didn't take the mark until about the time he joined the Maquis.
• Ensign Paris, at the end of this episode, refers to Captain Janeway as "sir." The pilot episode " Caretaker " establishes that Janeway prefers to be called "captain," or "ma'am" in a crunch.
• This is the second of two Star Trek: Voyager episodes that feature the character of Boothby, the other being the earlier fifth season outing " In the Flesh ". In their unauthorized reference book Beyond the Final Frontier (p. 328), Mark Jones and Lance Parkin wonder whether this episode originated as a sequel to "In The Flesh", with chaotic space having once been fluidic space .
• As in TNG : " The First Duty " and VOY : " In the Flesh ", Boothby here uses the sentence " Good enough for me! "
• While inside chaotic space, Voyager deploys a stationary beacon . After three hours, Voyager re-encounters the beacon, in the same fashion that the USS Enterprise -D did while in the Nagilum 's void in TNG : " Where Silence Has Lease ".
• This is the second of two consecutive episodes to feature no scenes with the real Neelix but only an alternate version of him: the biomimetic copy of him in " Course: Oblivion " and the illusory version of him in Chakotay's mind in this episode.

Reception [ ]

• Joe Menosky ultimately found this episode to be very muddled but liked one specific sequence. " I'm confused when I watch it, so I can't imagine the audience not being confused, " Menosky admitted. " There is one thing that I am very proud of in this episode, and that is the actual first contact sequence. The result is truly hallucinogenic. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, pp. 50-51)
• In an interview published in the March, 1999 issue of Star Trek Magazine , Robert Beltran, when asked about if he had any favorite episodes, cited "The Fight" among several, noting that he had gotten to box. He stated that viewers saw Chakotay training to unwind, which was something new that was learned about the character. This interview was later reprinted in Star Trek: Voyager 25th Anniversary Special .

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 5.10, 4 October 1999
• As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also starring [ ]

• Robert Beltran as Chakotay
• Roxann Dawson as B'Elanna Torres
• Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
• Ethan Phillips as Neelix
• Robert Picardo as The Doctor
• Tim Russ as Tuvok
• Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
• Garrett Wang as Harry Kim

Guest stars [ ]

• Carlos Palomino as Alien Boxer
• Ned Romero as Grandfather

Special guest star [ ]

• Ray Walston as Boothby ( hologram and illusion )

Co-star [ ]

• Majel Barrett as Computer Voice

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• Elizabeth Carlisle as Voyager command officer
• Christine Delgado as Susan Nicoletti
• L.J. Dougherty as Sharr
• Sylvester Foster as MacAlister
• Caroline Gibson as Voyager operations officer
• Peter Harmyk as Thompson
• Alicia Lewis as Voyager sciences officer
• Michael Muñoz as alien corner man
• Arthur Murray as Voyager command officer
• Pablo Soriano as Voyager operations ensign
• Simon Stotler as Voyager operations ensign
• Alien captain (voice)
• Ring announcer (voice)

Stand-ins [ ]

• James Delano – fitting photo double for Ray Walston
• Sue Henley – stand-in for Kate Mulgrew and Michael Muñoz
• Pete Leinbach – stand-in for Robert Duncan McNeill
• Susan Lewis – stand-in for Roxann Dawson
• Brita Nowak – stand-in for Jeri Ryan
• Lemuel Perry – stand-in for Tim Russ
• J.R. Quinonez – stand-in and hand double for Robert Picardo
• Keith Rayve – stand-in for Robert Duncan McNeill and Ned Romero
• Joey Sakata – stand-in for Ethan Phillips
• Richard Sarstedt – stand-in for Robert Beltran
• Gene Smith – photo double for Ray Walston
• Pablo Soriano – hand double for Robert Beltran
• Simon Stotler – stand-in for Ray Walston
• Stuart Wong – stand-in for Garrett Wang and Carlos Palomino

References [ ]

A ; Alpha Quadrant ; arena ; asteroid field ; auditory nerve ; bear-baiting ; boxer ; boxing ; boxing ring ; career ; carotid artery ; centimeter ; cerebellum ; Chakotay's grandfather ; Chakotay Training Program 15-Beta ; challenger ; chaos entity ; chaotic space ; chaotic space hulk ; chronic traumatic encephalopathy ; " clean bill of health "; cognitive disorder ; corner man ; deflector dish ; Delta Quadrant ; Delta Quadrant Boxing Commission ; dementia puglistica ; desire ; dimensional gradient ; DNA ; dozen ; duet ; Earth ; edema ; elbow ; energy weapon ; exogenetics ; eye ; family doctor ; fear of losing control ; fear of the unknown ; Federation ; first contact ; frontal cortex ; ganglia ; gravitational coefficient ; graviton shear ; gul ; hairline fracture ; hallucination ; headache ; hearing ; heart ; hertz ; holodeck ; Human ; ion storm ; isolinear frequency ; Jones, Price ; kilo ; kilometer ; logic ; MacAlister ; manly ; Marquess of Queensberry Rules ; Mars ; microfracture ; Milky Way Galaxy ; nasal bone ; needle ; neural pathway ; nucleotide resonance frequency ; Orion III ; phenomenon ; poster ; prizefighter ; punch drunk ; purse ; quasar ; rope ; scar ; scouting report ; senior year ; sensory cortex ; sensory organ ; sensory tremens ; Sharr ; shear force ; spatial sinkhole ; star ; Starfleet Academy ; stationary beacon ; subspace flux ; Terrellian ; Terrellian boxer ; Thompson ; thread ; torsional shear ; trophy ; trunks ; Tulet ; underdog ; Vegas ; vision quest ; visual cortex

External links [ ]

• " The Fight " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " The Fight " at Wikipedia
• " The Fight " at the Internet Movie Database
• 1 USS Voyager (NCC-74656-A)
• 2 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Star Trek: Prodigy

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Star Trek: Voyager

“The Fight”

Air date: 3/24/1999 Teleplay by Joe Menosky Story by Michael Taylor Directed by Winrich Kolbe

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

"It's hard to follow them. They go to strange places." — Chakotay's grandfather, perfectly describing this story

Review Text

Nutshell: Weird and atmospheric, but what does it all mean?

The lights are on, but who's at home? I'm trying to figure out if this episode is really worth any more than the value of its strangeness. When it comes to execution, this is an episode that pushes the envelope. Just where does that envelope get pushed? I dunno—out there, somewhere. Very, very far out.

Voyager , alas, seems to be in a bit of a rut. I hope it gets out soon, because season five has been pretty solid until recently. "The Fight" is not an awful show, and it certainly won't be remembered as an episode that didn't try. But the episode, for all its enthusiasm for being different, left me very unsatisfied. It's a mess. The producers and director put so much energy into a show that's so unfocused. Clearly, if they'd put that kind of energy into a show that made sense, they'd have something here. But one thing is certain: I'm not on the same page as writers Menosky and Taylor, and I don't think it's for lack of trying.

Despite the routine tech stuff, I can actually swallow the basics of the plot. Chakotay is having a very weird day, but, then again, so is the entire Voyager crew. This is the sort of day that would warrant Janeway saying, once again, "Weird is part of the job."

Voyager ends up stuck (in an idea a bit too similar to the "subspace sandbar" in " Bride of Chaotica! "), this time in something known as "chaotic space," where the rules of physics simply do not apply. If the crew can't figure out how to escape very soon, Voyager will be destroyed (cue music of doom). About this time, Chakotay starts hallucinating. It turns out that a hereditary mental defect he has is being stimulated by aliens who live in chaotic space. They're inducing the hallucinations in an effort to communicate with him. Subsequently, Chakotay goes on a vision quest to figure out what these hallucinations mean.

It's this vision quest that gives me the most trouble in "The Fight." The episode is consumed with stylistics and atmosphere—which in itself is fine. But I was amazed at how ineffective this vision quest was in terms of revealing something intriguing about the situation or Chakotay's character. I'm sure there are people out there who will try to analyze every last detail in search of some sort of symbolism. Me—I don't buy a lot of it. The writers' intent here is simply not interesting enough to warrant so much supposed "symbolism." This is an episode in need of a psychologist. I'm not a psychologist; I'm a reviewer.

Of course, that's not to say I won't try. In the final analysis, what "The Fight" really comes down to is Chakotay's reluctant need to keep "fighting"—overcoming his fear in order to communicate with this alien presence. And no one said that everything has to be laid out for the viewer in concrete, absolute terms. The boxing metaphor is reasonable enough; the idea of Chakotay taking blows as the aliens talk to him has a pretty clear psychological intent.

But what about the rest of this mess? Chakotay's vision quest not only has boxing, but also Boothby. Why did this episode need Boothby? Apparently to give Ray Walston another Voyager appearance. And also to expand the character into something he's not—namely Burgess Meredith. (I liked it better when Boothby was framed in his groundskeeper role and a mentor to mainly Picard; now the door is open to stick him in any episode or holodeck setting that has to do with the old academy days, where apparently everyone in Starfleet knew him. Bah.)

Then there's Chakotay's grandfather (Ned Romero), the "crazy old man" whom the episode views as some sort of symbol of tradition that Chakotay struggles with.

And there's all the murky dialog with other characters in Chakotay's vision, where style, not substance, is the point.

Each of these elements in itself is okay, but the episode throws them all together in an over-baked stew that makes surprisingly little sense. It's excessive, and the story suffers as a result. I got the feeling that the creators were trying too hard to accomplish a goal that wasn't even remotely certain.

When Sisko has visions on DS9 , I get the feeling it means something, because such visions usually grow out of some significant story point or character history; it's a part of the character. That's perhaps the big problem with Chakotay having visions here: They don't reveal much about the character that we can really understand. Okay, so he knew Boothby back at the academy, and he was a boxer in his free time, and he has different opinions than his grandfather. None of this comes to fruition by the end of the episode, so I'm forced to ask: So what? Like with all too many Voyager concepts, these elements serve the needs of the tech plot first, and the character a distant second.

Coherence is a lost virtue. One needs to look no further than the opening minutes for a prime example: Why does the story begin as a flashback? There's no dramatic basis for it, no reason not to simply start the story in a normal, chronological manner. Unless the writers were trying to confuse us with weirdness (which given the rest of this episode is a distinct possibility), I'm not understanding at all the reason behind the flashback structure (or lack thereof).

What remains is execution. Winrich Kolbe is one of my favorite Trek directors, and he demonstrates here that he has a knack for the utterly weird. Unfortunately, he demonstrates this to a fault, pushing way too hard at times. In " Infinite Regress " earlier this season, David Livingston went pretty far into chaos in that show's final act, but he used technique in a way that still told the story. In "The Fight," Kolbe simply doesn't have enough story behind him, and it seems to me that he overcompensated as a result. Some of this is neither understandable nor relevant. Doc's role in Chakotay's vision is particularly hammy and strange without having much of a point.

The other problem is that the "chaos" feels a bit too staged. I was convinced in "Infinite Regress" that Seven was overburdened by voices, but here I was convinced I was watching actors trying to project urgency. Beltran and Picardo have several scenes together where they're yelling in terse phrases that are supposed to be frighteningly important and urgent, but it comes off too much as "acting." I appreciate seeing Beltran in a little bit less of a wooden role, but he never really convinced me that he was Chakotay on the verge of going nuts.

I'll give "The Fight" points for atmosphere and ambition, but I have serious problems with the story's lack of sensibility and tendency to resort to wretched excess. It's an episode like this that reveals Voyager 's biggest weaknesses—a series that tends to get caught up in mechanical sci-fi concepts that lack the human interest they need to be compelling.

All in all, this is mediocre Voyager . I was somewhat entertained by the visual ambition of "The Fight," but the underlying story simply did not engage me. At the end, we've faced and escaped another anomaly and logged another day at the office. Chakotay goes back into the holodeck to fight a few rounds. Nothing really wrong with that, but nothing interesting about it either.

Next week: SERENITY NOW!!! (Jason Alexander is an alien that appears to be a lot more serene than George Costanza on his best days.)

Previous episode: Course: Oblivion Next episode: Think Tank

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Comment Section

83 comments on this post.

It's an old cliched thing to say but what were they smoking?!?

How the heck did yo not get that Chakotay was afraid of going crazy like his grandfather? That that was the whole problem? They spelled it out in the dialog, for goodness sake. I am thinking that you spent too long trying to figuring out the weirdness of this episode, instead of making sense of what was literally there.

I liked this episode a lot. Good use of character, good SF premise about the difficulties of communication with a truly alien life-form. Losing your grip on reality is really terrifying, for sure. I think it was carried off pretty well considering what they were trying to visualize.

I agree. I enjoyed the episode for its focus on Chakotay, and the aliens who were just to different to communicate in the normal fashion. Nice concept, interesting execution.

At least the writers gave us a Chakotay story. Although, the inclusion of Boothby seemed like such a waste. Given all the mentoring he did, when did this guy actually tend to the gardens?

I liked this episode a lot. It really gave a good sense of disorientation. SO many aliens in voyager are just like humans from down the block that this was really different. Its a reminder that there are life forms so strange out there that we can't even communicate with them in a normal way. This episode broke new ground for voyager.

At first time watching it ten years ago I couldn't make much out of it. But I enjoyed it this time and the atmosphere is quite nice. I always love it when they stay on board. They should have made more use of this ship as a stage.

Acoushla Moya: "Computer, did you say something?" Computer: "Negative." hahahahahahaha A good, interesting, different episode, at least as far as the concept. The execution was execrable. More annoying, improbable, lazy 20th-century recreations. More of Acoushla Moya's buffalo spirits mystic bull (fast forward!), after quite a few episodes' merciful respite from it. Are people really gonna be that dumb four centuries hence as to still cling on to ancient deities and religious hokery-pokery? I despair. Interesting, however, how all this New Age-y meditative crap is featured prominently among quite a few species but you (thankfully!) see no Muslim with their ass in the air, or a Xian doing the "Jesus loves you" schtick, or a Jew wearing a kipah... - even a Buddhist banging on some gongs.

Except for the better acting (haha) this episode was straight DS9--so I'm shocked you didn't love it.

I can't understand what anyone could possibly see in this episode. Isn't it possible to convey difference in a slightly less stochastic manner? Contact with the wormhole aliens in DS9 was done so much better than this.

It would be a lot easier to take the concept of "chaotic space" seriously if they hadn't done that stupid "Bride of Chaotica!" thing, and only a few episodes back. Couldn't they have called it something else, like maybe "Weird-ass Space"? It was nice to have a Chuckles-centric story, but his interest in boxing seems somewhat at variance with his purported "peaceful" personality. I didn't care much for the story, but I was impressed with the direction, particularly in the scenes in which they used snippets of characters' previously spoken dialogue to construct what the Weird-ass Space aliens were trying to communicate. The least believable aspect of the episode was the idea that anyone could be in a boxing ring with Neelix and not use the opportunity to show him the consequences of being the most annoying character in any incarnation of Star Trek.

About the boxing scene: I thought Terellians had four arms? It says so at Memory Alpha so it must be true...

Ow! He hit me! (closing scene) Voyager Enters the Twilight Zone Voyager Attempts to do The Prophets (badly) Take your pick. I don't know. I don't get it. Weird episode. EPIC technobabble to get them out of it. Chaotic space? The laws of physics in a state of flux? (LOL!!) This isn't Sci-Fi; it's Fantasy. Poor quality Fantasy. If you didn't get it already I didn't like it much. The episode wasn't terrible per se, it was just too weird to take seriously. Like the episode before it, it tried to do something different (people have differing opinions on "Oblivion".. I sort of liked it) but this time it just had this feeling of being a fish wayyyy out of water. As an aside, I share the concern about Boothby.* He's a groundskeeper not a boxing coach and I don't see where he fit in this episode. This guy is special and when he's not used for special moments it ruins his special-ness. I hope as I watch the series that he doesn't end up Voyager's version of Vic Fontaine (who I got sick to the back teeth of the sight of) At least it gave Chakotay something to do for the first time in 2 years. * I know I'm talking a lot like it's still running. Bad habit from watching it as if it is, right down to watching it in parallel with DS9 S7. I can wish things still can't I? :)

Let's see, again we take established character traits and let them blossom amidst a well painted background of technically unimportant plotting, making the character work all the more focused. This is Chakotay's turn and it's pretty good. Not great (not Counterpoint or Gravity) but not as mediocre as The Disease. This season is like listening to the slow movement of a symphony; each instrument states its version of the theme in its particular way while the orchestra swells behind. As for the talking heads bit that reminds one of the Prophets--this is actually a lot more interesting--each of the lines is an actual piece of dialogue from the episode, a memory of Chakotay's worked into a stream of consciousness. Very cool. 2.5 stars

Jammer, in regards to your comparison with Sisko, I found the exact opposite to be true : DS9 hid behind false character moments (like Sisko's relation to the people in his past/future) as a means to disguise the visions' true purpose, that being to drive a plot which profiteered on backstory and propound a subversive philosophy.

Another missed opportunity for Voyager. The idea of alien contact driving someone to the brink of madness is a terrific concept. The missed opportunity was in failing to provide relevant social commentary on people with mental disorders and how society perceives them.

I quit watching VOY somewhere in season 4 and have been getting caught up on everything I missed. So far, I have been really impressed with the high quality of season 5, but "The Fight" left me pretty cold. I didn't think this was a *horrible* episode by any means, and I agree that visually it's an intersting show, but something's missing here. I'm always glad to see Chakotay in a more prominent role, but this felt like a wasted opportunity somehow. Loved how the aliens were portrayed as totally bizarre and out of the human experience, but this one just left more wanting more somehow. More character insight into Chakotay, more on the aliens. Like I was saying, not a dreadful episode, just not nearly as good as it could have been. So far, this is my least favorite episode of the season.

Watching the episodes in production order makes the similarity to "Bride of Chaotica!" (filmed immediately before this one) even more distracting. Two episodes where the focus should have been on the characters and the visuals but instead spent too much time technobabbling to get us there. I think the actors and director did their best with the material, but when Joe Menosky himself says he gets confused watching the episode, you may as well give up trying to understand it. Still, I surprisingly don't hate it as much now as I did on first viewing.

This was a great episode, great characterisation, splendid description of the fear of going crazy. I enjoyed this, it was deep.

Jo Jo Meastro

For a episode that was designed for offering something different, it was suprisingly extremely dull and un-effective. Chakotays' character seems as much of a dead end as Harrys and I can't help but feel sorry for both actors, if I was them I'd demand the writers either kill my character off or at least give fairer treatment! Chakotays' random sudden intrest in boxing felt lame and a lazy device soley to benefit the bad plot. It's episodes like this that really kill any enthusiasm I have for Voyager, thanks for that writing staff! The only marginally cool moment in the whole show was the way the aliens finally communicated but by that point I was nearly put to asleep! A half star for the worst episode since Demon...

I agree with JoJo. this was totally boring. I cant stand "vision" episodes of Star Trek. most of them bore me. I watch ST for time paradox, mysteries, wormholes and other cool phenomena. but they could have done a lot more with the chaotic space. when the doctor and janeway dont understand the technobabble, then how are we supposed to understand it? i couldnt wait until this episode was over. one of the few in the entire series. Demon was much better. 1/2 star

This is definitely at least a 3 star episode Jammer. Did you watch the same show?

I spent the entire episode wondering why they'd given Chakotay the same transvestite haircut as Low Rimmer... Not a big fan of the episode, partly due to the feeling that it was a Darmok knock-off, and partly since the whole mysticism thing got really old seasons earlier.

Yeah, this one was sort of character dev.... Zzzzz.... just a shame that it had such magic-babble visions tha... Zzzzz.... chaotic space, chaotic episode, loosing my min... Zzzzzzz

Good episode, and underrated. Excellent directing and stellar performance by Beltran. The David Lynch episode of VOY. 3 stars from me.

In my opinion, the show had a good premise and poor execution. I like the idea of Chakotay confronting his fear of mental illness. (As an aside, how impressive that a treatment could turn off a single gene and prevent mental illness, presumably without having other unintended consequences.) I like the idea of showing the potential value of being insane by other people's standards. Here, the value is that the aliens could communicate with Chakotay and save Voyager in the process. (Usually, the "value" of insanity is portrayed as enhanced creativity or productivity.) I did not like boxing and Boothby as mediums for conveying Chakotay's struggle. Why couldn't the struggle have been portrayed solely through Chakotay's flashbacks of his grandfather? Or perhaps flashbacks of other times in Chakotay's life when he was concerned about being vulnerable to mental illness. I couldn't wait for this episode to be over, which is too bad. More could have been said or implied about the nature of mental illness and what constitutes lucidity.

I just watched this episode recently and had the recurring thought - Guest Starring: Ray Price as Boothby as Burgess Meredith as Mickey.

I guess the episode is ok. I mean, the direction is fun, and I think they captured the fear Chakotay felt well enough. The imagery worked decently, which is always a key part of these sorts of "Journey to the Center of the Mind" plots. The idea that the threat they were facing was actually just an alien trying to contact them is certainly better than the hard-headed alien of the week trope that we're used to, and in fact is very reminiscent of TNG's Night Terrors (which works as a comparison in multiple ways; it too is a mostly forgettable plot and mostly forgettable episode with some nice imagery). As for why this episode is merely ok, I have two major quibbles: 1) This is season 5, and we just now find out Chakotay both is a fan of boxing AND has a strong fear of going insane due to a hereditary disease? Neither of these was ever brought up before (and I assume the insane part doesn't get brought up again, although I guess the boxing one gets to recur in order to show The Rock)? Did he look even more uncomfortable than the rest of the crew whenever Voyager had one of its mind screw episodes? Shouldn't that have factored in with his brainwashing episode in Nemesis? Did he ever bring up boxing when he was going on about being a pacifist warrior? Nope, it just springs up out of the blue. I guess it's hard to say this episode should be abandoned just because it's too late, but this definitely would have been a better episode in the second season, and if it would have impacted Chakotay's character in more subtly ways. 2) The plot feels like something that would be analyzed in middle school. Hey kids, today we're going to talk about character development and plot! When you write a story, your character should learn something about himself, and face a challenge to overcome an obstacle that relates to that trait he learned about himself. So what do we have here? Chakotay realizes that he feels a great fear of mental illness due to this hereditary disease. Yet his obstacle is that he must risk mental illness in order to save his ship. And we learn this through the metaphor of boxing, where you have to be willing to take some hits. Let's make it even more obvious by having the trainer say boxing is all about what's in your heart. Thus, we know it's a matter of willpower to overcome the fear. That's all Chakotay has to do. Now, let's turn this simple idea into a 45 minute story. Yes, that's what many character pieces do, mirror the main plot with the character growth. But in a great story, it's subtle. In a great story, there's a real struggle, making you wonder if the hero will pull it out. But here? It's just such a straight line, so blatantly obvious. The struggle was just Chakotay taking a while to face the aliens, but no real growth there. Perhaps, rather than just seeing him screaming in sickbay, we could have seen him try to make contact, make some progress, but then seriously worsen. Start hallucinating and finding himself completely irrational more often. Then he has a real fear, that this is permanent, that he is getting worse. Can he go back inside his mind after that? Do they delay and try to find a technobabble solution? Does Chakotay risk permanent brain damage to save the ship? Does he reach back into his memories to his grandfather, and wonder what it was like for him to live with his disease? Wonder if, maybe, he can still have some peace in his life even if he does go insane? Nah, we'll just go straight to the dramatic climax. No winding around, no subtlety. Just imagery, flashbacks, and plot resolution. It all just seems so simple. It's a pleasurable enough outing, but just feels unfulfilling in the end.

Diamond Dave

I'm not keen on boxing, and I'm not keen on dream sequences. A boxing dream sequence? Magic... I wouldn't mind so much if this was an engrossing episode, but it really isn't. In terms of character development the main themes for Chakotay come out of nowhere, Boothby gets thrown in for no reason, and it just doesn't feel organic. The snippets of dialogue formed into sentences is an effective vehicle, but the rest just seems like a mess. Not a fan. 1.5 stars.

Course: Oblivion deserves better points than this episode to be honest. The crazy gene fear and Chakotay's interest in boxing both appeared out of nowhere. And since Chakotay has had other scenarios that affected his mind, it was odd this was never brought up before, not even a passing mention. I also preferred every moment they spent out of a dream sequence, and on Voyager discussing technobabble terms about the chaotic space, than the dreams themselves. The concept perhaps may be good, but I don't think it was executed convincingly enough.

This has always been my least favorite Voyager episode. I just don't like to watch the damn thing, regardless of it's valid meaning. It's awakens my "crazy gene" :-) Always a skipper. .5 stars.

I watched this two days after Ali died. Without that prompt, I probably would have fast forwarded through the fight scenes because I'm definitely not into boxing. I am, though, a huge admirer of Ali and he fought through his fears on behalf of himself and his people. Chakoty was clearly terrified by the vision that he would become crazy like his grandfather. I understand this because I remember becoming repulsed by characteristics of elders as a child accompanied by flashes of insight that those characteristics were part of me. As an adult, that insight has helped me accept what I might otherwise have rejected in myself. Despite his anthropologist father, I don't get the impression that Chakoty had a good childhood and I think that, like many Trek characters, he chose Star Fleet as an honorable way to escape home (Spock, Ro, Tasha). I think the writers have done a terrible job with his character because they did not have a consistent idea of his background. But I found the episode sufficiently evocative of my childhood conflicts to be watchable.

Nicholas Ryan

1.5 stars is ridiculously high. You've rated other episodes lower and this has to be the hardest episode of Trek to sit through.

I actually liked Carlos Palimino when he was welterweight champion of the world. That's the only reason I watched as much as I did./Sorry but I can't take Chuckinthetowelkotay and his boring vision quest baloney.

Well the writers dropped the ball yet again - fiddling around with genetics is outlawed in the federation, but Chakotays' parents had the halluciogenic gene removed?

Ok people, enough with the genetic stuff that can be explained by common sense. You can't participate in sports if you take certain drugs for performance enhancement but those same drugs can get a pass if used therapeutically. Obviously genetic engineering is the same. We can use gene therapy to stop hallucinations or to help two incompatible people have a kid but perfect hand eye coordination is off the table. Do we really need to spell this out when the real world works so similarly??

World's worst boxing coach. Reminded me of Moe coaching Homer: Chakotay: "He's not landing any punches". Boothby: "That's the problem, you're not letting him." Hilarious. I like what they were trying to do here. I'm not sure I like the way they did it, but I can't immediately think of a better way either. In order of communicate with the alien species chakotay has to overcome his fear of going insane. But the process feels like insanity to him, and he has to overcome that fear in order to communicate. A great idea. 2 stars for effort.

Get up ya son of a bitch! Cause Boothby loves ya.

Boy, what a headache-inducing, muddled episode. It literally hurt my brain to watch this one. It's completely incoherent without the virtue of being engaging. Sorry, but this episode is sci-fi excess at its worst, and I do think it merits 1/2 a star at best, not the generous 1 2/2 stars that Jammer gave it. It feels like Joe Menosky assembled the plot out of spare parts rejected from past screenplays; he's on autopilot at best in this one. The boxing stuff with Boothby, other than wasting the presence of Ray Walston, didn't convey any sort of atmosphere to me other than boredom. The aliens trying to warn Chakotay through his boxing program were telegraphed as friendly way too early for the show to maintain any tension. Overall, a real stumble in an otherwise fairly solid season.

Boy, this was really hard to sit through. One of the worst episodes of Voyager. Boothby does not belong in this role at all. The dialogues with the crew (like Sisko with the wormhole aliens) in Chakotay's visions were a bore, and Beltran is far being compelling in this version of Chakotay (not that he is not a dud the rest of the time, in my opinion). Even Ned Romero, a capable actor, seemed underwhelmed in that role. The denouement was an all-too-frequent cliché. Not a good outing at all.

Yeah, I found this episode pretty incomprehensible, which either means I wasn't willing to meet it partway (possible) or that it's basically unable to stitch together any compelling narrative out of the idea fragments that we have here (likely). I don't really understand what this tells us about Chakotay; I'm not *that* down on revealing that he used to box, I guess, but fear of going crazy seems completely out of the blue and seems to be the central thrust of the story. He confronts that old fear that he's going to go crazy, I guess. Great. The idea that the aliens can only communicate to people by turning on some "crazy gene" or another is potentially intriguing, but I don't think much is made of it here. I feel like I should have something more to say but this one really went right through me. Probably 1 star, though I guess I could be talked up.

Prince of Space

Ok, who’s gonna take a stab at talking William B up from 1 star? A nifty “Boxing Chakotay” limited edition action figure (STILL IN THE BOX!!) to anyone that gets him to 2.5 stars or higher!

Simply shockingly poor. What on earth did a mainstream audience make of this? Beltran simply cannot act at all. Out of the thousands of actors desperate for a role, they somehow ended up with him, McNeill, Wang and Lien, something which badly hobbled this show from the start. Boothby shouldn't be in this story and his boxing advice is nonsense as said above.

Parts of this episode remind me of TNG's 'Where Silence has Lease'. The one where they get trapped in an area of space, and drop a beacon and try to fly out, and find they are right back where they started from. This episode also seems to forget what happened earlier in the episode. CHAKOTAY: The aliens. They were there, watching me. EMH: Inside your vision quest? CHAKOTAY: They were trying to tell me something. ... EMH: Let them speak to you. CHAKOTAY: No! They'll make me go crazy. EMH: You're not going crazy. They're doing this for a reason. You've got to trust them. Stop fighting. Open your mind. Let go. Listen. Then... JANEWAY: Could be some sort of alien geometry, but we'll need much more. Is it safe for him to try to make contact again? EMH: Medically speaking, yes. The problem is convincing the Commander of that. CHAKOTAY: They want to contact me. And later they seem to forget all of that happened...(same line even) CHAKOTAY: They want to contact me. JANEWAY: Who does? CHAKOTAY: The people who live here. EMH: This will sedate him. JANEWAY: Wait a minute. You believe somebody lives here, in Chaotic space, and they're trying to communicate with you? Wut? No shit Janeway. You just told him a little bit ago to keep trying to communicate with the aliens. JANEWAY: Why go through all the trouble? We're trapped here anyway. CHAKOTAY: Let me back in the ring. EMH: Even if this is some kind of alien communication it could harm him. Permanently. .... CHAKOTAY: Captain. When have we ever turned away from a first contact? JANEWAY: Send him back in the ring. But they said earlier it was medically safe to contact the aliens that they forgot about, so I guess they forgot that too. This episode is stupid in many ways. 1/2 star.

What a bad episode. Here I was thinking they needed to develop his character more... be careful what you ask for I guess. woof.

Hey, an alien race that can only communicate by punching Chuckles in the face? I'm all for it. :-)

Oh man... easily Voyager's worst episode... worse than Threshold. Yes, I said it, and I meant it. This could have been a Chakotay-development episode, i.e. delving into his past, why he joined the Maquis, his passion for anthropology, his relationship with his heritage, his family, and his friends, (and maybe a bit about boxing). Instead, we get a boxing episode with aliens who make no sense. I guess this is comparable to Twisted, but that episode preserved the sense of mystery and developed the crew's relationships. The Fight spent 45 minutes doing nothing. At least Threshold developed Paris's character.

Really not a fan of this kind of pointless excess -- took so long for this episode to have any discernible direction as far as Chakotay's issues. Far too arbitrary with nothing really concrete to take away. I wasn't impressed with the acting from either Beltran or Picardo who just seemed to think that yelling a lot is what's needed. And ultimately, the plot is paper thin -- Chakotay has to face his fears so these aliens can talk to him enough to get him to guide Voyager out of chaotic space. And there's the DNA altering aspect, which is one of the worst Trek cliches. I feel that given how simple this episode really is, it tries to make it into something big with the special effects, weirdness etc. In fact, the overall impression for me is one of arrogance. It's a shitty premise and the writers/direction are pompous in trying to make it look impressive. Chakotay does his vision quest -- and we see his crazy grandfather. Are we to understand that his grandfather wasn't crazy and something was trying to speak with him? Or what? Did Chakotay learn anything from his grandfather? We know family and spirituality is important for Chakotay and that this is clearly a "Chakotay episode" -- but it's just unfocused nonsense for the most part. Even the whole confronting the fear or the unknown or whatever isn't instructive. Not even 1.5 stars for "The Fight" -- so 1 star it is for this mess. Maybe it could have included a B-plot. The whole idea of aliens communicating through a boxing match (altering senses) is too much of a stretch -- TNG has done this kind of thing better, as has DS9 with Sisko's prophet visions. Plenty of weird filler material in here that gets tiring to care about. Just not a good VOY viewing experience.

Incredibly dull.

I literally fell asleep. That is all.

Jammer et al, Correct me if I'm wrong , but isn't the idea of an area of space and/or an alien in that space somehow altering someone's DNA and needing to do that in order to communicate with other life forms a pretty neat and original idea?..If admittedly not well executed..And the concept that this life form us maybe somehow made of space itself and yet has physical mass and dimension..I thought that was pretty neat..what would you say Jammer?

Everyone posting positive comments about this episode HAS to be the same person posting under different names, right? This is the worst episode of any series of Star Trek there ever will be.

Todayshorse

Two words. Vision quest. The end. Then going round in circles like the Thompsons in 'land of black gold' Nelix the dull shouting in the middle of a boxing ring was a highlight though. But vision quests, wheels of whatever with stones and all that just bore the hell out of me.

Sleeper Agent

I liked it. So shoot me. It was quite enjoyable to see Beltran flipping out again and again, a fresh take on the ordinary, often sleepy Chakotay. A big plus for the evil Doctor =] 3 Stars.

Yes, a modern day Twilight Zone episode similar to the Lee Marvin epi about the boxing robot. I stand with those who enjoyed a good Chakotay storyline. Always a pleasure to see “my favorite Martian “ Ray Walton in a Star Trek episode!

I liked that Kid Chaos’ face was full of stars. I liked aliens who self-identified as too different for humanity to communicate with. While I understand that the Babel Fish facilitates faster dramatic exposition, and that it’s cheaper to use humanoid bipeds with forehead prosthetics than to hire real aliens, this epIsolde at least acknowledges what would surely be the rule rather than a rare exception if we ever did make contact. CJB said “Hey, an alien race that can only communicate by punching Chuckles in the face? I'm all for it. :-)” And while I like Chakotay and think he gets a bum rap in these comments, I got more entertainment value out of that post than from this entire incoherent pastiche of an episode. Though I did like the Doctor’s rants, especially the one gleefully/ragingly detailing boxing injuries.

Boothby channelling his inner Mick from Rocky?

Beltran’s acting is so bad in this episode, it’s distracting to the point where there is no possible way to enjoy it.

Commenting from 2020 I had already typed up a thorough review of this episode, I accidentally refreshed and lost everything so to sum up: this episode along with many others in the series is incoherent and just awful. It actually hurt my head to focus on the nonsense, Beltran was terrible in this - like the absolute worst acting I've seen in almost any show, and it's mostly because it's so badly written and not for his character type. I'm glad that every episode is almost in its own self contained bubble so I can easily skip something that looks crappy without worrying about missing something in continuity (the Nazi WWII one for instance was an easy skip 5 minutes in). Thank God for Seven of Nine, the only character keeping me engaged at this point.

Motron3000's comment got me thinking which series was the hardest to make it through and I'd have to say it's VOY. While VOY's 5th season is pretty good, I felt the series petered out in Seasons 6 and 7. I'd also agree 7 of 9 was a fantastic character and so well acted by Ryan that she really carried the show after her intro. But by VOY's 6th and 7th season, the franchise was running on fumes and it was nearly impossible to come up with an outstanding episode. Actually nothing from VOY's 6th and 7th seasons made my top-50 episodes so it was a bit of a slog to make it through all of VOY's episodes. TNG's 6th and 7th seasons weren't great (S7 is highly uneven) but I always felt that it had more potential (overall better premises, better sci-fi, but not necessarily a better cast/characters than VOY). For me, DS9's 6th and 7th seasons are its 2 best. You didn't really want to miss any episodes unless they started out like "Profit and Lace"! But these seasons had some terrific episodes and the strength of the underlying arc was in full force.

@Motron3000 While I don’t agree with your assessment, I wanted to suggest typing up long reviews in a word document then pasting here. I learned that lesson the hard way more than once.

This episode is rubbish. So boring, and hackneyed overlong dream sequences with other crewmen popping up to speak uncanny dialogue is usually Trek at its lamest. The chaotic space subplot is too perfunctory to even mention. This is a very dull episode.

Spock's Ears

I thought Chakotay did not know Boothby ? In Season 5 Ep4 "In The Flesh" the fake Boothby (Species 8472) meets Chakotay in the garden opening scene. Chakotay asks him who he is ?... "Boothby's the name, been here for 54 years" ..... (WHO DOESN'T KNOW BOOTHBY??!?) *54 YEARS DUDE!!!* FIFFFTEE-FOUURRR Years!! ... (Chakotay should have been busted as a spy, right then and there! ) Let's see if I got this straight: Chakotay arrives unannounced, no one knows him, he's got a camera, and doesn't recognize the head dude, who is been there longer, than the statues! Anywho, Fast forward : same season, Ep 18 ... opening scene again, Chakotay says , " I was sparing with a Terrellian ... BOOTHBY was there, Boothby used to train me when I was a cadet..!." Oh come on, now you know him?! Continuity?! ... I mean its one thing to error from 3-4 seasons ago, lol, but it's the same damn season, they didn't think anyone would notice? Man, they take some liberties in this show. I agree with previous reviews, snoozer .... This is what I call a filler episode ... "filling in" the episodes between what we all want .... more SEVEN OF NINE stories!

Finally a chance for Beltran to show off his acting chops. Too often he comes off as a sedated Marlon Brando and they don’t give him anything to work with. Personally, I worry about Alzheimer’s disease in my family and my future with it, so some points hit home. Unfortunately the vision quest sequences were too much like a poor man’s Prophet Sequence from DS9. They almost got there, and it was enough to pique my interest, just not enough to hold it. 2/4

I absolutely DESPISE boxing as a trope in general, and especially out of the blue in sci fi. I absolutely never want to see again boxing as a metaphor, boxing to work out everyone’s problems, etc etc.

Oh no, Acoushla Moya goes on a trip. "We're far from the spirit of my grandfather and my grandfather's grandfather and my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather. And from the plains of the buffalo. And my grandfather's buffalo. And my grandfa..." SNOOZE...

I liked the story, and I'm always glad to see Chakotay given something interesting to do. If nothing else, this episode ought to show yet again that Robert Beltran can act and will put a lot into the role when he's got material that requires it. Though I'm not a fan of boxing (and found the Doctor's criticism of it amusing), I appreciated the visual metaphor thatf boxing = Chakotay's difficulty in communicating with the more alien than usual aliens. It's a much better way to portray the struggle than just having Chakotay shouting about how difficult and painful the process is (which to be fair we also see). The background material with Chakotay's grandfather was the type of exploration of the character that we haven't seen since season 2, and some of Chakotay's dialogue is something I could see the younger Chakotay as portrayed in "Tattoo" saying. This is another middle of the road episode for me, which is to say that I enjoyed it. It's entertaining, it's not bad, but it's not different enough to elevate it beyond many others.

This season is the best of Voyager this far, but this was the second episode this season where I was more interested in scrolling through my phone than watching the screen.

Will just point out that this [The Fight] was during the same general Voyager-bridge-set-caught-fire reconstruction period as 'Bride of Chaotica' -- they were pinched for stages and story-edits, they did some of their filming asynchronously (months after the fact, when bridge-set rebuilt), and the quality suffers accordingly. I'm not defending this stretch; it's notably a hard slog.

Wow, I consider myself to be a pretty knowledgable Trekkie and a pretty big Voyager fan. I never heard the "bridge caught on fire" thing. Thanks for sharing.

I don't understand the comments praising this episode. I'm a big boxing fan, but this is incredibly boring, obnoxious, and Beltran's acting is atrocious. The Fight is easily the worst episode of Voyager. 0 stars.

Somehow I watched this episode twice. I'm not sure what was wrong with me.

It's kind of dispiriting to know that the last appearance of Ray Walston as Boothby is in this steaming pile of an episode.

The aliens were very original and unique and imaginative weren't they??

Good to see Beltran get screen time, and great to see him in a first contact situation. Chakotay does well as a diplomat, perhaps even better than Janeway. The boxing scenes were bizarre, although I was fine with Boothby as his trainer. I'm bothered that the writers keep defaulting back to Chakotay's native american background for almost every episode he is in. It makes him so one dimensional. Then again, with rare exception, the writers failed to develop most characters. Garak and Dukat were better characters than nearly all Voyager characters, and they were just recurring guests.

@Daniel B: Maybe you’re going crazy.

Trash. Would’ve been so much stronger if they focused on Chakotay’s family history of mental illness, how Janeway needs him to keep going but he’s afraid it’ll permanently affect him. Classic shallow Berman Trek.

Lawrence Bullock

Anything with Ray Walston in it is aces with me, from the time he snapped his fingers to light a smoke in " Damn Yankees" to whenever his last screen performance was. I don't mind the cracker if the cheese is good enough. But this was a weird one.

@Spock's Ears: ))In Season 5 Ep4 "In The Flesh" the fake Boothby (Species 8472) meets Chakotay in the garden opening scene. Chakotay asks him who he is ?... "Boothby's the name, been here for 54 years" Chakotay should have been busted as a spy, right then and there!(( Chakotay was PRETENDING to be a member of Species 8472 - presumably, a raw recruit unexpectedly drawn from the ranks and thrust into the simulation. Chakotay was thus PRETENDING to be a still-disoriented and naive alien who was in turn PRETENDING to be a Star Fleet officer. Two layers of deceit! If, instead, Chakotay had immediately revealed his intimate, real-world, insider knowledge about Boothby, Chakotay would have exposed himself as a spy. Chakotay therefore FEIGNED ignorance and naivete.

I found the main theme of fear from losing your loved ones to old age fairly poignant. Watching this as a 20-something certainly bored me, but now that i'm 30 and my parents are of course 10 years older, ive been forced to come to grips with fears and forms of grief I always ignored. I always pushed them aside thinking "my parents are only middle aged, nothing I have to worry about!" Problems sure are easy to ignore until they aren't, aren't they? Actually the worst part of this show for me, was how it wallows and indulges in the late 90s fixation on boxing. For some reason, this is something I've seen several 90s series get bogged down in. The best example I'm thinking of is the prison drama "Oz." Somewhere around the 4th season there is a HORRIBLE arc about the inmates organising a boxing tournament as a way for the rival gangs to blow off some steam without..y'know stabbing each other dozens of times with razor blades and other improvised shanking weapons. Anyway, this arc eats up huge chunks of screen time where it's just the actors hookin' and jabbin' at the camera, intercut with scenes of hard, tattooed men jeering and jostling. Then some AWFUL looking slow motion scenes as several fighters succumb to the effects of sedative-laced water bottles. This episode relies on a lot of the same camera angles and visual tropes that make boxing so boring to watch on film. (No your boxing sequence isn't as good as Rocky. Give it up!) Were a bunch of Hollywood writers really big boxing fans too?

in the first four minutes we have Chakotaayh having an epileptic seizure and then it focuses on a boxing match. I never loathed an episode more going trough in the first four minutes. For me Chakothaay is the least favorite character. I just can't stand his mumbling out-of-breath lisp way of speak- it doesn't seem like a character trait but more like he is slightly retarded.

This has to be my least favourite Voyager episode. I don't like the "spirit quest" idea, and the entire episode seems weird. Besides which, boxing is a violent contact sport-I guess I can't expect this, but one would think that if a person wanted to portray an enlightened time, they would have gotten rid of such diversions

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Star Trek: Voyager – The Fight (Review)

“No, make them stop!”

The Fight is a disaster. To be fair, it’s not the worst episode of Star Trek: Voyager . It is not as overtly racist as second season offerings like Tattoo or Alliances , even if there is still something deeply uncomfortable about the way in which the show approaches Chakotay’s Native American heritage as a gateway to pseudo-mysticism. It is neither as xenophobic as Displaced nor as misogynist as Retrospect , although its approach to mental health is…  questionable . Mostly, though, it is just a bad episode of television, not a spectacularly awful one.

Don’t worry. Jason Alexander will be here next week, if you can make it until then.

The problems with The Fight are somewhat typical of Voyager . It is an episode that decides to invent a new character trait in a regular character in order to justify the plot, revealing a lot of details about Chakotay that had never been suggested before and which will never be mentioned again. It is also overly reliant on techno-babble, with dialogue referencing nonsense like a “trimetric fracture” and a “paralateral rentrillic trajectory.” There is a pointless framing sequence designed to extend the runtime. There is nothing insightful about the characters or their world.

However, the biggest issue with The Fight is how it squanders a potentially compelling idea. Like Once Upon a Time before it, it is a great example of Voyager trying to write around a risk idea and effectively writing anything interesting out of the finished product.

Chaos and them.

Much like Once Upon a Time , The Fight began as a story idea by Michael Taylor. Taylor had joined the writing staff at the start of the fifth season, off the back of very distinguished work on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . Taylor had been responsible for the script that became The Visitor and had polished the script that became In the Pale Moonlight . In both cases, Taylor’s scripts had been heavily rewritten by veteran staffers, but both episodes demonstrated a willingness to experiment and to push the boundaries of what could be a Star Trek episode.

Taylor would do good work on Voyager . His credited scripts include Counterpoint and Bride of Chaotica! , which are two of the strongest episodes that Voyager ever produced. However, there was always a sense that Taylor was pushing Voyager further than the production team wanted to go, that his ideas were more ambitious than the executive producers would support. After all, Taylor would go on to work on Battlestar Galactica with Ronald D. Moore.

“Tactical advice from an Academy groundskeeper?” Tuvok can be a jerk, but he ahs a bit of point here.

Taylor’s pitch for Once Upon a Time had been breathtakingly bold, but had quickly been watered down to a very conventional piece of television. The Fight developed along similar lines. Interviewed by Cinefantastique , Joe Menosky explained that the original pitch was ambitious and exciting:

“ There was a guy living in the 21st century, and feeling himself become unhinged, because there are aliens trying to make contact . We were telling that story simultaneously with Chakotay suffering a mental breakdown as a result of a first contact happening in our Voyager time. That was the story that Mike Taylor wrote. It was an extremely well-written document. I don’t know if he actually put footnotes in it, but he might have, it was so detailed, and so intellectual. Rick Berman read the story, and he could not believe it. He just went off on, ‘These goddamn people like Mike Taylor, you need a subscription to the Journal of the American Medical Association to understand his goddamn story.’ Rick just threw it out.”

This is deeply frustrating. Voyager was a show that had largely stagnated, and which was soon going to be the standard bearer for Star Trek on American television. It needed to distinguish itself from all the imitators. It needed bold ideas. Instead, the show was just allowed to coast on stock Star Trek conventions.

Working together, hand-in-glove.

The basic plot of The Fight is fascinating. Voyager stumbles across a stock “anomaly of the week” , like any number of episodes from The Cloud through to Bliss . This anomaly traps the ship in what Seven of Nine describes as “chaotic space.” In keeping with the idea that the Delta Quadrant is a rough and random section of the galaxy, Chakotay even goes so far as to suggest that “chaotic space” represents something equivalent to the twenty-fourth century version of the Bermuda Triangle; ships enter, but they don’t leave.

Still, getting past that convenient plot device, The Fight is built upon an interesting idea. It turns out that “chaotic space” is not empty. In fact, “chaotic space” is inhabited by aliens that are so radically different from human beings that there is no easy way for the crew to interact with them. Still, the creatures try to make contact with Chakotay, and they do so in a way that triggers a violent series of hallucinations. Chakotay’s encounters with the aliens seem to drive him to the point of madness.

Reality breaks down.

There is something intriguing in this idea of an alien species so far outside mankind’s frame of reference that to interact with them is to invite madness. It evokes the idea of “outsideness”, perhaps popularised in the weird science-fiction and horror fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As H.P. Lovecraft wrote in Notes on Writing Weird Fiction , the unknown is exciting:

There will always be a small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest. These persons include great authors as well as insignificant amateurs like myself—Dunsany, Poe, Arthur Machen, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and Walter de la Mare being typical masters in this field.

This is very much a logical extension of the Star Trek premise. The opening narration to Star Trek famously promised “strange new worlds” , and what could be stranger than something that exists outside mankind’s capacity for comprehension?

Total K.O-os.

The Star Trek franchise had flirted with Lovecraft’s cosmic horror. In the show’s earliest days, it frequently seemed like the universe was haunted. Very few of the earliest episodes of Star Trek feature space-bound human-like civilisations; the introduction of the Romulans in Balance of Terror and the introduction of the Klingons in Errand of Mercy are very much the exceptions. Instead, early episodes of Star Trek suggest that the universe is a graveyard populated by monsters; the salt vampire in The Man Trap , the Gorn in Arena , the Horta in The Devil in the Dark .

Those early episodes of Star Trek tended to feature aliens that had evolved well beyond mankind; the Talosians in The Cage , Gary in Where No Man Has Gone Before , the Thasians in Charlie X , Trelane and his parents in The Squire of Gothos . Robert Bloch even made reference to Lovecraft’s “Old Ones” in scripts like What Are Little Girls Made Of? and Catspaw . Insanity frequently seemed contagious; it spread across the cosmos in Operation — Annihilate! and a scream echoed in the void in The Immunity Syndrome .

Getting in his head.

There were frequent suggestions that alien species operated beyond mankind’s capacity to perceive them. The Kelvans put away their tentacles to disguise themselves as humanoid in By Any Other Name . In an even more overt acknowledgement of Lovecraft’s mythology, the Medusans exist so far beyond mankind’s capacity to recognise them that to look upon them is to go mad in Is There in Truth No Beauty?

While early episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation like Encounter at Farpoint , Where No One Has Gone Before or Where Silence Has Lease would play up the weirdness of outer space, the later Berman era shows tended to treat space as something more generic and something safer. Space was populated by aliens that tended to look human, and who could serve as windows into the human condition. Space was where mankind for anomalies and empires, with the weirdness generally kept within narrowly confined parameters.

One of the interesting (and perhaps underrated) aspects of Voyager is the willingness to embrace the weirdness of science-fiction. The show approached the Delta Quadrant in a number of ways that distinguished it from the Alpha Quadrant in The Next Generation or the Gamma Quadrant in Deep Space Nine . Some of these differences were political in nature, with the Delta Quadrant largely treated as the deep space equivalent of the developing world, home to fiefdoms and unstable governments rather than empires and power brokers.

However, Voyager also made a conscious effort to frame the Delta Quadrant as something a little bit weirder and more bizarre than the Alpha Quadrant or Gamma Quadrant had become. Star Trek: First Contact retroactively suggested that Q had taken the Enterprise to the Delta Quadrant in Q Who? , the section of space that he described as “wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross.” It is highly debatable whether Voyager ever managed to live up to that premise, but it did try.

The production team tended to describe the Delta Quadrant somewhere weird and wonderful. Early in the run, Jeri Taylor explained that the greatest difficulty in playing up that weirdness was the issue of budget :

“Many of our choices do come down to money,” Jeri Taylor later confirms. “Everybody in the audience is hoping, ‘Wow, we’re going to the Delta Quadrant! We’re gonna see really weird aliens! There’ll be cabbage people, and beast people!’ The problem is, making those things believable is extremely expensive. We do not have a feature film budget; we cannot do the kinds of things that happen in Jurassic Park. Because of this, we end up with humanoids with bumps on their foreheads. That’s not a limitation we ourselves have set; it’s one we strive to get around and usually can’t.”

Nevertheless, even the early seasons of Voyager tend to emphasise the weirdness of the Delta Quadrant, often harking back to the tone and the weird science of the original Star Trek : the monstrous Vidiians in Phage and Faces , the floating truck in The 37’s , the reverse-aging in Innocence , the hyper-stylisation in The Thaw , the basic premise of Threshold .

“Don’t beat yourself up. That’s his job.”

As computer-generated imagery became cheaper, the production team amped up the weirdness. In The Fifty-Year Mission , Brannon Braga insists, “to me the Delta Quadrant should be the weirdest f$!king place in the world and weird sh!t should happen.” Janeway fought gigantic viral agents in Macrocosm . When they were introduced in Scorpion, Part I and Scorpion, Part II , Species 8472 were immediately one of the most strikingly alien designs in the history of the franchise.

As such, it makes sense that Voyager would embrace something as weird and eccentric as an alien species that exist so far beyond mankind’s comprehension that to engage with them is to invite madness. It feels logical that Voyager should stumble into a section of space where everything they know no longer applies. “We are too alien for you,” the creatures state in Chakotay’s hallucination. “We are too strange for you.” It feels like an idea that is genuinely fascinating and worthy of exploration.

Feeling boxed in.

Unfortunately, other realities kick in. Despite Lovecraft’s considerable critical and cultural reputation, it should be noted that the writer has very rarely been adapted from prose to film or television. As Don G. Smith points out in H.P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture :

So what is Lovecraft’s film legacy? It may not be very significant, because Lovecraft’s more philosophically challenging and chilling viewpoints have rarely been adequately translated to the screen. That, of course, could be said of most horror-science fiction authors. Screenwriters generally are shooting for a mass audience; therefore, their work cannot be very cerebral. Demographics suggest that the vast audience for horror-science fiction films are adolescents; requiring that screenplays advance the action and keep the jaded moviegoer entertained as he nuzzles with his girl and eats popcorn. This was not true in the twenties, thirties, or forties, but it became a fact beginning in the late fifties and has remained so ever since with only a few notable exceptions. For example, no Lovecraft film to date has adequately captured the author’s materialistic sense of the universe and his view of humanity’s smallness and insignificance in the face of a vast, indifferent universe. A few have tried, but they only suggest. Only a few films inspired by Lovecraft, but not based directly on his writings, have done so.

Lovecraft has inspired a lot of film and television, but his work is rarely adapted directly. Even those films and shows that claim to be inspired by Lovecraft’s writing tend to have been heavily revised and reworked in order to fit the conventions of cinematic horror. Reanimator is great fun, but it is unlikely to win any awards for fidelity.

A familiar ring.

Quite simply, Voyager is not a show with the appetite or the skill to present something so fundamentally uncanny or unsettling on television. Broadly speaking, the Rick Berman era tended to be quite conservative in terms of visual style and aesthetic. While Bryan Fuller’s scripts for episodes like The Raven , Retrospect and Mortal Coil might feature some effective dream imagery, generally speaking the dream worlds in episodes like Waking Moments or Bliss felt underdeveloped.

In defense of The Fight , there are a few fleeting moments of brilliance. Robert Picardo gives it socks during the central extended dream sequence, playing the role of Chakotay’s buried fear and anxiety. Picardo is one of the strongest actors in the ensemble, but he can also cut loose when the occasion calls for it; Darkling comes to mind. Picardo chomps on the scenery with reckless abandon. It is a pleasure to watch, adding to the sense of the uncanny.

Well, at least somebody had a good time this week.

Similarly, there is something very interesting in the way that the aliens try to stitch together a message to Chakotay, using snippets from his short-term memory rather than trying to address him directly. In some ways, it evokes the culture of remixing and sampling that was emerging during the nineties, the reformatting of existing artistic statements into something bold and new . The crosscutting of these conversations is a lot quicker than most of the editting in the Berman era, which sets up a nice tempo for the vision. The rhythm feels unnatural for Star Trek , which is good.

The reveal of “Kid Chaos” is also effective. The oddly-shaped boxing ring is just weird enough to add a level of abstraction to the process, and there is something haunting about an empty boxing robe. When the creature turns to face Chakotay, his hood is empty, reflecting the stars of chaotic space. There are certainly ways to heighten that uncanniness even further, with the computer-generated outline of something resembling a face feeling slightly unnecessary, but it does capture the weirdness of the basic premise.

Things come to a head.

Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is nowhere near as inspired. According to Cinefantastique , the development of the episode was a mess with far too many cooks involved in the process:

Menosky wrote the script, which incorporated the idea of first contact necessitating a mental breakdown, along with an idea of Robert Beltran’s about Chakotay boxing. After filming, they were short, so they added a sickbay frame. None of it made any sense. Said Menosky, “I’m confused when I watch it, so I can’t imagine the audience not being confused.”

These changes and additions help explain why The Fight was shifted so radically in the production order. It was actually filmed before Bliss , but pushed back much later in the year.

Massaging the script into shape.

As weird as the aliens might be, a lot of the episode feels very conventional in terms of plotting and styling. While there are individual aspects of the central vision that work very well, Chakotay’s nightmare feels just a little bit too much like the visions from the Prophets on Deep Space Nine . The golden hues are turned way up, the backgrounds are populated by familiar characters acting in unfamiliar ways, there is a sense that the characters are speaking to fundamental truths long buried by the heroes. The vision is weird, but it should be even weirder.

The problem is compounded by how Menosky chooses to approach these visions from a character perspective. Voyager has often struggled to define its secondary characters, to figure out what makes Kim or Tuvok or Chakotay tick. There is a sense that Voyager doesn’t really have a sense of who these characters are, even five years into the journey. The Fight tries to ground its weird alien mystery in character, but it cannot be bothered to explore any aspect of Chakotay that has already been suggested or defined.

A man alone.

Instead, The Fight adds two new elements to Chakotay’s background and history, two elements that had not been suggested by any prior appearance and which will never be mentioned at any point after The Fight . In terms of character motivation and psychology, The Fight introduces a history of mental illness into Chakotay’s family. On paper, this is interesting. There are certainly interesting stories to be told about characters confronting hereditary illnesses. More than that, mental health is a subject worthy of exploration and destigmatisation.

However, The Fight is not actually interested in twenty-fourth century mental health. It is not particularly invested in how this revelation informs Chakotay’s character. After all, there are number of interesting questions to be asked about a character like Chakotay with a history of mental illness in his family. He quit Starfleet to join the Maquis, becoming a terrorist. Did he ever worry that he was being affected by his grandfather’s condition? Did the knowledge of that potential time bomb inform his attitude towards Lon Suder?

“Suder, who the hell is Suder?”

The Fight just wants to use this detail as a plot element. The aliens can only communicate with Chakotay because he carries his grandfather’s gene, which is worryingly close to various unfortunate stereotypes about how psychiatric illnesses serve to make people “gifted” or “special.” As Simon Cross explained in Signs and Symptoms of the Mad Genius :

Plato first told us how poets possess furore poeticus that defied reason; that a poet’s inspiration was a form of divine or ‘good’ madness. By the time of the Renaissance, the creative authority or the nonconventional artist privatised this strand of thinking with the idea that melancholy was the true price of creativity and genius. The Restoration poet John Dryden then added further weight of expectation when he said, ‘Great wits are sure to Madness near alli’d/And thin partitions do their Bounds divide.” This association continued into the modern era in the romantic doctrine that to produce great art, the artist is necessarily sapped of health, mental or physical. Thus, England’s romantic prophet-in-chief, William Blake, invoked furore poeticus as the font of artistic motivations that gave form to his ‘visions’. Lord Byron equally valorised his own mad experiences, famously remarking, ‘We of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.’

The Fight works very hard to justify its twist on this idea with pseudo-science techno-babble, even if the EMH refers to it with the incredibly detailed label of “the crazy gene.” The aliens are apparently activating the gene in order to speak to Chakotay, which is just a science-fiction twist on a stock (and offensive) cliché.

Fight Doctor.

The Fight is not particularly invested in what that genetic conditions means to Chakotay. To be fair, Chakotay talks about his grandfather, and even flashes back to spending time with him. Chakotay expresses anxiety about becoming a “crazy old man” , a fear that is echoed back to him through the fight doctor in his hallucinations. However, this history of mental illness is very much a plot contrivance specific to this episode. It is never discussed again, never explored, never incorporated into a holistic approach to Chakotay’s character.

This history of mental illness only exists because it is convenient for the episode in question. It is a plot justification that allows for some broad drama, but nothing that actually affects or shapes Chakotay as a character. The best character drama is that which can be developed and explored. When The Next Generation started pulling dark secrets and hidden relatives out of the woodwork in its seventh season, the production team knew that it was time to draw down the curtain on the series.

Hardly a white knuckle ride.

Similarly, Chakotay’s sudden obsession with boxing arrives out of left-field. Apparently the idea came from Robert Beltran himself, who suggested the idea over dinner with the writers and producers :

Actually the boxing episode, there was Ken [Biller], Brannon [Braga] and Joe [Menosky], we were having dinner and they were asking me what I would like to do and with holodeck with Chakotay. And I gave them some ideas and they said, “Nah, nah, we already did this or that on Next Generation.” And then they said, “What about a boxing episode?” And I said, “I like boxing, OK, let’s do that. Just give me about two months heads up so I can get in really good shape, so I can look like a real boxer.” And they said “Okay, we will do that.” But then one day I get a call saying they were doing the boxing episode the next week. [laughs] It was an episode I really liked, but I didn’t feel the bare-chested thing would be a smart thing to do because I was in good shape, but not boxing shape. Those guys are in incredible shape. I was working with former World Champ Carlos Palomino who I had seen box and was a great fan of, a Mexican fighter. His body and mine were a little different.

To be fair to Menosky, it is hard to imagine a holographic boxing episode ever working particularly well, but it does suffer from being grafted on to this core concept. It feels like a concept heaped on top of another concept, suffocating the weirdness of these strange alien visitors.

While Chakotay’s interest in boxing has never been mentioned before and will never be mentioned again, it makes a certain amount of sense given a few scattered details about Chakotay’s previous life. Chakotay was eager to throw down with Dalby in Learning Curve , and demonstrated an interest in sumo wrestling in Latent Image . A better script would be able to tie those ideas together in a way that felt organic or interesting, treating this as a logical development rather than having it arrive out of nowhere at the start of the episode and disappeared into oblivion at the end.

It is worth comparing Chakotay’s interest in boxing to the character development on Deep Space Nine . Sisko’s interests in baseball and cooking extend across the entire run of the series. Bashir’s fascination with historical holosuite programmes really comes to the fore in the fourth season, but carries through to the end of the series in a manner that feels organic. Worf’s appreciation of Klingon opera comes up repeatedly. Odo’s appreciation of pulp fiction gets mentioned several times. That is how you build character.

No quarter given.

Instead, all of the potentially compelling character development in The Fight is purely utilitarian in nature. The Fight reveals nothing about the character of Chakotay. Instead, The Fight bends and distorts the character of Chakotay in order to tell the story that it wants to tell. It is a very cynical and disingenuous approach to storytelling and character building, one that underscores the laziness of how Voyager approaches its core cast. This laziness is all the more frustrating because of the wasted potential of the original premise.

Even the framing device demonstrates laziness. The in media res introduction to The Fight seems hackneyed and stilted, a desperate attempt to raise the stakes and to pad out the episode runtime. It is the easiest possible way to bulk up the episode, even if it feels like a cliché that adds nothing meaningful to the story being told. The Fight could have been more effective if it used that time to flesh out Chakotay’s character, to contextualise the character reveals in the episode, integrating them into his back story. Instead, The Fight takes the path of least resistance.

The Chakotay is of Voyager…

The Fight is an expression of many of Voyager ‘s worst impulsed, wrapped up in a limp execution of a compelling idea. Like so many episodes of Voyager , and like Voyager itself, The Fight is the laziest possible execution of a potentially intriguing idea.

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: Boxing , chakotay , characterisation , michael taylor , star trek , star trek: voyager |

5 Responses

>Rick threw it out.

What this ship needs is a Cam Mitchell. “They’re sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment!”

Why am I not surprised Robert pitched this episode so he could hang out with his favorite boxers? More power to him, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, Beltran is a bit of a jackass in the final years of the show, but it’s kinda hard to begrudge him using his one or two episodes a year to do stuff he actually enjoys doing.

Thanks for a very informative and interesting post. I just watched the episode and found it painful to pay it any attention, until the boxing sequence when the aliens communicate through that cross-cut of lines previously delivered. Loved it. I personally have no objection to the ancestral notion of the “touched” as voices of poetry. It certainly cannot be true of all the mentally ill, considering how pathetically needy many of those poor souls are in life. That said, I do not lurk around the obviously mad to see if I’m missing poetic gold, but sometimes I have overheard wonderful and imagistic lines in passing. (I have fondness, even if purely literary, for the Jaynesian notion of schizophrenia as a holdover from ancient man’s prehistoric and early civilizing brain structures — a la The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.)

All that said – the idea that these Chaotic Space physics resonated a single gene into such cohesive expression was annoying. Berman really couldn’t do much with complex natural phenomena, so saying “Uh this is because of a gene or nucleotide” feels like a default for many, many, many episodes of TNG and Voyager; the writers could not extricate from buzzwords of pop science magazines.

Perhaps we’ll get a weird and beautiful sci-fi cinematic world one day.

The writers should have been sitting down and asking Beltran these types of things in season one. The family history of mental illness and his love of boxing provide the beginnings of character development. We could have had scenes of him working out in a gym on the holo-deck, sparring with Kim or Tuvok, re-watching classic matches in his quarters. This would have made his character relatable and likeable.

Instead, even in this episode, we get the inevitable flute music and his magical vision question radio machine. They literally are unable to write a serious character beat with Chakotay without using this kind of racial stereotype. It’s like having Erhu instrumental music play anytime Ensign Kim is deep in thought.

This episode is also interesting for its foreshadowing of chaotic space – a source for a huge plot arc in Enterprise. The writers tried out a lot of the ideas they’d later use in Enterprise way back in the fifth season of Voyager.

It’s interesting that, when the writers talk about what to do with characters on this show, the holodeck is mentioned as though stories could hardly be told without it. Was the holodeck’s inevitability a nineties thing? Shows before and after the decade didn’t have it, though admittedly Deep Space 9 used it sparingly.

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS5E18TheFight

Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 18 The Fight » Recap

This episode has the following tropes:.

• A Day in the Limelight : A Chakotay episode.
• Apocalyptic Log / That Was the Last Entry : Voyager finds a derelict ship in chaotic space; their Captain's Log shows they were all Driven to Madness eventually.
• Artistic License – Biology : The Doctor with the myth about breaking someone's nose and sending the shards into their brain. Although it's possible he's being sarcastic; note that Chakotay chuckles after the Doctor says this.

• Big "YES!" : The Doctor Milking the Giant Cow .
• The Blank : Chakotay fights a being from a region of chaotic space; the being is wearing a boxing robe and had his back turned , when the alien is finally revealed, he has no face, only a starfield.
• Blind Jump : Paris suggests this, but Tuvok rejects it for the usual reasons.
• The Boxing Episode
• Brick Joke : When the Doctor is treating Chakotay's injury, he snarks that he should use stitches instead of the dermal regenerator, so that Chakotay could have a mean scar and call himself the "Maquis Mauler". That's the title on his robe at the climax.
• Character Overlap : Boothby from Star Trek: The Next Generation , or at least a memory & hallucination of him.
• Chewing the Scenery : Mad Chakotay and the Doctor in his hallucinations.
• Clip Show : May not be a true clip show, but it at least deserves an honourable mention. The aliens communicate to Chakotay in his mind by splicing together words taken from other crew members from earlier in the episode. Doc: You— Janeway: Are— Paris: Far from where— Doc: You— Grandfather: Call home. Doc: You— Janeway: Are— Grandfather: Lost. Doc: Do you understand?
• Continuity Nod : One that crosses series lines — when Chakotay ends up in Sickbay from Tuvok's neck pinch, he jokes, "Never spar with a Vulcan." The Sisko would agree with that .
• The Cuckoolander Was Right
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing : The Doctor spells out In-Universe why boxing is not a good idea, with a Large Ham depiction of the injuries suffered.
• Dull Surprise : Averted; Robert Beltran acts his heart out when his dialogue is no longer restricted to "Shields down to 20%".
• Dutch Angle : When Chakotay starts hallucinating on the bridge.
• Eldritch Location : Chaotic Space. It's so dangerous that even the Borg avoid it, with Seven saying that one cube has survived the experience.
• Face Your Fears : In Chakotay's case, the fear of losing his mind like his grandfather.
• Fan Disservice : Shirtless Chakotay getting a back massage... and then the camera pans back and it's from Neelix.
• First Contact : With a species of aliens who live in " chaotic space " and are too alien to communicate directly with Voyager . They're nice enough, seeming to know that it's dangerous for other species, and eventually figure out a way to give the crew instructions on how to leave.
• Fly-at-the-Camera Ending : The episode ends with Chakotay throwing a fist into the camera .
• Going in Circles : Beacons are being released to help Voyager navigate its way out of Chaotic Space , only the ship runs into the first beacon they released an hour earlier.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat : The Doctor trying to focus a crazed Chakotay in the Sickbay.
• Hearing Voices
• Helpful Hallucination : Helpful as it tells Chakotay how to get Voyager out of Chaotic Space.
• Holding Hands : Janeway holds Chakotay's hand as he's lying on the biobed, telling him he has to risk his sanity as it's the only way of saving Voyager .
• How Many Fingers? : The Doctor holds up three fingers in a facsimile of the Vulcan salute and asks this of a still-woozy Chakotay, who replies correctly. The Doctor says sardonically, "Good guess."
• In Medias Res : Well, if the aliens don't go in a straight line, why should the episode?
• Mad Oracle : Chakotay has the "crazy gene" that enables him to speak to the aliens.
• My Skull Runneth Over : Chakotay can barely hold it together as the aliens "realign" his mind to enable him to navigate the ship out of chaotic space.
• Never Tell Me the Odds! : Inverted; the Maquis Mauler demands to see Tom's Side Bet calculations on the odds. He refuses.
• No Time to Explain : When Chakotay learns from the aliens how to escape fluidic space, he immediately races to the bridge and starts pushing buttons and barking orders so he can get it done before he loses his hold.
• The Paralyzer : When Chakotay starts throwing punches on the bridge, Tuvok knocks him out with the Vulcan Nerve Pinch.
• Pun : Boothby makes a quip about "Maquis of Queensberry rules".
• Red Baron : "Kid Chaos" vs. "the Maquis Mauler".
• Sarcasm Mode : The Doctor on the subject of boxing.
• Series Continuity Error : Back in "In the Flesh", Chakotay's reaction on meeting the Species 8472 member posing as Boothby suggested that he was vaguely aware of who the original version was, but had never really spoken to him. This episode changes that to Boothby having been Chakotay's boxing coach for several years. (Unless he was pretending that he didn't know Boothby back then as part of his cover.)
• Slow Motion : Just before Chakotay gets KO'ed.
• Starfish Aliens
• Strange-Syntax Speaker : Not just the unseen aliens — Chakotay starts talking like them for a few sentences, with lots of pauses that William Shatner would appreciate.
• Techno Babble : "Trimectric" fracture? "Rentrillic" trajectory? What the hell does any of that mean? Even the eggheads on Voyager are stumped by this. Justified, however, as these terms are coming from a species of aliens who apparently live in chaotic space, meaning their perceptions (and presumably their geometries) are totally different.
• Trail of Bread Crumbs : The buoys that Voyager drops, as Paris mentions. Unfortunately, they end up circling back to the first one.
• Undead Author : Inverted. When Seven explains that the Borg have observed Chaotic Space events throughout the galaxy, Tuvok asks why no Federation ship has ever encountered it. Seven points out that, in fact, some probably have — they just never got a chance to tell anyone about it. Chakotay agrees, pointing out that a not-insignificant number of Starfleet vessels have simply disappeared over the years.
• World of Ham : The Voyager crew in Chakotay's Vision Quest , especially the Doctor with his To the Pain description of boxing injuries.
• Star Trek: Voyager S5 E17: "Course: Oblivion"
• Recap/Star Trek: Voyager
• Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 19 Think Tank

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Star Trek: Voyager: The Fight

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"The Fight" is the nineteenth episode of the fifth season of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager .

• 1 Lila Pitts
• 3 Denise Cloyd

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When  Voyager  is trapped in "chaotic space," an area where the laws of physics are in a state of flux, Chakotay begins hearing and seeing things. The telepathic aliens living inside the space are trying to contact the ship. However, prolonged communication may leave him insane or braindead. In their first attempt, Chakotay was boxing on the holodeck. The aliens induced further hallucinations of him boxing as "The Maquis Mauler," fighting Delta Quadrant's champion "Kid Chaos." Ultimately, the aliens help  Voyager  safely leave "chaotic space."

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The Fight Stardate: Unknown Original Airdate: 24 March 1999

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Star Trek: Voyager : The Fight    Rewatch  January 22, 2018 7:26 AM - Season 5, Episode 19 - Subscribe

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Opinionated Voyager Episode Guide looks at The Fight. Voyager is trapped in a region of space where the only communication is achieved by punching Chakotay in the face. Janeway approves.

Star Trek (Voy): The Fight

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I'm Mad Star Trek: Prodigy Made Me Like Chakotay

WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Prodigy season 2

• Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 redeems Captain Chakotay as a character through a surprisingly relatable and compassionate portrayal.
• Chakotay emerges as a natural leader, displaying loyalty, empathy, and devotion to his crew on the USS Protostar in both past and present.
• Prodigy's brilliant storytelling tactic reveals the depth and likability of Chakotay, challenging our preconceived notions from his portrayal in Voyager.

I'm mad that Star Trek: Prodigy made me like Chakotay (Robert Beltran). I was delighted as a Star Trek: Voyager fan to see Kate Mulgrew's return to Star Trek as both Hologram Janeway and Admiral Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Prodigy . I loved Prodigy season 1's Delta Quadrant setting and I eagerly anticipated further nods to Star Trek: Voyager in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2, like the introduction of the USS Voyager-A and the return of Robert Picardo's Doctor. I was less enthused, however, about the imminent arrival of Captain Chakotay , knowing Star Trek: Prodigy 's main characters would inevitably find him.

I thought Commander Chakotay was one of the least-developed characters in Star Trek: Voyager . Episodes that focused on Chakotay, like "The Fight" ( Voyager season 5, episode 18) and "Nemesis" ( Voyager season 4, episode 4) were some of Star Trek: Voyager 's weaker entries. It seemed Chakotay was on the USS Voyager's bridge because someone has to be the First Officer on Star Trek , and the Maquis weren't going to trust Lt. Tuvok (Tim Russ). Basically, I was expecting Captain Chakotay on Star Trek: Prodigy to be the same character as Commander Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager : dull, static, and subject to a hokey pastiche of stereotypical "Indigenous" spiritual practices. I was wrong.

Wait, Star Trek: Voyager's Chakotay Is In DS9?

Hold on ... rewind. Did a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2 episode really say Chakotay, as in Star Trek: Voyager's commander?

Star Trek: Prodigy Actually Redeemed Chakotay

The prodigy kids know that chakotay is more than he seems, and they prove it.

Star Trek: Prodigy redeems Captain Chakotay as a character, which ironically, starts with making Chakotay actively un likable. After finding Chakotay's present location halfway through Star Trek: Prodigy season 2, Dal R'El (Brett Gray) lays out the plan to save both Gwyndala (Ella Purnell) and the Star Trek timeline by rescuing Chakotay and the USS Protostar, only to be met with a gruff "No." Chakotay has little empathy for the cadets, leaving them outside to fend for themselves in the elements. Hologram Janeway explains that Chakotay lost his whole crew and his hope for the future, and that ten years in isolation have hardened Chakotay into the man they see today.

Chakotay's immediate refusal of Dal's plan echoes Captain Liam Shaw's (Todd Stashwick) famous "No" to Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Captain William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) in Star Trek: Picard season 3.

Star Trek: Prodigy' s young cadets start understanding Chakotay, so we do too. Captain Chakotay is tired and grieving, living in self-imposed exile to keep the Living Construct weapon inside the USS Protostar from destroying the Federation. When Dal stumbles on the body of Chakotay's First Officer, Adreek-Hu (Tommie Earl Jenkins), Chakotay starts processing his grief. The cadets rehabilitate the Protostar and Chakotay together, as the Protostar's grime and Chakotay's grumpy hermit persona fall away to reveal a ship and captain ready to return home. It's a brilliant storytelling tactic that gets us on board with liking Chakotay , whether we liked him to begin with or not.

Captain Chakotay Is A Natural Leader On Star Trek: Prodigy

And chakotay was actually okay on voyager, believe it or not.

In Star Trek: Prodigy , Captain Chakotay is a natural leader and devoted steward of the USS Protostar and its crew, both before and after his exile. Chakotay's character emerges through actions that are clearly motivated by values like loyalty, altruism, and empathy. In delegating tasks, Chakotay lets the cadets own their strengths instead of making assumptions about them, as they did about each other. When Dal is hard on himself for failing, Chakotay sits with Dal and listens before dispensing genuinely good advice that motivates Dal's future actions. Chakotay's not flashy or bold, but Chakotay is a good captain with his crew's welfare in mind. Not like Voyager, right? Wrong.

Star Trek: Prodigy is the cadets' story, so we're called on to share their perspective, and the respect and affection for Captain Chakotay that comes with Dal, Gwyn, and the rest learning who Chakotay actually is.

The infuriating aspect of this brilliant bait-and-switch on Star Trek: Prodigy is that it isn't one at all. Everything that makes Captain Chakotay a likable person in Star Trek: Prodigy is actually also present in Star Trek: Voyager. Commander Chakotay does care for the welfare of the USS Voyager crew when Chakotay argues with Janeway about allying with the Borg. Chakotay uses the same patient approach to mentoring Dal R'El in Prodigy as he does with Lt. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) in Voyager . Star Trek: Prodigy made me realize that Chakotay has always been thoughtful, respectful, and compassionate, so even though I didn't want to like Chakotay ... now I do.

Star Trek: Prodigy

Cast Robert Beltran, Kate Mulgrew, John Noble, Jason Mantzoukas, Brett Gray, Angus Imrie, Jameela Jamil, Robert Picardo, Jimmi Simpson, Ella Purnell, Dee Bradley Baker

Release Date October 28, 2021

Writers Kevin Hageman, Dan Hageman

Where To Watch Netflix

Star Trek: Voyager

Cast Jennifer Lien, Garrett Wang, Tim Russ, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson, Robert Beltran, Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo

Release Date May 23, 1995

Writers Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Where To Watch Paramount+

While the ship is caught in Chaotic Space, a zone where the laws of physics are in a state of flux, Commander Chakotay believes he's a 24th century boxer, The Maquis Mauler. Before long, he's going head to head with the Delta Quadrant's champion, Kid Chaos.

Voyager, seizoen 5

• Cast & crew
• User reviews
• Episode aired Feb 9, 2000

Seven of Nine and Tuvok are enslaved while on an away mission, with Seven forced to fight in gladiatorial competitions to the death. Seven of Nine and Tuvok are enslaved while on an away mission, with Seven forced to fight in gladiatorial competitions to the death. Seven of Nine and Tuvok are enslaved while on an away mission, with Seven forced to fight in gladiatorial competitions to the death.

• Michael Vejar
• Gene Roddenberry
• Rick Berman
• Michael Piller
• Kate Mulgrew
• Robert Beltran
• Roxann Dawson
• 13 User reviews
• 4 Critic reviews

• Capt. Kathryn Janeway

• Cmdr. Chakotay

• Lt. B'Elanna Torres

• Ensign Tom Paris

• Seven of Nine

• Ensign Harry Kim

• Hirogen Hunter

• The Champion
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• Crewman Lydia Anderson

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• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia The episode achieved a Nielsen rating of 4.1 million homes, and a 6% share, making it the highest rated episode of the season.
• Goofs Seven is away from Voyager for much longer than her regeneration cycle. Despite this she never shows any of the ill effects associated with failing to regenerate.

B'Elanna Torres : The Borg wouldn't know fun if they assimilated an amusement park.

• Connections Featured in WatchMojo: Top 10 Celebrities You Didn't Know Were on Star Trek TV Shows (2017)
• Soundtracks Star Trek: Voyager - Main Title (uncredited) Written by Jerry Goldsmith Performed by Jay Chattaway

User reviews 13

• Jul 19, 2020
• February 9, 2000 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (Studio)
• Paramount Network Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 44 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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The Star Trek: Voyager Sequel You’ve Always Wanted Already Exists

The story of Star Trek: Voyager continues in Prodigy, the animated series that is as much for fans of '90s Trek as it is for a new generation of fans.

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Star Trek is an ever-growing franchise, with 11 television series, plus two series of shorts and two separate film series. But despite all these spinoffs and spinoffs of spinoffs, only a couple of branches of the franchise have been given sequels. The Original Series has The Animated Series as a continuation, then its run of six sequel movies (seven, if you include Generations ), plus a prequel series ( Strange New Worlds ); and The Next Generation has four films and a sequel series ( Picard ), plus a spiritual sequel in Lower Decks . But Deep Space Nine has had to make do with a single episode of Lower Decks and Enterprise gets nothing but the occasional mention as easter eggs.

Voyager , however, has been more fortunate. The inclusion of Seven of Nine as a main character in Picard has already given at least one Voyager character the full sequel treatment, but some fans might not realize that there is another series that functions as a Voyager sequel in more ways than one— Star Trek: Prodigy .

Prodigy’s Two Audiences

One of Prodigy ’s biggest challenges has been to capture the interest of two separate target audiences. The series was produced with and also aired on the children’s channel Nickelodeon, and is aimed at children and teenagers. This also means it is aimed at new viewers, as no one assumes that children watching it will have seen any Star Trek before. The series introduces core concepts like what Starfleet is and how starships function in the Trek universe to brand new fans, and it does so very well.

However, it is also aimed at existing Star Trek fans of all ages. Season 1 of the show includes many callbacks and references to earlier Star Trek series that fans of those shows can appreciate. The episode “Crossroads,” for example, is a sequel to The Next Generation’ s “The Outrageous Okona”; “All the World’s a Stage” is a sequel to the Original Series ’ “Obsession” and the whole episode is basically an Original Series homage; and “Kobayashi” hasn’t just taken its name from the most overly referenced Star Trek story of all time ( The Wrath of Khan ), it actually features guest appearances from several past Star Trek stars who are no longer with us in the form of original audio clips (Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, and Rene Auberjonois) and a guest appearance from Gates McFadden as The Next Generation ’s Doctor Crusher in newly recorded dialogue.

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Prodigy Features Several Main Characters From Voyager

Most fans will be aware that one of its main characters is a hologram of Voyager ’s Captain and main character, Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. Janeway primarily appears in the form of a hologram of Captain Janeway at around the age she was when Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant (based on her rank, as she was promoted to Admiral not long after they got back, and on her hairstyle, which matches Janeway’s famous “bun of steel” from Seasons 1-3 of Voyager ). This hologram is programmed with all of Janeway’s memories (including post- Voyager , as it would hardly make sense for her to exist like a time traveler who doesn’t know what’s going on) and with her personality, making Kathryn Janeway an integral part of Prodigy from the start.

What viewers who have not watched the series might not know, though, is that hologram Janeway is not the only character from Voyager who appears in Prodigy . As the season goes on, we also get to meet Admiral Janeway—the flesh and blood Janeway we followed for seven years on her journey through the Delta Quadrant, as she is at the time Prodigy is set, which is in the year 2383. (This is just after the setting of Lower Decks , which is set in 2380-2381, and a couple of decades before Picard , which is set primarily in 2399-2401). As the storyline develops, we get to meet another main character from Voyager as well, and a third, Robert Picardo’s Doctor, is lined up to appear in season 2.

One thing grown up fans might not realize is that Prodigy is aimed at middle grade and teenage children. It’s not like some other animated spin-offs of major franchises, like Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures or Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends , which are aimed at pre-schoolers and which, although fun, don’t have all that much appeal to an adult audience. Prodigy may be animated, but it is much more similar to something like The Whoniverse’s The Sarah Jane Adventures ; the lead characters are children and teenagers, but the plot, tone, and themes are all sophisticated enough to be enjoyed by grown ups as well—in fact, Prodigy probably skews slightly older even than The Sarah Jane Adventures .

This means, among other things, that the adult and mentor characters—primarily Janeway—in Prodigy get as much attention and character development as the young leads. The Captain Janeway hologram has a lovely little story arc that builds to an emotional climax across the whole of season 1. But even more importantly for Voyager fans, Admiral Janeway has her own story arc going on as well. Over the course of the season, we see her reacting to a deeply personal loss, and we see some of her most notorious character traits playing out in a new setting—this Janeway may be older and rank higher, but she still leads with her heart, and she still makes mistakes sometimes when she trusts the wrong person, or jumps to conclusions. This is recognizably the character we know and love from Voyager !

Towards the end of the season and in the cliffhanger going into season 2, Prodigy also picks up on one of Voyager ’s best character relationships, which was notoriously neglected in the original show’s series finale—Janeway’s relationship with her First Officer, Chakotay (Robert Beltran). These two were one of the show’s most popular couples to “ship” romantically and the show itself dedicated at least two episodes to that idea (season 2’s “Resolutions” and Season 7’s “Shattered”) though in both cases they decided to stay just friends. Chakotay was paired with Seven of Nine towards the end of season 7, but that pairing was so unpopular with both fans and even the actors that it has never been mentioned again, and a suggested appearance from an alternate timeline version of Chakotay in Picard season 2 was turned down by Beltran .

Chakotay has made several guest appearances in Prodigy , though, including a flashback sequence that shows him and Admiral Janeway hugging, and there is a moment towards the end of the season in which Janeway is seen reaching out towards his image while he is missing in action. Since Prodigy is aimed at teenagers, not young children, it’s free to explore romantic storylines in a family-friendly way, and one of its recurring threads is the somewhat romantic tension between its main character Dal R’El (Brett Gray) and Gwyndala (Ella Purnell), so there is hope for Janeway/Chakotay shippers yet.

Whether or not the show intends to develop Janeway and Chakotay’s relationship romantically, it is certainly bringing their friendship to the front and center of its storyline—he cliffhanger which ended season 1 is built entirely around Admiral Janeway’s determination to find and rescue Chakotay. In other words, all of the tension around the end of the first season of Prodigy is about this central Voyager relationship and is carrying on a Voyager plot thread. Thank goodness Netflix has picked up season 2 after it was dropped by Paramount+, as having that particular carrot dangled in front of Voyager fans only to have it taken away again was just too cruel!

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Prodigy Is Also a Sequel to Voyager’s Plot and Story Arcs

Prodigy also functions as a continuation of Voyager ’s central concept and is able to pick up on other aspects of its story. In Voyager ’s pilot episode, the ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant, a distant part of the galaxy more than 70,000 light years from Earth, a distance it would take “more than 75 years” to cover, even going at top speed all the time. The series followed the ship’s journey back home, combining Trek’ s traditional theme of exploration with episodes centered around trying to find a quicker way to get back. It featured a crew that had absorbed a non-Starfleet Maquis ship (a resistance group fighting the Cardassians) alongside the Starfleet crew.

The show became notorious for using an episodic style similar to The Original Series and The Next Generation rather than leaning more on its story arcs like Deep Space Nine as many fans would have preferred, and the concept of two conflicting crews working together was largely ignored after a handful of episodes in season 1. However, the ideas were still there, driving the show. There were occasional stories looking at the conflicts between crewmembers in later seasons, like season 7’s “Repression,” and although the format was primarily Space Anomaly of the Week, the journey home was a story that developed across all seven seasons, with multiple episodes focused on attempts to get home more quickly.

The Delta Quadrant setting also allowed Voyager to put a lot of focus on exploration and Original Series -style Planets of the Week, introducing viewers to lots of new alien species that the show added to the Star Trek universe. The Talaxians, the Kazon, the Hirogen, the Vidiians, and the Malon are probably the most memorable, but there were many others, as well as many interactions with Delta Quadrant-based Next Generation baddies the Borg .

The core concept of Prodigy follows on directly from Voyager ’s. In the pilot episode, we meet our motley crew of young aliens in the Tars Lamora prison colony in the Delta Quadrant. They are all of different races and one of them, Gwyndala, is initially an antagonist to the others, just like Voyager ’s two opposing crews.

By the end of the initial two-parter, our heroes have got their hands on the USS Protostar , a prototype for a small Starfleet ship that can travel much, much faster than any others we have seen. The ship was sent out to return to the Delta Quadrant, captained by Chakotay and accompanied by the Captain Janeway hologram, because they are the experts in that part of the galaxy and already have some contacts there, but it was attacked and lost before being found by Dal R’El and the others.

The Show Is Full of Voyager References and Easter Eggs

The action kicks off in the Delta Quadrant, picking up the pieces from a mission that was specifically designed to follow up on Voyager ’s journey. Over the course of season 1, we have seen appearances from the Kazon, the Borg, and the Brenari (a telepathic species whose refugees were helped by Voyager ’s crew in season 5’s “Counterpoint”), and we have heard references to the Talaxians as well as a more obscure Voyager species, such as the Sakari (the species living underground in season 3’s “Blood Fever”). Janeway has even mentioned the events of Voyager ’s most infamous episode, one so unpopular on its initial release that fans thought it had been written out of the continuity, but which is actually really rather fun and entertaining and is now probably one of its best known hours—she mentions that she was “once turned into a salamander,” a reference to her and Lt. Paris’s (Robert Duncan McNeil) transformation into lizards before abandoning their lizard babies in season 2’s “Threshold.”

The writers have even given the Protostar a new feature to fix one of Voyager ’s most notorious plot holes. The USS Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant with minimal resources, and several episodes revolved around the search for deuterium fuel. And yet somehow, despite numerous shuttlecraft crashes, many of which were specifically described as having destroyed the shuttlecraft, the ship never seemed to run out of shuttles.

Starfleet ships of this era are generally equipped with two shuttlecraft, as was Voyager , plus they had Neelix’s (Ethan Phillips) ship, which they hardly ever used. In season 5, they built their own shuttle, the Delta Flyer, which they proceeded to crash just as often as the other shuttles, if not more so. And yet they never ever ran out. Entire websites were devoted to counting how many shuttlecraft Voyager had lost and apparently replaced with identical shuttles. Were the crewmembers Janeway didn’t like trapped in the bowels of the ship somewhere, building and re-building shuttles? Why did they build them exactly the same every time, and keep giving them the same names? How were they constantly running out of fuel, having to ration replicator food, forcing everyone to eat Neelix’s hair pasta and leola root stew because they didn’t have energy to spare, but they were able to keep up a constant stream of replicated shuttles? This mystery has never been solved, but the writers of Prodigy thought ahead—the Protostar has a replicator specifically designed to replicate shuttlecraft-sized vehicles.

Voyager is not the only Star Trek series referenced in Prodigy . The show is absolutely bursting with references, easter Eggs, and follow-ups to stories, species, and tech from all of the pre-2017 Star Trek series. But its plot, setup, and story and character development make it not just a “spiritual sequel” to Star Trek: Voyager —it is literally a sequel series to Voyager , continuing Voyager ’s plot threads and further developing its setting. If you’re a Star Trek: Voyager fan and you haven’t yet watched Prodigy , you’re missing out.

Star Trek: Prodigy season 3 hits Netflix on July 1.

Juliette Harrisson | @ClassicalJG

Juliette Harrisson is a writer and historian, and a lifelong Trekkie whose childhood heroes were JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. She runs a YouTube channel called…

• July 12, 2024 | Podcast: All Access Dons Their Visors To Look At The Next Five ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Episodes
• July 11, 2024 | Comic-Con Update: ‘Prodigy’ Screening With Kate Mulgrew And IDW Star Trek Comics Panel Announced
• July 11, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Finds A New Perspective In “Is There In Beauty No Truth?” [Episode 208]
• July 10, 2024 | Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Goes To The Races In “The Fast And The Curious” [Episode 207]
• July 10, 2024 | Star Trek Heading To Comic-Con 2024 With Big Hall H Panel, “Menagerie Booth,” And More

Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Goes To The Races In “The Fast And The Curious” [Episode 207]

| July 10, 2024 | By: Anthony Pascale 4 comments so far

 “The Fast and the Curious”

Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2, Episode 7 – Debuted Monday, July 1, 2024 Written by E rin McNamara Directed by  Sung Shin & Sean Bishop

A diverting adventure has the kids facing off with one of their biggest fears.

For a ship named Infinity, internal space is way too finite.

WARNING: Spoilers below!

“I demand tribute!”

Uncomfortably crammed into the Infinity, the kids are not relishing the estimated 61-day trip to the spiral nebula as they are already starting to get on each other’s nerves—and Pog breaking the sonic toilet definitely isn’t helping. Even though Zero is (rightfully) concerned, they decide to take a shortcut through an abandoned Borg transwarp conduit. No surprise, a device latches onto the ship, pulling them out and down to a stinky planet. But it’s not the Borg, it’s the Kazon, bringing back some memories. Some goons show up to take the kids (sans the hiding Zero and Murf) to meet the Maje , who appears to be a few Oglamars short of a Nistrom. After he demands their weight in gold-pressed latinum, Dal gets in his face and dangerously escalating things until Gwyn tries the diplomatic approach. Ekthi gives them a chance to win their freedom if they can simply beat his best pilot in a race. Dal and Pog team up in one skiff, Rok and Gwyn in another, as they head into a course swooping above burbling lava pools and through perilously narrow gates. Dal ignores Gwyn’s suggestion of coordinating strategy and even takes a swipe at her pod, frazzling her life-saving armband. Making things even worse, Ekthi is cheating by sabotaging them with random obstacles while Gwyn starts phasing in and out of existence. Oh, outside Zero and Murf discover this racing outpost is less NASCAR and more Roach Motel as they find a massive ship graveyard. 61 days of Pog smell is starting to sound pretty good right now.

Can you hear the voices in my head too?

“Your transwarp tyranny is over.”

Dal and Pog collide with the leading ship, sending them both into crash landings, and Gwyn and Rok exit the race to help. They discover the other pilots are all robots, as are all the guards. Zero and Murf get discovered by Ekthi and fight him, where knocking off his mask reveals a mind-control chip, which they pry off. Awakened, the Kazon doesn’t know what’s going on, so he takes them down into the pilot training facility where his last memory was working on a program. It’s here we meet the master manipulator: It’s the computer, of course. “Limited beings forged me, but I have grown beyond them.” Classic. EvilRacerSim 2.0 has been pulling ships out of the conduit to feed its need for more recruits, but none can meet the idealized “full potential.” The AI’s tentacles take control of Murf, who helps capture the rest of the gang, but Zero is not having any of it. With “We are not programs, we are living beings,” they break free by tearing off their own robotic limbs (OMG!) and fly straight at the computer core, destroying it in a shower of non-corporeal fury. It’s time to leave and the gang waves goodbye to the more docile Ekthi, taking Zero’s cracked but contained sphere with them. Back on the Infinity, they continue their journey, battered but buoyed by how they got through this latest ordeal, once again as a team. Speaking of teams, the Voyager holo-duplicates (with mixed personalities) get Maj’el suspicious, but when she goes to Gwyn’s quarters to try to sort out what’s going on, time comes to a stop except for some phased tentacle things that reach out to Holo-Gwyn… and she disappears. Time resumes with no one noticing. Okay, that was weird.

Now this is podracing!

Feel the need for speed?

For the second time in a row, the show gives us a standalone episode, this time with a planet-of-the-week adventure complete with guest baddies and action set pieces. After a bit of a Borg fakeout, we return to the Kazon, who should be far less sinister, except to these kids who were kidnapped and sold to the Diviner by a Kazon bounty hunter. The mystery around Ekthi made him more than his “Silence!” villain dialogue suggested. Together, this made the stakes much more personal, even with the racing stuff, which was entertaining if a bit predictable. But true to the Fast and Furious -themed title, this episode was really all about the family of this gang as espoused by Zero, who got to be the real hero of the episode with a strong performance from Angus Imrie. To that point, this episode seemed to be a pivot point for Dal, who is starting to confront his own hubris, and he does appear to be learning as he ends the episode by handing off his log to Gwyn, who was the real leader of the group throughout. So once again these short episodes (even one full of forgettable action) can have some real character stories happening underneath, and ones that feed into strong Star Trek themes. And what could be more Star Trek than the reveal that the real villain is an evil computer?

The red lighting indicates this computer has been set to evil.

This second half of season 2a (the first 10 episodes) continues to return to the more episodic style of the first season, but that can be a bit frustrating after the first five episodes really sunk us into the big plot about time travel, Solum, Chakotay, and the rest. But that tantalizing time tentacle bit at the end was probably enough, especially with a bingeable season. It is hard to juggle these multiple storylines, which is why we only dip into the Voyager-A POV briefly, which is mostly played for laughs as the adults seem oblivious to how weird the holo-dupes are, with only Maj’el catching on. But that’s one of those instances where you have to remember this is primarily a show for kids, and so that all tracks for the target audience. BTW, if you are looking for some more lore, it does appear that even though Zero woke up the Borg last season, what’s left of the collective isn’t active enough to retake at least his part of the transwarp network. We do know that in the coming years they will be back with the Artifact and will eventually attack Earth one last time (per Star Trek: Picard ).

What ever went wrong when using Borg tech?

Final thoughts

The pacing, music, design, and acting in season 2 continue to be at an even higher level than the excellent first season. If you love these characters, then you are going to love seeing them have these fun little side adventures, growing all along the way. And we get to revisit Voyager’s two big bads (the Kazon and the Borg, sort of) with a bit of a Landru twist, like a Trek Tyrant Turducken. What else can you want from an episode 7?

No one bad-mouths coffee on my ship.

• Stardate: 61875.9
• This episode introduced the sonic toilet to the canon, a future tech cousin to the sonic shower .
• Murf likes to do burpees for exercise.
• Borg transwarp conduits were first established in TNG (“Descent”) and then in several Voyager episodes, along with the use of a tachyon pulse to activate.
• Gwyn shows off her Klingon language skills, asking Zero “What in Sto’Vo’Kor is on our ship?”
• Holo-Dal (with Zero’s personality) is a big fan of Cardassian yamok sauce and Ferengi bog crab.
• The ship graveyard included the USS Cairo , previously thought to have been destroyed during the Dominion War.
• Ekthi was voiced by James C. Mathis III , best known for voicing Black Panther in several animated Marvel shows and games.
• Science moment: That stinky smell is thanks to hydrogen sulfide .

And I thought it smelled bad on the inside.

TrekMovie’s  Prodigy July binge-watch

Since all 20 episodes were released on Netflix at once, we’re binging it in five-episode arcs; we can’t stick to watching just one a week! Each All Access Star Trek podcast (every Friday morning) will cover five episodes, while written reviews for all five will publish throughout the week, with two-parters paired up. This will all wrap up just as San Diego Comic-Con kicks off at the end of the month. We also hope to have more Prodigy interviews and analysis in July and beyond.

NEW: Full spoiler open thread!

We welcome fans joining us through July covering 5 episodes each week and we do ask for these recap/reviews to keep comments related to the season up to the episode being reviewed.

However, for those choosing to binge the show even faster, we have created an open thread where you can post all the spoiler comments you want for the entire season. 

Season 2 of  Prodigy is available to stream on Netflix globally (excluding Canada, Nordics, CEE, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Mainland China) and season one is currently available on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Central and Eastern Europe with season two coming soon. Season two has launched in France on France Televisions channels and Okoo.

Keep up with news about the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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I really didn’t like this one. While I loved seeing the Kazon back this one felt like filler of the highest order to me and it was resolved way too easily IMO. But I guess that’s going to be an issue at times when you only have 23 minutes of screen time.

There are only two episodes I wasn’t fond of this season , this one and another one coming up. But not liking two out of 20 episodes is still pretty crazy.

“ I loved seeing the Kazon back”

Because I like them and was the first species that was introduced in the Delta Quadrant.

Fair enough, tastes differ. For me, they were bargain basement Klingons and the first indication that Voyager wasn’t going to be a particularly fresh or interesting show (and it largely wasn’t).