Recap / Star Trek Voyager S 1 E 12 "Cathexis"

Janeway is partaking in a holodeck holonovel when she gets word that Tuvok and Chakotay's shuttle has returned after an apparent attack, with both men incapacitated. It turns out that Tuvok has a cureable concussion, but Chakotay is comatose, having been drained of all his neural energy. After recovering, Tuvok explains that they were attacked by an unknown vessel near a dark nebula, so Janeway charts a course for the nebula to get answers. The Doctor sees no path to recovery for Chakotay, prompting Torres to performs a medicine wheel ritual sacred to him in hopes of helping. Meanwhile, Kes's telepathic abilities are acting up again, and she feels another presence on the ship.

Strange things start happening around Voyager. As they follow the path of the mysterious vessel toward the nebula, the ship starts charting a course away even though Paris insists he did no such thing. Later, the warp core gets shut down by Torres, though she insists the same. A study of their brain engrams shows that a different brain wave was in control of their actions during these moments. Realizing that they've got a body-jumping alien puppetmaster on the loose, Janeway gives her command codes to the Doctor, since he's the only one immune to its effects. Kes announces that she can sense the alien, and Tuvok suggests that he mind-meld with her to help her focus, but when the pair get into a turbolift, they both get rendered unconscious. Tuvok again bounces back, but Kes is comatose.

Paranoia is rampant, so Janeway orders a ship-wide magneton scan to find the culprit, which will be ready in a few hours. The Doctor informs Tuvok that Kes was physically attacked, and Janeway suggests that Tuvok may have assaulted her while possessed. She orders the Doctor to scan Tuvok, but the Doctor has been put offline by the mysterious saboteur. This transfers all command codes back to Janeway, so she splits them with Tuvok to prevent them all from getting into the hands of the alien at once. But suddenly the alien takes control of Janeway and attacks Tuvok. A phaserfight breaks out, and Tuvok stuns everyone to end it.

But evidence quickly starts mounting that Tuvok has been lying about the mysterious vessel they've been following, and Janeway notes how he is continually at the center of the alien's sabotage. She orders Kim to stop the ship. Tuvok declares that Janeway is under the influence of the alien because she's trying to prevent them from entering the nebula, just like the saboteur. When Kim refuses to heed Tuvok's new orders, the Vulcan pulls a phaser, seizes control of the bridge, and charts a course for the nebula. He finally admits that he's possessed by an alien from a race called the Komar, who feed on brain energy. But Torres gets possessed and ejects the warp core, stopping the ship. Janeway puts together all the clues to realize that there have been two entities aboard the ship, and the one that jumps between bodies is actually Chakotay.

Janeway activates the magneton burst to stun Tuvok and drive the Komar spirit out of him. But the ship is already inside the dark nebula and getting attacked by the Komar. Chakotay inhabits Neelix, who is standing vigil for Kes in sickbay, and rearranges the stones on the medicine wheel at his own bedside. Janeway deciphers the stones as a map out of the dark nebula, and she charts a course to safety. Later, the Doctor manages to finally revive Chakotay. Janeway welcomes him back, but Chakotay says it feels like he never left.

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This episode provides examples of:

• 2-D Space: Tuvok shows the mysterious vessel's path in two dimensions. Later, Chakotay uses his flat medicine wheel to show Voyager how to get out of the nebula.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The magneton flash scan, used to purge the ship of energy beings (not Chakotay, fortunately).
• Astral Projection: Chakotay, for most of the episode.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The alien on board is Chakotay's disembodied mind, trying to keep them from returning to the nebula where hostile aliens are waiting to attack Voyager and feed on the crew's neural energy. The real alien is inside Tuvok.
  • The alien appears to have locked down the Doctor's program to force command authorization to revert to Captain Janeway. It's actually Tuvok preventing the Doctor from informing anyone that Kes was taken out by a Vulcan nerve pinch.
• Body Surf: Chakotay.
• Brain Food: The Komar want the bio-neural energy of Voyager's crew, which will feed them for years.
• Call-Back: The shuttle was returning from a trade mission with the Ilidarians, whom Neelix mentioned in "Parallax".
• Closest Thing We Got: Invoked with the decision to transfer command codes to the Doctor as the only person the alien can't possess, even though he's still early in his personal development at this point. Janeway explicitly confirms that he would only have the authority to override her commands if he feels that she is being influenced by the alien, but that's still a considerable amount of trust to be placed in a program that they only started to regard as a person relatively recently.
• Continuity Nod: The holodeck program takes place in "Ancient England", just as TNG would have such programs set in the "Ancient West".
• Crazy Jealous Guy: When Kes says she sensed a presence in the room with her, Neelix snaps, "Who was it?"
• Cutting the Knot: When the alien starts jumping from one crewmember to another, Tuvok solves the problem by stunning everyone on the bridge with a wide beam shot.
• Dark Is Evil: As the aliens come from a dark nebula, naturally they turn out to be malevolent.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Janeway asks if the Doctor can handle the responsibility of taking charge of Voyager in an emergency.
    The Doctor: Of course...I make life and death decisions every day.
    Paris: I feel better already.
  • When Neelix demands the Doctor investigate someone who's supposedly Not Himself (just because he changed his order), the Doctor tells him he's being paranoid. He then stares at Neelix with mock suspicion. "In fact, one could say you're acting a bit too paranoid."
• Dramatic Thunder: Laid on thick for Janeway's holodeck program.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Despite Tuvok being addressed as lieutenant, and listed as such in the opening credits, he's actually been wearing the insignia of a lieutenant commander (two gold and one black pip) for much of the first season. This is the first episode in which he wears the correct insignia (two gold pips).
• Energy Being: The alien of the week.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Doctor is given command authorization of Voyager. Somewhat perturbed, the Doctor asks if that means he's in command. The Doctor will be more eager to become an Emergency Command Hologram in later seasons.
  • Torres, arranging the stones on Chakotay's medicine wheel, says, "Find your way home, Commander." We then cut to Kes in her quarters sensing a mysterious presence. As it turns out, that presence is Chakotay.
  • In a cross with Plot Parallel, the holonovel's Gothic setting is clearly meant to evoke the supernatural (dark and creepy house, forbidding housekeeper, Dramatic Thunder, Mirror Scare, the mysterious fourth floor). Then we switch to the main plot which involves alien (and spiritual) possession—i.e., a sci-fi version of a haunting.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Janeway has the command protocols transferred to the Doctor, as he's the only one who can't be affected by the alien.
  • Janeway has all power diverted to the thrusters including life support, so they can escape the nebula before the Komar break through their shields.
• He Knows Too Much: Kes is rendered unconscious and the Doctor's program is locked down under numerous security codes.
• He's Dead, Jim: The Doctor states several times that nothing he knows about can be done to restore Chakotay.
• Homage: Janeway's holonovel seems to crib liberally from Jane Eyre, with her as the new governess to the daughter of a bachelor gentleman with a stern personality and a house with something mysterious on the top floor.
• Impossible Genius: The brilliant and unappreciated Doctor has no problem putting Chakotay's soul back into his body at the end of the episode.
  Torres: How did you manage to reintegrate his consciousness?
  EMH: It involved three neural transceivers, two cortical stimulators and fifty gigaquads of computer memory. I would be happy to take you through the process, but it would take at least ten hours to explain it all to you. Needless to say, it was a remarkable procedure. I would consider writing a paper about it if there were a convenient forum in which to publish it.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The alien takes over people, uses them to commit sabotage, and they remember nothing about it afterwards.
• Layman's Terms
  Durst: (alarmed) Non-corporeal? That means it can move right though our bulkheads!
• Magical Native American: Chakotay and his medicine wheel, which he taught B'Elanna how to use.
• Mirror Scare: While in her holonovel, Janeway goes to shut a window that's come open in the storm, only to see a young woman reflected in the glass. She turns to see a framed painting of Mrs Burleigh on the wall. Then she startles when Lord Burleigh lays a hand on her shoulder.
• Not Big Enough for the Two of Us: Janeway snarks at Mrs Templeton that surely Lord Burleigh's Big Fancy House is big enough for the two of them.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Captain Janeway isn't happy at their paranoid reaction to Harry Kim's lapse of attention.
• Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious: The energy beings live in a dark matter nebula and attacked Chakotay and Tuvok when their shuttle passed it.
• Paranoia Fuel (In-Universe): Suspicion spreads among the crew with the realization that anyone could be under alien control and working to thwart them.
• People Puppets: The energy being possesses various members of the crew to do what it wants.
• Phlebotinum-Proof Robot: Due to the Body Surfing alien on the loose, the Captain transfers her command codes to the Doctor as he is the only person on the ship that can't be possessed. The alien just turns him off.
• Prayer Is a Last Resort: B'Elanna performs a ritual with Chakotay's medicine wheel; ironically the Doctor knows more about it than she does, as even spiritual healing techniques are part of his programing. He notes that B'Elanna has put Chakotay's stone in the realm of the beautiful Antelope Women. "He may not want to leave."
• Pressure Point: Kes suffers injury to the trapezius nerve bundle, a clue that she's been Vulcan Nerve Pinched.
• Pull the Thread: B'Elanna examines the shuttle's logs and finds no sign of the alien ship that Tuvok said attacked them.
• Psychic Powers: Kes senses the alien presence on board.
• Red Alert: Tuvok calls an Intruder Alert the moment the Doctor tells them various crewmembers may have been momentarily subjected to Mind Control.
• Recycled Premise: Instead of "Spock's Brain" we have "Chakotay's Soul".
• Shaky P.O.V. Cam: Chakotay's mind moving about the ship.
• Shout-Out: Tom Paris has fond memories of "Doc" Brown.
• Show Within a Show: This marks the first appearance of Janeway's Gothic romance holonovel.
• Space Clouds: The dark matter nebula.
• Spread Shot: When the alien intruder starts taking over members of the bridge crew in succession, Tuvok fires his phaser on wide beam to knock everyone out. When Tuvok's revealed to be hostile, he takes over the bridge by threatening to do it again, with the phaser set to Kill.
• Terminology Title: Cathexis is defined as the investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea.
  Chakotay: After the attack on the shuttle, I had the sensation of floating above my own body. I thought I was dead.
  Janeway: And when the shuttle returned to Voyager you were still disembodied?
  Chakotay: Yes. I couldn't speak, I couldn't touch anything. But then I found if I concentrated on someone who was in the room with me, I could share their consciousness.
• Two-Keyed Lock: After the EMH is locked down, Captain Janeway decides to divide Voyager's command authorisation codes between herself and Tuvok, as the alien can't possess two people at once.
• The Unreveal: We never do discover why it's forbidden to enter the fourth floor of Lord Burleigh's mansion, as the holonovel was Cut Short.
• Wham Line: "The authorization came from Commander Chakotay." Unusual in that, although it changes our understanding of all the previous events of the episode, it does so in a way that's actually good for the protagonists, rather than revealing how screwed they are.
• What Is This Feeling?: The Doctor is nonplussed by Janeway giving him access to Voyager's command codes; even if it is only temporary, and all it allows him to do is countermand her or another senior officer if he believes they are being influenced by the alien, it's still a great deal of power. As he did before when offered the ability to turn himself on and off, he underplays his reaction by noting he makes life-or-death decisions every day, but clearly the responsibility and trust involved affects him—another important step on his future road to independence.