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| Janeway has a nightmare - The first of many... |
The crew begins experiencing vivid nightmares. Tom is in a shuttle crash, unable to contact Voyager for an emergency beam-out; Harry sees a romantic encounter with Seven of Nine turn deadly; Janeway is horrified to discover the crew, mummified because she failed to get them home; and Tuvok reports to the bridge without realizing he is naked. None of them are eager to share their dreams... but when they do compare notes, they learn that all of their nightmares included the same mysterious alien, not acting on the dream, just watching.
The situation quickly proves to be a serious one. Six crew members, including Harry, never woke up from their nightmares. They are still asleep, with even direct cortical stimulation failing to wake them. Chakotay decided to use his Vision Quest techniques to go into a lucid dream. He meets with the alien (Mark Colson), who states he is acting in self defense. His species lives in the dream world, and have been hunted by those in the waking world. The alien tells Chakotay where the nearest border of this space is located so that Voyager can leave as quickly as possible.
At first, the alien seems to have kept his word. All crew members awaken once Voyager crosses the border, and everything seems to be returning to normal. Then the ship comes under attack by vessels that are impervious to the starship's weapons. When a demand for surrender comes, the alien on the viewscreen is the same one from their dreams. Voyager has fallen into a trap - and now the real nightmare begins!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Janeway: As soon as multiple crew members report the same alien in their dreams, Janeway doesn't hesitate to start seriously discussing the situation. When it is revealed that several crew members did not awaken, she becomes determined to find a solution. When captured by the aliens, Janeway immediately begins searching for ways to escape and resist, eventually finding a way to turn their dream abilities against them.
Chakotay: Season Four may be remembered as the season that introduced Seven of Nine, but it's at least as notable as the season where Chakotay has come into his own. Scorpion, Nemesis, Year of Hell, Mortal Coil, and this - All episodes with a very strong role for this previously poorly-utilized character. Chakotay's background in Vision Quests (seen as recently as the previous episode) provide his way into the story, with his ability to keep control of his dreams allowing him to be the dominant figure of the episode in a way that feels consistent with his established character.
Doctor: As a hologram, he is immune to the dream aliens' influence. He is awake even when the entire rest of the ship has been put to sleep. Chakotay is able to use this so that his final confrontation with the aliens is fully supported. Seeing Voyager being run, apparently reasonably successfully, by just the Doctor and Chakotay not long after seeing Janeway piloting the ship solo in Year of Hell does beg the question: Why such a large crew if only a handful of them are actually needed? Is it really just to give Janeway a large pool of potential redshirts?
Harry Kim: So which of the regulars do you think ends up being unable to wake from the nightmare? And when a diversion is called for to draw the attention of the aliens, who do you think gets to be vocally blamed by Seven before being assaulted? Yes, Harry Kim is wandering around with a neon bullseye painted onto his backside. Then again, given that Harry deflects questions about his nightmare by shifting everyone's attention to Tuvok, he just might deserve all he gets. He continues to be attracted to Seven - but after his Seven-centered nightmare followed by her assault, he may be a bit gun-shy at this point (unless, of course, Harry likes that sort of thing. Which would actually explain a lot...)
THOUGHTS
Waking Moments is a fun episode.
It's not all it might have been, mind you. Though director Alexander Singer has proved a steady hand in the past, his direction here is disappointingly standard for a "dream" episode. There is little atmosphere, even in the sequences we are meant to recognize as a dream; it all just looks and feels like a standard Voyager episode.
Andre Bormanis' script does move along at a good pace, though, and keeps things engaging throughout. It would be nice if it were more surprising - The plot turns are disappointingly easy to see coming, and even a couple of attempted "jump" moments raise little in the way of surprise or tension. In addition, the dream aliens seem to have little motive for their actions, essentially being evil for the sake of it. Even if the lead alien was telling the truth when he told Chakotay that they had been hunted, he certainly recognized by that point that Voyager's crew posed no threat. So what motive was there for leading the starship into a trap, when letting them go both avoided conflict and was actually the easier option? No satisfactory answer is ever given (indeed, no one in the episode even asks the question).
Still, it works as an hour of entertainment. It held my attention while watching. I may have seen most of the twists coming, but there was no point at which I lost interest in seeing it all play out. Even Janeway's "action movie moment," as she totes a Big Damn Gun while quipping about turning the aliens' dream into a nightmare, is just cheesy enough to be funny in the right way. Disappointingly conventional execution, both in the writing and the directing, keeps this from being a truly good episode. But it is at least a fun one - And I'm hardly inclined to complain about that.
Overall Rating: 6/10.
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