The Voyager crew discover a mysterious spatial anomaly that in 2032 swallowed Earth's first Mars astronaut whole. They decide to undertake a dangeous rescue mission.
The hallmark of Voyager these days seems to be a writer coming up with what they think is a great idea, the staff buying it, then everyone sitting about trying to come up with a way to develop it into an interesting story, and failing.
This is no exception. For the good of the story, Chakotay suddenly turns into Picard, professing a love for palaeontolgy he never mentioned before and a burning desire to retrieve the Mars probe, whatever the cost, a drive he's also never exhibited. It's as if Tom Paris had already had an episode this season, so Chakotay must take his role through a love for ancient items.
The biggest problem, however, is that the crew don't interact with anyone but themselves, and when Chakotay is injured, you half expect, and indeed hope for, an Inner Light-stylesection of Chakotay living the last few days of the astronaut's life. However, all we get is Seven learning about how special the past is. Jeri Ryan does her best, but it really is a profoundly uninteresting plot as well. Some form of interaction with the past would have been good, but the closest we get to excitement is the team trying to escape from the anomaly. There's also an attempt at tugging the heartstrongs with the final days of astronaut John Kelly, but he has so little screen time that you don't really feel for him or care about what happens to him at all. This should have been left on the drawing board.
**
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