While exploring the catacombs of a deeply religious civilization, Kes is zapped by a lethal force field, and Janeway must undergo a ritual to petition the peoples' religious figures to spare her life...
This episode provides examples of:
- Beleaguered Bureaucrat: The poor Magistrate is clearly having a rough time threading the needle between the religious monks and the visitors from Voyager. He blames himself for what happened, and when Neelix manages to find an obscure historical precedent which will let Janeway try and save Kes, he's happy to advocate it to the monks.
- Bridal Carry: Janeway carrying a comatose Kes into the shrine.
- Buried Alive: Janeway is sealed inside a sarcophagus for a Commercial Break Cliffhanger.Janeway: I'm dying.Spirit guide: Everyone dies eventually. (lid slides shut)
- Cliffs Of Insanity: Janeway is climbing huge cliffs with the requisite Climb, Slip, Hang, Climb...then we cut back to her holding the stone, as it's all an illusion.
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: Kes gets a near fatal injury when she insists on peeking into a sacred shrine that turns out to be protected by Some Kind Of Forcefield.
- Doing in the Scientist: Much of the episode is about Janeway putting aside her normal dependence on science and turn to understand religion. Despite all logic and evidence saying it shouldn't work, she is compelled to take Kes into the force field with her as an act of faith. Miraculously, Kes wakes up. After the fact The Doctor develops especially complicated Techno Babble to explain what happened, but Janeway's response makes her feel like he is discarding the faith she required.
- Don't Think, Feel: The three elderly supplicants urge Janeway to stop analysing everything and take a Leap of Faith.
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: Except young Janeway, apparently.Janeway: When other children were outside playing games I was doing mathematics problems.Guide: Mathematics. I can see why you enjoyed it. Solve a problem, get an answer. The answer's either right or wrong. It's very absolute.
- Fanservice: A Toplessness from the Back shot of Janeway.
- Grumpy Old Man: One of the waiting people is a half-deaf old grouch. The other guy and the lady are a lot more pleasant.
- Gut Feeling: With Kes dying, Janeway decides to screw logic and carry her back into the shrine with its dangerous forcefield, even though she can't think of any rational explanation why this will work. It does of course, and and it won't be the last time Janeway puts her gut instinct over logic.
- Hand in the Hole: Janeway has to stick her hand into a basket with a nesset — some creature that makes hissing noises. It bites her.
- Hope Spot: Looks like the nesset bite was the key! *Cue Kes starting to flatline* ... or not.
- I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: The Nechani Magistrate: "I'm an official of the government, not a spiritual leader."
- Letting Her Hair Down: Janeway lets down her Bun of Steel, for this episode anyway.
- Low Culture, High Tech: The guide repairing the light fixture looks like someone they called in for the job, but she turns out to be a monk as well, who fully comprehends the technology Janeway is using.
- Mama Bear: Janeway will do anything to protect her people, even undergo a potentially dangerous biochemical change.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Janeway is left wondering at the end of the episode whether the whole thing was scientific or supernatural.
- Meaningful Echo: The guide warns Janeway that "Everything you've gone through is meaningless." When the EMH tells her the same thing about the Vision Quest she's endured, Janeway realises she needs to start thinking about what that means.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Janeway goes into the ritual with this mindset, convinced there's a rational explanation for everything. It doesn't help.Janeway: I've been reviewing the Federation's cultural database. Most traditional spirit quest ceremonies involve some kind of physical challenge or test of endurance to prove the mastery of spirit over body. My instinct tells me this one will be similar. A series of ordeals that will result in biochemical changes.Chakotay: Of course there's always the possibility that the Ancestral Spirits really do control what happens in the shrine.Janeway: To each his own, Commander, but I imagine if we scratch deep enough we'd find a scientific basis for most religious doctrines.Chakotay: I remember when my mother taught me about the science underlying the vision quest. In a way, I felt disappointed. Some of the mystery was gone. Maybe the Nechani have chosen not to lose the mystery.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Chakotay, out of all people, who is fond of vision quests and does believe that there are things that science can't explain, acts unusually skeptical here. It seems that his protective feelings towards Janeway are overruling his acceptance of religious stuff. He does mention that vision quests can be explained by science though.
- Right in Front of Me:
- Janeway's guide turns out to be the woman fixing the light.
- How Janeway is able to get the answers she needs to help Kes—she sits with the waiting elderly people, whom she earlier dismissed as insignificant, and talks with them.
- Team Mom: Janeway is able to take the ritual on this basis, as there was a precedent in which a Nechani king took the ritual on behalf of his injured son. As The Captain she is both ruler and surrogate parent to Kes.
- Technobabble: The iridium ions caused a temporary dielectric effect in the outer epidermal layers which neutralised enough of the biogenic energy to make the Captain's altered biochemistry an effective defence against the forcefield, which functioned like a natural cortical stimulator and reactivated Kes's synaptic pathways when Janeway carried her through it. Or so the EMH says. For once, Janeway doesn't quite believe it.
- Tracking Device: A subdermal device is used to monitor Janeway's condition and track her movements. The monks know about it, but let her proceed regardless.
- Vision Quest: Janeway undergoes one when she suffers a snake bite.
- Your Door Was Open: When Janeway opens the opposite door to their chamber, the Grumpy Old Man says, "I told you it was unlocked!"
- You Were Trying Too Hard: There are ordeals, trials by poison, a rebirth ritual, and a cryptic vision — all because Janeway expects it to go that way. One of the elderly people even comments that she made things way harder on herself than most petitioners.
