Love is in the air as Chakotay catches two officers kissing in a turbolift. He asks Janeway whether they should draw up policies on fraternization in the ranks, but Janeway doesn't think it necessary to regulate the crew's personal lives. They take the ship into a strange energy disturbance and find a swarm of space-dwelling lifeforms. Meanwhile, Kes is gardening and is horrified to discover that she's been snacking on some beetles without realizing it.
Neelix finds Kes gorging herself on just about anything she can shove in her mouth. She maniacally insists nothing is wrong with her, but he carries her to sick bay anyway. The Doctor runs tests and eventually must kick Neelix out for interfering. He storms onto the bridge, where the crew are dealing with the fact that the space creatures have sucked the ship into their swarm. Janeway insists on finding a nonviolent way to free themselves. When Neelix interrupts her to complain about the Doctor's actions, the Doctor himself summons Janeway to sick bay. Kes has sealed herself off with a forcefield and refuses to come out. Even Neelix can't talk sense into her, but she does eventually let Janeway in.
Kes confesses that she's undergoing the Ocampan version of puberty, called Elogium, which has come far too early in her life. She has only this one chance to have a child. She and Neelix have to make the decision in 40-50 hours. Neelix is hesitant about having a child on a starship, but Kes angrily rebuffs his comments as excuses and accuses him of not wanting a child with her. Neelix wanders off to think and speaks with Tuvok, who notes the profound satifaction that child rearing can bring. Neelix returns and announces that he's ready to be a father, but Kes herself starts having doubts.
The ship hasn't been able to escape the swarm of space creatures, some of which have attached themselves to the ship in an attempt to mate. A massive version of the creatures arrives and starts ramming the ship, apparently in a display of dominance. The crew try fleeing, distracting, and ramming the creature to no avail. After noting the behavior of the creatures earlier, they decide to simulate a show of submission by changing the ship's color and rolling over, which the creature accepts. With Voyager having lost its "sex appeal," the smaller creatures detach and swarm around the larger one, freeing the ship.
Kes has decided against having a child. Neelix, who was starting to look forward to fatherhood, is bummed out, but Kes consoles him by revealing that her Elogium was "false," and that she will still go through it at the proper time, at which point she and Neelix will be better prepared for parenthood. Meanwhile, Janeway meets with a member of her crew who announces that she's pregnant with her husband's baby, who is still on Deep Space Nine. The captain commiserates that it's not an ideal place for a child but congratulates her anyway.
This episode has the following tropes:
- Androids Are People, Too: Neelix shows a little space racism against the Doctor, asserting that he's not real and has no right to order around a flesh-and-blood person like him. He's apparently not overwhelmed with gratitude for saving his life with those holographic lungs. Kes insists that the Doctor is at least real to her.
- Artistic License – Biology: The episode establishes that Ocampa can have children only once in their lifetimes, and strongly implies — though to be fair, it wasn't said outright until later — that they give birth to only one child during their one and only pregnancy. And since nothing in this or any other episode says that male Ocampa also give birth, this means that the best-case scenario is that every generation of Ocampa should be half the size of the previous one. Not to mention that it makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint for the physical act to take six days, during which the couple must be bonded together. Any species that takes that long to conceive would be open to attacks from predators.
- Big Eater: In the first stage of her elogium, Kes develops an absolutely ravenous appetite, for both ordinary and exotic things: in a very short period of time, she eats six bowls of mashed potatoes with butter, several apple-like fruits, a couple handfuls of beetles, and the flowers Neelix brings her. Oh, and she mixed dirt into the mashed potatoes.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Ocampans gives birth from a sac on their backs, and when women reach sexual maturity, you rub their feet until their tongue swells up.
- Bizarre Alien Locomotion: The space creatures propel themselves via flagellation, essentially whipping their tails back and forth as a means of moving forward. In keeping with the theme of the episode, this happens to also be how sperm propels itself.
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Kes holds up her hands to show some sticky yellow residue on them.Neelix: What's that?
Kes: The ipasaphor. It makes the mating bond possible.
Neelix: It does?
Kes: If we begin, we must stay bonded for six days.
Neelix: Six days?
Kes: In order to ensure conception. And after the ipasaphor appears, we only have fifty hours to begin the process. So, I need to know your answer. - Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Neelix's pepper sauce.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Neelix is once again proven to be extremely jealous when anyone is so much as nice to Kes. He clarifies that he's not distrustful of her but assumes that every man around is poised to take advantage of a "young, naive" girl like her. She's just as clearly insulted that he thinks she'd fall for it, but that gets shoved to the side as she begins to behave oddly.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The episode is a science fiction take on teen pregnancy, with Kes and Neelix struggling to decide with little warning whether they're ready to raise a child, and Kes ultimately decides that she's too young.
- Elevator Going Down: Chakotay interrupts a couple making out in the turbolift. Good thing he never finds out what some Slash Fic writers have him getting up to in there.
- Fake Pregnancy: Proximity to the field generated by the space breeders causes the onset of fertility in Kes, but once Voyager escapes the symptoms reside.
- Fan Disservice: Kes in a state of sexual heat looks like a sweat-stained, hollow-eyed junkie.
- Flowers of Romance: Neelix brings Kes flowers to apologize for his jealousy. When she starts eating them, he drags her off to Sickbay.
- Generation Ship: Chakotay points out that if it does take 75 years to get back home, Voyager will need a replacement crew in half that time.
- Get Out!: The Doctor to Neelix, after he keeps complaining and getting in the way while the Doctor is trying to find out what's wrong with Kes.
- Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: A Space Whale tries to hump
Voyager! - Interspecies Romance: Talaxian and Ocampa.
- Large Ham Jennifer Lien looks like she's having a blast playing a hormone-addled Kes.
- Most Writers Are Human: This episode makes a few assumptions about Ocampa and Talaxians from a western, human perspective. It's treated as self-evident that Kes would be horrified to realize that she's eating live bugs, but we've already seen several alien species in Star Trek eat bugs and other live creatures, and human cultures in real life eat insects. Tuvok also reminds Neelix that he's equally likely to have a daughter as a son, though that's a rather bold assumption from someone who knows just about nothing about Talaxian or Ocampan biology.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Kes drops into Sarcasm Mode when Neelix starts backing off from having a child with her.
- Parental Substitute: Kes proposes either Janeway or the Doctor massage her feet in lieu of her absent parents. As the captain is too busy, the Doctor ends up doing it.
- Reset Button: Turns out Kes can still have kids.
- Series Continuity Error: Kes puts up a forcefield in Sickbay to keep the Doctor away from her. But the Doctor is shown in other episodes to be able to walk through a forcefield by projecting himself on the other side.
- Ship Tease: J/CJANEWAY: Good work, Commander. In the future, if I have any questions about mating behaviour, I'll know where to go.
- Someone to Remember Him By: At the end of the episode, Ensign Wildman goes to have a quiet word with the captain. Turns out she's pregnant, and her husband stayed behind on Deep Space Nine on the other side of the galaxy. After all, Voyager was only supposed to be out for a few weeks…
- Space Whale: The large space creature looks and behaves quite a bit like a whale.
- Teen Pregnancy: According to the Doctor, this is very common for the Breen.
- Wacky Cravings: A variation. Although Kes isn't actually pregnant, she is undergoing severe hormonal changes related to her species' reproductive cycle, which causes her to develop a major appetite for the weirdest things: beetles, mashed potatoes with soil, flowers...
- With Due Respect: An unusually aggressive B'Elanna says this to Captain Janeway, when she's reluctant to harm the space creatures.
