Waking Moments (episode)

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"Waking Moments"
VOY, Episode 4x13 Production number: 182 First aired: 14 January 1998
←	81st of 168 produced in VOY	→
←	80th of 168 released in VOY	→
	{{{nNthReleasedInSeries_Remastered}}}th of 168 released in VOY Remastered
←	499th of 726 released in all	→

Written By André Bormanis Directed By Alexander Singer
51471.3 (2374)
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The crew begins to experience vivid nightmares, all containing the same mysterious alien.

1 Summary
2 Memorable Quotes
3 Background Information
- 3.1 Video and DVD releases
4 Links and References

[edit] Summary

The senior staff is asleep. They are each having their own separate dreams, but in those dreams, something unpleasant happens. In Tom Paris's dream, he is flying a shuttle when suddenly it begins to malfunction and he flies into a planet; Tuvok forgets his uniform and arrives at the bridge naked; Kathryn Janeway discovers that the crew are dead because she didn't get them home in time; Harry Kim dreams that he and Seven of Nine passionately kiss inside a Jefferies tube. However, in each dream, a mysterious alien appears. It is just then that they all wake up.

B'Elanna Torres arrives at Paris' quarters upset that he missed a date they had made. Paris apologizes, telling her that he didn't sleep well, and they re-schedule their date. Paris goes to the mess hall to get a cup of coffee. Neelix gets right on it, but pours him a cup of cooking oil instead. Neelix apologizes and says that he had a rough night. Paris arrives late on the bridge, but Captain Janeway is late too. She and Chakotay each explain that they had a nightmare the night before. Chakotay was deer hunting and while hunting, his father had turned into a vicious-looking alien. Janeway is surprised and says that she had an alien in her dream too. Paris interrupts and comments about an alien in his dream. Janeway asks Tuvok if he had an alien in his dream. He did, so Janeway called the senior staff together. But Harry Kim is still asleep.

Janeway and Tuvok go to Kim's quarters. Janeway knocks on the door and signals the door bell. No response. Tuvok uses a security clearance to enter the room. They find Harry asleep. They cannot wake him up. After bringing him to sickbay, The Doctor explains that Harry and several other crew members are in a hyper REM state. He cannot wake them, even with direct cortical stimulation. The Doctor advises that everyone avoid going to sleep.

In the briefing room, Torres, Chakotay, Janeway, Paris, and Seven of Nine are each describing the alien in their dreams. They attempt to make a computer generated image of him on the observation lounge viewscreen. Eventually, they arrive at the picture they want, and Seven says that the Borg have never encountered this species before. USS Voyager had never encountered them either. They cannot find any starships or any trace of alien life with their sensors. Chakotay suggests that they use their dreams to make contact with the alien. He suggests a technique called lucid dreaming in which the dreamer takes complete control of his/her dream, so that they can do whatever they want. He says that he can use the same techniques he uses during a vision quest to enter a lucid dream. He says that if he sees the full moon, Luna, then he knows he is dreaming and has complete control over it. If he taps the back of his hand three times, he can wake up.

Chakotay preparing for a lucid dream

In sickbay, The Doctor is ready for Chakotay to go asleep. Chakotay begins using the same words and devices he uses for a vision quest. Suddenly he is asleep and in his dream, he is holding a spear and deer hunting through the corridors of Voyager. When the deer enters the mess hall, he sees the full moon outside the window and realizes he's dreaming. He now has complete control. A few seconds later, he sees the deer again, but it transforms into the alien. The two men fight, but the alien is beaten and surprised that Chakotay can control his dream. He forces the alien to tell him how the other crew members can wake up. He says to go beyond their space and they will awake. Chakotay taps his hand three times and is instantly awake.

Chakotay heads to the bridge with Janeway and they begin moving out of the alien territory. After they are out of it, the other crew members wake up. Interestingly, Seven of Nine asks Kim to join her in the same Jefferies tube that he had dreamed about being in with her, but this time he gives her an excuse to stall for time. Suddenly, the ship is under attack and the attackers are the aliens. They had been led into a trap. The aliens surround Voyager with a dampening field and they suffer a complete power drain. A squad of aliens beams aboard Voyager and escorts the crew to the cargo bay. There, Janeway decides that they should make a diversion so that someone can access a Jefferies tube and retake the ship. Seven of Nine punches Kim and explains quietly that she is making a diversion. She shouts that it is his fault that the Voyager is taken over. Janeway pretends to handle it while Torres and Chakotay access a Jefferies tube. While accessing manual control, Chakotay suddenly sees the full moon on the control panel. He is stunned to find that he is still dreaming, having experienced a sleep phenomenon called false awakening. Two aliens then appear to try to restrain Chakotay, but he taps the back of his hand three times and instantly is awake in the real sickbay.

The full moon Chakotay saw on the computer panel

Finally really awake, The Doctor explains that he has been asleep for nearly two days and the rest of the crew began falling asleep one by one. Only he and The Doctor are awake. Based on readings the Doctor took, he and Chakotay conclude that all of the crew are sharing the same dream from his or her point of view. Meanwhile, in the dream, the senior officers are speculating on what is really going on. Since Chakotay had strangely disappeared, they began thinking that maybe he was right and that they were all dreaming. The Captain says that they should still treat this like it is an alien invasion, so she, Torres, and Tuvok eventually make their way through a Jefferies tube and into Main Engineering.

Torres tries to shut down the dampening field, but the warp core suddenly turns on. The computer then warns that a warp core breach will occur in sixty seconds. The core cannot be ejected. They surround engineering with a containment field and evacuate. Janeway hesitates, however, and orders them to go out while she stays in. When the breach occurs, the ship shakes, but is not destroyed. Janeway comes out of engineering a few seconds later and concludes that they are still dreaming.

Back with Chakotay, Janeway suddenly appears on the bridge and explains that she woke up the same way he did. The crew gradually begins to awaken. They set a course away from the alien space, but then Chakotay sees the full moon on the viewscreen. He tries to wake up but cannot. The Doctor says that he is paranoid and sedates him. Just then, Chakotay wakes up on the bridge. The Doctor says that he injected him with a powerful compound to wake him up; Chakotay had dozed off. By scanning for a certain neurogenic field, they had found where the aliens were. The Doctor sends him down with a hypospray to keep him awake.

In the dream world, Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres cannot wake themselves, but they know that they are dreaming and are thus in complete control. They grab phaser rifles and come across the aliens near the cargo bay. The aliens try to shoot them, but they cannot be harmed. Janeway orders everyone to stay in control of the dream but the aliens threaten that they will slowly waste away because they are not getting nutrition or muscle stimulation in the waking world.

The aliens in the dreams asleep in the waking world

Meanwhile, Chakotay is on the planet and cannot disable the field that is making the crew sleep. He finds a whole population of sleeping aliens, all who are in the dream. He begins to have trouble concentrating and is about to inject himself when he decides to inject one of the aliens instead because they looked weak. He orders the Doctor to target that chamber with a photon torpedo and destroy it if he does not hear from Chakotay in five minutes. Chakotay wakes one of the aliens and orders him to turn off the field or he will start shooting. But just then he falls asleep and enters the dream. There, he tells the aliens that they will all be killed if they do not stop this dream immediately.

"Chief medical officer's log, stardate 51471.3. With the neurogenic field neutralized, I've been successful in reviving the entire crew. Unfortunately, the experience has produced a troubling side effect for many of them – acute insomnia."

The Doctor is able to successfully revive all the crew members after the aliens deactivated the field. But they all now have a fear of going to sleep. After Chakotay, Paris, Kim, Tuvok, and Neelix are up early in the morning in the mess hall, Chakotay suggests that Neelix start breakfast.

[edit] Memorable Quotes

"It appears, that in my haste to report to the bridge, I neglected to put on my uniform."

- Tuvok, after reporting to the bridge naked during a dream.

"Neelix, did you have a rough night or something?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because you just poured me a steaming cup of cooking oil."

- Tom Paris and Neelix

"Resistance is futile."

- Seven of Nine, seconds before kissing Harry Kim rather forcibly

"Either I've become impervious to antimatter explosions, or we're still dreaming."

- Janeway, in the shared dream after a warp core breach

"I wonder what a Vulcan nightmare would be like."
"Alone, exiled on a planet, where the only form of communication is laughter."

- B'Elanna Torres and Neelix, poking fun at Tuvok's "Vulcan dreams"

[edit] Background Information

In this episode, Roxann Dawson first started wearing an over-jacket on her uniform, with tools in her top pocket, as a disguise for her pregnancy. This wasn't the first time the costume department used this trick, Gates McFadden wore a large lab coat during her pregnancy throughout TNG's fourth season. Dawson's pregnancy would, however, be written into the two-part episode "The Killing Game".
Chakotay visualizes the moon in its pre-colonized state. In the previously released movie Star Trek: First Contact, Commander Riker states that the moon appears quite different in the 24th century than in the 21st century.