S4 E12: Mortal Coil

Neelix, Chakotay, and Paris attempt to collect some protomatter from a nebula, but an unexpected discharge kills Neelix. When their shuttle returns to Voyager, Seven informs the crew that her Borg nanoprobes can be used to resuscitate people who have sustained such injuries, even up to 18 hours after death. The procedure is effective, but Neelix is greatly disturbed that he does not recall going to the Great Forrest, the Talaxian afterlife - a place that he had described earlier to Naomi Wildman (Samantha Wildman's child) when she could not sleep. He tries to brush it off, but finds that he cannot and seeks Chakotay's help with a vision quest. His vision seems to confirm his fears that he will never be reunited with his lost loved ones in the Great Forrest, and he resolves to end his life by beaming himself into the nebula. Chakotay confronts him, arguing that the vision may have only been forcing him to confront his fears, not confirming to him that they were true. However, it is Samantha's arrival, asking him to help Naomi get to sleep again, that most effectively talks him down. That night, Naomi dreams of the Great Forrest.

What a fantastic counterpoint to Sacred Ground. While both episodes are fundamentally about faith, Sacred Ground speaks in faux-aphorisms, hoping to prop faith up by taking cheap shots at science. Mortal Coil looks at the more measurable benefits of faith (the hope and comfort it can provide), while also examining the investment that the individual must also put in if he or she wishes to maintain it. If someone is going to choose to believe something, even in the absence of evidence, they've got to also be prepared to deal with the arrival of evidence of absence. And though faith in things like young-earth creationism must face counter-evidence daily, faith in an afterlife is typically a different story - very few people have come back from the dead.

Many reactions to this episode that I've read, including those on memory alpha, seem to be under the impression that it is making the statement that no afterlife exists. Maybe it is because of the agnostic approach that I take to the episode, but I don't get that at all. All we know for sure is that Neelix's conscious mind does not recall being present in an afterlife. In my opinion, that's a great place for this episode to inhabit - there's a whole lot out there to not know. I aspire to be comfortable with not being able to know some things. It isn't that I don't want to know more, or even that I don't seek to know more, but that I, when I do not know something, try not to carry that uncertainty as a burden. Neelix is clearly not in the same place, but I don't think that means that the episode is saying anything for certain.

Even as a stand-alone, this episode is awesome, but it is made even better by the improvements made to Neelix's character this season. The flipping out he does here carries a lot more weight coming from a more stable character. I'm very happy with the relationships that this episode builds between Neelix and the Wildmans and Chakotay and even Seven. You know what, I'm just going to say it: so far this season, Neelix is my favorite character on the show.

Also, along with the new astrometrics lab (which debuted in Year of Hell, Part I), the visual effects people on the show have been throwing in real-life pictures of astronomical objects into the backgrounds of that set (including the cat's eye nebula and the horse head nebula). I think that's a nice ambient touch. What is even better is that the nebula in this episode seems to be formed from a composite of nebula textures, so this is the first Trek nebula that actually looks like nebulas that we've seen. That's exciting.

Watchability: 5/5

Bottom Line: An indispensable episode, and a much more balanced look at faith than its third-season counterpart.

Side Note: It is established in this episode that the Borg have never assimilated the Kazon because they were simply not a worthy addition to the collective. In Seven's words, their addition would have "detracted from perfection." Now, I liked the Kazon more than most, but I still thought that was amusing.