Summary
- "Lost in Translation" in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds improves on Voyager's "The Fight" by executing the concept of communication with non-corporeal aliens more effectively.
- Uhura in Strange New Worlds is a better central character than Chakotay in Voyager. She seeks understanding and connection, interpreting the alien messages as cries for help.
- "Lost in Translation" is structured more thoughtfully than "The Fight". It presents a mystery with a satisfying conclusion, centered around Uhura's emotional journey and improvement over Voyager's lackluster episode.
24 years after one of the lowest-rated and most incomprehensible episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, an episode from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 fixed it. The two shows are separated by a century and 70,000 light years, with Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) leading USS Voyager's 24th-century journey through the Delta Quadrant and Captain Christopher Pike's (Anson Mount) USS Enterprise exploring a final frontier that's much closer to home in the 23rd century. But these two Star Trek shows are linked together by a type of alien with a unique communication style that appeared in both.
In Star Trek: Voyager season 5, episode 19 "The Fight", Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) struggles with what appears to be an attack on his mind from non-corporeal aliens that exist in chaotic space, where the rules of physics can shift at a moment's notice. The aliens attempt to communicate with him by altering his brain structure, which causes hallucinations that he refuses to pay attention to, fearing that he'll become a "crazy old man" like his grandfather was. It's only when he undergoes a voluntary vision quest that he can begin to understand them, as the aliens use images of familiar faces to deliver their message.
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