“Unforgettable”
Written by Greg Elliot & Michael Perricone
Directed by Andrew J. Robinson
Season 4, Episode 22
Production episode 190
Original air date: April 22, 1998
Stardate: 51813.4
Captain’s log. Voyager finds itself proximate to a firefight, though they can only detect the results of the weapons fire, not the actual battle itself. Seven theorizes that the combatants are cloaked, which proves to be the case when one ship blows up the other one.
The surviving ship’s occupant is a woman named Kellin, who contacts Voyager and asks for Chakotay by name. They can’t get a transporter lock on her, and so Chakotay leads a team over to the ship. He rescues Kellin from being stuck under fallen debris and then transports back to Voyager with her. The EMH is able to treat her despite the fact that the tricorder and biobed don’t retain any information about her a second after she’s scanned.
Kellin explains that her people, the Ramurans, emit a pheromone that makes people forget them once they’re no longer proximate to them. She, in fact, spent a week on Voyager, but everyone forgot about that once she left. She has returned because she wants asylum on Voyager.
The thing is, the Ramurans are fanatically isolationist, to the point that they’re not allowed to leave their home system. Kellin, in fact, is a Tracer, charged with hunting down people who leave and bringing them back. She found one such fugitive stowing away on Voyager. She accidentally revealed herself to internal scans, and Chakotay captured her. Eventually, she explained herself, and they spent a week searching for the fugitive, finally tricking him into being in a particular location so they could deactivate his personal cloak.
But in that week, Kellin fell in love with Chakotay and now, a month later, she has decided to come to Voyager to be with him. Unfortunately, he remembers nothing of any of this, and he can’t bring himself to entirely trust her. However, as they talk, and as Kellin describes their time together that he no longer remembers, he starts to fall for her again. Eventually, they wind up smooching in his quarters.
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A History of What Comes Next
Two cloaked Ramuran ships challenge Voyager, but Kellin helps them adjust sensors so they can get a weapons lock. The minute Voyager fires back, the two ships bugger off. Kellin is sure that they won’t give up this easily and they’ll be back.
Wanting to make herself useful, Kellin offers to become part of Tuvok’s security detail. Tuvok agrees to let her shadow one of his teams for a week and evaluate her.
A Tracer, Curneth, managed to get on board during the firefight with the two ships, and he captures Kellin in Chakotay’s quarters and uses a neurolytic emitter on her that will erase all her memories of the world outside the Ramuran homeworld. Chakotay places Curneth in the brig and brings Kellin to sickbay, but there’s nothing the EMH can do to stop the process. As her memories start to fade, Kellin begs Chakotay to do for her what she did for him: tell her about their relationship.
He does so, but she seems unmoved by it. If anything, her learning about this apparent lapse in judgment makes her more determined to go back home where she belongs. Reluctantly, Chakotay frees Curneth and lets him take her away. He then writes down what happened using pen and paper so it will be preserved after she’s gone.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Somehow, Ramuran pheromones are able to affect technology that the Ramurans have never encountered by erasing all trace of them. That’s totally plausible.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway is surprisingly blasé about giving Kellin asylum, given that there’s a metric buttload of doubt and uncertainty regarding her.
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok considers allowing Kellin to be part of her security detail. He also makes, not one, but two jokes on the subject.
Forever an ensign. Kim laments to Chakotay that Seven’s upgrades to the astrometrics sensors are not yet compatible with regular ship’s sensors, and he is not happy when Chakotay orders him to work with Seven to make them compatible. (Paris also teases him on the subject.)
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix winds up serving as Chakotay’s sounding board, both when he’s uncertain about how to respond to Kellin and when he’s struggling with her having lost her memory.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH is confused by the fact that his scans of Kellin won’t stay in the computer. But, as he himself says: “Luckily, I’m a master of visual diagnosis.” How he visually diagnoses a concussion is left as an exercise for the viewer.
Resistance is futile. Seven notices twice that Chakotay and Kellin’s faces grow flush when they discuss the other. Kim gets to explain to her about courtship rituals and how important they are to humans. Seven listens very carefully and concludes that they’re stupid.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Kellin rejects her entire society for love of Chakotay, only to have him not believe it’s real. When he finally does, her memory is erased, so she no longer even is willing to take the chance of loving him. And then Chakotay forgets all about her after she leaves. Cha cha cha.
Do it.
“If Kellin’s going to be with us, the captain wants her to serve a function—to contribute in some way.”
“A reasonable expectation. What are her skills?”
“Basically, she was a security operative for her people. She’s a trained expert in weaponry, surveillance, fighting skills—any idea where she might fit in?”
“Mr. Neelix could use an assistant in the mess hall.”
“Tuvok, that was a joke. Don’t deny it, you were trying to be funny.”
“If you choose to interpret my remark as humorous, that is your decision.”
“I do and it was.”
“It’s perfectly logical. All the qualities you mentioned would help in defending Neelix against the periodic wrath of the crew.”
–Chakotay and Tuvok discussing Kellin’s potential role on the ship while also giving Tuvok a chance to make a funny (twice!) and troll Neelix.
Welcome aboard. The big guest is Oscar-nominated actor Virginia Madsen as Kellin. Madsen had previously acted alongside both Robert Beltran and Tim Russ in the movies Slam Dance and Fire With Fire, respectively.
Michael Canavan and Chuck Magnus play the other two Ramurans we see. Canavan previously appeared in DS9’s “Defiant” as a Maquis, and will play a Vulcan in Enterprise‘s “First Flight.”
Trivial matters: At the top of the episode, Kim mentions that Voyager is searching for a deuterium source. This foreshadows “Demon” two episodes hence, when Voyager finally finds such a source.
Torres doesn’t appear in this episode, as Roxann Dawson was busy giving birth.
Set a course for home. “Since I can’t remember any of that, I don’t know if it’s true.” After almost four full years of watching this show very aggressively hit the metaphorical reset button, it’s amusing to see a script that has the reset button be part of the plot.
The problem is that, as nifty a general concept as the Ramurans’ memory-wiping pheromone is, it makes absolutely no sense in any practical way. I’ll buy that people forget about them, though it strains credulity that the pheromone would work exactly the same way on every species they encounter. But I don’t buy for a nanosecond that they also have the ability to wipe records of themselves from technology—especially not from technology they’re not familiar with. Also, how does the EMH not remember her? He doesn’t have a brain as such.
I might have been willing to buy it if Kellin had only been on board for a little while, but she was there for a week. There had to be significant evidence of her presence that would’ve been recorded by sensors in a variety of manners, and the gaps in people’s memories is something they would have investigated. I find myself reminded of TNG’s “Clues,” where they kept finding little things that showed evidence of something they didn’t remember, and they kept picking at it. Wouldn’t Voyager‘s crew do likewise?
The scripting is also pretty lackluster. Even with the problematic technical issues, the actual story is a good one, and Robert Beltran and Virginia Madsen convinced me of the relationship. I especially like that Chakotay is hugely mistrusting at first—after all, he’s been burned pretty badly on this front before with Seska—but he eventually realizes that she’s telling the truth, mostly because he falls in love with her all over again.
But the dialogue is incredibly clichéd and weak (a notable exception being Chakotay and Tuvok’s conversation about Kellin’s possible job on the ship), with the two conversations between Chakotay and Neelix being particularly cringe-worthy and sleep-inducing in their sappy cliché-ness.
The tragedy of this episode was pretty predictable from the moment we learned the Ramurans’ nature, and besides which, you knew Madsen wasn’t going to become a regular, and you knew that Chakotay would forget all about her as soon as she was gone. (Though at least they didn’t kill her off, which was a relief.) I did like the double whammy of Kellin also forgetting, and I really liked Chakotay mainlining coffee to stay up and write it all down on paper before he forgot it again.
But this was a strong concept that needed better execution on the script front. Ultimately, it’s distressingly, well, forgettable…
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s 2021 output will start with the thriller Animal, a novel written with Dr. Munish K. Batra; continue with Feat of Clay, the second book in his urban fantasy series following 2019’s A Furnace Sealed; and also include the short stories “Unguarded” in the anthology Horns and Halos, edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail & John L. French, and “In Earth and Sky and Sea Strange Things There Be” in Turning the Tied, edited by Jean Rabe & Robert Greenberger; with more still to be announced. In addition, his 2005 Spider-Man novel Down These Mean Streets will be reprinted by Titan as part of the Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours omnibus, alongside Spidey novels by Jim Butcher and Christopher L. Bennett.
I loved Tuvok’s line about Neelix needing defending from the crew. It reminded me of Quark’s story about why he had a pistol when he was serving in the galley of a Ferengi ship.
Honestly, I don’t know why they didn’t say that the virus they use at the end to infect the computer and erase all record of her also makes the scanners unable to detect them after. She’d already been on the ship once and (presumably) had done it before, or at least had the ability to, and it would have been an easy way to explain it. Given her species desire for privacy and anonymity, you’d think they’d take the chance to avoid detection in the future anyway.
My biggest issue with this episode is why the heck did Voyager help Kellin track down the stowaway and bring him back?! The Federation hands out asylum like it is gum, so I don’t know why they were so willing to help her drag back and wipe the memory of someone who just wanted to see more of the universe. Sure, maybe he was a serial killer or something, but they never mention him committing any other crime, and it comes across as remarkably cold-blooded of them. It’s odd that it doesn’t even have appeared to be considered.
I hate to speak poorly of an episode directed by the wonderful Andrew Robinson, but “forgettable” is basically all this episode is. I’ve defended Robert Beltran and his acting before, and I stand by that, but I don’t think romance is really his forte. He does better when he is faced with internal conflicts or struggling with some of the violence he has committed in his past. And nothing about this episode ever matters again (somewhat by design), so it just seems like a perfectly “meh” use of a TV timeslot.
“I came back because I fell in love with you.”
The biggest problem with this episode is that it suffers from a massive dose of what TV Tropes calls Protagonist Centred Morality. We’re encouraged to view Kellin as a sympathetic character and Curneth and the other tracers after her as the antagonists, denying her freedom of choice. The problem is that Kellin’s spent years doing the same thing, tracking down people whose only crime is wanting to leave their planet and brainwashing them into returning. Worse, Voyager’s crew actually helped her track down one of these fugitives. Okay, Kellin approached Voyager openly and asked them for asylum whilst Rusket stowed away…except Kellin sneaked aboard Voyager as well to start with, and only asked them for help when she was discovered. It’s interesting to speculate what would have happened if the crew had found Rusket first and got his side of the story: They might have chosen to side with him over his pursuer. Instead, he’s not even allowed to speak before Chakotay’s sipping champagne with Kellin to celebrate her getting to drag someone home against his will after lobotomising him. So, basically, Kellin’s the one we should side with because Chakotay fancies her.
It’s a shame because if the episode had actually bothered to properly examine Rumaran society then there is something disturbing about the way the tracers (including Kellin) see the rules of their society as sacrosanct. There’s no sadism and no real megalomania in Curneth when Chakotay tries to reason with him: When he says that letting people leave would suggest they don’t care about them, it’s clear there’s no way to make him change his mind. But instead, the episode insists on starting the story halfway through and putting the focus on Chakotay meeting an ex-lover who he’s lost his memory of, meaning we have to get an awkward back story to explain why she was on Voyager before.
The rules about the Rumarans seem a bit confused. Other species forget them within hours, except when they’re still around apparently, unless Kellin spent two weeks having to explain who she was again each morning. The bit about sensors not retaining information on them gets forgotten about when it’s convenient too: Possibly Voyager was able to beam Kellin aboard by locking onto Chakotay’s combadge, but after establishing tricorders are useless on her species, the Doctor’s running a medical doodad over her near the end as if it’s doing something.
Janeway’s lack of reaction to Chakotay and Kellin’s romance (she’s barely in the second half) is a clear sign that their will they/won’t they is being quietly dropped: I believe there’s a short story speculating that the distancing between them began during an alternate version of the birthday gift scene from “Year of Hell”. Tuvok gets most of the funnies again, notably in the dialogue Keith quoted. He also carefully avoids explaining to Seven that Chakotay wants to jump Kellin’s bones. Given Kim’s later fumbling attempts to explain relationships to her, that was probably sensible. Neelix gets used in a more serious role than he often does.
First episode without Torres. This leaves Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Tim Russ and Robert Duncan McNeill as the only regulars with 100% attendance, which I believe will be the case through to the final episode.
I recently read a book series to my son (the “Map to Everywhere” series by Carrie Ryan and John Parke Davis) where one of the leads, Fin, has the exact problem that no one can remember him for more than a few seconds. Even his name “Fin” comes from a scribble of “first name unknown”. The whole thing is handled very well and he has a fantastic character arc over the four books of the series, plus deals with the logistics of living a life on the streets where you cannot be given aid and comfort because no one can remember you were there long enough.
I cannot help but wonder if the authors weren’t inspired by this episode, although I admit the concept isn’t totally unique. In any event, read the series if you like YA fantasy.
The thing that gets me is that either the computer should remember her or by extension the Doctor shouldn’t have. She would have been in security recordings or and logs. In a fantasy series, it’s easy to handwave those things… but not in sci-fi.
It is perhaps no coincidence that I have no recollection of this episode at all from my last Voyager rewatch, although that was many years ago.
Not much I can add. They came up with a concept that was interesting, but too clever for its own good — too contrived to be made really plausible or workable, and raising far, far too many technical and ethical questions that the story shrugs off for the sake of a quickie doomed-romance-of-the-week story. Virginia Madsen is a strong presence, but the episode has little else going for it.
“Also, how does the EMH not remember her? He doesn’t have a brain as such.”
My question is the opposite. The EMH is a computer. His consciousness runs on the sickbay mainframe and his senses are the sickbay’s sensors (or the mobile emitter’s as a substitute). So if they have the power to conceal themselves from technology, the Doctor shouldn’t even be able to perceive her at all.
I was seriously tempted never to post a rewatch of this episode and tell people I had, but they forgot it after they read it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This episode’s very title is just asking for critics to call it the exact opposite, which it is despite the lovely presence of Virginia Madsen. It is so completely forgettable and underwhelming. I also felt like Kellin was a hypocrite, and it’s not even addressed by her, because she’s asking for asylum, and yet her very job was capturing and returning other members of her race, which we even see her doing and precipitated the events of this story. Not a way to make her very sympathetic. I also didn’t buy how all of the Federation tech along with all of the crew could completely be wiped of the aliens’ presence. It seemed odd how Janeway was practically a non-presence in this episode when her ship is being pursued for a good chunk of it. You’d also think Kellin would be protected better. I understand the Dawson was going into labor during the episode but it does seem strange how her absence, particularly in the conference room scene, isn’t even mentioned. Couldn’t some stock footage of her sitting in the conference room have been used? Or she could have filmed some dialogue scenes in advance of her going into labor? I’d give this one a 2 rating for being an inconsequential waste of time. I only really liked the Tuvok makes jokes scene and Seven’s insistence to Harry how courting rituals are a waste of time and how Harry does a poor job of explaining it to her.
If the Ramuran’s pheromones are powerful enough to erase computer records and sensor technologies, surely they can magic-erase Chakotay’s journal writings that he’s making at the end.
I rather liked this episode though, and I think it shows some growth for the star trek view of the world. As much as I love all the shows, its kind of cringey because to me its very obvious that its all a metaphor for cultures on earth, with the federation/starfleet obviously being the US and non-federation societies just being not as enlightened, its a very imperialistic show that’s completely unaware of itself. Had this been TNG or TOS the Ramurans would have learned from their minute exposure to Voyager that their ways have been wrong all along and maybe its time to start living the way the federation defines as right, now that they’ve introduced the brand new concept of freedom to them. They do flirt with that theme a little still, but the conclusion isn’t that they’ve enlightened the race. And the tragic twist seems fairly fitting, considering Kellin had made a living chasing down people who tried to leave. If anyone from her society deserved to escape, it wasn’t her.
@5 – And when you go to the index to look for it, the review’s pheromones somehow wiped the article from Tor’s server.
@@@@@ 2 cap-mjb Having Chakotay find and fall in love with Rusket would have been the more interesting story, honestly. It also might have allowed them to explore the idea of attempting to integrate someone into your daily life who you are always forgetting, and how terrifying it would be to know you could lose someone you love without ever remembering it.
The story was just missing *something*. Either it needed to be more like “Counterpoint,” with Chakotay falling in love with Kellin even though he *knows* she is the bad guy and has to reckon with that, or it just needed to give Rusket some sordid history to justify her tracking him down beyond “we never let any of our people leave.” Without either of those two things, you are left with a so-so romance that doesn’t get the time to fully explore it’s own premise, plus a pretty gaping moral quandary that no one even bothers to mention as such.
A stylistic choice I most definitely didn’t like which I personally think hurts the episode, at least during the initial part, was the use of flashbacks. There could have been more of an edge to the episode if the audience remains skeptical of Kellin’s intentions and whether she is really telling the truth or trying to pull a fast one on Chakotay. But the use of the flashbacks lends credence to what Kellin says took place and that undercuts the mystery and tension that otherwise could have been there. So I think it was a poor choice to use that storytelling device.
@krad: Who are you?
The rules about forgetting are so contrived that I think the only way to fix it is to dump the pheromones explanation and say, “We were a normal species, then a being called Q cursed us in a fit of pique.” Maybe it’s a Q we’ve met, maybe it’s not, but resorting to the Star Trek version of A Wizard Did It is kind of the only way out here. With the notable exception of Tuvok’s comedy, the episode is just unsalvageable though. Yikes.
Boring!
Don’t worry Kellin, I’ve already forgotten you, despite a lovely performance by Virginia Madsen.
Wait, what were we talking about?
I was just thinking…this has to be before Virginia Madsen’s star took off, right?
@14/Austin: I’m not sure when you would say Madsen’s “star took off,” but I was certainly familiar with her at the time, and had been since she played Princess Irulan in Dune 14 years earlier. Her IMDb bio calls her “One of the hottest stars of the mid-1980s.”
@15 – Hmm…not sure who wrote that description. I will give you Dune, but I don’t really see anything recognizable from that time period for her to really stand out. In fact, other than her Oscar nominated role in Sideways, I don’t really see that great of a Filmography. I might be making more of her in my head than she really is.
@16/Austin: I was certainly aware of Virginia Madsen by the time of her Voyager appearance primarily through a TV movie in which she played a real-life murderer and several ‘80s and ‘90s movies. Her biggest hit by the time of this episode was Candyman, a horror film with Tony Todd (Kurn from TNG and DS9), a sequel of which was directed by Jordan Peele (Get Out and Us) and was supposed to come out this past fall but was delayed until next year. But yeah, Madsen’s star didn’t really take off until Sideways came out in 2004 and her subsequent Oscar nomination. Her brother by the way is Michael Madesen, the acclaimed actor who Quentin Tarantino likes to use in his films.
It would actually be pretty funny and clever if in the DVD packaging inserts for Voyager season 4 and on the actual main menus if the episode title was just left blank where you’d normally see it listed. It could be like an Easter egg to find!
@16/Austin: Maybe Madsen is remembered more today for her post-2004 work, but she was hardly unknown in the ’80s and ’90s. She wasn’t a huge celebrity, no, but she was a familiar name, a recurring presence in TV and film. I remember seeing her name in the credits here and being somewhat impressed that they’d gotten a fairly prominent guest star.
The one Nat King Cole song that I hate in full force. There’s no way an episode with this title was going to be anything but disappointing. Unforgettable is a classic symptom of late-season slump. It’s ironic that season 3 had a late-season surge, while S4 goes the other way around, besides a couple of exceptions.
I guess the good thing is that episode isn’t a total loss. The romance is believable despite the abundant cliché. There’s immense chemistry between Beltran and Madsen. Casting really helped here. It also has a few fun scenes here and there. But obviously the plot kinda falls apart when you hit the thorny matter of Voyager’s records and sensor logs. Feels and plays like a script that could have spent more time in the rewriting stages, but just ran out of time, being a late season episode and all.
@19: I like that song! Especially the father/daughter duet version.
@7 It is sad but very true what you say. This is why I see DS9 as way ahead of the other shows as there was always some character totally opposing to the Federation nonsense. I love Star Trek but my biggest suspension of disbelief is always about the ways of the incompetent, self-important Feds, meaning Earth and not any other planet part of the alliance.
You said it yourself: imperialistic show unaware of itself. To a non-American viewr as myself, this is really obvious. Too bad as there are so many good stories and ideas in the show otherwise.
They have titled this show with a great sense of irony; this is one of the most forgettable episodes of the entire series, if not of “Star Trek.” Boring and tedious.
Speaking of Madsen’s roles, I remember Creator and Electric Dreams from the mid-80s. Neither are great films, but I have nostalgic feelings for both. The computer tech and nascent AI in the latter is very dated, but still fun.
I’m a huge fan of Virginia Madsen. It’s a shame she wasn’t a bigger star. It’s also a shame that she didn’t join the cast.
“Captain Log: Evaluation report, Chakotay. This officer’s usual high efficiency declined sharply over the last few months. I can not recall anything he did to support the ship’s mission for the last six weeks. Even if his performance returns to its usual standard, his inconsistency will remain a concern. Promotion not recommended.”
@25 In fairness, his being a terrorist is likely a larger barrier than promotion than “moped around for a couple weeks for no discernable reason.”
@26: Good point.
If Kellin wants to stay with Voyager, but her pheromones unavoidably cloak her presence, then block the pheromones. Create a chemical antagonist and apply it topically like anti-perfume, or suppress the glands that secrete the chemical, or excise the glands (like deglanding a skunk). If Seven’s nanoprobes can reverse death, surely they can identify pheromones?
Conversely, their hormones can’t work on other Ramurans (“I have this odd feeling I’m part of a society, and there sure are a lot of houses on this street, but I can’t recall anybody living in them”), so identify whatever physiology they have that renders them immune, and replicate it.
Where’s Tom’s knowledge of 20cen technology? –Replicate a film camera. If even silver iodide can’t record them, then I have to lean towards @12/Rick’s proposal that they’ve been cursed (geased?) by a Q-level being, and “pheromones” is simply a social fiction.
Well, it is technically possible to diagnose a concussion visually. As a former high school football player, I saw this all too often when there was a helmet-to-helmet collision. To know the severity, you usually need a brain scan but often physicians tend to err on the side of caution.
As a counselor, we have to “diagnose” off of visual and verbal cues all the time… but that’s a completely different comment and post.
I suspect in triage medicine, or “real frontier medicine” as Bashir would say, the EMH would probably over-diagnose just to be safe.
Other than that long bit of nitpicking, I absolutely loved the conversation you quoted between Tuvok and Chakotay and am severely disappointed there are no links to Nat King Cole. Maybe it’s not public domain. I’m sure it only took one person to write that song.
TA: Thanks for that.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, not a doctor
Hmm. The immediate quick fix that leaps to mind is to replace “pheremones,” with “nanites.” An adaptive weak AI scans, to me at least, as more believably capable of affecting both unfamiliar (although not that unfamiliar- infinite diversity rarely producing anything a Starfleet Medical Officer can’t suss out by the end of the episode) biological and alien technological systems.
Of course ‘intrusive nanites’ screams Borg! Maybe lean into that- have the Ramurans be another Borg Splinter (a cube or smaller ship that was cut off from the collective for whatever reason) that have developed airborne nanites and also a deep paranoia about being reassimilated by the Borg. That also gives Voyager a reason to help- no one wants the Borg to get their hands on aerosolized nanite.
Of course that would pretty much demand a heavier presence from Janeway and Seven, not a bad thing in itself, but we wouldn’t want to begrudge the show a Chakotay centric episode. Maybe set both encounters off of Voyager- Chakotay encounters her chasing a fugitive while on a planet or space station on some diplomatic or scientific endeavor, then again when she catches up to him on another planet?
“Tuvok, that was a joke. Don’t deny it, you were trying to be funny.”
“If you choose to interpret my remark as humorous, that is your decision.”
This is the part I never got about Vulcans. They have emotions – they just suppress them. They know that humans enjoy humor. The ones who spend all their time among humans (like Spock and Tuvok) should be able to tell jokes, even if they don’t personally find the jokes funny. Tuvok has observed endless snark on Voyager and based on his undercover assignment with the Maquis, we know he knows how to present a facade others appreciate. So how come they’re not deadpan snarking all the time and why is it such a surprise when they do snark? They’re the Steven Wright species of the Federation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5ErMolRE8M
@33/James: Vulcans absolutely do deadpan snark all the time — both Spock and Tuvok did plenty of it. Their pretense that they aren’t joking is part of the deadpan routine.
@33 I think Tuvok fully knows he is making a joke, and Chakotay fully knows that he will deny it, and they are just doing the routine because they both find it amusing.
Another episode that has good ideas, but can’t quite make the most of them – I tend to agree that the most sensible explanation for this impression would be that those flashbacks cut back much of the tension to be mined from the gap between Kellin’s heartfelt claims and Our Heroes’ almost complete inability to confirm or refute them.
I also think that the final twist would have been more heartbreaking if Kellin had voluntarily undergone the mind wash procedure in a rather desperate bid to prove that her desire to quit her Home was deep-seated, rather than circumstantial, only for Love to falter in the face of harsh reality: if nothing else this would have provided a nicely poetic twist.
I had forgotten this episode completely. That’s not intended as a joke putting the episode down; my real point is I was surprised to read that a species that nobody can remember started in Voyager.
Because until now I had seriously believed it was the Silence in Doctor Who.
@37: Well, the first species that no one can remember is the Paxons from TNG’s “Clues.” But they didn’t make people forget through pheromones. They put intruders into stasis and wiped their memories.
@38 Right, I was only thinking of species that have making others forget them as an inherent part of their biology.
I actually remember this episode thanks to it giving me a little crush on Virginia Madsen, the ending was quite effective with her being memory wiped and Chakotay recording everything on good ole fashioned ink and paper. My mind has a habit of filling in blanks, so I always thought there was some kind of nanite or computer virus that dealt with the tech because pheromones don’t do that.
@32/CuttlefishBenjamin (by the way Cuttlefish are my favorite cephelapod)
That’s a brilliant idea, though despite the risk of the Borg being overused it’s incredibly strong and resolves a lot of issues. Also it links back to the Borg Cooperative in a different way. A Borg splinter group that while they have separated still are tightly bound, even though everyone has their own minds nobody’s allowed to leave. Change the song themed title from “Unforgettable” to “Hotel California” and call it done.
@40 As an aside, a friend of mine always jokingly referred to Voyager as the “USS Hotel California” since seemingly the only way to leave was to die or ascend to a higher plane of existence.
Yeah. Aside from Virginia Madsen being likeable and stunningly attractive this is one forgettable episode.
I remember when this aired, being happy to see MAdsen, who at the time was more known as the “woman from Candyman”
It is interesting that Candyman is considered one of the greatest slasher/horror movies of all time, but her name did not become more recognizable with it.
The Juxtaposition with her “Forgettable”-ness is appropriate.
@43/whereistony: I’m surprised more people here don’t seem to remember Madsen as Princess Irulan. Lynch’s Dune was a pretty big deal back in the ’80s (and hey, Patrick Stewart was in it), but it doesn’t seem to loom large in the culture today.
@44/CLB: I think Dune doesn’t loom large in our culture today because it was a commercial and critical failure when it was released and still holds that perception today even if it may have something of a cult following. Even David Lynch disavows it. Hopefully the reboot film coming next year will reignite interest in the property as a potential franchise.
I think I only became aware Virginia Madsen was in Dune earlier this year. I’ve never watched the film from beginning to end and I think that has to do with the fact that as a kid I would stumble across the film playing on cable and be grossed out and terrified by what I was seeing and I’d change the channel! And of course Madsen only has her one main scene at the beginning of the film which I kept missing.
@45/garreth: I guess Madsen’s scene in the opening of Dune is memorable for how weird and clumsy it is as an exposition sequence.
@44,CLB,I remember Madden’s Princess Irulan, and her costumes, vividly! I also remember that Patrick Stewart was dead wrong for Gurney Halleck but did a great job anyway. And of course Brad Dourif being creepy, he is so good at that!
A sudden thought just struck me. What kind of range does this pheromone have? She stayed on Voyager for weeks, but obviously once she retired to her quarters, that leaves the question of how she was remembered the next day. Her pheromone aura extends to an entire spaceship? Maybe it travels through the air filters and lingers as long as she is onboard. And once she leaves, the pheromones then begin to dissipate? I’m not sure how pheromones behave with the air, actually.
@48: I don’t think the whole pheromones thing was ever adequately explained. I too was wondering if Kellin had stayed aboard Voyager for two weeks then how Chakotay and everyone else was remembering her day to day without wondering who this intruder was? Maybe video was being recorded and every morning she played it back to people to remind them? Must get tedious.
And I never bought the whole notion of erasing every trace of her species from Voyager’s technology. I’m sure if someone really wanted to, they could have videotaped Kellin on something outdated like a 21st century camcorder and stashed it somewhere for safekeeping.
@49/garreth: ” I too was wondering if Kellin had stayed aboard Voyager for two weeks then how Chakotay and everyone else was remembering her day to day without wondering who this intruder was? Maybe video was being recorded and every morning she played it back to people to remind them? Must get tedious.”
Hmm…We have short-term memory and long-term memory, and if we’re exposed to an idea only once, like a vocabulary lesson in a language class, it might fade before we store it in long-term memory. That’s why we study it over and over to reinforce the memory and make sure it sticks. Repetition solidifies the tenuous memory and makes it permanent.
So I’d assume the Ramuran pheromone just amplifies that natural effect. The memory of them can’t be permanent, but it fades gradually, and if you’re in regular contact with them, the periodic reminders reinforce the memory and keep it from fading entirely. It’s only in their absence, without reminders, that you forget entirely.
Another possibility is that it’s a binary pheromone — a long-lasting one that erases the memory, and a short-term one that temporarily suppresses the action of the first as long as a Ramuran is present to emit it. It’s only when the second pheromone is no longer active that the first one is free to do its work. I’m not sure that works as well, though.
Maybe IMDB doesn’t mean hot like box office :-)
In “Logan’s Run”, the lead character fleeing from the society’s unjust rules is someone who had the job of enforcing them…
They could have made the electronic unscannability of the, um… Ramurans… be a deliberate technological intervention by them, involving nanoprobes perhaps, or they could have said some words including “quantum”, and make it stick. (Briefly.) After contact with any of these people, your present and past gradually alter, so that locally (hah! good quantum befuddling word!) they never were there at all. But… does that let you write it down…
Whatever it is, she can talk over radio if she wants to…
Spoiler for Jack Campbell’s sci fi “Lost Fleet” novel series? John Geary’s space fleet gets their computers afflicted with hostile software that prevents storing data about spaceships that they are fighting… twice.
Does the Doctor see, er… Kellin… because he’s a hologram and that’s different from a plain computer program, or because he’s processing information about her instead of storing it, or does he not see her at all but infer that she’s there because other people are talking about or to her…
There are those rare brain injury memory conditions, like in “Before I Go To Sleep” and “50 First Dates” and “Harlequin Romance”…
And as for Vulcans joking: Not necessarily exactly that, but I speculate that since they practise strict emotional self-control, they normally get to be outright rude if they want to, since you’re not allowed to take offence. Thoughts?
@51/Robert Carnegie: “In “Logan’s Run”, the lead character fleeing from the society’s unjust rules is someone who had the job of enforcing them…”
Well, the various incarnations of Logan’s Run differ on whether he’s really fleeing. In the original novel, Logan is a loyal enforcer who decides on his own initiative to infiltrate the Runners and kill their leader as his final act on the last day of his life. He doesn’t actually switch sides until the climax, after his journey shows him what a deteriorating mess his society actually is. In the movie, Logan is assigned to infiltrate the Runners and loyally obeys, and it’s unclear just when and why he switches sides for real, though it’s probably when he turns on his fellow Sandmen to save Jessica. It’s only in the short-lived TV series that Logan runs as a genuine act of rebellion; he’s questioning the system from the start and impulsively defies orders to save Jessica when they first meet, so that he has no choice but to run with her. (The various comics all adapt one of the above.)
I’m not sure where Kellin falls along that spectrum. She doesn’t even really question her world’s policies; she just runs away for love. I guess that comes closest to movie Logan, since it seems like he’s motivated more by feelings for Jessica than doubts about the system. But he still ends up recognizing eventually that the system is wrong, after learning about the old ways. I don’t think Kellin ever got there, perhaps because she had to settle for Chakotay rather than getting to hang out with Peter Ustinov and his cats.
As for the mechanism of the Ramurans’ powers, I would’ve gone with psionics — telepathy to wipe people’s memories, fine-scale telekinesis to reprogram or disrupt technology.
As for Vulcans joking, I think that jokes (depending on the kind) have as much of an intellectual component as an emotional one, since they’re an act of creativity and the unconventional juxtaposition of concepts. One could argue that puns are the most intellectual form of wit, an exercise in pure linguistics.
Though I’d seen Dune and the Hitchhiker HBO series, I first became aware of Virginia Madsen in Long Gone, a TV movie (HBO?) about baseball with Dermot Mulroney and William Petersen, an actor who just seemed to pop in random low level movies until he became mainstream in CSI.
I found it interesting that 7 noticed flushing faces with both Chakotay and Kellin, but didn’t comment that she’d also observed similar face flushing behavior from Kim when he started crushing on her.
Not sure how nitpicky anyone is about pronouns in the recap, but under Mr. Vulcan it states “Tuvok considers allowing Kellin to be part of her security detail.” I assume we’re talking about Tuvok’s security detail and not Kellin’s.
They missed an opportunity here because they could’ve stated in-episode that the pheromones were the reason none of the Voyager crew remember anything about previous episodes.
I feel sorry for the original fugitive. He wanted to flee his people just like the tracer who followed him, but because he wasn’t a beautiful woman they just chucked him in the brig, wiped his memory, and sent him on his way.
@54: Yeah, I always felt Kellin was a big hypocrite for her actions. If she was going to seek asylum she didn’t have to “trace” others and wipe their minds unless she was so self-interested above all other considerations. I thought it made her pretty unlikeable. But yes, beautiful women in the 24th century will receive preferential treatment apparently just as they do today.
How is keeping a written account of Chakotay’s experiences going to keep it in his memory? Shouldn’t Kellin’s relationship with Chakotay make Janeway insanely jealous? Seven takes more of an interest in their budding relationship than Janeway does, especially with what was to come. Didn’t Dawson give birth during the previous episode?
Kurneth probably purged Kellin’s encounters with the EMH from his memory files, like we see in Latent Image. Would you say Unforgettable suffers from the same flaws as The Omega Directive? An interesting idea that botches it in the execution? Unforgettable is exactly what the episode is not, but it is Robert Beltran’s favourite episode because Virginia Madsen was his favourite guest star.
1: “A perfectly “meh” use of a TV time slot” – reminds me of what Roger Ebert said about Showgirls – “A waste of a perfectly good NC-17 rating.”
2: I’ve only just recently discovered TV Tropes, and I’d like to know how long it’s been going? There is something very creepy about Ramuran society and there is something disquieting about the crew helping one of their runaways to be recaptured and then backpedaling because Chakotay’s fallen for one. It’s Janeway, Seven and the Doctor the show will revolve around from here on out.
3: It’s funny that people have no recollection of Unforgettable. 5:
6: Dawson’s absence from the briefing about the Omega Directive was never explained either, although Torres is acknowledged in Living Witness. I think it was easier to write her out if she wasn’t the main focus. 8: ??? 9: Fall in love with Rusket?
10: It makes sense that Chakotay would be sceptical since he’s been led astray by opportunistic women before like Seska and Riley Frazier. 12: A Wizard Did It – sounds like something out of TV Tropes.
13-18: I’ve always felt Virginia Madsen is a greatly underrated actor (much like her brother) and even though Unforgettable is strictly by VGR’s numbers, Madsen is solid, professional and a lovely presence, as always (check out the unjustly ignored Creator to see what I mean). Sidenote: Tarantino wanted to use Michael Madsen in Pulp Fiction as Vince Vega, but he turned it down, a decision Madsen is still kicking himself over 28 years later. He’s never turned down any of Tarantino’s other films since.
19: S2 had a late surge as well. 23: I love Creator and it’s a shame it’s not more widely known. 24: True, I would’ve loved for Madsen to join VGR. 32: Assimilation in aerosol form? Creepy! 34: Fat Tony: “It’s funny because it’s true!” 40: What are the differences between cephalopods and Men in Black’s cephalopoids? Were the Sakari a splinter group from the Enarans? There is always risk of the Borg being overused on VGR.
47: Madsen, not Madden. 49: I don’t understand the science behind Ramuran physiology either and how it affects selective memory. 51: What did you mean about the IMDb? 53: Of course the crew remember previous episodes, even the Silver Blood did.
@56/David Sim: “How is keeping a written account of Chakotay’s experiences going to keep it in his memory?”
Isn’t it obvious? We all forget things, but we write them down so we don’t lose the information permanently. He may not directly remember that it happened, but the written account will tell him that it happened. That is literally the entire purpose of writing, to preserve and transmit information in a more permanent way than individual memory.
“What are the differences between cephalopods and Men in Black’s cephalopoids?”
Uhhh…. cephalopods are the category of animals including octopus, squids, and cuttlefish. MiB named a fictional alien race after the real category, no doubt to imply that their true form is like an octopus or squid.
57-Christopher L. Bennett – I don’t have a problem with Chakotay keeping a written account of his relationship with Kellin. I just didn’t understand why it had to be handwritten. And thanks for telling me the difference between cephalopods and cephlopoids. I’m probably reading too much into it.
David Sim: It had to be on paper because — as was established early on in the episode — all traces of Remurans are wiped from technology after they depart. That’s why the EMH couldn’t examine her and why all logs recorded during her week on board no longer had a trace of her.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
56: I first came across TV Tropes in 2011. According to Wikipedia, it started in 2004.
What I disliked the most was the hypocrisy regarding the treatment of the refugees. When it was the pretty woman, Voyager’s crew was eager to help. A memory death ray is some extreme use of force to apply on someone and people would be outraged if such a device was used today. But when it was in Chakotays interest to not blast the refugee, he does a 180 on the whole subject and argues on and on against a law that he himself was happy to help uphold a few weeks ago.
I watched this episode for the 5th time or more last night (June 9, 2023) except for the last 15 minutes. There’s some questions that are unanswered: 1) Why do people want to leave her planet? 2) Why won’t her planet let them leave?
The ending was stupid. After Kellin got hit with the memory killing gun, Chakotah should have stayed with her so that she wouldn’t forget him. Instead, he leaves her for a minute. Then when he returns to her, she doesn’t remember him anymore.
Chakotah grabs the memory killing gun from the tracer. Less than a minute later, he gives the gun back to him. If that were me, I would have shot the tracer with the memory killing gun; and I would have kept the gun. And maybe I would have beaten the sh-t out of the guy.
very late commenting, but i just watched this episode and Kellin flat out says she’ll install a computer virus to wipe out all records, i mean, it’s dumb too, but not as dumb as thinking their pheromones cause computer memory wipes..
chakotay tells the rest of the bridge crew that she told him this at 12:15 (on paramount plus)