Waking Moments

Several of the senior staff have nightmares in which the same unknown alien appears. Then crew members start falling into a sleep from which they cannot be roused, and the Doctor finds them locked in an unusual REM state. Chakotay uses lucid dreaming techniques, with Earth's moon as his cue, to enter the dream world deliberately and confront the alien, who says the sleepers will wake once Voyager leaves his people's space. But Voyager is misled into heading deeper into their territory. Chakotay seems to wake, only to spot the moon and realise he is still dreaming. When he truly wakes, almost the entire crew is asleep, sharing one dream, held there by a neurogenic field. Kept awake with the Doctor's help, Chakotay beams down to a cavern full of sleeping aliens and, threatening them with a photon torpedo, forces them to release the crew. Voyager goes on its way, with a bout of insomnia the only lasting effect.