Eye of the Needle

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We begin on a planet where an away team, including Chakotay, Seska, Kerry, Neelix, and others are gathering food, including the infamous leola root. The discovery of a Kazon vessel in orbit has Janeway order the away team back to the ship, but Seska is missing. Chakotay finds her in a cave with Kazon, and they manage to escape. Seska was finding mushrooms, and uses them and stolen goods in Neelix’s kitchen to make a soup for Chakotay and her to share, which doesn’t please him at all and he sentences everyone involved, including himself, to lose their replicator rations for 2 days. The bridge receiving a hail from a defunct Kazon vessel prompts an investigative away mission, and they find Kazon fused with the ship’s metal interior and one survivor who gets beamed to sickbay. The investigation finds traces of Federation tech on a console and they vow to remove it. In Sickbay, the surviving Kazon needs a blood transfusion, so Kes runs a scan of the crew to find eligible partners. Meanwhile, Janeway, Tuvok, and Chakotay investigate who could have leaked the Federation technology and narrow it to either Kerry or Seska. Seska defies orders and tries to retrieve the console on the Kazon ship, or so she says, and is injured in the process. She’s the only member of the crew who never had a blood sample taken and thus it’s discovered she doesn’t have typical Bajoran blood markers. She’s probably Cardassian, the Doctor conjectures. Chakotay, Janeway, and Tuvok hatch a plan to catch the spy regarding the console in question. Chakotay baits Seska, and Tuvok baits Kerry, but it’s Seska who takes it and is caught. She initiates a transport off Voyager and onto a Kazon ship. The episode ends with Chakotay and Tuvok speaking about the former’s naivety – having two spies working for him – to which Tuvok calms his nerves.

This is such a well done whodunnit episode, and Seska is absolutely perfect as the culprit. The audience knows she’s responsible, as it’s seeded in previous episodes, but it’s quite satisfying how the crew figures it out. Showing the crew’s latent perceptions of one another was an incredible touch; when Chakotay first hears about Seska possibly being Cardassian, he says he wants to question her first, and Janeway almost makes an alarmed face like she doesn’t trust him. Having the Janeway, Chakotay, and Tuvok dream team sow some doubt with each other was the chef’s kiss, especially when there’s excellent scenes of them whispering together the progress they’ve made in their investigation. Finally, when Tuvok says, “Do not mistake composure for ease,” Tuvok says – oh, I love it.

This was originally posted on Dec 15, 2020. Transported to neocities on Oct 20, 2025.