An away team is interrupted while obtaining a needed item for the warp engines; Tuvok and Torres are captured by this suspicious police state race called the Mochra, and Janeway is sheltered by an old man (Joel Gray) who believes she is his daughter. She tries to extricate herself from him, but begins to get drawn in by the sadness of his life. When she goes on a rescue mission, he proves useful, for a while, and she uses her charm to masquerade as a lady of the evening to get inside the prison. In the course of the struggle, Janeway rescues Tuvok and Torres, and the old man kills the evil leader (who was responsible for the killing of his real wife and daughter), but is then shot by guards. Not one of my favorite episodes, it seems to move slowly and seem kind of boring. Gray’s quirky performance may or may not elicit sympathy. The title may also refer to Janeway’s attempt to resist being drawn into the emotional sadness, which she does not.
But there is one redeeming factor – an A-1 nit: when Joel Gray dies, his head falls to the left and he does a death stare. In the next scene, his head is facing to the right! Either that was a continuity problem, or this race does a strange after-death rigor-mortis head flop.
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