5.04 in the flesh

Chakotay and Tuvok appear to be at Starfleet headquarters in San Francisco. In reality, they are on board a space station with a recreation inhabited by something that looks human. When one of the aliens is beamed back to the ship, it commits suicide, and subsequent tests reveal that it is actually species 8472. Chakotay has made contact with a ‘woman’ on the planet; his date turns sour when she scans his DNA and discovers that he is a real human. Both sides distrust each other, because of their past meetings, but when Janeway requests to talk, the leader of the station (Boothby, played by Ray Walston) agrees. During the course of the talks, which are going nowhere because of mutual distrust, Janeway arbitrarily disarms her nanoprobe-armed warheads, which gets 8472 back to the table. Eventually, 8472 admits that they are planning a recon mission of earth to avert the threat of a human attack; they are not planning on taking over earth. Voyager and 8472 reach an agreement to trade technologies, and Boothby promises to talk to his supervisors and tell them the positive things that have happened in their encounter.

Chakotay is the star of this episode; it is through his friendship and seduction of the female ‘Archer’ (including a kiss that obviously impressed her) and by using the knowledge that she learned of humans from her reading, that they develop a mutual trust for each other. It is also a sexually-charged episode, with Chakotay ending up back at her quarters; she dons some very sexy evening clothes, and gives herself an injection (to stop herself from reverting to her normal form) in the upper thigh, revealing all of her shapely leg. There is also some excellent cat-and-mouse dialog between them, like when she says, "I think you’re a little too human."

Other great dialogue (as Chakotay gets a nanoprobe-armed phaser in preparation for his ‘date’ with the alien woman):

"Paris: Do you always arm yourself before a first date?
Kim: You never had a date with species 8472."

This episode is a great example of how Star Trek ‘grows’ a species and characters. Initially, species 8472 is presented as completely evil, even more black and white evil than the Borg. In the second 8472 encounter, there is only one, and we see it as a living thing that has been separated from the others and tormented, and is just trying to get home. Finally, here, 8472 is in human form, and we learn that they were just trying to defend themselves, that although they consider themselves superior, this is from a lack of knowledge.