When Janeway is informed that the sensors have detected a nebula emitting a high level of omicron particles, she decides to collect them and do a bit of exploring. Immediately upon entering the nebula, Voyager gets into trouble and breaks through a barrier with hopes of escape. But they find that they are in a vastly different area. After breaking back out of the area, the crew realizes that they were actually inside of a life form and they their actions have wounded it. Risking their own safety, the crew re-enters the life form in order to repair the damage.

Larry Hankin (Gaunt Gary)
Angela Dohrmann (Ricky)
Judy Geeson (Sandrine)
Luigi Amodeo (The Gigolo)

• Chakotay teaches Janeway how to contact her spirit animal guide. Janeway's animal guide is a lizard.
  
• This episode debuts Tom Paris' "Chez Sandrine" holodeck program, which is based on a bar he used to visit in Marseilles, France.
  
• Chakotay mentions Voyager has a complement of 38 photon torpedoes and Janeway says they have to way to replace them. This doesn't seem to be an issue in the future as they fire torpedoes as necessary. However, this could be because the ship is running on low energy reserves at the time.
  
• This is the first mention of the Doctor's programmer, Dr. Zimmerman.