Caretaker, Part I
Original Air Date: January 16, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48315.6
Unhappy with a treaty between the Cardassian Union and the Federation, some Federation colonists and Starfleet personnel have banded together as a guerilla group known as the Maquis. To many people they are heroes, but the Federation - and the Cardassians - must treat them as terrorists. A Maquis ship, piloted by a former Starfleet officer named Chakotay and his tactical officer, Tuvok, races through the demilitarized zone, Cardassian warships in hot pursuit. Chakotay, whose crew of twenty includes an engineer named B'Elanna Torres, a brilliant Klingon-human hybrid, narrowly evades the Cardassians by entering the Badlands, a plasma-charged region of space. But their luck is about to run out; a massive displacement wave washes through the Badlands, enveloping the Maquis ship and spiriting it away in a brilliant flash of white.
Captain Kathryn Janeway, commander of the starship U.S.S Voyager, visits the Federation Penal Settlement in New Zealand, with an irresistible offer for one prisoner: She wants Tom Paris, an ex-Starfleet officer-turned-Maquis to help Voyager's crew search the Badlans for the missing Maquis ship. She reveals that Tuvok was an undercover plant aboard Chakotay's ship, and that he is really her chief of security. Paris accepts Janeway's offer, and is soon en route to rendevous with Voyager at Space Station Deep Space Nine; there, he meets young Ensign Harry Kim, who also serves aboard Janeway's ship. Kim soon discovers the truth about Paris' past, but he chooses not to reject his newfound friend.
As Voyager enters the Badlands, the crew scans for signs of the Maquis ship, but they are soon scanned by a coherent tetryon beam, and menaced by a huge displacement wave. Her warp drive inhibited by the Badlands' plasma fields, Voyager retreats from the wave at full impulse power. The wave overtakes the ship, however, blanketing her in a brilliant light.
When Captain Janeway regains conciousness, she discovers that her ship is in dire straits. Many of her crew members are dead, the hull has been breached, Sickbay does not respond, and Ensign Kim reports something even more frightening - the ship is approximately 70,000 light-years away from Federation space! When Voyager's viewscreens finally come back on-line, Janeway sees an alien Array, an immense structure pulsating with energy. Floating near it is the missing Maquis ship.
Shortly thereafter, a mysterious force transports the entire surviving crew off of Voyager, leaving behind only the fussy Emergency Medical Hologram doctor. Janeway's crew finds themselves on what appears to be an Earth-style farm, complete with friendly farmers, but scans indicate it is all a holographic projection. Soon, the Starfleet crew is trapped - with the Maquis crew - in some sort of medical experiment. Three days later, the crews are all returned to their ships unharmed, except Kim and Torres; they awaken in a pristine alien hospital, with strange tumors covering their bodies. Janeway talks Chakotay and the Maquis into working together to find their missing crew members, but an old man aboard the alien Array cryptically tells them that they don't have what he needs, and that there isn't time to send them home. After he teleports the crews back to their respective ships, Tuvok and Janeway reason that the answers to this mystery may be found on a nearby desert planet, which is receiving energy pulses from the Array. An exhausted Janeway promises her crew members that she will return them home...each and every one of them.
--courtesy of Star Trek UniverseCaretaker, Part II
Original Air Date: January 16, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48315.6
The Federation starship U.S.S Voyager has been flung over 70,000 light years from the Badlands, where its crew was investigating the disappearance of a ship full of Maquis dissidents. Now, the crew of Voyager, commanded by Captain Kathryn Janeway, find that it must work with the Maquis, led by Commander Chakotay. A key member of each crew has been abducted by a mysterious entity who resides aboard a huge alien Array. The only clues to help find the missing crewmembers are a series of energy bursts from the Array, which are being sent to a nearby desert planet. En route to the barren world, Voyager encounters a small ship; inside it is Neelix, a strange-but-friendly humanoid. In exchange for water, the scruffy scavenger offers to help locate the missing officers, who he says are with the Ocampa.
On the planet below, the missing crewmembers - Ensign Harry Kim and Maquis engineer B'Elanna Torres - are in an Ocampan hospital, where they have been sent following experiments conducted on them by the Caretaker, the entity in the Array. They soon find they are in a subterranean city which the Caretaker built and designed for the Ocampans. Meanwhile, Janeway beams down to the planet's parched surface with Tuvok, her Vulcan chief of security, as well as Chakotay, Neelix, and ex-Starfleet officer Tom Paris. Coming upon an encampment of the Kazon-Ogla, they attempt to negotiate with the leader, Maje Jabin, offering him water for his help entering the underground Ocampan city. When Jabin threatens them, Neelix uese a smuggled phaser to allow the group to escape, including Kes, jabin's Ocampan servant - and Neelix's lover!
Torres and Kim begin their escape from the city, following a series of ancient and crumbling iron staricases to the surface. Meanwhile, Janeway and her crew have found breaches in the Caretaker's security barrier, and have beamed into the city to find their friends. Suddenly, the Caretaker's energy bursts speed up, then stop completely. The Array reorients itself, then begins firing on the planet's surface, sealing the Ocampan city. Tuvok hypothesizes that the Caretaker is dying, and that he sent the energy bursts to provide the Ocampans with energy for the future.
With radiation from the explosions on the planet's surface playing havoc withe transporters, the only hope of the combined Starfleet and Maquis teams is to reach the surface. They do, but not without some perilous moments, including Paris's daring rescue of an injured Chakotay. Back aboard Voyager, Janeway prepares for battle; two Kazon ships are about to attack! As Paris takes the conn, and the Maquis ship helps hold off the Kazon, Janeway and Tuvok beam over to the Array. Janeway learns that the Caretaker is responsible for the Ocampans' fate, and that his abductions and medical experiments have been his attempt to procreate, thus ensuring a Caretaker for the future. When a larger Kazon ship threatens Voyager, Chakotay beams his crew over to the Federation starship, then sets his ship for a collision course, beaming himself out at the last possible moment. Disabled, the Kazon ship collides with the Array, stopping the Caretaker's attempt to destroy it to keep it out of Kazon hands. Unfortunately, the Caretaker dies before he can try again.
Janeway must make a decision: Keep the Array active until it can be made to send Voyager home, or destroy it before the Kazon can seize it. She chooses the latter, although the Kazon warn her that she has made an enemy. Later, Janeway promotes Paris to the rank of Lieutenant, and announces that the Maquis crew will now be part of Voyager's crew, with Chakotay as her First Officer. Both crews must set their past differences aside, for the journey home - 70,000 light-years through the Delta Quadrant - will be perilous.
--courtesy of Star Trek UniverseParallax
Original Air Date: January 23, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48439.7
As the crew tries to adjust to the merging of Starfleet and Maquis personnel, the differences are apparent. One heated procedural discussion in Engineering ends with Lieutenant Carey in Sickbay with a broken nose thanks to B'Elanna, who later gets a little advice from Chakotay on getting along and controlling her temper.
While Janeway looks to fill the many still-vacant jobs on board, Neelix and Kes volunteer to serve -- he as a cook and guide, and she as a gardener of airponic vegetables to save replicator power. Voyager must make do with its Emergency Medical Hologram Doctor, with Tom Paris to assist him. Chakotay recommends B'Elanna as Chief Engineer and Janeway agrees to consider it.
Suddenly the ship is jolted. Voyager has come upon a quantum singularity -- a star that has collapsed in upon itself, creating a powerful surrounding energy field. The crew believes another ship to be in jeopardy and tries to save it from destruction, only to trap themselves in the singularity. Tension rises as symptoms of sickness appear aboard and the holographic Doctor begins shrinking.
After several attempts in vain, Janeway and B'Elanna discover that the other ship caught in the distortion is just a mirror image of Voyager. The rip in the singularity that they entered through must be found and exited before it collapses, forever trapping them. Using a dekyon beam fired from a shuttlecraft, the Captain and B'Elanna open up the rip wide enough for Voyager to get out. Because of her tempered initiative and unorthodox efforts in saving the ship, B'Elanna gets the Chief Engineer's post, and Carey is among the first to congratulate her.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comTime and Again
Original Air Date: January 30, 1995
Mission Stardate: Unknown
During the night shift, as Paris tries to talk Kim into a double date with him and the Delaney sisters, Voyager encounters a huge shock wave in space that awakens Kes and leaves a terrible image in her mind's eye. Investigating, the crew stumbles upon a planet capable of supporting humanoid life yet mysteriously laid waste by an explosion that instantaneously wiped out all life there. After finding a timepiece in the debris that had stopped at the time of the explosion, Paris discovers a subspace fracture that allows a glimpse of life on the planet beforehand. Minutes later, both Janeway and Paris are caught in another, larger fracture that actually transports them back in time to the planet right before the explosion. Knowing they are trapped, Paris locates the timepiece he'd already found in its store display and realizes the cataclysmic disaster will fall a day later.
During the search for Janeway and Paris, Kes is able to sense the destruction and the trail of the missing officers. Neelix suggests that she see the Doctor, who is none too pleased that he wasn't even told about new arrivals aboard Voyager -- much less that Captain Janeway is missing.
Despite apparent violation of the Federation's Prime Directive, Janeway and Paris warn a group of polaric ion power protesters that their actions could be the trigger for the planet's death-knell. But the dissenters are determined to go on with a protest at the power station, and some decide to sabotage the facility as a stunt to show how dangerous the technology can be. Janeway tries to warn a guard at the station of what is about to happen, and Paris is shot and severely wounded during the ensuing scuffle. Eventually she realizes that their own rescuers' use of a polaric beam caused the catastrophe, and she convinces a protester to let her use her own phaser to fire back and blunt the impact of the beam breaking through the time distortion.
The plan works: the planet is spared annihilation, and Voyager's crew is returned aboard at the moment just before the shock wave is met: Paris and Kim hotly debating the Delaney sister's date. This time, Kes senses a serenity about the planet, which is bypassed as not advanced enough to warrant a contact visit.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comPhage
Original Air Date: February 6, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48532.4
Captain Janeway is surprised to find her private dining room, just off the crew's Mess Hall, has been converted into a kitchen by Neelix. A timely call regarding a new dilithium source distracts the Captain from her first impulse to get the unauthorized mess out.
Neelix directs the crew to a planet supposedly rich in dilithium, but during an away-team survey, he is attacked by a humanoid alien who surgically removes his lungs. Transported to Sickbay, Neelix's only hope is a pair of holographic lungs programmed by the Doctor. Even so, the lungs are temporary, at best: Neelix cannot move in the machine, which resembles an iron lung. Janeway, Kes and the others do the best they can for his spirits; Kes stays with him and decorates the ceiling so Neelix has something to look at.
In the meantime, Janeway heads a search for the aliens, the Vidiians, that leads to an asteroid that serves as a base. When confronted, the aliens admit to stealing Neelix's organs, but defend themselves by telling the story of the "phage," a bizarre disease that attacks their people, eating away at their bodies and organs until they are forced to scavenge others as substitutes. When prodded to return Neelix's lungs, they are told that they have already transformed them for their own use.
With no alternative, Janeway is forced to let them go. The aliens, taken by this gesture of good will, agree to help Neelix, and perform an emergency lung transplant with a willing donor, Kes. Because of Kes' interest in medicine, the Doctor asks Captain Janeway for permission to train her as a Medical Assistant.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comThe Cloud
Original Air Date: February 13, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48546.2
On a morning walk around the ship, Janeway ponders loosening the traditional protocols of command amid Voyager's unique aloneness. Her visit to Engineering convinces B'Elanna her department is under inspection. When Janeway enters the Mess Hall, Kim and Paris debate the propriety of inviting their Commanding Officer to join them. On the Bridge she confides to Chakotay her yearn for a Counselor, believing the crew may be homesick, but he describes his people's use of an animal spirit guide and offers to help her discover her own guide.
Then sensors detect a nebula emitting a high level of useful omicron particles, and the Captain decides to collect some and do a bit of exploring. Back in the Mess Hall, Neelix can't believe Janeway entered the nebula, but Kes speaks up for the romance of exploration until they turn to see globules spattering and attaching themselves to the ship's hull. The globules lead Janeway to order the exit of the nebula, but that takes some doing.
Meanwhile, Paris awakens Kim to join him in a new homesick-fighting Holodeck program: a duplicate of a Parisian bar near where Paris took his Starfleet training. Inside we meet several people that Paris knew in his academy days -- a pool shark named Gaunt Gary, the Gigolo, and Sandrine, the bar owner -- along with a female named Ricky, a regular in all of Paris' holoprograms. Kim joins in a pool game with Paris, who confides in him that this is his idea of home.
After sampling the globules, B'Elanna and the Doctor both agree that Voyager is actually inside a lifeform that has been wounded by the crew's actions, and interrupt Janeway's exploration of her spirit guide, a lizard, to bring the news. After re-entering the living nebula, the Doctor's suggestion of a phaser suture is used to "sew up" the damaged area.
The crisis averted, Kim overrides Paris' morning advice and invites Janeway for a pool game in the newly opened Sandrine's. To everyone's surprise, she shoots a mean game of pool.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comEye of the Needle
Original Air Date: February 20, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48579.4
Ensign Harry Kim detects a subspace disturbance bearing all the marks of a wormhole that might provide the crew of the U.S.S Voyager with a shortcut back to the alpha Quadrant. What they find is a micro-wormhole, only thirty centimeters in diameter, too small to fly through but large enough to carry a message to the Federation. Lieutenant Tuvok launches a microprobe into the wormhole, where it becomes stuck in a gravitational eddy. If it remains there, the pressure will crush it within seventy-two hours. When they detect that the probe was scanned from the other side of the wormhole, Janeway decides to use the probe as a message relay, the crew's first chance to contact the people back home.
Kim sets up a voice link to the person on the other side, who turns out to be the Romulan captain of a science vessel in the Alpha Quadrant who suspects the crew of being Federation spies. Janeway eventually convinces the Romulan to trust her, asking him only to relay messages to family and friends of the lonely crew members. Establishing visual contact, the Romulan, a scientist separated from his own family, agrees to petition the Romulan Senate for permission.
Afterward, a tremendously thrilled Torres says she might be able to piggyback a transporter signal onto the visual link, allowing the entire crew to transport through the wormhole to the Romulan ship. With time running out before the probe relay is crushed, hope surges through the ship as a number of transporter tests prove successful, despite a strange phase variance. To test the process on humanoids, the Romulan, not allowing Federation personnel aboard his ship, volunteers to transport to Voyager. But seconds after the Romulan arrives, Tuvok dashes the crew's hopes when he determines that the phase variance was caused by a time shift. The Romulan is from 2351 - twenty years in the crew's past.
The wormhole is a rift in time as well as space, and if they transport through, the crew will end up two decades out of time. After much discussion, Janeway sadly sends the Romulan, Telek R'Mor, back to his ship, knowing that at least he agreed to relay their messages at the proper time. But Tuvok shatters even those hopes when he reveals that the scientist died in 2367 - four years before he would have sent their messages. Devastated, with no way to know whether their messages got through, all the crew can do is move on, hoping for another path home.
--courtesy of Star Trek UniverseEx Post Facto
Original Air Date: February 27, 1995
Mission Stardate: Unknown
Kim and Paris visit the homeworld of the Baneans, a people at war with the nearby Numiri. There they meet with the head of military science, Tolen Ren, to discuss potential scientific advances that may help Voyager find a faster way back to Federation space.
Ren invites Kim and Paris for dinner at his home, where Ren's dog continually barks at them: they are assured that he always barks at strangers. Ren's wife, a much younger woman named Lidell, seems bothered to prepare dinner and the two don't feel very welcome. But Paris is attracted to her and ultimately is blamed for her husband's brutal murder that night. His Banean sentence: to relive the violent moment of the crime from the victim's perspective for the rest of his life. The judgment is accomplished by a Doctor implanting memory engrams from the victim's mind into that of the criminal.
Because of the differences in humans and Baneans, Paris' brain can't accept the implanted engrams and will eventually be destroyed. Janeway and Tuvok return to the Banean homeworld to find a solution. Voyager is then attacked by the Numiri.
When Tuvok mind-melds with Paris, he discovers that Ren was murdered by a shorter man and symbols and numbers were also implanted in Paris' brain. Through a clever set-up the Numiri are twice shown to be after Paris. Tuvok deduces the numbers and symbols in Paris' brain are military information, which had been placed there by the traitorous Doctor when the punishment engrams were imbedded.
The Doctor who implanted the engrams is also Lidell's lover and the right height, denies knowing anything -- until Leeka the dog is brought in and doesn't bark, because it knows him.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comEmanations
Original Air Date: March 13, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48623.5
While exploring an uncharted asteroid, Chakotay, Kim and B'Elanna stumble upon the burial ground of the alien race Vhnori. After the Vhnori die, their bodies are deposited on the asteroid by subspace vacuoles. During the investigation, Kim is caught up in a vacuole and deposited on the Vhnori's homeworld, while the alien woman, Ptera, who was to be transported to the asteroid, is beamed aboard Voyager with Chakotay and B'Elanna. Thanks to modern medicine she is cured of her brain tumor, but is shocked to see herself among strangers, her beliefs seemingly proven wrong. Her burden is finally eased when she takes a chance and experiments with the transporter -- she rematerializes on the platform dead.
Meanwhile, Kim's presence among the Vhnori causes many to doubt their traditional beliefs. The experts on the planet decide to keep him for examination since he's the only person to ever return from the "afterlife." Kim soon realizes that the only way he can return home is the same way he came: through the Vhnori's death stations.
When Voyager moves in closer searching for Kim, vacuoles begin depositing corpses directly on the ship. After they can find no trace of him, they decide they have to leave to protect the warp core that's being affected by the vacuoles. At that moment, they discover a vacuole deposited a human on the asteroid: it's Kim. They quickly beam him aboard and revive him.
Captain Janeway offers the shaken Ensign a couple of days off to contemplate the experience he just had. The contrast between the Vhnori's devout beliefs and the witnessed reality bothers him, but Janeway notes that at death Ptera's body released a neural energy that became part of the ambient electromagnetic field surrounding the planet. Perhaps that, she adds, is what the Vhnori afterlife is all about.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comPrime Factors
Original Air Date: March 20, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48642.5
Lost 70,000 light-years from home, the starship U.S.S Voyager is continuing its long journey through the Delta Quadrant when it receives a strange transmission. The signal is from a Sikarian space vessel; its commander, Magistrate Gathorel Labin, asks Captain Kathryn Janeway for permission to come aboard Voyager. Once there, "Gath" prepares a sumptuous meal of Sikarian delicacies, and offers Janes and her crew a restful shore leave on Sikaris. Janeway takes the charming Gath up on his offer, and the crew soon beams down to a hedonistic planet where pleasure is the most prized ideal, and story-telling is a refined art. Gath has designs on romancing Janeway, but a discovery by Ensign Harry Kim may change Janeway's feelings...and offer Voyager a chance to go home!
Harry Kim meets a beautiful young musician named Eudana, and she takes to a platform which transports them to a more private place. Kim quickly discovers that they have been transported to Alastria, a planet 40,000 light years away. Returning to Sikaris, Harry reports his findings to Janeway, and Gath fills in the details; the Sikarians have found a way to fold space with a "spatial trajector." While Janeway sees this as a way for Gath to help get Voyager closer to home, he tells her that sharing technology would be a violation of the Sikarian canon of laws.
For the first time in her Starfleet career, Janeway must ponder the implications of the Prime Directive from the other side; this time it is they who need technology, and the Sikarians whose laws forbid interference. But even as Janeway proposes solutions to Gath, the crew is taking matters into their own hands. Lieutenants Seska and Carey in engineering are trying to talk Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres into helping them decipher the Sikarian technology, when another option presents itself: Gath's assistant will give them the technology in return for a database of literature from Earth. While Janeway sees her other options disappearing, Lieutenant Tuvok works with Torres and Seska to make the trade...behind the Captain's back.
When the destruction of the ship is narrowly averted, the engineers find that the trajector technology is incompatible with Voyager's systems. Leaving Sikaris, Janeway is shaken; her chief of security, Tuvok, and her chief of engineering, Torres, have - essentially - mutinied. Janeway dresses down Torres, then listens as Tuvok explains that he was attempting to spare Janeway the ethical choice in dealing with the Sikarians. Janeway sees the logic in his actions, but reminds the Vulcan that logic can be used to justify any action.
--courtesy of Star Trek UniverseState of Flux
Original Air Date: April 10, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48658.2
As Commander Chakotay leads an away team on a planetside scouting mission for food supplies, U.S.S Voyager detects a small masked ship belonging to the Kazon, the crew's warlike adversaries. As Chakotay gathers his team for beam-out, he finds Ensign Seska missing. He locates the Bajoran officer in a cave, where she says she was gathering mushrooms for chakotay's favorite soup when she spied Kazon warriors. Trying to escape, Chakotay and Seska engage in a brief firefight with two Kazon, which leaves Chakotay injured. Days later, Voyager receives a distress call from the same Kazon ship it encountered at the planet. Beaming over, an away team is horrifies to find the ship littered with Kazon bodies grotesquely fised into the bulkheads, floor and consoles.
Lieutenant Torres determines the accident was caused when the Kazon tried to install a new piece of technology that exploded - Federation technology. The only explanation is that someone aboard Voyager covertly gave the technology to the Kazon, potentially altering the balance of power in the entire quadrant.
Chakotay's suspicions fall on Lieutenant Carey, who was passed over for the Chief Engineer post, but Lieutenant Tuvok suspects Seska, who had the opportunity to contact the Kazon on the planet. Both adamantly maintain their innocence, and Seska transports herself to the Kazon vessel to try to retrieve the console, only to receive severe burns in the process. Chakotay refuses to believe Tuvok's theory that Seska, Chakotay's ex-lover, was trying to destroy evidence, but is dumbstruck when a blood screening reveals her to be a genetically-altered Cardassian. Seska explains away the discrepancy, reassuring him of her loyalty and love.
Laying a trap for the traitor, Tuvok and Chakotay wait to see who tries to cover their tracks. Eventually someone tries to doctor the computer files to indicate Seska's guilt. Chakotay, disheartened but determined to do his duty, tells Seska he knows she is the traitor; in her attempt to make it seem that Carey was framing her, she gave herself away by using a Sickbay computer terminal. Seska, exposed, reveals her Cardassian thirst for power by insisting the crew needs to build a base of power to survive in the quadrant after Captain Janeway's "incomprehensible" decisions stranded them. Suddenly Seska activates a remote computer command and transports herself to the lead Kazon vessel. With several Kazon warships closing in, Janeway must wait for another time to settle with Seska, and Voyager departs. Tuvok reassures Chakotay that he was not naive nor inattentive, since he himself was fooled by Seska.
--courtesy of Star Trek UniverseHeroes and Demons
Original Air Date: April 24, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48693.2
When Voyager comes across a protostar, Janeway has samples of its photonic energy beamed aboard for study and possible use in power converters. After a small glitch, B'Elanna corrects a breach in the transporter's containment field and safely finishes the samples' beam-in. But in calling Kim to assist her studies, she learns that ship sensors cannot detect him in the Holodeck or anywhere else aboard.
Tuvok and Chakotay enter the Holodeck to find no sign of Kim but discover his program still running: a version of the English epic poem Beowulf. Confronted by characters from Beowulf, they join in to fight the creature in the story and also disappear.
Rather than lose any more organic crewmembers, Janeway sends the holographic Doctor to unravel the mystery as his first away mission. Though he puts up a brave front, Kes gets him to admit he's unsure of himself and then offers encouragement, helping him select a name from an admired role model: Schweitzer. Once inside he begins to get the rhythm of the role but is uncomfortable with romantic advances from a female character, Freya, until she dies in his arms after taking a sword blow meant for him. Although both are holograms, he is clearly moved by her last word: his newly chosen name.
Inspired to try again, the Doctor realizes that an alien lifeform was snared in the energy samples taken earlier and, escaping through the field breach, retaliated by taking form in the Holodeck as the Beowulf monster and converting any Voyager crewmembers into energy. When the "sample" beings are returned to the alien, Kim, Tuvok and Chakotay all reappear -- leading to a commendation from Janeway for the Doctor. He decides not to take the Schweitzer name because Freya died saying it.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comCathexis
Original Air Date: May 1, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48734.2
Captain Janeway is enjoying playing a governess to the two children of Lord Burleigh in an interactive Gothic holonovel when she's interrupted by Kim, who reports that a shuttle has returned badly damaged.
Of its passengers, Tuvok has minor injuries but Chakotay is diagnosed as brain dead. Logs show that during an encounter with a black nebula, all of Chakotay's neural energy was depleted and would cause his death if not replenished quickly. While Voyager returns to the nebula, B'Elanna places Chakotay's medicine wheel above him as he had requested.
Oddly, several inexplicable events begin unfolding: Paris locks helm control out and changes course twice, while B'Elanna shuts down the warp core. Kes announces she can sense an alien presence that may be possessing the officers, and is soon found unconscious with Tuvok in a turbolift. Because they deduce the alien can control different people at different times, Janeway transfers all command codes to the Doctor -- but even he is soon found deactivated.
As the ship returns to the nebula, Janeway discovers that the alien has taken over Tuvok, who takes command of the ship. Suddenly they realize another essence is at play: it's Chakotay, who had been trying to help all along. He signals the correct path out of the nebula with a pattern in the stones on his medicine wheel, and soon is revived while the alien in Tuvok is released.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comFaces
Original Air Date: May 8, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48784.2
Janeway grows concerned when B'Elanna, Paris, and Lieutenant Peter Durst fail to report in for beam-up after an away mission. In reality, the phage-plagued Vidiians are kidnapping visitors and masking the landscape to cover their operation on the planet. The scientist Sulan is in search of a cure for the deadly disease of his people. During an experiment, B'Elanna is literally split into two separate beings -- one fully Klingon, the other fully human -- by Sulan, who believes Klingons may be immune to the phage. Since the Vidiians are too weak to do their own labor, the unused hostages including Paris, Durst and another Talaxian are put to work digging tunnels.
Sulan is excited when the Klingon B'Elanna shows signs her body is fighting the disease. He wants to replicate her DNA and integrate it into that of Vidiians, telling her she will be considered a hero to his people. But the Klingon B'Elanna suspects that Sulan's interest in her has grown beyond scientific curiosity.
In the prisoner barracks, Paris is shocked when the all-human B'Elanna appears, explaining what has happened. She admits she should be happy at losing her despised Klingon heritage -- growing up on Kessik IV with her mother as the only Klingons, she decided her human father left them because she looked too alien -- but now she realizes the benefits of her Klingon blood.
Meanwhile, an away team led by Chakotay realizes this planet's caves show traces similar to the Vidiian caves previously encountered, and after trying to phaser through a suspected false wall they beam out quickly before two Vidiians who suddenly appear can subdue them.
The Klingon B'Elanna tries to tempt Sulan into freeing her to explore her sexual side, but despite herself she can't hide her revulsion at his patched-together form. He can't help but notice her reaction and promises her that one day his people will be beautiful again with her help. He has Durst killed so his face can be grafted over his own garish features. Instead of attraction, the sight so enrages the Klingon B'Elanna that she breaks away and grabs Sulan, almost snapping his neck. Only the sound of voices sends her from the room, and she eventually helps to plan an escape with her human half and Paris.
Along the way, the B'Elanna halves learn to appreciate each other and, thanks to help from the returned Chakotay in Vidiian disguise, they subdue Sulan and disable the caves' forcefield to beam out. But Sulan gets off one more shot, aiming for the human B'Elanna but killing his beloved Klingon when she steps in to take the hit. The Klingon part dies after beam-up, but the Doctor is able to return enough DNA to restore B'Elanna to her newly appreciated wholeness.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comJetrel
Original Air Date: May 15, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48840.5
Neelix is called away from a Paris-Tuvok pool match in Sandrine's holodeck bar, and is confronted on the Bridge by Dr. Ma'bor Jetrel, a Haakonian scientist. Jetrel was behind the Metreon Cascade super-weapon that annihilated Talax's moon Rinax during their recent war --killing Neelix's family -- and forced Talax's surrender.
Janeway understands Neelix's bitterness but allows Jetrel aboard when he explains he's searching for victims of metremia, a late-developing disease caused by exposure to metreon radiation. The Captain and then Kes finally convince Neelix to let himself be tested, but the incident only reopens old wounds for Neelix: he confesses to his mate that he wasn't on Talax at the time with their army as he'd claimed -- he was hiding because he was a coward. Kes helps him understand that he is really angry at himself and is blaming Jetrel, who meantime pronounces Neelix afflicted but explains that the ship's transporter may be used for a cure.
Jetrel draws suspicion when he first deactivates the Doctor and then knocks out Neelix. Finally Jetrel reveals that he may be able to regenerate the disassociated remains of Rinax's dead Talaxians, but when the plan fails he admits that he and not Neelix is dying of metremia. In fact, Jetrel draws his last breath after hearing Neelix finally voice his forgiveness.
--courtesy of StarTrek.comLearning Curve
Original Air Date: May 22, 1995
Mission Stardate: 48846.5
Captain Janeway is enjoying playing Lucie the governess in her Gothic holonovel's second chapter when the program quits running, interrupted by a disruption of power to the energy grid.
The problem is soon found to be in the ship's bio-neural gel pack circuitry. A Maquis Engineer, Dalby, made repairs without warning, an action which defied protocol. In Tuvok's report to Janeway and Chakotay later, they hit upon the idea of a Maquis "boot camp" to bring the new crewmembers up to the Starfleet standards expected of them -- with former Academy trainer Tuvok in charge.
The four recruits chosen balk at Tuvok's tough discipline until Chakotay himself smacks Dalby in the jaw -- a demonstration of the limits of "the Maquis way." Tuvok finds it so rough to train the Maquis, he even solicits Neelix for advice. He uses the example of a flower stem that breaks instead of bending, to show that Tuvok can be inflexible.
Meanwhile, more and more of the formerly dependable gel packs malfunction and threaten basic ship systems. B'Elanna and the Doctor find that the organic components of the packs are "infected" with a virus and search for a way to sterilize the infection without harming the rest of the ship and crew. The "cure" with heat is almost fatal to Tuvok's team when it is trapped in a cargo bay amid noxious fumes. The crisis is averted as Tuvok gains new respect when the Vulcan risks his life to rescue a Maquis team member. Tuvok decides he needs to bend the rules sometimes.
And the virus? To Neelix's horror, it's traced to a bacteria given off by an alien cheese fermenting in his kitchen and absorbed through the air ducts.
--courtesy of StarTrek.com