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Voyager finds another Federation starship, the USS Equinox, stranded in the Delta Quadrant. But they also find that the Equinox crew is harboring a dark secret. (Season Finale)
Summary
The Equinox under attack
A Federation starship. On her bridge, all hell has broken loose; nearly everything is wrecked. The only light is the flashing red lights of a red alert and the flash of sparks.
Grimly, seated in the command chair, the captain hears an ominous report from an officer: the ship's deflector shields are at 29%; whatever is attacking them is breaking through. The captain makes a decision: drop the shields completely and allow the shield emitters the 45 seconds they need to fully recharge; a potentially suicidal action, but they have no choice; they will certainly be all killed if the emitters run out of power.
He and his officers immediately field phaser rifles and aim at the air above their heads. He gives the order. Instantly, upon the lowering of the shields, a dry, high-pitched screeching whine is heard. Portals appear above them. The officers fire into them and they close.
But others appear rapidly, and they begin to be overwhelmed. A green, flying creature emerges from one, and immediately closes on an officer. Three streaks of light slash across him. He collapses and his body immediately desiccates into a dried husk.
The officers desperately fire at every portal and creature that emerges from it.
Act One
Aboard the USS Voyager, Captain Janeway, Seven of Nine and Commander Chakotay look at an emergency transmission on the huge viewscreen of the ship's astrometrics lab, shown to them by Seven. They see a static-filled image of the same captain from the attacked ship, and listen to him as he grimly sounds a distress call:
Ransom's call for help
"This is Captain Ransom of the Federation Starship Equinox! We're under attack! We need assistance!"
Janeway recalls the name: Rudolph Ransom, captain of the USS Equinox, a Template:ShipClass starship. Seven announces that the signal was transmitted 14 hours ago. The obvious question is what is the Equinox doing in the Delta Quadrant. Seven surmises that perhaps she is there to find Voyager. But Janeway does not believe this; Novas are short-range planetary research vessels, she tells the former Borg drone, not designed for long-range tactical missions. She must be stranded here, like Voyager.
And therein lies the good. After five years traveling alone, they have, against all odds, come upon another Starfleet vessel, crewed by fellow Starfleet officers and crew. They will no longer have to make this journey home alone; neither will the Equinox crew. Janeway immediately orders a course laid in toward the Equinox, three light years away, at maximum warp, with shields up and at red alert.
Voyager arrives at the Equinox's location. Janeway orders recently demoted Ensign Paris at the helm to come down from warp. At the operations station, Ensign Kim puts the stricken vessel up on the viewscreen.
The ship is seen, hobbling. Its shields are clearly visible; it is still under attack. If all were well, they would not be seen at all. The attackers are not apparent. But the attack does not appear to be weapons fire, as there are no other ships nearby. At the tactical station, Lieutenant Commander Tuvok reports the heavily-damaged state of the vessel.
They enter hailing range. Janeway orders a channel opened. She identifies herself and Voyager. But Ransom interrupts with yelled instructions to her to extend Voyager's shields around the Equinox. She orders it done immediately. Paris moves Voyager above the Equinox and Tuvok works to extend the shields.
But as this is being done, the same dry, high whine from before is heard again. At the auxiliary console, Seven of Nine reports the opening of portals – interspatial fissures – on several decks, including the bridge deck, Deck 1.
Voyager shields the Equinox
But then Tuvok finishes with the shields. A single large shield is seen surrounding Voyager and the Equinox, and then becomes invisible, indicating that the attack has ceased. This is confirmed by Seven's announcement that the fissures have vanished, and the ending of the noise.
Janeway hails the Equinox, but gets no answer. She orders Chakotay to assemble rescue teams to beam over.
Ensign Gilmore
The teams beam over. Chakotay, Lt. Paris and Voyager's chief engineer, Lt. Torres, form one team, and beam to the engine room. At Chakotay's order, Torres begins seeing about restoring power, as Paris finds the desiccated, shriveled corpse of a crewmember. A trained field medic, he scans it with his tricorder, and finds that every cell in the body is desiccated. Torres reports her bewilderment after examining the engine assembly; it appears have been totally redesigned from original Starfleet specifications. Then Chakotay finds a survivor; a terrified blonde Human ensign, under some debris. Her name is Marla Gilmore.
Janeway finds Ransom
Other teams find survivors in other areas of the ship. On the bridge, Captain Janeway herself, along with Tuvok, find still more survivors, including Captain Ransom. Janeway speaks with him briefly. They establish that both their ships came to the Delta Quadrant in the same way: courtesy of the Caretaker. (VOY: "Caretaker") Though gravely injured, he refuses to leave his bridge, but Janeway insists that he go with her to Voyager; they will compare notes further there. Reluctantly, he agrees.
Act Two
As Voyager and the Equinox travel together, the crews of both ships are gathered in Voyager's mess hall. There, Captain Ransom performs a solemn ceremony commemorating the dead of his crew. He calls names: Lieutenants William Yates, and John Bowler, Ensigns Dorothy Chang and Edward Regis, and Crewman David Amantes.
The tone then changes, and he thanks Captain Janeway on behalf of himself and the survivors. She warmly accepts them aboard, calling them the "newest members of our family." She then issued duty assignments: Ensign Kim and Lt. Torres are to lead efforts to repair the Equinox. Seven and Tuvok will work with Ransom's first officer, Maxwell Burke in analyzing the attacks on the Equinox. She then dismisses the assemblage, and the crews mingle happily.
The attacks have not ceased, it is discovered
In the lab, however, Seven makes a disturbing discovery. She, Tuvok and Burke show it to Captains Janeway and Ransom. On the lab's viewscreen, an image of the two ships is seen, with the shield around them both. Intermittent glowing spots appear in different areas. Seven explains that they are stress points, caused by interspatial fissures the Equinox's attackers are opening, trying to come aboard. The attacks have thus not ceased; they are merely being successfully blocked.
But this success will not last long; Tuvok explains that every opening of a fissure within one meter of the shields weakens them by 0.3%. Janeway immediately does the calculation in her head. The result is alarming: in two days, the shields will be down. They thus have two days to mount a defense, or Voyager will end up like the Equinox.
Seven comes up with an idea: bio-scans that Burke showed her and Tuvok indicate that the aliens cannot survive for more than several seconds in this realm. Thus, if they can show the aliens that they possess the ability to hold them here, thus killing them, they may stop their attacks out of self-preservation. Burke builds on the idea: in order to study their attackers, they had built a multiphasic force field chamber in the Equinox's research lab to trap one for several minutes in order to study it. Janeway decides to have a latticework of such force fields installed throughout both ships.
But when she asks Ransom to allow them to examine the chamber, he and Burke get evasive, responding that the research lab is flooded with lethal levels of thermionic radiation. But, Burke adds, the schematics are in their auxiliary data core. Ransom and Janeway leave for the Equinox's bridge to download them to Voyager's computer.
Tales of the Two Captains
On the Equinox's bridge, as they work, Janeway and Ransom compare notes further about their and their crews' travails in the Delta Quadrant. Janeway speaks of Voyager's many run-ins with dangerous aliens, including those most feared by the Federation: the Borg. Ransom tells her that he and his crew never encountered the Borg at all since arriving. Janeway ventures that he and his crew are lucky.
But he quickly quashes that with a recounting of what happened to them. Their first encounter, he recalls, was with a power known as the Krowtonan Guard. Upon their arrival, he, like Janeway, had ordered a course set toward Earth's coordinates. But the Krowtonan Guard warned them that they had violated their territory and to leave immediately. Ransom ordered the course maintained. The Guard responded without mercy. Thirty-nine crew-members, half the crew, were killed.
After that, everything changed, he recalls. When they first arrived, he had told them that they had a duty as Starfleet officers and crew-members to follow the Starfleet directives of exploration and expansion of knowledge, and to uphold Starfleet principles. But after the Krowtonan Guard experience, they saw their only goal as one thing: survival.
The talk then segues into the Prime Directive, and how often they have violated it to preserve their crews, alone in this "Wild West" of a quadrant. Janeway admits to bending it on occasion. He noncommittally admits to the same thing, as they find, among the wreckage, the Equinox's dedication plaque. They put it back up on the bulkhead.
After finishing the download, the captains return to Voyager. Ransom finds Burke eating heartily in the mess hall (he cannot get enough after two years on emergency rations).
"Mind your words. They'll never understand."
His words to Burke are ominous and conspiratorial: "Don't get too comfortable. If Janeway is any indication, these people will never understand." He warns Burke to watch what he says to Voyager crew-members. Burke cautions that they will "find out eventually". Ransom responds that they will be able to keep it from them as long as they can keep them out of the Equinox's research lab.
Act Three
Healed and back on his feet, the Equinox crewman rescued by Seven and Ensign Kim, Crewman Noah Lessing, goes to see Seven in the astrometrics lab.
But as they are talking, the by-now familiar high screech is heard again. Lessing and Seven look above their heads in alarm. On the bridge the sound is also heard. Kim tensely reports to Chakotay that interspatial fissures are opening on three decks, including Deck 1. Tuvok reports the reason: the lateral shields have gone down. Chakotay orders power routed to them. This brings them back up and the noise disappears.
Chakotay orders an explanation. Tuvok gives it: the aliens began to focus their efforts, rapidly opening fissures along a single shield vector. This wore that shield vector down so quickly that it collapsed before auxiliary emitters could respond. Chakotay sees immediately what this means: these things are damned smart. They are getting smarter by the minute. They have less time than they originally thought.
Janeway, Chakotay, Ransom, Burke and Ensign Gilmore meet with Seven and Tuvok in Janeway's ready room, where Seven and Tuvok report that the multiphasic force field chamber's schematics can be indeed adapted for general ship-wide use.
But it will take fourteen hours to do so, and, as Gilmore nervously points out, the aliens may very well collapse a part of the deflector shields again before then. Chakotay suggests that they make a stand on one ship, thus halving the time. The logical choice is Voyager; she is more powerful and in good working order. Ransom, Burke and Gilmore, however, are not keen on the idea of abandoning their ship.
Janeway considers, and comes to the same conclusion as Chakotay. She quotes a Starfleet regulation which basically says that when two or more ships fight alongside each other, in the absence of a flag officer, the captain of the ship that has tactical superiority is in charge of the group. In this case, that is Janeway. Ransom, aware of this, is forced to agree, and orders Burke, and by extension, the other Equinox survivors, to treat Janeway as their new commanding officer. The meeting ends.
After the meeting, however, Burke goes to engineering. Alone, he conducts an unauthorized download of the proposed ship-wide multiphasic force field into a tricorder he has carried there with him. Torres enters and finds him, but he manages to deftly hide his act and distract her from asking pertinent questions as to why he is there with banter.
Conspiracy
Then Ransom calls all the survivors to meet him on the Equinox bridge. They meet and conspire to take the force field generator once it is built and leave. They have no intention of giving up their ship. So obsessed are they about surviving and returning to Earth that they are ready to do whatever is necessary to do so, at an cost, including abandoning their rescuers, absconding with the protection from their enemies that Voyager developed and leaving Voyager's crew to face them alone. They hash out their plan and prepare to enact it.
However, while they are doing so, Janeway is having a meeting of her own with Tuvok and Seven. The two have found that, after all this time, the Equinox's science lab is still flooded with thermionic radiation. It should have dissipated by now. Further, they have found that three EPS conduits have been rerouted to the lab; they are emitting the radiation.
They report this to Janeway. The conclusion is that the lab has been intentionally contaminated; Ransom does not want them to enter it. Janeway decides that a check of just what is in there is necessary; Ransom is obviously hiding something. Since the radiation level is too high for an organic to survive, she decides that they will send in, without Ransom's knowledge, the one Voyager crew-member who will not be affected. This is The Doctor, their chief medical officer, a hologram.
The Doctor beams into the lab. Maintaining a comlink with Seven and Tuvok in the astrometrics lab, he slowly moves through the lab, examining it.
What he finds is damning evidence of the most flagrant violation of Starfleet and Federation laws regarding reverence for all life, Human or alien.
Act Four
The Doctor finds the remains of one of the aliens
The lab contains the force field equipment which was used to intentionally trap the aliens, so that they would die. However, as The Doctor discovers, this was not for defense; it was so that their nucleogenic bodies could be used to boost the warp engines' power, due to their high antimatter content. The Doctor finds other equipment which supports this conclusion; equipment to convert the remains into a crystalline compound that the engines could use, once they were suitably modified. The Equinox crew was thus intentionally killing the aliens to boost the power output of their warp drive, in order to cross the vast distance home more quickly. Janeway is immediately informed.
On Voyager, Ransom and Burke, unaware that the game is up, walk along a corridor, discussing final preparations for their plan. But they run into two of Voyager's security officers, who have been instructed to detain them. They try to head for a transporter room, but instead meet an armed Tuvok, who is Voyager's security chief as well as Janeway's chief tactical officer. He is accompanied by more of his security officers. He informs Ransom of Janeway's "wish" to speak with him. Ransom goes without resistance.
Ransom is next seen sitting across from Janeway in the briefing room. Sitting at the head of the table, Janeway stares at him in palpable anger. She informs him of what The Doctor has found, presents him with a sample of the crystallized remains, and cuttingly asks him how many more of the aliens he would have needed to kill to return to the Alpha Quadrant. The aliens, she accuses, are not aggressors; they are only defending themselves from him and his crew.
Ransom does not deny it. He heatedly defends the actions by quoting a Starfleet regulation that authorizes a captain to "preserve the lives of his crew by any justifiable means" in the event of imminent destruction. Janeway has none of it. What they did was wrong in every sense, morally, ethically and, according to Federation law, legally, she insists.
Ransom recalls their first encounter with the aliens
He defensively outlines how they started on this course of action: starving, with the Equinox all but destroyed, they managed to find an Class M planet where they hoped they would find food. The planet was inhabited by a race called the Ankari. They thought the nucleogenic aliens were spirits of good fortune and, after giving Ransom and his crew food and some supplies, invoked them to bless their journey, using a device to open interspatial fissures through which they emerged, flew around the crew and returned to their realm. Scans showed high antimatter content in their bodies.
Seeing a possible way to "turbocharge" their engines for faster warp flight, thus letting them return home, they bartered with the Ankari for one of the devices. They constructed a multiphasic force field chamber in the ship's lab to hold one of the aliens, summoned one and tried to study it but it died; it could not live for more than several seconds in this realm. But its remains were found to have retained the high antimatter content. With a bit of modification, the engines could use them; they would increase the power output and thus their speed.
And so they began summoning the aliens intentionally to use their bodies in this manner. Ransom insists that they were left without a choice. Janeway again has none of it. She relieves him of command and orders that he and the other survivors be confined to quarters.
She then goes to the bridge and orders The Doctor to return to the lab and retrieve all the data he can find on the aliens. She also orders Seven to go to the Equinox' engine room and take the modifications off-line. Perhaps, she muses, they can make contact with them themselves and explain that Ransom and his crew will be punished for what they were doing to them, and thus convince them to stop their attacks.
Seven, however, discovers that the Equinox's engine modification schematics are encrypted; she cannot access them. Chakotay has Gilmore decrypt them, and Seven beams over to begin dismantling them.
However, in the Equinox's research lab, The Doctor is having trouble accessing the data he is after, even though he has decrypted it. The ship's computer informs him that authorization from the ship's EMH is needed for access.
The Equinox EMH takes The Doctor's mobile emitter
The Doctor activates the EMH. It is a Mark 1, exactly like The Doctor. The Doctor informs him of his crew's arrest. Curious, he asks The Doctor how he is able to leave his sickbay, and The Doctor, rather foolishly, shows him his mobile emitter. He sternly informs the Equinox EMH of the criminal experiments that have been happening in the lab and is shocked to learn that the Equinox EMH designed them; the crew deleted his ethical subroutines.
Thus, he has no qualms about what was done, neither about what he does next: he suddenly strikes The Doctor's arm, deactivating the mobile emitter. The Doctor goes off-line. The Equinox EMH puts the emitter on.
Act Five
As the Equinox EMH returns to Voyager, pretending to be The Doctor, on the bridge, Captain Janeway and her bridge officers note with consternation that the shields are weakening even more rapidly; the aliens have stepped up their attacks. While Seven works in the Equinox engine room, Tuvok and Lt. Torres are in the astrometrics lab, almost ready to bring the ship-wide multiphasic shielding on line.
But in the sickbay, The Equinox EMH queries the computer for Ransom's location. Once he gets it, he packs a bag of hyposprays and goes there. He tells the guards outside that the Equinox crew has been infected with a virus and he has been authorized to inoculate them. They let him in. Once inside, he surreptitiously informs Ransom of his real identity. He is going to help them escape.
In the astrometrics lab, Tuvok and Torres attempt to activate the shield grid. But nothing happens. They try to find out what is wrong.
Ransom and his crew escape
What is wrong is that Burke, while in engineering, had done more than steal the multiphasic field generator's schematics; he had also reconfigured intended power couplings to the device, then reconfigured the sensors so that this would not be detected. Tuvok and Torres work to undo this, as Ransom and his crew overpower their guards, take their weapons and enter the corridor. They head for a transporter room.
On the bridge, at his station, Ensign Kim reports detection of phaser fire on the deck the Equinox crew were confined on. Janeway immediately orders security to seal off the deck.
The aliens step up their efforts, rapidly wearing the deflector shields down. As the shields degrade, Kim reports an unauthorized transport. Janeway orders him to block it but he fails. He reports that the Equinox crew have beamed onto their bridge. Attempts to call Seven of Nine fail; Seven is seen lying unconscious in the Equinox engine room, Ensign Gilmore standing over her.
On the Equinox bridge, Burke reports with chagrin that Torres has erected a force field over the multiphasic force field generator; he cannot beam it off Voyager. He tries to override the command codes. This works; he beams it onto the Equinox.
Janeway hails the Equinox and, seething, warns Ransom that if he does not desist in his action, both ships will be destroyed. But he will not hear it, responding that that would be better than thirty years in her brig. She threatens to fire on him.
He ends the communication. Torres calls Janeway and reports that the Equinox crew have taken the generator. Thus, Voyager is defenseless against the aliens. On the Equinox, Ransom orders their escape at warp, but in engineering, Gilmore reports Seven's attempt to dismantle the warp engines, and that she, Gilmore, is undoing it. Burke integrates the multiphasic field generator into the ship's computer.
Voyager's shields fail. The dry whine is immediately heard. Kim agitatedly reports fissures opening on all decks. Janeway and the bridge officers field weapons.
On the Equinox, a fissure opens. But Burke succeeds in getting the generator up. Instantly, as an alien comes through, it finds itself trapped by a force field. It rushes frantically about, bouncing from field to field, then collapsed and dies. Ransom orders it taken to the lab. Crewman Lessing reports engines are on-line. Satisfied, Ransom orders a course set for the Alpha Quadrant. The Equinox is seen pulling away from Voyager, taking Seven and The Doctor, who are still aboard, with them.
An alien closes on Janeway
On Voyager's bridge, fissures are opening all over. Janeway and her officers fire into them as they open, but more open immediately elsewhere.
Then Chakotay shouts a warning to her. She whirls.
One of the aliens heads directly at her.
A single touch...
Memorable Quotes
"Drop... shields!"
- - Captain Ransom, bellowing out an order to temporarily drop the Equinox' deflector shields to recharge them in the face of the nucleogenic aliens' attack
"BLT?"
"Bacon, lettuce and tomato. It was a nickname"
"A nickname?"
"My initials"
"Oh, how romantic."
"We broke up ten years ago, Tom. There's no need to go to red alert."
"How about yellow alert?"
"You're cute when you're jealous."
"Who's jealous?!"
- - Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres, concerning B'Elanna's close friendship to Equinox commander "Max"
"Well, "Turkey Platter", what do you say we go to work?"
- - Harry Kim, to Tom Paris
"May I ask you something, captain to captain? The Prime Directive: how often have you broken it for the sake of protecting your crew?"
"Broken it? Never. Bent it, on occasion. And even then, it was a difficult choice."
- - Captain Ransom and Captain Janeway, as Janeway tells a barefaced lie to Ransom.
"Starfleet Regulation 3, Paragraph 12: In the event of imminent destruction, a captain is authorized to preserve the lives of his crew by any justifiable means."
"I doubt that protocol covers mass murder."
"In my judgment, it did."
- - Captain Ransom and Captain Janeway
"It's easy to cling to your principles when you're standing on a vessel with its bulkheads intact, manned by a crew that's not starving."
"It's never easy, but if we turn our backs on our principles, we stop being human."
- - Captain Ransom and Captain Janeway
"A shower and a hot meal... I guess that's all it takes for some of us to forget what's at stake here. We're going home, We can't let Voyager stop us now, not when we're this close."
- - Captain Ransom
Background
- Rick Worthy previously played Kornan in DS9: "Soldiers of the Empire" and went on to play the Xindi-Arboreal Jannar in several episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise.
- In the Voyager episode "Relativity", we see Admiral Patterson introducing Janeway to the Doctor for the first time, remarking that Starfleet was considering outfitting his program onto all Federation starships. The Equinox apparently was another test candidate for the EMH program, as it must have been in the Delta Quadrant at that time or shortly after.
- The main bridge of the Equinox is a re-use of the set used for the USS Prometheus, as are the corridors, crew quarters and science lab. They are all slightly altered to simulate the effect of damage.
- There was much speculation that Kate Mulgrew was considering leaving the show at the end of the fifth season, which would mean Captain Janeway would have to be written out (hence Janeway was attacked by the aliens at the end of this episode). Rumors circulated that Captain Ransom may have assumed command of Voyager, or that Chakotay would assume command. However, Mulgrew opted to remain with the show and Janeway was allowed to live. (citation needed • edit)
- The possibility of another Federation starship being in the Delta Quadrant was discussed in the first season episode "State of Flux".
Video and DVD releases
- UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment): Volume 5.13, 27 December 1999.
- The first Voyager volume distributed by PHE.
- In feature-length form, as part of the UK VHS collection Star Trek: Voyager - Movies: Volume 3 (with "The Killing Game"), 5 February 2001.
- As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection.
Links and references
Special Guest Star
Guest Stars
Co-Stars
- Scarlett Pomers as Naomi Wildman
- Steve Dennis as Crewmember
- Majel Barrett as the computer voice
Uncredited Co-Stars
- Tarik Ergin as Ayala
- Kerry Hoyt as Fitzpatrick
- Mark Rogerson as Brian Sofin
- Unknown performers as
- James Morrow
- Angelo Tassoni
- Thompson
References
Amantes, David; Ankari; antimatter injector; astrometrics; auto-initiating security grid; bacon; BLT sandwich; Bowler, John; Caretaker (Nacene); claustrophobia; dilithium; Chang, Dorothy; Emergency Medical Hologram; EPS conduit; Equinox, USS; ethical subroutine; exobiology; field generator; internal sensor; interspatial fissure; isogram; kemocite; Krowtonan Guard; laser scalpel; lettuce; matter conversion technology; mercurium; multiphasic chamber; multiphasic force field; mutagenic virus; nucleogenic energy; neural interface; Template:ShipClass; petaQ; plasma injector; plasma torch; polaron grid; Ponea; post-traumatic stress syndrome; power coupling; Prime Directive; Regis, Edward; rescue team;sonic shower; Starfleet oath; Starfleet Regulation; stasis chamber; submolecular resequencer; subroutine; sweater; synaptic stimulator; thermionic radiation; thermographic analysis; thermolytic reaction; transport enhancer; triquadric algorithm; tomato; universal translator; warp core; warp plasma manifold; waverider; Yates, William
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