After the rest of the crew is placed in suspended animation to protect them from dangerous radiation, Seven, with only the Doctor for company, is placed in control of the ship.
Summary
On the holodeck, The Doctor teaches Seven of Nine about conversational skills. When she talks to holographic versions of Harry Kim and B'Elanna Torres, she subjects them to many questions at fast speeds. The Doctor pauses the program to tell her what she did wrong, and Seven leaves abruptly.
Meanwhile, USS Voyager comes upon a Mutara-class nebula. Upon entering the nebula, the crew starts to become disoriented and their skin burns. Tuvok is able to turn Voyager around, stopping the symptoms. Seven arrives on the bridge with a dermal regenerator to treat the burns, finding a crewman dead. The effects were caused by subnucleonic radiation in the nebula, and only Seven and The Doctor were unaffected.
Scanning the nebula, Seven determines that it is over 110 light years long and would take one month to travel through it, or one year to go around. While the best option was to go through, the Doctor only comes up with one alternative to protect the crew from the radiation - stasis units.
In a meeting, Kathryn Janeway tells the senior staff of the plan, sending the crew into stasis, leaving Seven and the Doctor in charge. Chakotay has misgivings about Seven being in charge, due to past instances of misbehavior and failure to comply with orders. Despite his objections, the plan is put into effect.
The crew are sent to a cargo bay on deck 14, where stasis pods are located. All the crew, minus Seven and the Doctor, are put into pods and then into stasis. The journey into the nebula begins.
On the tenth day in the nebula everything is proceeding as expected, though Tom Paris escapes from his stasis pod. With nothing left to do, the Doctor takes Seven to the holodeck to continue work on her social skills. Working on the warp field, Seven employs the help of Neelix and Janeway holograms. When The Doctor notices her doing this, he again begins to discuss social behavior with her. During the conversation, the computer reports the antimatter containment is failing. Seven proceeds to engineering while The Doctor heads to the bridge. When Seven arrives, she finds it was a false alert signal.
She finds the computer error leading to the alarm was linked to a bio-neural gel pack problem in sequence 6-theta-9 on deck 4. One of the gelpack's neurodes were causing random signal fluctuations. The problem is bypassed by routing to another gelpack sequence, but all of a sudden, the Doctor's mobile emitter starts to fail. Seven and The Doctor rush back to sickbay as his program goes off-line. The electro-optic modulator had been damaged due to the radiation, and now Seven is on her own to perform ship functions.
On the 29th day, Seven attempts to make a course correction, but the computer is slow to respond. When it does, it starts to operate erratically. Upon rerouting the computer's functional relays, it returns to normal. In astrometrics, Seven determines that Voyager was six days away from exiting the nebula, but then starts to hear Tom Paris call for help. However, in the cargo bay, she finds he is in his pod, along with everybody else. The computer then announces that a ship had come in range.
The captain of the ship, Trajis Lo-Tarik, requires a microfusion chamber, and is beamed to the cargo bay to trade liquid helium for it. Lo-Tarik talks of the loneliness of being in the nebula and starts commenting about the Borg, despite mentioning prior that he did not know them. Escorting Lo-Tarik to the transporter room, Seven, armed with a phaser, hears Paris call for help again. Losing concentration, Seven loses track of Lo-Tarik.
In sickbay, The Doctor and Seven attempt to locate Lo-Tarik, who registers neither on internal sensors, nor in scans of his ship. The doctor suggests she continue with her duties and watch out for Lo-Tarik. She displays a little fear, but shrugs it off, saying "I am Borg."
Pacing the corridors with a phaser rifle in hand, Seven begins to hear the voices of Lo-Tarik and the Voyager staff. Entering the cargo bay, she again finds the crew undisturbed. Lo-Tarik contacts her over the communications network commenting about the failure of the structural integrity field around the warp coils. Seven proceeds to engineering, and contacts Lo-Tarik asking where he is - the bridge, he reveals. Hearing calls for help, Seven looks up to the upper level to see Paris and Kim writhing in pain, bursting into flames as she climbs to their aid.
Lo-Tarik begins playing games with Seven, so she uses it to her advantage and removes the air from the bridge. Seven contacts the Doctor to notify him that Lo-Tarik was incapacitated. The Doctor, who had repaired his mobile emitter, proceeds to engineering. In surprise, Lo-Tarik enters engineering, and is shot by Seven. The phaser beam is ineffective, and Lo-Tarik incapacitates Seven by berating her. The Doctor enters engineering and sees Seven alone, as Lo-Tarik and the other voices were images in Seven's mind. The primary EPS relays start to fail, and the Doctor links his emitter to the relays to repair them. When they go off-line, The Doctor's program deactivates, leaving Seven alone.
With a few hours remaining until Voyager exits the nebula, Seven's hallucinations get worse. Walking the corridor, she comes upon a Borg drone, who also berates her about her loneliness, and her weakness since departing the Borg Collective. Entering the turbolift, she meets Lo-Tarik again, again harassing her with talk of loneliness. On the bridge, the Voyager staff sarcastically put down Seven's progress. The propulsion systems start to fail, along with auxiliary power. She takes power from 10 stasis pods to restore propulsion. As the faux Voyager crew comments on how she does not care about her colleagues, Seven flees to the cargo bay.
In the cargo bay, some of the crewmembers in stasis pods 1-10, including Tom Paris, start dying due to lack of oxygen. Seven diverts all power from life support to the pods. The Janeway hallucination stands over her as she passes out near the entrance to the cargo bay, commenting on her bad decision.
In sickbay, Seven wakes up on the main biobed, in front of the real Janeway, Chakotay and Doctor. The Doctor had found Seven unconscious when they exited the nebula, placing her on life support. He awoke the crew, the mission was a success.
In the mess hall, Seven sits down with Torres, Kim and Paris and talks with them. Paris comments on how they could've died in the pods. Seven mentions that Paris would've got out of the pod in time, for she witnessed him out of his pod four times during the trip. Paris attempts to shrug it off, saying he didn't like enclosed spaces. Seven suggests he simply didn't want to be alone.
Log Entries
- Personal log, Seven of Nine, stardate 51929.3. This is the tenth day of our journey through the Mutara Nebula. I've created an efficient daily routine.
- Personal log, Seven of Nine, stardate 51932.4. The twenty-ninth day in the Mutara Nebula. I believe I'm beginning to feel the effects of this prolonged isolation. My dreams have been... disturbing, but I'm determined to fulfill my responsibilities. With the Doctor confined to sickbay, I have taken on increasing duties. Ship's systems are beginning to require constant maintenance in order to avert disaster. This morning I must... purge the auxiliary plasma vents. End log.
Memorable Quotes
"We’ve come 15,000 light-years. We haven’t been stopped by temporal anomalies, warp core breaches, or hostile aliens. And I’ll been damned if we're going to be stopped by a nebula."
- - Janeway
"The Doctor will be in command. You will follow his instructions just as you would follow mine."
"Follow the orders of a hologram?"
- - Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine
"Look at the fact that here's someone who's butted horns with you from the moment she came on board; who disregards authority and actively disobeys orders when she doesn't agree with them."
"And this is the person I'm giving responsibility for the lives of this entire crew. I suppose you want me to tell you I'm not crazy."
"In a nutshell."
- - Chakotay and Captain Janeway
"Holodecks are a pointless endeavor, fulfilling some human need to fantasize. I have no such need."
"What you need is some editorial skill in your self expression. Between impulse and action there´s a realm of good taste begging for your acquaintance."
"I find your self expression ponderous."
- - The Doctor and Seven of Nine, bickering.
"Come on, Tom. Sleepy time."
"What if we... had to get out in a hurry?"
"You can unlock the unit from inside, Tom."
"Do I detect a hint of claustrophobia, Lieutenant?"
- - Harry Kim, Tom Paris and The Doctor
"Why do they have to design these things like coffins?"
"Should we replicate you a teddy bear?"
- - Tom Paris and Harry Kim
"Seven of Nine to the Doctor."
"Go ahead."
"Lieutenant Paris has left his stasis unit and is unconscious."
"I'll be right there. Apparently, he's more claustrophobic than I thought."
- - Seven of Nine and The Doctor
"If you had even the slightest sense of humor, you'd realize I was making a small joke."
"Very small."
- - The Doctor and Seven of Nine
"It's not unheard of for people to come out of stasis and start wandering. Leave it to Mr. Paris to be just as much trouble now as when he's awake."
- - The Doctor
"These tubes certainly weren't designed with creature comfort in mind."
- - The Doctor while crawling through Jefferies tube
"I can complain if I want to, It's comforting."
...
"Well, this journey certainly has not lacked excitement. I can´t complain about being bored."
"Since you find it comforting, you´ll undoubtedly find something else to complain about."
"No doubt, you really should try it."
- - The Doctor and Seven of Nine, more bickering.
"Seven, are you... frightened?"
"I am Borg."
- - The Doctor and Seven of Nine
(Doctor's program flickers, begins to degrade) "I have to get back to sickbay!" (program flickers again) "Hurry!"
"I am hurrying."
"If the mobile emitter goes off-line while I'm out of sickbay my program may be irretrievable!"
"Don't panic. It's counterproductive."
"That's easy for you to say. You're not facing cybernetic oblivion!" (program flickers yet again) "If that happens again, I'm a goner!"
- - The Doctor and Seven of Nine
(The Doctor gives a sigh of relief) "Home, sweet sickbay, I never thought I'd be so happy to see these walls."
- - The Doctor, after reaching sickbay when his mobile emitter started to fail
"NO!!!"
- - Seven of Nine, after The Doctor goes off-line.
"I am Seven of Nine, I am alone. But I will adapt, I will..."
- - Seven of Nine, before passing out
(The computer's voice slows and deepens, returns to normal, then deepens again) "Warning. Deuterium tank levels are fluctuating beyond acceptable tolerances."
"The computer sounds like it needs a stimulant."
- - The Computer and The Doctor, after Seven neglected to perform her maintenance duties.
"I hope you're not afraid of the dark."
- - Tragis to Seven of Nine
"Neelix, this soup is great. What is it?"
"It's my secret recipe. I've never told anyone what's in it."
"Why does that make me nervous?"
"Oh, come on, Tom. Where's your sense of adventure?"
"Not in my stomach."
- - Harry Kim, Neelix, Tom Paris and B'Ellana Torres
"I... felt the need for companionship."
"Well, after a month with only the Doc for company, I can understand that."
- - Seven of Nine and Tom Paris
Background Information
- The original pitch for this episode came from James Swallow, being the first British writer to submit a story for Star Trek. In the atlas Star Trek: Star Charts, the Mutara-class nebula has been named the Swallow Nebula in his honor.
- A similar storyline occurred in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Doctor's Orders", when Doctor Phlox was forced to take control of the ship on his own to pilot it through a nebula and began to hallucinate.
- The episode also has many similarities to a previous Voyager episode, "Persistence of Vision", which features The Doctor working closely with Kes while the rest of the crew is incapacitated by hallucinations.
- It is mentioned that the ship has traveled 15,000 light years toward home.
Video and DVD releases
- UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 4.13, catalogue number VHR 4634, 28 December 1998.
- As part of the VOY Season 4 DVD collection.
Links and References
Guest Stars
- Wade Williams as Trajis Lo-Tarik
- Ron Ostrow as hallucinated Borg drone
- Tarik Ergin as Ayala (uncredited)
References
14 Beta 7; anti-psychotic; Ayala; bio-neural circuitry; bio-neural gel pack; Borg; Borg Collective; Borg drone; cargo bay; Chi 14; cloaking device; command processor; dermal regenerator; electro-optic modulator; EM stress parameters; EPS conduit; force field; helium; Jefferies tube; Maquis; microfusion chamber; mobile emitter; Mutara class; nanoprobe; nebula; parrises squares; phaser rifle; sensory nodes; South Carolina; stasis; subnucleonic radiation; subspace field matrix; tennis; volleyball; warp core breach; warp field
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