|
Just after B'Elanna and Tom Paris
say their wedding vows and prepare for a holodeck honeymoon,
Torres discovers a problem in engineering. After further
investigation, she finds one of the Jefferies tubes is losing
molecular cohesion due to subspace radiation from the warp
drive. Suddenly, Torres becomes violently ill. When Paris brings
her to sickbay, they find several more crewmembers in the same
condition.
The Doctor diagnoses Torres
with acute cellular degradation and explains that her
chromosomes are breaking down at the molecular level. Meanwhile,
Chakotay and Tuvok pinpoint an event that could have caused
their problems. They encountered a bio-memetic compound — the
"silver blood" — on the Class-Y "demon planet" they visited
about a year earlier. When they left that planet, the crew's DNA
was copied, and duplicates of themselves stayed on the planet to
begin a new population. However, after the Doctor injects a
dichromate catalyst into her deceased body, Torres disintegrates
into the metallic compound. Chakotay and Tuvok realize they are
all the duplicates, and not the "real" Voyager crew.
Unwilling to travel thousands of light-years back to the demon
planet, Janeway plans to forge ahead toward the Alpha Quadrant
and hopes to find a solution to the rapid degradation. When
sensors detect a Class-Y planet, the crew readies the ship to
land, knowing that the planet's atmosphere is the only thing
that may keep them alive. However, a vessel suddenly appears
that warns them to leave and begins firing.
Voyager is unable to sustain the hits from the firing ship and
must retreat. When Janeway orders the crew to search for another
demon planet, Chakotay tells her they are questioning her
command. The crew is beginning to remember their existence
before Voyager, and to them, Earth isn't home. After Chakotay's
neural pathways start to destabilize, he dies in sickbay. Close
to death herself, Janeway decides to turn the ship around and
set a course for the demon planet.
A few weeks away from the planet, Janeway dies. As acting
captain, Kim tries his best to hold the ship together with the
help of Seven of Nine — one of the only other remaining
crewmembers — and to fulfill Janeway's request to store the
ship's database in a signal beacon so at least the crew's
accomplishments won't be forgotten. Failing to accomplish that,
Kim and Seven detect an approaching vessel. Kim orders Seven to
eject the core so they can drop out of warp and hail it. But the
force of doing so causes the ship to disintegrate, and the
approaching vessel — the real U.S.S. Voyager — comes across the
mysterious debris. Curious about the distress signal they were
receiving, the real crew can only make a note of the event in
their log. |
