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Now that the U.S.S. Voyager has
established two-way communications with Starfleet, Captain
Janeway receives her first official assignment in seven years:
Locate and retrieve the Friendship 1, a probe launched from
Earth in 2067 with a message of peace to other worlds. Contact
was lost 130 years ago, but its known trajectory would place it
in the Delta Quadrant near Voyager's current position. After
five days of searching, the probe is detected on a planet
darkened by a nuclear winter caused by antimatter radiation.
An away team consisting of Tom
Paris, Harry Kim, Chakotay, Neelix and Lt. Joe Carey take the
Delta Flyer to the planet, who go searching for the probe
wearing environmental suits. While Paris, Neelix and Carey
follow their tricorder readings into a cavern, Chakotay and Kim
are surprised to find a field of missile silos containing active
warheads. Paris, Neelix and Carey see evidence that the cavern
is inhabited, but sensors have detected no lifesigns. They find
a piece of debris labelled "Friendship 1" and prepare to
transport it to the Flyer, but then are suddenly surrounded by
armed aliens who are cloaked in heavy robes and breathing
equipment. Meanwhile Chakotay and Kim discover the Flyer has
been invaded by one of the planet's inhabitants, who attacks
them but then gets knocked out by Chakotay's phaser. Then
antimatter weapons start rocking the Flyer, so Chakotay is
forced to fly it back to Voyager, leaving the others behind. In
the cavern, the native people show themselves to be highly
malformed and mottled from radiation exposure, and their leader,
Verin, is very hostile to the away team. When Verin learns
they're here to retrieve their probe, he accuses them of causing
his people's suffering.
 Verin contacts Voyager and tells Janeway he's taken her crewmen
hostage, demanding the relocation of his people to another
planet starting in three hours. Janeway confers with the Doctor,
who has examined the unconscious alien Chakotay brought back,
and learns that his tissues are saturated with antimatter
radiation, explaining why no lifesigns were detected on the
planet. The Doctor wakes the alien, named Otrin, who reveals
that his planet's devastation was caused by an antimatter
containment failure. And he blames the human race for it because
until the Friendship 1 arrived and introduced that technology,
his people had never conceived of anything like antimatter.
After decades of suffering, they came to the conclusion that
humans intended to contaminate their world so they could
eventually come and conquer it.
Tuvok locates a class-M planet 132 light-years away, and
determines it would take almost three years to completely
relocate all 5500 of the aliens. Meanwhile Seven of Nine
extracts nanoprobes from her bloodstream so the Doctor can
reprogram them to cure Otrin of his radiation sickness, and
Janeway asks Otrin to elaborate on his efforts to neutralize the
planet's radiation. On the surface, Neelix tries to tell Verin
that humans are not so bad and never meant to harm his people,
but he remains unconvinced. Janeway later contacts Verin and
tells him that relocation is impractical, offering an
alternative: help Otrin carry out his theories on how to
counteract the radiation. Verin won't budge on his demands, so
Janeway asks to exchange a supply of food and medicine for one
of the hostages. Verin picks out Carey and tells him to set up
the transport enhancers. Just before Carey is beamed out, Verin
shoots him in the heart and he arrives in Sickbay dead.
 Janeway tells Verin she will start evacuating his people in an
hour, but then she calls Tuvok and Chakotay into a meeting. In
Sickbay, Otrin is getting much better after his nanoprobe
treatment, and hopes that Voyager can heal all his people. But
Seven points out that Verin has refused their help, and suggests
to Otrin that he would be a better leader than Verin. Meanwhile
Paris helps a woman on the surface deliver a baby, which arrives
stillborn, but Paris is able to bring it to life. Just then a
patrol captures another Voyager crewmember, Tuvok, making Verin
believe he has another hostage. But it turns out one of the
alien guards is the Doctor in disguise, and he helps Tuvok
overpower the captors. The hostages can now beam out, but before
leaving, Paris tells the new mother the baby won't survive
without further treatment, so she lets him take her son to
Voyager.
Once the baby is stabilized, Janeway plans to send him back
along with some food and medical supplies, but then leave. Paris
and Neelix appeal to the Captain to help these people in spite
of their refusal to cooperate. So Janeway and Seven work with
Otrin to develop a plan to neutralize the planet's radiation
with an isolitic chain reaction, using photon torpedoes to
deliver the catalytic agent. Otrin brings the now-healthy baby
back to the surface and confronts Verin to accept Voyager's help
and begin trusting them. Meanwhile the ship enters the planet's
atmosphere to detonate the charges that will counteract the
radiation. When the ground begins to shake, Verin arms an
antimatter missile and prepares to launch it at Voyager. But his
own lieutenants — and the grateful mother — aim weapons at him
to prevent him from ruining their only chance for survival.
Verin realizes Otrin is in command now. Just then a child runs
in and urges everyone to come outside. They see that sunlight is
starting to break through the dark clouds, for the first time in
decades. Voyager retrieves the Friendship 1 and resumes course
for the Alpha Quadrant, but the success of their mission cost
them the life of a crew member. |
