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Captain Janeway and the Doctor run
into a problem as they travel back from a medical symposium on
the Delta Flyer. When Janeway returns to the U.S.S. Voyager, she
tells Chakotay that they encountered a race called the R'Kaal
who have outlawed conventional warp travel through their
territory, and insist on punishing Voyager by dismantling the
ship. Janeway says she agreed to surrender their warp core in
exchange for letting the crew settle on an M-Class planet.
Chakotay is concerned that the captain is giving in so easily,
but Janeway insists she's tired of continually risking her
people on a slim chance of making it home, and orders Chakotay
to set a course for the planet.
Janeway then asks Torres to
modify the Flyer's tractor beam so that if the warp core is
ejected, it can be safely towed at warp speed. Chakotay learns
of this order, and tries to find out from Janeway what's really
going on. Janeway acts strangely distant, and retires to her
quarters with a "headache." Chakotay visits Sickbay and calls
for the Doctor, who beams in from elsewhere on the ship.
Chakotay asks him to re-examine Janeway to see what the aliens
may have done to her. Later, Chakotay gets a message from
Supreme Archon Loth of the R'Kaal Imperium, warning that if
Voyager does not surrender its warp core in ten hours, his
armada will destroy the ship. Chakotay asks Seven of Nine and
Harry Kim to pinpoint the source of that transmission. After
finding out from the Doctor that the captain is normal, Chakotay
confronts Janeway in her quarters about her decision. He makes
up a story about Janeway's past that she pretends to remember,
thus exposing her as an imposter. The imposter then overpowers
Chakotay and knocks him out with a hypospray injection.
 The imposter places the unconscious Chakotay in the ship's
morgue and keeps his combadge, then returns to Sickbay and uses
the mobile emitter to restore his identity — the imposter is the
Doctor. The Doctor has been hearing the voices of two "Overlooker"
aliens — the species that learned how to tap into the Doctor's
perceptual subroutines over a year ago — and forced to do their
bidding because they are holding the real Janeway hostage on
their ship. On top of procuring the warp core, Zet, the leader,
orders the Doctor to also acquire a series of gel packs. When
Tuvok summons Chakotay, the Doctor downloads the commander's
holographic template and takes on his identity. Tuvok informs
him that the Flyer's com system is not damaged as the captain
had reported. Meanwhile Janeway, being held behind a forcefield
by the Overlookers, tries to bluff her captors into thinking the
Doctor is fooling them, but Zet refuses to abandon his plan
because the warp core is worth too much money.
On Voyager, the Doctor, using Janeway's voice, summons B'Elanna
Torres to the captain's quarters so he can draw her out of
Engineering in order to impersonate her there. While loading up
gel packs in a case, the Doctor is approached by Tom Paris,
Torres' husband, for a romantic interlude. After that awkward
encounter, the Doctor goes to Astrometrics as Chakotay where
Seven and Kim reveal that the R'Kaal transmission originated
from inside Voyager, specifically Holodeck 2. The disguised
Doctor goes there with Kim, who uses residual photonic
displacement to find out who was last there. He realizes the
R'Kaal was actually a hologram, and the underlying template was
that of the Doctor's. Exposed, the Doctor injects Kim with a
hypospray, and hides him also in the morgue.
Back in Sickbay, the Doctor talks to the Overlookers while
listening to "The Blue Danube" waltz. Tuvok arrives and reveals
that he's learned the Doctor downloaded the captain's
holographic template while on the Flyer. When the Doctor tries
to inject him with a hypospray, Tuvok is ready for the attack.
The Doctor leaps through solid objects and grabs his mobile
emitter to escape from Sickbay. Tuvok pursues him to a holodeck,
where he's faced with a roomful of holographic copies of the
Doctor. While Tuvok tries to disable the decoys, the Doctor
takes a Jefferies Tube to Engineering and becomes Chakotay
again, ordering an evacuation due to an imminent core breach.
Paris informs Torres that he's detected the Doctor's emitter in
her section, so the Doctor traps Torres behind a forcefield,
activates his Emergency Command Hologram protocols and uses his
command codes to eject the warp core. The Doctor then makes his
way to the Delta Flyer and, using its modified tractor beam,
tows the core away at warp speed.
Meanwhile Janeway helps the second Overlooker, Nar, repair a
salvaged component, realizing she may be able to take advantage
of his friendliness. Zet puts a stop to their interaction, just
as the Doctor arrives in the Delta Flyer with the warp core. Zet
says he will release the captain in exchange for the core, but
instead he beams the Doctor over to their ship and imprisons him
with Janeway. Janeway chews out the Doctor for not following her
orders to refuse cooperation, but he insists he wouldn't let her
be killed.
 Back on the stranded Voyager, the crew finds Chakotay and Kim in
the morgue and revives them. As they try to figure out how to
track down the Flyer, the ship's com system starts playing "The
Blue Danube" and won't stop. But the music contains several
incorrect notes, so the crew realizes it was altered
intentionally. Seven analyzes the harmonics and finds a pattern
that appears to be a warp signature. She scans for that
signature and finds it 6.7 light-years away. Since Voyager
doesn't have warp, Tuvok and Paris take a shuttle to that
location.
The Overlookers, meanwhile, decide to use the Doctor to
infiltrate their Hierarchy's Surveillance Complex to steal
valuable information, and start uploading new data and
holographic templates into his matrix. When the Doctor takes on
the form of an Overlooker, he starts to destabilize and has a
hard time staying in one form. At that point Tuvok and Paris
arrive in the shuttle to take back the Delta Flyer, and they get
into a phaser fight with the Overlookers. Zet decides to
jettison Voyager's warp core and detonate it, and Nar realizes
that would kill the people in the other ships. Janeway and the
Doctor escape from behind the forcefield and, while the Doctor
struggles with Zet, Janeway works the controls to transport the
warp core back out into space, allowing Paris to reclaim it with
the Flyer. Zet asks Nar to help him overpower the hologram, but
Nar chooses to knock out Zet instead, putting an end to the
struggle.
In danger of permanently decompiling because of the excess
subroutines, the Doctor is rushed back to Voyager where Torres
and Seven try to stabilize his matrix. Certain he won't survive,
the Doctor starts making several "deathbed confessions" to the
crew, include the revelation that he's in love with Seven. But
then Torres succeeds in saving his program, ensuring a long life
for the highly embarrassed Doctor. |
