star trek voyager mobiler emitter episode

• Cast & crew
• User reviews
• Episode aired Oct 21, 1998

Voyager investigates the birth of a nebula. Unfortunately, its intense blast wave catches an away mission shuttle, causing emergency beam out transporter signals to fuse the Doctor's mobile ... Read all Voyager investigates the birth of a nebula. Unfortunately, its intense blast wave catches an away mission shuttle, causing emergency beam out transporter signals to fuse the Doctor's mobile emitter with Seven's nanoprobes. The mobile emitter subsequently starts assimilating a sci... Read all Voyager investigates the birth of a nebula. Unfortunately, its intense blast wave catches an away mission shuttle, causing emergency beam out transporter signals to fuse the Doctor's mobile emitter with Seven's nanoprobes. The mobile emitter subsequently starts assimilating a science lab and assaults a crew member to create a new Borg drone built upon the emitter's tw... Read all

• Gene Roddenberry
• Rick Berman
• Michael Piller
• Kate Mulgrew
• Robert Beltran
• Roxann Dawson
• 13 User reviews
• 7 Critic reviews

• Capt. Kathryn Janeway

• Cmdr. Chakotay

• Lt. B'Elanna Torres

• Lt. Tom Paris

• Seven of Nine

• Ensign Harry Kim

• 'One,' 29th-Century Borg Drone

• Ensign Mulcahey

• Voyager Computer

• Lead Starfleet Crew Commander
• (uncredited)
• Voyager Command Officer
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia Although the character of Ensign Mulcahey ( Todd Babcock ) is mentioned in at least four other episodes of "Voyager," this installment marks his only onscreen appearance.
• Goofs As a Borg vessel approaches, Janeway and Seven share their full knowledge of the Borg with One in Astrometrics. One's fascination with the Borg is obvious. Janeway wants One's cooperation in fighting them off, but Chakotay's announcement of the Borg vessel's approach interrupts, calling all hands to battle stations. Janeway and Seven head to the bridge without One's answer. One follows them. On each side of the doorway stand two motionless security guards. They don't follow the Captain to protect her, they don't detain One from following her (even though he represents a potential danger to her and Voyager), and they don't go to their battle stations, which makes it entirely unclear who or what they are there to guard.

B'Elanna Torres : How many Borg hitchhikers are we gonna pick up on this trip? Maybe this is the Collective's new strategy. They don't assimilate anymore, they just show up and look helpless.

• Connections Featured in Star Trek: First Contact Review (2009)
• Soundtracks Star Trek: Voyager - Main Title (uncredited) Written by Jerry Goldsmith Performed by Jay Chattaway

User reviews 13

• planktonrules
• Feb 23, 2015
• October 21, 1998 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (Studio)
• Paramount Network Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 46 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Drone (episode)

• View history
• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 2 Log entries
• 3 Memorable quotes
• 4.1 Story and script
• 4.2 Cast and characters
• 4.3 Production
• 4.4 Continuity
• 4.5 Reception
• 4.6 Video and DVD releases
• 5.1 Starring
• 5.2 Also starring
• 5.3 Guest stars
• 5.4 Co-star
• 5.5 Uncredited co-stars
• 5.6 Stand-ins
• 5.7.1 Computer library images
• 5.8 External links

Summary [ ]

Seven of Nine is practicing smiling in a mirror, when The Doctor enters the cargo bay . Seven objects, as he walked in without announcing himself. The Doctor, who apologizes, comes to her because they are about to start a mission together with B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris to survey a proto-nebula , which will come into existence within a short period of time. While walking to the shuttlebay they talk about the upcoming mission.

Seven looking in the mirror

While en route to the nebula , they run into spatial turbulence and talk about the discomfort of Class 2 shuttles . Seven asks Paris why he does not design a new and larger shuttle if he is so discontent with these Class 2 types. When the proto-nebula appears, the shuttle is caught in the gravimetric shear of a plasma surge a few seconds later, which causes the shuttle to lose its propulsion .

When USS Voyager receives their distress call , Captain Janeway orders transporter room 1 to beam the shuttle crew out via an emergency beam-out. Because the shuttle is still caught proto-nebula's shearline, Ensign Mulchaey has trouble establishing a good pattern lock , but is able to beam them out. Despite a small problem separating their patterns, he is able to re-materialize them safely. When they step off of the transporter platform , The Doctor's holomatrix begins to flicker; it seems his mobile emitter was damaged somehow. After Torres transfers his program to sickbay , she tells him that some emitter circuits were fused during transport. To see if she can repair the damage, she needs to perform a diagnostic on the mobile emitter. She and Mulchaey go to the science lab , where they started diagnostic routine alpha-three-six. Torres tells Mulchaey to check the results the next morning.

Assimilated mobile emitter

After they leave the science lab, the mobile emitter releases assimilation tubules , attach to the LCARS computer console where it is lying, and begins assimilation .

Act One [ ]

The Doctor calls Lieutenant Torres at six o'clock the next morning. He wants to know when his mobile emitter will be repaired. When she walks into the sonic shower , he even appears on its display and an agitated Torres throws her towel over it and ignores The Doctor completely.

At about the same time, Seven's regeneration cycle is aborted prematurely because she detects a Borg presence. She goes to the bridge and informs them of her concerns. Ensign Harry Kim tells Seven that sensor sweeps were performed the entire night and no Borg presence was detected. When she suggests that a Borg vessel might hide within the proto-nebula, Kim tells her that even a Borg cube would not survive the nebula . Chakotay tells Seven to let The Doctor check her proximity transceiver to make sure it is not malfunctioning. While The Doctor is performing his check, she tells him her proximity transceiver was activated again. This has to do with Ensign Mulchaey who, upon starting his duty shift by checking the diagnostics results of The Doctor's mobile emitter, is probed by extraction tubules for DNA .

On the bridge, Harry Kim notices that power from the warp conduits is being re-routed to the science lab on deck eight and detects a force field – with a Borg signature. Chakotay immediately orders red alert and tells Seven that she is right: Borg have been detected on Voyager and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok is on his way to the science lab with a security team. When Seven and Tuvok's security team enter the science lab, they find Ensign Mulchaey unconscious but alive, and notice a Borg-like maturation chamber protected by a force field that Seven surmises will allow her passage. Seven investigates and finds it contains a drone in its fetal state – unusual, because the Borg do not procreate, they assimilate.

Act Two [ ]

Fetal Borg drone

When Captain Janeway is briefed by Seven, she is told that the drone is the result of a transporter accident that occurred when they were beamed from the shuttle. Her nanoprobes interacted with The Doctor's mobile emitter when their patterns were temporarily merged. Nanoprobes within the emitter assimilated the diagnostics console and used Mulchaey's DNA as a template to create the lifeform. Captain Janeway orders a level ten force field and twenty-four hour security around the science lab, yet will not terminate the drone fetus unless forced to do so.

Seven and The Doctor, together with Tuvok and Torres, are scanning the drone from astrometrics . They find that since Mulchaey is Human , the drone is also Human, but twenty seven percent of the body is made of Borg implants. Its body armor is made of the mobile emitter's poly-deutonic alloy , while the emitter itself is part of the drone's central nervous system and cannot be removed without killing it. Because of the emitter's origin, it is, in essence, a 29th century Borg drone. As a precaution, Seven dampens the proximity transceiver to prevent the drone from contacting the Borg Collective . When Seven briefs Captain Janeway about the drone's capabilities (internal transporter nodes, among other things), Seven is asked to act as its teacher, to teach the drone how to act as an individual. Captain Janeway sees this as the only possibility to prevent the drone from joining the Borg collective. Killing the drone is her last option.

When the drone awakens from its alcove , it asks Seven of Nine its designation. Although Seven tells him it is irrelevant, it keeps asking for it. Seven is forced to initiate a direct neural interface, because the drone does not seem to understand her verbal instructions. When she tries to disengage the neural link, however, the drone tries to assimilate the entirety of her knowledge and ignores or refuses her command to terminate the link. Only when Seven tells him he was hurting her does the drone disengage the neural link.

Act Three [ ]

Borg data node

For everyone's safety, Seven decides to use Borg data nodes to teach the drone about its environment. When Neelix brings the first data node, Seven shows the drone how to assimilate the collected data via his assimilation tubules. Upon completion of assimilation of its data, he identifies Neelix and Seven and is aware of the existence of Voyager , which is traveling through interstellar space . Seven explains to him that Voyager is not a Borg collective, but that everyone on board is a unique individual. When the drone requests more information, Seven tells him that he first must see The Doctor for a medical evaluation. Neelix escorts the drone to sickbay, during which the drone notices a slight fear of him among the crewmembers and asks Neelix about the Borg. Neelix evades his question and tells him instead that he should get a name, because every individual has a name.

While being scanned by The Doctor, the drone asks how he came into existence. The Doctor tells him about the transporter accident. Although his existence is an accident, he is told that he is not unwelcome and after some time, he will make a fine addition to the crew. It is, after all, Voyager 's primary mission to explore new forms of life.

After his medical check, Seven familiarizes the drone with Voyager . When they visit engineering , the drone helps Torres by predicting the rate of expansion of the proto-nebula. When they visit Captain Janeway, he tells her his designation is One , that he assimilated forty-seven billion teraquads of information, and asks her if he is sufficient. When Janeway tells him he is, One asks to be excused, as Torres had asked him to help improve the efficiency of the Bussard collectors . Seven tells Captain Janeway that One had asked about the Borg and she was worried that if he gains more knowledge about them, he might seek the Borg Collective, which would pose a grave tactical risk. They decide, for now, not to tell him about the Borg.

When One is escorted to his alcove by Seven of Nine, he again asks to be told about the Borg when he notices that the alcoves are not Starfleet technology. Seven refuses and tells him to step into his alcove. He pauses and complies, then interestingly thanks her. As he regenerates, a proximity transceiver on his neck transmits a signal to the Borg Collective. They receive it and pursue.

Act Four [ ]

The regeneration cycle is interrupted by Captain Janeway and a security team, who promptly inform Seven that One has sent the signal, despite their having deactivated it. It seems One's cranial implant automatically created a secondary proximity transceiver which transmitted the signal. Voyager 's long range sensors already detected a transwarp conduit . When One makes clear that he wants to meet the Borg, Captain Janeway tells Seven that it is time to show One what and who the Borg are.

In astrometrics, One watches and learns about the Borg. Seven tells him that individuals who are assimilated lose their individuality, that their minds are integrated into the hive mind , and their bodies are augmented with cybernetic implants. One tells them he desires to experience the hive mind, whereupon Captain Janeway tells him that if he does so, he will no longer be unique, his individuality will be destroyed. One wonders how the Borg can be so destructive, while Seven is not. Janeway explains to him that Seven has regained her individuality, but if the Borg had the chance, they would reintegrate her back into the hive mind. Janeway tells One that if the Borg assimilate him, they will become far more destructive. When One asks Seven if she would rejoin the Borg collective if she had the chance, she answers that Voyager is her collective. Their conversation is interrupted by Chakotay's call to man battle stations, as a Borg vessel is approaching.

One and Seven are on their way to the bridge when he tells her about changes in his autonomic nervous system . Seven tells him that he is experiencing anxiety, an emotion, a state of apprehension caused by fear, and that the entire crew feels the same. Seven tells him that they will engage the Borg: although the Borg are powerful, they will resist them. When One tells her that resistance is futile, Seven tells him this is not always the case.

Act Five [ ]

The sphere locks on a tractor beam

When they enter the bridge, the Borg sphere begins scanning Voyager, as One analyses the Borg sphere in considerable detail. While Voyager hears the standard Borg warning over the communication channel they just opened, One and Seven hear the collective as billions of voices calling them in unison from inside their minds. The Borg sphere locks on a tractor beam . Seven tells him that if they do not resist that voice, Voyager and its crew will be destroyed. One interfaces directly with the tactical console. Although One's shield enhancements break Voyager free of the Borg tractor beam , his phaser enhancements are countered by the Borg. One tells Seven that he cannot enhance Voyager 's systems any further, but that he can thwart them from inside the sphere, directly. Seven fears that they will assimilate him, but he assures her that they will fail. One declines the Voyager crew's offer to transport him before transporting himself inside the sphere.

The sphere is destroyed

The Borg inform One they will "add your biological and technological distinctiveness" to their own. One replies that his technology is superior, and threatens to destroy their ship if they do not stop the attack on Voyager . The drones that try to get in his way are incapacitated by One's personal shield. One manages to interface with the collective, steering the ship into the proto-nebula. He does not respond to the collective's request to terminate his link. As the Borg sphere sinks deeper into the nebula, its hull collapses upon itself and implodes.

After Captain Janeway orders Voyager to stand down red alert and deploy damage control teams, Harry Kim detects a life sign in the debris. It is One, alive after erecting a multi-spatial force field around his body. Captain Janeway orders Kim to beam One directly to sickbay.

Seven sees sadness in her reflection.

Upon entering sickbay, The Doctor informs Seven that he has already scanned One for injuries: his implants, though fused, will regenerate – but he requires immediate surgery to address cerebral trauma and internal bleeding. One tells Seven that he directly heard the Borg's objectives; they now know of his existence and wish to assimilate him. So long as he is alive, Seven and the crew of Voyager are in danger. One's force field repulses The Doctor's assistance, despite Seven's emotional pleas to comply with her wishes. One tells Seven that he is an accident, and that he should never have existed. After assuring her that she will adapt to his absence, One ceases to function, and dies.

In the cargo bay, Seven deactivates One's alcove, and looks into the mirror…

Log entries [ ]

• " Captain's log, supplemental. This proto-nebula seems to have a mind of its own. It's still expanding, with no end in sight. We're holding at a safe distance to monitor its growth. "
• " Daily log, Seven of Nine. I've activated the drone's linguistic database. It is now capable of assimilating information. A direct neural link is too dangerous, so I decided to use Borg data-nodes. "

Memorable quotes [ ]

" The Borg: party-poopers of the galaxy. "

" I'm a doctor, not a... peeping Tom. "

" Good morning. " " That remains to be seen. "

" It will become what we help it to become. " " How Starfleet of you! "

" How many Borg hitchhikers are we gonna pick up on this trip? Maybe this is the Collective's new strategy. They don't assimilate anymore, they just show up and look helpless. "

" …That's called a joke. " " Joke: a verbal comment or gesture designed to provoke laughter. " " I see you've got your mother's sense of humor. "

" You must comply. Please. You are hurting me. " " You will adapt. "

Background information [ ]

Story and script [ ].

• Harry Doc Kloor 's original pitch for this episode started with aliens pursuing Lieutenant Tom Paris, who successfully fled from them in the Delta Flyer , only to then crash land on the surface of an unknown planet. After struggling out of the Flyer , he realized that his arm was almost entirely ripped off. A friendly member of a technologically-advanced race inhabiting the planet reattached the limb using Borg ingenuity. The staff writer taking the pitch found it too gruesome, commenting, " Oh no, we can't do anything like that. The fans wouldn't want to see all that blood and gore. " [1]
• The story pitch was consequently rethought by Harry Doc Kloor, who then submitted the new version to executive producer Brannon Braga . Kloor remembered, " One day I went into Brannon's office and said I've got a story you're going to buy. Seven of Nine's nanites infect the Doc's holo-emitter and create a 29th century Borg. " diego writing panel report.shtml However, the Borg drone's nature was to undergo a significant change. Staff writer Joe Menosky recollected, " Harry Kloor pitched what we used to call 'Terminator Drone' […] It was going to be an unstoppable, killer drone. We didn't go that route. We decided to go softer, character-oriented. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 29) Through about seven more incarnations of the plot concept, Kloor and staff writer Bryan Fuller devised this approach, considering that The Doctor and Seven might become parents of a rapidly matured Borg, essentially changing the "killer" into a "child" who would learn life through the teachings of his "parents." Brannon Braga loved the modified concept. [2]
• Thinking of a conclusion for the episode proved difficult for Brannon Braga. He reflected, " I just didn't know how I should end the show for a long time. At the last minute I realized that it had to end with this drone dying, and what a wonderful moment it would be. Executive producer Rick Berman had the idea that he would sacrifice himself to do it. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 29)

Cast and characters [ ]

• J. Paul Boehmer , who guest-starred as One, thought highly of this installment, describing it as a "very interesting episode." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 46 , p. 71)
• A regular cast member who was appreciative of J. Paul Boehmer's work here was Seven of Nine actress Jeri Ryan . She opined, " The actor who we got to play the drone was a wonderful actor. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 28)
• Jeri Ryan enjoyed this installment in general. The actress remarked, " That was one of my favorite episodes […] It was a real pleasure to work on. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 28)
• Although Seven of Nine's mother and father neither appear nor are referenced here, Jeri Ryan believed they are part of Seven's thought processes, in light of the loss of One. " She thinks back to her parents, " Ryan supposed. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 28)
• Brannon Braga considered Jeri Ryan's performance as Seven of Nine here to be flawless. " Jeri Ryan was perfect, " Braga enthused. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 29)

Production [ ]

• The creation of One's physical appearance involved multiple processes. " I had to go through the whole prosthetic routine […] It was a four hour make-up session, " recalled J. Paul Boehmer. " I had to get a body cast made […] I was in the body cast for two hours. It was also a really long process of getting in and out of the suit I was wearing […] The artists had four days to design and put together this costume. " Boehmer didn't find these processes arduous, instead referring to the prosthetic routine as "totally cool." He continued, " The guys were great […] I was warned that [the costume] was going to be very claustrophobic and unbearable, but I loved it all. If I had to do it every week, I'm sure that it would lose its charm, but for the week that I did it, it was terrific fun […] What [the artists who designed and built the costume] came up with is nothing short of amazing. I was totally blown away by that. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 46 , p. 71)
• The small clips that One watches regarding the Borg Collective were clips from VOY : " Scorpion " and " Scorpion, Part II ".
• The images that are displayed while the drone is assimilating information from Voyager 's computer include two unnamed planets and schematics of the Phoenix warp ship, a Cardassian military freighter , a Galaxy -class starship, a DY-100-class sleeper ship, a K'Vort -class Klingon Bird-of-Prey , a D'Kora -class Marauder, a Romulan Bird-of-Prey , an Academy flight trainer , a Jem'Hadar warship , a Klingon D-7 battlecruiser , a long range shuttle , an orbital office complex , a Defiant -class escort , a D'deridex -class Warbird, a Sovereign -class starship, and a Negh'Var warship .

Continuity [ ]

• This episode marks the first appearance of a Borg sphere in the series and the second overall after Star Trek: First Contact .
• One's body armor has a design unlike any other Borg body armor. Aside from its unusual-looking composition, it also has tubing at the ribs, legs, and shoulders that glows blue every two seconds. J. Paul Boehmer once commented that the reason he had to have a body cast made for One's costume was "because it's a totally brand new Borg." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 46 , p. 71)
• The fate of The Doctor's mobile emitter, which is confirmed to be "embedded in [One's] cerebral cortex", is not addressed on-screen. As it is present in subsequent episodes, it has presumably been removed from One's corpse and restored to normal operation.
• Torres mentions to The Doctor and Tuvok that the mobile emitter is "500 years more advanced than anything we've got", but later, The Doctor tells One that his mobile emitter is from four hundred years in the future. In fact, the mobile emitter could be from anywhere between 425 years to 525 years in the future, as the exact year of origin of the technology is never made clear in the episode " Future's End, Part II " in which the mobile emitter is introduced – only that it originates from the 29th century.
• When convincing One that he needs a name, Neelix says that the crew cannot call him the "drone" because it is "not very interesting." Ironically, this unused name is used for the title of this episode. The name "One" had already been given to a previous installment .
• While in the shuttle at the beginning of this episode, Seven of Nine suggests to Tom Paris that he "should design a new shuttle". This foreshadows the construction of the Delta Flyer in the next episode " Extreme Risk ".
• Seven's direction to One that he "must face outward" in a Borg alcove seems contrary to other episode that have featured Borg alcoves, such as TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds ", in which drones were seen facing both outward and inward in alcoves. It can be assumed that the Borg reviewed and updated their alcove posture policy in between the two episodes.

Reception [ ]

• Ultimately, both Joe Menosky and Brannon Braga were extremely satisfied with this episode. Menosky noted, " I think the episode was very successful. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 29) Braga cited the outing as one of several fifth season standouts he believed were "really high-concept, well-produced, well-acted shows" that he thought were "about the best we've ever done on this series" (other such episodes being " Counterpoint ", " Timeless ", and " Dark Frontier "). ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 1, Issue 1 , p. 65) Also, Braga declared, " 'Drone' is one of my favorites [....] It was a classic, great Star Trek episode, because only Seven of Nine could bring that tear to your eye. Because she didn't fully understand her own emotions, and was experiencing grief for the first time, you felt it as though for the first time. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 29) In addition, Braga remarked, " When Seven gets into the role of mentor the same way Janeway has been her mentor, and gets to experience the loss [of her child]… that's what makes the episode very successful. " [3]

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 5.1, 1 March 1999
• As part of the VOY Season 5 DVD collection
• As part of the Star Trek: Fan Collective - Borg collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also starring [ ]

• Robert Beltran as Chakotay
• Roxann Dawson as B'Elanna Torres
• Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
• Ethan Phillips as Neelix
• Robert Picardo as The Doctor
• Tim Russ as Tuvok
• Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
• Garrett Wang as Harry Kim

Guest stars [ ]

• J. Paul Boehmer as One
• Todd Babcock as Mulchaey

Co-star [ ]

• Majel Barrett as Computer Voice

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• David Keith Anderson as Ashmore
• Tom Morga as Borg drone
• Pablo Soriano as operations ensign
• Chester E. Tripp III as Borg drone
• Stuart Wong as command officer
• Unknown actor as voice of the Borg

Stand-ins [ ]

• Brita Nowak – stand-in for Jeri Ryan
• Stuart Wong – stand-in for Garrett Wang

References [ ]

29th century ; ability ; ablative armor ; adjective ; airponics bay ; Alcove Beta ; Alcove Gamma ; all hands ; analysis ; artificial gravity plating ; assimilation ; astrometrics ; astronomical survey ; autonomic function ; battle stations ; " big chair "; biological system ; Borg ; Borg Collective ; Borg cube ; Borg long-range tactical vessel ; Bussard collector ; cargo bay ; cerebral cortex ; Class 2 claustrophobia ; Class 2 shuttle ( unnamed ); collective mind ; comparative humanoid anatomy ; cranial implant ; cubic kilometer per hour ; data node ; Delta Quadrant ; diagnostic routine ; diagnostic tool ; DNA ; duranium ; dyne ; emergency beam out ; emitter circuit ; encoding sequence ; English ; expression ; extraction tubule ; fail-safe ; feedback pulse ; force field ; freedom ; gagh ; gold star ; gravimetric shear ; group shot ; hitchhiker ; hive mind ; holo-imager ; individuality ; information ; internal bleeding ; internal transporter node ; Intrepid -class decks ; joie de vivre ; joke ; kilometer ; Klingon ; leader ; life support system ; linguistic database ; logic ; mass ; maturation chamber ; maturation cycle ; medical analysis ; medical scan ; Milky Way Galaxy ; mobile emitter ; multi-dimensional adaptability ; multi-spatial force field ; multi-spectral algorithm ; nanoprobe ; neural interface ; neural pathway ; particle physics ; party pooper ; pattern buffers ; Peeping Tom ; phaser ; pheromone ; plasma ; poly-deutonic alloy ; proto-nebula ; protostar ; proximity transceiver ; " pull the plug "; radiation ; reactive armor ; regeneration alcove ; regeneration cycle ; red alert ; sense of humor ; shearline ; shield generator ; shield modulation ; ship of exploration ; shoehorn ; shore leave ; sonic shower ; spatial turbulence ; starship operations ; systems analysis ; Talaxian ; temperament ; temperature ; teradynes per second ; teraquad ; tissue sample ; towel ; tractor beam ; transporter lock ; transporter malfunction ; Transporter Room 1 ; transwarp conduit ; tricylic life support system ; Unimatrix 325, Grid 006 ; volume ; warp conduit ; warp field theory

Computer library images [ ]

Academy flight trainer ; Cardassian military freighter ; D-7 battlecruiser ; D'deridex -class ; D'Kora -class : DY-100-class ; Defiant -class ; Galaxy -class ; Jem'Hadar warship ; K'Vort -class ; long range shuttle ; Negh'Var warship ; orbital office complex ; planet ; Phoenix ; Romulan Bird-of-Prey ; Sovereign -class

External links [ ]

• " Drone " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " Drone " at Wikipedia
• " Drone " at the Internet Movie Database
• " Drone " at MissionLogPodcast.com , a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast
• 1 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Calypso (episode)

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The mobile emitter in Drone

Discussion in ' Star Trek: Voyager ' started by at Quark's , Aug 21, 2017 .

at Quark's Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

Just looked Drone again. After all these years it's still a very enjoyable episode. But, there's that mobile emitter, which is something of an enigma. On the one hand, it is apparently so simple (or certain parts of it are), that someone (B'Elanna) from a period of 400 years before its time can repair it. And I believe this episode is not the only instance in which it is repaired (but I'm not entirely sure). On the other hand, it apparently contains so many and so many diverse advanced technologies that within a few days it can grow a single drone (I'm not even going into the 'how' part here) unbeatably superior to the Borg collective (at least the part of the collective residing in that Sphere) . Also, after the emitter is damaged, it gets to be part of the drone's cerebral system, undergoes a sphere implosion, is presumably extracted from the drone's body and repaired. Next time we see it, it's good as new. All this in one episode! What's the explanation for this? Did they just have the incredible luck that never in all those years a really complicated part of the emitter got damaged, a part that they couldn't have repaired with 24th knowledge ? Or are all the really complicated parts self-repairing- but the simple parts aren't ?  

Refuge Vice Admiral Admiral

Maybe they were able to determine a schematic of the emitter. As for the 29th Century materials that may have been unique to that time (if there were actually any), I really don't know. How would the replicators go for such? It was a pretty cool episode. I kept thinking is that Niles from Frasier? But it wasn't. It was my understanding One was part human, part Borg, and part emitter. Just lifted this from Wikipedia : "A small team from Voyager , including Seven of Nine and the ship's holographic Doctor , are performing a survey of a proto-nebula on a shuttlecraft. When the nebula becomes unstable, the team is evacuated via transport to the ship, but a malfunction briefly merges their patterns together. The malfunction is corrected, and the team is safely transported aboard. The Doctor finds his mobile emitter is failing, and he is safely returned to sickbay while Lt Torres takes the emitter to the science lab to attempt repairs the next day. The crew is unaware that the emitter has gained some of Seven's Borg nanoprobes from the malfunctioning transporter, and it begins assimilating the equipment in the science lab." That implies that there was quite a bit more going on that I thought.. "assimilating the equipment in the science lab". Ensign Mulcahy's tissue gets assimilated next.. and our clever little Borg wannabe makes itself a maturation chamber and life is born! Love it. Of course given the holographic nature of the Doctor when the transporter merge happened the emitter was more likely to have mixed patterns with Seven and her nanoprobes. Otherwise we could've had another Tuvix situation.  

Catarina Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

It is endearing but full of?? and let's face it, we didn't actually believe he was staying on board. I know you didn't ask for an opinion but it is all I got. Hehe.  

F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

I wouldn't be surprised if it had a database built in (which Voyager couldn't access/didn't know about) with all the futuristic technology blueprints in it. You can fit so much data onto a memory card today that's the size of a little fingernail it's unreal - imagine what they can do in the 29th century.  

King Daniel Beyond said: ↑ I wouldn't be surprised if it had a database built in (which Voyager couldn't access/didn't know about) with all the futuristic technology blueprints in it. You can fit so much data onto a memory card today that's the size of a little fingernail it's unreal - imagine what they can do in the 29th century. Click to expand...

Sophie74656 Commodore Commodore

at Quark's said: ↑ Just looked Drone again. After all these years it's still a very enjoyable episode. But, there's that mobile emitter, which is something of an enigma. On the one hand, it is apparently so simple (or certain parts of it are), that someone (B'Elanna) from a period of 400 years before its time can repair it. And I believe this episode is not the only instance in which it is repaired (but I'm not entirely sure). On the other hand, it apparently contains so many and so many diverse advanced technologies that within a few days it can grow a single drone (I'm not even going into the 'how' part here) Click to expand...

at Quark's said: ↑ Next time we see it, it's good as new. All this in one episode! Click to expand...

at Quark's said: ↑ Ah, my apologies, I didn't mean to say that it even re-appears in within the same episode 'good as new' - it doesn't, AFAIK. I meant the two sentences to be read separately, not in combination. The first one expressing surprise that even after all that happened to it, B'Elanna with her "primitive " 24th century knowledge still was able to repair it at all , the technology must be very advanced and quite sturdy and relatively easy to repair. The second sentence was just meant to express dumbfoundedness over all these paradoxes contained within the very same episode. Click to expand...

Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

I'm liking the idea that 29th-century technology is deliberately made easy to repair by anyone who finds it. That's just another advancement of 500 years hence. (Exactly the opposite of, say, Warhammer 40K, where nobody knows how anything works and thus nothing can be repaired...)  

Iseult Ensign Red Shirt

Refuge said: ↑ Otherwise we could've had another Tuvix situation. Click to expand...

Iseult said: ↑ Oh man, Tuvix. What a cool guy. Click to expand...

Farscape One Vice Admiral Admiral

Wasn't the mobile emitter built by Henry Starling based on things he learned from the timeship? He clearly didn't have the materials to build exactly like a 29th century model, so he had to use whatever he has in the 20th century. The emitter itself likely is built using 20th century technology, which the crew can easily fix, but with 29th century programming, something they have to look through and study. At least, that's what I am thinking.  

Farscape One said: ↑ Wasn't the mobile emitter built by Henry Starling based on things he learned from the timeship? He clearly didn't have the materials to build exactly like a 29th century model, so he had to use whatever he has in the 20th century. The emitter itself likely is built using 20th century technology, which the crew can easily fix, but with 29th century programming, something they have to look through and study. At least, that's what I am thinking. Click to expand...

Not that Memory Alpha is an authority but it says this.. "Owned by Henry Starling in 1996 , the emitter was either aboard the appropriated Aeon timeship , or derived from the 29th-century technology therein. "  

CommanderTrip Captain Captain

The mobile emitter is such a funny thing. When it was first introduced, it was certainly more vulnerable. I think it was the episode "Macrocosm" someone on the crew highlights that the Doctor needs to be careful because the emitter is 29th century technology and they could lose his program or the technology could be damaged, yadda yadda yadda, something to that effect. The mobile emitter suffered from the "plot-of-the-week" format the show suffered from in it's later seasons, or "Joe Carey's Law" as I like to call it. Like Joe Carey himself, or the finite amount of photon torpedoes, unlimited shuttles, and only 47 bio-neural gelpacks, many of Voyager's early plot points in later seasons were just kind of forgotten or taken for granted. The mobile emitter became an invulnerable, repairable, and permanent fixture on Voyager. It was no longer a fragile piece of future technology from the future's future. The image of the Equinox-EMH b*tch slapping the emitter on the Voyager-EMH's arm comes to mind. But I will give Voyager some credit for having a few threads carried out in their later seasons across different episodes. The Reg Barclay/Troi/Pathfinder/Admiral Paris episodes are great examples. And the Borg Kids/Icheb episodes pop into mind too. Voyager definitely had a lot of potential if the show spent 7 seasons patching hull breaches, picking up new crew members, bringing back old crewmembers (joe carey!) and not killing them. (joe carey!)  

^In general, I can forgive these 'plot points' by assuming they gradually got better in making do without starfleet facilities. Photon torpedoes can't be replaced? That's true when (I believe) Janeway mentions it in early season 1, but not necessarily still true in season 6. The same goes for gel packs and stuff. Similarly, I could imagine they gradually understood a little more about this mobile emitter.  

Jedman67 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

CommanderTrip said: ↑ The Reg Barclay/Troi/Pathfinder/Admiral Paris episodes are great examples. And the Borg Kids/Icheb episodes pop into mind too. Click to expand...

Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

There's always room for more Broccoli  

Voth commando1 Commodore Commodore

I think we have to assume the mobile emitter is extremely complex and advanced technology and it joining with Seven's nanoprobes had the effect of creating the drone. As for the mobile emitter-it was probably 29th century technology and it wasn't something Starling could have made himself in my opinion.  

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This Guide is for the television show "Star Trek Voyager". Return to the Guide main page. In a frame? Break Out!

Written By: Steve Mount Source: Episode Viewing. Episode order shown is Production Order.

Key terms and characters Borg A particularly dangerous Starfleet nemesis; Voyager has been dropped into their home turf Chakotay A Maquis of Earth Indian origin; First Officer of Voyager. Dilithium Fuel for a starship's warp engines The Doctor A holographic doctor, intended for emergency use, but pressed into permanent service Federation A group of planets in a peaceful alliance Janeway, Catherine Captain of the Voyager Kazon Warlike race intent on capturing Voyager for access to her technology Kes An Ocampa, whose lifespan is only seven human years; medical tech Kim, Harry Starfleet officer on his first assignment Maquis A group of people disaffected by the Federation/Cardassian treaty, fighting for independence from both groups Neelix A Talaxian, picked up by Voyager; cook, morale officer Paris, Tom Former Starfleet officer, Maquis sympathizer; navigator Phaser A light-beam weapon Q Omnipotent being, who's taken a liking to Janeway Seska Maquis, Bajoran - later revealed to be a Cardassian spy; allied with Kazon Seven of Nine A former Borg, disconnected from the Collective by Voyager, now a crew member. Seven is human, her name is Annika Hansen Starfleet Military branch of the Federation Torres, B'Elanna Maquis, half Human, half Klingon; engineering Transporter A method of travel that converts matter to energy and back again Tuvok Vulcan, security chief; was undercover on Maquis ship Viidians A race with afflicted with a deadly disease; they have very advanced medical technology, used to steal body parts Warp The ability to travel faster than light Wilder, Samantha Member of the Starfleet crew, gave birth to the first baby on Voyager Wilder, Naomi Ensign Wilder's daughter

The Caretaker While searching for a missing Maquis ship, the USS Voyager finds itself transported 70,000 light years from home. Joining with the Maquis crew they strive to find a way home.

Parallax When attempts to rescue a ship stuck in a quantum singularity fail, the crew must work out if everything it as it appears.

Time and Again During an investigation of a recently devastated world, Janeway and Paris accidentally travel back in time to one day before the event that kills all life on the planet.

Phage When one of the Voyager crew is attacked the Viidians, aliens that harvest bodily organs, Janeway must confront the ethical problems of dealing with them.

The Cloud Searching for a boost to their energy supply in a nebula, the crew accidentally damage an unknown life form.

Eye of the Needle Voyager detects a wormhole that seems to lead to the Alpha Quadrant, and they discover someone on the other side - but that someone is a Romulan, living decades in Voyager's past.

Ex Post Facto While on an away mission, Paris is accused of murder and sentenced to relive the incident over and over again for the rest of his life.

Emanations Searching for a new element in an asteroid belt, Kim is transported to another reality and the only way back may be to die.

Prime Factors Voyager meets a very friendly race that may have a way to get them half way on their journey home, but does this strange people have an ulterior motive for welcoming them.

State of Flux When a damaged Kazon ship is found, the explosion shows evidence of Federation technology. Captain Janeway must face the fact that there is a traitor on board the Voyager.

Heroes and Demons A number of crew go missing on the holodeck and the Doctor, on his very first away mission, is set to find out where they went.

Cathexis Returning to Voyager Chakotay is in a coma and Tuvok appears to be lying. When crew start acting strange, they suspect they are not alone on the ship.

Faces In a Viidian attempt to cure the Phage, B'Elanna is split into her Human and Klingon halves which must work together to escape.

Jetrel A scientist responsible for killing thousands of Talaxians, including Neelix's family, comes aboard with serious news. But can he be trusted?

Learning Curve While Tuvok is tutoring some of the former Maquis crew, an accident occurs and Tuvok and company find themselves trapped and have to rely on each other.

Projections Convinced the Voyager is under attack from the Kazon, the Doctor leaves Sickbay to tend the wounded and descends into chaos where nothing can be trusted to be real. Reginald Barclay appears as a hologram representing the Doctor's control system.

Elogium When space borne creatures attach themselves to the ship Kes prematurely enters the Elogium, the one time in her life she can have a child.

Twisted The Voyager encounters a space disruption that traps the crew on the ship as it becomes a maze in which space folds in upon itself, each decision they make narrows their choices and further traps them.

The 37ers The Voyager is forced to land on an planet and the crew are astonished to find a '37 Chevy and Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly across the Pacific Ocean.

Initiations Chakotay is attacked by a lone Kazon youth who has to prove himself by killing a Federation enemy.

Non Sequitur Ensign Kim awakes to find himself in 24th Century San Francisco. Looking at his service record he finds that he was never assigned to the Voyager. He later discovers that he entered a time rift, and he must decide to repair the time line and return to Voyager, or leave it as is, and continue his life on Earth.

Parturition On a mission to a Class M planet, Neelix and Paris become trapped in a cave with a hatching alien life form. They must team up to protect each other and the baby alien.

Persistence of Vision Just before an important first contact meeting, the crew are troubled by disturbing images from their life. Paris sees his father and Janeway is shocked when her holodeck novel takes on a new twist.

Tattoo Chakotay is left behind on a planet inhabited by descendants of a Native American Indian tribe. He must face his past and remember his culture to convince the tribe of his goodwill.

Cold Fire On a space station, an Ocampan colonist offers to lead the crew to the second Caretaker, a female alien they call Suspiria.

Maneuvers Seska returns with her Kazon allies with a massive shock for Commander Chakotay - she and he have a child together (maybe).

Resistance Caught up in a local conflict Tuvok is taken captive, Janeway is helped by an old man who believe she is his long lost daughter.

Prototype When the crew finds a humanoid robot floating in space, Torres attempts to repair it. Brought back to life, the sentient artificial life form explains that its kind is near extinction and demands that Torres builds a prototype for a new generation.

Alliances Janeway seeks to strengthen Voyager's position by forming an alliance with some of the Kazon sects. When the talks do not go well she looks to the Trabe who appear to have similar peaceful goals. She soon discovers that the Trabe, who used to enslave the Kazon before they revolted, have revenge on their minds.

Threshold In a effort to find a quick way home, Paris flies a new transwarp shuttle to the never before achieved speed of Warp 10 but on his return he starts to exhibit very strange after-effects.

Meld After a murder is committed on the ship, Tuvok melds with the guilty man to try and determine why he did such a evil deed and find himself spiraling into madness.

Dreadnought The Voyager crew find a Cardassian guided missile that was launched by the Maquis and pulled into the same rift as Voyager was. The missile is attempting to fulfill its programming and is headed towards a populated planet; Torres must face up to the actions of her past and stop the errant projectile.

Death Wish Quinn, a desperate refugee from the Q-Continuum seeks refuge on Voyager, but it is not long before Q arrives to take him home. Janeway must hold a unique trial, where Q must defend the Continuum.

Lifesigns In order to save a dying Viidian female, the Doctor places her phage-ridden body in stasis and transfers her mind into another hologram who he quite unexpectedly starts to fall in love with.

Investigations As Neelix starts to hear rumors of a traitor on Voyager, Paris decides to leave the ship and join a Talaxians convoy. Soon after the convoy is attacked by the Kazon and the ever scheming Seska attempts to coerce information out of Paris.

Deadlock On the run from the Viidians, Voyager seeks refuge in a plasma cloud, when a sudden accident caused severe damage to the ship and as the crew discovers creates a duplicate Voyager.

Innocence After Tuvok's shuttle crash-lands in a sacred haven of the Drayan, an alien race which has refused outside contact for decades, he finds three frightened Drayan children that have been abandoned by their people to die on the planet.

The Thaw Voyager finds a group of aliens preserved in cryogenic suspension, but when the crew try to wake them they find the computer does not want to let them go.

Tuvix Due to a freak transporter accident, Tuvok and Neelix become combined into a single alien entity which combines traits from both of them. When it becomes necessary to split Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix, Janeway has to face an uncomfortable choice - bring back her two friends, or allow Tuvix, who does not wish to "die", to continue on.

Resolutions Chakotay and Janeway become much better acquainted after they are quarantined on an uninhabited planet.

Basics, Part I The Kazon put a daring plan into motion and seize the Voyager, leaving all but the Doctor and an imprisoned crew member stranded on a desert planet.

Basics, Part II With Voyager in the hands of the Kazon, Janeway must find some way to retrieve her ship.

Flashback After coming down with a mysterious ailment, Tuvok has visions back to his days when he served on a starship under the famous Captain Sulu.

The Chute Kim and Paris are falsely accused of committing acts of terrorism and are both incarcerated in a horrific alien prison.

The Swarm As Voyager prepares to cross through the territory of an unknown but feared race, the Doctor finds himself with a major problem.

Sacred Ground Kes walks unprotected into a sacred shrine while on an away mission, and the biogenic energy in the shrine nearly kills her. To find a cause and cure, Janeway subjects herself to a rigorous religious ceremony that tests her faith in science, but which ultimately fails to help Kes. In the end, Janeway must have faith in the unknown to help Kes, which she does; when the Doctor discovers a scientific explanation for the cure, Janeway seems disappointed.

False Profits The Voyager crew encounter the two Ferengi that were lost in the Delta Quadrant when the Barzan Wormhole turned out to be unstable. The Ferengi have made quite a life for themselves, pretending to be gods, dazzling the locals with their technology, and taking advantage of a local prophecy. Neelix, altered to look Ferengi, Paris, and Chakotay lead on away mission to rid the people of the Ferengi, and, perhaps, use the wormhole to return home - but the Ferengi collapse the wormhole when they attempt to escape, leaving Voyager behind as they are sucked into it.

Remember B'Elanna starts to have a very vivid dream about a young woman, as Voyager transports a group of telepathic aliens back to their home world. At first, the dreams are pleasurable, but they soon turn dark as they reveal a secret about the aliens. Told the dreams may be a side effect of their simple presence, the Doctor blocks them - but B'Elanna's curiosity gets the best of her, and she removes the block; the dream reveals that an anti-technology movement on the alien world was put down by what amounted to genocide. One of the alien women chose B'Elanna to reveal the secret to; she later dies en route. Forbidden by the Prime Directive and the Captain from investigating on the planet, B'Elanna allows one of the young alien women to watch the dreams, hopefully planting the seed of knowledge.

Future's End (Two parts) After being attacked by a ship from the future, the Voyager crew find themselves on 20th Century Earth, where they must prevent a leading 20th Century industrialist from destroying the future. The crew does pick up one useful piece of technology - a portable holographic generator, which allows the Doctor to walk about outside of sickbay or the holodecks.

The Q and Grey Q appears to Janeway, intent on seducing her so that they might have a child together. Janeway rejects him and is wary of his motives. They soon become clear when Q and another Q visit Janeway again - the suicide of Quinn has spawned a freedom movement, spearheaded by Q himself, and Q feels that the infusion of human DNA, new blood, will give the Continuum a rallying point. Q brings Janeway to the Continuum, this time altering her perception so that it appears as Civil War America. The "other Q", Q's mate for eternity, is stranded on Voyager, her power diminished by the war. She devises a way to bring Voyager to the Continuum so that she may get Q back and Voyager can get Janeway back. Meanwhile, Q and Janeway are captured by "Southern" forces and sentenced to die. They are rescued by Q and the Voyager crew. Q and Q mate, and create a new Q, and the Continuum civil war ends.

Warlord When an alien warrior dies on Voyager, he manages to take over Kes in an attempt to see his plans of conquest through.

Macrocosm The ship is overwhelmed by a strange gelatinous life form and Janeway is forced into the conduit to elude the alien form while the Doctor on his first away mission attempts to find a solution.

Fair Trade At the edge of space he is familiar with, Neelix begins to feel unneeded and is afraid he'll be left behind. In an attempt to gather further information for the rest of their journey, an old friend of Neelix tricks him into shipping some illegal narcotics which gets the Voyager crew into some difficulty.

Alter Ego Aliens invade Neelix's new holo program and cause problems for the Voyager crew.

Coda The crew are left in a state of shock when Janeway is apparently killed by the Viidians after she is forced to crash land.

Blood Fever One of the Vulcan crew members enters Pon Farr, the ferocious Vulcan mating phase, during the exploration of a decimated colony. The object of his "affection", B'Elanna, is less than thrilled. Also, the crew finds evidence that the colony was destroyed by the Borg.

Unity The Voyager crew come up against the Federations greatest threat, when they discover an apparently disabled Borg cube. They later discover a colony of sorts, made up ex-Borg, disconnected from the collective and trying to reassert their individuality.

Darkling Experimenting with new personalities, the Doctor puts the crew in terrible danger as he starts to show a dark and sinister side.

Rise While attempting to help a local race, Tuvok and Neelix crash land and in the process reveal the possibility of a traitor in their midst.

Favorite Son Kim starts to behave abnormally and leads the Voyager crew to an alien planet where an amazing secret about him is revealed.

Before and After During an experiment to try and prolong her life, Kes finds herself moving backwards and forwards in time, beginning with the moment of her death, through a fatal attack, and all the way back to her pre-birth.

Real Life The Doctor creates a holographic family to try and better understand his patients. When B'Elanna attempts to make the Doctor's idyllic family a little more reflective of reality, the Doctor experiences teenage growing pains, marital strife, and the death of one of his children.

Distant Origin A scientist finds the body of a dead Voyager crew member, and detects similar DNA patterns in the body. Going in search of Voyager to prove a theory of distant origin, the scientist embroils Voyager in a political tug-of-war. Janeway and the Doctor discover that this advanced race is descendant from a species of Earth dinosaur that discovered space travel long before humans even existed, proving the distant origin theory.

Displaced Crew members mysteriously start to disappear to be replaced by an unknown alien race. At first, the aliens seem as confused as the crew, but it is soon discovered that this race is using this technique on purpose, to capture Voyager for use in further conquest.

Worse Case Scenario The crew find a partial holo program dealing with the possibility of a mutiny on board the ship and try to figure out who wrote it. They later find out Tuvok wrote it as a training aide, but that Seska modified it to strike back at Tuvok, whom she feels betrayed her and the other Maquis when he was aboard their ship as a spy.

Scorpion Voyager enters Borg space, but the Borg are preoccupied with a new species it cannot assimilate, and which is destroying Borg ships by the handful. When Harry is infected with the alien virus, the Doctor thinks he has a cure in Borg nannites. Janeway attempts to strike a deal with the Borg - they will share their technology in exchange for safe passage. Before she gets an answer, Voyager and the Borg are attacked.

Scorpion (Part 2) The Borg pull Voyager away from the attack by Species 8472, as Janeway strikes a deal. She and Tuvok work with Seven of Nine, a Borg of human origin, to come up with a replication system and a delivery system for the developing nanoprobe weapon. The Doctor perfects his nanoprobe treatment and cures Kim. Species 8472 is in contact with Kes, and they figure out what Voyager's up to; they attack, and the Borg ship destroys it in a suicide mission; Tuvok, Janeway, and a contingent of Borg and equipment were transported to Voyager first, though. Janeway is hurt in the attack and tells Chakotay to continue working with the Borg; but when they tell him to alter course back into Borg space, he breaks the alliance and blows the Borg into space - except for Seven of Nine, who creates a doorway to 8472's dimension. They must now face the enemy. Repaired, Janeway takes command and stands her ground, destroying a small fleet of 8472 ships. Upon return to normal space, Seven of Nine attempts to assimilate Voyager, but Chakotay links with her and appeals to her humanity; distracted, a power surge sent by Torres disconnects Seven from the Collective.

The Gift The Doctor continues Seven of Nine's rehabilitation. A potentially fatal malfunction of a Borg implant starts, but Kes is able to visualize the implant and destroy it on an atomic level. She and Tuvok do some Vulcan exercises, and she is definitely able to see beyond the telepathic, beyond the subatomic level of matter. But the effect is cascading, and she is unable to stop it. Janeway tells Seven of Nine her former name - Annika Hansen, taken by the Borg at a young age. Seven of Nine demands to be sent back to the Collective, but Janeway refuses. When Seven of Nine tries to contact the Borg, Kes detects her and stops her. Kes tells Neelix and Janeway, that she must leave the ship - and as her decision is made, she begins to phase, disrupting the ship's hull. She takes a shuttle craft and she exists our reality, but as she does, she takes Voyager with her, throwing them far out of Borg space, ten years closer to home. Seven of Nine begiuns to reacquire a more human appearance.

Nemesis Chakotay's shuttle is shot down when he came too close to a pair of warring races, the Vori and the Kidari. Rescued by a Vori squad, he sets out to find the remains of his shuttle, but his escort is killed in a Kidari raid. The Vori tell Chakotay that the Kidari are beasts who rape and pillage, and have no respect for the dead. Chakotay is told that a nearby unit has commo equipment that he can use to reach Voyager, but in a fire fight, both squads are nearly wiped out, and Chakotay is shot. He stumbles upon a village, where the locals fix him up and feed him, then send him on to a resupply station, where there will be a radio. As he walks off, the village is hit in an air strike - he goes back to help, but is captured and interrogated. He meets up with a lone survivor from the squad that rescued him and the two of them go on a raid - where Chakotay meets Tuvok, dressed as a Kidari. Tuvok tells Chakotay that he has been captured and brainwashed. Unbelieving, Tuvok brings him to the village that had been wiped out in the air strike - it is there, in pristine condition. Back on Voyager, Chakotay has to come to grips with the hatred he felt toward the Kidari, who are not the monsters he believed they were.

Revulsion Torres and the Doctor answer a distress call from a holographic maintenance worker on a disabled ship. He explains that the crew was infected with a virus on a survey mission, and they all died. He lashes out at Torres, though, making it clear that he is repulsed by "organics". The Doctor explains the outburst away as a reaction to his prior experience with people. But when B'Elanna goes exploring, she finds the crew, murdered. The hologram detects her tinkering and attacks her; she is able to stop his program just in time - the Doctor finds her collapsed on the floor, with a hole in her heart. The hologram damages the Doctor's mobile emitter, but Torres is able to permanently disable him with a power surge. Kim and Seven of Nine work together to design an astrometrics lab, and he starts to get to know her better. Harry is a bit put off when he invites her to a holographic sunset, and she proposes that they copulate.

The Raven While Voyager negotiates passage through the space of the difficult Bomar, Seven of Nine has a relapse of Borg technology - a Borg homing beacon has reenergized Seven's remaining Borg implants. She hijacks a shuttle and departs for the beacon, where she is sure a Borg ship awaits. Tuvok and Paris take off after her, while Janeway tries to placate the Bomar, who not only are upset about the incursion, but also because it is by a Borg. Tuvok beams aboard Seven's shuttle, be she disarms and stuns him. Paris's shuttle is disabled by Seven's phaser fire. He limps along after them. Tuvok and Seven reach an M-class moon, and beam down. There they find a 20-year-old Federation starship. Seven recognizes it as her parents ship, The Raven - the beacon was left behind when she was assimilated. The Bomar bomb the dilapidated ship, and Tuvok and Seven escape just as it begins to crumble. Paris beams them aboard and Voyager races after the whole bunch. They warp out of Bomar space and begin the longer roundabout journey.

Scientific Method The crew is afflicted by various ailments, ranging from the captain's headaches to Chakotay suddenly turning into an old man. B'Elanna and the Doctor find that the affected crew have tags on their DNA - just as they find this, they, too, are disabled. The Doctor contacts Seven via her Borg implants. He adjusts her eyepiece to be slightly out of phase. She confirms that there are aliens throughout the ship, conducting experiments. When they are revealed, the leader tells Janeway that they are simply conducting experiments, and they will soon leave with a minimum of casualties. Janeway, fed up, tired, and on enhanced levels of dopamine, aims Voyager toward a binary pulsar. The aliens evacuate, and Voyager's momentum carries her through the gravity well, with heavy damage to several decks. Paris and B'Elanna finally get some private time .

The Year of Hell (part 1) Voyager encounters a Krenim vessel, with low firepower but big words. They avoid the vessel and contact the dominant species in the area, the Zaal. But as they speak to the Zaal, a temporal shock wave hits them, the Zaal disappear, and the Krenim ship is now a large threatening vessel. Over the next few months, Voyager is pummeled in Krenim attacks. Seven finds a Krenim torpedo embedded in the ship, and is able to get key readings from it before it explodes. With her readings, Voyager is able to construct shields to counteract the Krenim weapons. Meanwhile, a Krenim vessel, which exists outside normal space and time, is using a time weapon to erase a species from time. The shock wave encounters Voyager's shields and disrupts the process; the Krenim are instantly reduced to a tiny empire. The Krenim ship goes to Voyager and attempts to erase it, though its mass prevents it from catching Voyager as it warps away. The trip weighs heavily on the ship, though, and Janeway orders all non-command staff to abandon ship.

The Year of Hell (part 2) The small crew left aboard Voyager struggles to keep the ship together. Meanwhile, aboard the Krenim time ship, Paris and Chakotay are taken out of the brig and made to feel like part of the crew. The captain offers to restore both the Krenim civilization and Voyager, with some help from the two. Chakotay begins to learn of the time calculations, while Tom befriends some of the crew. Tom feels that they would be willing to mutiny, though Chakotay is unwilling to go that far, until the captain wipes out yet another civilization. Tom transmits the ship's coordinates to Voyager, which is joined by a few ships from other races. A battle ensues, and the ship's time phase shift is dropped. When the fall into normal space/time, Janeway plots a collision course into the time ship. The collision and an overload in the temporal core sets off a time wave inside the ship, and all the damage it has ever done is restored. Voyager encounters a Krenim vessel, and a course is plotted around their space, the crew unaware of what had transpired in the alternate time line.

Random Thoughts Visiting the Mari, a placid, telepathic race, Janeway and Torres negotiate with Guill, a vendor, for some spare parts. During the transaction, an assault by a man named Frane is perpetrated on a market vendor. Such a crime is almost unheard of. The local police chief, Namira, looks into the crime, and asks all Voyager crew involved to submit to mind scans. B'Elanna was found to have been bumped into by Frane, at which time she thought of hitting him back. She is accused of Aggravated Violent Thought, a crime on Mari, and is sentenced to have her violent thoughts erased. Janeway and Tuvok look into the crime, and find that Frane had been convicted of violent thought four prior times, but Namira is certain he has been purged of all but B'Elanna's thoughts. Tuvok investigates Guill, and finds that he trafficks in violent thought. He is able to overcome Guill and his associates, and takes Guill aboard Voyager. Namira is presented with the evidence, and Torres is released. Seven comments to Janeway that their dual missions of exploration and return to the Alpha Quadrant are at cross-purposes. She suggests abandoning exploration and proceeding directly home.

Concerning Flight While running her daVinci program, Janeway is called to the bridge - Voyager is under attack. Throughout the ship, pieces of technology are beamed away, including the main computer core. Kim and Seven are able to trace the raiders, but it takes Voyager 10 days to get there. Janeway and Tuvok go to the surface near where Federation energy signals are detected, and they are greeted by Leonardo. He is wearing the Doctor's emitter, and says he has found a rich patron. The patron turns out to be a dealer in stolen goods, and he attempts to sell the computer core to Janeway. But he overhears he plans to get the core back, and takes her prisoner. She convinces Leonardo to help her escape, and using his maps, they find the site the computer core is being stored in. The core is beamed back to Voyager, but Janeway and daVinci are left behind. Janeway uses a site-to-site transporter to beam out of the building, and a pursuit ensues. They escape on one of daVinci's flying contraptions - Voyager battles its way down low in orbit to beam the two aboard, after which they leave post haste.

Mortal Coil Neelix goes on an away mission into a nebula to collect proto-matter, and is killed in an accident. Unable to revive him, the Doctor tells Janeway to prepare him for burial - but Seven tells Janeway that he can be saved by Borg technology. Using nanoprobes, Seven and the Doctor revive Neelix. He has a crisis of faith, however, when he does not see the Great Forest. He had told Naomi Wilder about the Great Forest earlier; a place where Talaxians go when they die, where all you ever loved them are waiting. Neelix asks Chakotay to help him with a vision quest - in his quest, he sees his sister Alexia, who tells him the Great Forest is a lie, and he knows what he has to do. He tries to kill himself by beaming into the nebula, but Chakotay is able to delay him. When Ensign Wilder tells Neelix that Naomi needs him, he realizes that he has a new family on Voyager.

Waking Moments The morning shift all awaken after having nightmares, all of whom feature a fierce-looking alien. Suspecting the appearance of the same face in many dreams is more than a coincidence, Janeway and Tuvok go to check on Harry, who is late for duty - he is sleeping, and nothing the Doctor does can revive him or several other crew members. Chakotay uses his vision quest hardware to put himself in a dream he can awaken himself from, and finds the alien and confronts him - they live in the dream world as we live the in "waking" world, and they want Voyager out of their space. Chakotay awakens, and sets course to leave, but an alien fleet overtake and occupy Voyager - until Chakotay realizes he is still dreaming. When he awakes this time, he only finds the Doctor - all the others are now sleeping. Chakotay plots a course for a planet with unusual energy readings. He beams down and finds a huge cavern filled with the aliens, all asleep. He falls asleep, though; but tells the aliens that the Doctor will destroy the cavern and all of its occupants if they are not released. They are released and leave alien space quickly.

Message in a Bottle Seven detects a Starfleet vessel - but in the Alpha quadrant. She has tapped into a vast network of alien relay stations, stretching 60000 light years. Attempts to contact the ship by subspace are unsuccessful, so they try a higher-powered holographic stream, sending the Doctor to the ship before she goes out of range. He arrives in a seemingly empty ship, but he finds the bodies of some of the crew; he revives one for a moment, and learns that the Romulans have taken the ship. The Prometheus is a prototype weapon with an experimental Multi-Vector Assault mode. It also has a prototype EMH program, that the Doctor recruits to help disable the Romulans. The two doctors gas all the Romulans, but they are just moments away from a rendezvous with the Tal Shi'ar, to deliver the new ship. A Starfleet squad attacks the Romulan ships, and the Prometheus. The doctors fumble around the bridge and activate the MVA, and destroy the Romulans. On Voyager, a Hirogen, the race that built the network, breaks Voyager's connection. When Janeway tries to convince them to let them maintain the link, they balk, but Seven is able to maintain the link. The Doctor is sent back to Voyager. Listed as missing, Voyager now has hope that there may be a way home. Starfleet's message - "You're no longer alone".

Hunters A Hirogen ship intercepts Starfleet transmissions bound for Voyager, and does its best to scramble them as they continue on. Voyager receives the transmissions, sent as a result of the Doctor's previous away mission to the Prometheus; Seven and Janeway quickly realize that they are letters from home, though Seven finds an encrypted transmission broadcast simultaneously with the clear text. The transmitter is a huge relic, powered by a contained quantum singularity. It is part of the huge network of relay stations spanning two quadrants. Tuvok and Seven go in a shuttle to the relay station to boost its containment field so that the transmission can be better heard. But they are taken prisoner by a Hirogen ship, and the Hirogen captain is intent on acquiring "relics" from their bodies. More Hirogen ships approach; Janeway disrupts the containment field, creating a huge gravity well. The Hirogens fire, and the containment field collapses, unleashing the black hole - Kim is able to pull Tuvok and Seven away from the hostile ship just in time. The letters create quite a stir on Voyager, as the former Maquis learn of the fate of their movement and their comrades; and Janeway learns her fiance has married someone else.

Prey Voyager encounters a badly damaged Hirogen ship, and they board her. A lone Hirogen is found and taken aboard for treatment. Meanwhile, Voyager is able to learn much about the Hirogen - they are hunters, and their entire society is based on killing prey. They do not even appear to have a home world. As he recovers, the Hirogen demands to be let go to continue his hunt. A hull breech and organic matter near it lead to the discovery that the Hirogen is chasing a member of Species 8472, left behind after the invasion of Borg space. It is cornered and detained, though the Doctor can do little to help it. Janeway orders Seven of Nine to create a quantum singularity so it can return to its own space, but Seven refuses. During an attack by other Hirogen ships, the power flickers, allowing the Hirogen hunter to escape. It finds 8472 and as they struggle, Seven beams them both to one of the Hirogen ships; the attack is broken off. Janeway is angry at Seven for disobeying, and banishes her to her cargo bay and astrometrics.

Retrospect Voyager is bartering for new weapons technology with Kovin, an Entharian. Janeway agrees to trade with Kovin for a new weapon that appears to be impervious to shielding. Janeway allows Seven access to engineering to help integrate the system into Voyager. While working with Kovin, Seven strikes him during a minor altercation, and Seven is again restricted to her quarters. During a medical exam, Seven is unusually unnerved by the Doctor's instruments. He thinks she is suppressing memories and puts her through a regression therapy to recover them. In her recall, Kovin got her alone while during firearms testing and disabled her; nanoprobes were extracted from her body. Janeway confronts Kovin, who denies the allegation. During an investigation in his lab, nanoprobes are found; Kovin beams away to his ship, and Voyager gives chase. Further examination of the evidence, though, shows that Kovin is not guilty, and the memories are probably the result of Seven's Borg experiences. Kovin is convinced that Voyager's requests to listen are traps, and he fires at Voyager until his ship blows up under an overload. The Doctor requests that some of his programming be erased to prevent him from making such a mistake again, but Janeway refuses to allow it.

The Killing Game (part 1) Voyager has been overtaken by a group of Hirogen ships. For three weeks, the Hirogen leader has been using the holodecks to conduct hunts of Voyager personnel in various scenarios, from the Crusades to Klingon hand-to-hand combat. The Hirogen have Harry working to expand the holodecks to several levels, and the Doctor patching up the crew as they are dispatched in each scenario. The problem is compounded because the Hirogen have implanted neural transmitters that are making the crew think that they are actual characters in the game. The Hirogen leader picks World War II as the next scenario, putting the crew in the role of the French resistance and the Americans; the Hirogen are the Nazis. Harry comes up with a plan to neutralize the neural transmitters, but needs an ally in the holodeck itself. When Seven is wounded in the game, the Doctor is able to disable her transmitter - she is sent back into the game aware of herself, but awkwardly unfamiliar with the other characters. Janeway and Seven go on a sabotage mission to Nazi HQ, where seven finds a holodeck console and begins to program it; only Janeway's transmitter is deactivated before the Hirogen catch on. Seven and Janeway escape the HQ just before the Americans begin to shell it.

The Killing Game (part 2) The American shelling of the Nazi HQ has breached the holodeck, since the safety protocols have been turned off, exposing Voyager to the game. Janeway and Seven return to the resistance HQ. Janeway makes her way to sick bay, from where the neural transmitters are controlled. Since nearly the entire ship has been equipped with holomitters, she can place a holographic explosive beneath the sickbay. When it explodes, the entire crew is aware, but now under heavy attack from the holographic Nazis and the real Hirogen. Janeway is captured and taken to the Hirogen leader. He tells her his plan is to use holo technology to return the Hirogen to a stable civilization. By hunting on holodecks, they can remain stationary and stop wandering the quadrant. She agrees to give him holo technology in exchange for their freedom, but the leader's second is not so willing and kills him; he dies himself when Janeway chases him down with a rifle. The battle wages on, but soon the two sides come to a stalemate. Janeway meets with the new Hirogen leader and gives them some holo technology as agreed, and the Hirogen leave.

Vis a Vis Voyager encounters an alien with a very sophisticated, very unstable warp drive. They are able to stabilize the drive and have the alien, Steth, come aboard to make repairs. Paris help him out. Steth is a shape-shifter, and he is about to lose his shape's stability. As they repair the ship, Steth replaces his body with Tom's, taking on his shape. Though Steth has some trouble adjusting to Paris's life, he quickly adapts. He is not fully satisfied with Tom's life and begins to go off the deep end, threatening Seven and attacking the captain. He is phasered and placed in sickbay. On Steth's ship, Paris jumps out of warp in Benthen space, where he finds the "real" Steth. They find Voyager. When Janeway hijacks a shuttle, it is clear the alien has again shifted. They are able to catch the Janeway alien and everyone is returned to their original shape.

The Omega Directive An energy wave hits Voyager and an odd read-out appears on the bridge displays. No one can clear the displays except Janeway, who does so and then quickly disappears into her ready room. The captain calls for Seven - she knows about the Omega Directive because the Borg knew from assimilated Starfleet captains. The Omega Molecule is one of infinite complexity, yet is harmonic - the Borgs' Holy Grail. Janeway's mission is to discover the source and destroy it, before it destroys a large portion of space. Janeway tells Chakotay that she and Seven will either return successfully, or they will never return at all. He convinces her to tell the senior staff the details. Omega was synthesized 100 years ago in the Lantaru sector. The explosion resulting from the molecule's destabilization destroyed the station it was developed in and disrupted subspace for light years. In that space, warp travel is impossible. The source of the shock wave is found at a research station on a small moon. They find hundreds of the molecules - they are being researched as an energy source. Voyager takes the molecules just as the researchers' military arrives - while they take fire, Janeway has to deal with Seven, who wants to save and harness Omega. In the end, they destroy the molecules and Seven ponders whether the Borgs' pursuit of Omega amounts to a religion.

Unforgettable A ship in distress calls for help, asking for Chakotay by name. Injured in sick bay, the woman, Kellin, asks for asylum. She tells Chakotay that her race has a biology that prevents others from remembering them, that prevents scanners from seeing them. She says she was on Voyager for two weeks and she left knowing she would be forgotten - but she found that she'd fallen in love with Chakotay. Her people do not tolerate defectors - she herself is a tracer, a bounty hunter, but she is disenchanted with her peoples' closed society. The crew try to find some way to verify her story, and she recounts her time aboard to Chakotay. She was hunting a dissident when her cloak failed and she triggered an intruder alert. Janeway was not happy to hear a stowaway was aboard and had Chakotay work with Kellin. They found the dissident and celebrated his capture alone in Chakotay's quarters. A pair of tracers come for her, but Kellin modifies Voyager's sensors to detect the ships. Kellin tells Chakotay that she will leave if he feels nothing for her. Though he still does not remember her, he asks her to stay. A tracer is already on board and scans Kellin to make her forget her time on Voyager. The Doctor is unable to stop the memory drain. The tracer refuses to help as well. Soon, her memory is gone and Chakotay tries to explain to her, but she insists on going home. Chakotay makes his log with paper and pencil so he will remember.

Living Witness 700 years in the future, a Kyrian museum recalls a destructive encounter with the Warship Voyager. They strike a deal with the Vaskan to find and capture the Kyrian leader Tedran in exchange for information on the whereabouts of a stable wormhole. Voyager capture Tedran and kill him and 8 million people. Some Vaskans distrust the evidence of the Voyager Encounter, but recent archeological digs have uncovered further proof. The exhibit curator, a Kyrian, views the artifact, a copy of the Doctor. He is informed that as the designer of some of the weapons used in the Encounter, he may be tried as a war criminal. When the Doctor sees the Kyrian version of history, he balks. It was the Kyrians who attacked the Vaskans and Voyager, led by Tedran. Though initially reluctant to listen, the curator allows the Doctor to revise the simulation. The Kyrians invade Voyager and take technology and hostages. The Vaskan ambassador killed Tedran, not Janeway. The discovery of the Doctor sparks a race riot between the Kyrians and the Vaskans, but when the truth became wide spread, a new unity between the peoples emerged. The Doctor stayed with them for many years before leaving to retrace Voyager's journey home.

Demon Voyager faces a power crisis and the crew quarters are left without power. Seven finds a Y-class planet (demon class in Starfleet slang) with needed raw materials. Attempts to beam the deuterium aboard just leads to an accident. Harry suggests a highly modified shuttle and environmental suit. Kim and Paris head down to mine the deuterium. Kim falls into a pool of a liquified metal and his suit starts to fail... soon Tom's suit fails, too. When they don't return, Janeway uses remaining power to land Voyager. Seven and Chakotay go out to find them. Chakotay almost falls down a cliff when Paris, unsuited, helps Seven pull him back up. Paris and Kim are brought back to be examined by the Doctor. As soon as they are aboard, they begin to suffocate. Doc finds a fluid in their blood which adapted their bodies. The atmosphere is unsafe to replicate - a cure must be found or they will have to be left behind. The fluid is found to have organic properties and when it touches B'Elanna's thumb, it mimics her. An away team finds the bodies of Paris and Kim still alive, barely. A pool of the fluid forms under Voyager and she begins to sink. Janeway fires into the pool - the Kim duplicate asks Janeway to stop. The "silver blood" has experienced sentience for the first time. In exchange for releasing Voyager, volunteers donate DNA for duplication to populate the planet.

One Voyager enters a nebula with disastrous results to the crew. The radiation is toxic - too far to go around, the entire crew must be put in stasis during the month it would take to go through it. Seven, unaffected by the radiation, will remain awake with the Doctor; Janeway has reservations that Seven can handle such prolonged solitude, but agrees to the plan. 10 days into the trip, ship's systems begin to fail. A major problem with the warp engines turns out to be a false alarm - several gel packs are failing and sending false signals. The Doctor's emitter fails as well, confining him to sick bay. By day 29, Seven admits to herself that she is feeling the effects of the isolation. Voyager encounters a ship and Seven works a trade with the lone pilot. When she rebuffs his propositions, he gets loose on board. After she disables him, she begins to hallucinate. The Doctor finally fails, leaving Seven alone for the remaining days of the voyage, her Borg implants beginning to degrade, too. In the last day, her hallucinations intensify. She has to reroute all power to the engines, including her life support to get the ship through, and barely survives, but she and the crew emerge alive and well.

Hope and Fear After five months, Janeway continues to try to decode the Starfleet message. Neelix and Paris bring Arturis aboard, one of a species with a talent for languages, in exchange for help in a trade negotiation. Janeway asks if he can help with the message. He does, and the message gives coordinates that lead to a ship, and a message that the ship can bring them home in three months. The Dauntless uses experimental slipstream technology to move great distances quickly. They investigate the ship, and try to learn its technology and adapt it to Voyager, too. Janeway works on part of the message Arturis said was badly damaged - it is a message that Starfleet cannot help them find a way home. Arturis lied to them - Dauntless is his ship, modified to look like Starfleet. He blames Janeway for the assimilation of his entire race by the Borg, once they defeated Species 8472, they went after his race, which had eluded them for centuries. He plans to bring her and Seven to the collective. Using the slipstream technology, Voyager gives chase, fires, and is able to beam Janeway and Seven back. Arturis ends up in Borg space. The slipstream damages Voyager, but Seven vows to try to find a way to use it to bring Voyager home sooner.

Night Voyager is crossing a great expanse, two years wide. In it, there are no stars, no life, no frame of reference. The darkness outside the ship has people on edge after only two months, and has given Janeway a chance to seclude herself in her quarters. Sullenly, she contemplates the fate her decisions have lead Voyager and the crew to. Suddenly, Voyager drops out of warp and loses all power. As some systems come back on line, a creature attacks Seven and Tom in a holodeck. Seven shoots the creature and they take it to sickbay. Tuvok fires a flare of sorts and illuminates several ships, which then move off slightly, restoring all ships power. A fourth ship arrives and fires on the first three, driving them off. The captain, Emck of the Malon, offer to help guide Voyager out of The Void through a wormhole in exchange for the alien creature. Janeway talks to the creature once he regains consciousness. The Doctor tells her he is dying of theta radiation poisoning, the same radiation the Malon ship is glowing with. Voyager takes the creature back to its people. Janeway asks Emck what the theta radiation is from - it is an industrial byproduct, and he is dumping it in the Void. The radiation has upset the delicate balance of the void. They offer to help the Malon convert their industry and ships to recycle theta radiation, as Voyager does, but Emck refuses, fearful of his hauling business if there is nothing to haul. Janeway decides to take the wormhole by force and close it once inside. Voyager fights its way past the freighter, but she is badly damaged by the Malon ships' weapons, but the night creatures attack, distracting the Malon as Voyager slips into the vortex, fires photo torpedoes at the opening; Voyager emerges to a bright, start-filling viewscreen.

Drone Seven, Paris, B'Elanna, and the Doctor fly near a proto-nebula to study it when it suddenly surges, placing their shuttle in jeopardy. They are taken in an emergency transport - in the process, the Doctor's emitter is damaged. Seven and crewman Mulcahey take it for study. While they are away, the emitter grows Borg appendages. When Mulcahey checks on the emitter, assimilation tubes extract tissue from him, leaving him unconscious. Seven deduces that in the transporter, some of her nanoprobes were merged with the emitter - it has built an artificial womb and is growing a fetal Borg, which is not how drones are normally built. It matures quickly - Janeway refuses to destroy it, and tells Seven to teach it. It is very powerful, with the emitter's 29th century technology evident in the design. Neelix tells the drone he should choose a name. He chooses One. While regenerating, his proximity sensor trips, alerting a Borg probe, which intercepts Voyager. Janeway and Seven give One a quick history of Borg conquest, and he agrees to help, first disrupting a Borg tractor beam, then enhancing Voyager's phasers - but Voyager's technology is not very advanced, and he beams over to the Borg probe, sending it into the nebula. It implodes, but One barely survives. He refuses to let the Doctor operate, and denies Seven's pleas. He dies, saying his life puts the Voyager crew in danger.

Extreme Risk A Malon tractor beam attempts to steal Voyager's multi-spacial probe. Janeway sends the probe into a atmosphere of a gas giant, and when the Malon ship gives chase, it is crushed. The probe gets stuck, and Paris suggests building a new shuttle he's been working on to go get it. Janeway approves and the team gets to work. Another Malon ship demands the probe as payment for the first's destruction. Janeway refuses, and Seven detects that they are building a shuttle to get the probe, too. The race is on. B'Elanna is not much help, though, as she seems to descend into depression. When she tests the shuttle on the holodeck, with all safeties turned off, she is nearly killed. She is placed in the Doctor's care, and Chakotay inventories her other holodeck programs. He brings her to one she wrote of the Maquis massacre they'd learned of. She says she feels nothing looking at the bodies of her friends; she has no family left. Chakotay tells her that Voyager is her family now. The Malon send their shuttle into the planet, and Paris follows with his Delta Flyer, with B'Elanna, Seven, and Kim along. They are able to shoo away the Malon ship and beam in the small probe. B'Elanna saves them all with a well-timed force field to engulf a hull breach.

In the Flesh Chakotay takes pictures of Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco, including one of legendary Boothby. In a lounge, he meets Valerie Archer who notes that she finds it odd being in human form. Tuvok gathers Chakotay, and they beam aboard the Delta Flyer, with a security guard who tried to stop them - they are orbiting a space station with a huge recreation of a piece of Earth inside. They take the guard back to Voyager - the Doctor attempts to examine him; when he does, the man kills himself. Janeway reviews Chakotay's photos and marvels at the accuracy of the recreation. The Doctor discovers that the guard has been genetically modified at a cellular level - he forces a reversion, and a dead member of Species 8472 morphs on his examining table. Janeway deduces that 8472 must be preparing to invade the Federation. Seven produces modified nanoprobes to use as a defense. Chakotay goes back to the simulation, where he takes Archer on a date. She takes a clandestine skin sample and discovers he's human - he is detained by Boothby, the commander at the simulation. They ask him when the Federation fleet is arriving to attack. Janeway contacts Boothby and arranges a meeting. She stands down her nanoprobe weapons as a sign of good faith, and they learn 8472 is scared of humans - they allied with the Borg and killed many of their kind. Janeway insists they are not a threat, and, in fact, Voyager is alone in the Delta Quadrant. They tell her their plans are not to invade the Federation, but to send agents to infiltrate it, to find out their plans to destroy 8472. The two realize their positions have been arrived out of mutual fear. Boothby pledges to return to the leadership of 8472 and to try to convince them the Federation would prefer to meet and understand 8472 rather than destroy them. Janeway provides Voyager's comm signal so they can contact her.

Once Upon a Time Paris, Tuvok, and Wilder are surveying space in the Delta Flyer when an ion storm damages the ship. They are forced to make a crash-landing on planet. Wilder has a severe internal injury and needs surgery. Aboard Voyager, Neelix takes care of Naomi, keeping her occupied with homework and the well-loved holostory about Flotter the water man and Trevis the tree man. The situation reminds him of his family, killed in the war with the Haakonen - and of his sister Alexia in particular. He tells Janeway that he cannot tell Naomi, to save her from the pain he felt. Voyager locates the Flyer and sends teams down to the planet to dig it out of the planet's crust. Unaware of the efforts, the Flyer's crew records farewell messages for their loved ones as life support starts to fail. They start to race against time as another ion storm races toward them - they are able to uncover the shuttle enough to transport the entire thing out before the storm hits. Reunited, Naomi and Wilder explore Flotter's world together.

Timeless Kim and Chakotay beam down to an ice planet and locate Voyager, buried under a glacier. They beam inside and find the crew all long dead. They activate the EMH and take Seven's body aboard their ship - the Delta Flyer. They activate the Doctor and say that they are there to change history. Aboard Voyager, the slipstream drive is finally ready for an attempt to get home. Paris, however, has run some last-minute tests and finds that there is a fatal flaw - in the slipstream, Voyager will be destroyed. Harry works out a way to have the Delta Flyer ride the slip stream ahead of Voyager and send minor corrections back to her. Janeway approves the plan and they start up the drive. When the corrections are needed, Harry sends them but they do not work - Voyager is knocked off the slipstream and crash lands on the planet. Harry explains to the Doctor that they are there to send the right corrections to Voyager, using Borg technology from Seven's body and stolen from the Federation - they are fugitives. The Borg tech will allow a message to travel back to Seven through time. The Challenger, under Captain Geordi LaForge, tries to stop them from violating the Temporal Prime Directive, but they send their message. It fails - the corrections did not work. Harry sends them again, this time to knock Voyager out of the slipstream safely, but not in the Alpha Quadrant. It works - Seven enters the corrections and Voyager stops, though 10 years closer to home.

Infinite Regress A Borg vessel has been destroyed and a sub-space signal emanating from it is affecting Seven's mind as it attempts to establish contact with her - different personalities that had been assimilated into the collective begin to overwhelm Seven's consciousness: a Klingon warrior, a Vulcan officer. A young girl plays a game with Naomi Wilder for quite a time. When she attacks B'Elanna while speaking Klingon, however, she is restrained in sick bay. Once the doctor determines what is going on, Seven tells them of a Borg transmitter called a vinculum. Voyager finds the vinculum and beams it aboard to attempt to shut it down. But it adapts to their attacks. While B'Elanna works to dampen and shut down the vinculum, the doctor worries that Seven's own personality may be lost. Tuvok goes into her mind to try to bring her out. Meanwhile, B'Elanna finds the vinculum infected with a virus, which is causing its transmissions. The DNA pattern match that of Species 6339. Voyager sets out to find a 6339 ship - when they do, they learn the virus is a doomsday weapon against he Borg, and they are anxious to get the vinculum back. Janeway refuses, citing Seven's health. B'Elanna fights to dampen the device, as Voyager battles 6339 and Tuvok battles within Seven's mind. Once B'Elanna shuts down the vinculum, Tuvok pulls Seven back and Voyager beams the vinculum into space where 6339 can pick it up themselves.

Nothing Human An energy wave hits Voyager and they set out to find its source - it is an alien ship. They beam aboard its life form, which is not humanoid. While the Doctor tries to examine it, B'Elanna comes to report on the ship - the creature jumps to life and attaches itself to B'Elanna. The doctor cannot remove it and knows little about exobiology. He and Kim create a hologram of one of the Alpha Quadrants greatest exobiologists, Crell Moset. One problem for the Maquis on board - Crell is a Cardassian, and an infamous one at that. Tabor, a Bajoran, tells of experiments he conducted on live subjects. Though he cured a deadly disease, but killed dozens to create the vaccine. Tabor lobbies to have Moset erased, and B'Elanna refuses to have him work on her. The doctor and Paris lobby to have him continue, and Janeway agrees - do this now to save B'Elanna and deal with the morals later. They do send out an energy wave to try to contact more of the species, in case they can help. Moset and the Doctor set out to operate - Moset's procedure would save B'Elanna but kill the creature; the doctor jumps in with a less aggressive procedure that will save both. An alien ship pops out of warp and it locks onto them with a tractor beam. They release the creature and beam it to its ship, which retreats. The Doctor contemplates saving the Moset program, but after speaking with it and grappling with the moral dilemma, he deletes it. B'Elanna is angry at Janeway for authorizing the procedure - Janeway tells her to deal with it.

Thirty Days Paris is demoted to Ensign and placed in solitary confinement by Janeway. In a letter to his father, he recounts the events leading up to the punishment: Voyager encounters a world whose atmosphere is entirely water, being held together by some kind of field. While orbiting, ships confront Voyager, but Janeway quickly convinces the Moneans of their good intentions. The Moneans tell Janeway that the planet, on which they arrived 300 years before, is losing volume. Tom suggests taking the Delta Flyer into the depths of the planet, deeper than the Monean ships can go, to investigate. At 600 km deep, Paris and a Monean scientist Riga discover a mechanism. It emits a gravity field, and holds the water to it. But something is forcing it to divert power from gravity to its own structural integrity. Tom and Riga discover the Monean's own oxygen mining processes are disrupting the mechanism. To stop the process, the mining should be stopped and revised. The Monean ambassador thanks them, but refuses to do anything. Tom, a lover of old ocean tales, feels an affection for the planet and teams with Riga to destroy some of the refineries. They hijack the Flyer, and take aim on the plant, but Voyager fires on the Flyer and forces it to the surface. Tom is taken into custody, tried, and thrown into the brig.

Counterpoint Devoran warships stop Voyager and board her. They scan everyone and everybody, including some waste canisters in the cargo bay. On the bridge, the head inspector, Kashyk, asks Janeway about two Vulcans and two Betazed on her crew - she tells him that they are all dead. He reminds her of the penalties for being a telepath, and takes his ships and leaves. Tuvok and the rest of the crew, and a dozen or so Brenari are then pulled out of the transporter pattern buffers in the waste containers. The Brenari are on the run from the Devore. They are searching for a wormhole to take them out of Devore space (passage through which requires submission to inspection on demand). Kashyk appears alone in a shuttle and asks for asylum. He knows they have been hiding telepaths, and is fed up with how the Devore treat them. He asks for safe passage. He and Janeway work together to try to determine the next place the wormhole will appear. They determine the Tehara system, where a Devore sensor station will likely detect them - they try to drift past but are detected. In a race to the wormhole site, Devore ships chase Voyager. Kashyk volunteers to go back aboard the Devore ships and divert them. But upon his arrival, he reassumes his position and demands Voyager turn over the Brenari - but Janeway sent them ahead in two of Voyager's shuttles to the wormhole entrance, and they make their escape. Kashyk lets Voyager go, rather than let his record show that the Brenari escaped.

Latent Image While experimenting with his holoimager, the Doctor finds a surgical scar on Kim that neither has any recollection of; the surgery was definitely done by the Doctor, 18 months earlier. He enlists the help of Seven, who was not on board at the time. They review his image album from 18 months ago and find many images deleted. She is able to reconstruct a handful, and they tell an odd story - a crew member he has never seen, a shuttle mission he does not recall, and an attack by an alien. They bring their findings to Janeway, with the premise that some alien race has erased all the crew's memories of some event, and may still be doing it. Janeway asks the Doctor to shutdown while they investigate. He later has more short-term memories erased, and his holoimager recorded Janeway doing it. He confronts her - she admits to the erasures. 18 months ago, his program confronted a situation it could not deal with and it was rewritten and the memories erased. She intends to do it again. Seven challenges her decision, saying the Doctor is more than just a machine to be fixed. She agrees to let him see the memories - he was on a mission with Kim and Ani Jetal, when they were attacked. The alien weapon attacked their nervous system, and when he discovered a treatment, he only had time to help one of them - Jetal died. His ethical and cognitive programs later came in conflict as he contemplated his choice. After his memory is restored, the conflict returns, and Janeway shuts him down. But this time, she decides to help his program adapt, to let the battle wage within him, rather than remove the memories.

Bride of Chaotica! Tom and Harry are still playing Tom's Captain Proton holonovel when Voyager comes to a dead stop, with systems failing all over the place. On the holodeck, several distortions appear, but seem benign. Unable to stop the simulation, they transports out of the holo deck. Voyager has entered a layer of subspace that is disrupting their warp field - the more they push against the field, the more it pushes back. Meanwhile, on the holodeck, the distortions spawn human-looking figures, who are captured by Chaotica's troops. One is killed and the other escapes. As the crew tries to free Voyager, sensors suddenly pick up weapons fire on the holodeck. When Harry and Tuvok beam back into the holodeck, they find destruction everywhere. They learn that Chaotica is firing his death ray at the distortions and the distortions are firing at Chaotica's castle. One of the distortion people encounter the pair, and he explains that he is a photonic life form - he is unaware that there can be carbon-based life and suspects Tuvok and Tom are illusions. Tom devises a plan to resolve the conflict; the Doctor will pose as the President of Earth and get the photonic beings to hold their fire while Janeway acts as Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People. Janeway seduces Chaotica and disables his lightning shield, and Tom uses Proton's ship to destroy the death ray. Once the Chaotica threat is eliminated, the photonic beings leave, and Voyager slowly emerges from the subspace field.

Gravity Tuvok, Paris, and the Doctor crash land a shuttle when it is pulled into a gravity well. Noss, a woman also crashed on the planet, steals supplies from Paris, but Tuvok retrieves them when he rescues her from some attackers. With the universal translators down, communication is difficult until Paris gets the doctor working again. They abandon the shuttle and go to Noss's ship, which is defended against outside attack. Noss tells them she's been there 14 years, and has seen many ships crash land there. Noss begins to learn English and starts to fall for Tuvok. Since they've been there so long and rescue seems unlikely, Paris encourages Tuvok to pursue a relationship. Tuvok refuses, recalling his lessons in logic as a rebellious teen. Tuvok is hurt in an ambush and Noss nurses him back to health, but when he recovers, he is not as receptive to her affections as she'd like. Meanwhile, Voyager searches for the shuttle and encounters the gravity well, and determines the shuttle went inside. They launch a probe that confirms a system exists on the other side of the disturbance... telemetry from the probe indicates a temporal shift - 30 minutes on Voyager translates to two days on the other side. A nearby race is getting ready to close the disturbance as a navigational hazard. Voyager only has a limited amount of time, and sends the stranded team a message. On the ground, the group is withstanding an alien attack as they count the hours to their rescue. Noss is hurt and Tuvok retrieves her just before they all beam out. Before Voyager drops Noss off on her home planet, Tuvok mind-melds with her to help her understand why he rebuked her.

Bliss Voyager detects a wormhole that appears to lead to the Alpha Quadrant - landing, in fact, right next to Earth. The entire crew is excited as messages start to come to Voyager from Starfleet, indicating generally good news for everyone. Seven, Paris, and Naomi Wilder return from a scouting trip to find the crew in a euphoria. Seven is instantly suspicious of the wormhole. She watches Janeway's log entries that indicate she was initially suspicious, but quickly became convinced the wormhole is real. When Seven scans the wormhole, she finds a ship and contacts it. Its pilot, Qatai, warns them away, saying it is a trap. When Seven tries to convince the crew the wormhole is not real, she is disbelieved, and, in fact, and scheduled to be placed in stasis to protect her from Borg monitoring subspace. She refuses and locks herself in her cargo bay; she finds Naomi there, too, apparently unaffected by the crew's blinding bliss. Seven transports to Engineering and tries to divert Voyager away from the wormhole, but she is disabled. As Voyager passes through the wormhole, everyone but Naomi passes out. She revives Seven, who contact Qatai - they are inside a giant bio organism that feeds on starships. He has been tracking it for years, after it destroyed his colony ship. It tricks crews by convincing them that its mouth is just what they have been looking for. Seven brings the Doctor online and with Qatai's ship they fire at the beast until it expels them.

Dark Frontier (part 1) Voyager destroys a Borg scout ship and retrieves the left over pieces in an attempt to make some use of the technology. Seven and B'Elanna try to repair the ship's transwarp coil; they wish to hook it to Voyager to move a bit closer to home; the coil is burnt out, though. They also find a data coil, detailing Borg movements in the area. Janeway decides on a bold plan: the data show a disabled probe ship limping home at warp speed. They will board the ship, steal its transwarp coil, and use it in Voyager. On the way to a rendezvous, Janeway has Seven review the mission logs they retrieved from the Raven, details of her parents' encounters and research on the Borg, three year's worth of data. Voyager catches up to the probe sphere - Seven estimates that its transwarp drive will be repaired in just a few days. The crew drills for the mission in the meantime. The Borg contact Seven - they are aware of Voyager's presence. They will let Voyager leave safely if Seven agrees to return to the collective. When Janeway tries to remove Seven from the mission, Seven is adamant - she must go. The mission disables the sphere's shields and the transwarp coil is beamed back to Voyager. As they prepare to leave, Seven is detained by the Borg, and the rest of the away team returns to Voyager. The sphere jumps to transwarp and returns to a huge Borg colony, where Seven is met by the Borg queen.

Dark Frontier (part 2) The Borg queen tells Seven that she was planted on Voyager to help the Borg learn more about humans so that they can be assimilated. It is not their intention to turn her back into a drone - she'll be much more valuable as an individual, though she is reconnected to the collective. The queen takes Seven on a trip to assimilate a small world; during the action, Seven helps a handful of people escape, but the queen tracks down their ship. Seven pleads for their freedom, and to her surprise, the queen allows them to escape. Gaining a bit of trust, the queen tells Seven her plan - to burst a biogenic weapon in Earth's atmosphere and assimilate the population slowly with nanoprobes. Seven refuses to help develop the nanoprobes. She threatens to reassimilate Seven, and shows that as a drone, her father still lives. Naomi Wilder asks Janeway to rescue Seven; she tells Naomi that she had no intention of leaving Seven behind. Janeway reviews the sensor logs and realizes that Seven had been contacted by the collective - and realizes that she sacrificed herself for Voyager. The Doctor devises a means to contact Seven, and they use the Hansen diaries to devise means to protect themselves and the Delta Flyer from Borg sensors. They install the transwarp coil in the Flyer and follow the sphere's trail to the Borg colony. They detect Seven in the queen's chamber; they contact her, but the queen hears the call, too. Janeway and Tuvok beam aboard the queen's ship; Tuvok disables shields as Janeway confronts the queen. Seven gets conflicting orders from Janeway and the queen, but heeds Janeway, allowing them to beam back to the Flyer. They turn tail back to Voyager and are pursued. When they emerge back at Voyager, with the Borg in pursuit, Chakotay orders torpedoes to close the transwarp conduit; the Borg ship emerges from the conduit in pieces. They install the transwarp coil in Voyager and estimate they cut 15 years off their journey before it burned out.

The Disease Voyager is helping the crew of a massive generational ship repair their warp engines. Despite a directive from Janeway that personal contact with the Varro be kept at a minimum, Harry has fallen in love with Tal, an engineer. When the two make love, he notices his skin luminesce; later on, while working with Seven, she notices the glow and takes him to sick bay. He confesses his relations with Tal to the Doctor; because of the potential for cross-species disease, he is required to tell the Captain, who forbids Harry from seeing Tal. Despite this, they do speak and she says the reaction is normal among her people - it even has a name, olan vora. Meanwhile, Tuvok finds a stowaway in a Jeffries tube; he requests asylum - he wants off the generational ship. Seven and B'Elanna detect problems in the ship's skin - they find an artificial parasite feeding on the hull. Tal admits to being part of a movement to stop the ship and actually find a planet to live on. The ship breaks into segments; some decide to leave and go their own way; other rejoin to continue the original voyage. Tal and Harry bid each other farewell, and Harry suffers through the withdrawal of the olan vora.

Course: Oblivion Big news on Voyager: Tom and B'Elanna's wedding, Ensign Harper's new baby, and an enhanced warp drive meaning a two-year journey to Earth through the center of the galaxy. The new warp field appears to be having an adverse effect on the ship, however, and the Doctor is deluged with patients afflicted by some sort of epidemic. The new drive is shut down, but the failure of the ship and crew continues. Oddly, objects brought aboard the ship in the past nine months are unaffected. Chakotay and Tuvok trace Voyager's steps, all the way back to the Demon Planet. They have suspicions that are confirmed when the Doctor performs an autopsy on the newly deceased B'Elanna - they are not really flesh and blood; they are all copies of the Voyager crew. Their only option is to use the new drive to quickly return to the Demon planet, or find another Class Y planet to land on. They find a Class Y planet, but locals chase them off and they rush to the Demon planet, sending distress calls all the way. After the deaths of Chakotay and Janeway, Seven builds a beacon out of unaffected parts, but it is destroyed when the launcher fails. They detect another ship and turn to it. On board the real Voyager, a signal is detected, but when they arrive at the source, there is nothing but debris. Voyager continues its journey home.

The Fight Chakotay is boxing in a holodeck simulation when he sees an odd image behind his opponent; distracted he is promptly knocked out. He heads to sick bay; while there, Voyager gets stuck in an odd region of space. Seven notes that the Borg have encountered space like this, and only one cube had ever survived it. Chakotay begins to hear voices and see images from his boxing match. The Doctor discovers he has a genetic abnormality that causes hallucinations - it had been suppressed at birth, and has been stimulated. Voyager finds a derelict ship; they down load the logs and find that several of its crew had also experienced hallucinations before they all died trying to find a way out of the zone. Chakotay goes on a vision quest to try to resolve his issues; there, he sees his grandfather, who had also suffered from the visions. He is thrust into a boxing ring; he hears voices that appear to be offering alien technology to him, but he does not understand. Janeway and the Doctor surmise there may be beings in this space that are trying to help them escape, through Chakotay - he fears the voices will drive him mad, but agrees to keep trying. He lets his fears go and begins to understand their instructions. He rushes to the bridge, recalibrates the sensors and sets a new course -- and Voyager soon emerges from the zone, safe and sound.

Think Tank Voyager detects a planetoid with considerable dilithium deposits. When they conduct further scans, the planetoid explodes, and a ship emerges from the fire; the Hazari ship, part of a race of bounty hunters, tries to capture them, but they escape. Long range scans show the sector is full of Hazari, all intent on capturing Voyager for some unknown client. As Janeway tries to figure a way out, a figure appears to her. Kurros, a member of a powerful think tank, sends his image to her to offer his group's help, for an as-yet undetermined price. Janeway and Seven go the Kurros's ship. He notes that they have stopped wars, resisted the Borg; even cured the Viidian Phage. Their price, is Seven herself - they wish her to join their group. Seven declines. Voyager captures a Hazari ship and tries to figure out who placed the bounty on them - initially, it appears to be the Malon, but further investigation reveals the Hazari's contact was Kurros himself. Janeway and the Hazari captain try to figure a way to outsmart the think tank. Seven goes to their ship and allows herself to be hooked into their translation matrix. While connected, Voyager sends a pulse through her to disrupt the matrix, after which the group is unable to communicate with each other. In the confusion, Seven beams away and Voyager warps away.

Juggernaut A Malon toxic waste dumper has a critical emergency, and Voyager responds to her distress call, rescuing only two of its crew. One, the captain, warns Voyager to move at least 3 light years away from his ship, the blast and radiation radius should it explode. But the theta radiation interferes with Voyager's engines, and she cannot jump to warp. Instead, Janeway hatches a plan to repair the dumper. One Malon warns of a mythical race of creatures that live on the dumpers. B'Elanna, Neelix, and Chakotay go to the dumper with the Malon. One Malon is killed. B'Elanna, already under Tuvok's tutelage for anger control, and disgusted by the Malon's society, tries to maintain her cool when Chakotay is nearly spaced and has to go back aboard Voyager. She and the others soon realize that the ship's distress is no accident, and that they are being stalked. On the bridge, she confronts a Malon who had been given up for dead in the ship's core, a demon. He intends to exact revenge on the ship itself, regardless of the consequences. She beats him down and helps Voyager guide the dumper to a star, where its contents explode harmlessly.

Someone to Watch Over Me After B'Elanna confronts Seven as she studies her and Paris and their "mating rituals", the Doctor volunteers to teach her some new social skills, perhaps even dating. Paris bets the Doctor that he can't. They meet several times to go over the basics, and Seven decides on a crewman to ask out on her first date. She asks Lt. Chapman to dinner in Tom's French bistro holoprogram, and all goes well until they dance and she tears one of his shoulder ligaments. After a few more lessons, the Doctor asks her to a reception; while there, she learns of his bet with Paris and walks out on him. He apologizes and tries to think of a way to tell her that he has developed feelings for her ... but she comes to him first and tells him his lessons are no longer needed since there are no suitable mates for her on Voyager. Neelix hosts the Kaati ambassador Tobin while Janeway goes to the Kaati planet to negotiate a trade deal. While on board, Tobin, who is from a monastic culture, samples Voyager's food, women, and wine, to Neelix's consternation. At a reception in his honor, he passes out drunk; Neelix and the Doctor quickly sober him up for the return of his superior; just in time, he regains his composure and the agreement proceeds.

11:59 During a lull in the voyage, Janeway tells Neelix of her ancestor Shannon O'Donnell, an astronaut who helped build the Millennium Gate in 2000, and who later went on to conduct many Mars missions. As the crew discuss the tales they'd been told of their family histories, Tom Paris, an amateur Mars historian, tells Janeway that he knew of no O'Donnell involved with Mars. Janeway looks into her ancestor's history: Shannon rode into Portage Creek, Indiana, en route to Florida. She had tried out to be an astronaut and did not make the cut. Her car breaks down and she takes refuge in the book store of Henry Janeway. Henry is the lone holdout in downtown Portage Creek - a developer wants to raze the entire downtown to build Millennium Gate, a giant shopping mall and bio-habitat tourist attraction. Moss, the developer, knows of O'Donnell and offers her a job on the project if she can convince Janeway to sell. She tries, but Henry is adamant. Moss prepares to move the project to another state. O'Donnell packs her things to leave, but returns for one last attempt - this time, Henry gives in, with a promise of a nice secluded storefront in the new "monstrosity" for his bookstore. Captain Janeway comes away disappointed that her family hero was not who she'd thought.

Relativity As Janeway tours her brand new ship, Voyager, she speaks to a tall, blonde crewman - Seven of Nine. Later, Seven goes to work in a Jeffries Tube, and finds a planted weapon. On the bridge, a chronoton surge is detected, and as security approaches Seven's position, she is beamed out with a temporal transporter - but she is pulled out too soon, and she dies. The crew on the Federation Time Ship Relativity must go back and recruit Seven for the mission again, just before Voyager is destroyed by the weapon. On board Voyager, several people are coming down with space sickness -- it is later tracked to a temporal distortions that begin to pull at the ship. Time travelers arrive and take Seven back with them. Captain Braxton, Janeway's old "friend", is on a mission to stop Voyager from being destroyed, and only Seven, with her Borg implants, can help them. This is the third time she's been recruited, each time trying to pinpoint when the weapon was placed to stop it. She must succeed this time, because being moved through time any more could kill her. She is sent back to a time when the ship was under attack by the Kazon. She is detected, and a force field is erected around her - Seven and Tuvok catch her and she explains what she is doing. They let her go, and she finds the saboteur - it is an insane Braxton, intent on revenge after all the grief Janeway caused him. She chases him through the ship, and through time, until the Relativity can beam them both back. Braxton is arrested, and Voyager continues on her way.

Warhead Voyager encounters a distress call, and an away team finds it being sent by a small device on a planet's surface. The Doctor can understand its machine language; they beam it aboard to study and repair it. It thinks it is a person, flesh and blood. They realize quickly, though, that the machine is a weapon; they attempt to copy the warhead's program to a holomatrix while disabling the explosives, but the machine catches on and takes over the Doctor's program. It intends to use Voyager to complete its mission. On the way, the crew try to figure out a way to disable it. Neelix recognizes some of the technology, and finds a trader, Anguani, who is familiar with it. He offers to help, but his price is too high, so he tries to steal the warhead - Voyager destroys his ship. Harry helps the warhead recover old memories - it is part of a doomsday fleet of large-scale weapons. When the war ended, it had been ordered to divert to a barren planet and explode there. But the recall was past the point-of-no-return for many of the other warheads, who have detected Voyager and surround it. The warhead tries to convince the others that the mission is over, but they do not believe it, so it beams itself out to the group, which all proceed on to the target. On the way, the warhead explodes, destroying itself and all in its group.

Equinox Captain Rudy Ransom, of the Federation science ship Equinox, is under attack and sends out a distress call. Voyager gets the call and rushes to help. It helps fend off the attack, and the Equinox crew beams over the Voyager. The handful of crew members tell that they, too, were pulled into the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker, and have been on their way home ever since. They've had a very rough time of it, though. The first officer, Max Burke, used to date B'Elanna, making Paris jealous. The aliens keep up their attack on the pair of ships, slowly draining power from Voyager's shields. Alone, Ransom and Burke agree to watch what they say around the Voyager crew - "they would never understand." To mount a defense, Janeway orders the Equinox abandoned over Ransom's objections. Based on Equinox's research, they build a shield generator that will repel the aliens. Curious about a contaminated area on Equinox, Janeway sends the Doctor over - he finds the corpses of alien bodies and research results - the Equinox has been using the aliens to power their ship for the trip home, and the attacks are in self-defense. Janeway has Ransom arrested. The Doctor tries to enlist the help of the Equinox EMH, but his ethical program was modified to allow him to conduct the tests. The EMH helps release Ransom. The Equinox crew beams back to their ship and beams the new shield generator to the Equinox, leaving Voyager defenseless as the aliens begin their attack on Voyager and the Equinox pulls away.

Equinox (Part 2) The aliens kill and injure several crew, but they are able to repel them for a time. Janeway orders Voyager to give chase. The EMH on Voyager is the Equinox's, and he plans to provide tactical data to his ship. On Equinox, Seven is taken prisoner after sabotaging the engines. The Doctor is stored in the Equinox and Ransom disables his ethical program so that he will extract memories from Seven, despite the consequences to Seven. Chakotay tries, and fails, to communicate with the aliens. Voyager finds the Equinox orbiting a planet, hiding. Two of her crew are taken prisoner before a fire fight breaks out; but the Equinox again escapes. Chakotay vocally worries about Janeway's state and she confines him to quarters. Voyager tracks down an Oncari ship - the Oncari can summon the aliens - Janeway makes a deal - call off the attack, and she will deliver the Equinox. On the Equinox, Ransom begins to have second thoughts. When Voyager catches up to them, Ransom tries to cooperate, but Burke takes command. Ransom works to help Voyager beam his crew over, but decides to go down with his ship as the core overloads and the aliens attack. Five of the Equinox crew on Voyager are stripped of rank; Chakotay admits to Janeway that he came close to mutiny himself.

Survival Instinct Voyager visits a Marconian outpost and hosts a wide array of alien guests. One approaches Seven and Naomi Wilder as they eat, offering to sell Seven several Borg relays. Seven purchases them, then the seller contacts two compatriots to say their plan is in motion. As she analyzes the relays, the trio infiltrate Voyager's systems. While Tuvok tries to trace the breech, they find Seven's alcove, where she is regenerating. She awakens just as security barges in on them - the three are former Borg, old members of Seven's unimatrix. They have separated from the collective, but have not separated from each other. They want to know why their memories stop during an incident when their ship crash- landed years ago. The link helped them escape, but now it is overwhelming them. Seven has no memory of parts of the crash either. Seven decides to link with them to regain the memories, a possibly risky procedure. On the planet, several Borg died; those that lived slowly regained their pre-assimilation memories. They did not wish to rejoin the collective. But Seven did - she tracked them down and disabled them until the Borg came for them. She panicked because when she was assimilated, she was a little girl, and she was scared to be alone. The three have not long to live, and they can either live a long life as drones, or a short one as individuals. They all choose to be individuals and all go their separate ways.

Barge of the Dead B'Elanna is caught in an ion storm while trying to retrieve the multi-spatial probe. She barely makes it back to Voyager. A piece of metal is found lodged in her shuttle craft, from when she lost deflectors - it bears the symbol of the Klingon Empire. The crew celebrates the archeological find, though B'Elanna is nonplussed. During a ceremony, though, she sees a Klingon warrior kill the crew, and she is suddenly on a rickety boat - the barge of the dead, for dishonored souls, on its way to Grethor, Klingon hell. She meets the first Klingon, Kortar, the stuff of childhood nightmares, and sees her mother Miral arrive ... and then she is suddenly in sick bay, revived from a coma. Though she has never put much stock in her Klingon heritage, she feels strongly that she has, through her dishonor, committed her mother to hell. She demands to go back, by simulating the coma. Though Janeway is reluctant, she agrees. She arrives on the barge and finds her mother and demands of Kortar that she be allowed to replace her mother. But Kortar knows her plan - to be revived. She swears not to allow it, and Miral is transported to Sto'vo'kor. She walks into Grethor; it is Voyager - an eternity on Voyager is her hell. Miral appears to her - it is not her time, she must choose to live. She has already taken the first step to restoring her honor. The Doc revives B'Elanna, who will live to complete her journey.

Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy The Doctor installs a new daydreaming routine to his program, to allow him to stretch his imagination. He soon finds, however, that his fantasies are beginning to over shadow, and then take over, reality. Mean while, an alien craft monitors Voyager; a micro-probe is sent out and burrows itself into the Doctor's program, and watches the ship from his eyes ... or rather, his fantasy eyes. They see him as a lady's man, a strong leader, backup captain, and inventor of the photonic cannon, a powerful weapon. When the fantasies take over completely, Janeway, Seven, Harry, and B'Elanna work hard to fix him, catching glimpses of several of his fantasies, including the erotic ones, along the way. Once fixed, the Doctor is embarrassed by the revelation of his fantasies. But worse, he is contacted by one of the aliens who fears for his job - his race has planned an attack because of what they saw in the fantasies, but that world does not exist. He gives the Doctor a plan to defeat the attack. Though initially skeptical, Janeway is able to confirm the coming attack; the only way to win the fight is to give the Doctor command and play out the story. The Doctor stands his ground with the aliens, driving them off with the threat of his dreaded photonic cannon. Janeway decorates the Doctor for his efforts, and promises to look into having him as a backup captain in the future.

Alice Upcoming

Riddles Upcoming

Dragon's Teeth Voyager is pulled into a subspace corridor and a ship there helps push them out. Then they demand all records of their encounter be confiscated. Janeway refuses and the aliens fire on Voyager. They find a desolate planet to land on to make repairs and avoid confrontation, and while they do, they detect faint life signs. An away team finds hundreds to stasis tubes, sealed for 900 years. They open one, and its occupant, Gedrin, tells them they were there to avoid a bombardment from space, but were only supposed to be under for five years. His people, the Vardwar, fought and lost to the Turay and their allies. They used the corridors to explore space, and met up with at least the Borg and the Talaxians. The others are reanimated, and the Vardwar prepare to leave the planet. Neelix, curious about the Vardwar, investigates, and with Seven's help, finds many references to the Vardwar from several texts collected in the Delta Quadrant. The stories tell of soldiers who come in the night to rob and conquer. Janeway worries that Voyager is in more danger from the Vardwar than from the Turay above. When she demands the Vardwar ships stand down, they attack Voyager. As she tries to escape, she contacts the Turay and suggests an alliance of convenience. The Turay attack the Vardwar and Voyager escapes; in the mean time, over 50 Vardwar ships escape into the subspace corridors.

One Small Step Voyager encounters a graviton ellipse, a rare spatial phenomenon. Voyager sends a probe into its core and detects many different compounds, including some unique to 21st century Earth's Mars program. Chakotay is excited that they probably found the phenomenon that destroyed the Aries 4 command module, and its pilot, which was in orbit around Mars. For historical interest, Janeway decides to send the Flyer into the ellipse with Chakotay, Tom, and Seven aboard. They make it through the outer layers and find a calm core. They search for the Aries as they collect and study other compounds from within the core. They find Aries, almost totally intact. They try to tow it out, but as they do, Voyager detects a dark-matter asteroid headed for the ellipse. Though Janeway orders the module be left behind, Chakotay refuses, and when the asteroid hits, the Flyer is damaged. B'Elanna thinks a few of the parts on the Aries can be used to repair the Flyer; Chakotay was hurt in the collision, so Seven goes over. She plays Lt. John Kelly's logs from the Aries as she goes to work. Kelly had not died on impact, but lived for weeks in the ellipse trying to find a way out. He finally died when life support gave out. Moved by his story, Seven downloads all of his logs as she finishes her work; and she beams Kelly's remains back to the Flyer. The module is installed and the Flyer emerges from the ellipse just as it heads back into subspace. Kelly is given a military burial at sea.

The Voyager Conspiracy Upcoming

Pathfinder Lt. Reg Barclay is visited by an old friend, Deanna Troi; he asks her to help him. He is obsessed with finding a way to contact Voyager from the Alpha Quadrant. He wants to finalize his theories before Admiral Paris visits the Pathfinder project, Starfleet's effort to communicate with Voyager. He is using Voyager simulations to inspire, to bounce ideas around - as a source of friendship. Troi worries about Reg's past holodeck addiction, but he insists the simulation is his best hope. He suggests using a MIDAS array to create a quantum singularity, a wormhole, to Voyager's estimated position, and to send subspace signals through it. Admiral Paris is intrigued, but Reg's supervisor, Commander Pete Hawkins, is unconvinced. When Hawkins finds Reg in a Voyager sim, he halts Reg's research and restricts him to quarters, removing him from Pathfinder. Reg appeals directly to Paris, who says he will have a team review his findings. He tells Troi that the Voyager crew has become like the family he felt he had on the Enterprise. He is anxious, and begins an experiment against orders. He opens a micro-wormhole and sends a message to Voyager. His work is interrupted by Hawkins and a security team, but as they begin to lead him away, Voyager responds. Paris speaks to Voyager, sending a message to Tom, as the wormhole closes, and promises of establishing a permanent link are made.

Fair Haven Tom has created a holoprogram, a detailed Irish town called Fair Haven. None too soon, as Voyager detects a Class 9 neutronic wave front headed their way - it has disrupted warp fields, so Voyager must wait for it to hit, pass, and dissipate, a long process. Neelix suggests the program be kept running 24 hours so that the crew can visit at their leisure. Even Janeway manages a visit, and she meets the barkeep, Michael Sullivan. After a night-long bull session with him, she returns after modifying his program, making him more outspoken, well read, and not married. Once the wave front hits, there are several down days to wait within the storm, and Janeway and Sullivan spend a lot of time together. But one day, Sullivan goes on a drunken rampage - the love of his like, Katie, has left him. The Doctor asks her what happened, and she says that she was falling for Sullivan, but all the while was aware that she could tweak his character. It left a bad taste in her mouth. The Doc suggests that a relationship with a holo character may be the only such relationship she is allowed, considering her position. But it may be too late - the trailing edge of the storm is much stronger than the leading edge, and when it hits, Fair Haven is badly damaged. Tom sets about to repair the program, and Janeway is relieved to find Sullivan intact. She tells him she will return, someday, and locks his program so she cannot make any further changes.

Virtuoso Upcoming

Memorial Upon the return of Chakotay, Neelix, Tom and Harry from an extended away mission, Tom finds the B'Elanna has built him a circa-1950 TV set. As he watches into the wee hours, he sees himself in a show, in a phaser battle. In a Jeffries tube, Harry suddenly imagines a battle, too, and quickly crawls to "safety". Harry goes to see the Doctor, who simply thinks he is suffering from exhaustion. But when Neelix holds Naomi Wildman at gunpoint, refusing to let her go lest she be slaughtered, something is clearly wrong. Chakotay talks Neelix down by remembering the slaughter, and a man named Saavdra. Janeway calls them all together, and it would appear that the away team was drafted into an evacuation of colonists, an evacuation that turned into a massacre, the Nakan Massacre, with all 82 civilians perishing after some refused to leave their colony. Janeway orders Voyager to follow the Delta Flyer's path, to find out what happened. As the approach Tarakis, Janeway too remembers being in the battle - as does most of the crew. An away team beams down to look for evidence of a battle and finds none, though Harry does lead them to a cave where he hid and killed a couple of civilians. Chakotay and Janeway find a transmitter that explains everything - a 300-year-old memorial to the Nakan who died that day, which transmits a neural signal such that anyone passing by has the memories deposited in their mind. Old, weak, and malfunctioning, it appears ready for decommissioning. But Janeway instead instructs the crew to fix it to keep it running another 300 years, in continued memorial to the people of Nakan.

Tsunkatse On the Norcadian home world, the crew takes in some shore leave while Janeway goes to Pendari to do some exploring. Several of the crew take a liking to tsunkatse, a martial arts fighting match. Seven and Tuvok head out to look into some spatial anomalies, and are taken captive by a large ship. Seven awakens to find Tuvok injured, and she expected to be a player in tsunkatse. She refuses, though relents when Penk, the master, promises to help Tuvok's injuries. At a match, the crew is surprised to see Seven enter the ring - they try to get a transporter lock on her, but realize the match is a hologram, beamed to several planets at once. Voyager recalls Janeway and starts a search for the transmitter. Though Seven is beaten, she proves popular and Penk schedules her for a death match. A 19-year veteran of the matches, a Hirogen, trains her. As the match is set to begin, Voyager finds the tsunkatse ship, though it is heavily armed and armored. Seven's opponent is her Hirogen trainer. Voyager attacks and is able to beam out Tuvok; when the Delta Flyer returns, the extra firepower is enough to pull out Seven and the Hirogen. They find a Hirogen hunting party to return him to, and Seven has to deal with her feelings that she would have killed to save her own life - Tuvok reassures her that her feelings of guilt and shame are a positive reaction to the ordeal.

Collective A small away team on the Flyer is taken by a Borg cube. Chakotay, Tom, and Neelix cool their heels in a holding cell, while Harry is no where to be found. Voyager tracks down the Flyer and runs into the cube - in the ensuing battle, Voyager disables the cube. Seven scans the cube and finds only five drones on board, explaining the poor performance. The Borg agree to give up the Flyer crew in exchange for technology. Seven beams over and finds the crew - several young Borg children, too soon out of the maturation chamber. Seven brings a dead drone to Voyager and the Doctor finds it killed by a pathogen of some sort. Harry awakens on board the Flyer, in the cube, and starts to move about, setting charges around the ship's field generator. Janeway offers to sever the Borg connection, though the Number One refuses, and demands the technology they agreed upon. They think the Borg will come for them, but Seven finds a transmission that the cube had been abandoned. Harry is captured and injected with nanoprobes to force Janeway's hand. Over his objections, Janeway has the Doctor synthesize more of the Borg virus. They try to take the tech by force, but Voyager sends a feedback loop down the tractor beam, setting off explosions; the First dies, and the others surrender. Voyager takes them aboard, where, once underway again, the Doctor removes the childrens' implants.

Spirit Folk The residents of Fair Haven start to become aware of some odd things about the visitors to their town - when Seamus and Milo see Tom turn Harry's date, Maggie, into a cow, they are convinced the Voyager crew are spirit people. The Doctor, as Fr. Mulligan, assures the people that they are mistaken. But the quickly disappearing grey skies, the miraculous rescues of injured people, not to mention the leprechaun-like Neelix, keep the suspicions high. Sullivan, the voice of reason, tells the villagers he will talk to Katie about all this, and when he demands she tell the truth, she end the program to run diagnostics. Since the Fair Haven program has been running continuously for so long, small glitches have become major bugs - such as the characters becoming aware of the crew. Tom and Harry examine the Sullivan character and find an error in his perceptual filter and try to fix it - he feigns dumbness and when he returns to Fair Haven, he calls a meeting. Tom and Harry, on their way to fix the holodeck, are taken hostage. B'Elanna proposes deleting the program, but Janeway is reluctant. She sends in the Doctor, but they take him, too - and when Sullivan slips on his mobile emitter, he goes to find Janeway. She reaches a compromise with him - they can no longer allow Fair Haven to run continuously, but she does agree to keep it alive, and to repair it.

Ashes to Ashes Mizoti, the young rescued Borg girl, gets a transmission from an alien claiming to be Lyndsay Ballard, a long-dead member of the Voyager crew. Harry and Janeway meet the alien in the sickbay where she recounts her ordeal - she and Harry were on an away mission when the Hirogen attacked. She was killed and buried at space. Her body was retrieved by the Kobali, who cannot reproduce and who, then, revive dead aliens. The Doctor confirms that her DNA has been actually altered, but that this is indeed Ballard. After she gained the trust of the Kobali, and was placed with a family, she escaped at her first chance and tracked down Voyager. The Doctor cannot revert her back to be human, but he does give her plastics that alter her appearance. Ballard and Harry reminisce about their friendship, and Harry starts to feel old, unrequited feelings well up. Though she has a few problems at first, such as unconsciously speaking Kobali, Ballard does well... but the Kobali, her adoptive father specifically, come looking for her. Janeway refuses to turn her over, and a Kobali warship attacks. Ballard stops the fight when she realizes that her dream of returning to Voyager was just a dream, and that she has a new life now, with the Kobali. Harry gives Mizoti Ballard's hair brush. Seven confides in Janeway that she is finding keeping tabs on the Borg children much more difficult than she imagined.

Child's Play Voyager finds Icheb's home planet, from whence he was taken by the Borg. The Brunali society is much battered by Borg attack, and they sustain themselves with genetically altered crops. Icheb was developing a penchant for astrometrics, and Seven is concerned that his parents Yifay and Leucon cannot properly teach him what he would like to learn. Icheb is also reluctant - Janeway invites his parents aboard to help him acclimate. After a meal with them, he seems to do better, though Seven is definitely suffering from separation anxiety. With his new training, Icheb could be a real asset to the Brunali; his father points out that despite Voyager's ability to explore, their main goal is to return home. He decides to stay. After Voyager leaves, Seven notes inconsistencies in some of Leucon's stories, and she convinces Janeway to turn back. Meanwhile, Yifay convinces Leucon that Icheb was created for a higher purpose, and they inject him with something. When Voyager arrives, a Brunali shuttle, carrying Icheb's drugged body, is on its way to a Borg conduit. A Borg vessel locks on to Icheb's ship and to Voyager, and pulls them in - but they escape by sacrificing the shuttle and blowing it up in side the ship. Seven learns the Icheb had been genetically engineered to infect the Borg with the pathogen they found on Icheb's Borg ship. They leave with him.

Good Shepard Upcoming

Live Fast and Prosper Upcoming

Muse Upcoming

Fury Upcoming

Life Line Upcoming

The Haunting of Deck 12 Upcoming

Unimatrix Zero (Part 1) Upcoming

Last Modified: 27 Sep 2000 Send comments to Steve Mount . SaltyRain is a trademark of Steve Mount.

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Recap / Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 2 Drone

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This episode provides examples of:

• This facet of Borg technology is what creates One. After a Teleporter accident swaps some of Seven's nanoprobes into the Doctor's 29th century mobile emitter, the nanoprobes find themselves in an unfamiliar environment and immediately set about adapting the technology to create a drone. The result is a Borg drone five centuries more advanced than anything in the current galaxy.
• This also works against the crew later. When Seven disables the beacon that would have alerted the Borg to One's presence, his implants respond by generating another.
• Attack Reflector : The Borg use a feedback pulse against Voyager's phasers.
• Even before then, Seven tries to warn One about what the Borg would do to him. His response? "They will fail."
• Book Ends : Seven of Nine looking into a mirror. The first time, she's practicing her smiles . The second time, she sees her own grief over One's death .
• Downer Ending : One dies from his injuries after destroying the Borg ship, and quite willingly on his part, as the collective knowing of his existence means Voyager would be in constant danger and assimilating a 29th century drone would make the Borg that much more powerful. Or as One puts it, "I should not exist." Seven is, obviously, heartbroken. Seven: You are hurting me! One: You will adapt.
• Express Delivery : A 29th-century Borg drone goes from tissue sample to fetus to full-grown adult in a day, much faster than even the standard Borg maturation chambers.
• Fanservice : B'Elanna has a Toplessness from the Back moment when she strips off for her sonic shower. Unfortunately only the Doctor sees her sexy front .
• Seven's suggestion to Tom about designing a larger shuttle leads to the creation of the Delta Flyer in "Extreme Risk".
• The Doctor is taking up holophotography, which becomes significant in "Latent Image".
• Harry mentioning that not even a Borg ship could survive inside the nebula.
• The Gadfly : Chakotay congratulates Ensign Kim on his running of the 'night' shift, then innocently asks if it's true he makes the crew call him "Captain Kim".
• Heroic Sacrifice : The drone sacrifices himself to destroy the Borg sphere and save Voyager .
• Heroic Suicide : Having been retrieved from the wreckage of the Borg sphere, One puts up a force field to prevent the Doctor from treating his critical injuries and allows himself to die. This is because he knows that his continued existence will put the Voyager crew in jeopardy, since the Borg will be determined to assimilate him.
• Hologram Projection Imperfection : Everyone is relieved at their Teleportation Rescue , until the Doctor starts flickering.
• How About a Smile? : Seven is practising her smiling when the Doctor barges into her Cargo Bay. He appears not to have noticed, until he asks her to pose for a group shot. "And smile...like I know you can."
• Infinite Supplies : They lost another shuttle (but this only incites them to build a bigger and tougher shuttle in a later episode).
• Ironic Echo : Seven is really feeling her humanity when One decides to make his Heroic Sacrifice . Before, when he almost broke her arm trying to assimilate as much information as possible, she said, "You are hurting me," and he relented. After the sphere blows up in the nebula, One is dying, and refusing the Doctor's treatment with his personal shields; as before, though with heretofore unseen emotion, she says, "You are hurting me..." But this time, the Armor refuses to be dented, as One says, with much affection, "You will adapt," and dies.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder : The Doctor: "I'm a doctor, not a peeping tom ."
• Locked Out of the Loop : Seven elects to avoid telling One about the Borg, in spite of his desire to learn. So, he decides to call them up himself and see what they're like...
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling : Seven wakes up the moment her Borg systems sense the proximity of other Borg systems. Chakotay thinks It's Probably Nothing , but agrees to scan the area for Borg. It happens again when Ensign Mulcahey is attacked. By that time Chakotay has realised the Borg is on the ship, and dispatches a well-armed security team.
• Naked Freak-Out : When the Doctor interrupts B'Elanna's sonic shower by turning on the two-way Video Phone while she's naked, she hurriedly covers herself with a Modesty Towel while the Doctor nonchalantly replies he's a doctor and she has nothing he hasn't seen before. She promptly throws the towel at the Video Phone in annoyance.
• Not a Morning Person : B'Elanna leaves the Doctor's emitter in the Science Lab so the computer can run a diagnostic on it. At exactly 0600 she's woken by an impatient Doctor who wants his emitter back as soon as possible. B'Elanna: ( Death Glare ) The one day...I get to sleep in... EMH: You're worried about a few more seconds of unconsciousness? My freedom is at stake!
• Oh, Crap! : Everyone on the bridge when One and then Seven start hearing the Collective calling to them. Fortunately, neither one gives in.
• Our Showers Are Different : In the future we will have sonic showers. With a two-way Video Phone . Gene Roddenberry would be proud.
• P.O.V. Cam : Once the Borg fetus is revealed, we get a green P.O.V shot of everyone peering in and discussing him, implying he's capable of understanding their speech even at that stage of development.
• Rousseau Was Right : When Seven first links with the (as yet) unnamed drone, he starts forcibly probing her memories and won't stop—until she says, "You are hurting me." He then disengages.
• Sickly Green Glow : Ensign Mulcahey enters the Science Lab and finds it glowing green. He grabs a tricorder and goes in for a closer look, only to get nabbed by a couple of Borg tubules. Fortunately he doesn't get assimilated; it was only taking a bio-sample.
• Some Kind of Force Field : One that deflects Harry's scans of the science lab. And has a Borg signature.
• Space Clouds : The proto-nebula.
• Status Quo Is God : The fact that One has the Doctor's mobile emitter in his brain means that he's basically doomed from the beginning.
• Super Prototype : While created by accident, One can be considered an advanced prototype, made using 29th century technology that makes him far more technologically advanced than anyone in the galaxy, Federation, Borg, or otherwise.
• Teleporter Accident : During an emergency transport, Seven's Borg nanoprobes get merged with the Doctor's mobile emitter. It could have been worse as B'Elanna fell on top of the Doctor during a Screen Shake — they could have had a half-Klingon holographic doctor!
• Teleporters and Transporters : One has this built into himself.
• Too Cool to Live : One determines that as long as he exists, Voyager will be a target of the Borg. So when he is critically injured, he refuses treatment, and allows himself to die.
• Tragic One-Shot Character : One.
• Tron Lines : One has these on his person.
• The Un-Smile : Seven is practicing her smiling .
• Uterine Replicator : Tuvok and Seven enter the Science Lab to find a Borg maturation chamber.
• Video Call Fail : But why would you put one in your sonic shower in the first place?
• Ensign Mulcahey, while he isn't killed, is never seen again after his DNA is sampled by the Borg technology. Seems very odd since he's technically the drone's father. He will be mentioned in three more episodes but not appear onscreen.
• After the plot starts to revolve around One, the Doctor's portable emitter gets only one brief mention. Since he has it back again in the following episodes though, it's logical to assume that they managed to retrieve it in an intact/repairable state out of One's corpse.
• Would Not Hurt A Child : Faced with either killing the rapidly-growing Borg baby or studying it, Janeway chooses the latter.
• You Are Number 6 : The drone is called One.
• Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 1 Night
• Recap/Star Trek: Voyager
• Star Trek Voyager S 5 E 3 Extreme Risk

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Star Trek: Voyager

“Drone”

Air date: 10/21/1998 Teleplay by Bryan Fuller and Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky Story by Bryan Fuller and Harry Doc Kloor Directed by Les Landau

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

"Maybe this is the collective's new strategy. They don't assimilate anymore, they just show up and look helpless." — Torres on the Borg

Review Text

Nutshell: Very intriguing and poignant. Voyager at its best.

"Drone" opens with Seven looking into a mirror, practicing her smile. This is a wonderful scene. It works on the "cute" level, but there's a lot going on under the surface. It's quite clear that her smile is completely superficial. Seven doesn't feel like smiling, and she can't "feel" the smile when she makes it. It's just there. And knowing that frustrates her. In 20 seconds, without a single line of dialog, "Drone" has already managed to say something interesting about Seven: She's trying, but she's just not there yet—and it may be quite some time before she is.

"Drone" is one of the classic type of "human" Star Trek stories. What does it mean to be human and to have feelings? Why do we consider certain values so important? What kind of sacrifices should we make to serve the greater good? All of these questions have been asked dozens if not hundreds of times through the years of the Trek canon, but "Drone" does it as well as some of the best of them.

Once again, it accomplishes this through an analysis of Seven and the Borg. Voyager has played these cards many times, but when they're played as well as they are here, I'm hardly in a position to complain.

In this case, a freak transporter mishap causes Doc's mobile emitter to malfunction. And somehow, when Seven touches it, some of her Borg nanoprobes fuse with the holo-emitter technology. A bizarre technological process spontaneously erupts, and before long, Doc's emitter is assimilated by the nanoprobes, which in turn assimilates a Voyager computer station, turning it into a Borg maturation chamber. The chamber steals a sample of an ensign's DNA, and presto—a Borg fetus. It's surprising how plausible the episode makes this techno-evolution all seem. And the episode's visual conception of this process is neat—creepy and weird, and also irresistibly intriguing. Because this new Borg is based partially upon the 29th-century technology in Doc's emitter, there's the frightening prospect that this will become a very advanced new form of Borg drone.

So what's the prudent course of action? Pull the plug? Terminate the Borg before it can become a threat? Possibly. But that certainly wouldn't be the human thing to do, and it most definitely isn't what Janeway is going to do. The plan is to allow it to develop; since it won't have access to the Borg collective, the Voyager crew can train it to adopt human values. Janeway puts Seven in charge of this endeavor.

"Drone" is a primarily Seven-oriented episode, but it utilizes the ensemble much better than a lot of single-character-heavy shows. If "Drone" and " Night " are any indication, Voyager is doing a better job of balancing the cast than last season. (But somebody please promote Harry to lieutenant, already. Now he's an ensign who's running the bridge at night, for crying out loud.)

This episode is a melding of sorts of TNG 's " The Offspring " and " I, Borg ," as well as Voyager 's " The Gift " from last season. It's not be the first episode of its kind, but who really cares? "Drone" is entertaining from beginning to end, working on every level—evoking mystery, fear, wonder, and eventually sympathy and pain.

The most noteworthy characteristic of "Drone" is that it made me care. Sure, some aspects of the story are more or less inevitable, but that didn't hurt the show because I felt for all parties involved in the plot—particularly Seven and the drone—and I was very caught up in the flow of the story.

Part of this arises out of the sense of amazement in watching this new Borg come to life. Within a day, it fully develops from fetus to adult. When Seven activates it, the drone is like an empty shell waiting for a set of instructions and a purpose—sort of like a computer with no operating system loaded. Being a Borg, the drone is able to assimilate information easily and quickly, which the crew provides in a manner that allows him to learn at an incredible pace.

J. Paul Boehmer, who plays the Borg drone, brings a detached sense of confused curiosity to the role, which proves immensely effective. He asks questions and is genuinely interested in learning the answers, but in some cases he doesn't understand the nature of the questions he asks or the answers he receives. He's extremely innocent, and certainly doesn't understand the nature of emotions, even though he obviously has them. But he's perceptive and is quick to clue in to the fact that people are nervous around him, as shown in a scene where he asks the Doctor, "Am I unwelcome here?"

Meanwhile, Seven helps him as best she can, but proceeds with caution when the subject of the Borg arises. There's that area of doubt—the question of whether the drone will seek out the collective if he learns about it. But as Janeway rightly says to Seven, they can't hide the nature of the Borg from him forever. The parent-child bond that begins to form between Seven and the drone (who adopts the appropriate name, "One") is quietly moving, especially the scene in the cargo bay where Seven shows One that he must regenerate in a Borg alcove. "Thank you," One tells her. Seven, caught off-guard, finds she can only repeat, "We must regenerate."

What's particularly interesting given this story's situation is that One is permitted the chance to become a very human, individualized Borg, unlike the individuals who are assimilated into the Borg collective and vanish into a hive bent on consuming everything it encounters.

When the moment comes when One must learn about the Borg collective, he exclaims, "I would like to experience the hive mind." The scene doesn't play out One's exclamation for us to fear, as one might initially expect. Rather, the scene as it unfolds demonstrates how Seven and the captain try to teach him about the nature of individuality, and how the Borg collective steals such individuality away from people forever. Slowly, they get through to him; One coming to grasp what it means to be an individual is a big part of "Drone's" appeal.

There's a significant action overture here, which also works on story terms, where the Borg collective learns of this drone's presence and sends a ship to intercept Voyager and assimilate him. What this demonstrates, alas, is the danger in adopting something so complex and inherently dangerous as a Borg. Even when the situation is seemingly controlled, an unknown variable can bring about disaster (in this case, One unknowingly sends a homing signal to the Borg). Before long, the Borg are looming in front of Voyager , spouting their usual threats of assimilation. The confrontation benefits from the typically impressive effects, including a spherical CG Borg ship.

Voyager 's fate ultimately hangs on a noble sacrifice on One's part, who beams himself aboard the Borg ship and, with the aid of his superior technology, is able to take control and destroy it from within. It's not so much the confrontation with the Borg ship that's important; it's One's sacrifice that hits home. Even after One miraculously survives the destruction of the Borg ship, he denies himself emergency surgery once beamed back aboard Voyager . He realizes that his existence—an accident, as he even acknowledges—will put Voyager in danger if the Borg ever learn he survived.

I was moved by One's selfless act; who would've conceived of a selfless, noble Borg individual? Equally impressive is Seven's reaction to this sacrifice—which for her is a personal loss. Jeri Ryan's performance is heartfelt and on-target, leading into a finale that has no words, but just a silent Seven staring into the mirror like she was at the story's beginning. It's very nice, allowing the moment to speak for itself rather than offering us overly obvious dialog.

This ending peers into Seven's mind. She may not be able to make a smile work yet, but Seven knows partially what it means to feel and to be human. That may not be a particularly new concept in itself, but it's the fact that we've made additional progress—a step forward—that really counts.

"Drone" epitomizes the broadest concepts of Star Trek in its most visible forms. Everything that has always made Trek so accessible and appealing—new types of alien intelligence, action and special effects, neat gadgets—can be found here. But there's also the deeper meanings, questions, and emotions—the ongoing character analysis, the broad strokes of wonder and tragedy, the contemplation upon what makes us human. "Drone" is like the perfect balance of a little of everything, and the story pulls it all off within an appealing, pleasant, and quietly exciting hour. It's one of Voyager 's best moments.

Next week: And one of the longest-standing Voyager mysteries is answered—how the crew goes about making new shuttles!

Previous episode: Night Next episode: Extreme Risk

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Comment Section

84 comments on this post, robert murphy.

I agree. This is a great moment in Voyager history. Although I never considered Voyager to be the best series in ST, this episode gave us a really good sci-fi story. I really wish they had given One a nice arc instead of a one off (lousy pun). This would probably have been too un-Voyagerlike, but I really think One deserved an arc. Of course he is too powerful to keep in the story forever, so they would have had to eventually kill him off, perhaps selflessly killing Borg, or some other threat, but that could come after the crew (and the viewers) got really attached to him over a longer period of time. It would have been much sadder and would have made this season a better one. There was so much potential in this One character -his parts are from the future! He is the strongest Borg alive, and he's on our side! So many cool things could have come from this concept. It's such a shame that it all ended in one show... but such is the way with Voyager... sigh.

This episode is similar to Tuvix. The transporter accidentally leads to a merger. The merger results in a new individual. In a very dramatic climax, the new individual is killed. At least this time Captain Janeway didn't murder the new individual, although that possibility was brought up during the episode.

Dirk Hartmann

I loved this episode. Actually, I even enjoyed it more the second time around because during the first time I watched it, I constantly feared that the story would eventually decline into a predictable "drone gets out of control, goes on a rampage and must be stopped" setting. Boy, am I glad it didn't!

This was a solid episode and the story played out well. The drone had to die at the end, he was simply too powerful not to overwhelm subsequent storylines by being more than a match for any challenges "Voyager" faced - presumably it wouldn't have taken him long to fix up transwarp drive for "Voyager" or figure out howto make "Quantum Slipstream" drive function. Still looks good in 2009. Classic "Voyager."

The setup required another transporter accident...sigh...but at least it serves the purpose of creating a good story, as opposed to, say, hyper-aging. Unfortunately, the Doctor continues to become more shrill and tedious with each passing episode. His utter petulance when he calls up Torres at dawn to find out about his mobile emitter is played for laughs, but it only served to annoy and remind viewers that the chain of command is quickly breaking down on this ship.

It's amazing that this episode, which in a way is quite derivative of TNG's "I, Borg", still somehow manages to be a masterpiece in its own right.

"Terminate the Borg before it can become a threat? Possibly. But that certainly wouldn't be the human thing to do, and it most definitely isn't what Janeway is going to do." I seem to remember a certain murder of Tuvix. That wasn't even a threat. Janeway just liked Tuvok and Neelix better.

People liked this? I thought it was just a copy of I, Borg. I could see the ending a mile off.

I've enjoyed watching Voyager, since about mid season 4, but it does like its lack of continuity. So in this episode, we see that the Doc's emitter is effectively inside the Drone's brain. So can we take it then that it is unserviceable? Nope, we need the Doc to be mobile again, so 2 episodes later, he has it at his disposal once more! Grr.

The biggest plot hole in this nonetheless enjoyable episode is the clear implication that since the Super Borg dies, the regular Borg lose interest in the mobile emitter. The twenty-fourth-century Borg would be interested in that emitter -- hell, interested in any twenty-ninth-century technology -- whether it's a standalone piece of equipment or whether it's embedded in the Super Borg's head. I can accept that they didn't know of its existence until they made contact with One, but now that they know about it they should be frantic to get their hands on it. We know from "First Contact" that the Borg have time-travel capability. I guess they're limited to going into the past; otherwise, they'd be traveling to the future to get all sorts of techno-goodies.

This wasn't bad, but don't think I'd have given it 4 stars. It seemed to use every cliché in the book, recycled a LOT of stuff and ended up with the usual Voyager reset button plotting (how convenient that the borg survived in a way that has never been known before, just long enough to get the mobile emitter back!) A little bit of amusement is how One's walk seems to match that of Kryten in Red Dwarf. Maybe they should have put him in charge of laundry :-) Don't know about how Janeway has become at this point. "Stubborn as a Klingon" is about right, but she didn't seem to rule out murder. "I'd *prefer* not to" isn't good enough and very unbecoming of a respected Starfleet captain IMHO! I'd taken Tuvix as a bit of a "forget about it, the writers weren't thinking" type episode, but to have that ruthless nature show up again, even if it wasn't acted upon... hmm. It did have its good points. Seven losing One (does that make her Six?!) was pretty powerful, and far more effective than Data losing Lal. I appreciate what the episode tried to do, and I didn't hate it like it sounds, but I'd struggle to give it this kind of glowing review. On another positive side, at least they had gone back to the concept of a manned transporter room. Poor Kim gets a break from being blamed for the Transporter Difficulty of the Week!

Seven says the Borg assimilate rather than reproducing in this fashion, but way back in Q-Who? they showed a nursery where Borg are born biologically and then immediately fitted with implants.

This episode was engaging and compelling, but no way was it a four-star effort. For me it was far too derivative of "I Borg" and I had a problem with the guy playing the Borg - while his delivery was often fine, he still played it far too 'cutesy' at times and his walk was hilarious - whenever he moved it was so obvious it was an actor trying hard to 'do the robot'. As someone said he walked like Kryten from Red Dwarf. I also wonder at Voyager's decision to make the Borg speak like regular humans - why didn't they use the vocoder effect they used on Locutus and Hugh, for example? That was highly effective and made the Borg seem more Borg. I also didn't buy the climax in this episode and One's self-sacrifice. Nothing in the story really justifies One's willingness to make sacrifice himself for the Voyager crew - it was obviously just done because the writers had backed themselves into a corner and had to end the story. As a result I found the climax lacked the emotional resonance it really thought it had. As I said, it was an engaging episode, but ultimately didn't quite work for me. 3 stars from me.

Although there were certain things I didn't like about this episode, I thought the portrayal of the borg was refreshing. Hugh from TNG was more like a wussy child, not an intimidating presence that could actually instill fear. Although One's movements were more robotic, he was a new drone and a new being... and I found the mouth and body movements helped to show this (move here, say this) as well as create unease and uncertainty of how he would react, would the borg side win over? Overall I wish this episode would have been split into two... things happened too quickly and made his quick development seem somewhat unbelievable and didn't allow long enough for the viewer to emotionally connect with him.

"now that (The Borg) know about (Doc's mobile emitter) they should be frantic to get their hands on it." @navamske, as far as The Borg are concerned One died in the sphere explosion and the emitter (even if they did know that *it* was responsible for his existence in the first place) was destroyed with him. "Nothing in the story really justifies One's willingness to sacrifice himself for the Voyager crew" @Iceblink, I disagree. When One assimilated all of the information he was given on humanity and human history, he learned about the concept of self-sacrifice. His interactions with the crew and his understanding of the inherent dangerousness of his own existence led him to make that sacrifice. "(this episode) seemed to use every cliché in the book" @Cloudane, in my mind that's one of the reasons it is such a great episode. It does use clichés, but the story is so powerful, it manages to transcend all of them. As Jammer said, there's a little bit of everything here that makes Trek what it is. In fact, episodes like this are why I watch Star Trek in the first place and continued to watch Voyager even during its worst days. I suffered through the boredom of the Kazon, the insanity of "Threshold," and the high-concept ridiculousness of "Demon" to get to episodes like "Drone." Occasional brilliance was inevitable with a cast this good and characters this interesting.

The whole time I was watching this, I was waiting for One to meet his "father". One's biological component is based on a *member of Voyager's crew*. That could have serviced the story and One's character development in so many ways.

I'm wondering why B'Ehlanna would have a towel next to a sonic shower...there's nothing to dry afterwards...

A great episode. The best scene was when One transported into the Borg sphere and pwned the 2 Borg drones who tried to stop him. That was hilarious.

@Jay - good point it should have been a robe instead of a towel. But the scene bothered me. "Look we can sexually exploit another actress in the series..."

Forget the absurdity of these magical nanoprobes creating a new living being etc... How about the thought of the doctor frantically ripping into the drones skull to remove his mobile emitter... Thats entertainment....

I too noted the plot holes and derivative nature of the show but at the end when One dies, I got choked up. This story was emotionally compelling and that's good enough for me.

Wonderful Star Trek. Easily 4 stars. SEVEN: You must comply. Please, you are hurting me. ONE: You will adapt. snif...snif...

One was only dying on his human biological side. What happened to Seven's Borg technology that can revive a dead person "up to 72 hours after death" like she did for Neelix?

Alessandro17

I am watching again Voyager. It was the first complete series I watched about 8 years ago. Well, what to say? Drone is a refreshing change from Voyager's dominant theme: the evil alien. At list in DS9 there was only one relentless villain, the Dominion. In Voyager, from the Kazon to the Malon (that is what I am watching now) they are all bad guys. Even the good ones have something "wrong". In this episode "humanity" shamelessly wins over other considerations. Best episode thus far.

Overall a pretty good episode, another nice vehicle for Seven to demonstrate progress on her journey to rejoining the human race. Gotta agree with others that the plot was incredibly derivative, with the ending fully predictable lightyears away. When one considers the disastrous previous encounters with the borg, galaxy wide battles with hundreds of cubes and millions of drones, Janeway should have aborted the drone fetus in a heart beat. For the sake of the ship and crew, how suicidal is she to take on such a risk? Indeed, the drone ended up summoning a borg sphere. That said, Tuvix was a more compelling 'transporter malfunction' episode, mainly because it forced the Voyager crew (particularly Janeway) to make a moral decision on behalf of a new lifeform - that choice being forced euthanasia. --- or was it cold blooded murder? Depends on your point of view. In Drone, we get noble self-sacrifice, not unlike Spock in Star Trek II. Though obviously the ending was necessary for the sake of continuity of voyager, it failed to bring anything new to the moral universe of star trek - it merely reinforced well trodden tropes. Furthermore, at no point in the episode did actions of the crew have any meaningful impact on the course of events - they were just extraneous window-dressing. However, Seven did learn yet another consequence of being human, suffering emotional loss. A longer denouement could have fleshed out these new emotional scars.

Holy Trek. Aside from the very implausible, silly, ludicrous explanation for how One was "born", the rest of the episode was pure joy to watch. Oh mine, it is amazing how much Seven has added to this show. The final of the episode, the dialogue, and how it builds upon Seven's contexto is just really really good. I also enjoyed quite a lot the portrayal of One, as well as the actíng behind him. They ressembled the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, in the way he moved, talked and, most touching, both the facial expressions in between machine and human and the way he looked at the others. Loved this one.

I loved this episode. This one really shined, and is by far one of my favorites of Voyager. ST VOY really should have had many more episodes along these lines (not necessarily with the Borg, but overall). Although they had Geordi make a cameo appearance for the episode: Timeless, and DeLance reprise his role as The Q between Barkley here or there, what Voyager really needed was an appearance of Commander Data (perhaps even Lore) in the Delta quadrant. What a trip that would have been if of all things, Lore had to teach the drone the aspects of NOT being evil having learned lessons from Data and others...between Seven of Nine trying to be a mother to One. Honestly though, I think that they should have saved One until the end and combined his existence with Endgame for the most powerful season finale / Star Trek ending ever. Could you imagine what it would have been like for One and Admiral Janeway to have teamed up and worked together to jump from one Borg ship to the next before encountering and doing a final Battle with the Borg Queen? And although Admiral Janeway manages to save the lives of the crew, Seven and the Voyager crew are able to return to earth and survive not just because of Admiral Janeway's sacrifice...but also because of One's. Seven then would have to deal with knowing that One was gone, but his sacrifice was to get them home as well as to save their lives with Admiral Janeway. The end of the story could have shown Seven of Nine looking in that exact same mirror at the end, only on Earth as the final scene after they made it home...and as the last human on Voyager before she steps out onto the planet for the first time since she was a child herself. What do you think? Would that have been too haunting to end the show with and final season?

I found this to be just a redo of "I, Borg" with better special effects and less compelling drama. The whole process of growing the Borg out of stolen cells seemed too contrived for me. The actors depiction of the Borg just wasn't convincing either - a far cry from the mechanical and chilling performances of the TNG era Borg.

Well I thought Janeway had completely lost her marbles, the most advanced borg ever, clearly a dangerous threat to the ship and everyone in it and she decides to let it live.

I thought One's decision to resist the Borg was completely unearned by the plot. He spends a few days with the Voyager crew and suddenly he's willing to die for them? He has no human sense of morality, so I don't see how he could be so moved by the plight of those that the Borg assimilate. When he finally learned the Borg's history he reacted to it the way a human being would, but he's not a human being. When he finally made contact with them it would have made far more sense for him to embrace them rather than fight them. The greater problem though, is that the episode was sappy. I thought the same thing about "I, Borg". Episodes like this serve to neuter the Borg as adversaries. I will say that Jeri Ryan was enjoyable to watch as always though, and like T'Pol on Enterprise, she's my favorite part of this show. Even

I enjoyed the episode, even though the origins of the drone were a bit of a stretch. Still, I'm willing to let it slide as it was obviously just a set up to get to the story. If it takes a rather implausible set of coincidences to get to a story as decent as this, I'm okay with that. I was initially thinking the story would rapidly devolve into the predictable tedious Borg drone runs amok and causes general mayhem kind of stories, but I'm glad they decided to go the other way. It was for the better. I don't think it detracts from the threat of the Borg as a dangerous adversary, since One is a unique instance who is completely detached from the collective. He was a freak accident. As is getting to be the routine, it was another Seven of Nine focused episode, but like I already said. Voyager has very few characters interesting enough to work with, so if that means they have to rely heavily on the most interesting one to carry the show, then so be it. I do tire of it sometimes, but it's better then seeing episodes focused around characters that don't really grow or change. That's looking at you, Neelix and Harry, who are still mostly the same now as they were in season 1. At least Seven grows and changes over the course of the show. And although she's not the only one to do so, she is one of the more interesting ones.

There was one small detail I really liked that no one's mentioned yet: the EMH was justifiably hurt and upset at the possibility of being locked in one small sickbay 24/7 again forever, which we know he finds lonely and distressing. But he never said or even implied anything about that to grown-up One (who was certainly perceptive enough to ask if the rest of the crew didn't like him), and the latter had to literally force EMH to stop trying to save his life at the end. Doc's quality of life was going to drop like a rock without his emitter for the duration of however long One would have lived. Fussing at Torres early on was one (funny) thing, but once One became aware Doc never did anything to make him feel bad about being born. I thought that was really kind and a quiet statement about how far the EMH has come as a person, even though this was mainly a Seven episode.

The ensign at the beginning of the episode was really hot, i would have enjoyed this unoriginal story alot more if he'd had a bigger part

Jay - Sat, Jan 29, 2011 - 12:52pm (USA Central) "Seven says the Borg assimilate rather than reproducing in this fashion, but way back in Q-Who? they showed a nursery where Borg are born biologically and then immediately fitted with implants." That's not true. That was just Riker's flawed interpretation of things. Most likely, those babies in Q Who were kidnapped from another species and in the process of being assimilated.

skadoo - Wed, Jul 10, 2013 - 11:43am (USA Central) "@Jay - good point it should have been a robe instead of a towel. But the scene bothered me. "Look we can sexually exploit another actress in the series..." Sigh. What makes you think it had anything to do with any type of disrespectful sexual exploitation? Would you say the same thing if it were a naked Neelix? Sorry for the imagery, but damn, it was only meant to be a funny scene with the doctor showing how he wants his emitter back, only to contrast that with his positive attitude to One, thus implying that the doctor is a really good person. That scene had nothing to do with exploiting women. I swear, some of you people are just so negative about sex.

Another hum drum episode. Agreed that I, Borg had already covered similar territory. Didn't even matter if the Doc's holo-emitter was futuristic and never assimilated by the Borg till now. It still felt too derivative. And maybe it's also because I was nonplussed with that ep on TNG, too. The borg are at their best when they are shown as totalitarian, take no prisoners and being cold-bloodedly efficient with their lifeless execution of getting things done. No talking, no useless wasting of energy. These eps I guess are to try to soften them (yet again). Something Voyager did till Endgame in which by then they were all but impotent. And I thought I was the only one who noticed B'elanna had a towel for a sonic shower. Which made zero sense. For the scene, maybe. 2 stars is all I could muster for this one.

As I was watching this episode, it occurred to me that instead of showing this advanced drone around the ship and giving him a tour of the mess hall, they probably should have just handed him a rusted out transwarp coil from one of the borg wrecks they salvaged, a screwdriver, and said "here, make this work" and then given him an afternoon to get them home to the Alpha quadrant. You'd think the crew would have learned by now that characters like that don't stick around for long and you gotta put'em to work while you can.

icarus32soar

A being resulting from "an accidental convergence of technologies" grows to show more nobility and sense of self-sacrifice for the greater good than all of the rules of the almighty Federation put together. What dramatic irony that the most advanced Borg conceivable displays the greatest sense of moral individual decision making. WOW ten times over. A singularly great hour of sci-fi cinematic excellence.

Diamond Dave

Strong episode, but in the end I found it to be slightly too derivative of I, Borg to get the top marks. But that aside, this is a really intelligent character piece for Seven and provides both a thought-provoking and exciting hour's viewing. The concept of the 'future-Borg' was also an inventive and intriguing one. 3.5 stars.

Just watched this one again last night. If I may, .... on little nit pick? You'd think that the creation of Borg technology on board in a science lab might set off some sort of alarm? :-) But this one was a gem. Couple thoughts from this one. Seven goes from "We can still terminate it, but we must act quickly." to "You are hurting me" .... powerful stuff. I just love when One meets Janeway... "One?" :-) I thought the Torres meeting in Engineering was funny too. "You get a gold star" :-) SEVEN: You have assimilated enough for one day. :-) I'm a sap for the ending... it gets me every time. Jeri's performance throughout is awesome and J. Paul Boehmer was outstanding as our futuristic Borg Drone as well. Do we ever hear about Mulcahey again? I can't remember. One of Voyager's finest. Punn intended :-)

For all the similarities with "I, Borg," I think this episode has the most in common with "The Offspring," in which Data creates and then loses his daughter, Lal. Even the scene with the as-yet-unnamed drone waddling down the corridor as crewmembers do double takes, and especially noticing a human female, is reminiscent of the new android before it gets a human appearance. The overarching story in each is virtually identical: The character who epitomizes emotionless logic striving toward humanity gets a "child" who becomes more human than the "parent," and that very breakthrough leads to the "child's" death, ultimately "humanizing" the regular character.

This was a decent episode, but I thought it was a rip-off of I, Borg and a few other Trek episodes which I feel were done better. I even saw similarities to Tripp's clone. It also underscores how Janeway flip-flops. She'll kill Tuvix, a man who is begging not to die, but won't "pull the plug" on an embryo that could end up giving the Borg access to 29th Century technology. "let's see what happens." Really? Not a five star episode for me.

I meant "4 star." Forgot which rating system We're using.

As Janeway pointed out, we went through this with Seven. Predictable ending (***)

I have to say, having just binge watched the entire series again after not having seen it since the original run. This is one of the their best episodes. I too wish that One would of had a longer arc story wise. The actor played him very well and I wanted him to live. I am loving this show more than I remembered from the first time. I was a big fan orginally too.

@Yanks - I agree totally. Seven's "you're hurting me" was really poignant. Jeri Ryan may be great eye candy but I can't imagine anyone doing a better job as seven. She consistently nails it. One of my favourite voyager eps.

A decent episode, but Torres seems to have reverted here to the more surly behavior she had in the early seasons...it seemed out of place here and a bit distracting.

Another transporter accident, those things are dangerous!!! :) I've always thought that borg episodes, doctor episodes, and seven episodes are my favourites. This has all three! Five stars out of four!

I'd caught the tail end of this one a couple of years ago, so I knew how it resolved going in, but it was somewhat better than I'd expected. Agree that it's a mashup of "I, Borg" and "The Offspring", and that it combines three whiz-bang improbable, problem-spewing Treknologies (transporters, Borg nanoprobes and the mobile emitter) into a single ridiculous result (One), but they *almost* pull the thing off, and Jeri Ryan is dynamite as 7 (once again). The biggest problem with the episode is there just isn't enough time for One to become enough of a part of the crew for his actions - or 7's reaction - to make much sense. They probably should have skipped the silliness with the nebula and began the episode with 7 trying to fix the Doctor's malfunctioning mobile emitter with nanoprobes. It would have appeared to have been a success, and 7 would have left it overnight in the science lab for a full diagnostic - right before the credits rolled we'd have seen it do its Borg thing... Either that or expand "Drone" to a two parter, or even a loosely-connected set of "One" themed episodes. They could have been in the process of slowly removing what implants they could as they tried to make One more human, somewhere along the line triggering the regeneration of his signaling apparatus. Or maybe they'd have just encountered the Borg in some other unrelated circumstance and One could have sacrificed himself as part of an attempt to defeat them... The final bit with One's death and Jeri Ryan's last scene was excellent - really powerful stuff - but it's unfortunate the process of getting there was somewhat unoriginal, uneven and terribly rushed. Unfortunately that describes most of the better Voyager episodes - this franchise really needed new blood, and instead Paramount let the same tired hacks run it straight into the ground.

This was a great episode. Seven's words and expressions as One let himself die were tear-jerking. That being said, I wanted to make three nitpicks: 1. The death or removal of One was too telegraphed from the beginning. I literally had the thought, "This guy is too powerful. He gives them and easy way out of everything. He has the mobile emitter in his head. They are so going to kill him at the end of this." 2. You would think by now that the standard procedure for evaluating any kind of explosive/expansive stellar phenomenon is NOT to do it in a shuttle! Jesus Christ these idiots don't deserve to survive. It's so frustrating that it makes it harder to suspend my disbelief. 3. Not a nitpick, but can you imagine what it must've been like for the Doctor to remove his emitter from One's head?

I admit I was surprised by the number of negative opinions registered here. Was the episode, at least in part, derivative? Sure. But then, the argument has been well made that there haven't been original stories for millennia, certainly in the broad, central themes and governing principles. Was it predictable? Well, clearly the answer for some was yes, but I've always found the question a bit foreign. I've never been the "type of person" (ung...what a problmatic expression) that found much to be predictable. I get caught up in the story and my mind is usually too occupied watching emotions play on faces, listening to the score, etc., to even consider what will happen later. Mind you, many friends do find themselves outside the story, and a few even babble their predictions in real time, usually announced triumphantly, and sometimes spoiling it for me. And if a story is truly terrible, I may do the same. In general, though, I am lucky enough (or stupid enough ) to bob along with the moment, so predictability is not an issue. Why did several people decide the origin of "One" was outlandish? Borg nano probes, if they do anything at all, create (and maintain) more Borg - using whatever resources are available. That's why they exist. If they found themselves suddenly exposed to a new, resource-rich environment, what else WOULD they do? Combined with advanced technology, but short on the biological material with which they are programmed to merge, why was sampling the first living tissue they encoutered a stretch? I don't mean any disprespect, but the many arguments dismissing One's creation seem almost, well, bizarre. Most of the cast had some strong, small moments. I like Robert Beltran (he is too often underrated) and I love his big smile, which whetever else you might say about him, is never deployed unearned. Even Wang has a nice showing, conveying just the right note when he announces One is still alive in the Borg Sphere debris field. Jeri Ryan was, as she so often is, amazing. She and ( drat - I can't recall his name- ung SORRY very good actor who also played a creepily-convincing holodeck Nazi in another Voyager episode!) One had visible chemistry (as actors, like Hopkins and Foster, or Shanks and Dean-Anderson, or Varney and Gabriel ) and when One dies, it is quite profitable to watch Ryan's face closely, as the director clealy intends. Stewart was , and is, in league of his own in the entire Trek universe, and beyond, at being able convey the full range human emotions, sometimes many simultaneously, without saying a word. Nimoy was also amazing at this, as is Mulgrew, on many occasions, and Brooks on several. Jeri Ryan can, likewise, project an internal experience with remarkable skill, and Sevens' arc from beginning to end, from cautious fascination to parental pride to deeper investment to the shock and grief of loss, plays across her face with moving conviction. There are probably a hundred little moments, but one example has the Doctor (in one of HIS strong moments) say to Seven, on One's death, that he is sorry. Seven jumps as if startled - just the sound of another voice rips her from her stunned instant of bewildering loss. That is great, internal acting; she is RIGHT THERE and we feel it. So, with respect, for these and many more reasons, this a great episode. p.s. Petulant, I couldn't agree more. If they had at some point used Todd Babcock again, I would have been very happy.

I'm re-watching this ep today. While I agree with many here that this was an outstanding episode, one thing gnawed at me and distracted me throughout the entire episode. Mulchaey's DNA was used to create One, yet we hear nothing from him later. Technically, he's the drone's father, right? Yet no one ever consulted him about One's role or destiny or whatever you want to call it? (I swear I am not trying to turn this into a political/moral conversation, lol) I liked the actor and think he should have had a voice equal to Seven's.

While definitely recycling ideas from other episodes, I would say this one falls into "an old story well-told" category. Could be because I think I might have a soft spot for stories about weird motherhood. I was worried how were they going to handle the inevitable exit of One. We know he has to go and him heroically sacreficing himself would be particulary generic way to go and I was prepared to be disappointed when he blew up with the sphere. And then he beams back and comits suicide right before Seven. What a gut punch. I also give credit for bring back the Borg but keeping them extremely dangerous. Thank god they used a sphere and not a cube.

Outstanding episode - really great acting by Jeri Ryan for 7 of 9. You can see the emotion in her and how she struggles with it from start to finish. "Drone" made me care despite some wild sci-fi that stretches the realm of believability. In the end, some of the loopholes didn't matter because we have an intensely compelling and poignant story. The early part of it really reminded me of Frankenstein. I expected the new Borg drone to go on some kind of rampage, maybe get 7 on his side, and that Janeway was being foolish putting 7 in charge. But 7 developed motherly instincts and the Borg drone identified with the crew and its individuality. When the Borg sphere came calling, the episode really picked up. There's a moment of doubt where you wonder if the call of the Borg will convert the new Borg drone. Again, for me, there's no enemy like the Borg -- their presence automatically makes you take notice. Really great review written by Jammer too, which I wholeheartedly agree with. This is a good episode for the ongoing arc of 7 of 9 learning to be human. There was the early part where the doctor is training her to make conversation with Torres and Kim and that goes wrong, the part with her learning to smile -- all little things that feed into the greater story of her emotions at the end. As for the Borg drone itself, yes, it is a lot like the TNG terrific episode "I, Borg" but this one still really worked for me. The whole creation of the new Borg drone was quite a stroke of creativity to come up with a way to conceive of a 29th century Borg drone -- but I didn't care about the huge stretch of believability because here we have a compelling and very poignant ending. 4 stars for "Drone". 7 of 9 is such a better character than Kes (and most of the others on the ship). I'd have to assume the 29th century Borg drone has that added dimension to its thinking to realize it's better off dead than alive as far as the Borg threat to the Voyager crew -- so it has empathy and can make the ultimate sacrifice.

Here I go again... finding myself agreeing with Seven when she disagrees with Janeway about the latter's decision not to terminate the drone.. It seems Seven knows more about humanity and the consequences of playing God better than Janeway. Again, Janeway makes a decision on behalf of the Borg drone to make him develop in her image of what he should become in the same way she did with Seven, nine months ago (in fact, that was the core of Seven's argument back then. It's a consistent pattern. Great job by the guest actor Boehmer playing the drone. And kudos to Jeri Ryan for how well ahe expressed her desperation in her final dialogue with One. Great beginning and ending shots also. The fake smile, and the real sadness. Priceless.

Prince of Space

All I’ve learned from reading these comments to a really enjoyable Voyager episode is that everyone likes saying the word “derivative.” Half of the people that say it do so so smugly that you can almost hear them rubbing their chins afterwards while admiring their handiwork. So impressive... no, really. Great episode, a textbook example of what decent Trek writing can accomplish. Keyboard wanna-be script writers pounding out the word derivative should be assimilated.

Did anyone notice one of the random security guards chewing gum when Janeway confronted the drone about the transmission?

Startrekwatcher

2-2.5 stars I didn’t think much of this one A 29th century drone was intriguing but it really wasn’t put to much use and I didn’t feel much of anything even though the episode tried hard at pulling at the heartstrings. This was a poor rehash Of the much better TNG” The Offspring”

As with Timeless, I want to state outfront that I like this a lot and think highly of it. And yet I'm still going to go straight to criticisms, ha! I guess the main thing I want to talk about is the fact that I felt my emotional engagement is not where it "should have been" for this story, and I'm curious as to why that is. I don't know if I will, but I wouldn't mind revisiting this one to see how I feel on another viewing. But I think this time (and also the first time I saw it all those years ago), I found it interesting but too rushed to get as involved as I feel I should be. There isn't enough time for the full arc of One's creation, evolution, and death, as well as Seven's rapidly changing views of him, as well as the Borg threat which, let's note, is the first time the show has seriously played the card of the presence of the Borg for real since Kes got them out of Borg space in The Gift. It's a lot to take in, and the emotional beats feel a bit unearned because there just isn't time enough to relax with the characters and understand what "normal" actually constitutes for them, at least for me. The episode has some I, Borg elements, but mostly I think it's strongly reminiscent of episodes like The Offspring in TNG and The Begotten on DS9. And I had a bit of a similar issue tracking The Offspring emotionally. I'd say though that the difference -- and why I think The Offspring is a great episode and I'm not so sure if I'd say that about Drone (though I know that Jammer's ratings are reversed) -- is that The Offspring is very forthright about the emotional distance that it creates. No one knows what to make of Lal and of Data's parenthood, and Data and Lal lack emotions, at least for most of the story's running time. The bizarreness of the situation, including the accelerated "growth" of Lal (emerging essentially fully formed once she chooses her appearance) is put front-and-centre, and also becomes part of the justification for Haftel's intervention -- how can we know what the parental bond between Data and Lal should look like? We are in totally uncharted territory, and I think we are led to feel uneasy about things (right from the beginning, where Geordi, Wesley and Deanna are a little spooked by Data's reveal of his private project, and it's hard to tell how much he recognizes the weight of what he is doing, though ultimately I think he does). And further, if I feel somewhat bewildered at the end of the episode and am not sure how to process all my feelings, this seems appropriate, and also further underscores what's unique about Data -- the way he somehow both is and is not changed by the event, that he's taken Lal completely into himself but can also plausibly outwardly go on as if nothing has happened, rather than having a long recovery arc for the loss of a child. The weirdness and uncomfortable speed with which all this takes place is part of the point, and gets to something that is at the core of Data's character and of what the main justification might be for objecting to Data procreating -- that he is unpredictable and hard for us mere humanoids to fully see and connect to, though I think the episode also strongly argues in favour of what he does for Lal. Now I won't deny that Drone also successfully emphasizes the weirdness of One's status and of Borg relationships, such as they are, and the uniqueness of his experience, but the way it comes about as a freak accident ends up meaning a little less about Seven, in comparison, and I'm not so sure that the hyper-speed movement through her essentially getting and losing a super-advanced adult child who can outmaneuver the Borg collective is necessary or organic to the character. The way The Begotten worked was by being less ambitious and covering less in the hour -- focusing on the Odo/Mora dynamic and the possibilities opened by the baby changeling, but without feeling the need to accelerate it to be an adult of Odo's that he bonds with and loses; the tragedy is still present, but it is somewhat muted because the story doesn't push us to see the baby changeling as a sentient, fully-formed being or to push Odo to interact with it as such. The episode is in some ways more like TNG's The Child, an episode of which I'm not a fan, though having One be a freak accident is preferable to it being an experiment the way Troi's pregnancy and Ian Andrew's brief life was there. This episode is better executed in almost every way, but it does leave me similarly unsure how I feel, and maybe a little weird about feeling like I was manipulated. At the same time, I'm not *against* what the episode did (the way I was against The Child). I think if I can get into the episode's rhythms I might really enjoy it and be moved by it.

I don't see how a storage device/emitter for holograms, even if it's from the future, would lead to a borg that can modify Voyager's shields and weapons and be able to totally overcome a borg ship all by itself. And why is there a viewscreen in Torres' bathroom? And if so why would it be able to be activated by someone from the outside? Whoever designed Voyager must have been a peeping tom. Good episode though. Best one since 'Prey' if you ask me. 3 stars.

I Hate Janeway

Janeway: "Let's create a new Borg with 29th Century technology. What could possibly go wrong?" Seven of Nine: [Explains everything that could go wrong.] Janeway: Well we can't MURDER this unborn drone just because it might save billions of lives. That would be immoral of me.

And a few episodes later: Harry Kim: We've encountered a pre-warp planet with a billion people that will be destroyed by a plague. Emergency Medical Hologram: No problem, we can give them some advanced technology that will let them cure the plague. Janeway: We can't do that, that would violate the Prime Directive. Let them all die! Lieutenant Paris, take us out of here, maximum warp!

RandomThoughts

Hello Everyone! I just hit this one again on my re-watch, and was pleasantly surprised as, once again, I had forgotten much of it. My thoughts, in no particular order: When One is getting his first injection of information, they keep the shot on his face, and it really struck me as his mouth dropped open slightly, and a look of awe crept in. I really liked how Boehmer acted here, and throughout. As others mentioned, I also noticed when Doctor didn't say one bad thing about his emitter being in One (not even a slightly snarky comment), once One was up and about. It was as if he was just simply pleased to see this somewhat new lifeform, with a big smile when he scanned him. And I figured right then that One would be able to construct a new emitter eventually, some day down the road. I never thought the Borg would really grow their own children (unless they had an idea about how to do something better), but my thought was if the Borg assimilated a unwilling participant who was with child, they'd keep the baby and grow him/her as Borg. Out of a population of millions or billions, there'd be quite a few babies around as well, and they'd just keep them too, so long as it was efficient to grow them. We already know they kept children, since Seven was young when assimilated. We saw in the brig of the Enterprise that there was water for the sink in TNG episode "The Hunted". Perhaps they usually use a sonic shower, but do use some water sometimes and thus, a towel. As much as I liked the episode, it sure seemed to be moving fast. I agree that parts of it could have been spread out over two or three. I really liked Neelix interacting with One in the corridor. He just seemed like the perfect sentient to be helping him right there. Although I did feel that Neelix accepted him rather quickly, with no apparent trepidation (see previous comment). When they were in engineering, and One came up with the algorithm, my first thought was Seven just realized she wasn't going to be the first stop for complicated problems any more. I don't know what her face was supposed to convey then, but I didn't read pride or satisfaction, more like "Oh crud, he's just out-done me". We now know that no matter what they do to their weapons or shields they cannot be upgraded any higher than they are now, to be able to defeat a Borg ship. I'd think One's overclocking the systems would probably stick (heh, but you know... Voyager), but they would obviously need to upgrade their capabilities. In all fairness, they did show them attempting to do that a few episodes ago in "Retrospect", but this should show them they need to go much further than they have. In their current state, if One couldn't get weapons or shields any higher than that, no one can. Lastly, One had multi-phasic shields up, or some such thing, after he destroyed the sphere, and the first thing Janeway says is "Get a lock on him!". Would they be able to? I think that's about it. Thanks for your time and have a great day... RT

If you pick away at an episode for long enough you can come up with enough plot holes and things to complain about to ruin it for yourself. I think Jammer hit the right note with it's an enjoyable hour of trek. I did agree with one of the commenters that One should have had Two...episodes, that is. Obviously, he was too advanced to remain on board but making him a two episode character would have been completely unexpected and given a lot of opportunities to flesh out the character and integrate him into the series. I'm reminded of Battlestar Galactica, where everyone expected the second battlestar to buy it immediately, but surprisingly was integrated into the series for weeks. A similar unexpected addition, for at least a second episode, would have been a fresh aspect to treks usually too episodic nature. Nevertheless, yeah, it's 4 stars.

Brought a tear to my eye, at the end. A well done episode, with subtle and overt adaption (to her humanity) for Seven. Voyager at its best is the best. As a whole, the characters are the most compelling, which is central to me, for enjoying a series.

Sean Hagins

Maybe this is just my macabre sense of humour, but as soon as Seven left sickbay in despair after One dies, I could see the Doctor going, "Well, I guess he won't need this anymore!" and cheerfully pulling out his mobile emitter

Jeffrey Jakucyk

I don't buy all the derivative/ripoff comments, this episode is way too good to be levying such criticisms. Yes there's elements of those other shows, but that doesn't make it a ripoff. This is a standout hour of television, one of my favorites of the whole franchise. It's not one that I normally think about, compared to Yesterday's Enterprise, Best of Both Worlds, or In the Pale Moonlight, but it should be. It's one of those episodes where I think "oh yes, THIS one!" when it comes up in my rotation, and that's rare. I am surprised that nobody has brought up DS9's The Abandoned. That episode has a lot of similarities in that it's about a baby Jem'Hadar being raised (or attempting to be raised) by Odo. He tries to instill his values, but the kid's nature is in conflict with that. He wants to learn about his people, just like One does. Yes the path is different, and in the end Odo fails to get through to the Jem'Hadar kid while Voyager's crew succeeds in getting through to One, and that is encouraging. I really love Boehmer's acting. He brings a robotic but also child-like quality to the character which is both endearing and threatening. He really sells the character and gets us invested in him. 7: You must comply. 1: I will NOT! 7: You must comply. Please. You are hurting me. 1: You will adapt. Outstanding. The PoV shot from inside the maturation chamber, watching Janeway and the others discussing what to do is an excellent touch as well. It's not the first time we've seen something like that, but it's pretty rare, and I really enjoy it here.

Meh. This was 2 stars at best. Watchable, but I have no idea why so many of you liked it. It's yet another "exploration" of a Borg being an individual, and as such is entirely predictable. Borg is born (by the way, Seven said that this isn't the way Borg are born, yet in the VERY FIRST Borg episode in TNG, Riker uncovers a Borg baby in a maturation chamber...), Borg assimilates knowledge, Borg realizes "being an individual" is important (why? why is the idea that being in the collective is better never explored?), Borg sphere approaches Voyager, viewer is completely relaxed because Voyager always beats the Borg through some deus ex machina, and surprise surprise the sphere is destroyed because apparently 1 Borg with some future technology can effortlessly outwit a million Borg on a space vessel. I hate the way they dealt with the Borg throughout Voyager. They took them from being a menacing enemy to being a wimpy collective that one never felt any fear of whatsoever. Everything in this episode felt rushed and by-the-numbers. Most of it revolved around focusing on Seven as she "showed her emotion" about her "accidental Borg child" during different stages of its development. Big wow. Couldn't care less. Nothing particularly new or interesting. There's only so much exploration of individuality you can do until it becomes boring (they had Huw in TNG, and then of course Seven, and probably a few I've forgotten - what is the point in this episode, again?) It would be far more interesting if they did a story from an assimilated Borg's point of view, being offered individuality by Voyager and rejecting it, preferring to be part of the collective. But no, individuality is always better (possibly because everything is being seen from the POV of individuals...?) Just Another Borg Episode. 4 stars? You've gotta be joking.

Sleeper Agent

Great episode! Although I like the precious "Night" better, this one certainly had a lot of entertaining elements including a great guest star, amazing make up and effects, and a thrilling story which had you (kind of) guessing 'til the end. What I find curious is the sudden appearance of a Borg SPHERE. Did I miss something or have the collective suddenly developed a new model of ships? As the crew seem astonishingly blasé about it when it appears, I am leaning to the former. On another note, I've noticed that the better VOY gets, the more bitter the comments. H8rs gonna h8, I guess....

Simon Blake

Among my favourite episodes, mainly for two lines that REALLY stick in my memory even 20 years on: First, when One volunteers to go over to the Borg ship, Seven warns "They will try to assimilate you." One makes the slightest of head movements which nevertheless CLEARLY conveys the sentiment "bitch, please", and simply says "They will fail." Brilliant. And second when the "You are hurting me" line repetition pays off with "You will adapt." That is absolutely lovely and brings a tear to my eye as I'm typing this. Five stars just for getting to those two lines.

The “You will adapt” line gets me every time,, especially used after Seven’s “You are hurting me” line, which she thinks will work a second time. Heartbreaking. Some lovely cinematography in the episode too.

First. I just have to say how much I enjoy seeing these comments continue so many years after the show aired, wow!! I think what bothered me the most is how, despite ONE being the literal child of that ensign (not by choice, but still) his father was not at all included in any moment or aspect of One’s existence thereafter. IT’S HIS KID, DAMMIT—not Seven’s (unless, given her nanoprobes’ envolvement, maybe One is the child of both? Sure, maybe the ensign would choose not to connect with his offspring—but them SHOW this, onscreen! And I would understand how, for security reasons, Janeway would need to terminate his parental rights, given that executive leadership capacity would be required here. But again, if that’s the case, SHOW THIS. On another note - an idea, not a critique - it could have been interesting if the holo-emitter (either initially, or later, after One’s death) somehow recognized the Doctor as a “being” to assimilate, not just a program. Perhaps a 29th Century tech attribute. Imagine if Borg technology then adapted to assimilate holographic “life”—and assimilate the Doc! ;)

This episode holds sentimental value for me because when it first premiered, I erroneously thought "Ensign" was a name and not a military rank. So when Chakotay was trying to reach "Ensign Mulchaey", I thought Chakotay was addressing the crew member by his full name. I was not a smart 15 year old.

8,000 cubic kilometers per hour, lol. Hard to imagine they would need to bother moving the ship. The edge of the nebula is almost certainly approaching them slower than an old man using a walker. Probably slower than a snail. But I did really like this episode, and the ending really “gave me all the feels” in a way that rarely happens with Trek (“Inner Light” and “City on the Edge of Forever” come to mind, not that this episode is necessarily quite in that stratospheric company). I did initially see it the way @Nick did, though: “Janeway should have aborted the drone fetus in a heart beat”. But my feelings about it evolved along with Seven’s, and I was tearing up right with her when One died.

Sarjenka's Brother

Great episode. Only one element missing for me. This creation comes from not two, but three, beings: The doctor's device, Seven's nanoprobes and the DNA of the crewman. I feel like he should have been part of the story, too.

This was pretty good though not quite 4 stars. I wish I could have found the "You will adapt" line as moving as many commenters did but I can't. I just never formed any kind of an emotional bond with the characters, such that their personal triumphs and tribulations would leave me anything other than nonplussed. If a similar kind of a line would have been delivered in a similar context on Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5, it would've had me bawling. That's Voyager's single greatest failure.

Bob (a different one)

I really don't understand why so many people compared this episode to "I, Borg." I mean both episodes feature a Borg with individuality, but other than that they are completely different shows. "I, Borg" Is a 45 minute ethical debate about whether Hugh is more than a machine, and if so is it immoral to use him as a weapon. Which leads to the next question: If Hugh is "human" what are the implications of killing the Borg? What was initially believed to be self defense against soulless automatons may very well be an act of genocide against an enslaved race. The final question is "Is it morally right to commit genocide if you believe that you think your own people face an existential threat? There are really no moral debates in "Drone" other than a 15 second scene where Janeway says she won't kill the infant drone. Others have compared the episode to "The Offspring" and I think that is closer to the mark. Both are about characters who learn more about humanity through their "children." There are substantial differences though. Lal's creation creates an ethical debate about whether Data has the right to "procreate" as well as a debate about who is best suited to raise her. Janeway sees One as a potential boon and immediately puts Seven in the role of mother. Data, who wants to become more human, purposely creates Lal. Seven has humanity thrust upon her and becomes a parent due to a transporter accident and a decision by Janeway. This doesn't seem all that important, but it makes the ending of both episodes more tragic, imo. The ending of "The Offspring" is sad for the audience because Data can't truly feel sadness for his daughter. Compare that to "One." Seven begins the episode by looking in a reflective surface and faking human emotions. By the end of the episode she looks on the same surface and she is legitimately heartbroken. The endings of both episodes are tragic but for exactly opposite reasons. Anyways...all three are great episodes. MVP: Jeri Ryan. She gives another great performance. LVP: B'Elanna Torres. Jesus Christ give it a rest already. Unless the episode revolves around her the writers seem content to make her character a two dimensional bitch.

More proof WIFI and 5G are going to be the end of civilization!

Khyron Bensal

I liked the episode, but the ending was somewhat predictable. I would prefer that the sphere was from Future borgs, more advanced even than One, that they took One with them, without a deep explanation of why, only that One understands, and this is a collective he wants to join. The heartbreaking separation could still occur, time travel separation is like death in some way, and we will keep us asking: What happens with the borg in the future. This perfect borgs are good? Are evil? They could even return the holografic emmiter with a finger snap given how advance they could be.

The Doctor: "I see you’ve got your mother's sense of humor."

The Real Trent

"Drone" seems to be popular, but I've always considered it to be a bad episode. In DS9's "The Abandoned" we watch as a baby Jem Hadar is discovered, bonds with a parental figure, learns various lessons, and then leaves the show. In DS9's "The Begotten" we watch as a "baby" Changeling is discovered, bonds with a parental figure, learns various lessons, and then dies. In TNG's "I, Borg" we watch as a wide-eyed Borg drone is discovered, bonds with the crew, learns and imparts various lessons, and then leaves the show. In TNG's "The Child" we watch as an alien kid is "born", learns various stuff, and then "kills itself". In TNG's "The Offspring" we watch as a robot child is created, learns various stuff, and then dies. In VOY's "Real Life" we watch as a hologram daughter is created, teaches various stuff, and then dies. This is an old Trek formula. In almost all cases the "child" is cute, naive, ignorant, doe-eyed, and speaks in an overly earnest way. Sometimes the child is also extremely dangerous, as in the case of the Borg or the Jem'Hadar, or unable to be reformed or fully enfolded into the crew. If the child doesn't literally die, it will die metaphorically (eg giving up its "individuality" to rejoin a collective, or abandoning its body). In each case the episode tilts toward the sentimental and the saccharine. In each case the child is paired with a mother or father figure. "Voyager's" "Drone" brings nothing new to the table. It's "child" is an overly cutesy Borg drone, he's given his obligatory surrogate mother (Seven), learns his obligatory lessons, and does the obligatory sacrifice. This episode is one cliche after the other, and whatever "themes" it touches upon required the introduction of no new characters, and should have instead been given entirely over to Seven.

I always liked this one, most likely because it takes a sci-fi environment seriously, i.e. having to deal with a cybernetic organism who advancement is out of reach of the humans around him. They have to deal with him, gain his trust, and yet not lose control of the situation. And while the congenial tone of the episode is quite pleasant, especially in its naive enjoyment of watching a new life form come into awareness of its surroundings, this naivete actually goes too far and upon closer inspection starts to look like childishness. I'll try to give a few examples. Right from the start of the situation in sickbay, they find the mobile emitter being host to the generation of a new Borg lifeform. Doc is predictably upset, but this comedic trope actually gets in the way of what should be real alarm by everyone: 29th century technology is being used as the core of a new Borg lifeform? This literally sounds like the biggest threat to life in the galaxy that could exist. So while the tone of curiosity plays nicely as naive interest, the real danger is buried by us laughing at Doc's complaint, which really should not be ignored. Picard let the Borg live out of the principle of not committing genocide; but Janeway here is doing something far more dangerous, purely because she wants to see what happens. This is so irresponsible it's hard to overstate it, it's almost like mad scientist territory. Later on in the episode "One" is going around learning things, and occasionally has a desire for more information that Seven, as his 'mother', takes it upon herself to sometimes deny. But what once again is played as quaint and cute - the drone wanting something and mama saying no firmly - is actually a sugared over version of what really should have been incredibly challenging. When human parents raise an infant it is completely helpless, so there is no question of the parents having their way. As soon as the infant is capable of doing stuff on its own it becomes nearly impossible to stop it doing dangerous things other than physical interventions (pick the baby up, move it away). When the child can speak, it will say "no" for no good reason when you tell it that it can't have something, and essentially the only recourse the parent has is to say "too bad" and use the helplessness of the child as the only real leverage. You can still pick up a toddler and put him in time out, and so forth. But now imagine the 'toddler' is larger than you, far more advanced and powerful technologically, where there is literally no way you could ever require compliance if it didn't want to. More than once in the episode One is resisting, and Seven uses a sharper tone, 'insisting' that he comply; she even says "Comply!" at least once. And this game of chicken should really be no game at all. In her place I'd be sweating, because the instant One discovered he could refuse with no consequence the game would be over and any illusion of control would be lost. So in terms of this being an analogy to raising an actual child, I think the episode mainly goes for sweet and cute at the expense of anything actually resembling trying to teach a young child how to live in the world. What Seven goes through is really not challenging at all; in fact she is practically just standing by watching One be perfectly congenial and cooperative, with no efforts on her part required to curb him. Finally things come to a head when (a) One wants to know about the Borg, and (b) the Borg actually come for him. Seven and Janeway have an almost irrelevant conversation about how eventually he'll have to be told the truth, because in literally the next scene to Borg come into the picture. "Eventually" turns into "right now", so I don't know what the point of the conversation was other than to further cement Janeway's fixation with One being a new member of the ship's crew with a choice of his own. Once again, what should be a Lovecraftian nightmare - this super-advanced being taking their mobile emitter and choosing to advance the Borg by 5 centuries in tech - instead is treated as a Barenstain Bears choice of when the little tyke can learn about his real family. I mean, yikes, we're talking about the end of pretty much all DQ species, and eventually the Federation, if he makes this choice. It's just criminal that there's not even a senior staff meeting to consider the options, with Tuvok no doubt offering the option to destroy One before he learns how to defend himself. I mean, that option can be filed under D for Duh, as it's hard to imagine letting a meeting between One and the Borg happen without having taken certain precautions...like wiring up One's underwear with a thermal detonator. The fact that One turns out to be a perfect gentleman is adorable (truly), and the fact that he ends up a hero making a noble sacrifice is neat, tying the episode up like a little bow. But the whole exercise from start to finish never takes its own premise seriously, both in terms of the wonder of what One could do, to the danger he poses. In every scene you could replace him with a baby Jem'hadar or baby Klingon and the script would still play more or less the same way. That's a waste of a cool premise. Overally I always liked this one, and I still do, but it's no better than 'nice' due to these drawbacks. It ends up being an enjoyable but shallow take on having a super-being on the ship needing guidance. This exact formula sort of gets reused in Q2, treated in less seriously in the latter case. If Q2 is a straight Neil Simon comedy, Drone is more like a touching episode of Lassy where you smile when One tells the Borg to go jump in the well.

@Peter G great commentary and yet another instance where Voyager fails even when it makes a passably good episode. The writers have this simple idea in their minds of (I guess) giving Seven a taste of some other aspect of humanity, in this case motherhood (what else is new - it is pretty much Star Trek: Seven of Nine now) but in the process totally fails to grasp the implication of its own premise and ends up with something stunted and contrived. Actually, your commentary made me think of Charlie X, an episode I never thought to connect with this one. But that is an episode that takes the concept of an omnipotent child seriously and needless to say the tone is alot different and the content (rightly) a whole lot more menacing.

A Fantastic episode. One of my favorites of any Trek series. They do a great job of making One a character I care about within the course of an episode. His sacrifice is truly an emotional moment, the first moment of true loss Seven has ever had to face. Speaking of Seven, we get to see how much she has grown as an individual since joining the crew. I loved the line where she states "Voyager is my collective". The episode ends the same way it began, with Seven looking in the mirror. Now however, instead of practicing a forced smile, we can see the true feeling of sadness in her eyes.

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