voyager unity episode

Unity (episode)

Chakotay is injured and trapped on a world where the inhabitants are embroiled in conflict, but the people who rescue and care for him harbor a disturbing secret.

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 development
4.2 Cast and characters
4.3 Sets, makeup, and costumes
4.4 Production
4.5 Effects
4.7 Reception
4.8 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 Stunt double
5.7.1 Starship references
5.8 External links

Summary [ ]

While attempting to find a faster way through the Nekrit Expanse, Commander Chakotay and Ensign Kaplan cannot get a fix on their Class 2 shuttle's current position and are therefore lost. When Chakotay points out an asteroid field , Kaplan notes that it is the same one they passed two hours before – they have been flying in circles. They cannot contact Voyager as they are out of com range. Soon after, they pick up a signal buoy with a Federation signature. As they get closer, they hear a distress call from the planet . Before they land their shuttlecraft on the planet, Chakotay has Kaplan launch a message buoy so Voyager will know they landed in response to a distress call. Upon landing, they find a desolate scene and are met by a large group of aliens .

Act One [ ]

The two almost immediately come under fire from their attackers. Kaplan is shot by the unknown foes while Chakotay is left injured. Soon, another group comes and scares the hostiles off, taking the unconscious commander with them.

Chakotay wakes up in the dark to find himself in a room where he sees a woman by the name of Riley Frazier who tells him that Kaplan is dead and his shuttle has been destroyed by scavengers. Chakotay soon learns about Frazier and the others: they were attacked by aliens in the Bolian sector in the Alpha Quadrant , some were killed and others put in stasis . They woke up on this planet, along with several Romulans , Klingons , and Cardassians . All were grabbed from where they were. One group of them attacked Chakotay and Kaplan, and Frazier's group saved him. She tells him that she is part of a Cooperative .

After an otherwise uneventful journey, Voyager flies through the Nekrit Expanse. Lieutenant Tom Paris remarks that this region of space should be instead called the "Negative Expanse", as the crew has not come across anything remotely interesting for days. Captain Kathryn Janeway suggests that if the helmsman is bored, the warp plasma filters are due for a thorough cleaning. Paris then tells her that he now finds the Expanse to be an interesting navigational challenge. Later, Voyager discovers an apparently derelict and abandoned Borg cube . Captain Janeway orders that Voyager be taken to red alert .

Act Two [ ]

Janeway orders all stop, shields to maximum, and to stand by all weapons. However, chief tactical officer Tuvok cannot detect any Borg systems operational on the cube. Janeway has Ensign Harry Kim run a multiphasic scan , but the operations officer cannot find any active power signatures nor any life signs aboard. " Well, that's a relief ", Paris notes. Tuvok advises caution but Janeway decides to board the cube: this represents a rare – and highly valuable – opportunity to understand their technology.

Back on the planet, Chakotay continues to learn about the cooperative and their efforts. Oddly, Frazier also tells him that she has put down roots here, and desires to stay instead of joining Voyager . When she goes to work on the communications array, Chakotay wants to help but she refuses abruptly, saying he is too weak to work and that he should rest.

Meanwhile, Captain Janeway's away team boards the Borg cube. Tuvok and chief engineer B'Elanna Torres determine that all activity on the vessel ceased five years ago but for reasons they cannot yet explain. They theorize that either an accident occurred or, however improbable it seems, an attack from a more powerful species disabled the cube – though did not completely destroy it, instead leaving it adrift. Torres finds an access node. If she can get it operational, she should be able to tap into the cube's data systems to find an answer. While Tuvok tries to find a compatible micro-power relay to connect to a generator , a dead Borg drone falls in front of him from behind a wall.

In Voyager 's briefing room , Torres tells the captain that their scans have determined there are 1,100 Borg corpses on the cube. Tuvok remarks that they located a breached section of the cube, where some of the bodies of Borg were preserved perfectly. Torres adds that one of the bodies of a drone was brought aboard for an autopsy to provide an answer as to what killed them all. Janeway wonders why the Collective has left one of their ships with all of its technology intact for anyone to find. Tuvok suggests that the deactivation of the cube severed its link to the Collective. Torres, however, speculates that the Borg were possibly defeated by an enemy even more powerful than the Collective. Janeway orders Torres to assist The Doctor with the autopsy of the drone and suggests contacting Commander Chakotay to return from his scouting message early and let him know they have run into " some old friends. "

At the same time, Chakotay wakes again and manages to break out of the room where he was being kept. A vast plant is revealed, and all the individuals have implants similar to Borg drones . Chakotay explores as discreetly as he can, but the others don't seem to mind. Eventually, he sees Frazier again, without hair and with Borg implants.

Act Three [ ]

Chakotay demands answers, and Frazier, along with a Romulan , Orum , quickly explain that they were once drones, many assimilated during the Battle of Wolf 359 , but an electro-kinetic storm caused by the expanse broke their link with the hive mind . Realizing how far they were from Federation space, they settled on a planet and learned how to survive and cooperate with one another.

In sickbay , The Doctor concludes from his autopsy of a Borg corpse taken from the cube that it had been electrocuted and suffocated in space. But when The Doctor tries activating an axonal amplifier with a cortical probe , the drone jerks upright, frightening everyone observing. The Doctor manages to deactivate the drone. He remarks that he must have activated a backup neuroelectric power cell . Lieutenant Torres concludes that The Doctor's actions caused the Borg to reset to its original programming, meaning that the other corpses could also be reactivated. " We'd have a major problem on our hands ", Torres fearfully notes.

Due to the blast Chakotay took early on, his health soon worsens. Orum tells him that if he does not let them help him he will die before Voyager arrives. They help by using a neural link to heal Chakotay's injuries. " I'm not letting anyone implant some neural processor in my brain! " Chakotay is more than reluctant but he finally agrees when he sees no other alternative. During this experience he sees many of their memories and thoughts. It is a powerful and enlightening experience for him, and it also helps heal his neural damage. Interestingly, there are lingering effects from the link, even though the transceiver is removed. Frazier says it is temporary, and they enjoy it while it lasts.

Act Four [ ]

Chakotay helps the others with the communications array. He now knows what the group wants to achieve through the link, believing it a radical concept. Soon, Voyager arrives in orbit of the planet and try to contact Chakotay, but interference makes it difficult. When the inhabitants detect it, Frazier tries to persuade Captain Janeway to assist in re-establishing the link for the entire population permanently. Specifically, they want the Voyager team to re-activate the neuro-electric field generator on the Borg ship because they have enough energy to do so. While Janeway is willing to provide supplies, upgrade their security and even take some of them on Voyager if they wish, she is extremely skeptical about re-activating the neuroelectric generator. After Frazier leaves, Janeway asks for Chakotay's opinion. Chakotay says that the former Borg drones are sincere and they have no evil intent, and while in his heart he would do anything to help them, he agrees that the captain has to take other considerations into account. Janeway sees it as imposing a choice onto thousands of people without consent, and too dangerous that it may help create a new malevolent collective. Janeway decides not to help them and Chakotay lets Frazier know. She understands and bids him farewell, but not before another unsuccessful attempt by Chakotay to take her with him.

After Voyager has delivered them much-needed supplies, Chakotay and Torres start returning to Voyager via shuttle . He's disappointed and Torres makes a mental note for a holodeck session later. Suddenly, he hears the Cooperative again, saying they need his help. His head falls and comes under control of the telepathic link. He stuns Torres and goes to work.

Act Five [ ]

Tuvok sees the shuttle changed course and Janeway orders pursuit. The Cooperative explain they're under attack and need him to reactivate the generator aboard the abandoned Borg ship, directly violating his orders. He complies and beams aboard the cube. Chakotay avoids the Voyager away team searching for him as he locates the generator. Lieutenant Tuvok finds him, and Chakotay fires with Kim retaliating. However, Chakotay manages to activate the generator as he falls.

As soon as the generator is activated, the people attacking the Cooperative's compound stop their attack as they begin to hear the Cooperative's thoughts and the Cooperative welcomes them. However, the generator also activates the Borg ship and its dormant drones. The rescue team sent to intercept Chakotay, along with Chakotay himself, are quickly beamed aboard Voyager . The planet's inhabitants manage to trigger the Borg ship's self-destruct sequence before it gains weapon capabilities. Within three seconds the ship explodes. The inhabitants hail Voyager in their collective state and offer Voyager their lasting gratitude.

In sickbay, The Doctor explains that Chakotay's exposure to the Borg collective "heightened his telepathic receptivity" allowing them to influence him. Then, as Voyager travels away from the planet, Chakotay discusses the situation privately with Janeway and questions how long the inhabitants can retain a sense of morality amidst the power of a collective; it didn't take them long to use Chakotay against his will for their motives.

Log Entries [ ]

First officer's log , stardate 50614.2. Ensign Kaplan and I are returning to USS Voyager , after completing a scouting mission in the Nekrit Expanse .
Captain's log , stardate 50622.4. While Commander Chakotay scouts for a faster route through the Nekrit Expanse, we are continuing our month-long journey through the sparsely populated region.
Captain's log, supplemental. We've detected a message buoy , launched from Chakotay's shuttle, and are heading toward it. The autopsy of the Borg corpse is under way.

Memorable quotes [ ]

" The nebula's completely scrambling our navigational readings. I still can't get a fix on our position. " " Are you saying we're lost, ensign? " " That... depends what you mean by lost, sir. " " Lost... as in you still can't get a fix on our position. "

" Well at least someone knows where we are. "

" I'm here to help you. " " How did... " " How did I get here? I could ask you the same question. " " It's a long story, why don't you go first. "

" There are dozens of different races on this planet, all of whom were brought here against their will. Many of them are suspicious of other species. It's not exactly a united federation around here, if you know what I mean. "

" You know, they ought to rename this region the 'Negative Expanse'. We haven't run across anything interesting for days. " " If you're bored, Mister Paris, I'm sure I can find something else for you to do. The warp plasma filters are due for a thorough cleaning. " " Now that you mention it, Captain, I find this region of space a real navigational challenge. "

" I must say, there's nothing like the vacuum of space for preserving a handsome corpse. "

" I thought you said the link was severed. " "It was... " "But we can re-initiate it, among a small group, for a short time." "We could generate a neuro-electric field that could heal your injuries." "You want to hook up my mind to some kind of Borg collective! Thanks, but I don't think so." ".If we don't do something to slow the neural degradation immediately, you will die."

" I'm not letting anyone implant some neural processor in my brain! "

" Don't be afraid, Chakotay. We're here to help you. Open your mind to our thoughts, and concentrate on getting well. Hear our voices. Open your mind to our thoughts. Our collective strength can heal you. You're safe with us. Feel the connection. We're with you. See who we are. Know us. You're not alone. Our strength is your strength. We can overcome your pain. We welcome you into our thoughts. There'e nothing to fear. We won't let you die. We're all one circle: no beginning, no end. "

" When we were linked, we had no ethnic conflict. There was no crime, no hunger, no health problems. We lived as one harmonious family. " " With all due respect, Dr. Frazier, you were one harmonious family bent on the violent assimilation of innocent cultures. "

" Proceed to interlink console 3 Beta 6. Hear our thoughts. Our thoughts are one. "

" They saved us from that cube, and they let you go. " " But they didn't hesitate to impose their collective will on me when it served their interests, did they? " " No, they didn't. " " I wonder how long their ideals will last in the face of that kind of power. "

Background information [ ]

Story development [ ].

The decision to create a Borg episode for Star Trek: Voyager , specifically one that would air in the all-important February sweeps period, was made in May 1996 or thereabouts. ( Star Trek Monthly issue 23 ) After this decision was made, the prospect of the Borg appearing on Voyager influenced many story ideas that were pitched to the series. Staff writer Kenneth Biller explained, " We wanted to bring them back, and we got loads of pitches. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 86)
Although Ken Biller was ultimately selected to pen this episode, he found it ironic that, even though he was the least avid of the Star Trek fans on Voyager 's writing team, the episodes he was assigned to write – for the third season of the series – included both this installment and the Q episode " The Q and the Grey ". ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 84)
In coming up with this episode, Ken Biller wanted to make the Borg more interesting than their essentially one-note nature of relentlessly pursuing and consuming their enemies. He commented, " When you think about the Borg, they're interesting and cool, but they're just relentless and keep coming at you. How do you get under their skin? That was the question I had to ask. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine issue 18 ) The writer did some research by reading a script for Star Trek: First Contact , which was yet to be released at that point. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102)
Ken Biller then hit upon the concept that the Borg could, in some way, be collectively deBorgified. " I suddenly got this image of the Tower of Babel , " he explained. " This incredibly interwoven, complex community had been created, and once you knocked it all down you would have all these people who spoke different languages, and couldn't communicate with each other. It occurred to me that a group of ex-Borg would be a very interesting community to explore. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102) It was when considering how the episode should depict the Borg that Biller struck upon this solution. " That's when I came up with the Tower of Babel idea of 'What would happen if the Borg were severed from the link?' " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine issue 18 )
Ken Biller recognized a parallel between his idea and the break-up of the Soviet bloc. He recalled, " It suddenly occurred to me that it was basically like the Soviet Union , not to get too lofty about it. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine issue 18 ) As such, he personified – in the character of Riley Frazier – the renewed nostalgia for communism that had developed in the area following the Soviet Union's dissolution. Biller also considered representing the experience of being a Borg as a unifying, pleasant existence; this led him to not only conceive of the disputes between the former Borg, as they were no longer in such harmony, but also to ask the audience to consider this idea by having Frazier present Janeway with the moral ambiguity. Biller remarked, " I thought it would be an interesting question to pose to the audience, to make her appeal to Janeway using Janeway's own kind of ideals. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102)
The writers originally considered including a decimated wasteland of Borg ships in this episode, such as had appeared – as the aftermath of the Battle of Wolf 359 – in TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II ". " To be honest with you, " Brannon Braga admitted, " we were going to do a Borg graveyard, and we didn't because we decided to just make it one cube. " Despite such an area ultimately not featuring here, the concept was brought to fruition for the third season finale " Scorpion ". Braga noted, " It's kind of an image that we had held over. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 28 , p. 17)
This episode's first-draft script was submitted on 29 October 1996 . The script's final draft was submitted on 7 November 1996 . [1] Shortly after the final draft was approved, co-executive producer Jeri Taylor said that the installment "has been written and starts shooting soon." ( Star Trek Monthly issue 23 )

Cast and characters [ ]

Robert Duncan McNeill directing Robert Beltran

Robert Duncan McNeill with Robert Beltran

Ken Biller considered Riley Frazier to have worthy motives, noting, " [Riley's] motives were really noble. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102) This was not, however, how the character was viewed during production. In fact, Chakotay actor Robert Beltran was advised to think of her as a truly evil character. Director Robert Duncan McNeill recalled, " I told Robert [Beltran] that a real powerful image for me was that he was being seduced by the devil . The Borg woman is beautiful and sweet and sincere, but deep down, she is the devil. It was great when he got that. " ( Star Trek: Communicator issue 112 , p. 56) McNeill also commented, " For me, 'Unity' was about Chakotay being seduced by the Devil, and that's what I told Robert Beltran. I said, 'let's make this kind of a film noire . Here's this dangerous woman, but she doesn't appear very dangerous in the beginning. She's very seductive. She's very sweet. And ultimately she turns out to be the Devil. She's still one of the Borg and part of that dangerous collective, and he's seduced by her. That was the story that I wanted to tell. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 27 , p. 13)
Robert Beltran liked this episode. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, pp. 93-94; Star Trek Monthly issue 38 , p. 18)
Years after portraying Orum herein, Ivar Brogger went on to appear as Barus in the seventh season episode " Natural Law ".

Sets, makeup, and costumes [ ]

The Borg set that was used for this episode was not from Star Trek: First Contact , although the physical designs of the Borg drones were, providing a revitalized look to the Borg of this installment. Robert Duncan McNeill explained, " The Borg costumes and makeup were from the movie. It was the new Borg, the scarier Borg. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102)
The Borg appliances were typically time-consuming to apply. Citing one particular example of this, Robert Duncan McNeill said, " We had a Borg with a working arm. He had an arm that was supposed to look like scissors, and the cables weren't working. All of a sudden you look at your watch and an hour or two has gone by and you haven't done anything because you're playing with cables. " This mechanical arm was one of the costume pieces that had previously been used in Star Trek: First Contact . ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102)
Robert Duncan McNeill found the episode's Borg set to be basically too small. He explained, " The Borg set, believe it or not, was one hallway that was about 40 feet long that curved around. It was the smallest set that I've ever seen in my life. We had no room on the stage to build a big Borg ship, because the other sets took up so much room. All the room they had was basically 40 feet in a semicircle. I said, 'You can't do this. The Borg are supposed to have these huge cubes.' " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102)
According to the unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (pp. 169 & 160), this episode's colony was mostly a redressed set that had previously been used for the Akritirian maximum security detention facility in " The Chute " and Bahrat's space station in " Fair Trade ".
The planet set of this episode was artificially extended via the use of a computer-generated matte painting created by Eric Chauvin (who had freelanced for Voyager ever since its pilot, " Caretaker ", and was a friend of visual effects supervisor Mitch Suskin ). " There's a wide establishing shot of the encampment, in a desert. It was all shot on the soundstage, and there's a construction crane that was moving around, " Mitch Suskin explained, adding, " The building was extended. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 105)

Production [ ]

Director Robert Duncan McNeill with actors Robert Picardo and Roxann Dawson while filming this episode

This episode was the second of four Voyager installments to be directed by Robert Duncan McNeill (who usually only played Tom Paris on the series); his directing debut had been the earlier third season episode " Sacred Ground " and he later directed the fifth season installment " Someone to Watch Over Me " as well as the Season 7 episode " Body and Soul ". Shortly after finishing work on "Sacred Ground," he commented, " My next show is the one that introduces the Borg, the ones you saw in Star Trek: First Contact , to our show. It's a different challenge to direct an action piece [than to direct a more character-oriented episode, such as 'Sacred Ground.'] " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine issue 11 )
Due to the fact that this episode's depiction of the Borg is a metaphor for the disintegrating Soviet bloc, Robert Duncan McNeill researched the history of that subject shortly before directing the installment. " I actually did some reading about that, about Russia and all the politics that went on, " he revealed. " I think some of those ideas did come out in the story, even though it wasn't a really heavy, political episode. Yet there were some references and you could connect that to contemporary issues, individuality as opposed to group needs or desires. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 108)
This episode's filming took place between 11 November 1996 and the 20th of that month .
The fact that the Borg were only to be shown minimally in this episode, despite the installment having been eagerly anticipated over a long stretch of time, put extra pressure on Robert Duncan McNeill. Shortly after working on the episode but before the installment was aired, McNeill recalled, " What was most frightening for me was knowing that it was a Borg episode, but the Borg were only on two and a half pages of the whole script. The rest was all the mysterious ex-Borg. I said to the producers, 'You know, you're giving me a Borg episode, but we never get to see the Borg. I need more Borg or the fans are going to go crazy.' So I tried to give the same sort of suspense and mysterious quality that you get from the Borg. I tried to give that through the whole piece, so hopefully the fans will still feel that same tension without actually seeing the Borg for the whole piece. They really don't appear except on two or three pages of the script but there was a lot of pressure with this being the Borg introduction [to Star Trek: Voyager ]. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 27 , p. 14)
Another factor that created pressure on the episode's production was the challenge of measuring up to the promise of Star Trek: First Contact , that Star Trek film having been released three months before this episode was first aired. Robert Duncan McNeill explained, " With the film coming out, there were a lot of comparisons to that. How can we achieve something that doesn't drop the ball with what the movie did? [....] There was a lot of pressure not to repeat what they did, yet do something with [the Borg] that was just exciting. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 27 , p. 14)
During production of this episode, Robert Duncan McNeill and the crew tried to hide the smallness of the Borg set. " I think we disguised that fact, and made it seem like it was really this labyrinth of tunnels, " he said. " They'd walk down the tunnel once, and right by the camera, and then we'd cut, and they'd go back to the other end, and walk it again. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102)
In the moment between Janeway and Chakotay in the briefing room, Janeway paces the room as if she is Chakotay's conscience or guardian angel, while he ponders his situation. Explaining how this unscripted action came about, Robert Duncan McNeill recalled, " Kate Mulgrew came into the scene and said, 'I think this is a very delicate fishing expedition for Janeway with Chakotay. It's a very intimate moment.' She wanted to sort of move around and keep moving. That was not at all what I had planned. I had a completely different plan, and she did this movement and tried a feeling that I hadn't expected at all for that moment. " The action influenced the filming of the scene. " Because of what she did, " McNeill continued, " that shot came to me. I said, 'If that's what you want to do there, and I think it's working, let's do something different with the camera. Let's stay in real tight and have it just pass back and forth.' " McNeill concluded, " It's a much more intimate, mysterious shot than what I had planned, and it was really exciting to me when that happened. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 27 , p. 14)
The montage that this episode uses to represent Chakotay's experience of linking with the Cooperative features both newly shot footage (such as shots of the young Riley Frazier with her grandfather) and archive footage from such episodes as TNG : " Q Who ", DS9 : " Emissary ", and " The Way of the Warrior ", as well as VOY : " Caretaker ". " Some of that was scripted, " Robert Duncan McNeill said of the sequence. " Some of the things that were scripted we couldn't find, so that was a real collaboration, [between] Jeri Taylor and myself, Ken Biller, the writer, Bob Lederman , the editor and [producer] Wendy Neuss as well. We tried to go from the dialogue of what they actually said and then reinforce that with the images in the montage. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 102)

Effects [ ]

Voyager 's visual effects artists were eager to work on a Borg episode but felt somewhat let down by the scale of this installment. " We knew a Borg script was coming down the pipe, and we were excited, " Mitch Suskin recalled. " When we first read the script we were disappointed that it wasn't a big battle, but as the show developed I started to like it a lot more. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 104)
This episode debuted a newly designed version of the Borg cube. This was the third rendition of that particular ship design: the previous two versions had both been studio models , with the first having been featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the second having been built by Industrial Light & Magic for Star Trek: First Contact . Mitch Suskin commented, " The challenge of building another Borg cube and doing it CG was something we were curious to see if everybody would accept. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 104) The CGI model of the cube was built at Foundation Imaging by Emile Edwin Smith , who based it on the Next Generation and First Contact physical models. " Well, when I built the new cube for Voyager , " Smith recalled, " I based everything off image maps and then modeled around them. To make it real simple I had an underlying cube that was mapped with an image. I then took the main image that I had created into modeler and started building on it. Basically it was large areas of chunkiness raised above the inner cube with many of the detailed areas of the map modeled on these areas. I also interconnected the pieces with tubes and added edge pieces to make it look more dimensional and 3d on the edges. " [2]
Some footage of the previous physical type of Borg cube was also used here. Emile Edwin Smith noted of this installment, " We animated 90% of all the visual effects, the other 10% were stock model shots. " [3] Some obvious examples where footage of the Borg cube was reused is in the montage sequence when Chakotay links with the former Borg.
The visual effects artists were also tasked with designing the effect of the weapon blast that injures Chakotay at the start of the episode's first act. Recalling the creation of this effect, Mitch Suskin stated, " We had the big gun that Chakotay gets hit with, and the only thing we really knew was that it had to be some sort of energy wrapped around his body or head and gave him neurological damage. We sat down with Greg Rainoff , who's our animation effects artist, and played around with a few things. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, pp. 104-105)
As Kim fires a phaser at two different Borg drones in the episode's climax, the visual effects artists were challenged with matching the look of the Borg being shot to the effects in Star Trek: First Contact . Mitch Suskin explained, " When the Borg get shot at, they have this shield that lights up. It's a 3-D effect with a couple of different elements, and because the movie had just come out, Mr. Berman wanted us to duplicate what was done on the feature. We were afraid that we wouldn't have the time or the money to do it. We wound up getting the elements that they used in the feature and tracking it in, much the way they did. It's usually the easiest things that give us the most trouble, and that was the case. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 105)
Ultimately, Mitch Suskin was highly pleased with the ways CGI was incorporated into this episode. He commented, " When that Borg cube exploded, the only element was the explosion, the rest was accomplished in the CG domain. It was a real breakthrough. That was the first show that I really had no reservations about. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 104) Regarding the ultimately used effect of the blast that hits Chakotay, Suskin also enthused, " I think it really fell together, I was very pleased. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 105)

Continuity [ ]

Voyager loses at least its third shuttlecraft in this episode, and the first of its type ( Class 2 ), having previously lost three shuttles in " Initiations ", " Non Sequitur " and " Parturition ".
This is the last episode to be set inside the Nekrit Expanse , through which the crew has been traveling since the events of " Fair Trade ". The Expanse would be seen again, however, in " Distant Origin ", from the point of view of Gegen during his search for Voyager .
The death of Ensign Kaplin in this episode brings the total number of confirmed crew deaths since the series premiere " Caretaker " to 13, the previous death having occurred in " Warlord ". This leaves Voyager with a crew of 140, given Voyager 's crew compliment of 152 established in " The 37's " (after the first of these deaths).
This is the sixth time the crew of Voyager discover a direct connection between the Alpha Quadrant and Delta Quadrant, having previously discovered a wormhole connecting the two quadrants (" Eye of the Needle "), descendants of Human abductees (" The 37's "), descendants of aliens who have visited Earth (" Tattoo "), a Cardassian weapon (" Dreadnought "), and Ferengi (" False Profits ").
This encounter with the Borg is foreshadowed slightly earlier in the series, by the discovery of a Borg corpse in the previous episode, " Blood Fever ". The only other previous presence of the Borg in Star Trek: Voyager is two references to them in the second season installment " Death Wish ", wherein both of the references are to the Q Continuum 's dealings with the Borg before that episode. Continuing this storyline, the events of this episode are later referenced in the fourth season episode " Scorpion, Part II ".
Torres' suggestion that the Borg may have been defeated "by an enemy even more powerful than they were" seems to foreshadow the introduction of Species 8472 , who went on to make their first appearance in VOY : " Scorpion " at the end of the third season . This was, indeed, the intention of "Scorpion" co-writer Brannon Braga: to tie the two episodes together, while leaving the events of each episode independently understandable. Braga said, " 'Scorpion' definitely ties in with an event in 'Unity' but not such that you would have to have seen that episode to understand it. In 'Unity', we find a disabled cube. It was really never made clear how the cube was destroyed, and now [meaning in 'Scorpion'] you'll find out [...] So 'Unity' is only a hint of things to come. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 28 , p. 17)
When the Borg cube first appears on-screen, an unusual tone – reminiscent of the Borg theme in Star Trek: First Contact – can be heard.
This is the first episode to establish that at least some of the Borg could continue to function following the defeat of their queen and some drones in Star Trek: First Contact . In fact, prior to the writing of this episode, there was considerable debate as to whether the Borg should make an appearance in Star Trek: Voyager , after the events of that movie. While the series' team of writer-producers were considering this possibility, First Contact co-writer Ronald D. Moore expressed a belief that the film should be the last appearance of the Borg, whereas Brannon Braga, the film's other co-writer, divulged his support for what happens here – apparently "dead" Borg being revived. ( Star Trek Monthly issue 24 , pp. 36-37) With regard to this issue, Ken Biller said, " I think Rick [Berman] is very clear that just because we saw Borg destroyed in the movie doesn't mean that the entire collective was destroyed. We leave that an open question. There are other Borg in the Delta Quadrant. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 86)
It is not explained how the former drones could be alive when the cube that assimilated them at Wolf 359 was destroyed in the Sol system during "Best of Both Worlds". One possible explanation is that before the cube's destruction, they left the battle in a sphere similar to the one seen in Star Trek: First Contact .

Reception [ ]

Ken Biller was ultimately "really proud" of this installment. He noted, " I loved that episode. " ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine issue 18 )
Both Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga also thought highly of this episode. Citing the installment as one of the highlights of Voyager 's third season, Taylor noted, " I thought that our Borg episode in February, 'Unity', took an interesting look at that race. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 31 , p. 11) Braga similarly included this episode among a few examples of third season Voyager installments that he thought were good (the other episodes being " Scorpion " and " Distant Origin "). Of this particular installment, he said, " I think 'Unity' was a very good example [of a good Star Trek: Voyager episode]. It was unexpected. It had a fascinating premise about the Borg, kind of a metaphor for the Soviet Union. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 29 , p. 13)
Yet another production staffer who was satisfied with this episode was Robert Duncan McNeill. He enthused, " I was really happy with it. I was very pleased. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 27 , p. 14) Regarding the success of having advised Robert Beltran to think of Riley Frazier as the Devil, McNeill commented, " I think that we got a lot of that seduction, a lot of the character stuff in there, and ultimately a lot of action as well. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 27 , p. 13) McNeill was also personally pleased with the way this episode portrays the Borg; he told an audience at the bi-annual Novacon convention in April 1997 that he was proud of the episode "because the Borg were not [as] one-dimensional as previously depicted, but still as evil as ever." ( Star Trek Monthly issue 29 , p. 5) McNeill was initially concerned, though, about whether the episode's depiction of the Borg would be received well by Star Trek 's fans . " The Borg are the essence of evil in a way, and this was kind of showing the cracks in that evil, " he observed. " If we deactivate these bad guys, then they're really not so bad after all. I was nervous that the fans were going to reject that. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 108)
This episode achieved a Nielsen rating of 5.4 million homes, and an 8% share. [4] (X)
Much to the relief of Robert Duncan McNeill, the idea of the defanged Borg apparently piqued the fans' interest. " I think that they were really interested in the idea [....] When Star Trek has got good ideas and strong writing, " McNeill stated, " that's what it's good at–making people think. I think this episode definitely did that on a lot of levels, and it entertained them at the same time. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 108)
The temporary relationship between Chakotay and Riley Frazier upset some fans; specifically, the "J and C" group – the fans who were eager for the relationship between Janeway and Chakotay to become more explicit. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 94)
Cinefantastique rated this episode 3 and a half out of 4 stars. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 29, No. 6/7, p. 105)
Star Trek Magazine scored this episode 3 out of 5 stars, defined as "Warp Speed". ( Star Trek Monthly issue 29 , p. 58)
The unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 171) gives this installment a rating of 7 out of 10.
Brannon Braga was not eager for the Cooperative to reappear after this installment, although he was open to the question of their fate being answered in the future. When quizzed about the possibility (prior to the airing of the third season finale "Scorpion") of fans seeing the Cooperative again, he rhetorically asked, " Do you want to? " Pounding one of his fists in the air as if he was hammering nails into a coffin, he added, " Nailing in nails. " Moments later, he continued, " The Cooperative is long gone, man. It's been months since we've seen the Cooperative. That's not to say we won't learn someday what happened to them. That's kind of an interesting question. " ( Star Trek Monthly issue 29 , pp. 17-18)
Several costumes and props from this episode were sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay, including the costume of Ivar Brogger ( Orum ). [5]

Video and DVD releases [ ]

UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 3.9, 21 July 1997
As part of the VOY Season 3 DVD collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway

Also starring [ ]

Robert Beltran as Commander Chakotay
Roxann Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres
Jennifer Lien as Kes
Robert Duncan McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris
Ethan Phillips as Neelix
Robert Picardo as The Doctor
Tim Russ as Lieutenant Tuvok
Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim

Guest stars [ ]

Lori Hallier as Riley Frazier
Ivar Brogger as Orum

Co-star [ ]

Susan Patterson as Marie Kaplan

Stunt double [ ]

LaFaye Baker as stunt double for Susan Patterson

References [ ]

2368 ; 2440 ; ability ; access node ; alveoli ; anarchy ; appendage ; asteroid field ; Alpha Quadrant ; automaton ; autopsy ; axonal amplifier ; barbecue ; bearing ; bluebonnet ; body part ; Bolian sector ; Borg ; bunker ; Cardassians ; cardiac depolarization ; chair ; class M ; collective consciousness ; combadge ; Cooperative ; cooperative garden ; communications array ; community ; cortical probe ; data node ; distress call ; donor ; dozen ; electrocution ; electrodynamic turbulence ; electromechanical discharge ; electrokinetic storm ; ethnic conflict ; euphoria ; Farn ; Federation ; Federation hailing beacon ; Frazier's mother ; ghost ship ; Happy Hunting Grounds ; heart ; hive mind ; holodeck ; homesteader ; horse ; hour ; hoverball ; hull damage ; Human ; hyper spanner ; inorganic ; Klingon ; message buoy ; micro-power conduit ; minute ; multiphasic scan ; natural disaster ; Nekrit Expanse ; neural link ; neural processor ; neural tissue ; neural transceiver ; neural transponder ; neural trauma ; neuro-electric energy ; neuro-electric field ; neuro-electric field generator ; neuroelectric power cell ; neuropeptide ; neuro-transceiver ; neuro-transponder ; New Cooperative ; New Cooperative planet ; optical scanner ; organic ; Parein ; power ; prosthetic arm ; red alert ; Romulans ; science officer ; scouting mission ; self-destruct sequence ; skin pigmentation ; stargazing ; stasis ; telepathic receptivity ; Texas ; vacuum ; vegetarian ; warp plasma filter ; Wolf 359 ; Wolf 359, Battle of ; year

Starship references [ ]

Borg cube ( unnamed 1 , 2 , 3 and Locutus' cube ); Class 2 shuttle ( unnamed 1 , and 2 ); Klingon Bird-of-Prey ( unnamed ); K't'inga -class ( unnamed ); Melbourne , USS ; Neelix' shuttle ; Predator -class ( unnamed ); Roosevelt , USS ; Saratoga , USS ; Vor'cha -class ( unnamed )

External links [ ]

" Unity " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
" Unity " at Wikipedia
" Unity " at MissionLogPodcast.com
" Unity " at the Internet Movie Database
2 Daniels (Crewman)
3 Sito Jaxa

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Star Trek: Voyager

“Unity”

Air date: 2/12/1997 Written by Kenneth Biller Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

"I wonder how long their ideals will last in the face of that kind of power." — Chakotay, on the 'New Collective'

Review Text

Nutshell: Quite good. A few flaws, but an intriguing premise and a fresh way of utilizing a reliable Trekkian element.

I've always liked the Borg (but then again, who hasn't?). They're the most interesting and fearsome villains that Star Trek has ever come up with—not just because they're powerful and relentless, but because they're determined to force you to join them, quashing your free will and independent thought. As a result, I went into "Unity" with high expectations; and, for the most part, I came out quite satisfied.

First a digression: It's an interesting observation that Voyager as a series still hasn't come up with a fresh, new, defining "concept" for its Delta Quadrant milieu. TNG came up with the Borg in its second season, DS9 introduced the Dominion in its second season; but here we are in season three of Voyager —and I'm still not sure where the gold is (and apparently the writers don't either). Instead, in one of its better episodes to date, Voyager falls back on a reliable piece of TNG . I'm not condemning the creators for deciding to use old material—far from it. After all, as I said last week in my review of " Blood Fever ," bringing the Borg to Voyager could potentially re-energize the series if they become a regular nemesis. Still, I find it an interesting and perhaps telling sign.

"Unity" isn't a rehashed Borg episode; it takes a completely new perspective on the Borg: the inverse perspective. Usually the Borg are automatons who seek to forcibly assimilate you into their Collective. But in "Unity," Chakotay and Ensign Kaplan (Susan Patterson) land a shuttle (it doesn't crash but it does later get disassembled and thus destroyed) on a planet of warring colonists who used to be Borg and have since been broken from the Collective. Kaplan is killed in an attack by a faction of colonists within minutes of the landing. (A show of hands—who didn't know the Ensign We've Never Seen Before would be killed in the course of the episode, or, more specifically, in the course of the first scene?)

Chakotay is shot and injured in this attack, but he's rescued by a group of colonists that includes a human named Riley (Lori Hallier) and a Romulan (Ivar Brogger), among other Alpha Quadrant humanoids. All these colonists were assimilated into the Borg Collective at one point, but an electrical storm severely damaged their cube five years ago, severing them from the Collective and returning the survivors to their original, individual selves. While Chakotay uncovers this realization on the planet, Janeway and the Voyager crew—out of contact with Chakotay—finds the mostly-abandoned Borg cube adrift in space.

The story takes the standard A/B-story structure but uses it effectively. The plots seem initially unconnected, but then come together plausibly and sensibly. The early scenes of Voyager 's discovery of the Borg ship are creepy and ominous. Seeing a dead Borg ship is every bit as intimidating as seeing a live one, because there's the conceivable possibility that the dead ship will become a live one.

Upon boarding the ship and finding what's left of its crew is inactive for reasons unknown, the crew muses over what could've caused a Borg ship to "die." One of the best realizations in the episode is Torres' scarily amusing line: "Maybe the Borg were defeated... by an enemy even more powerful than they were." And Janeway's dry reaction: "Continue scanning for any Borg vessels in the vicinity—as well as any other ships that might be... 'more powerful'." It's the kind of comment that's long overdue in coming. After all, the Voyager is alone out here, and if they were to run into hostile Borg or someone "more powerful," they could have a big problem on their hands.

Chakotay's problem doesn't seem as initially threatening, but it's by far more complex and meaningful. Riley, along with her close Romulan ally, explains their intentions to Chakotay to form a new "Cooperative" to end the fighting on the settlement. Before revealing the nature of this Cooperative, however, Riley and her allies must help Chakotay, who will die of his injuries unless something can be done to stop his "neural degradation" (ah the Trekkian technical jargon, how I love it!). To heal his injuries, they must use a device to mentally connect him with several others in their group—absorbing him into a small, temporary type of Borg Collective to repair his neural damage.

Chakotay does not welcome such an idea, and it's easy to see why. As Riley says herself, it's understandable for one to be skeptical; but despite how fearsome and ruthless the Borg Collective can and has proven to be, there are great advantages to being interlinked with other minds—provided it's not put to destructive use.

This is the theme of "Unity" At what cost is unity a positive option? Chakotay experiences first-hand the sorts of advantages and pleasures being connected with other minds can bring: tenfolds of knowledge, efficient communication of ideas, not to mention a closeness to those in the link that far exceeds what one could ever find outside the Collective.

That brings us to Riley's New Cooperative. She wants Chakotay to help her bring peace to the colony by retrieving and reactivating the Borg cube and sending a signal from it that would give her the ability to unite the entire colony permanently, bringing unified peace and order to it.

That's a tall order. The repercussions are unpredictable and could be disastrous. Once Janeway locates Chakotay and the colony, Riley makes an official request to the captain, which, as one would expect, is not received with enthusiasm. The colonists may perhaps be well-meaning and sincere—as Chakotay can certainly attest—but it's not simply that easy, and Kenneth Biller's teleplay wisely knows that.

Reactivating one power generator on the Borg ship could reactivate the entire ship and the remaining Borg left on it. The consequences of that are obvious. Perhaps not as obvious, but more interesting, is the question of what exactly would become of the colony once it becomes a unified whole. "Unity" raises some implicit issues that are well worth close scrutiny.

For example, why are these people so willing to give up their individuality in favor of a New Cooperative? The whole message behind the Borg up to this point has been that assimilation into their Collective is worse than death itself—because one no longer has free will or independent thought over the power of the whole. When Riley and the other assimilated Borg were separated from the Collective five years ago, they were, to use Riley's own word, free—individuals with memories of their own pasts and identities. It's interesting—very interesting indeed—seeing that after the "euphoria" of freedom wore off and the fighting ensued, that Riley's best solution became to re-assimilate the colony into a new Collective which, without the Borg-inherent intention of being a group of conquerors, she comfortably labels the "New Cooperative."

It's therefore a subtle irony that when Chakotay informs the colonists that he can't help them they force him to help anyway, taking control of his actions by sending a signal to his shuttle and hijacking his thoughts. The action finale is punchy, as the crew races—and fails—to stop Chakotay from reactivating the Borg generator—which awakens the Borg drones and the vessel.

The New Cooperative sets the Borg's auto-destruct, however, perhaps as a sign of good will (leading to one of my favorite sights: a Borg cube getting blowed up real good!). Chakotay wonders however, how long the Cooperative's ideals will last in the face of such power. I wonder as well. The ideal of oneness and group cohesion frankly strikes me as quite dangerous. That's "Unity's" payoff, and why it works so well. It seriously asks what the difference is between the Borg and the New Cooperative. Is it inevitable that the Cooperative's power will lead them to seek out victims the way the Borg do? I think it's a distinct possibility. The fact that Riley's group activates this Cooperative without the consent of most of the colony is assimilation in and by itself; the motives begin to lose their relevance.

Detracting from the overall power of the show are a few small but noteworthy details that continue to plague the series' credibility. One is the destruction of yet another shuttle. These losses just can't be ignored week after week. Either the show has to acknowledge that the crew has found a way to build new shuttles or there should be great concern over losing them. Destroying a shuttle wasn't really necessary here anyway, so why did they do it? Ugh.

Then there's the aforementioned matter of the arbitrary killing of Kaplan—also unnecessary. And, of course, there's the excessive technobabble in the final "explanation" scene and the part where the severity of Chakotay's injury is revealed. Couldn't these passages have been written without uses of such convenient-sounding gobbledygook?

There's also a glaring logistic error: Riley explains she was originally assimilated during the battle at Wolf 359. How was that possible? That ship was destroyed in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" and had nothing to do with the cube that appears in this episode. This is only one line of dialog, and it's not a major demerit, but someone wasn't paying attention.

I don't want to sound like "Unity" was a negative viewing experience, because it wasn't. It's a standout episode. The special effects are as good as I've seen them on Voyager , McNeill's direction is effective, the story is fresh and implicitly complex, the production is impressive, and the action and suspense works. This is not the best episode of Voyager , but it's among them.

Previous episode: Blood Fever Next episode: Darkling

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Comment Section

58 comments on this post.

"A show of hands -- who didn't know the Ensign We've Never Seen Before would be killed in the course of the episode, or, more specifically, in the course of the first scene?" Kaplan appeared in "Future's End, Part II." Chuckles ordered her to show the Doctor where the Technobabble Room (weapons control or whatever) was.

Actually, she appeared in both parts of "Future's End". In Part I she had the unfortunate role of Junior Officer Who Asks a Stupid Question [TM].

Ha! Burn, Jammer. Anyway, killing off Red Shirts is a Trek tradition and I always smile when I see it. Great ep, good review. As for the Wolf 359 thing, er... transwarp corridor on the cube that got blowed up? The Queen was on that cube as well, after all.

This is an interesting episode. The New Cooperative could be similar to an early stage of the Borg Collective. In the beginning people might have joined voluntarily, the allure of the collective mind is powerful. The New Cooperative might head down a similar path. The road to hell is plastered with good intentions.

@Destructor, The Queen transcends all. She can change bodies and be anywhere in the collective she wishes. And she can be replaced. Riley behind at Wolf 359 is implausible and just plain sloppy writing. It's like they felt they had to have a gratuitous TNG reference. Dumb.

Latex Zebra

We know the Borg Sphere's are Transwarp capable and just because the Cube saw didn't utilise one on screen during TBOBB doesn't mean they didn't send one back at some point.

I just finished watching Unity. I'd seen this episode before, I think, but probably not more than once, and not since it originally aired. When Chakotay asked the final question, about how long the Co-operative's ideals would last in the face of that kind of power, my own mental answer was, "probably not long." I liked this episode, but it implied an idea which I've been thinking about for a while now, where the Borg are concerned; namely, that some of the people who were assimilated, genuinely liked it. To a certain extent, I think Seven of Nine herself did, even though the circumstances surrounding her assimilation were deeply traumatic. My own fascination with the Borg, has brought up some of the issues and cognitive dissonance that I have with cybernetics and transhumanism as more general concepts. For the most part, of course, it's all utterly horrific; and I remember one guy a while back, produced a video series of several hours' length, which he called "Seven of Nine, and the Sexualisation of Technology," where he basically argued that Trek and other elements of pop culture were being used to encourage the population to want to become cyborgs. As Seven herself said in "Drone," however, "the lure of perfection is strong," and related topics have been an area that I've always had an interest in, even though I know that the potential results of such technology would likely prove unspeakable. Not so much an episode review; sorry for that...but it was about some ideas which were connected with the episode, so it's not completely irrelevant.

This episode brought up a few interesting questions for me. As far as Voyager was concerned, why not investigate the Borg Cube and try to acquire some of their technology - Transwarp should have been quite interesting to someone in Voyager's position. On the other hand, it shows how deeply the events of TBOBW affected the Federation. Janeway came off as genuinely terrified, and made decisions the way a skittish prey animal would. It was nice to see that Janeway is still human, and Voyager is not all-powerful. The Cooperative was interesting, but I had a problem with the quasi-mystical telepathic borg. Weren't nanoprobes the key to the Borg's communication and regenerative properties? That explanation is both grounded in real science and seems to sit better with canon than "Neural-electic blah blah blah..." I understand the writer's were probably reluctant to inject nanoprobes into Chuckles, but that would have made an interesting continuity concern as well. The other thing that was intriguing about the New Collective is the question of who was in charge. A perfectly flat democratic group mind should not have a leader, yet the Borg derives its efficiency and power by being a collective mind driven by the will of the Queen. I would have liked to have understood that better, because it seems that the leaders of the good cell would not have necessarily been able to impose order, unless the order itself comes from the innate Borg programming... Anyway, a good episode with the exception of the magic telepathy hokum. It left you asking questions, which is what great sci-fi is all about.

Definitely one of the better Voyager Borg episodes before they turned into action movies. I loved the scene where Chakotay is first connected to the group and it starts out sounding a bit like a Vulcan mind meld but as the voices merge it turns into the Borg voice. Chilling.

This episode could have been entitled "Leviathan" after the 17th century book of political philosophy by Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes described the state of nature as "Nasty, brutish and short." These people, freed from the collective, are living in a Hobbesian state of nature, one of war of all against all. Hobbes favored an absolute monarch to prevent civil unrest, and felt that while the monarch might not be perfect, anything was better than anarchy. In the collective, there was no internal strife. Of course, they don't want to go back to the collective, but instead think that they can use some aspects of the group mind to provide unity without the totalitarian nature of the Borg. In place of a monarch, they substitute the collective will. It remains to be seen whether this will work out for them in the long run. Majority rule without checks and balances to protect the minority is subject to abuse, and a collective where everything is subject to the rule of the majority is opporessive. Of course, the Borg are not truly ruled collectively, but ruled by the Queen. Left to their own devices, the Borg collective would "vote" to disband, and the Queen prevents such unacceptable thoughts. But even if this new collective only goes with the majority, majorities can go too far. It remains to be seen whether this group will prosper or just exchange one nightmare for another.

Since we learned in TNG that the Borg originated from somewhere in the Delta Quadrant; it was pretty much set in stone that Voyager would come across them. It was just a matter of time and a matter if whether any episode pertaining to such would be plagued with the usual writing problems inherent in this series. Thankfully, the writers decide to make a *gasp!* thought-provoking episode concerning the return to individuality (a la TNG's "I, Borg") and the temptation to justify reunification through a collective for enlightened purposes. This is a mostly very well written piece of storytelling that actually utilizes Voyager's potential as a series. I realize that this isn't technically the true Borg encounter episode; as this doesn't really concern any part of the actual collective. But it's it great start and I for one was happy to see it. 3.5 stars. Side note: Concerning the death of "redshirts" on ST series as a whole; I get the fact that it has become a running gag, as it were. I would hope at some point someone somewhere would realize it ultimately becomes an exercise in gratuitousness and only serves to distract from the narrative in nothing less than a negative way. The joke is over and I hope that any future series will abandon it.

I think this episode has a lot of relevance to social media, Twitter etc., with everyone suddenly being plugged into everyone else's thoughts whether they like it or not, and the resulting effects on the society (and the direction it will take) being uncertain.

One of the reasons the Bjorn became a weak wasp sting is due to episodes like this. Wishy washy idealist nonsense, where former Bjorn can reclaim their humanity (etc). It's pathetic. The Bjorn were supposed to be a deadly genocidal collective. And now they are a weak flip flop.

Question: was Chakotay's experience here *ever* followed up on? Because it seems to me it would help give the forced Chakotay-Seven relationship a new perspective: here's a guy who's actually *experienced* the intimacy of being in a collective!

I always interpreted Chakotay's ability to connect to Seven at the end of "Scorpion" as being related to his time in "Unity," though I can't swear to that being true.

It is explicitly mentioned either in "Scorpion" or "The Gift" that Chakotay remembers being in a collective consciousness which is why he ends up being selected for the neck-thingy double cross. I don't think it's a small matter either that the first person for whom Seven held significant romantic feelings (besides the elf from "Unimatrix Zero"--she had forgotten him anyway) was Chakotay.

The Dreamer

Good Episode I also wondered about the potential Wolf 359 plot hole In guess the transwarp conduit could be plausible I.e a sphere left behind to collect escape pods and return to the Delta Quadrant? (The Wormhole aliens protecting The Sisko of course.) or a ship or two assimilated and headed for the DQ after the cube was blowed up It would have been more plausible for these the starfleet officers and romulans to be the victims from the outposts along the neutral zone referenced in the same named episode. But I guess wolf 359 sounds more memorable As far as explaining Klingons etc

Nice catch on the Roosevelt thing Jammer. You could make up some tech-jibber-jabber reason, but you'd really have to work at it! :-) Too bad we didn't get to know Kaplan more. I know it's an "ensemble" / red-shirt thing (she was in gold BTW), but she was more than cute :-) I'm in lock step with Jammer here. Good, but not quite 4.0 stuff. 3.5 stars from me.

Good episode, good review, good comments section. :) Like Yanks, I was sad to see Kaplan go. She seemed to have more personality than the average redshirt, and she did a nice job of protecting her commander from harm when it started to get violent. Nice to see Chakotay getting him some a la Kirk. :) There were some nitpicks both from Jammer and the peanut gallery that were on point. A couple I'd add: @ 9:50 I love how Harry said there was no response to his hails (the second one especially) IMMEDIATELY after sending them, allowing absolutely no time for them to respond. I know, the show's got to move along; but couldn't they have some other dialogue from Tuvok or something and then come back to him saying there was no response? @ 37:03, Chakotay's hand is huge or that lady's head is tiny!

Primordial Soup

A bit of nitpicking or I might have simply missed it but why at the end when they were trying to prevent Chakotay from reactivating the cube why didn't they just transport him out? I would guess the transporters weren't working as usual, voyager has the worst transporters it only requires a light breeze and they stop working.

Overall, one of the better borg episodes. If I had to take issue with something though, it's how easily the colonists are to surrender their individuality (to embrace assimilation) given their experiences and more importantly, how Chakotay is willing to just go along with it. Yes, he was under their control at the end, but initially he recommended the plan to Janeway. I just can't wrap my head around Chakotay agreeing with the forcible assimilation of thousands of people, especially when you consider his earlier revulsion at the idea of even a temporary joining to save his life. Even Janeway seems to take this concept a little too easily, focusing more on the danger of reactivating the borg cube and less on the obvious ethical problem. I did, however, enjoy the ending and this episode does stand as unique in my mind in all of borg canon. It is the first and to my knowledge, the only episode that even hints at the origin of the borg, helping to explain how even good intentioned people could have been corrupted by the allure of collective consciousness. Rather than portraying the collective as horror, it gives us a glimpse of the seductiveness of that state of being. Incidentally, I prefer to just ignore the Borg queen and pretend that the borg are more or less as they were portrayed before her unwelcome arrival in First Contact. Indeed, the addition of the Queen actually wrecks the episode for me, running counter to its central thesis about the loss of individuality as being both horrifying and seductive.

I like how Kaplan dies from a shot to the shoulder but Chakotay is hit full in the chest and he's just knocked out. His animal guide must have protected him or something...

@Primordial Soup I couldn't understand why Tuvok and Kims scans couldn't locate Chakotay just a few feet away on the Borg cube

Diamond Dave

It's taken all series but finally we have a really strong episode. I suppose at this point returning to the Borg was something of a given - late in the 3rd series Voyager still hadn't come up with a classic bad guy after the Kazon never came up to scratch. But at least here there is a fresh perspective on the Borg, offering a very effective insight into a more nuanced foe. There are some really good scenes - the collective voices merging into the voice of the Borg being one outstanding moment. It's also a good Chakotay episode too - head winning out over heart but then manipulated into doing it anyway. Good stuff. 3.5 stars.

Hey look! Upchokotay with ensign Who Cares. Don't get used to her. (I'll come with you......, NO) Nothing suspicious about that. O great. let's watch Chocobokotay not die. Stupid overused premise. Reactivate a Borg ship transmitter... No danger there. Extremely skeptical???!! How about Not in a million years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let's get the heck outta here now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh well. Don't say I didn't warn you. (***)

Startrekwatcher

I found this episode to be a bit overrated. Sure it's a little bit better than the episodes preceding it and following it but it still isn't great. Ken Biller isn't one of my favorite writers. Chakotay isn't that exciting or involving of a character. And all the hype leading up to this hour made expectations high and I have to say I was disappointed. The episode did a great Job creating a very foreboding atmosphere and with the ship Passing beyond the Nekrit Expanse it made the Delta Quadrant unknown and mysterious once again. But I just don't think the episode got "there" with the premise. Not to mention the continuity issues littering the eposode(survivors from Wolf 359, the borg being telepathic and neural energy healing chakotay)

I think the one collective member's comments about how thrilling it was to have a new mind (Chakotay's) in the collective is very telling. Clearly there is a euphoric feeling one gets from being linked. And the more minds the better. So I can see them begin to absorb new minds as time goes on, perhaps voluntarily at first, but soon aggressively (in fact if you think about it they forced some of the people on the planet to join the new collective). The only chance that they have is if they do not have access to the tech needed to link new minds and succeeding generations will be raised as normal individuals.

Ferdinand Cesarano

I enjoyed this episode tremendously. The nuanced portrayal of the people on the planet -- sympathetic overall, but not without areas for critique -- was an example of excellent storytelling. Each viewer is left to decide whether and to what degree the actions of this "new collective" were appropriate. I don't mind techno-babble or medico-babble one bit; and I find the constant mention of this as a negative to be wrong-headed. The slinging of jargon promotes the suspension of disbelief, and helps the viewer buy into the scenes. The only quibble that I have with the episode is with the scenes on the powered-down Borg cube. If there was no power on that ship, there should have been no life support or gravity. So the away teams should have had to wear space suits and magnetic boots. But, even with that flaw, this episode delivered.

To me this episode just felt too on-the-nose and manipulative and odd and unpleasant since it seemed manipulative with dark messages ... when people regain individuality they'll instantly go to incompatible tribalism and fighting? They need to be magic-technology-re-collectivized, that's the only way to prevent or end fighting? And, from the early deceptions, it seemed obvious that the group would of course end up being not so benevolent or tolerant as they initially claimed to be (and the ending was a way to show that but in a safe way).

A very good episode - nice to get a different way of dealing with the Borg. How the fear of the Borg -- even when dead -- terrifies Janeway/Torres is well done. The Borg are truly the best Trek villains. So some natural phenomenon kills this particular cube and some Borg escape and de-assimilate. But then they want to form a new collective, which seems innocent enough to Chakotay at first but then maybe not so much. I thought this was a creative way of examining the Borg (telepathy, healing or regeneration). I found the dead Borg cube to still be very ominous when the Voyager crew went over to examine it - as well as when the Dr. conducts the autopsy and "revives" the Borg -- great stuff. I don't find Chakotay a very interesting character -- another wooden Voyager actor and I actually thought the ensign who gets killed early was adding a nice dimension to the episode - but of course she gets killed while Chakotay somehow survives the same weapon attack. But his final line is very telling: "I wonder how long their ideals will last in the face of that kind of power." I'd give this episode 3.5 stars just barely - the Borg really do it for me and the reaction of the Voyager crew to it was well done.

Once again, how convenient that Voyager happens across a whole group of people from the alpha quadrant. Chakotay goes on a scouting mission to find a faster way through the Nekrit Expanse. In a shuttle. I would assume Voyager is going far faster than any shuttle could already. And what could he possibly find that would be faster than just flying straight through it anyway? But then he couldn't get stranded on the planet by himself, so whatever. There are 80,000 drones on the planet. A few hundred of them are getting along in their little colony. How do they manage to survive with 79,700 savages surrounding them? Voyager now has a Borg on the ship, that is never seen or studied or even mentioned again as far as I can remember. They could have probably learned something from it, but it's completely ignored after this. I guess they tossed it out an airlock. 2 1/2 stars

I should say that they do mention the Borg corpse again next season, so that's one thing they actually remembered from an earlier episode, surprisingly.

A good one, nice and look for the Borg. The Romulan doctor mentioning how very wonderful it was to have a new brain added, along with Chakotay's final comment, was ominous indeed. The Borg are always chilling, and I liked how even this . . . softer side of Borg managed to retain that. The Romulan doctor was nicely portrayed. All good.

This episode had a bit of a continuity problem. In the scene where the small group of Borg reinitialize their link with commander Chakotay because their base is under attack, you can see at least one kazon Male among the attackers; but later on in the series, seven of nine states that the kazon were unworthy of assimilation.

Sean Hagins

@Niall I COMPLETELY agree! This is a fantastic episode! Odd that everyone has various nitpicks, but none are the same one I had-I find it near impossible that the organic part of the Borg can survive the vacuum of space to reactivate (I know they say it was an automatic response or something, but still!) Anyway, I actually am not "chilled" by the New Collective as some here are. In fact, the fact that the New Collective that started with a few hundred was able to assimilate the other 79,000 or so and keep their friendly feelings towards Voyager, gives hope that perhaps they can change more Borg into still having minds and yet be part of a good whole. Kind of like Gaia in Asimov's later Foundation books (Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth) Of course, the whole one mind thing is sci-fi, but the fact of an overall guiding idea being shared that lets various peoples live in harmony and unity as opposed to the chaos that formerly governed their lives is definitely a good idea (*and free will is still intact) Loved this episode! Among my top 5 Voyager eps!

Togu Pardamean Oppusunggu

Such an interesting episode and one where Chakotay stars. Yay! Just wanted to give shout out to the romantic tension between Chakotay and Frazier. Well played. And one does get to believe that she is kind and well-intentioned, which gives the ending a bit of a chilling tone. Still, I'd like to believe, as Sean Higgins here puts it, that the New Collective does figure a way to strike a balance that preserves individual freedom.

Relating this to PIC Season 1: In re-watching this episode I don't think PIC has violated canon with respect to de-assimilated Romulans -- there's a fair amount of leeway PIC writers have with what they can do with de-assimilated Romulans. And they'd probably retcon/invent stuff arbitrarily if need be. But I think the reclamation project and what took place in "Unity" can be totally independent. I imagine the PIC arc will come up with a different way that the Romulans were able to be de-assimilated from the natural disaster in "Unity". Should be acceptable that Hugh is not aware of this little collective deep in the Delta Quadrant that has lost its connection to the greater Borg collective and has essentially been abandoned. This little collective destroys the Borg cube and presumably lives happily ever after on their planet. A top-10 VOY episode for me, by the way.

This came close to working for me...but didn't quite. I'm not a fan of Borg episodes as they tend to be somewhat simplistic. They tend to be fight/flight episodes where the key decisions tend to be when to run/attack...and not much more. That's boring. The original concepts of the Borg by Gene was to likely to explore "group-think" which was a cool concept. But later shows devolved the borg into a simple military foe to be faced mostly with military solutions. This episode actually does return somewhat to the roots of the Borg in exploring the concept of group-think and group-consciousness...but it largely does from a favourable viewpoint (except for when Chakotay was hijacked). I think if Star Trek had explored the Borg much like the White Mountain trilogy did, they would have worked better. In those stories, you have "capped" and "uncapped" citizens existing under an oppression alien occupation. Those books were moddield on the authoritarian governments that sprang up in the 30's and were very critical of group-think. Those stories successfully combined the physical and mental aspects of group-think...while Star Trek borg only really explored the physical dynamics of group-consciousness.

Sarjenka's Brother

Count me squarely in the 3.5 LIKE IT camp. Lots to think about philosophically and lots of good tension and twists. Very nice set designs and special effects. The nitpicks aren't wrong, but unless something is egregious, I'm just learning to let those go. You're going to get a bunch of boring stories if the fourth Trek series 100% rigidly adheres to every little thing,

Maybe the Borg cube at Wolf 359 launched a sphere with all the newly assimilated Starfleet drones and sent it back through a transwarp conduit to the Delta quadrant where they were assigned to a new cube. Or something. I’m bargaining.

When I saw a good Voyager episode with more than one star, I did wonder if this website had been hacked. Finally a decent Chakotay episode, even if he doesn't do a lot. Riley was beautiful, and everything was well acted. I particularly liked the happy Romulan. At the end of some episodes... a few dozen, I guess, I can't see why Janeway doesn't have the sense to wipe out the planet, or villans' ships. She's ohssnly shot one person so far, and that was a holodec character. If she can destroy the Caretaker's station for no good reason, she can make a prudent military decision occasionally.

It’s a relatively strong episode for Chuckles (and Beltran), but I found it rather boring, and annoyingly implausible. It’s implausible enough that there was any chance Voyager/Chuckles would even find these people. Were they actually expecting a Starfleet ship to stroll by and help them reactivate the cube babble thingy? Luckily, Chuckles’ shuttle didn’t see the cube, so they had time to gain his confidence by him being wounded etc etc. And the colonists’ endless reassuring exposition manages the rare feat of simultaneously being annoyingly oblique and entirely on the nose. It’s all so cagey and contrived, I sure as HELL would not have trusted these people. It likely would have helped if the script didn’t try to hide what was going on to the viewer. That’s the annoying on the nose part. If you get it— like 90% of the audience— you get it at the first winking hint. There was a solid concept here, but the story’s scaffolding is so painfully evident. Maybe these people would have tried this with any ship that showed up, but from the colonists’ song and dance, it’s quite apparent they were expecting Chuckles and Voyager to show up.

FWIW, I also saw this first run, and while I do think it’s badly flawed, the episode’s trailer did it no favors since it hyped the Borg and gave away the plot. And, made it look kind of exciting, versus the talkie reality. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aoMvrmXudGc Talkie talkie episodes can be very strong, but I don’t think this one was. Reminds me of the Lore/Data two parter with the Borg.

It’s funny, I watched this when it first aired and completely forgot about it ever since. I was trying to think how I even ended up in this review. I was just perusing Tv Tropes, reading about Scorpion. Seems the production itself thought this episode didn’t live up to its hype: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/StarTrekVoyagerS3E25S4E1Scorpion “Author's Saving Throw: This was an apology for "Unity" failing to live up to the hype of the return of the Borg, as Jeri Taylor admitted in the May 10-16, 1997 issue of TV Guide: Taylor hopes the May 21 cliffhanger (part 2 airs in late August) will "keep the audience from feeling cheated" by the Borg's Voyager appearance in February's much hyped, but ultimately disappointing, episode called "Unity", which was really more about a band of ex-Borg drones. Admits Taylor, "we were concerned that maybe that wasn't a big enough dose for the viewers, so we dropped the two-parter we had planned, and decided to write an all-out, slam-bang, Borg-as-villain adventure”

Bob (a different one)

I like this episode. It has some surprising twists and an interesting new take on the Borg. Silly posted: "This was an apology for "Unity" failing to live up to the hype of the return of the Borg, as Jeri Taylor admitted" The Voyager creators have a lot to apologize for, but Unity isn't one of them. I would have liked to have seen fewer "slam-bang, Borg-as-villain adventure” episodes and more episodes that centered around how the various species in the Delta Quadrant were affected both directly and indirectly by the Borg. Robert Beltran's acting is often described as wooden, but I prefer to think of it as "undetstated." He may not be giving a Shakespearean tour de force performances, but he does seem more "natural" than some of the other cast. Something to ponder: all we know about the politics of the colony comes from Riley herself. Who's to say that she was telling the truth about the raiders? In retrospect, maybe the "raiders" were storming the cooperative to prevent them from reactivating the Borg hive mind?

"Something to ponder: all we know about the politics of the colony comes from Riley herself. Who's to say that she was telling the truth about the raiders? In retrospect, maybe the "raiders" were storming the cooperative to prevent them from reactivating the Borg hive mind?" Even if the raiders were as Riley said, does that make forcibly assimilating them right? This is a chilling outcome. Picard said he'd rather die than be assimilated. But I guess it's a-ok here because they are violent and don't wanna live in a collectivist multi-species utopia. Is this some kind of indictment of the Federation? Holy smokes maybe those Klingon monsters from Discovery S1 had a point? This episode is maddening for focusing on all the wrong things. Chacotay is horrified at being in a collective for a minute or two temporarily to heal a mortal wound but thinks forcibly assimilating hundreds of individuals is cool? Janeway is too busy worrying about the danger of activating the cube to care if any of this might oh I dunno violate the Prime Directive? Or how about just basic ethics and human decency? In retrospect, this is one of those episodes like Up the Long Ladder that seems to have fundamentally failed in writing, execution or both, despite having some really cool ideas.

An animated gif of the scene in which Ripley's true nature is revealed: https://i.imgur.com/m4dAkb0.gif

@Bob (a different one) I’m glad I am not the only one who likes Robert Beltran as an actor. The problem with him isn’t that he can’t act, it’s that the writers almost never let him sink his teeth into anything. If you give the man nothing to work with, what do you expect his performance to look like?! But the man can act. Okay, he’s not Patrick Stewart. I wouldn’t even say he’s at Robert Picardo’s level. But when given the chance, he can deliver quality performances. And Chakotay, as a character, is actually really fascinating. It really annoys me that he was one of the characters given such short shrift. If properly developed, he could have been awesome. This episode has definitely risen in my estimation over the years. When I first saw it I was so disappointed. I wanted the flash-bang adventure for the Borg’s return that “Scorpion” ended up giving us. Now, I have to admit, this is an absolutely chilling use of the Borg. What appeals most to me is that this is as close to an origin story for the Borg as we ever got. Aside from an off-hand remark in “Dragon’s Teeth” about the Borg only having assimilated a few star systems 900 years previously, we’re never told where they come from or how they got started. (As an aside - that’s undoubtedly a good thing. If they had ever given us the origin of the Borg, they almost certainly would have had Humans be responsible for it somehow. GROAN! We can’t have them independently arise out in the Delta Quadrant. No, Earth and humanity would have to be involved. Star Trek is probably the worst franchise I’ve encountered when it comes to Small Universe Syndrome. I’ve heard that they were thinking of making V’Ger be responsible for the creation of the Borg. Again - GROAN! I’ve also heard that one of the original plans for ENT: “Regeneration” was for Alice Krige to play a member of Starfleet who gets assimilated by the 24th century Borg and becomes the first Borg Queen. Yet again - GROAN! Seriously, stop!) But honestly, can’t you see something like this little collective being how the Borg began? A group of well-meaning individuals who don’t understand what they’re messing with, and whose creation ultimately gets out of hand? These are, in way, good people. They’re using the Borg collective consciousness to heal people. Definitely a commendable action. They’ve found a way to use the Hive Mind to create peace. Again, laudable. But, it sure doesn’t take long, does it, for that power to go to their heads. Before probably even they know it, they’re subordinating Chakotay’s will to their wishes without his consent and forcibly assimilating others into their collectivist utopia. Power corrupts, after all. Once a small group like this started down that path how long do you think it would take for them (and how easy do you think it would for them) to justify to themselves the forced assimilation of others? After all, they’ve found “perfection”. Wouldn’t it be only compassionate to share that perfection with others? Wouldn’t they then find it necessary to share that perfection? After all, people would only resist because they simply don’t know any better. If they could only understand what those already in the collectivist utopia already know they would doubtlessly want to be assimilated. So, forcible assimilation isn’t bad, it’s compassionate. Therefore, they’ll happily force you to join their utopia; it’s for your own good, after all; just trust them, you’ll thank them once you a good little drone. Then, centuries later, they’re a galaxy spanning threat. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” is a well-known saying for a good reason. Bringing real world politics into this for a minute - I think it might this depiction of the Borg that started my lifelong distrust of involuntary collectivism in all in it’s forms. The Borg, after all, are the ultimate communist nightmare. And Holy Mary, Mother of God, it is terrifying!

Jason R. said: "This episode is maddening for focusing on all the wrong things. Chacotay is horrified at being in a collective for a minute or two temporarily to heal a mortal wound but thinks forcibly assimilating hundreds of individuals is cool? Janeway is too busy worrying about the danger of activating the cube to care if any of this might oh I dunno violate the Prime Directive? Or how about just basic ethics and human decency?' Janeway brings up the danger of reactivating the cube when meeting with Riley, and says that she is highly skeptical of her plan but she (politely) says that will give the matter some more thought. When she and Chakotay are alone she brings up the same objection you did: JANEWAY: Not only would it mean imposing a choice on thousands of people who had no voice in the decision, but it would also be taking a terrible risk. Helping to create a new collective. Who knows what the repercussions might be? I think it's also important to consider that Chakotay was being influenced by Riley's group. At first he simply displays extreme empathy, but by the end you see that they can directly control him. How much of his conversation with Janeway was the real Chakotay? Luke said: " If they had ever given us the origin of the Borg, they almost certainly would have had Humans be responsible for it somehow. GROAN! " A few years ago David Mack wrote a trio of Star Trek novels, the Destiny trilogy, that included the origin of the Borg. And, of course, it tied humanity into it. Surprisingly though the books were actually really good. The books were designed to cap off the ongoing novel continuity at the time and I really wasn't up to date with the current storylines, but I still really enjoyed them. Most tie-in novels are crap, but these are some of the exceptions. And, as long as I'm recommending books, I think you might like the book The Joke by Milan Kundera. It isn't a dystopian sci-fi book or anything, it's just a very good (imo) novel about life in communist Czechoslovakia.

“A few years ago David Mack wrote a trio of Star Trek novels, the Destiny trilogy, that included the origin of the Borg. And, of course, it tied humanity into it.“ Seriously?! FACEPALM!!!! Star Trek has got to be the very embodiment of Small Universe Syndrome.

"Janeway brings up the danger of reactivating the cube when meeting with Riley, and says that she is highly skeptical of her plan but she (politely) says that will give the matter some more thought. When she and Chakotay are alone she brings up the same objection you did: JANEWAY: Not only would it mean imposing a choice on thousands of people who had no voice in the decision, but it would also be taking a terrible risk. Helping to create a new collective. Who knows what the repercussions might be?" This ethical dilemma should have been the focus of the episode, not a side issue addressed in one line. Moreover, I don't like the idea of the ex drones controlling Chakotay as in mind control; the episode should have tied this in to the loss of individuality theme and made it clear that being joined with them even for a short time essentially "assimilated" Chakotay causing his motives to align with theirs.

A few scientists invent a way to link their thoughts to speed up their research. It works really well and they get other people at their research facility to try it. The research facility starts running at an incredible pace and begins making incredible finds thanks to the unity they've achieved with the new invention. As the invention gets used more, those using it lose more and more of their individuality into the collective they've created and lose empathy or understanding as to why any scientists at the facility wouldn't want to use the invention and join them when they could be serving the collective and making more discoveries. Soon, the collective starts forcibly making other scientists to use the invention, and eventually, non scientists, to grow and strengthen the collective with the most benevolent intentions. Not a stretch to think this is how the Borg came to be.

This episode lays the foundation for Voyager's entrance into Borg space some episodes later, and paves the way for the iconic "Scorpion". In a sense it also serves the function of DS9's "The Jem'Hadar", a second season episode which also served to introduce us to enemy space. I wouldn't rank "Unity" as highly as Jammer does. The "positive collectivization" themes are too big for this episode to handle, and no interesting parallels are drawn between The Federation and what is essentially a mini Borg Federation (free Borg healthcare included!). Instead, Janeway's default position is skepticism and distrust, and the political and philosophical themes this episode broaches are mostly ignored. Interestingly, Janeway and Chakotay's beliefs seem to flip between here and "Scorpion". In "Unity" Janeway talks Chakotay out of dealing with the Borg (albeit "free Borg"). In "Scorpion" these roles are reversed. If the episode squanders its thematic potential, it does well as a piece of spectacle. The reveal that the aliens are "free Borg" perfectly coincides with Janeway's stumbling upon a Borg Cube (dramatically offline). And the episode's climax, in which a Cube springs suddenly to life, is still powerful.

The actress who played Riley looked a lot like Dr. Crusher.

Having just discovered the episode, I watched it, and liked it. For me, what stood out was that, with the right inducement, anyone might be led to join the Borg collective. Chakotay was prevailed upon to do so, in order to be restored to health. These Borg were benign. Others, might not be. This was one of the most ingenious of the Borg episodes in Voyager. 3 stars out of 4.

One of the best episodes of the series I think its 4 stars. I'm not going to let the one liner about Wolf 359 ruin it for me. Remember we don't know what happened between the battle and when the Enterprise caught up with the cube near Earth, so I'm going to go with what someone else said above, in that in between period a sphere left the cube sending the newly assimilated drones through a transwarp conduit for assignment.

I found myself distracted by the ways Chakotay's story reminded me of Picard's in "Liaisons": marooned on an unfamiliar planet, greeted as he regains consciousness by a woman with long blonde hair who tells him that his traveling companion is dead and he must keep still because he is injured. He wants to escape, but the woman keeps finding reasons they can't … It wasn't just the initial set-up. Similarities were still popping up well into the episode. I started to wonder if someone spilled coffee on the script for the first act or two and hastily copied down a few things from an old copy of "Liaisons."

Finally an episode of V'ger I pretty much liked. Further, an episode featuring Chakotay that I feel worked for him. He tends to be a non-entity for me. I think a good part of that comes from the performance of Lori Hallier as Riley. Her 40 year career and 93 acting credits on IMDB point in the direction of "experienced veteran." She's another actor who showed up on Voyager after a stint in soaps. Lori appeared in 48 episodes of "Days of Our Lives" from 1989 to 1990. While the episode doesn't dwell too deeply on the topic, it does raise the question whether individual freedom or collective enterprise is preferable.

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Star Trek Voyager S 3 E 16 "Unity" » Recap

Ensign Kaplan and Chakotay are returning in a shuttle from a mission to scout an area of space known as the Nekrit Expanse. The local conditions are presenting some navigational challenges for them. When they eventually pick up a Federation signal, they are surprised to discover that it is not coming from Voyager , but from a nearby planet with a settlement of over 80,000 humanoids. Whoever is calling them knows they're from the Federation, and they're requesting their help.

They leave a message buoy behind for Voyager and follow the signal, but their first impression of the planet's inhabitants isn't encouraging. Several robed aliens open fire on them soon after they land. A second group arrives to drive them off, but not soon enough to stop Chakotay from being knocked out by an energy weapon.

When he comes to, he finds a human woman watching over him. She introduces herself as Riley Frazier, the one who sent the distress signal. She also tells Chakotay that Ensign Kaplan didn't make it , and that his shuttle has been stripped down to the bulkheads by the scavengers who attacked him.

Chakotay is obviously curious how Riley found herself on this distant planet, which is populated by a wide variety of aliens, some familiar and some not. She says they all have the same story: they were attacked in space and abducted by an unknown species who put them into stasis and dropped them here, alone, for no apparent reason. Some of these unwilling transplants live peacefully together, while others, as Kaplan found out the hard way, do not. Chakotay is eager to help them repair their damaged communications array so he can contact Voyager , but Riley insists that he rest out of concern for the neural damage he suffered during the firefight.

Meanwhile, Voyager has encountered a derelict Borg cube. It's not clear what misadventure deactivated the drones aboard, but Janeway sees it as an opportunity to learn more about their technology.

Despite his host's seemingly pure intentions, Chakotay's locked room makes him feel more like a prisoner than a guest. He manages to hack the door open and into a courtyard filled with makeshift structures. Nothing seems particularly suspicious, until he comes across a group of locals, including Riley, and sees that they wear a number of Borg implants.

Riley is quick to admit that her original story wasn't entirely true. It was the Borg who abducted and assimilated the planet's populace, and it was only after their cube was hit by an electrokinetic storm five years past that they were severed from the collective and regained their individuality. They settled on this planet, but before long the cultural differences between the widely disparate species created hostilities that persist to this day.

But Riley insists that she was honest about the Cooperative's desire to create a peaceful, lasting community. As an example, she introduces her friend Orum, a Romulan who has long since abandoned his mistrust of humans. They didn't send the distress signal to be rescued, but to enlist Voyager 's help in protecting themselves from their attackers.

Unfortunately, Chakotay is still struggling from his earlier injury, which Orum believes will ultimately be fatal if left untreated. With their limited resources, there is only one treatment they can offer. The Borg collective, Orum explains, can transfer neural energy between drones as a means of repairing injury. As they all still have their neural processors from when they were assimilated, they could temporarily join themselves with Chakotay to heal him. Chakotay is understandably resistant to this idea, despite their assurances that it would be completely non-invasive, but his deteriorating condition eventually compels him to reconsider.

They begin the procedure. The eerie voice of the collective that we all know so well fills Chakotay's thoughts, but their comforting words are a stark contrast to the Borg's usual rote imperatives.

Cooperative: Open your mind to our thoughts and concentrate on getting well. Hear our voices. Open your mind to our thoughts. Our collective strength can heal you. You're safe with us. Feel the connection. We're with you. See who we are. Know us. You're not alone. Our strength is your strength. We can overcome your pain. We welcome you into our thoughts. There's nothing to fear. We won't let you die. We're all one circle—no beginning, no end...

Chakotay once again wakes up with Riley watching over him, this time feeling much better, and not just physically. The thoughts and memories he shared with them, combined with the residual link, has radically changed his perspective of the Cooperative. Through the link, he also learned their real plan for solving their little civil war.

Voyager has arrived at the planet by now, having found the message buoy left behind by Kaplan. Janeway listens to Riley's request, which is for them to temporarily reactivate the derelict Borg cube's neuroelectric field generator long enough to establish a collective link, similar to the one Chakotay joined, but permanently and for the entire population. For all the trauma they caused, the Borg's hive mind at least precluded the sort of conflict they now suffer.

Janeway doesn't doubt their motives, particularly with Chakotay advocating for them, but there are a lot of consequences to consider. Well-intentioned or not, there's no way to know what might become of this new collective, not to mention the ethics of imposing such a decision on thousands of individuals. And more pragmatically, fiddling with Borg technology is always a gamble. A drone they attempted to autopsy en route to the planet spontaneously reactivated, and if one of them can do that, so could the 1,100 others still on the cube. In the end, Janeway is forced to refuse, offering only supplies as consolation. Disappointed, the Cooperative nevertheless accepts her decision gracefully.

Chakotay's shuttle ride back to Voyager is bittersweet. B'Elanna offers to take his mind off things with some exercise back on the ship, but Chakotay's attention wavers as he starts to hear the Cooperative in his mind. After a moment of confusion, he takes out his phaser, stuns B'Elanna, and commandeers the shuttle.

The Cooperative is using their link with Chakotay to call for help from the planet, where they are besieged by the raiders. They give him directions to reactivate the field generator on the Borg cube. Tuvok leads a security team to stop him. After a brief exchange of phasers, they stun Chatokay, but he manages to activate the generator with his last moment of strength.

Reactivated drones flood the halls as the cube comes to life. The security team evacuates everyone back to the ship, where the crew is preparing for the impending battle, but only moments later, the cube self-destructs. Voyager , mercifully undamaged, receives a transmission from the planet.

Cooperative: We are the new Cooperative. We have destroyed the Borg cube. We regret that we forced Commander Chakotay to assist us, but it was necessary for our survival. His link with the Cooperative has now been severed. Our lasting gratitude.

The Doctor confirms that they were speaking the truth about freeing Chakotay from their link. He feels betrayed by the Cooperative, no longer convinced of their sincerity as he was before. Janeway is somewhat more understanding, given their situation, though both agree that there is much room for uncertainty over how this new society will turn out .

This episode has the following tropes:

Almost Lethal Weapons : A Gold-shirt was hit in the shoulder by a small pistol and instantly died, proving the weapons weren't on stun. Chakotay took a blast from a large rifle directly to his center mass... and woke up with a headache. It did do some nerve damage however that unless treated could eventually kill him, but the fact it didn't kill him outright is rather ridiculous.
Brainwash Residue : Turns out even after the physical implants have been removed, Chakotay is still vulnerable.
Call-Back : Riley was a science officer on the USS Roosevelt , assimilated at the Battle of Wolf 359.
Captain Crash : Chakotay loses another shuttle. In fairness, he didn't crash it this time; it just got scavenged for parts after it was on the ground.
The Chains of Commanding : Chakotay says that if it were up to him, he'd help Riley. But if he were The Captain , he'd have to consider other issues.
Chekhov's Gun : The events of this episode affect Chakotay's attitude toward the Borg in "Scorpion", leading to conflict with Captain Janeway.
Continuity Snarl : One of the most notable in the franchise to this point. Riley and the other former drones are mostly Alpha-quadrant species, and she specifically says she was on one of the ships involved in the battle at Wolf 359, meaning the Borg assimilated some of the crews. But that cube was destroyed before it ever had a chance to get back to the Delta quadrant. The writers try to handwave that here by implying the Borg sent their 'spoils' back on a seperate vessel, though this would seem to fly in the face of the Collective's (at that time) certain belief there was nothing the Federation could do to stop them; ergo, they would have had no reason to do so.
Deus Sex Machina : Riley and the other former drones link with Chakotay in a small Hive Mind to help cure him. Afterwards while still feeling its effects, he has sex with Riley.
Distinction Without a Difference : Torres: I'm not being apprehensive, Tuvok, I'm just nervous as hell.
Distress Call : The Away Team picks up a Federation homing beacon which they at first think is Voyager giving them a return signal. When they land to investigate, they're attacked.
Fascinating Eyebrow : The Doctor while he examines the Borg corpse .
Face-Revealing Turn : A different take in that we see the back of Riley's head with its cyborg implants, then she turns to reveal her face.
Fatal Attractor : And he'd finally gotten over that whole Seska business too.
Fire-Breathing Weapon : The aliens attacking Chakotay are driven off by some sort of backpack plasma-flamethrower.
Foreshadowing : Before discovering the Borg cube was immobilized by an electrokinetic storm ( whatever that is ) B'Elanna speculates that the Borg might have come across a more powerful enemy . She also warns about what might happen if all the Borg corpses get reactivated, which ends up happening.
Ghost Ship : The derelict Borg cube, lampshaded by B'Elanna.
For Chakotay, going through with the neural link is this, in that it's the only way to save his life.
Morally dubious though it was for the Cooperative to coerce Chakotay into activating the neuroelectric generator, their only alternative was to take their chances with the mob of murderous marauders beating down their door.
Going in Circles : Chakotay and Kaplan realise they've been flying in circles in the Space Clouds .
Half-Truth : Loads of this from Riley. Riley: We have a deep connection to one another that I've never felt before . Not even with members of my own family.
Hearing Voices : And it's not a good sign here either.
Horrible Judge of Character : Lampshaded by Chakotay at the end. Because he shared his mind with Riley and the others, he assumed they didn't have any hidden agendas. And they didn't...at the time. Janeway: You know, Chakotay, that's a part of who you are. Given everything you believe in, I don't see how you could have behaved differently. Chakotay: But I couldn't have been more wrong about them, could I?
A House Divided : Stuck on a planet with limited resources, the former drones remembered their old antagonisms and started fighting.
In Harm's Way : Despite the risk Janeway doesn't hesitate to send over an Away Team to the Borg cube to gather intelligence, knowing the next cube they encounter might be a lot more active.
In the Hood : It hides the implants .
I Surrender, Suckers : Chakotay raises a hand in apparent surrender, then shoots Tuvok with the phaser held in his other hand.
It's a Long Story : Chakotay regarding how Voyager got in the Delta Quadrant.
Mauve Shirt : Ensign Kaplan played a role in Future's End , but is killed in this episode before the first commercial break. The writers posthumously gave her a first name four seasons later.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished : Chakotay helps the New Collective repair their communications array. They use the boosted signal to take control of Chakotay.
No Sense of Personal Space : Janeway circles Chakotay closely while asking his opinion about Riley's proposal.
Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here / Tempting Fate : Tom is complaining about how boring the Nekrit Expanse is roughly two minutes before Voyager runs into a Borg Cube .
Not Quite Dead : Turns out the drones can reactivate.
Everyone on the Voyager bridge when they see the ship in their path is a Borg cube.
Riley's reaction to Chakotay seeing her implants ; and Chakotay himself seeing the implants.
Everyone in Sickbay when the Borg corpse suddenly reactivates.
Everyone on Voyager when the Borg cube powers up.
Peek-a-Boo Corpse : Tuvok is searching through some power conduits when a Borg corpse drops out.
Please Keep Your Hat On : Turns out Riley is using a wig to hide her bare head with its cybernetic implants.
Scavenger World : There's 80,000 people warring over what few resources they've been able to salvage from the derelict cube.
Sliding Down The Slippery Slope : Given that they didn't hesitate to Mind Control him for their own purposes, Chakotay wonders how long it will be before the New Co-operative is no different from the old Borg Collective.
Sympathy for the Devil : The episode shows what is so seductive about Borg assimilation — the ability to understand others completely, without conflict.
Tap on the Head : Chakotay nearly dies from the neural damage after being shot by a BFG , and the injury only gets worse.
Teleportation Rescue : The Away Team teleports out Just in Time as a Borg drone swipes at them.
Transplanted Humans : Riley poses as this at first.
Utopia Justifies the Means : Riley wants to end the conflict on her world by reestablishing their Hive Mind . When Janeway refuses, they take control of Chakotay and force him to do it.
Wham Line : B'Elanna and Chakotay's shuttle is on its way back to Voyager , the two of them having a pleasant conversation about hoverball, when... Cooperative: (in Chakotay's head) Chakotay, can you hear us?
Wham Shot : The Borg Cube just before the commercial break .
What Happened to the Mouse? : The New Cooperative have not appeared in canon again since this episode, so the full implications of reactivating their link has yet to be explored.
With All Due Respect : Riley: When we were linked we had no ethnic conflict. There was no crime, no hunger, no health problems. We lived as one harmonious family. Janeway: With all due respect, Doctor Frazier, you were one harmonious family bent on the violent assimilation of innocent cultures.
Star Trek Voyager S 3 E 15 "Blood Fever"
Recap/Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek Voyager S 3 E 17 "Darkling"

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Friday, April 3, 2015

Voyager, Season 3: Unity

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Commander Chakotay is attacked after answering a distress signal then is surprised by the people who sent the signal. Captain Janeway makes a scary discovery in nearby space, a derelict Borg Cube.

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SEASON 3 • EPISODE 17

Star trek: voyager.

Date Aired: Feb 12, 1997 (United States)

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Star Trek: Voyager - Episode Guide - Season 3

The slo-o-o-o-ow evolutionary progress of Star Trek: Voyager continues in season 3, as the show finally starts to more closely resemble, you know, Star Trek.

Voyager season 3 is still fairly uneven in quality, but some good old ST staples still get some good use in this season. The crew experiences trippy time paradoxes in “Coda” and “Before and After”, while the entire ship visits the 1990s a la Star Trek IV in “Future’s End.” The holodeck, well more used in Voyager than in any other ST series, is done extremely effectively in the ripping yarn “Worst Case Scenario” and the surprisingly interesting “Real Life.” (To be fair, however, there is “Alter Ego”…)

1. Basics, Part II – Talk about your pat resolutions: The Voyager crew survives in Stone Age conditions for about six hours of so and befriends a shaman while Paris, with the assistance of the Doctor, rounds up some galactic cavalry and Voyager is returned with nary a scratch. O yeah, Seska dies and the baby for which Janeway and Chakotay were willing to sacrifice ship and crew is never heard about again. **

2. Flashback – In Voyager’s version of “Trials and Tribble-ations,” Tuvok and Janeway mentally travel back to Tuvok’s time on the Excelsior, which awesomely intersects with the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and gives Captain Sulu an opportunity to kick a little ass. ****

3. The Chute – With no knowledge of how they arrived, Paris and Kim find themselves in a prison straight out of Escape from New York. Kim’s sad attempts to act the aggressive badass are thankfully outweighed by a neat twist or two. ***

4. The Swarm – Janeway et al attempt to maneuver Voyage through a space packed with a swarm of small ships, but it’s Robert Picardo who deservedly gets the quality screen time. The Doctor’s memory is rapidly degrading and so B’Elanna crafts a holodeck program of the EMH’s designer, Dr. Zimmerman, to assist. ***

5. False Profits – Full disclosure: Star Trek Guide digs the Ferengi as fantastic satirical content on consumerism, so that may bias this synopsis. So … remember the dudes looking to bid on rights to a wormhole in the ST:TNG episode “The Price”? This is what happened to them after traveling through the ultimately unstable wormhole: The two conniving Ferengi found ways to exploit the local mythology of a nearby planet to their advantage; clearly The Prime Directive has no business (so to speak) conflicting with the Laws of Acquisition… ****

6. Remember – B’Elanna has recurring dreams which appear to be induced by visiting aliens called Enarans ; these are a side effect of an attempt to repress certain bits of Enaran history or something, but we’re still trying to figure out why Torres was susceptible rather than the Vulcans and Betazoids kicking around…**

7. Sacred Ground – Metaphysics and subatomic physics collide in a story that would likely have had Gene Roddenberry foaming at the mouth. When Kes is left comatose outside of a monastery while on shore leave, Janeway must take a less than scientific approach to restoring her to consciousness. **

8. Future's End, Part I – Kinda like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home except not quite as humorous and set in the 1990s. An interesting time-travel tale which includes time travelers from the 29th century and Voyager’s escape into the 20th, where an unknown event will destroy the Earth 1,000 years later. Interesting stuff made even more compelling with Ed Begley Jr. playing an EEEvil Steve Jobs. ****

9. Future's End, Part II – Part II keeps the tension and intrigue high, while giving Tuvok and Paris some a few funny bits. Time ticks away as the unanswered questions demand resolution: Can Henry Starling be stopped? How will Voyager return to the 29th century? Does The Doctor get to keep that dope mobile emitter? And will Paris bag that attitudinal 90’s chick? ****

10. Warlord – An alien warlord takes control of Kes’s mind and whoa are the results boring … *

11. The Q and the Grey – Kind of like two Q-centric episodes put together: Q tries to convince Janeway to have a baby with him (guess he should have been around for Kes’s Elogium), and then reveals that Janeway’s decision in “Death Wish” has led to a civil war among the Q that’s having deleterious effects in the standard four-dimensional plane of existence. ***

12. Macrocosm – The classic virus-from-another-planet Star Trek trope goes one step further when a “macrovirus” invade Voyager. Watchable despite the silly presence, basically because The Doctor and Janeway are ultimately the only ones standing (literally). **

13. Fair Trade – Neelix finally admits that he knows nothing about the space they’re traveling through and goes on to whine about his uselessness. And then he gets scammed out of Voyager resources thanks to an “old friend.” **

14. Alter Ego – Kim and Tuvok vie for the affections of a holodeck babe, which then (sigh) comes to life outside the holodeck. *

15. Coda – Head trip for Janeway: The captain appears to be trapped in a time loop involving various death scenarios before the plot line takes a crazy left turn into the afterlife. ***

16. Blood Fever – Another rule of Voyager: Any story line involving B’Elanna Torres flipping out can immediately be labeled a non-classic. In this pretty silly episode. Tuvok goes through Pon Farr – and “passes it” to B’Elanna. I know, right? 0

17. Unity – In an episode set just outside of Borg space, a couple of subplots featuring the deadly force involve the investigation of a dead Borg cube and rogue Borg units who have (mostly) de-assimilated from the collective. ****

18. Darkling – Picardo gets to chew the scenery a bit in this one, based on an attempt by the Doctor to expand his personality. Unfortunately, this experiment goes awry and a Mr. Hyde type emerges at random. ***

19. Rise – Tuvok and Neelix (gods help us) crash land a shuttle (no kidding). Sensors and transporters aren’t working (imagine that) because reasons, so Neelix lies, claiming to know how to repair the nearby space elevator; also, there’s a bomb aboard. And Neelix squeakily complains that Tuvok doesn’t respect him. *

20. Favorite Son – In a plot line straight out of Kirk’s playbook, Kim is revealed to actually be a member of another species and is recalled to a planet where women are the vast majority, so even the ensign can get some. Or so he thinks … **

21. Before and After – Head trip for Kes: She suddenly finds herself years in the future and saddled with a terminal disease. She then begins traveling backward through her life. ***

22. Real Life – The Doctor creates a too-perfect family with whom to interact on the holodeck, so it’s a good thing that Anson Williams of Happy Days fame is aboard to direct. Includes a surprisingly touching ending. ***

23. Distant Origin – A nice script steadily unpacks a compelling tale about a reptilian scientist who believe their species evolved from humans. This one includes a very interesting reaction to the typical stirring speech by Chakotay as well… ****

24. Displaced – Head trip turns into invasion, as Voyager crew members are replaced one at a time by aliens who’ve discovered quite the unique pilfering strategy… ***

25. Worst Case Scenario – This show may take (justifiable) flak for overusing the holodeck, but at least three Voyager episodes make the list of top ST stories using the device. This is the first of the best. When a mysterious, anonymously-programmer holo-program starring the Voyager bridge crew and set in a time of Maquis rebellion, nearly everyone on board is obsessed. When the “author” is revealed to be Tuvok and the “holonovel” actually a training exercise, the crew nevertheless encourage him to finish writing; Paris offers to lend a hand. ****

26. Scorpion, Part I – The wussification of the Borg begun in the post-Best of Both Worlds seasons of ST:TNG continues, as the Voyager crew discovers a totally badass bunch of dudes known only as Species 8472. The Borg then condescend to negotiate (!) with Janeway regarding safe passage though Borg space in order for assistance with the 8472s.

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Seasons & Episodes
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Star Trek: Voyager Season 3 Episodes

66 Metascore
Drama, Action & Adventure, Science Fiction
Watchlist Where to Watch

A starship is stranded in the uncharted Delta Quadrant in this fourth 'Star Trek' series, the first to feature a female captain. Here, the crew grudgingly teams with Maquis rebels to try to return to Earth after Voyager is hurtled 70,000 light-years from Federation space.

Season 3 Episode Guide

26 Episodes 1996 - 1997

Basics, Part II

Wed, Sep 4, 1996 60 mins

Conclusion. The treachery of Seska and Culluh (Martha Hackett, Anthony De Longis) leaves Janeway and the crew stranded on Hanon Four, while the Kazon's control of the Voyager is undermined by unlikely saboteurs. Suder: Brad Dourif. Chakotay: Robert Beltran. The Doctor: Robert Picardo.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 1 image

Wed, Sep 11, 1996 60 mins

A Vulcan mind-meld between Tuvok and Janeway takes them back to Tuvok's first deep-space assignment, aboard the Excelsior with Capt. Sulu (George Takei). Janice Rand: Grace Lee Whitney. Kang: Michael Ansara. Valtane: Jeremy Roberts. Helmsman: Boris Krutonog.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 2 image

Wed, Sep 18, 1996 60 mins

The Akitirians declare Kim and Paris to be terrorists, and they are thrown into a hellish prison where devices attached to the inmates' necks drive them insane.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 3 image

Wed, Sep 25, 1996 60 mins

Voyager enters a section of space belonging to a culture that doesn't tolerate trespassers; meanwhile, the Doctor begins to lose his memory.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 4 image

False Profits

Wed, Oct 2, 1996 60 mins

After discovering traces of a wormhole that may lead to the Alpha Quadrant, Chakotay and Paris find something else---two Ferengis who've become holy leaders of a Delta Quadrant planet.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 5 image

Wed, Oct 9, 1996 60 mins

While shuttling a group of telepathic aliens to their homeworld, Torres experiences realistic dreams, which may represent an actual occurrence involving murders that seem genocidal.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 6 image

Sacred Ground

Wed, Oct 30, 1996 60 mins

Kes becomes comatose after entering a sacred shrine, prompting Janeway to try to learn the cryptic ritual necessary to save her.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 7 image

Future's End

Wed, Nov 6, 1996 60 mins

Part 1 of 2. A 29th-century ship attacks Voyager, then both are drawn through a temporal rift that throws them back to 20th-century Earth.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 8 image

Wed, Nov 13, 1996 60 mins

Conclusion. As Starling and Janeway battle for the timeship, Rain, Paris and Tuvok try to run interference; and Chakotay and Torres are captured by militiamen.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 9 image

Wed, Nov 20, 1996 60 mins

Kes is possessed by a centuries-old Ilari warlord, dragging the crew of Voyager into a civil war that Janeway wants to avoid.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 10 image

The Q and the Grey

Wed, Nov 27, 1996 60 mins

Q returns, intending to mate with Janeway. But the arrival of another Q reveals his true reason for reappearing---a civil war in the Continuum.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 11 image

Wed, Dec 11, 1996 60 mins

Janeway discovers Voyager has been invaded by macroviruses that have infected the entire crew---and are now hunting her and the holographic Doctor.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 12 image

Wed, Jan 8, 1997 60 mins

Neelix, fearing his usefulness on the ship may be over, enlists the aid of a fellow Talaxian, Wix, to procure star maps, but Wix's methods lead to trouble.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 13 image

Wed, Jan 15, 1997 60 mins

When Harry falls for a holodeck character, he goes to Tuvok for Vulcan guidance---but the character becomes intrigued with Tuvok and breaks free of the holodeck.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 14 image

Wed, Jan 29, 1997 60 mins

Janeway and Chakotay crash-land a shuttle on a planet, where a strange chain of events is initiated and Janeway appears to die---several times.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 15 image

Blood Fever

Wed, Feb 5, 1997 60 mins

After Torres encounters Vorick, who is in the grip of the Vulcan mating urge, she finds herself increasingly out of control, jeopardising an away mission.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 16 image

Wed, Feb 12, 1997 60 mins

Chakotay, responding to a distress signal, finds a colony of races formerly assimilated by the Borg; Janeway comes face-to-face with one of the Borg cubes adrift in space.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 17 image

Wed, Feb 19, 1997 60 mins

The Doctor's experiments in personality enhancement create a murderous alter ego that takes control of him.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 18 image

Wed, Feb 26, 1997 60 mins

Voyager aids a planet under bombardment by an asteroid, but the team assigned to investigate crash-lands.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 19 image

Favorite Son

Wed, Mar 19, 1997 60 mins

Harry exhibits precognitive skills by anticipating an attack, then guides the ship to a planet where he is greeted as a long-lost son.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 20 image

Before and After

Wed, Apr 9, 1997 60 mins

Kes awakens to find herself as an old woman on her deathbed, but then discovers she is moving back through her life, seemingly to a point before her birth.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 21 image

Wed, Apr 23, 1997 60 mins

The Doctor creates a holographic family to enhance his performance as a physician; meanwhile, Voyager encounters a highly destructive "astral eddy".

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 22 image

Distant Origin

Wed, Apr 30, 1997 60 mins

An alien scientist (Henry Woronicz) tries to prove a heretical theory for the origin of his species---but his first contact with humans goes disastrously wrong. Odala: Concetta Tomei. Veer: Christopher Liam Moore. Haluk: Marshall Teague. Chakotay: Robert Beltran.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 23 image

Wed, May 7, 1997 60 mins

As crew members begin to disappear, they are replaced by confused aliens called Nyrians, who seem to have no idea how they've boarded the ship. Rislan: James Noah. Lang: Deborah Levin. Jarlath: Mark L. Taylor. Dammar: Kenneth Tigar.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 24 image

Worst Case Scenario

Wed, May 14, 1997 60 mins

Tuvok's holonovel about a mutiny aboard Voyager becomes a real threat to the ship when a booby trap set by Seska (Martha Hackett) is discovered within it. Tuvok: Tim Russ. Janeway: Kate Mulgrew. Chakotay: Robert Beltran. Torres: Roxann Dawson.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 25 image

Scorpion - Part 1

Wed, May 21, 1997 60 mins

The Voyager enters Borg space and encounters a devastating new threat.

Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3 Episode 26 image

Ceremonies - Paris 2024 Closing Ceremony

John Leicester, Associated Press John Leicester, Associated Press

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Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/star-studded-closing-ceremony-brings-2024-paris-olympics-to-end-with-a-flourish

Star-studded closing ceremony brings 2024 Paris Olympics to end with a flourish

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Paris closed out two and a half extraordinary weeks of Olympic sports and emotion with a boisterous, star-studded show in France’s national stadium on Sunday, handing over hosting duties for the Summer Games to the next city in line: Los Angeles in 2028.

WATCH: The images that have defined the Paris Olympics

In a display of Hollywood showmanship, Tom Cruise descended from the top of the French stadium to the “Mission Impossible” theme song, shaking hands with athletes, before taking the Olympic flag from star gymnast Simone Biles, putting it on the back of a motorcycle and driving out of the stadium.

In a prerecorded ride past the Eiffel Tower, Cruise drove his bike onto a plane and then skydived out of it over the Hollywood Hills. Three rings were added to the O’s of the famed Hollywood sign to create five interlaced Olympic rings.

It was just one of the highlights of the closing ceremony that put a final flourish to Paris’ first Games in a century, with an artistic show that celebrated Olympic themes, golden fireworks and thousands of athletes partying into the night.

Actor Tom Cruise jumps from the roof of the Stade de France during the 2024 Paris Olympics closing ceremony, Saint-Denis, France, Aug. 11, 2024. . Photo by Phil Noble/Reuters

In their enthusiasm, crowds of athletes rushed the stage during a highlight video from the Games, and stadium announcements in French and English urged them to double back. Some of them stayed, surrounding Grammy-winning French pop-rock band Phoenix as they played, before security and volunteers cleared the stage.

For Los Angeles, topping Paris could be mission impossible. The French capital made spectacular use of its cityscape for its first Games in 100 years. The Eiffel Tower and other iconic monuments became Olympic stars in their own right, serving as backdrops and in some cases venues for competitions.

But LA was bringing star power of its own: singer Billie Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, rapper and Paris Olympics mainstay Snoop Dogg — plus longtime collaborator Dr. Dre — performed at Venice Beach as part of the handover from the City of Light to the City of Angels.

Each of the music artists is a California native, including H.E.R., who sang the U.S. national anthem live at the Stade de France, which hosted Olympic track and field and rugby sevens. The audience was expected to top 70,000 people.

At the start of the show, the stadium crowd roared as French swimmer Léon Marchand, dressed in a suit and tie instead of the swim trunks he wore to win four golds, was shown on the giant screens collecting the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.

There, the Olympic cauldron — powered by electricity instead of fossil fuels — had lit up the French capital for the duration of the Games, thrilling crowds by rising into the skies on a balloon every night.

Flagbearers carry flags during the 2024 Paris Olympics closing ceremony, Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France, Aug. 11, 2024. Photo by Albert Gea/Reuters

As a delicate pink sunset gave way to night, athletes marched into the stadium waving the flags of their 205 countries and territories — a display of global unity in a world gripped by global tensions and conflicts, including those in Ukraine and Gaza. The stadium screens carried the words, “Together, united for peace.”

With the 329 medal events finished, the expected 9,000 athletes — many wearing their shiny medals — and team staffers filled the arena, dancing and cheering to thumping beats.

WATCH: A look at Team USA’s golden run at the Olympics in Paris

Unlike in Tokyo in 2021, where the Games were pushed back a year by the COVID-19 pandemic and largely stripped of fans, athletes and the more than 70,000 spectators at the Paris arena celebrated with abandon, singing together as Queen’s anthem “We Are the Champions” blared. Multiple French athletes crowd-surfed. U.S. team members jumped up and down in their Ralph Lauren jackets.

In a speech, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach — who sat with French President Emmanuel Macron during the show — said the Games “can create a cultural peace that inspires the world,” noting that the athletes “respected each other even if your countries are divided by conflict.”

United States athletes celebrate during the closing ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games at Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France, Aug. 11, 2024 . Photo by Rob Schumacher/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters

The national stadium, France’s largest, was one of the targets of Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers who killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13, 2015. The joy and celebrations that swept Paris during the Games as Marchand and other French athletes racked up 64 medals — 16 of them gold — marked a major watershed in the city’s recovery from that night of terror.

The closing ceremony saw the awarding of the last medals — each embedded with a chunk of the Eiffel Tower . Fittingly for the first Olympics that aimed for gender parity, they all went to women — the gold, silver and bronze medalists from the women’s marathon earlier Sunday.

WATCH: Exploring the history of gender equity at the Olympics and where things stand today

The women’s marathon took the spot of the men’s race that traditionally closed out previous Games. The switch was part of efforts in Paris to make the Olympic spotlight shine more brightly on the sporting feats of women. Paris was also where women first made their Olympic debut, at the Games of 1900.

The U.S. team again topped the medal table, with 126 in all and 40 of them gold. Three were courtesy of gymnast Simone Biles, who made a resounding return to the top of the Olympic podium after prioritizing her mental health instead of competition in Tokyo in 2021.

Unlike Paris’ rain-drenched but exuberant opening ceremony that played out along the Seine River in the heart of city, the closing ceremony’s artistic portion took a more sober approach, with space-age and Olympic themes.

The Golden Voyager performs during the formation and raising of the Olympic Rings during the 2024 Paris Olympics closing ceremony, Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France, Aug. 11, 2024.. Photo by Phil Noble/Reuters

A golden-shrouded figure dropped spider-like from the skies into a darkened world of smoke and swirling stars. Olympic symbols were celebrated, including the flag of Greece, birthplace of the ancient Games, and the five interlaced Olympic rings, lit up in white in the arena where tens of thousands of lights glittered like fireflies.

Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of both shows, had faced blowback for portions of the opening ceremony, which were assailed by former U.S. President Donald Trump, French bishops and others who felt they poked fun at Christianity.

Jolly and other members of his creative team filed police complaints over death threats and online vitriol targeting them and some of opening show’s performers.

Critics jumped to the conclusion that a segment featuring drag queens and a DJ who is also an LGBTQ+ icon had parodied “The Last Supper,” Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting showing Jesus Christ.

Jolly and his team repeatedly insisted that was never their intention and got backing from Macron, who described himself as “outraged and sad” by the backlash against them.

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Exploring the history of gender equity at the Olympics and where things stand today

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