One (Star Trek: Voyager)

"One" is a fourth season episode of Star Trek: Voyager. It is episode #93. It was written by Jeri Taylor, and directed by Kenneth Biller.

Quick Overview: The crew encounters a dangerous nebula in which the only way they can make it through alive is to go into stasis. Seven must then navigate Voyager to safety alone.

The show begins with Seven in the mess hall, trying to have a conversation with some of the crew members in the mess hall, but comes out more like an interrogation. It is revealed that they are on the holodeck and the Doctor is trying to help Seven develop her social skills. Seven does not see the point and tells the Doctor it is time for her checkup as it is preferable to remaining on the holodeck.

Meanwhile, Voyager approaches a Mutara class nebula which extends far beyond their sensors. Captain Janeway decides to go through it rather than around, but within minutes of entering the nebula the crew, begins to suffer mysterious burns. The Captain orders Lt. Paris to turn the ship around but he collapses from the pain before he can reach the helm. Tuvok, with his superior mental abilities, makes it to the helm and plots a course back out of the nebula. Seven, who had been unaffected, arrives on the bridge to help tend to the crew but discovers one ensign has already died from his severe burns.

Later in Astrometrics, Seven tells the Captain that that nebula extends for at least 110 light years, meaning it would take at least a month to get through it and more than a year to go around it. Janeway states that they have made it 15,000 light years so far without being stopped by hostile aliens, warp core breaches, or temporal anomalies, and she refuses to be stopped by a nebula.

Janeway heads to sickbay where the Doctor has been studying a sample of the nebula's gasses. He tells her that the damage came from subnucleonic radiation and that even the briefest exposure destroys organic tissue. After exploring all options, he says the only protection the crew has against the radiation would be to go into stasis. Janeway is initially a little unnerved by this, but the Doctor assures her that he is perfectly capable of handling all the ships systems. The Captain points out that he needs backup in case his holomatrix goes offline, to which the Doctor replies there was only one other crew member who seemed unaffected by the nebula's radiation.

In the cargo bay, the Captain explains to Seven of Nine the magnitude of her responsibility and that the lives of the crew will be in her hands. Seven feels the Captain doubts her, but Janeway states that while she ordinarily has faith in Seven's abilities, this situation is unique. She reminds Seven that when she was first severed from the Collective, it was difficult for her to adapt to just being around relatively few humans compared to thousands of drones and asks Seven to imagine being alone with only the Doctor for company. Seven replies that she will adapt and assures the Captain that she can do this. Janeway agrees, and tells Seven that the Doctor, being the Chief Medical Officer, will be in charge and that Seven is to follow his orders just as she would follow the Captain's.

The Captain then calls a meeting of the senior staff and informs them of the situation. She explains that Seven and the Doctor will check on them four times a day, and that when they awake a month later it will simply feel as though they had just taken a nap. Commander Chakotay sticks around after the rest of the senior staff leaves, and asks the Captain if she's sure she's making the right decision by leaving Seven in charge of all their lives. He argues that Seven has butted heads with Janeway since she came on board, disregards authority, and has a habit of disobeying orders that she doesn't agree with. He knows that Janeway has a bond with Seven that is unique and that from the beginning she saw things in the former drone that no one else could, and asks Janeway to help him understand some of those things. Janeway replies that it's just instinct, and that despite Seven's rebellious attitude, she honestly believes that Seven wants to do well by them. Chakotay says that's good enough for him.

As the last of the crew is being put into stasis, Tom Paris tells the Doctor that if he has to be in stasis for a month he'd prefer to do it in his quarters, but the Doctor replies the crew is being relocated to deck 14 so it will be easier to monitor the crews vital signs. Tom reluctantly climbs into his stasis unit and asks, "What if we had to get out in a hurry?" To which Janeway informs him that he can unlock the unit from the inside. The Doctor teases Tom about be claustrophobic, and Tom complains that the stasis chambers are designed like coffins. Harry asks Tom if he would like a teddy bear replicated.

Captain Janeway is the last one to enter into stasis, leaving just the ship to the Doctor and Seven.

File:JeriRyan-as-Seven.JPG

Seven of Nine

The first few days through the nebula are uneventful and Seven develops a efficient routine of maintaining the ships systems and monitoring the crew. One day she comes across Lt. Paris laying in the doorway, unconscious. The Doctor arrives to help put Tom back into stasis and tells Seven it's not unheard of for people to come out of stasis earlier and to, "leave it to Mr. Paris to be just as much trouble now as when he's awake." Seven asks the Doctor why complain about it if he knew something like this could happen. The Doctor replies he was simply making a small joke, to which Seven responds, "Very small." After completing his assessment of Paris, he tells Seven to spend some time in the holodeck saying she needed a brush up course on how to get along with people. Seven points out, "There is no one here to get along with." Doctor argues that he's there, and that it wasn't a request, it was an order.

The program the Doctor picks out is a crew party which takes place in the mess hall. Instead of mingling however, Seven stands off to the side trying to figure out how to recalibrate the warp field in order resist the nebula's radiation. When the Neelix hologram comes over to try and get Seven to join the fun, Seven decides the program may not be a complete waste of time after all, and asks Neelix, who has some knowledge of warp field theory, to assist her. She then asks the Captain if she could help as well. The Doctor freezes the program and he and Seven get into a argument about the helpfulness of the program. They are interrupted when the ship shudders and the computer warns them that the anti-matter storage tanks are failing. They leave the holodeck and find that they will have to eject the tanks. The Doctor heads to the bridge and Seven to engineering.

When the Doctor reaches the bridge he finds that the sensors inside engineering are reading high levels of plasma and informs Seven that she'll never be able to get in. Seven argues that she can survive long enough to eject the assembly. Another alarm goes off on the bridge and the Doctor tells her there are plasma conduits rupturing on decks seven and thirteen. Seven insists that she can do it. Back on the bridge yet another alarm goes off and the Doctor reports that the hull is breaching in engineering and tells Seven to get out. Seven ignores him and walks into engineering to find everything normal and informs the Doctor it was a false alarm.

The Doctor traces the problem to some bio-neural gel packs in sequence 6-theta-9, which he and Seven go to replace. While in the jeffries tubes, the Doctor's program starts to degrade, and they rush back to sickbay. Seven examines his mobile emitter and discovers the electro-optic modulator is damaged thanks to the nebula's radiation rendering the Doctor confined to sickbay.

On Stardate 51932.4, the 29th day in the nebula, Seven finally begins feeling the effects of prolonged isolation. In her personal log she states that her dreams have been disturbing but she is determined to complete her mission and see the crew safely through the remainder of the nebula. During her rounds, she also begins hallucinating, seeing shadows and hearing Tom cry out for her. When she goes to check on him, she finds that he is still safe in his stasis unit. While on the bridge, she discovers that the ship's systems aren't fairing much better as 33 percent of the ship's gel-packs are now experiencing quantum failures. In Astrometrics Seven discovers that they still have 6 days 5 hours before they reach safety.

The computer informs Seven of an approaching vessel, and she opens a channel with the alien. He tells her his name is Trajis Lo-Tarik that he needs a microfusion chamber. Seven offers a trade for some liquid helium and beams the alien aboard.

While Seven searches the cargo bay for a microfusion chamber, Trajis ask her where she got her unusual name. She tells him it was her Borg designation, to which he replies that he's never heard of them. He tells her that he's both pilot and crew on his ship and that's he's had to rebuild its engines twice already, but he's determined to be the first person of his species to see the other side.

Trajis asks Seven how she is handling the loneliness, which makes her uneasy. He tells her that he's heard drones can't stand being alone, and Seven realized he had lied to her about not knowing who the Borg were. She finds and gives him the chamber, asking him to leave. He implies he'd like to stay longer, but Seven grabs a phaser from a cargo container and forces him out.

As Seven walks him down the corridor at phaser point, he tells her that he can help ease her loneliness and that she'd be better off spending time with him. Seven suddenly hears Tom's cry for help but turns to find an empty corridor. When she turns back around she finds that Trajis has disappeared.

Seven reports to the Doctor that there is an intruder on board, but the Doctor is still stuck in sick bay so Seven has to take care of things herself. The Doctor notes that she seems frightened, but she quickly recovers her composure and tells him that she is Borg.

Seven arms herself with a compression rifle. As she walks down the corridors she begins hearing ghostly voices of Trajis and members of the crew telling her that they're dying, but when she reaches deck 14 she finds the crew is still in safe in their stasis units. Back in the corridors, Seven hears Trajis taunting her. She ignores him until he threatens to cause a warpcore breach, which causes Seven to rush to engineering. As she checks the controls, Trajis says that he couldn't bring himself to destroy her ship. The lights suddenly go out and Seven demands to know where Trajis is. He informs her he is on the bridge where he can do just about anything.

Seven suddenly hears Paris' cry for help from the upper level and rushes to help him, but as soon as she reaches the top of the ladder she sees both Paris and Kim's bodies burst into flames.

She goes back to a console and tries to distract Trajis while she depletes the oxygen on the bridge. Once his gasping stops, Seven informs the Doctor she has incapacitated the alien. The Doctor, who had just finished repairing his emitter, is on his way to the engineering with news about the gel-packs.

Seven climbs back down to the lower level just as Trajis walks into engineering. She fires the rifle at him, but the phaser beam just goes right through him. Trajis continues to taunt Seven and tell her that she'll never be human, she'll always be Borg. Seven turns to find the warp core has suddenly turned from blue to eerie green.

The Doctor arrives and finds Seven seemingly talking to herself. Seven warns the Doctor that the alien is dangerous but when she turns back around, he's gone. The Doctor assures her that there was never anyone else there. He goes on to tell her that he discovered the radiation was producing a degradation in the synaptic relays in the gel-packs and assumes it's having a similar effect on her Borg implants, resulting in her hallucinations. The Doctor starts to take Seven to sickbay to give her an anti-psychotic to help her through the next few days, but the primary EPS conduits start overloading, which is what the Doctor had tied his mobile emitter into. Just before he goes offline, he tells Seven she has to hang on and that she is the only one that can save the crew now.

As the days go on, the hallucinations get worse. With just 17 more hours to go, Seven is haunted by images of the crew, covered in burns, telling her that she'll never be able to succeed. She also comes across a Borg drone, telling her that she is weak and cannot survive alone. She tries to remind herself that what she's seeing is not real and he finally vanishes.

On her way to the bridge, she is once again visited by a vision of Trajis. The turbolift doors open to reveal the inside of a Borg ship. Seven reorders the turbolift to go to the bridge, and the doors close. Once on the bridge, images of the entire senior staff are there to taunt her. To make things worse, the computer informs her that the engines have failed. After rerouting all available power, it still isn't enough to get the ship moving again, so she has no choice but to reroute power from some of the stasis units. It works, but as the hallucination of Kim points out, those people in stasis are going to die.

Seven rushes to deck 14 to find some of the crew laying in their stasis units coughing and succumbing to the effects of the radiation. Horrified, Seven reroutes power from life support to the chambers, which saves the crew, but leaves Seven without oxygen or heat. As a result, she quickly loses consciousness.

Seven awakes in sickbay to find the Doctor, Janeway, and Chakotay standing over her. Chakotay tells her that once the ship cleared the nebula, the Doctor came back online, found her unconscious, reinitiated life support, and woke the crew.

Later, Seven watches as Kim, Torres, and Paris chat in the mess hall. She surprises them by asking if she may join them. She tells them that she feels the need for companionship, to which Paris says he can understand after being stuck with only the Doctor for company for a month. Their conversation turns to the fact that Paris left his stasis unit on four separate occasions and had to be put back in, which elicits some teasing from Kim. Paris says he doesn't know why, but he doesn't like closed spaces. Seven suggests it is because he dislikes being alone.

Trivia

This episode's plot was later re-used in Enterprise for the episode "Doctor's Orders" with Dr. Phlox playing the role of Seven, with T'Pol playing the rol of The Doctor (EMH).

External links

• One at Memory Alpha