Deadlock (episode)

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While trying to avoid Vidiian territory, Voyager is nearly destroyed by proton bursts coming from an unknown source.

Summary

Teaser

Neelix asks Ensign Samantha Wildman to help him in the mess hall. A heating element in his kitchen is malfunctioning, and it won't be long before there won't be any way to cook for the USS Voyager crew. Since Neelix has her there, he also asks her to help fix one of the food replicators. While investigating the problem, Wildman goes into labor. Neelix is excited for her and escorts her to sickbay. Seven hours later, The Doctor announces Wildman will soon deliver her baby. The bridge crew waits in anticipation. Tom Paris can't believe how long it takes; he figures she would have had the baby by now. Kathryn Janeway reassures the lieutenant that childbirth takes as long as it takes. Tuvok adds that the birth of his third child took 96 hours.

The light conversation is interrupted when Tuvok detects Vidiian subspace communications ahead and a star system containing all Vidiians. Janeway doesn't want her or her crew to be unwilling organ donors, so she orders Paris to find a way to avoid detection. Paris sees a plasma drift, navigates the ship into it and successfully avoids the Vidiians. Back in sickbay, Wildman screams in pain; the baby's cranial ridges have lodged into her uterine wall. It is a rare complication in Human-Ktarian births. The Doctor performs a fetal transport to deliver the baby which causes a small complication that can be fixed with osmotic pressure therapy. Otherwise, she's perfectly healthy.

Just then, the ship hits severe subspace turbulence. The warp engines stall and power failures occur all over the ship. The antimatter is being drained, but the source is unknown. Janeway orders B'Elanna Torres to start a series of proton bursts that will keep the antimatter reaction going. Torres prepares to start the procedure, but the bursts start without warning seemingly out of nowhere. The ship is heavily damaged and people are hurt all over the ship. What's worse, the incubator for Wildman's baby is losing power. The Doctor asks Kes to switch to an emergency incubator while several injured crew members pile into sickbay.

Act One

The proton bursts continue to appear out of nowhere and there's no way to stop them. Power continues to fail on Voyager and the structural integrity field is compromised. A hull breach appears on deck 15. Ensign Harry Kim is sent to seal the breach with an experimental method he developed to create emergency bulkheads. Back in sickbay, The Doctor is attempting to help the injured and save Wildman's baby all at once, a task that is becoming overwhelming. The baby's cell membranes are losing cohesion. The Doctor and Kes attempt to modulate the osmotic pressure, but it doesn't work. Wildman's child's vital signs drop to critical levels. A cortical stimulator is used, but it's too late. The baby dies in the incubator. Wildman mourns for her child.

Captain Janeway tells Chakotay to magnetize the hull to minimize the effects of the bursts. She works with him to transfer enough power to protect the ship.

Torres and Kim reach the breach on Deck 15. Assisting is Hogan, who is out in a corridor in section 29 Alpha. A proton burst blows out the panel where Hogan is working, throwing him onto the floor with severe plasma burns. Unable to move much, he calls sickbay for help. Kes responds and heads for the lower deck. Meanwhile, the breach is widening. Kim attempts to seal it, but a huge chasm appears below him. Kim attempts to grab onto Torres' hand, but the force of the vacuum is too strong and he is flushed into space, killing him. Torres comes out of the Jefferies tube into the corridor to help Hogan. Kes runs down the corridor to help, but she vanishes into thin air.

Act Two

Torres tells Janeway what has happened to Kim and Kes, and informs her of the spatial rift that has opened on deck 15. She throws a piece of broken conduit into the rift and scans the fissure. She notes that there is an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere on the other side; Kes might still be alive. With the hull breach still not sealed, Janeway orders that the entire deck be evacuated. Torres helps the injured Hogan to his feet and the two of them make their way out of the area.

Chakotay is able to draw enough power to magnetize the hull and minimize the effects of several proton bursts. Janeway orders a full damage report from Tuvok. The news isn't good: the deck 15 breach had widened to encompass a part of deck 14, and 632 micro-fractures are all over the hull. All primary systems are off-line, the antimatter levels are at 18 percent and continuing to fall, the warp coils in both nacelles are fused and inoperative, 15 crew members have plasma burns and 27 others have other injuries. The Doctor has opened triage facilities in sickbay and holodeck 2. Tuvok also reports that Wildman's baby died. Janeway first shows a sign of sadness, then anger. She orders Paris to go to help the wounded. Just then, the proton bursts begin again. The power feeding the magnetized hull shuts down and the hull begins depolarizing. Fires erupt everywhere but aren't put out because the automatic fire suppression system is off-line. A hull breach appears on the bridge. The main computer warns that the emergency force fields are off-line, meaning there is no way to seal the breach. Chakotay begins evacuating the bridge. Janeway stays at her command chair, trying to re-route emergency power to the field emitters to seal the breach, as Chakotay yells at her to leave the bridge before it's too late. As more of the bridge begins to crumble, Janeway finally starts to join the other bridge evacuees. As she evacuates, she takes one last look at the bridge and freezes in disbelief--she sees a ghost-like image of her bridge crew. In fact, she's staring at herself sitting in her chair. Chakotay yells once more and Janeway leaves the bridge.

The Janeway in the chair (Janeway #2) sees herself (Janeway #1) cross the bridge and enter a turbolift. Janeway #1 has a tinge of orange from the fires that erupted on the first bridge. This Janeway sits on an unaffected ship; gone are the breaches, injuries, and damage. The proton burst procedure is occurring normally. Janeway #2 in shock tells a very much alive Harry Kim to scan the bridge because she says she saw herself...and she looked like hell. Kim reports that he found a spatial fluctuation, but it was gone in a millisecond. He can't get a more precise reading because the sensors are being used for the proton bursts. Janeway asks Torres to speed up the procedure from its normal three hours so she can get use the sensor array to find out what happened.

In sickbay, Wildman holds a healthy baby girl. Janeway goes to congratulate her and asks The Doctor about a mysterious crewmember they found unconscious on deck 15: the Kes from the first Voyager (Kes #1). The Kes from the second Voyager says Kes #1 is nearly identical to her in every way, except for a phase shift in her DNA.

Act Three

Kes #1 recounts the events of the severe damage on her Voyager. She says she ran through a corridor, then she felt dizzy, and she woke up there in sickbay. Janeway #2 says her crew found a piece of conduit from bulkhead 052 on deck 15, section 19 Alpha, even though there were no signs of damage. Kes #1 disagrees, saying there was massive damage to deck 15. Janeway #2 walks Kes #1 through the events after they left the plasma drift. Since Kes #1's Voyager had not started the proton burst procedure, Janeway #2 believes the interaction of the proton bursts must be damaging the other ship. Janeway #2 tells her Torres to stop the proton burst procedure. The bursts stop, but the drain on antimatter starts once again. Janeway #2 knows the only way to figure out how to get out of the situation is to find the first Voyager, so she heads to the bridge for more information. Chakotay #2 runs a quantum level analysis on the ship's sensors after left the plasma drift and hit the spatial turbulence. Torres #2 explains that it was more than just turbulence, it was a divergence field. After the ship left the drift, all sensor readings doubled...every particle of matter was duplicated. The field created another Voyager, occupying the same point in space-time.

Janeway #2 recounts a Kent State University experiment where quantum theorists duplicated a single particle of matter using divergence of subspace fields called a spatial scission. The theorists failed when they tried to duplicate antimatter. The experiment explains why Voyager's power was draining so fast; both ships are running their engines from the same antimatter source, like Siamese twins linked together at the heart. Janeway #2 asks Torres #2 to figure out a way to communicate with the other ship. She also wants to find a way to get Kes #1 back to her ship without being harmed. Kim works on a phase discriminator to protect Kes #1 from the effects of the spatial rift.

Back in sickbay, Wildman #2 asks The Doctor #2 when she can start breastfeeding her baby. The Doctor says she can start immediately, although they'll have to think of alternatives once her baby's Ktarian incisors form in 3-4 weeks. The sound of the baby crying brings back Kes #1's memory of the first Wildman's baby dying in her sickbay. The Doctor #2 tries to comfort her and says it's not her fault. Kes #1 wants to go back to her ship to help her crew. The Doctor tells her not to worry, he should have a counterpart that is well-programmed to handle the situation.

Janeway #2 and Torres #2 try to figure out a way to communicate with the first Voyager. Janeway #2 orders Torres #2 to emit a comm signal through all subspace bands to get their attention. The comm signal pronounces itself as a shrill noise that permeates into engineering of Voyager #1. Voyager #1 locks onto the phase variance of the communique and sends back the signal. Torres #2 sends a message to the first Voyager using the ship's emergency encryption code to begin communicating at a frequency of 12 GHz. The viewscreen behind the engineering console springs to life, and the face of Janeway #2 appears. The two Janeways meet for the first time.

Janeway #1 and her crew discuss whether the second Voyager is a deception, but Janeway #1 tends to believe Janeway #2. Janeway #1's counterpart knew intimate information about her and her crew, including when she walked seven kilometers in a severe thunderstorm after she had lost a tennis match. Janeway #1 decides to cooperate with her and coordinate an attempt to try to merge the two ships. Janeway #1 takes command of the effort and orders both Lieutenants Torres to synchronize a depolarization pulse with the deflector dish. The pulse doesn't work; in fact it causes the ship to go further out of phase. The phase separation threatens to destroy both ships, so the plan is aborted. The stress of the procedure breaks the comm link and turns the antimatter leak into a hemorrhage, meaning the ship will be out of power in 30 minutes. Running out of time, Janeway #2 asks Kim #2 if he's ready to send Kes #1 back to her ship. He is. Janeway #2 tells him to rig another phase discriminator; she plans to go to the other Voyager and coordinate operations with Janeway #1.

Act Four

Janeway #1 is attempting to figure out how to stop the leak of antimatter when Janeway #2 shows up in engineering to talk to her. The two Janeways go to the top level of engineering to try to determine how to fix the problem. Janeway #1 thinks of separating the two ships, but Janeway #2 says that's impossible because her Torres says interaction between the two ship's antimatter would cause the ships to destroy themselves. Janeway #2 wonders if Janeway #1 could move her crew to her undamaged ship. Janeway #1 says that is impossible, because her Torres says that moving more than 5 or 10 people at a time would harmfully adjust the atomic balance of the two Voyagers, once again destroying both ships. Janeway #1 tells Janeway #2 to go back to her ship to run a metallurgical analysis on the hull. Janeway #2 already knows what her counterpart is going to do – destroy her ship and allow Janeway #2's intact ship to continue on its journey – and convinces her to wait for 15 minutes to think of another way. Back on her own bridge, Janeway #2 hails her counterpart and begins to describe an idea she's had when both Tuvoks detect a Vidiian ship heading toward them. The effects of the power loss and proton bursts have caused the weapons and shields on both ships to go off-line. It would take three hours to restore the weapons system to the undamaged ship. The Vidiians are aware of this and fire a hypothermic charge. The charge makes a direct hit, but only the second ship feels the effect. Its weapons array is destroyed. The first ship is undamaged. The Vidiians land their ship on the hull of the second Voyager and cut an access port on deck 5.

Act Five

Vidiians board the second Voyager and begin harvesting the organs of the crew. A Vidiian kills Tuvok and a security guard. In sickbay (on deck 5), The Doctor tells Wildman that he will keep her baby safe, planning to hide her in an access port. The Doctor erects an emergency force field around sickbay to protect them, but it doesn't hold for long, and two Vidiians storm into the room. Back on the bridge, Chakotay reports the Vidiians have taken sickbay and everything below deck 5. There are 347 Vidiians on the ship and more are boarding. Janeway #1 hails the second Voyager and offers to help by sending a security team to fight the Vidiians, but Janeway #2 refuses. She decides to use the auto destruct sequence to prevent both ships from falling into Vidiian hands. Janeway #2 tells Janeway #1 that it only seems fair for her to send Harry Kim through the spatial rift with Wildman's baby. Kim protests, but Janeway #2 orders him to get the baby and go, saying he's got five minutes to get through the rift. As Kim leaves the bridge, Janeway #2 sets the auto-destruct for five minutes and tells the computer to mute the voice warnings. Kim makes his way to sickbay, where the Vidiians are scanning Kes #2 and Wildman #2 for organs. They notice that Wildman has just given birth. They begin scanning for the baby, who is huddled in The Doctor's arms in his office. Kim bursts in and kills the Vidiians and takes the baby through the rift, saving both their lives. Back on the bridge, two Vidiians walk off the turbolift. Janeway gives them a calm welcome: "Hello. I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway. Welcome to the Bridge." One of the Vidiians alerts the other to the auto-destruct countdown, but it's too late. Only three seconds remain. The second Voyager and the Vidiian ship are both destroyed.

"Captain's log, stardate 49548.7. There are no signs of any pursuing Vidiian vessels, and we have resumed a course toward home."

Voyager continues on its way and makes repairs. There are no signs of the Vidiians. It will take three days to repair the bridge. Kim gives Wildman her new baby. After Tuvok and Janeway have a discussion about their experience, she talks to the new Harry Kim. Kim and Janeway walk out into the corridor where he comments that it's weird that he's on a different ship with a different captain and a different crew, except she is his captain and there is really no difference. Janeway says that being Starfleet officers, weird is part of their job.

Memorable quotes

"Uhh...."
"What's wrong?"
"I think I'm having a contraction... Oh yeah it's a contraction alright."
"Oh that's wonderful. Labor can't be far behind. We're having a baby."

- Neelix and Wildman

"Push, ensign."
"You push! Dammit! I'm sick of pushing!"

- The Doctor and Wildman, while Wildman was in labor

"This is ridiculous. It's been seven hours. How long does take to deliver a baby?"
"As long as it takes Mr. Paris."
"Indeed. During the birth of our third child my wife was in labor for 96 hours."
"Four days?"
"I have learned that pregnancy and patience go hand-in-hand."

- Paris, Janeway, Kim and Tuvok

"This isn't really my ship and you're not really my captain and yet you are and there's no difference. But I know there's a difference. Or is there? It's all a little weird."
"Mr. Kim, we're Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job."

- Kim and Janeway

"Please don't make me call security and have you escorted off my ship, because ... you know, I'll do it."

- Janeway #1, to Janeway #2, when the two disagree about how to proceed

"Make me a promise, Kathryn: Get your crew home."
"I will. I will."

- Janeway #2, to Janeway #1, as she decides to sacrifice her ship

"Harry, you've got five minutes, get the baby."
"But Captain..."
"Move it ensign, that's an order!"

- Janeway and Kim

"Warning, self-destruct sequence has been initiated. Warp core overload in four minutes, fifty-five seconds. There will be no further audio warnings."

- Computer

"Hello. I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway. Welcome to the Bridge."

- Janeway #2, to a group of Vidiians, three seconds before the second Voyager initiates self-destruct

Background

This episode shares some common bonds with the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Visionary". Both show the destruction of the space station/starship and both Miles O'Brien and Harry Kim die and are replaced by alternative versions of themselves, with the characters then voicing reservations about their place in this timeline. "Visionary" was written by Ethan H. Calk.
This is also the first of two times over the course of the show where Janeway will meet herself face-to-face. The second will be in the finale, "Endgame", although she does watch herself walking down a corridor in the season 5 episode "Relativity".
This episode marks the second time that Harry Kim "dies" during Voyager's seven-year trip, the other time being "Emanations".
"Deadlock" also includes the first of many times that Janeway "dies" during the series. On this occasion, her duplicate is killed during the self-destruct.
It is also the second time Captain Janeway initiates Voyager’s self-destruct, and is the only time on the series where she does not cancel it in time, with this episode being the first of many where Voyager is destroyed.
Reference to 47: While attempting to find options to contact the other Voyager, B'Elanna had tried to remodulate the com frequency carrier five times on 47 different frequencies.
While watching the computer schematic of the doubling effect, the screen heading displays "Scan Analysis 4077." 4077 was the unit number on M*A*S*H and is another often-referenced number in various episodes of recent Star Trek series.
Janeway-2 has Janeway-1 promise that she'll get the crew home. Janeway-1 keeps the promise... with another Janeway to help.
Unlike in other Trek incarnations, in this episode, when Janeway-2 initiates the self-destruct sequence for Voyager, the computer does not ask for concurrent authorization from any other member of the bridge crew, though this also happens in "Dreadnought".
When the Vidiians enter the Voyager bridge, they are greeted by the computer countdown for the self-destruct sequence, similar to when the Klingon invasion party boards the USS Enterprise in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

Apocrypha

The events of this episode play a role in the Star Trek: Voyager - String Theory trilogy, where a Nacene infiltrates Voyager by altering the crew's memories and posing as Janeway's sister. Due to them being slightly out-of-sync with the rest of the crew, Harry and Naomi are immune to her tampering, and can thus perceive the Nacene for what she really is.

Video and DVD releases

UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 2.9, 9 September 1996.
As part of the VOY Season 2 DVD collection.

Links and references

Co-Stars

Uncredited Co-Stars

References

airponics; alignment module; alphanumeric sequencer; anodyne relay; antimatter; auxiliary respirator; bio-probe; bone marrow; cabbage; carrier wave; celery; cell (biology); cellulose; clavicle; computer core; containment field; coolant; deflector; dermaline gel; DNA; emergency encryption code; EPS conduit; exocranial ridge; fetal transport; field emitter; fire suppression system; force field generator; G-type star; gigahertz; hypothermic charge; green bean; hemocythemia; hull breach; imaging array; impulse engine; incisor; incubator; Kent State University; kidney; Ktarian; magnetic field; maneuvering thruster; metallurgical analysis; micro-fracture; microcellular scan; multispectral analysis; osmotic pressure therapy; pancreas; pelvis; phase discriminator; phase shift; phase variance; plasma; plasma burn; plasma drift; pot roast; pregnancy; prostaglandin; proton; quantum-level analysis; quantum cohesion; replicator; resonance pulse; self-destruct; sensor array; Siamese twins; spatial anomaly; spatial fluctuation; spatial flux; spatial rift; spectral frequency; structural integrity grid; subspace band; subspace communication; subspace divergence field; subspace field; subspace turbulence; tennis; thermal array; thunderstorm; uterus; vegetable; Vidiian; Vidiian starship (2371-2372); warp coil; warp core

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Star Trek: Voyager
Season 2

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