Macrocosm
Stardate: 50425.1
Original Airdate: Dec 11, 1996
By Chakoteya
The Story
On their way back from a trade discussion with the Tak-Tak,
Captain Janeway laments to Neelix that she just couldn’t
get the hang of the gestures used by that race. It turns out that
putting your hands on your hips is the worst insult possible,
but fortunately Neelix was able to rescue the situation. She considers
making him Voyager’s Ambassador, and he likes the sound
of that. Voyager is not at the arranged rendezvous point, and
the sensors find them adrift over a light year away. There is
no response to their hails, but a strange bioelectrical fields
is making a detailed scan almost impossible. Captain and Ambassador
take phasers and go to find out just what has happened to the
crew in their absence.
Voyager is on red alert, the main computer and comm. system are
offline, and the bioelectric field is everywhere. On their exploration
they come across a tool kit – the person using it seems
to have just dropped everything and run. Ensign Wildman’s
quarters are empty, but Good Morning Voyager has been running
for eleven hours, and the abandoned meal was replicated about
the same time ago. Back out in the corridor they see a shadow
on the wall and follow it into a transporter room. The room is
empty but there is a hole in the transporter pad with mucus goo
around it, where the intruder has punched through into the Jefferies
tubes. Main power starts to fail, and Environmental Controls are
going offline. They head for the bridge by turbolift, while the
heat from the warp plasma fails to be vented and starts to create
a heat wave throughout the ship. Then something begins to attack
the elevator. It judders to a halt and something smashes through
the wall and squirts goo at Neelix. Janeway kills it with her
phaser and then the pair make their escape through the roof hatch.
On their journey through the tubes, Captain Janeway detects human
lifesigns above them, but cannot pinpoint where. Neelix is starting
to run a high fever and has fluid in his lung so Janeway goes
to get an emergency medical kit, but while she is away, something
comes down the tube and drags him away. Alone, Kathryn heads off
to Engineering instead of the bridge and, stripping down to her
vest, raids the weapons locker on the upper level for a rifle,
grenades and a rucksack to store other useful commando stuff in.
Then she heads on out, ready to tackle whatever it is that has
dared to try and take her ship from her.
First stop, an apparently deserted bridge. She heads over to
the rarely uses science station and broadcasts a message for help
to anyone who can hear it. Something bits her on the arm and she
runs a steriliser over it, but it is too late, she is infected.
She quickly scans the ship and discovers there are plenty of people
just below her, so the next stop is the Mess Hall. Harry is unconscious
and Chakotay has a strange growth on his neck. As she examines
it, small things fly out of it, and then a massive version appears
to attack her, knocking her to the ground before she can blast
it with the rifle. There is nothing she can do for the crew here,
so she takes herself off to sickbay. The doors do not open automatically,
so she forces them, and is greeted by the EMH with a phaser.
She has bruised ribs and a torn muscle. While the EMH treats
her injury he tells her how the situation came to be.
They received a distress call from the Garan Mining colony asking
for medical aid. The EMH volunteered for the mission and loaded
his programme into the mobile emitter. By the time the ship arrived
at the colony everyone was seriously ill. The EMH beamed down
and gave a very full description of the location to Chakotay over
the open comm. line. He found one of the miners and discovered
that the virus had used the victim’s grown hormone to make
itself bigger, and visible to the naked eye. It was attracted
to infra-red and continuously growing. Chakotay refused permission
to beam it or any sick miners aboard because of the risk of infection,
but several organisms came up with the EMH. The biofilters detected
them but before the buffers could be purged, several escaped into
other systems. As they made their way through the ship, the EMH
and Kes used his tricorder data to create a synthetic antigen
to defeat the infection. When Chakotay came to check on their
progress, they were about twelve hours away from a cure. Meanwhile,
volunteer replacement chef Tom Paris was having problems with
the power supply which had incinerated a pot-roast. Torres checked
the gel pack for him and discovered that it was infected. When
she touched it, she got goo all over her hand. The Doctor was
summoned to the mess hall and he quickly realised that an epidemic
was imminent so he recommended that the area be quarantined. Chakotay
ordered red alert and had the forcefields put in place around
deck two. The EMH collected a live macrovirus and returned to
sickbay to continue his search for a cure. While it was under
the microscope it grew so quickly that it escaped and had to be
trapped inside a forcefield. By the time the antigen was ready,
the macrovirus was over one third of a metre across. The EMH grappled
briefly with the angry life form before injecting it, whereupon
in collapsed to the floor in a squishy heap. With the antigen
proved, the EMH headed to the mess hall to begin vaccinating the
quarantined crew, but he was attacked by two very large macroviruses
and had to hide under a table to protect his mobile emitter from
their vicious stingers whilst they broke through the quarantine
field and took over the rest of the ship.
Bones knitted, Janeway asks why the crew are all gathered in
the mess hall and cargo bays. The EMH believes the macroviruses
are instinctively driven to herd their prey together. The Captain
is running a fever, the result of the bite on the bridge, and
she volunteers to become the first human test subject for the
completed antigen. It is successful, but they have no way of getting
to the crew to administer it. Janeway suggests dispersing it through
the air, but it will have to be done from Environmental Control
once the systems are repaired. The EMH prepares two canisters
and they head off into the Jefferies tubes and split up to double
their chances of success.
The Captain gets to their goal, splattering macroviruses along
the way, but the EMH has to retreat into a shuttle after his mobile
emitter was nearly destroyed by the beasts. She gets the systems
online and is just about to release the antigen into the atmosphere
when Voyager is rocked by impacts – they are being attacked
by the Tak-Tak. Using the shuttle’s systems, they make contact
with the Consul, who has picked up the distress call and come
to purify the ship of this incurable disease, just as they have
purified the mining colony. Talking fast, Janeway convinces the
Consul that they have a cure, and they can prove it if he will
stop his attack and give them time to get it to the crew. He gives
them an hour, but the attack has destroyed their chance of dispersing
the cure through the air. Then the Captain has an idea.
The Paxau resort is bustling with colourful characters when the
large macroviruses swoop in on the new infra red signatures. The
EMH now has a clear path to the mess hall and cargo bays to vaccinate
the crew while Janeway heads for holodeck two with an antigen
‘bomb’. Just as she is about to throw it in among
the macroviruses when one attacks her and knocks it out of her
hand. After a brief hand to hand struggle, she knifes it and lobs
the bomb into the room with seconds to spare. There is a big green
explosion and all the macroviruses are killed. The Tak-Tak are
impressed, and call off their attack.
In her ready room, Captain Janeway is listening to music while
painting a landscape. Chakotay brings her the damage report and
invites her to join a group going skiing on the Ktarian glaciers.
She declines, feeling that she’s had enough exercise for
a while.
Review
Another Janeway story already, and this time she gets strip off,
heft a big gun and save her ship and crew single-handedly. This
is Voyager meets Alien, where dialogue takes second place to splattering
weird aliens all over the bulkheads.
There are little nuances in the episode which tell you that the
writer really is paying attention to continuity – Neelix
reminds his Captain that he only has one lung, as kindly donated
by Kes in Phage, and his Briefing with Neelix programme from Investigations
has developed into Good Morning Voyager. Naturally it is the loquacious
EMH who gets to tell most of the story in his narrative while
treating Janeway’s insect bites, but fortunately his instinct
for Mobile Emitter Preservation keeps him from being the Hero.
That’s left to Kate, aka Ripley, looking very fit in her
vest.
Forget the science, please. It’s not important to the plot.
Just sit back and enjoy the fun. Revel in Janeway being sidelined
by Neelix in negotiations with the TakTak because her habit of
putting her hands on her hips is a gross insult in their body
language. For once we get a small glimpse of how communicating
with alien species should be fraught with misunderstandings. It’s
no Darmok [Next Generation episode], but it’s not trying
to be. Enjoy the alien mega-bugs, delight in the carnage on the
holodeck and take it as it is, 44 minutes of escapism. Although
as far as this reviewer is concerned, it would have been so much
more pleasant to watch if it had been the first officer removing
his uniform and getting down to business, it wasn’t to be
that way. Never mind.
Grade: 6/10
Cast:
Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway
Robert Beltran as Chakotay
Roxanne Biggs-Dawson as B'Elanna Torres
Jennifer Lien as Kes
Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
Ethan Phillips as Neelix
Robert Picardo as The Doctor
Tim Russ as Tuvok
Garrett Wang as Harry Kim
Guest Cast:
Michael Fiske as Garan miner
Albie Selznick as Tak Tak
Creative Staff:
Director: Alexander Singer
Written By: Brannon Braga
