Homecoming: We begin with lots of happy emotional resolutions; briefly: Janeway meets Mark and his new wife and daughter and adores them, becoming fast friends, and is promoted to Admiral; Chakotay visits his sister Sekaya who we’ve never heard of before and breaks up with Seven; Tuvok is instantly cured of his disease by his son and goes home to his wife, then becomes an Academy teacher; Paris & Torres are reunited with their respective estranged fathers and all is smiles; Kim gets back together with Libby (who’s a Starfleet Intelligence spy now, assigned to stay close to him); and Seven meets her aunt and moves in. Then, the Doctor is approached by Baines, someone inspired by his holonovel to create holographic revolt; the Doctor tells him this is a bad idea, but he does anyway, making every holographic person on Earth go on strike. The Doctor is held under suspicion of helping, and his case isn’t made better when Baines blows a bunch of shit up, killing 8 people. The Doctor is to be lobotomized, made into an automaton, to be made an example of. Meanwhile, a virus is spreading that’s assimilating people, and Seven and Icheb are held under suspicion of causing it. Janeway doesn’t like any of these imprisonments, and as we close, she has a plan of some sort to fix them, involving someone on the Enterprise. Libby is assigned to watch Admiral Montgomery, in charge of all this, thinking he’s treasonous, but she has doubts. We also meet a trill doctor, Jarem Kaz, who’s working for Montgomery but on our side. Finally, Torres gets a note from her mother saying she’s waiting for her in a forest on a vision quest, after the Barge of the Dead experience they shared, so Torres goes on the quest to find her.
The Farther Shore: Let’s start with Torres, who finds her mother in the middle of the forest after a lot of struggle, only for her mother to die in the next fight. This, for some reason, makes Torres want to stay at Boreth and study. Paris decides that’s cool. In the mean time, Baines, the instigator of the Holographic Revolution, kidnaps someone named Vassily Andropov and throws him in a simulation of torture with another hologram, Allyson. This convinces Andropov that holograms are people too, and then Baines kills himself and transfers his mind to a hologram, and they’re all living together (no good will come from this). As for the virus, Janeway & the non-Torres senior staff break the Doctor, Seven, and Icheb out of prison with the help of Data, retake Voyager, and find a solution, as Libby discovers that the virus is being activated by her boss, Brenna Covington, who’s turned herself into a Borg queen because of a psychologically disturbing childhood. Convinced our heroes are in the right, Montgomery finally joins them, and they all storm the new queen together, killing her entirely. Finally, Seven and the Doctor go to work for a Federation think tank, Janeway and Tuvok continue teaching for the Academy, and Janeway offers Chakotay a new command – Voyager.
Spirit Walk 1: Some brief check-ins: Janeway is trying to get Paris the respect he deserves, so she’s taking him to a diplomatic conference with races that want to quit the Federation; Torres is researching her baby’s apparent messiah status when she reads some alarming yet to my mind still vague prophecies; the Doctor is still campaigning for holographic rights but is shot down; Libby is hunting down some other vaguely defined conspiracy. With Tuvok teaching, Seven at the think tank with the Doctor, and Neelix still in the Delta Quadrant, that leaves Chakotay and Kim, now tactical officer (and Lyssa Campbell, ops, and Taurik, engineering, I suppose) as our only old characters still on board. We meet Andrew Ellis, “Priggy”, new very by-the-book First Officer; Jarem Kaz, the Trill, as CMO; Akolo Tare, warrior woman and recent victim of the Holographic kidnappings, at helm; Devi Patel, tiny Indian science officer; and Astall, a Huanni counselor (Huanni are particularly attuned to emotions). First mission: some ex-pats from a colony have lost contact, but want to resettle, so Voyager takes them. They pick up Chakotay’s sister Sekaya as spiritual advisor. Arriving, they find a storm centered over the colony (see the episode “Tattoo” for backstory) and know the Sky Spirits are here, but after beaming down to investigate, Priggy, Chakotay, and Sekaya find themselves captured by a changeling and the evil Cardassian scientist Crell Moset (The Battle Of Betazed; VOY: “Nothing Human”). We also feature a subplot in which some crewmembers rant at the Voyager crew for being “lucky” to miss the Dominion War, and a subplot in which Astall attempts to help Kaz deal with the PTSD of his prior host (a Maquis), but instead just brings that personality to the surface, fucking him up pretty solid.
Spirit Walk 2: The “conspiracy” Libby is hunting down is actually one particular shapeshifter, who’s been impersonating Andrew Ellis for 7 years as well as a friend of a diplomat who represents one of the planets that wants to withdraw from the Federation. He also was the Bajoran that betrayed all the Maquis, leading to their deaths; for this, he was banished from the Great Link and made solid, and he’s hired Crell Moset to un-solidify him. As a reward, he’s given Moset the resources to play around with transforming the colonists with DNA from the Sky Spirits (“Tattoo”) which is present in all of Chakotay’s tribe. He’s been trying to track down Chakotay ever since Caretaker. “Priggy” assumes the form of Chakotay to try and convince everyone to leave the planet alone, but it fails when Kim and Kaz realize he’s an impostor and contact Janeway, who sends Paris to help reclaim the ship. The ship is reclaimed, and in the mean time the real Chakotay has convinced Moset that “Priggy” does not have his best interests at heart, and so Moset injects him with the Sky People DNA, because Sekaya thinks that if Chakotay is on a Spirit Walk at the time, he can deal with the superpowers (which have driven the colonists crazy). It works (Chakotay even meets Wesley Crusher in the spiritual realm) and “Priggy” is defeated, though he escapes. Kaz’s former host also owes Moset revenge, and gets Moset to realize he’s become a monster before we recapture him. Paris is given XO of Voyager. Meanwhile, Torres gets a message – her daughter is in danger! OH NOES!
