Equinox (Voyager episode)
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Equinox is an episode of . It is the 5th season finale and is episode 526.
Plot
An alien, one of many attacking within Voyager, knocks Captain Janeway to the deck, but she had turned enough to avoid being affected by thermionic radiation. Yelling for tactical control, she uses a deflector pulse to reinforce the shields at least temporarily. The aliens' attacks are halted, but damage has been done; Chakotay is unconscious, and there's no response from sickbay.
Meanwhile, the USS Equinox is warping away from the battle area. With the multiphasic shielding in place, the aliens are staying clear. Captain Rudolph Ransom realises Voyager must be under attack but, in a moment of crisis with his conscience, decides not to deviate from his course to the Alpha Quadrant.
Janeway, wandering the corridors of her ship, is handed the mobile emitter by Neelix, who found the device on Deck 7. She takes it and reactivates the EMH back in sickbay, not realising that it is the program from the Equinox, without the ethical subroutines. He begins to treat Chakotay, who Tom Paris had managed to stabilise. Chakotay believes they should try to communicate with the aliens, while Janeway is determined to go after Ransom. Their debate is interrupted by the sound of the interspacial fissures again.
Seven of Nine's capture
Ransom tries to persuade Seven of Nine to stop resisting him and to become part of the crew, but Seven refuses to comply. She bluntly tells Ransom that he would be an inferior role model to her than Janeway, and that Voyager made a mistake to trust them. Max Burke realises that their EMH has left them a replacement, and activating the Doctor from Voyager. The pair both realise they're stuck on the Equinox together.
Meanwhile, the Equinox prepares to activate their enhanced warp drive, using the aliens as fuel to get back to Earth within several months. However, just as the ship is accelerating, it stalls. The power relays to the modified injectors have been encoded — Ransom quickly realises it must have been Seven of Nine. He tries to get her to tell him the codes, to which he just gets a cold reply. Burke deletes the Doctor's ethical subroutines, and persuades him to extract the information by any means necessary.
Meanwhile, Chakotay and Harry Kim have come up with a way which, they believe, may allow them to communicate with the life-forms. Dropping shields around the bridge, they send the message. Although an alien appears, moves next to Harry's station for a moment, then disappears, there appears to be no obvious response — until the creatures attack the shields again. Another deflector pulse is activated, but the deflector is losing power. Janeway and Chakotay move into the ready room, where Chakotay accuses her of having a vendetta against Ransom, and letting that cloud her judgement. She admits she is furious, that not just a Starfleet officer, but a Starfleet Captain could discard his values and break the Prime Directive, the two things Janeway has held dear to, especially while in the Delta Quadrant. She leaves Chakotay in no uncertain terms that she intends to hunt Ransom down, no matter what the cost.
Ransom checks in with the Doctor, who reveals to access the information he's after, he'll have to remove Seven's cortical array, but by doing this, all of Seven's higher brain functions will become severely damaged. Ransom reluctantly tells Seven he has no choice – a phrase Seven rebukes. She stubbornly tells him she will have to be destroyed to obtain the codes. The Doctor proceeds.
Chakotay is summoned to Janeway's ready room — she notes it isn't common for Chakotay to suggest recommendations in writing, holding up a PADD. Commenting that it was the only way he could think of getting Janeway to acknowledge his recommendation, Janeway refuses this suggestion as well. Chakotay had suggested getting in touch with the Ankari, the race who introduced Ransom to the nucleogenic life-forms, a race who surely could communicate with them. However, this would take Voyager away from its course following the Equinox. Janeway notes from Ransom's service record that he tends to hide when being pursued, so asks Chakotay to use astrometrics to find likely hiding places.
Equinox, meanwhile, is hiding. The planet's atmosphere should shield them from Voyager sensors. Ransom orders repairs to be made, while sending Noah Lessing and another crew member down to mine some dilithium. The pair beam down, but are captured by a Voyager away team.
The Equinox EMH tries to warn Ransom that Voyager has found them, and that they have polarized their hull plating to mask their approach. The Voyager and the Equinox engage in a brief battle, Voyager taking the Equinox weapon systems off-line. Not willing to accept defeat, Ransom takes his vessel into the planet's atmosphere. Voyager follows, but has to retreat when the deflector, which they're relying on to protect the vessel against the life-forms, is losing power trying to protect the vessel against the atmosphere. Equinox escapes to warp, while Voyager has to repair primary systems first.
Janeway interrogates Lessing, who she has tied up in a cargo bay. She threatens to drop the shields in the room if he doesn't tell her Ransom's tactical status. Getting nowhere, she goes outside, with Chakotay, and drops the shields. Chakotay quickly realises Janeway isn't bluffing, so goes in and rescues Lessing, saving him in the nick of time. He gets him to tell him everything he knows on the Ankari. Janeway agrees to try and find a nearby Ankari vessel, but when Chakotay tells Janeway he's not impressed by her recent reckless actions, she removes him from duty and confines him to quarters.
Apparent moral inconsistency
However, earlier, when Ransom asked for mercy for his crew because they were following his orders, Janeway said they should have followed the higher moral code of Starfleet — but here she removed Chakotay (and threatened to do the same to Tuvok) for doing just that.
\"Spirits of Good Fortune\" demand retribution
Janeway orders Tuvok to engage a tractor beam on the fleeing Ankari ship, not having the patience of normal diplomatic channels. The Ankari crew are forced to agree to summon their "Spirits of Good Fortune" and act as translators. Speaking with them in the cargo bay, the life-forms demand to destroy the Equinox as retribution. Tuvok tries to persuade them that they will punish the Equinox crew in their own way, via imprisonment, but gets nowhere. Janeway unusally promises the life-forms to deliver the Equinox to them if they stop their attacks on the Voyager. The life-forms accept.
Mutiny on Equinox
Ransom escapes the challenges of surviving by wearing a synaptic stimulator, a device which allows him to experience various alien vistas. Although only designed to view landscapes, being nowhere as advanced as a holodeck, he sees someone in it. He is amazed to discover it's Seven of Nine, who asks, then instructs Ransom to find another way home. Seven turns into a nucleogenic life-form, at which point Ransom ends the program. Burke summons him to the bridge at the same time, as Voyager has found them again. Ransom orders the vessel to open a channel, preparing to surrender to Janeway and make peace with the aliens. Burke doesn't accept this, and takes control of the ship, ordering Ransom taken to the brig. Marla Gilmore points her phaser at Ransom, and takes him away. Burke contacts the Equinox EMH aboard Voyager and asks him to find the vessel's current shield frequency.
Voyager opens fire on the other vessel, and the two ships engage in combat while at warp. Gilmore leads Ransom to Engineering, and lowers her phaser – she's on his side, and wants this to end as much as he does. The two begin trying to access transporter control.
Voyager destroys the Equinox port warp nacelle, and the ship falls out of warp, leaking plasma. Voyager continues to pursue, still firing its weapons. The EMH transmits the shield frequency to Burke. Voyager moves in, preparing to engage a tractor beam, when Burke manages to fire torpedoes through the shields. Despite Tuvok rotating the shield frequency every ten seconds, Voyager suffers extensive damage, losing many weapons arrays and impulse drive. Ransom suddenly hails the ship and offers to surrender, saying he can transport the Equinox crew to Voyager, Janeway agrees. She tells her crew, who are amazed at their captain's sudden change in attitude, that Ransom is a Starfleet captain, even if he forgot that for a while.
Burke isn't ready to surrender just yet, and places a force-field around the bridge. Gilmore is able to transport the rest of the crew to Voyager, including Seven of Nine. She also transfers the Doctor's program back to his sickbay, with ethical subroutines restored. The Equinox EMH threatens to blow out every holo-emitter in the room, and blow out the Doctor's command sequencers — the Doctor merely orders the computer to delete the Equinox EMH, and stops the transmission of the shield frequencies.
Ransom, still in engineering, contacts his bridge. He tells the stunned Burke that he has dropped the shields around the ship, except the bridge and his current location. The vital systems are exposed. Burke refuses to transport to Voyager, despite his captain's pleas - instead, he tried to lead the bridge crew to the nearby shuttlebay two decks down, but all perish en route.
As the life-forms attack the Equinox warp core, Ransom hails Janeway. He tells her that his ship is about to explode, and he has to get it to a safe distance from the immobilized Voyager. Janeway tries to get Ransom off, asking him to set auto-navigation. He refuses, saying he has no time, and telling her that she has a fantastic crew, and forces her to promise to get them home. Janeway does.
Ransom, having set a course away from the Voyager, wears his synaptic stimulator one last time, watching a beautiful beach view. A moment or two later, Equinox explodes and is destroyed.
Aftermath
Janeway strips the five former and surviving Equinox crew of rank, reducing them to active crewmen, saying that they need to earn her trust this time. They'll be under strict supervision for a while. She has also reinstated Chakotay, and the two discuss morale. In response to a comment from Janeway, Chakotay admits he briefly considered a mutiny of his own, but says that would have been "crossing the line." Janeway suddenly notices that the dedication plaque for Voyager has fallen, for the first time, and wonders if it is a symbol of recent, or upcoming, events.
| Preceded by: Warhead | Followed by: Survival Instinct |
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