MEDICAL LOGS

FLASHBACK
Season 3 : Episode 44

 

MEDICAL REPORT:

As Voyager approaches a nebula rich in sirillium, Tuvok is plagued by visions of himself as a boy, trying to rescue a girl who is falling off a cliff - an event he does not recall experiencing.

Tuvok's vision and arrival in Sickbay

The Doctor suspects he is reliving a repressed memory, which can cause permanent brain damage in a Vulcan. Tuvok's memory engrams in the dorsal region of the hippocampus are being disrupted by the virus, creating symptoms that resemble a Vulcan syndrome known as t'lokan schism. A repressed traumatic memory begins to resurface, a battle is waged between the Vulcan's conscious and the unconscious mind causing severe brain trauma. In extreme cases, the patient can literally lobotomise himself. There is no medical treatment for this condition. Vulcan psychocognitive research suggests that the patient initiate a mind-meld with a family member and the pair attempt to bring the repressed memory into the subject's conscious mind. In advanced stages of t'lokan schism, memories and thought processes become distorted and confused. The family member, in this case Janeway, will act as a pyllora, or guide and counselor. She will help reconstruct the memory in its entirety and help the subject to objectify the experience. By processing the experience, rather than repressing it, he can begin to overcome fear, anger, and the other emotional responses, and to reintegrate the memory into the conscious mind. Janeway agrees to mind-meld with Tuvok, as she is the closest thing to a family member Tuvok has on board. Together, all the time located in Sickbay, the pair journeys through his subconscious to relive the past.

the Doctor's diagnosis and discussion with Janeway, Tuvok requests Janeway as his pyllora, and preparing for the mind-meld

The meld, though intended to take them back to his childhood to the time of the alleged encounter on the cliff, instead takes them to 2293 to Tuvok's first Starfleet assignment, on the Starship Excelsior then commanded by Captain Hikaru Sulu. En route to carry out an illicit rescue of old comrades, Sulu takes the Excelsior passes through a nebula that looks similar to the one Voyager spotted prior to Tuvok's first flashback. Once again, Tuvok experiences the memory of the little girl falling, but this time he experiences erratic brain patterns that lead to convulsions. The Doctor revives Tuvok, and Janeway wonders what the little girl had to do with this period on the Excelsior. All Tuvok can recall is that the Klingons ambushed the starship in the nebula, forcing Sulu to abort the rescue mission. Re-forming the mind-meld, Tuvok relives the Klingon attack. He recalls that during the battle he aided an injured crewman named Valtane, who died with Tuvok right by him. As he goes through the memory again, the Doctor notices that Tuvok is again experiencing erratic brain patterns. Unable to break the mind-meld between Tuvok and Janeway, the Doctor exposes Tuvok's brain to bursts of thoron radiation and in doing so, inadvertently discovers the truth - when Valtane died, a strange alien virus he had been carrying in his brain migrated to Tuvok's brain, camouflaging itself as a repressed memory. The Doctor increases the intensity of the radiation and is able to destroy the virus, leaving the minds of Tuvok and Janeway healthy. The Doctor employs a cortical stimulator on Tuvok.

the "memory" changes to afflict Janeway but the Doctor destroys the virus and the mind-meld is broken, with a schematic of the virus shown on a Sickbay monitor

STAR TREK CONTEXTUAL MEDICAL GLOSSARY:

Cortical stimulator.

DOCTOR'S QUOTE:

To Tuvok: "I don't know what happened to you, but there can be any number of explanations: hallucination, telepathic communication from another race, repressed memory, momentary contact with a parallel reality - take your pick. The universe is such a strange place."