For Episode Guide version comprising over 350 screenshots with all the dialogue, see Episode Index.
The crew find themselves in what looks like a farmyard on Earth. But Janeway's tricorder reveals they've travelled only 100km and are on the Array. Kim reports there's no indication of "stable matter" and assumes it's all a holographic projection.
They're offered cookies and a welcoming beano by "the neighbours", who include a banjo man (later revealed to be the Caretaker) but Janeway refuses the hospitality.
Paris reports that the whole crew is scattered around the farm. She sends him to see if he can find a holographic projector of any kind. "Can you tell me why we're here?" Janeway asks the farmwife who offers her corn on the cob. The farmwife replies with the mysterious, "Oh we don't mean you any harm."
Kim and Paris explore a barn, despite the efforts of a farmgirl to distract them. Kim's tricorder detects a lifeform all around, a matrix processing device and humanoid lifeforms including a Vulcan. The farmgirl knocks down Paris who alerts Janeway via his comm. badge. When Janeway and her team arrive, the farm folks gather round holding pitchforks. The farmwife says that if no one wants any corn, "we'll just have to proceed ahead of schedule."
The barn wall dissolves to reveal a vast laboratory.
Janeway and her crew are horrified to see Chakotay, Torres and Tuvok here, suspended and attached through their chests. Then it's the turn of the rest of the Voyager crew.
Janeway awakes on Voyager in Engineering to find that she and the crew have been returned after three days, all save Harry Kim.
She contacts Chakotay and asks if Kim is on his ship. Chakotay asks how she knows his name and she replies that they came looking for them. Chakotay says he's missing a crewmember too, his engineer Torres. Janeway says their problem is the same and suggests they work together. Chakotay consults Tuvok who agrees by nodding his head. Chakotay says he and two others will beam to Voyager.
Chakotay, Tuvok and another Maquis member beam aboard Voyager. They arrive armed and ready. Janeway tells them that weapons are not needed here.
Then she greets Tuvok, whose undercover role is revealed. Chakotay is grim but doesn't get angry until he sees that Paris is involved: "At least the Vulcan was doing his duty as a Starfleet officer, but you, you betrayed us for what - freedom from prison, latinum? What was your price this time?!"
Janeway tells Chakotay she expects him to grant the same respect to a member of her crew as he would expect her to give one of his.
She and Chakotay, with Paris and Tuvok, return to the Array, which they do armed with compression phaser rifles. They meet the banjo man and demand their missing crewmembers back. "Aren't you contentious for a minor bipedal species," he says.
Later, talking mainly to himself he says, "I must honour a debt that can never be repaid, but my search has not been going well." He adds, "There's no time left" to send them home and he won't release their missing crewmembers (Kim and Torres). With a wave of his hand he sends them back to the ship.
In her Ready Room, Tuvok reports that the Array's bursts of energy have reduced in frequency, and Janeway reports her findings which are that the Ocampa world is a desert. "It has all the characteristics of an M-class planet but without any nucleogenic particles." Because it lacks these particles, the planet is incapable of producing rain. Janeway surmises that once the planet suffered an ecological disaster. She tells Tuvok that Kim's mother contacted her as he had left his clarinet behind and asked if there was time to send it and she had had to say no. She tells Tuvok that she hardly knew Kim. Tuvok tells her that he has never met Kim. She says she missed his counsel. With her thoughts obviously on the crew's loved ones back in the Alpha Quadrant she tells Tuvok that his family are worried about him. He counters that Vulcans do not worry, but she says they miss him, and he says that he misses them too. She says she must make time to get to know the crew. She says it is a fine crew and she has to get them home. She promises Tuvok she will return him to his family.
Kim wakes in a hospital room to see alien strangers around. In the same room is Torres, who also awakes and tries to escape but is restrained and sedated.
En route for the fifth planet of the system, where the Array is sending the bursts of radiant energy, Voyager encounters a debris field and a ship in it.
The ship belongs to Neelix who claims the debris for his own.
He reveals that the Ocampa, who live on the fifth planet, call the alien who looks after them "the Caretaker", and that the Caretaker has been kidnapping lots of ships for months. He agrees to help Voyager in return for water. When he is beamed aboard, to be met by Tuvok, it's shown that transporter technology is new to the Delta Quadrant.
Neelix greets Tuvok by hugging him, an unexpected experience for Tuvok!
In what we later learn is called the Central Clinic, Kim admits to Torres that he and his ship had been sent to capture the Maquis crew. When Torres bangs on the door in frustration at captivity, he calms her down. She blames her Klingon half. An Ocampa male (for they are on Ocampa), says they are not prisoners but their guests and they're free to go, but is unable to answer Kim's query about the skin disease he and Torres have.
Kim and Torres are shown the Ocampa planet. Due to the "warming" of the planet over a millennium ago (which we learn later was unwittingly caused by the Caretaker's species), the Caretaker built the underground chambers and led the Ocampa there, and has supplied their needs ever since. Many of the younger generation dislike this dependency on the Caretaker. This includes food; food machines produce every 4.1 intervals. Kim and Torres are told that the Ocampa people care for those whom the Caretaker sends them but that they all died of their disease.
