DEADLOCK
Episode 37

 

SUMMARY: Voyager and the crew are duplicated. Ensign Samantha Wildman goes into labour and delivers a baby girl. Voyager enters a plasma cloud to block sensor detection by twenty Vidiian ships and a G-type star system with two planets showing Vidiian lifesigns. But when Voyager emerges from the plasma cloud, an odd series of events occur when the warp engines stall, the antimatter supplies drain, and proton bursts emanating from an unknown source cause a hull breach on Deck 15. As he tries to repair the hull breach, Kim is sucked into space and killed. As Kes, carrying a medkit, runs toward Hogan, who is injured, she vanishes through a mysterious rift. Wildman's baby dies when osmotic pressure therapy fails due to damage to the ship's systems. The hull breach widens and the ship is forced to run on emergency power. Neelix tries to comfort Samantha Wildman when her baby dies Kim is unable to hold onto Torres' hand and he dies in space When another proton burst causes a new breach to form on Deck 1, Chakotay is forced to order everyone off the Bridge. As Janeway reluctantly abandons her post, she sees a mirror image of her crew overlaid onto the partially destroyed bridge. At the same time, a duplicate Janeway sees an image of her battered self walk across the undamaged Bridge! Torres' view of Kes as Kes runs into the rift and vanishes Janeway sees a ghost-type image of herself on the Bridge The duplicate Janeway orders the crew to investigate while she visits Wildman in Sickbay to admire her newborn baby who is fully healthy following osmotic pressure therapy. While in Sickbay, the duplicate Janeway also interviews the mysterious patient who apparently simply appeared on Deck 15 - an identical version of their own Kes. This newly-arrived Kes reports the same series of odd occurrences but noting that the proton bursts were causing massive damage to her ship. This leads the duplicate Janeway to speculate that there is another Voyager nearby. This is confirmed by research by the crew. Their initial analysis of the sensor logs from their trip through the plasma cloud did not find anything unusual, but a quantum-level analysis revealed that the subspace turbulence they encountered was a divergence field which has caused spatial scission, i.e. every particle of matter (mass, energy output, bio-signatures, everything) on the ship was duplicated in the instant they passed through the field. The two Voyagers are linked by the antimatter in the warp drive, but there is not enough antimatter to sustain both vessels, as per an experiment Janeway witnessed at Kent State University, in which normal matter could be duplicated but an attempt to duplicate antimatter failed. This makes her crew realise that both Voyagers' engines have been trying to draw power from a single source of antimatter. At first, the duplicate crew has difficulty contacting the other Voyager's crew to inform them of the findings because the molecular signatures of the two ships are slightly out of phase. The duplicate Torres sends a rotating band pulse on all subspace bands to attract their attention (which is received in Engineering where the Bridge has been relocated to after the hull breach on Deck 1), then uses the emergency encryption code for the short message needed to tell the other Voyager to lock onto a frequency of 12 gigahertz. the two Voyagers Once communication is established, the two Voyagers attempt to re-create the subspace divergence field they passed through and depolarise it by sending out a massive resonance pulse from their deflector dishes at exactly the same time, hoping it will merge the ships. They have to abort the merge when the plasma flow becomes too turbulent, and the divergence fields become so chaotic they threaten to destroy both ships. The duplicate Kim rigs portable phase discriminators enabling the duplicate Janeway and the original Kes to cross the rift on Deck 15 to the original Voyager. There the two Janeways meet and discuss their options. The original Janeway, captain of the heavily damaged Voyager, proposes the self-destruction of her ship and crew to save the other. The duplicate Janeway begs 15 more minutes to come up with a better solution. the two Janeways confer Further discussion is interrupted when a Vidiian ship closes in and fires a hypothermic charge enabling the Vidiians to disable and board the undamaged Voyager (the duplicate), but they are unaware of the original Voyager's existence. The Vidiians are attacking the crew in order to harvest body organs, to help the Vidiians combat the phage, a disease which is killing the Vidiian species. The duplicate Janeway rejects Janeway's offer to send armed help through the rift, as sending more than a few people would fatally alter the atomic mass of the ships and she does not want the Vidiians to become aware of the original Voyager. the Vidiian ship approaches after disabling Voyager over 340 Vidiians board Voyager With the Vidiians outnumbering the crew and about to seize the entire ship, the duplicate Janeway realises that the odds are against her. She arbitrarily alters the plan and sets her own ship on self-destruct, but first she orders her Kim to take Wildman's baby through the rift. Evading the Vidiian boarding party and downing the two Vidiians in Sickbay, Kim manages to do so, going through the rift to the safety of the original Voyager a moment before the ship explodes. The Vidiians and their ship are destroyed at the same time. Kim collects the Wildman baby from Sickbay the duplicate Janeway welcomes the Vidiian commander to the Bridge too late the Vidiians realise the captured Voyager is about to self-destruct the duplicate Voyager explodes, catching and destroying the Vidiian ship too.... ....but leaving the original Voyager intact the duplicate Kim with duplicate Wildman baby safely reaches the original Voyager where he is met by the originals of Tuvok, Torres and Kes Ensign Wildman is pleased and grateful as she nurses her (duplicate) baby. As the duplicate Kim leaves Sickbay with Janeway, in sight of the numerous teams working to repair the massive damage to the ship, he remarks that it feels weird because she is his captain but in a way she is not and yet there is no difference. She responds by telling him: "We're Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job." Wildman with her 'new' baby the duplicate Kim with his 'new' captain NOTE: Sources assume, and therefore I do, that the original Voyager and crew are the ones that survive. Obviously that is the easiest and simplest conclusion, but it is possible, since we do not actually know which Voyager is the original, that the duplicates survive.      JANEWAY #2: You're going to self destruct your ship. JANEWAY #1: What makes you say that? JANEWAY #2: Because that's what I would do if your Voyager were intact and my Voyager were crippled, my crew wounded or dead. I'd sacrifice my ship so that yours could survive. JANEWAY #1: Then I'm glad we agree. Go back to your ship. JANEWAY #2: I didn't say I agree. I said I understand.