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SUMMARY: During an attempt to treat Tuvok of a crippling mental condition, Tuvok and Janeway are "transported" back in time and meet the historical figure Captain Sulu.
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.
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| Tuvok's "memory". He takes himself to Sickbay where he collapses. |
The Doctor suspects he is suffering the Vulcan syndrome known as t'lokan schism - a repressed traumatic memory begins to resurface, and 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 but the technique is for the patient to mind-meld with a family member acting as 'pyllora'. The pyllora, or guide and counsellor, is meant to 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 suppressed memory into the conscious mind.
Because of their long-standing friendship, Janeway agrees to meld with Tuvok, as she is the closest thing to a family member Tuvok has on board. Together in the mind-meld, all the time located in Voyager's Sickbay, they journey through his subconscious to relive the past.
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| Monitor scan of Tuvok's brain. Tuvok asks Janeway to act as his pyllora. The mind-meld. |
The mind-meld is intended to take them back to his childhood to the time of the supposed encounter on the cliff, but instead it "transports" Tuvok and Janeway back eighty years to his first assignment as a junior science office aboard the Federation Starship Excelsior in 2293, then commanded by Captain Hikaru Sulu. As Tuvok and Janeway try to discover why they have ended up at this particular memory, they have to "participate" in the events as they happened.
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| Sulu, captain of the Excelsior in 2293. Janeway and Tuvok are surprised to find they have been "brought" to this part of Tuvok's memory. |
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 before 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.
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| The Excelsior is buffeted by the shockwave of Praxis' explosion. |
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| When Sulu and the rest of the crew decide to go and rescue Kirk and McCoy from Klingon imprisonment, Tuvok protests the breach of Starfleet regulations, and Sulu tells him that loyalty is more important than regulations. |
Re-forming the mind-meld, Tuvok relives, with Janeway observing, the time when a Klingon ship apprehended the Excelsior and forcibly escorted it away. But Sulu ignites the sirilium in the nebula and effects the Excelsior's escape.
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| Kang, the Klingon commander. Janeway observes, with the Klingon ship on the viewscreen behind her. |
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| Sulu apparently gives way to Kang's order, but later orders Tuvok to ignite the sirilium in the nebula. The explosion impacts the Klingon ship. |
Tuvok recalls that during the battle with the Klingons he tried to aid an injured crewman named Valtane, who died of his injuries with Tuvok right by him.
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| Tuvok shouts a warning but Valtane is fatally injured. |
As Tuvok goes through the memory again, the Doctor notices that Tuvok is again experiencing erratic brain patterns. Suddenly Sulu "sees" Janeway! As Tuvok and she are taken to detention, the Doctor, unable to break the mind-meld between Tuvok and Janeway, stabilises the mind-meld, enabling Tuvok and Janeway to revert to an earlier part of the memory and avoid Janeway being "seen" by Sulu. In exposing Tuvok's brain to bursts of thoron radiation, the Doctor 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 "memory" changes to afflict Janeway.
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| The Doctor monitors the condition of Janeway and Tuvok. Sulu sees Janeway. |
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| The Doctor discovers the virus masquerading as a repressed memory. |
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| The virus briefly transfers to Janeway so that she "remembers" letting the girl fall from the precipice. |
But the Doctor increases the intensity of the radiation and thus manages to destroy the virus, leaving the minds of Tuvok and Janeway healthy.
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| The mind-meld is broken and Janeway recovers when the Doctor manages to destroy the virus. Later, she and Tuvok look at the monitor schematics as the Doctor explains. |
Afterwards, Tuvok and Janeway reflect on that earlier time in Starfleet history when space was still new for exploration and, with a sense of nostalgia, Janeway admits that she now feels like she was a part of it too.
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| Tuvok and Janeway discuss their experience. |
 | | CAPTAIN SULU TO THE PROTEST MADE BY TUVOK: You'll find that more happens on the Bridge of a starship than just carrying out orders and observing regulations. There's a sense of loyalty to the men and women you serve with, a sense of family. Those two men on trial - I served with them for a long time. I owe them my life a dozen times over. And right now, they're in trouble, and I'm going to help them. Let the regulations be damned.
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