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SUMMARY: Voyager starts to traverse secretly the territory of hostile aliens. The Doctor's program is degrading fatally.
Paris and Torres are in a shuttlecraft investigating some intermittent sensor readings. A few moments of light flirting are interrupted when two members of an unidentified species unexpectedly beam aboard. Torres and Paris are unable to communicate with the insectoid aliens via the Starfleet universal translator. The aliens become impatient and open fire at the pair before leaving the shuttlecraft. Paris sustains serious injuries, Torres recovers sufficiently to get them back to Voyager.
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| the aliens attack and leave Paris critically injured |
The Doctor, who had been studying opera on the holodeck, is called to Sickbay to treat Paris and Torres.
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| the Doctor tries to sing an operatic duet but is irritated by the holographic diva's arrogance |
After treatment, Torres is allowed to return to duty. But Paris requires a complex surgical operation to reconstruct his motor cortex.
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| the Doctor with, among others, the two patients Torres and Paris, in Sickbay |
 Neelix informs Captain Janeway that he does not know these aliens by name, only by reputation, and that they are known to attack any outsider who enters their territory, leaving ships badly damaged and rarely with any survivors. While in the shuttlecraft Torres and Paris, without knowing it at the time, had triggered the aliens' sensor net at the border of their territory - that was what the mysterious intermittent sensor readings were. Unfortunately, taking a route around their territory would take Voyager over fifteen months even if they could sustain maximum warp, so Janeway opts to stay on course rather than lose time due to a bunch of bullies (the aliens). She asks her staff to produce a plan to enable Voyager to get through the aliens' sensor net undetected.
In Sickbay, the Doctor suddenly forgets how to perform the operation on Paris and Kes has to take charge. As Paris convalesces from the successful operation, the crew learn that the Doctor's memory circuits are degrading. They could deal with the problem by re-initialising his program, but Torres explains that if she does that all of the memories the Doctor has acquired in the past two years would be lost, along with much of the personality he has developed including his friendships.
partway through the operation, the Doctor forgets the surgical procedure |
Torres analyses the Doctor's program |
At Kes' insistence, Torres transfers the Doctor's program to the EMH diagnostic system, which is a holodeck re-creation of the laboratory on Jupiter Station where his database originally had been written. There the diagnostic program is "embodied" by a holographic re-creation of Dr Lewis Zimmerman, creator of the EMH. The holographic Zimmerman has his personality too - prickly and even cantankerous. After examining the Doctor's program, holo-Zimmerman explains that the Doctor's memory degradation is understandable since his program was designed to run for only a maximum of 1,500 hours. However, holo-Zimmerman is unable to come up with any solution beyond resetting the program.
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| Torres and the Doctor on the holodeck - they meet the diagnostic program, who looks like Dr Zimmerman who created it and the EMH program in his likeness, both visual and personality-wise |
Meanwhile, the crew adjust Voyager's shields and the ship slips through the aliens' sensor net without being detected. Once in their space, Voyager's sensors pick up a mass of thousands of small alien vessels, known as the 'swarm' of the episode's title. The Voyager crew rescue a non-Swarm alien named Chardis (name in script not in dialogue) from his ship which was recently attacked by the Swarm. Chardis dies from his injuries.
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| Chardis: "There were thousands of them, little ships, swarmed around my freighter, covered every square metre of the hull, then they began extracting energy from all the ship's systems. We had no defence. Then they boarded us. ..... It was just painful. People screaming, dying."
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As Voyager continues on its way, the crew are unaware that one of the tiny Swarm vessels was still attached to the hull of Chardis' ship. The Swarm ship's crew notice Voyager and attract the attention of the rest of the Swarm that are still nearby, by firing a polaron burst which makes Voyager visible to the alien sensors.
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| a single Swarm ship detaches from Chardis' ship and draws the Swarm's attention to Voyager's presence |
Voyager is pursued by thousands of small alien ships |
Voyager flees, with the Swarm in hot pursuit. When the Swarm ships catch up, they attach themselves to Voyager's hull and, as with Chardis' ship, start draining the starship's energy. A small boarding party of the insectoid aliens is repelled by the Bridge crew, but if they cannot get free of the Swarm they will end up like Chardis and his crew. |
thousands of Swarm ships attach themselves to Voyager's hull |
several aliens transport onto Voyager's Bridge |
Realising that every vessel in the swarm is connected at some quantum level, the crew is able to create an explosive chain reaction which drives them off long enough to get through the territory.
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| the explosive chain reaction forces the Swarm ships off Voyager's hull |
Meanwhile, with the Doctor's memory degradation worsening every minute, Kes persuades the Zimmerman program to sacrifice its existence by grafting its matrix onto the Doctor's - they are compatible as they both have the same type of adaptive heuristic matrix. When the EMH program is re-initialised, the Doctor is restored although he initially seems to have reverted to his original programming without knowledge of the previous two years. Then, as he treats Torres for a minor headache, he begins to hum the song he was performing earlier in the holodeck, showing that not all has been forgotten.
the diagnostic program starts to go offline, along with the Doctor, in order to create the graft or matrix overlay |
the Doctor re-appears after the overlay is successfully completed |
 | | KES, ARGUING AGAINST SIMPLY RE-INITIALISING THE DOCTOR'S PROGRAM: We just can't treat the Doctor like he's a computer any more. He's come too far for that. Doctor, please, think about this. You'd be losing so much - all the relationships you've developed, our friendship, your sense of being a true member of this crew, all that would be gone.
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| | DIAGNOSTIC TOOL (HOLO-ZIMMERMAN): Well, there's nothing more I can do. Either re-initialise it or live with the knowledge that eventually this EMH will end up with the intellectual capacity of a parsnip. |
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