Episode Synopsis : Season 5
ONCE UPON A TIME
Episode 99

 

The Delta Flyer is on an away mission to collect mineral samples, crewed by Paris, Tuvok and Ensign Samantha Wildman. But during the mission, the Delta Flyer is badly damaged by an ion storm. Samantha, when she speaks to her young daughter Naomi (born in 2372 in [#37 Deadlock]), avoids telling her this, but after Naomi has gone to bed she tells Neelix who, as Naomi's godfather, is looking after her while her mother is away. The away team take the Delta Flyer to a planetoid to try and escape another ion storm but they crash there, ending up inside an intact Delta Flyer but buried beneath the rock surface in a cavern filled with lethal fluorine gas. Samantha is severely injured, with a punctured lung and internal bleeding. Voyager tracks their distress call, but there is another ion storm is blocking their path. As the crew get busy with preparations to search the planetoid for the away team, Neelix takes charge of Naomi. At a senior staff meeting Janeway gives him the mission of keeping Naomi occupied and unaware of her mother's predicament for the time being. Dining with Neelix in the Messhall, Naomi tells Neelix that she wishes to become the captain's assistant. She becomes anxious when she sees Seven enter, whom she fears, calling her "the Borg lady". Kim tracks the Delta Flyer's impulse trail on the planetoid and, although there are no lifesigns, rescue teams are despatched to the crater concerned to search. Meanwhile, Naomi is worried when her mother does not call and even cites to Neelix the Starfleet regulation that requires away teams to report to their starship's bridge at least once in every 24 hours. But Neelix tries to distract her with her favourite holodeck tales. These are children's holostories known collectively as The Adventures of Flotter. They are set in the imaginary Forest of Forever and the holocharacters and situations are intended to educate children about science. Her companions are Flotter, who represents water, and Trevis (pronounced "tree-vis"), who represents trees. The stories, however, do not keep Naomi's attention for long. The prospect of telling Naomi that her mother is lost brings back grim memories for Neelix, who lost all his family in the Metreon Cascade (unleashed by the Talaxians' enemies the Haakonians, described in [#15 Jetrel]). Neelix wishes to avoid telling Naomi because he hopes they will find her mother safe and well, and wants to save Naomi the pain of bereavement, in particular the feeling that he himself has suffered, that of being all alone. He has even avoided telling Naomi about his own family loss, so as not to upset her. As part of his scheme of trying to keep Naomi from worrying about her mother, Neelix has Kim replicate a Flotter toy for her, as consolation after the Flotter holocharacter is destroyed by the Ogre of Fire on the Holodeck. When he gives the toy to her, he finds she is working on a way to reliquify Flotter and thus restore him to life. Janeway urges Neelix to stop trying to avoid telling Naomi about her mother's predicament but he at first refuses outright, insisting that as her godfather he knows what is best for her. When Janeway persists, he finally agrees to tell her in the morning. Naomi suddenly wakes in the middle of the night after a disturbing dream. She goes to the Bridge in search of Neelix, but en route she overhears Torres ordering the fetching of phaser drills and secretly observes Torres transporting somewhere with a rescue team. When she enters the Bridge she overhears talk of the crash and Janeway ordering that Sickbay should prepare for casualties. Neelix notices Naomi too late and she flees before he can catch her. Neelix discovers that Naomi has cleverly left her combadge on the Flotter toy in her quarters - she does not wish to be found. On board the Delta Flyer, as their life support system begins to fail, Paris, Tuvok, and Samantha record farewell messages to their loved ones. Meanwhile, Naomi has fled to the Holodeck. When Neelix eventually finds her in the Forest of Forever, Trevis and the resurrected Flotter try to warn him off as he lied to Naomi. She, however, permits him to talk to her. He tries to comfort her about her mother's possible loss, and receives comfort from her in return when he finally tells her about losing his own parents and sisters when he was very young. Together, they find the strength to cope. They are interrupted by Janeway's shipwide warning that a level-8 ion storm is approaching, and Neelix sends Naomi to her quarters for the duration. Chakotay and Seven locate the Delta Flyer buried beneath the rock, and Chakotay hopes that, upon using the phaser drills to gain proximity to the shuttlecraft, Voyager can then beam out the Delta Flyer. Janeway warns him that they have only six minutes before the ion storm arrives - they must finish in that time so that Voyager can flee the storm. With two minutes left before the oxygen runs out, the Delta Flyer crew hear the rescue team digging above them. Kim is able to get a transporter lock on the Delta Flyer and transports it to Voyager just as the storm arrives. Voyager then jumps to warp and escapes the storm. Once Samantha's injuries are treated in Sickbay, Neelix brings Naomi to her, and mother and daughter enjoy a happy reunion. Later Samantha and Naomi visit the Forest of Forever together, and find Neelix having tea with Flotter and Trevis. Flotter remembers Samantha, who played in the holoprogram when she was a child. Leaving a happy Neelix behind, Flotter leads the party on a new adventure - to a castle inhabited by a giant beetle. Janeway arrives, saying she is checking on her captain's assistant, and confides to Neelix that she too played in the holoprogram when she was a child and, at the age of 6, flooded the entire Forest.      NEELIX TO JANEWAY: You don't understand what's at stake here! When you were her age you were safe and sound on Earth with two healthy parents to take care of you. You never had to worry about the possibility of being alone. Take it from me: you wouldn't have liked it.    TUVOK TO SAMANTHA: You have been an exemplary mother to Naomi, and she is in the hands of people you trust. She will survive and prosper, no matter what becomes of us.