Crew : Chakotay - Adventures - Season 5 - [#100 Timeless] : Janet's Star Trek Voyager Site

[Remember], rotated image to show what
Torres sees above her when she is in bed

CHAKOTAY
: Season 5

screenshots by Janet

[Remember]

#100 TIMELESS

The story is conveyed in the order shown on tv.
Orange = 15 years in the future. Green = 15 years in the past. Bold white = the past, now the new present.

THE FUTURE.
It is fifteen years in the future. Chakotay and Kim beam onto an ice planet and locate the site of USS Voyager, which crashed here fifteen years ago killing all on board. The entire ship is entombed in a glacier.

Chakotay and Kim beam inside Voyager. They find the power grid has been destroyed, the bio-neural gel packs are frozen solid and decks 9 to 14 are compacted. Chakotay surmises they must have hit the ice at full impulse. Chakotay goes to the bridge where he finds the dead and frozen bodies of Janeway and Seven. He contacts Tessa Omond in the Delta Flyer and orders her to transport Seven's body there. Meanwhile Kim reaches Sickbay and activates the Doctor, who is bewildered by the state of the ship. Kim wants his mobile emitter so that they can remove the Doctor from Voyager.
As Chakotay arrives, the Doctor says: "Wait, I demand an explanation."
Chakotay: "I'll give you one: we're here to change history."

FLASHBACK TO THE PAST.
In Engineering, the crew celebrate the completed installation of Voyager's quantum slipstream drive, adapted from Arturis's ship [#94 Hope and Fear], and with benemite crystals at the heart of the system.. Torres breaks a bottle of champagne on the railing to great applause. The next day they will set course and arrive home in the Alpha Quadrant. Janeway tells the crew they have been in the Delta Quadrant for 4 years, 2 months and 11 days: "Now it's time to go home." Janeway asks Chakotay if he has special plans that evening. When he replies that he has nothing special, "date with a replicator", she tells him to cancel it and have dinner with her.

When Paris finds a phase variance in the threshold that causes the slipstream to become unstable, Kim says it is probably just a sensor glitch, but to try and reassure Paris he suggests they carry out some tests on the holodeck simulations.

After 23 holodeck simulations and 23 disasters Paris and Kim report the phase variance problem. Accordingly a meeting of senior staff is held in Engineering. Kim proposes that he flies the Delta Flyer a few seconds ahead of Voyager in the slipstream, to "ride the rapids" i.e. calculate the phase corrections and transmit them to Voyager. Janeway tells him to give her details within an hour.

When Chakotay arrives in Janeway's quarters for dinner (she has cooked her mother's recipe, vegetable biriyani), she informs him that she has decided to adopt Kim's plan. Chakotay warns her of the risks but she says they have been in the Delta Quadrant too long. Chakotay buries his reservations and supports her, and she assigns Chakotay to the Delta Flyer with Kim.

Aboard the Delta Flyer, Chakotay and Kim explain these past events to the Doctor. Completing the story, they tell him that Kim transmitted the wrong phase variance. This knocked Voyager out of the slipstream and forced Janeway to make an emergency landing on the ice planet which killed the crew on impact. Kim bitterly explains that he and Chakotay reached Earth, were celebrated and given medals, and Admiral McIntyre even wanted Kim to marry his daughter, but Starfleet gave up searching for Voyager after 4 years despite their pleas, saying there was a "low probability of success". As soon as they heard about "salvage component 36698", a Borg temporal transmitter salvaged by Starfleet from the wreckage of a Borg cube in the Beta Quadrant, they realised they could change history: by transmitting the correct phase variance they could bring all the Voyager crew home to the Alpha Quadrant safely. Chakotay and Kim stole the Borg temporal transmitter, and stole the Delta Flyer "right out of a Federation shipyard", and with the Doctor's help they can use the Borg interplexing beacon inside Seven's head to send a new set of phase corrections back in time to Voyager: the temporal transmitter is to send the signal back through time, the interlink frequency from the interplexing beacon will facilitate the transmission, and Seven's chronometric node will pinpoint the exact time of death so that they can send the signal to arrive shortly before it.

Tessa Omond arrives to say that she has put the Delta Flyer in a low orbit and remodulated the shields but they have only six hours "if we're lucky" before Starfleet find them: Kim and Chakotay are "the galaxy's most wanted... Two counts of high treason, and conspiracy to violate the temporal prime directive". Kim tells the Doctor that Tessa and Chakotay are lovers.

Tessa and Chakotay beam back to Voyager to download Voyager's sensor logs, in order for their transmission back in time to be sent to the correct place. The logs contain part of Janeway's last entry: "...but should our luck run out I'd like to say for the record that the crew of Voyager acted with distinction and valour." Chakotay is moved, as the last time he sat in his commander's chair everyone was alive.

Chakotay: "Look at me. Last minute jutters, cold feet, I don't know what to call it. Ridiculous, isn't it? After all these years, working towards this moment, and when it comes all I can think about is losing you."
Tessa: "Your heart has always been on Voyager. That'll never change. This is where you belong. And who knows, maybe we'll meet one day."
Chakotay: "And if we don't?"
Tessa: "Then I'll miss you all the same."

Kim, speaking into the message recorder: "...all of that's changed. You owe me one."
The Doctor summons Kim and Kim explains he was doing a "letter to a friend".

As the Doctor and Kim work, the Delta Flyer's sensors detect a Federation ship approaching.
Kim: "If you're having doubts let me know and I'll take your program offline, but if you're with us then we tempt fate together."
Doctor: "To aid an honorable thief or to spend eternity inside cybernetic oblivion? Let's tempt fate."

Chakotay and Kim in the Delta Flyer, ready for the slipstream journey.
Chakotay: "Shield generators?"
Kim: "Online."
Chakotay: "Plasma flow?
Kim: "Stable."
Chakotay: "Comlink?"
Kim: "Secure."
Chakotay: "Lunch?"
Kim: "Salami sandwiches."
Chakotay: "Feeling up to this, Ensign?"
Kim: "Yes, sir."
Chakotay: "Chakotay to Voyager, we're ready."

The Doctor and Kim work: the Doctor on Seven's Borg implants, Kim on the Borg temporal transmitter..

The captain of the pursuing starship, the USS Challenger, is Geordi La Forge. He hails Chakotay, who decides to accept the transmission as it could buy the conspirators some time. Captain La Forge tries to persuade Chakotay to surrender: if they hand over the transmitter and stand down their vessel, the charges of conspiracy will be dropped, but Tessa responds that that is not much of an offer, for if they succeed this timeline will not have existed. When Chakotay says that he wants to save the lives of 150 people, La Forge says he might be doing the same in Chakotay's place, but he has his own crew to think of, "not to mention fifteen years of history". They wish each other luck, and La Forge opens fire on the Delta Flyer.

Voyager in the quantum slipstream.
Janeway: "Captain's log, stardate 52143.6. With any luck my next log entry will be made in the Alpha Quadrant, but should our luck run out I'd like to say for the record that the crew of Voyager acted with distinction and valour."

Kim calculates the phase correction.

The Doctor manages to extract the information that Kim needs, namely that Seven's interlink frequency is 108.4423600; and from her chronometric node he ascertains the exact time that Seven's cybernetic systems terminated was stardate 52164.3, Borg time index 9.43852. He is surprised when Kim sets the signal transmission to time index 9.40, but Kim says that timing is everything. He wants to ensure Seven receives the message at exactly the right moment.

After Kim sends the phase correction to Seven, the Delta Flyer stays in the slipstream but Voyager does not.

The slipstream collapses due to the phase variance. Voyager's hull starts to buckle and inertial dampers are offline. Paris takes the ship towards an L class planet 9 million kilometres away. Paris reports that they are only a few parsecs from the Alpha Quadrant. "Not exactly how I wanted to cross the finish line," mutters Janeway.
Voyager hurtles towards the ice planet and crashes.

Kim realises his phase corrections did not work, because they are still there and nothing has changed. USS Challenger locks onto the Delta Flyer with a tractor beam but Chakotay tells Tessa to send a plasma surge up the tractor beam, which disengages them, but overloads the EPS conduits - now the Delta Flyer's warp-core will breach within moments.

Kim: "I killed them!"
Doctor: "Mr Kim."
Kim: "They trusted me and I killed them! ... Don't you see, history's repeating itself. I destroyed Voyager once and I'm doing it again."
...
Doctor: "Somebody has to knuckle down and change history and that someone is you."
The Doctor suggests that if Kim cannot bring Voyager's crew safely home, he could at least send them a warning. Kim realises he can send a phase correction which will disperse the slipstream entirely - Voyager will not make it home but the crew's lives will be saved.

Chakotay asks Tessa if they can eject the warp-core, but she replies that the emergency systems are offline.

Chakotay declines La Forge's offer to beam them out of the Delta Flyer. He suggests La Forge retreat to a safe distance.

The power starts to fail and Kim uses the Doctor's mobile emitter as an emergency power supply. He manages to transmit the phase correction just as the Delta Flyer explodes.

NOW, THE NEW PRESENT
Chakotay reports that Voyager and the Delta Flyer have been thrown out of the slipstream into normal space. Kim insists that he did not send any phase corrections to Seven, leaving everyone puzzled about what happened.

Janeway: "Captain's log, supplemental. Our slipstream flight may have been brief but it took nearly ten years off our journey. I've given the order to dismantle the quantim drive until the technology can be perfected. Despite the setback, we have a renewed sense of momentum. It no longer seems a question of if we get home but when."

Janeway: "Looks like we have a guardian angel. ... His name is Harry Kim. ... Well, if you won't take it from me, take it from you. Seven found a log entry encoded in the telemetry - from Harry Kim, to Harry Kim." She leaves the messhall so that Kim can read the log entry.
Kim's message: "Hello, Harry. I don't have much time so listen to me. Fifteen years ago I made a mistake and a hundred and fifty people died. I've spent every day since then regretting that mistake, but if you're watching this right now that means all of that's changed. You owe me one."

	The captain of the pursuing starship, the USS Challenger, is Geordi La Forge. He hails Chakotay, who decides to accept the transmission as it could buy the conspirators some time. Captain La Forge tries to persuade Chakotay to surrender: if they hand over the transmitter and stand down their vessel, the charges of conspiracy will be dropped, but Tessa responds that that is not much of an offer, for if they succeed this timeline will not have existed. When Chakotay says that he wants to save the lives of 150 people, La Forge says he might be doing the same in Chakotay's place, but he has his own crew to think of, "not to mention fifteen years of history". They wish each other luck, and La Forge opens fire on the Delta Flyer.
	Voyager in the quantum slipstream. Janeway: "Captain's log, stardate 52143.6. With any luck my next log entry will be made in the Alpha Quadrant, but should our luck run out I'd like to say for the record that the crew of Voyager acted with distinction and valour."
	Kim calculates the phase correction.
	The Doctor manages to extract the information that Kim needs, namely that Seven's interlink frequency is 108.4423600; and from her chronometric node he ascertains the exact time that Seven's cybernetic systems terminated was stardate 52164.3, Borg time index 9.43852. He is surprised when Kim sets the signal transmission to time index 9.40, but Kim says that timing is everything. He wants to ensure Seven receives the message at exactly the right moment.
	After Kim sends the phase correction to Seven, the Delta Flyer stays in the slipstream but Voyager does not.

	The power starts to fail and Kim uses the Doctor's mobile emitter as an emergency power supply. He manages to transmit the phase correction just as the Delta Flyer explodes.
	NOW, THE NEW PRESENT Chakotay reports that Voyager and the Delta Flyer have been thrown out of the slipstream into normal space. Kim insists that he did not send any phase corrections to Seven, leaving everyone puzzled about what happened.