Captain Janeway is abducted and the Doctor must masquerade as various members of the crew in order to give the aliens the ship's warp core.
This episode provides examples of:
- Bluff the Imposter: Chakotay makes up a story from Janeway's past to trick the imposter.Chakotay: Don't you remember what happened on Lesik Prime?
Janeway: I don't see how that's relevant.
Chakotay: I think you do. Fifteen years ago, you were the lieutenant who was kept in the dark. If you hadn't questioned your captain's orders, the entire away team would have been lost.
Janeway: This situation's entirely different.
Chakotay: You never told me that story. I made it up. - Brick Joke:
- Janeway sees the spare parts that the subordinate criminal has collected and restored and suggests that B'Elanna might want to acquire some of them. After he takes out his boss, he asks Janeway if the offer is still good.
- The episode starts with the Doctor waking Janeway while singing very loud opera. It ends with her telling him one of the rules of spending time in the holodeck with her: "No opera."
- Chekhov's Gun: The Doctor listens to a piano solo in Sickbay at one point. The same piece, intentionally altered to sound like a poor performance, provides a way for Voyager to track the alien criminals.
- Cloning Gambit: The Doctor makes multiple copies of himself in the holodeck to throw off his pursuers on Voyager.
- Death Glare: Janeway walks into the Delta Flyer's cockpit and glares at the Doctor when his loud opera singing wakes her up.
- Dying Declaration of Love: The Doctor confesses his true feelings to Seven of Nine, when he thinks he's about to decompile.Doctor: You have no idea how difficult it's been, hiding my true feelings all these years, averting my eyes during your regular maintenance exams. (goes down on his knees) I know you could never have the same feelings for me, but I want you to know the truth. I love you, Seven.
- Easily Forgiven: Janeway lets the Doctor off easy — she sentences him to six days without his mobile emitter, which he's already served by hiding in Sickbay for a week after his embarrassing confessions.
- Easy Sex Change: This is especially easy for the Doctor, who can just tell the computer to make him into Torres and adjust parameters to simulate her late-stage pregnancy as well.
- He Knows Too Much: Downplayed — Doc uses the off-button hypospray on Chakotay and Harry when they start figuring him out.
- Identity Impersonator / Holographic Disguise: The Doctor.
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: Averted; the Doctor when he transforms into B'Elanna Torres remembers that she's pregnant and modifies his appearance accordingly.
- Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: The Doctor as B'Elanna Torres gets kissed by Tom Paris.
- Master of Disguise: Pretty easy for a hologram who can change his appearance with one command to the computer.
- The Mole: The Doctor would have been one for the two aliens who wanted him to infiltrate the Hierarchy, until the overloading of different forms caused his program to start destabilizing.
- MookâFace Turn: The subordinate criminal. He was never as ruthless as his boss to begin with, and being repeatedly insulted didn't help his loyalty.
- Not Herself: Zig-Zagged. Chakotay figures out pretty quickly that something is amiss with "Janeway," and manages to Bluff the Imposter. Vorik, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care when "B'Elanna" can't remember where they keep important engineering supplies. Tom doesn't twig on either, attributing "her" odd behavior to late pregnancy.
- Not-So-Final Confession: The Doctor hastily confesses all the things he wanted to say, when he thinks he's about to decompile. When this doesn't happen, he hides in Sickbay for a week.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: Janeway's captors, Zet and Nar, are on the run from the Hierarchy, having stolen the ship they're using; it's implied they'll be in big trouble if they're caught. Indeed, Zet's plans for the Doctor start with sending him to infilrate a Hierarchy surveillance complex, to steal valuable information.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The Doctor complies when aliens capture Captain Janeway and demand Voyager's warp core in exchange for her release. His justification: "Voyager can survive without its warp core... but not without its captain." No. The ship was in interstellar space, and the warp core is a critical component in the ship's warp drive. Without it, the ship can only travel at sublight speed using its impulse engine. In interstellar space, losing faster-than-light capability is a death sentence. And you thought their trip to Earth was a long one WITH the warp drive... That's nothing compared to a sublight journey to the nearest star! While the loss of Janeway would be tragic, the loss of her as captain would in bigger scheme of things only be a very temporary and minor problem, because by proper protocol the formal command of Voyager would be transferred to the next link the in the chain of command, which would be Chakotay. Somehow getting a new warp core in interstellar space would present a challenge so many magnitudes larger that it borders on the improbable.
- Yeah, about the only way this makes any kind of sense is if one assumes that buried way deep down in the Doctor's programming there's a really poorly worded directive to "keep the captain alive at all costs." But even then...why wouldn't such a directive also include protecting the ship?
- Shout-Out: The lead criminal describes the inhabitants of the Vinri System as "mostly harmless."
- Space Pirates: The Hierarchy return as the Villain of the Week.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: The Doctor's logic for trying to save Janeway even at the cost of the warp core. Janeway doesn't buy it.Doctor: Voyager can survive without its warp core... but not without its captain.
Janeway: Now it doesn't have either.
