- The Control Voice: Human history is marked by our desire to expand our boundaries. But what happens when our reach exceeds our grasp?
A spaceship's crew attempts to salvage an abandoned ship and start to go insane.
- The Control Voice: Ultimately, our survival may depend less on our ability to overcome our enemies than the weakness of our own character.
Manifest Destitropes:
- Alien Autopsy: The UFS Mercury medical officer Dr. Will Olsten performs an autopsy on one of the Trion bodies kept in cold storage aboard the UFS Rhesos.
- Alien Blood: The Trion have yellow-green blood. Given that it is rich in copper, it is highly conductive of electricity.
- Apocalyptic Log: The UFS Mercury medical officer Dr. Will Olsten's record of the Boarding Party from his ship exploring the UFS Rhesos is one.
- Cruel Twist Ending: A spaceship investigates a distress call from an abandoned spaceship. While exploring it, the crew begins to grow paranoid and insane, one by one. The doctor tries to figure out what is going on, but is too late and succumbs as well. The alien virus that caused this is unknowingly sent to Earth. This does overlap with Karmic Twist Ending seeing how the virus was the result of humanity destroying the aliens so they could colonize their homeworld for themselves, with the doctor comparing it to how the wars with Native Americans ultimately caused syphilis to be carried to Europe.
- Found Footage Films: This episode is presented as Dr. Will Olsten's audio-visual record of the UFS Mercury crew boarding the UFS Rhesos on July 17, 2163 after receiving its Distress Call. The end of The Teaser and act breaks are signified by Olsten temporarily stopping recording. The footage is later discovered by the crew of another ship.
- Hostile Terraforming: The UFS Rhesos wiped out the indigenous population of Trion, millions of beings at an early stage of evolutionary development, using neutron bombs in order to terraform and eventually colonize the planet.
- Jitter Cam: Very much in evidence.
- Mind Virus: The UFS Mercury receives a Distress Call from the UFS Rhesos and sends over a Boarding Party. They discover strange writing in blood on the Rhesos bulkheads. The only surviving crew member is its captain, Milus O'Brien, who killed all of the others and jettisoned their bodies in space. The Mercury medical officer Dr. Will Olsten eventually determines that both the Rhesos crew and his ship's boarding party have been infected with a bioelectrical virus, which causes insanity, in revenge for the Rhesos wiping out the indigenous population of Trion. The so-called virus, which is in actuality the combined consciousness of the Trions, is spread by electrical currents. This episode ends with another ship observing Olsten's record and the revelation that they have already sent a copy of it to Earth, where it will infect the entire population.
- Overpopulation Crisis: Earth is severely overpopulated and other planets are being terraformed and colonized as a result.
- Reality Has No Soundtrack: Given its premise, this episode features no music (discounting the opening and closing credits).
- Space Pirates: Captain Sam Abbott suspects that the UFS Rhesos was attacked by space pirates who murdered the crew.
