Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager):
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"Endgame" is the title of the series finale of the Star Trek spinoff series, Star Trek: Voyager. Originally shown as a double-length episode and presented as such in DVD collections, it is shown in repeat broadcasts as two linked episodes.
[edit] The main story
In the year 2404, Earth is celebrating Voyager's 10th anniversary of its 23 year journey home. However, an elderly Admiral Kathryn Janeway steals a chrono deflector from a Klingon named Korath and uses it on her shuttle to travel back to 2378 in the Delta Quadrant. She pulls rank on Voyager to emit an anti-tachyon pulse, collapsing the temporal distortion to prevent the Klingons from following her through. However, everyone is unaware that the Borg are listening.
On board her old starship, the Admiral tells her younger self to return to a nebula filled with Borg, that they passed by a few days ago. She provides advanced technologies that would give Voyager the opportunity to get past the massive Borg defenses and enter a transwarp corridor. On encountering the Borg, the technology is used to grand effect. The Borg were unable to penetrate Voyager's new ablative hull armour nor capture it with tractor beams. Through use of transphasic torpedoes, Voyager destroys two Borg Cubes. They then come upon a Borg transwarp hub at the center, which could save the ship sixteen more years of being stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
However, the admiral’s efforts are hindered by the desire of her younger self to use the future technology to destroy the transwarp network instead of using it to return home. Trying to blast it from the inside is impossible, as the network adapts to any attack due to the control of the Borg Queen (Alice Krige, reprising the role for the first time since Star Trek: First Contact). It can only be destroyed from their end for the Alpha Quadrant contains only exit apertures that can't be harmed. The two Janeways argue over the issue until the elder Janeway tells her younger self that Seven of Nine will die if they do not take the road home, along with 22 other crewmembers. Though Captain Janeway is moved by this confession, she decides that the foreknowledge of Seven's death means it is no longer certain. The Admiral mentions that, while that might be the case, Tuvok has no chance, already suffering from a degenerative neurological condition that will slowly destroy his logic and will eventually make him senile. It will get worse if they don't get home. After discussing the issue with the rest of her crew, Captain Janeway decides to go ahead with her plan to destroy the Borg’s transwarp hub, their center for transport around the galaxy. Without it, the Borg have no way to travel across the galaxy. Countless worlds could be saved. On seeing the crew’s selfless reaction to the plan, the older Janeway rediscovers a piece of her old fighting spirit and with Captain Janeway, comes up with a plan to both destroy the hub and possibly get Voyager home.
Admiral Janeway takes her shuttlecraft and enters the transwarp hubs, taking her to the Unicomplex—the center of all Borg activity, where the Borg Queen herself resides. She first appears to the Queen in her mind, claiming she wants Voyager towed back to the Alpha Quadrant, as if she is betraying them, in exchange for information on how to adapt to the armour and torpedo technologies. However, the Queen is quickly able to detect her shuttle and beams the Admiral to her chambers and “assimilates” her into the Borg collective. A few minutes later, Admiral Janeway unleashes a neurolytic pathogen from within her bloodstream that devastates the Borg, physically making the queen fall apart. With permanent deactivation of the Queen, the Unicomplex suffers a cascade failure and blows up, killing the partially assimilated Admiral.
Meanwhile Captain Janeway and her crew have entered a transwarp corridor and fire torpedoes at the unprotected manifolds while traveling back to the Alpha quadrant, pursued by a Borg sphere ship that has managed to withstand the pathogen’s effects and assimilate Admiral Janeway's ablative armor upgrade, ordered by the Borg Queen to destroy Voyager so that the Admiral (and her sabotage) will never exist. Unable to fight back against the ship’s exterior defenses, Janeway takes her ship inside the sphere, where, upon its arrival in Earth's solar system, she detonates a torpedo that destroys the sphere from the inside out.
In the show’s final few minutes, the crew stand dumbfounded that they have finally returned home after seven years lost in the Delta Quadrant and are greeted by a fleet of Starfleet vessels that arrived to fight the sphere. Settling down in her chair, Captain Janeway issues her final words; the same words that she used at the start of her journey: "Set a course...for home."
[edit] Secondary stories
The final episode also includes the birth of Miral, daughter of Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres. Miral is born as Voyager reenters Earth’s solar system. The sounds of the baby’s gurgling are heard over the communications system, to the joy of all the crew. In the alternate future, she is an ensign on a classified mission to obtain a chrono deflector for Admiral Janeway. She threatens two Klingons who accused the admiral of disrespect, with the breaking of their arms. Janeway suggested she spend some time with her parents at the reunion on Earth.
Commander Chakotay and Seven of Nine are revealed to have started dating. Though Seven is at first wary of the relationship, and more so after Janeway tells her of her own death, Chakotay persuades her that he wants to be with her, even if it's uncertain how long they will be together; however, Janeway's older self suggests that Seven and Chakotay will eventually be married. In the alternate future, Seven died on the trip home and it is implied that Chakotay couldn't handle the trauma and died when they returned home. He was buried on Earth 26 years later.
Tuvok is suffering from a degenerative brain disease that will slowly destroy his logic, yet does not tell the Captain as the only cure is a mind-meld with a family member—logically, he does not want to distract the Captain. In Admiral Janeway’s future, the disease has progressed too far to be cured and he is in a mental institution.
The Doctor’s “name” saga is finally concluded in the first few minutes of the show, where a future Doctor is seen confessing that he has finally decided to call himself Joe, taking thirty-three years to come up with that name, after his new wife’s grandfather. He even plans to have kids. This revelation takes place in an alternate future, one in which the Voyager crew does not ultimately end up.
Neelix makes a brief appearance on the communications screen talking to Seven of Nine. Two episodes previously he had left to join a Talaxian colony. He has plans to marry Dexa, a Talaxian woman he first met at the colony and quickly fell in love with. His first appearance in the show was also on a viewscreen.
Harry Kim is the captain of the U.S.S. Rhode Island. He goes to stop Admiral Janeway from going back in time, but he ultimately decides to help his old friend in her cause. In the present timeline, young Harry Kim is anxious to pursue what is inside the nebula. An amused Janeway tells him "you may be the captain some day, but not today." In another timeline, it was Harry in the Voyager episode "Timeless" who was determined to rewrite the past and prevent a disaster.
It is surprising that after 26 years Barklay is only a commander while Harry Kim who was 2 ranks below, is now advanced one rank above to Captain.
Ranks of all of the Star Trek series have always been inconsistent.
In the last few scenes of this episode, seven classes of Starfleet ships are seen: Defiant, Galaxy, Excelsior, Nebula, Prometheus, Akira and Intrepid (Voyager itself).
The shooting adventure game Elite Force II uses an 'unseen' part of the series finale as a plot device. In the first level of the game, Voyager's Hazard Team is assigned to beam aboard the Borg Sphere which has trapped Voyager inside during the trans-warp pursuit, in order to disable the dampening field which, it is claimed at the start of the level, is keeping Voyager captive. The level overall represents the length of 'real time' that Voyager is trapped within the sphere before it ultimately blasts its way out. The level's end is ultimately followed by a cutscene imitating the very end of the 'Endgame' episode, using the game engine's CGI, before it cuts as a segue into the office of a Starfleet administrator on Earth, where the game then continues. The game's plot also states that Tuvok is temporarily assigned as Tactical Officer and Second Officer of the Enterprise E, following Voyager's return to Earth and William Riker's re-assignment to the starship Titan.
[edit] Regular Characters
[edit] Guest Stars
[edit] External links
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