The Protostar crew heads to the nearest Starfleet outpost to seek refugee status, not knowing the danger they carry with them. Meanwhile, Admiral Janeway — the real one, not the hologram — begins her search for Captain Chakotay in earnest, arriving at Tars Lamora and linking up with a survivor there: the Diviner.
Tropes:
- The Atoner: Zero is immensely guilty over accidentally hurting Gwyn and swears to do everything possible to restore her memories.
- Auto Doc: The comm station has a biobed with a full suite of automated tools. Unfortunately, it goes haywire in the middle of trying to restore Gwyn's memories thanks to the virus, nearly drowning her instead.
- Call-Back: Admiral Janeway finds the remnants of the commbadge the Diviner crushed in the mid-season finale.
- Captain's Log: Notably, this is the first log made by Dal that includes a stardate, signifying him finally taking his role as Captain seriously."Captain's Log, 61209.5. It's been weeks since leaving Tars Lamora for good. Saving the Unwanted from the Diviner is something we'll always remember. Except Gwyn. After catching a reflection of Zero's true form, her memories are still a blur. Since then, we've been racking up good deeds, hoping Starfleet will look past the fact that we kinda stole their ship. And who knows? If they're as great as Janeway makes them out to be, maybe they'll accept a bunch of kids who don't know where they're going, which would be good to know, since we're just now approaching the closest Federation comm relay station in hopes they'll take us in.[...] Suddenly, that dream of finding a place where we all can be accepted is actually becoming real. Even I'm starting to believe."
- Classified Information: Dal's entire species is classified by Starfleet, raising even more questions about who and what Dal is.
- Continuity Nod: Frex mentions Nimbus III as a worse assignment than his current one.
- Dirty Coward: Frex flees in the only Escape Pod from the self-destructing station, abandoning the children under the belief that they deliberately sabotaged it. Kinda cold for Starfleet, especially to children, potential saboteurs or not.
- Drowning Pit: When the virus infects the station, Gwyn is trapped in a shielded biobed slowly filling with water. She manages to cut herself free when she snaps out of her flashback.
- Flashback:
- Gwyn has a couple to her last meeting with her father, though the first two are jumbled and weird because she hasn't sorted out her lost memories.
- Admiral Janeway watches a holo-recording of the Protostar being christened and the last time she saw Chakotay.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Downplayed, but Frex admits that being isolated on a far-flung relay station isn't helping his mental state.
- Hope Spot: Dal really can't catch a break in his quest to find out what species he is. He learns that the information is in the Federation's database, but it's Classified Information and requires contact with Starfleet Command to access. Then it turns out that the Protostar has been compromised with malware that could potentially destroy the Federation (as demonstrated when it forces the comm station to destroy itself), meaning that his goal has once again been pulled out of his reach.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: When Gwyn tells Frex that her species (Vau N'Akat) isn't in the Federation's database, he figures otherwise until she comes up as "Unregistered Species". Conversely, Dal assumes that his species isn't in the database until it gets a hit, albeit one that's flagged as "Classified".
- Noodle Incident: After the aquathawn swallows the submarine, Jankom says, "You know, Jankom swore he'd never be eaten alive again."
- The Reveal: Murf is finally revealed to be a Mellanoid slime worm, a species mentioned only once before.
- Still Wearing the Old Colors: To establish how isolated the comm relay is, the only guy crewing it is still wearing a later TNG uniform as opposed to anything newer, though strangely he's wearing the style of combadge seen on Admiral Janeway.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: After Frex uses the only Escape Pod to abandon the station, the kids don EV suits and space-jump to the Protostar.
- Tractor Beam: The crew has to precisely leap into the Protostar since transporters are offline. Rok's math is off and they miss by a bit, but Janeway simply turns the ship around and grabs them in a tractor beam.
- Trauma Button: Dal saying "we can't go" triggers Gwyn's repressed memories, though only a flash without context. This isn't the first time, according to Zero. The phrase "tear itself apart" allows her to recall the full memory.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Not knowing about the Diviner's trap, the crew stop at a distant comm relay outpost to introduce themselves to the Federation. When an uplink is established, all the systems on the station are corrupted and the station destroys itself.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Jankom vomits into a bucket after the wild ride with and inside the alien whale.
- Wham Shot:
- The bio-scanner at the outpost gets a hit on Dal, only to immediately flag him as classified with orders to report him to Starfleet Command.
- Admiral Janeway arrives at Tars Lemora, where the Diviner is still alive, currently in stasis to survive the lack of atmosphere.
"Whoever he is, he's alive, and hopefully, he'll have answers."
