The crew has to work together to overcome a sudden temporal anomaly that threatens to destroy the ship... despite said anomaly separating them all into individual temporal speed instances.
Tropes:
- Already Done for You: When Janeway hops into Zero's timeline, Zero reveals they've already deduced the nature of the temporal anomaly and figured out how to correct the problem. Unfortunately, Zero is running on one of the faster timelines, which combined with their limited dexterity means it's up to the rest of the crew to make use of that information.
- Captain's Log:
- Janeway gives a log as the training officer, explaining how she's putting the crew through a teambuilding exercise after their disastrous First Contact last episode."Training officer's log, Stardate 607125.6. After the crew's last mission conducting first contact went terribly awry, I fear their failure is tearing them apart. Falling down is easy. It's getting up that takes practice, which is why, as their advisor, it was time to stir things up."
- Gwyn records her own log so she can give information to Rok, who's running in the slowest timeline."Hey, Rok, how are ya? I don't have much time, so I'll get right to it. I'm sorry we all pushed you to be security officer. I've been told what to do and who to be my whole life, too. I know you're young. You're capable of so much. I want you to be the best at whatever you want. But, to have that chance, I need for you to pay close attention. I attached files with schematics to build a warp matrix and where to find the right dilithium coupler. I tried to do it, but things got complicated. So it's up to you. I know you can do it. The crew believes in you."
- Janeway gives a log as the training officer, explaining how she's putting the crew through a teambuilding exercise after their disastrous First Contact last episode.
- Cliffhanger: The last shot of the episode reveals that one of the incomplete copies of Drednok's remote body made the transition back into normal time. And while it's little more than a torso and scattered limbs, its eyes light up…
- Companion Cube: Rok is shown to have built herself a Murf doll to replace the real deal after an indeterminate amount of time alone.
- Continuity Nod: Nandi contacts the Diviner with information on the Protostar's last coordinates, as she was planning last episode.
- Continuous Decompression: Gwyn venting the drive section maintains a suction effect until Drednok is sent flying.
- Contrived Coincidence: Drednok transmitting his program to the Protostar just happens to coincide with them flying into a tachyon storm and creating a temporal anomaly, disrupting his ability to fabricate a body in all but one iteration.
- Dangerous Phlebotinum Interaction: The tachyon storm interacting with the gravitational containment of the protostar core creates a temporal anomaly, splitting the ship in six while also threatening to destroy it in ten minutes once the containment fails.
- Disney Death: Most of the crew is killed by the exploding warp core in their respective time dilatations, while Janeway is erased by Drednok. Rok is thankfully able to save all of them.
- Easily Forgiven: Janeway brushes off the revelation that Dal and the crew aren't Starfleet; regardless of their origins, they're her crew now and she is duty-bound to assist them.
- Eye Awaken: An incomplete copy of Drednok left in the vehicle replication bay after the merger has one eye light up in the final shot.
- Facepalm: Janeway facepalms twice, once after the crew fail the Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle and once when she's stuck in a time iteration with Murf, who's utterly incapable of helping.
- Feathered Fiend: The holo-chicken attacks Dal while it's being chased around by the holo-fox.
- Fling a Light into the Future: After her own attempt to solve the problem is derailed by Drednok, Gwyn records a log for Rok to find, knowing she'll have much longer to put together the pieces and save the day.
- Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: The episode starts with the crew attempting this puzzle on the holodeck. The puzzle is given a bit of added difficulty because the crew actually have to wrangle the chicken and fox. Though they fail to solve it because Dal pulls a Rage Quit, Zero catches on to the fact that the items can be carried across the river in either direction. This plays into the end of the episode, as while Janeway keeps moving ahead in the timelines until she reaches the one closest to normal time, Rok's timeline is the longest and thus can be revisited.
- Group Hug: Everyone hugs Rok once she reveals that she fixed the problem with the protostar core.
- Heroic BSoD: Dal has two:
- The first is during the Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle. After the fox and chicken attack him, he ends the program and admits the truth to Janeway, feeling it was time to come clean as he sullenly leaves the holodeck.
- The second is after he goes through all the steps needed to fix the Protostar, only to be foiled by the lack of a single component, feeling he's failed. Janeway assures him that even if he personally failed, what he's learned will help his crew succeed.
- Idiot Ball: Apparently, no one considered not flying into the tachyon storm in the first place, even though the crew are more or less flying aimlessly and have no pressing need to pass through it. To be fair, the group just had an emotional moment and nobody is at the helm, though you'd think Janeway would realize it's in their path.
- Internal Reveal: Dal admits to Janeway they aren't Starfleet cadets and stole the Protostar.
- Just One Second Out of Sync: The tachyon storm interacting with the protostar containment splits the ship in six, one for each member of the crew. Each version runs at a different speed, some slow and some fast, and they can't physically interact with each other, only move data between instances. Janeway, by adjusting her own speed, is able to move between each version, collecting the information she needs to solve the problem.
- Lost Aesop: The episode tries to draw a connection between the holodeck puzzle and the temporal disaster both needing teamwork and the crew to pull together in order to solve them. But 'work together' is totally irrelevant to the traditional Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle, which just requires one person to deduce the order of necessary movements. (Theoretically, a group working together could completely bypass the intended solution by using the other members to physically restrain the fox and chicken, but that also isn't where the episode is going.)
- MacGyvering: When the vehicle replication bay won't work, due to the temporal distortion and Drednok's program rendering it useless, Dal improvises a warp matrix out of whatever parts he can cobble together from around the ship.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The tachyon storm the Protostar flies through. It just wouldn't be Star Trek without one of these.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Drednok finds the correct part to complete the warp matrix, allowing Rok to finish the job in her timeline after Gwyn has vented him into space.
- Not Me This Time: Drednok admits to invading the Protostar, as Janeway witnessed in Chakotay's log fragment, but denies responsibility for corrupting her memory.Drednok: Close, but not quite.
- Oh, Crap!: When Gwyn mentions that the tachyon storm could screw up the Artificial Gravity, Jankom panics because said gravity is what keeps the protostar core from going boom.
- Override Command: Drednok is able to use Chakotay's authorization codes to delete Janeway. How he learned that is anyone's guess. Fortunately, only her holo-matrix is deleted, not her memory files, so Rok is able to reconstruct her (after 200+ failures).
- Race Against the Clock: Each member of the crew has about ten minutes before the Warp Core detonates. However, thanks to the time dilation, how quickly that time passes varies. As an example, for Jankom, ten minutes pass in what feels like seconds. For Rok, time moves extremely slow, at a pace that feels like months, perhaps years.
- Rage Quit: Dal cuts the Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle short after getting attacked by the chicken and then tackled by the fox.
- Remote Body: Drednok transmits a copy of his program and a simplified version of his schematics to the vehicle replication bay, allowing him to build a copy of himself on the Protostar in order to seize it for the Diviner. Things are complicated by the temporal anomaly rendering the vehicle replicator useless in all but one timeline.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Jankom is stuck on the shortest time dilation and is the first to go when the warp core explodes. Drednok is also only able to complete himself in Gwyn's timeline, leaving him to face off against the two most serious characters in the show. Also, Janeway spends the least amount of time with Murf.
- Shout-Out: In addition to being name-checked by Janeway there are several shoutouts to Apollo 13.
- Dal’s cobbled together warp matrix looks similar to the cobbled together air scrubber.
- The lack of the proper connector is reminiscent of the fact that the air scrubbers on the command module could not plug into those on the Lunar Excursion Module.
- Spanner in the Works: Drednok's attempted takeover would have had much better odds had the temporal anomaly not left him in an iteration of the ship with the one person he is incapable of harming.
- Stating the Simple Solution: When Janeway finds that Rok has reconstituted her program and assembled the warp matrix, she asks why Rok hasn't already fixed the temporal anomaly. Rok says that no one bothered to tell her where the warp matrix goes, the rest of them simply having understood that as a matter of course.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- When Janeway initially explains the situation to Rok and that she is the only one who can fix it, Rok panics and dismisses the hologram. It’s easy to forget that Rok is eight years old and the fate of a ship and her crew is a lot of pressure for someone that age. Fortunately, Rok also has plenty of time to cool off and come to grips with it.
- Solving the famous Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle is easier when it's just a thought experiment following unrealistic rules. When attempting it on the holodeck with realistic simulations of a fox and chicken, nature will take its course eventually.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: Gwyn triggers the protowarp sequence so the drive section will open and vent Drednok into space. Unfortunately, it also vents the warp matrix into space, so she can't fix the problem in her timeline.
- Took a Level in Badass: While trapped in the slowest time dilation, Rok was able to teach herself advanced mathematics and engineering to repair Janeway and the warp core.
- Tricked Out Time: The temporal anomaly has some weird effects to say the least. Each member of the crew experiences time at different rates and their own copies of the Protostar all have ten minutes (in normal time) before they explode. Yet at the same time, events happen concurrently so information gained in a faster timeline is still available in a slower one. Most notably, Gwyn is able to record a log file near the end of her timeline which Rok is then able to play in her own, much slower timeline.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: Each timeline runs at different speeds, based on proximity to the core, alternating between fast and slow as the distance increases. The closest to the core see the biggest difference, while the furthest see the smallest difference. Rok is implied to have spent years in her timeline, being the second-closest to the core.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside: On the flip side of the coin, we have Jankom Pog, for whom ten minutes passes in less than one.
- You Do Not Want To Know: Janeway only vaguely claims that Rok spent "too long" in her version of the Protostar when Gwyn asks how much time she spent alone.
