The Diviner delivers an ultimatum to the wayward crew: return the Protostar or the prisoners on Tars Lamora will die.
Tropes:
- A-Team Montage: Once Dal decides that they should return to Tars Lamora, what follows is a montage of the crew preparing for the upcoming rescue mission.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Gwyn reminds the Diviner of how he abandoned her on Murder Planet in favor of the ship. For his part, he acknowledges he prioritized his duty over her, but insists things will be different now.
- The Chains of Commanding: Since Dal decided to be the captain, the decision on the Diviner's deal falls on him. It weighs on him greatly, since he rightly fears that accepting would land him back in the hell he spent years trying to escape and break up the crew, while there's no guarantee the Diviner would honor his word.
- Chekhov's Skill: Murf's indestructible body comes in handy when the crew stuff the protostar inside him, using him as a living containment vessel.
- Darkest Hour: The Diviner has Gwyn and the Protostar and he's destroyed the gravity and life support on the Rev-12, meaning that Dal, the rest of his crew, and the Unwanted are going to die — until it turns out that Dal planned for this and the rescue can still continue.
- Evil Is Petty: The Diviner destroys the Rev-12's power core to deny the miners any escape and make sure they die within the day, even though it gains him nothing, simply because he thinks so little of them that he feels he has to spite them.
- Evil Makeover: Drednok reprograms Janeway to serve the Diviner, which also makes her skin pale, gives her black lipstick and eyeliner, black hair with teal highlights, and shifts the gold accents on her clothing to teal.
- Exact Words: Once he has the Protostar, the Diviner orders the power generator of the Rev-12 destroyed. He tells Gwyn that he promised them a ship, not their lives.
- Foreshadowing: When the crew leaves the ship, "Zero" never speaks and Jankom is constantly dragging their body along, making it fairly obvious after a few shots that Zero isn't really in there. In addition, Rok-Tahk tells Murf "Time to play dress-up" before they leave the Protostar, and Murf is conspicuously absent after that; it turns out that Murf is inside the copy of Zero's casing, while the real Zero beamed down with their supplies before the ship landed.
- He Cleans Up Nicely: Janeway comments this when Dal shows up in a Starfleet uniform. The rest of the crew follow suit, as does she (by adjusting her holo-matrix).
- Heroic Sacrifice: Gwyn agrees to go with the Diviner, if he gives up the Rev-12 in exchange for the Protostar. It's then subverted when it's shown to be all part of the plan, as neither she nor the crew expect that to be permanent.
- Hostage for MacGuffin: The Diviner gives the crew an ultimatum: either return the Protostar and save the miners, or refuse and he'll kill them.
- I Lied: The crew don't expect the Diviner to honor his deal, noting that he's offering the lives of the miners but no way to transport them. Sure enough, he doesn't intend to let them leave the asteroid, and goes so far as to make sure they'll all die by destroying the power core keeping the life support running.
- Jet Pack: The crew pack what Dal calls "emergency evacuation thrusters" just in case they have to deal with zero-G, which turns out to be a sensible precaution.
- Moving the Goalposts: The Diviner demands Gwyn in addition to the ship after she talks back to him. She in turn demands the Rev-12 for her friends if she agrees. He violates the spirit of the deal by sabotaging the Rev-12 before he leaves, but the crew never expected him to honor the deal and removed the protostar before landing.
- No Gravity for You: When the Rev-12 power core is destroyed, gravity is the first thing to fail. The atmospheric shield will follow soon after, once the emergency backups run out of power.
- One Size Fits All: Dal implicitly grabs a Starfleet uniform out of Chakotay's quarters and it fits just fine, despite being half the man's size. The rest of the crew presumably replicated versions designed to fit them.
- Properly Paranoid: Turns out that the crew anticipated that the Diviner would go back on his word and prepared by removing the core from the Protostar and hiding it inside Murf, in turn held inside a copy of Zero's casing as a disguise.
- Significant Anagram: "A Moral Star" is an anagram of "Tars Lamora".
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: The crew all switch to Starfleet uniforms before the rescue mission. Zero gets a paintjob in the right colors, since a uniform would hamper their mobility. Janeway then alters her holo-matrix so she's wearing the same uniform.
- Smash the Symbol: Whatever the Diviner's history with Starfleet, he considers their mission statement a hypocritical lie and has Gwyn remove her comm badge to spitefully crush it.
- So Proud of You: When the crew decides to risk their lives by going back to Tars Lamora to save the enslaved miners, Janeway acknowledges that they're behaving exactly as a Starfleet crew would.Janeway: I just wanna say, I know you never thought you were Starfleet material, but today, you're risking everything on a seemingly impossible mission to save others, to bring hope to a hopeless cause. Nothing's more Starfleet than that.
- That Came Out Wrong: When speaking with Gwyn about agreeing to the Diviner's deal, Dal says he's afraid of losing "us", then immediately clarifies he meant the crew as a whole before she can point out the ambiguity.
- The Unreveal: The Diviner starts to psychically convey the true reason he wants the Protostar to Gwyn, but senses she's stalling for time and doesn't get to finish.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The plan to save Tars Lamora is never spoken aloud, and there's only vague hints as to what it entails. Despite the Diviner's pettiness being a setback, it otherwise goes off as intended: they assumed he would destroy the Rev-12's power core, "surrendered" Gwyn to The Diviner as a stalling measure, and deprived the Protostar of its core phlebotinum — to wit, the protostar that powers its enhanced warp drive — by hiding it in Murf.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The Diviner doesn’t even bother to respond to Janeway before coldly ordering Drednok to reprogram her.
- You Monster!: Gwyn calls her father this when he dooms the inhabitants of Tars Lamora.
