History Recap / StarTrekVoyagerS5E17CourseOblivion

* KilledOffscreen: The deactivation of the Doctor, the deaths of Biomimetic Tom and Tuvok, and the final destruction of the duplicate ''Voyager'' are not shown onscreen.

* AsteroidMiners: The biomimetic duplicates find a "Demon" planet, but it's already been claimed by a mining group.Biomimetic Janeway backs down rather than destroy the miners.

The story starts with Lt. Tom Paris and Lt. B'Elanna Torres marrying each other, which turns out to be a happy moment for the crew... although they do not notice how the floors and the Jefferies tube below them are starting to ominously distort. (And wait, didn't Tom get demoted?) B'Elanna and Seven of Nine soon find out, though, with Seven discovering that the distorting section of the ship is losing molecular cohesion and B'elanna saying that it's radiation from the warp core that's causing the demolecularization. Then B'Elanna herself starts to develop signs of the same problem, as do a few other crew members who worked in Engineering. She eventually dies despite Tom Paris and the Doctor's best efforts to save her.

Realizing that things brought on board the ship over the past several months are immune to demolecularization, Commander Chakotay and Lt. Cmdr. Tuvok investigate the path of ''Voyager'''s journey and indicate one particular event -- their landing on a Demon-class planet where they discovered the "silver blood" -- that may be the cause of the problem. Through an injection of a dichromate catalyst into the corpse of B'Elanna Torres, Chakotay and Tuvok get their answer -- the whole ship as well as its crew are biomimetic copies of the original ''Voyager'', and the warp core radiation, though harmless to humanoids, is killing them. Despite this, Captain Janeway orders her crew to continue on their journey to the Alpha Quadrant while they try to find another Demon-class planet where they could make repairs.

The real ship draws near, but Ensign Kim, Seven of Nine and Neelix are the only main crew still living with most of the ship being held together by force fields; they are unable to hail the original ship or come out of warp. Ensign Kim orders the warp core to be dumped, which would drop them out of warp; it succeeds, but at the cost of the ship also disintegrating. By the time the real ''Voyager'' comes into contact with the ship's last known coordinates, they are too late -- all that is left is just formless particles of debris from which no investigations can be made. At which point the real Captain Janeway records a brief note in the ship's log and tells Ensign Paris to resume course.

* ApocalypticLog: The Captain's Log becomes this as the episode goes on, as shown by Harry Kim's final entry.

** Biomimetic Neelix suggests for their honeymoon, Tom and B'Elanna take a cruise on a sea of liquid ''argon''. Argon is only a liquid between -189 and -185 degrees Celsius! Granted, this takes place on the holodeck, but given how often the safety protocols decide to break...

* ArtisticLicenseSpace: Janeway and Chakotay are giddy at the idea of flying right through the center of the Milky Way galaxy, even though [[DangerInTheGalacticCore all the exploding stars and black holes would make it a navigational nightmarish impossibility]]. (Not to mention the [[Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier superbeing living out there, waiting for a starship.]])
* AsteroidMiners: The biomimetic duplicates find a "Demon" planet, but it's already been claimed by a mining group. Duplicate!Janeway backs down rather than destroy the miners.

** Seven lampshades this when B'Elanna tells her how to operate the warp core, something she already has extensive knowledge of.
** Played straight when Chakotay and Tuvok recap the events of "Demon" to each other.

* BigNo: Biomimetic Tom Paris to The Doctor when he is told to return to his quarters after they fail to resuscitate B'Elanna.
* {{Bookends}}: Harry Kim is one of the first silver-blood clones in "Demon", and one of the last to survive in this episode.

* BouquetToss: B'Elanna Torres tosses the bouquet, and Seven of Nine catches it, which leads to this conversation.

* ChirpingCrickets: On the fifth moon of Cytrax, a suggested location for Tom and B'Elanna's honeymoon. Neelix says that their song is reported to be an auditory aphrodisiac.
* ClosestThingWeGot: Later on in the episode, with the crew drastically reduced, the Doctor offline, and Tom Paris suffering decay, Neelix gets promoted to Chief Medical Officer despite having only a field training as a medic.
* ContinuityNod: Tuvok states that the Demon planet was located in "the Vaskan sector" -- presumably named in reference to the [[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS4E21LivingWitness Vaskan race]], whom ''Voyager'' had encountered just prior to the events of "Demon".
* ContrivedCoincidence: Despite trillion to one odds, the biomimetic ''Voyager'' comes across the real ''Voyager'', though they fall apart before contact is made. This is lampshaded earlier, when the Doctor tells Janeway that they should find the real ''Voyager'', but she dismisses this as impossible due to the fact that they have no idea where the ship is, if they've been destroyed, or returned to Earth.
* DestructoNookie: Joked about at the wedding when Janeway mentions how Tom and B'Elanna aren't using painsticks at the ceremony.
--> '''Harry:''' They're saving the painsticks for the honeymoon.
* DoctorsOrders: With biomimetic Neelix being made Chief Medical Officer after losing The Doctor, he warns Captain Janeway not to have him call this if she doesn't let Ensign Kim take command of the ship for a while, given how close she was to total demolecularization.
* DoNotGoGentle: Biomimetic Kim and Seven throw everything the melting ship is still capable of into their effort to survive.

* ExplainExplainOhCrap: Chakotay and Tuvok retrace their route and come across the Demon-planet, recalling the events of that episode. Tuvok looks extremely uneasy when they start to come to the same conclusion regarding the "silver blood" duplicates.

* EverybodyDiesEnding: Everyone dies or is already dead when the duplicate ship is destroyed. Harry Kim, Seven, and Neelix survive the longest.

* FauxEmpoweredPerson: The Janeway duplicate believes herself to be the real Janeway, and does things as the real captain would. Some members of the crew, such as biomimetic Harry, continue to put their faith in her. This leads to some bad command decisions which results in the destruction of the ship.
* GiveAwayTheBride: Biomimetic Chakotay does the honors of giving away B'Elanna at the wedding.

** The ship finding a Demon planet, which they hope will stop the degradation. Unfortunately, the planet has already been claimed by a mining group and Janeway backs down rather than destroy them.
** Biomimetic Kim spotting the real Voyager. ''Brutally'' crushed when the only way they can reach it ends in the ship's destruction. Their whole existence amounts to little more than a footnote in the real Janeway's log.
* IdiotBall: Even after realizing her entire crew is biomimetic, Janeway insists on maintaining their course for the Alpha Quadrant, instead of going all out for a nearby planet in an effort to save their lives. In addition, she orders the enhanced warp drive brought online to go back to the "Demon" planet, which drastically accelerates their disintegration.
** Though, this fits into the theme of "what is life?" She is aware of their origin as an unorganized blob of goop and points this out-- they weren't sentient as that goop, and for an advanced form of life to return to is essentially a form of suicide. It's quite analogous to a human accepting returning to a few dozen glasses of proteins.
* ImColdSoCold: The first symptom for B'Elanna is feeling very cold and asking the computer to turn the heat up.

* InsaneTrollLogic: Janeway's reasoning for why they should keep heading for Earth, which even Chakotay says is a terrible idea?

* InternalHomage: May or may not have been intentional, but: Tom suggests honeymooning in a holographic 1920s Chicago. That's pretty specific, but 1920s Chicago has come up in the franchise before--[[Recap/StarTrekS2E17APieceOfTheAction in an episode that also involves aliens wholesale deciding to imitate humans, including (at the end) a Starfleet crew]]. That was a much more comedic treatment of the idea, of course.

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: Chakotay's death convinces Duplicate!Janeway to turn the ship around.
* LohengrinAndMendelssohn: Both are used in the episode, played by Harry Kim, with the latter song being played during the {{Overcrank}} sequence where the rice is tossed on the newlywed couple.
* MagicalDefibrillator: The cortical stimulator was used here as one, though it was unable to bring B'Elanna back from the dead.
* MaleGaze: We have a nice shot of Seven's behind in her SensualSpandex as she crawls down a Jeffries tube.
* [[MarriedAtSea Married in Space]]: Tom Paris and B'Elanna are joined together by Captain Janeway as per Starfleet tradition.

* MistakenForDisease: People begin to develop necrotic lesions, food decays, and B'Elanna in particular becomes lethargic and feels cold all the time. The EMH thinks it's due to an epidemic, but it's actually because they're not even the real Voyager crew: they're the "silver blood" copies of the crew made back in "Demon"; radiation from the warp drive is causing them to revert back to goop.
* MomentKiller: Tom moves to kiss B'Elanna after putting on her ring, but Janeway interrupts as she has to marry them first before he can kiss the bride.

* PublicDomainSoundtrack: Harry is playing a jazzy rendition of that old classic "Heart and Soul". Too bad they couldn't have done the T'Pau version.
* RewatchBonus: [[https://voy.star-trek.info/albums/season5/5x18-CourseOblivion/extant_StarTrek_VOY_5x18-CourseOblivion_00156.jpg Take a look at Biomimetic Tom's uniform during the wedding]], and you'll see that he has two pips indicating the rank of lieutenant, even though earlier this season in "Thirty Days", Tom had gotten demoted to ensign, which is indicated by only one pip. This is the first hint that the audience isn't seeing the actual crew.
* TheRoaringTwenties: Biomimetic Tom Paris' planned honeymoon in the holodeck with his wife would take place in this kind of setting.
* ShipperOnDeck: Torres suggests to Seven, who'd earlier caught the wedding bouquet, that she give Harry Kim a shot.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: Not only does the entire biomimetic crew die, no one will even remember that they existed because their time capsule fails to launch and is destroyed. If there's any consolation, the planets that the Demon planet ''Voyager'' met will someday realize it wasn't the real ''Voyager'' crew.

** {{Lampshaded}} re: Tom and B'Elanna:

** Also in B'Elanna's marital vow to Tom Paris:

* SlowMotion: Biomimetic Tom Paris and B'Elanna's departure at the end of the wedding ceremony as they are showered with rice is done in slow-motion as we see what happens to the rice when it falls to the floor.

** InUniverse when Neelix doesn't understand the point of throwing rice over a married couple in a wedding instead of eating it. He also thinks it should at least be cooked.
--->'''Doctor:''' The idea is to shower the couple with a symbol of good fortune, not garnish them like a roast chicken.

* ToxicPhlebotinum: Warp core radiation is harmless to normal living beings, but dangerous to beings and substances made of "silver blood", causing them to demolecularize.
* WhamShot: The real Voyager calls up the source of the distress signal on the viewscreen... and it's a bunch of space spatter.
* WhatWouldXDo: When biomimetic Harry Kim orders Seven of Nine to dump the warp core and Seven warns that dumping it while still traveling at warp would tear the ship apart, Harry tries to reason with Seven by saying, "What would Captain Janeway have done?"
* WhatYouAreInTheDark: Writers commented that part of they liked about this episode was exploring how the characters would react when faced with certain death, including Tom Paris denying his own reality to avoid facing his pain while Janeway falls back on her own goals to avoid acknowledging the scale of the problem. Chakotay, of course, acts as the voice of reason and tells Janeway exactly what they need to do -- and he posthumously gets the last word.
* WidowedAtTheWedding: Biomimetic B'Elanna dies before she and Tom Paris get to enjoy their honeymoon together.
* WithThisRing: Biomimetic Harry Kim needed a little prompting from the Captain to give Tom Paris the ring to put on B'Elanna's finger.
* YouAreInCommandNow: Near the end of the episode, with the higher-ups succumbed to demolecularization, biomimetic Harry Kim is the only officer in charge of the ship, with Seven of Nine as Chief Engineer and Neelix as Chief Medical Officer.

The story starts with Lt. Tom Paris and Lt. B'elanna Torres marrying each other, which turns out to be a happy moment for the crew... although they do not notice how the floors and the Jefferies tube below them are starting to ominously distort. (And wait, didn't Tom get demoted?) B'elanna and Seven of Nine soon find out, though, with Seven discovering that the distorting section of the ship is losing molecular cohesion and B'elanna saying that it's radiation from the warp core that's causing the demolecularization. Then B'elanna herself starts to develop signs of the same problem, as do a few other crew members who worked in Engineering. She eventually dies despite Tom Paris and the Doctor's best efforts to save her.

Realizing that things brought on board the ship over the past several months are immune to demolecularization, Commander Chakotay and Lt. Cmdr. Tuvok investigate the path of ''Voyager'''s journey and indicate one particular event -- their landing on a Demon-class planet where they discovered the "silver blood" -- that may be the cause of the problem. Through an injection of a dichromate catalyst into the corpse of B'elanna Torres, Chakotay and Tuvok get their answer -- the whole ship as well as its crew are biomimetic copies of the original ''Voyager'', and the warp core radiation, though harmless to humanoids, is killing them. Despite this, Captain Janeway orders her crew to continue on their journey to the Alpha Quadrant while they try to find another Demon-class planet where they could make repairs.

* [[MarriedAtSea Married In Space]]: Tom Paris and B'elanna are joined together by Captain Janeway as per Starfleet tradition.

** {{Lampshaded}} re Tom and B'Elanna:

* WidowedAtTheWedding: Biomimetic B'elanna dies before she and Tom Paris get to enjoy their honeymoon together.

** Might even be a RayOfHopeEnding, if the real ''Voyager'' and her crew decided to take a sample of the "debris" before they left the scene of their Silver Blood copies' destruction. They would at least figure out what was involved, even if they don't catch on that it was their own duplicates who died.

* CloningBlues: Biomimetic Tom Paris gets his partner Harry Kim to see the downside of their Captain Janeway getting them to Earth by suggesting that the real Harry Kim is already home on Earth having Sunday dinner with his family, and that people will see him as an imposter if he comes strolling in to greet them. Harry responds with, "So what do we do? Wait around until we all disintegrate?"

* NoticeThis: When Janeway asks Tom if he's having second thoughts about marrying B'Elanna, the camera slowly zooms in to show that he is still wearing his lieutenant insignia, even though the real Tom was demoted in "Thirty Days" to ensign (and wouldn't get his rank back until the end of Season 6). This is the first clue for the audience that things are not right.

* RewatchBonus: [[https://voy.star-trek.info/albums/season5/5x18-CourseOblivion/extant_StarTrek_VOY_5x18-CourseOblivion_00156.jpg Take a look at Biomimetic Tom's uniform during the wedding]], and you'll see that he has two pips indicating the rank of lieutenant, even though earlier this season, Tom had gotten demoted to ensign in "Thirty Days", which is indicated by only one pip. This is the first hint that the audience isn't seeing the actual crew.

* RewatchBonus: [[https://voy.star-trek.info/albums/season5/5x18-CourseOblivion/extant_StarTrek_VOY_5x18-CourseOblivion_00156.jpg Take a look at Biomimetic Tom's uniform during the wedding]], and you'll see that he has two pips indicating the rank of lieutenant, even though earlier this season, Tom had gotten demoted to ensign in "Thirty Days". This is the first hint that the audience isn't seeing the actual crew.

---> '''Doctor:''' The idea is to shower the couple with a symbol of good fortune, not garnish them like a roast chicken.

* BookEnds: Harry Kim is one of the first silver-blood clones in "Demon," and one of the last to survive in this episode.

* MythologyGag: May or may not have been intentional, but: Tom suggests honeymooning in a holographic 1920s Chicago. That's pretty specific, but 1920s Chicago has come up in the franchise before—[[Recap/StarTrekS2E17APieceOfTheAction in an episode that also involves aliens wholesale deciding to imitate humans, including (at the end) a Starfleet crew]]. That was a much more comedic treatment of the idea, of course.

* MythologyGag: May or may not have been intentional, but: Tom suggests honeymooning in a holographic 1920s Chicago. That's pretty specific, but 1920s Chicago has come up in the franchise before—[[Recap/StarTrekS2E17APieceOfTheAction in an episode that ''also'' involves aliens wholesale deciding to imitate humans, including (at the end) a Starfleet crew]]. That was a much more comedic treatment of the idea, of course.

->''We received a distress call at 0900 hours… arrived at the vessel's last known coordinates at 2120. The ship was destroyed. Cause unknown. No survivors.''

* YouAreInCommandNow: Near the end of the episode, with the higher-ups succumbed to demolecularization, biomimetic Harry Kim is the only officer in charge of the ship, with Seven of Nine as Chief Engineer and Neelix as Chief Medical Officer.

* KillEmAll: Everyone dies or is already dead when the duplicate ship is destroyed. Harry Kim, Seven, and Neelix survive the longest.

* MetaTwist: An odd case, as the show's notoriously lax continuity and lazy writing makes it quite easy to be surprised by the twist, with Tom and B'Elanna's sudden marriage and the references to things we never saw naturally taken as just more of the writers not caring about their work.

-->'''SF Debris:''' And that's all she wrote for...all they wrote.

* InMediasRes: while many ''Star Trek'' episodes use this opening, this one takes it a step further. The audience doesn't even learn about the episode's premise until quite a ways in.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1660d390_448c_4273_be1c_7579b752fe30.jpeg]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/img_1156.JPG]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Yeah, they're not gonna be able to buff that out this time.]]

* ShootTheShaggyDog: Not only does the entire biomimetic crew die, no one will even remember that they existed because their time capsule fails to launch and is destroyed.

* ArtisticLicenseSpace: Janeway and Chakotay are giddy at the idea of flying right through the center of the Milky Way galaxy, even though [[DangerInTheGalacticCore all the exploding stars and black holes would make it a navigational nightmarish impossibility]]. (Not to mention the [[Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier superbeing living out there, waiting for a starship.]])

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: Janeway and Chakotay are giddy at the idea of flying right through the center of the Milky Way galaxy, even though [[DangerInTheGalacticCore all the exploding stars and black holes would make it a navigational nightmarish impossibility]]. (Not to mention the [[Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier superbeing living out there, waiting for a starship.]])