Two Starfleet legends finally meet.
The Cerritos crew prepare the U.S.S. Voyager to become a museum display back on Earth. Immediately, a veritable avalanche of Call Backs results in Two Lines, No Waiting: aboard Voyager, a macrovirus gets loose and starts wreaking havoc on the ship; and, aboard the Cerritos, the Tuvix plant results in Billups and T'Ana merging... and T'illups deciding to create more hybrids. It's up to Boimler, Mariner and Rutherford, on Voyager, and Tendi and her new friend T'Lyn, on Cerritos, to save both days.
Also, a mysterious ship blows up a Klingon Bird-Of-Prey. This will be important later.
Tropes:
- Admiring the Abomination: The curator is thrilled to find a live macrovirus on the ship and wants to have it preserved for the museum.
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: After Mariner is able to get Boimler to be confident again and tells him to go save the Voyager, Boimler pats her on the head before he leaves. Mariner is disgusted that he did that and he admits he felt weird for doing it and apologizes.
- All Webbed Up: Since the macroviruses can no longer infect the crew (Starfleet has since inoculated against that), they adapt by instead sticking people to walls with goo.
- Back for the Dead: Ma'ah returns, only for him and his ship to be apparently destroyed by the mystery ship.
- Bait-and-Switch: Boimler becomes very tense once Ransom tells him that only something catastrophic could prevent him from being promoted. One could assume he fears that such an event will occur precisely because of that, but it turns out he actually fears being promoted because of how he assumes Mariner will react.
- Black Comedy: Michael Sullivan at one point laments "I miss my wife."Context
- Body Horror: T'Lyn transports all of the Tuvixed officers to the brig, but this causes them to be merged into a giant non-sentient blob of flesh.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Ransom uses a Tamarian allegory to express his disappointment in Boimler. Kayshon is impressed.Ransom: Shaka, when the walls fell, Ensign!
Kayshon: Sokath, his eyes uncovered!
Ranson: I pay attention. - Both Sides Have a Point: Meta-wise, the episode acts as one to the real-life debate regarding whether or not Janeway was right to split Tuvix. The Cerritos crew has a similar situation and try to use Janeway's logs to find out how she solved her problem. When they learn what happened, they're straight up horrified and outright state Janeway murdered Tuvix, much like those who argue against Tuvix being split. However, they do acknowledge that Janeway didn't really have the luxury of keeping Tuvix together, as they were stranded in the Delta Quadrant with no Starfleet support or the necessary technology to Take a Third Option, so she couldn't afford to lose two critical crew members, much like those who agree with Janeway's decision.
- Broken Pedestal: While Janeway has become one of Starfleet's most legendary Captains, the Cerritos characters all become horrified when they read up on the original Tuvix incident. They for all intents side with the longstanding fan arguments that Janeway straight-up murdered Tuvix. However, it also gets deconstructed, as Freeman and Shax agree that Voyager's situation was unique and unprecedented: stranded on the other side of the galaxy with limited resources and unable to replace lost crewmen. He and Freeman may not like it, but at least they can understand why Janeway made the decision she did in the context of the situation (and how the Cerritos has the benefit of options and access to resources that Voyager didn't have).
- Call-Back:
- Mariner is still calling Voyager "VOY," which she picked up from Boimler in "We'll Always Have Tom Paris."
- Mariner mentions to Boimler "that Pike thing [they] aren't supposed to talk about."
- Boimler is still feeling guilty about ditching Mariner when he got promoted and transferred to the Titan, as well as not defending her enough when she got sent to Starbase 80.
- Call-Forward: The final season of Picard established that Voyager was officially decommissioned following its return home and placed in the Fleet Museum. This episode shows the beginning of that archival process two decades earlier.
- Cassandra Truth: Freeman tries to convince T'Illups that she is not going to treat their situation like Janeway since, unlike Voyager, the Cerritos has access to Starfleet's resources and knowledge that could allow them to Take a Third Option. Unfortunately, T'Illups already learned about Tuvix's fate and came to the conclusion that there is safety in numbers, using an improvised transporter to fuse Freeman and Migleemo into Captain Doctor Frigleeman as the first member of their Tuvixed army.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The modified scanner that T'Illups engineered is capable of scanning for personality traits, making it easier for T'Lyn and Tendi to isolate and separate the components of the merged blob at the end.
- The cheese Neelix brought on board that infamously made the ship sick is weaponized by Rutherford to shut down the holographic characters.
- Continuity Cavalcade: Voyager is already Famed In-Story, but it turns out many corners of the ship have leftovers of their crazy adventures. Neelix's cheese, Tuvix, salamanders, the macrovirus, the Clown, Chaotica, Michael Sullivan ...Boimler: These are, like, VOY's deep cuts!
- Continuity Nod: Mariner geeks out upon seeing Voyager. "Those Old Scientists" established she was a Closet Geek about old Starships.
- Crazy Enough to Work: Rutherford ends the chaos by loading up a caulk gun with Neelix's homemade cheese and injecting it into the bio-neural gelpacks to repeat the malfunction-inducing infection. He says he wouldn't have gone for it anywhere else, but figured a Voyager crisis needed a "kooky" Voyager-style solution.
- Crossover: A very loose one with VOY, as only the U.S.S. Voyager itself appears (and without any of the VOY main characters). That being said, the events of VOY (specifically "Tuvix") still end up being the catalyst for this crossover.
- Cross-Referenced Titles: The episode's title is a pun on the Voyager episode "Tuvix", given it's status as a Sequel Episode.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The unidentified ship disables all systems on the Che'Ta before one-shotting it.
- Debate and Switch: The episode seems like it will confront the moral dilemma presented in "Tuvix" and show that there could have been another solution to the one Janeway went with. This all becomes irrelevant after T'Illups goes off the deep end once they learn what happened to Tuvix, and tries to force the entire Cerritos crew to be hybridised. The debate becomes further irrelevant once the hybrids are accidentally merged into a horrifying blob of non-sentient flesh, forcing the crew to separate them without worrying about the moral implications.
- Description Cut:
- After Freeman learns from Janeway's log that she essentially killed Tuvix in order to separate him back into Tuvok and Neelix, Freeman hopes T'Illups doesn't look up what Janeway did before they get him proper help, but it cuts to T'Illups looking at Janeway's log and he decides to take action against them to ensure his survival.
- Tendi is excited for her new promotion and lack of mysterious threats; cut to the Che'Ta being destroyed by an unidentified ship.
- Didn't Think This Through: T'Lyn makes a critical error by hijacking the transporter system to try and put all the duplicates in the brig. Since they were currently using it to merge more people, it combines them all into a blob. This ultimately ends up being a benefit, however, as it eliminates the moral dilemma of diffusing one sapient being, since the blob is non-sentient.
- Distracted by the Sexy: As Mariner is just starting to react to the chaos, Michael Sullivan grabs her for a kiss and she is quite flustered for a minute.
- Dramatic Irony: Freeman being unfazed by T'illups, reasoning all she has to do is check Janeway's personal logs and duplicate whatever solution the Voyager crew used at the time. Those who've seen "Tuvix" of course know exactly what's coming.
- Evolving Credits: As is tradition, more players are added to the Borg battle, this time a Breen ship and the Whale Probe.
- Failed a Spot Check: A macrovirus somehow went unnoticed in an access panel on Voyager's bridge for their entire journey home.
- Fascinating Eyebrow: T'Lyn does this after finding that her attempt to beam all of the Tuvixed officers to the brig has resulted in them being Tuvixed into a giant non-sentient blob.
- Foregone Conclusion: The Cerritos will complete its mission to escort the U.S.S. Voyager to Earth, as it will end up in the Fleet Museum and intact by 2402 in the third season of Picard. The dramatic tension instead lies in how much chaos and damage the LD characters and their shenanigans will inevitably unleash before it reaches that phase of the archival process.
- Furry Reminder: T'Ana gets annoyed when Billups starts talking about a pet dragon he had in his youth, saying that people always talk to her about their pets.
- Fusion Dance: Billups and T'Ana are combined into T'illups, who then combines other pairs of people to avoid being separated as Tuvix was. Specifically:
- Captain Freeman and Counselor Migleemo become Captain Dr. Frigleeman.
- Lieutenant Shaxs and Ensign Barnes become Lieutenant Shabarnes.
- Chief Lundy and Honus the bartender become Chief Chondus.
- Lieutenant Stevens and Matt the whale become Swhale Swhalens. T'illups admits they didn't think that one through, continuing the trend of Stevens being a Butt-Monkey.
- Jennifer and Nurse Westlake would have been the latest fusion if Tendi and T'Lyn hadn't stopped the hybrids in time.
- T'Lyn beaming all the hybrids into the brig at once compounds the problem quite literally by turning them all into one barely-sentient blob.
- Genre Savvy: Boimler uses his knowledge of the Captain Proton series to stall for time by playing along with Chaotica's hamminess, and Chaotica can only respond with the same.
- Good Is Not Soft: Freeman and Shaxs learn that Janeway was this when they find out how she straight-up murdered Tuvix even when he begged her to live.Shaxs: Holy [Bleep]! Janeway didn't mess around.
- Holodeck Malfunction: The macroviruses end up causing the computer to manifest the greatest hits of Voyager's holodeck history, and for added fun make the holodeck safeties "random". Worse, the entire ship has been outfitted with holoemitters as part of its museum conversion, so the characters have free rein. Mariner objects that the Clown from "The Thaw" isn't technically a holoprogram, but that one can probably be blamed on the curator.
- Internal Deconstruction: The moral dilemma surrounding Tuvix is reassessed, with most everyone mortified to learn that Janeway forcibly separated Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix against his wishes (part of Janeway's rationale was also that Tuvok and Neelix were unable to speak on the matter). But they reasoned that Voyager was also stranded away from Starfleet with more limited options, and without the crew shortage they had more time to try and devise a better solution. Still, because of their unique origins T'illups isn't thinking straight and ends up trying to start a hybrid revolution, which forces the issue of separating them.
- Internal Reveal: The Cerritos' senior staff is unfamiliar with the Tuvix situation, which leads Captain Freeman to look up Captain Janeway's logs to find out how she solved the problem. Meanwhile, Voyager fans Mariner and Boimler already know what happened.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Is demerging a Tuvix the right call, or should they try to find a better solution? While the crew mostly fall on the second option, the mindless blob created by transporting them all at once clearly needs to be demerged.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Mariner absolutely flips in joy as she sees Voyager, before trying to calm down and claiming that it's Boimler who'd love seeing her. Ironically, Boimler is ambivalent through most of the episode, as he's fretting over his coming promotion.
- Legendary in the Sequel: Obviously, the Voyager itself, Janeway, and her crew at this point in the 24th Century timeline (and the conclusion of their show). Freeman even lampshades in her opening log how Voyager's sojourn in the Delta Quadrant have made it and her crew Federation history.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- It's quite clear the writers side with fans on the Tuvix debate, as both Mariner and Freeman remark with horror that Janeway straight-up murdered Tuvix. Freeman refuses to take so drastic an option and insists on letting Starfleet have a go at solving the problem since they're not stuck in the Delta Quadrant with limited resources.
- A possible, if subtle example. The core four (minus Rutherford) finally get promoted after 3 years stuck as Ensigns. What makes it interesting is that this happens during a crossover episode with Voyager — a show which was infamous for Limited Advancement Opportunities (especially for keeping Harry Kim as a lowly Ensign for the entire run). It's probably not a coincidence that Boimler's accidentally messing around with Harry's uniform early on.
- The Continuity Cavalcade is humorously referenced as several holographic characters show up, most from only one episode, and as the crew are dodging bladed weapons it's referred to as a "deep cut" (online slang for a really obscure Mythology Gag or Continuity Nod).
- Leitmotif: When Voyager is revealed, her series' main theme plays.
- Lethal Chef: In addition to the episode mentioning the time Neelix nearly destroyed the ship with cheese, we see a group of ensigns preparing the mess hall and setting up what are likely authentic replicas of Neelix's cooking. One of them gets overwhelmed by the smell and looks like he has to get away before he pukes.
- Meaningful Background Event: It isn't called attention to, but Rutherford appears quite crestfallen when Tendi is promoted, and this informs his actions in the following episode.
- Mega-Microbes: The macrovirus makes a return. It accidentally combines with a nanoprobe, which enlarges it into a fist-sized drone to fit.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Seems to apply to the Tuvix hybrids; when T'illups merges Captain Freeman and Migleemo against their will, the resulting hybrid immediately orders the creation of more hybrids, each of whom seem equally willing to turn on their former crewmates on the spot.
- No Biochemical Barriers: The hybrid orchid's ability to fuse species is taken up to eleven here, not only merging humanoids but fusing poor Stevens with a whale, before all of them are combined into a single blob.
- No OSHA Compliance: Boimler is tasked with clearing waste from the holodeck. There is gas and some nasty looking green sludge involved. Boimler removes the canisters without any sort of breathing apparatus or protective clothes.
- Not So Above It All: Mariner may tease Boimler for always geeking out, but she gets just as excited about Voyager.Mariner: (gasps) OH MY GOD, WE GET TO DO SOMETHING ON VOYAGER?
- Not so Dire: The Cerritos is sent to a mystery station for a top-secret mission, and even the BGM suggests something serious...until it turns out that they're transporting Voyager to Earth.
- Not Worth Killing: Ma'ah refuses to destroy the mysterious ship despite it violating Klingon territory on account of the fact that it appears disabled and only has one occupant, making destroying it a dishonorable act. He just orders its location recorded and chooses to go around it, at least until it starts charging weapons.
- Odd Friendship: Tendi is very excitable in general and really latches on to T'Lyn. Being Vulcan, it's hard to tell if T'Lyn enjoys her company too, but by the end of the episode it's evident it's a mutual friendship.
- Person as Verb: Two people being merged by the transporter is called "Tuvixing" in-universe.
- The Peter Principle: Mariner is promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade and tries to refuse, even approaching Ransom later and giving back her pip. Ransom cites her history of promotion and demotion but reveals that he saw Mariner give Boimler the pep talk needed to save the day. While Ransom plays it up as him being a better commanding officer, Mariner is refusing promotion out of being contrarian but despite herself is inspiring the people around her to be better.
- Poor Communication Kills: When Ransom tells Boimler he's going to get promoted, his performance and actions during the Voyager mission becomes sloppy because he's worried that his friendship with Mariner will be ruined again and he believes he has bad judgement and doesn't deserve the promotion. When he confides this to Mariner, she reveals she was the one who told Ransom to promote him and kept it a secret because she wanted to surprise him. After learning this, Boimler regains his confidences and is able to save everyone on the Voyager.Mariner: Look, I am really touched, but this is why we can't keep secrets. One of us always ends up covered in slime.
- Pun-Based Title: "Twovix" of course not only evokes the original "Tuvix" episode, but the "Two" also underscores this is a follow-up.
- Rank Up: Boimler, Tendi, and Mariner are promoted to lieutenant junior grade and T'Lyn is promoted to provisional lieutenant junior grade. Rutherford justifies not being promoted due to "breaking" Voyager.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Belijo is prickly, but he does give Boimer and Rutherford a "Well done" for breaking Voyager. He even adds their pictures to a new part of the Voyager exhibit.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: Two Klingons express frustration with Ma'ah's role as captain, with one of them saying that he won't have the position for much longer (clearly intending to take it from him). Indeed, Ma'ah ceases to be captain less than a minute later... because the entire ship is blown up.
- Sequel Episode:
- The transporter merges people the same way it did in the Voyager second season episode "Tuvix", thanks to Tendi and T'Lyn failing to secure a sample of the flower responsible for the original incident.
- To a lesser extent, it's also a sequel to "Endgame", picking up on the USS Voyager's fate after returning from the Delta Quadrant (and serving as a loose bridge between its last appearance there and its reappearance in the Fleet Museum in the final season of Picard).
- Sequel Hook: The episode is over and the characters are grateful they don't have anything else to worry about. In The Stinger the Klingon crew from "Weh Duj" comes across a mysterious ship that somehow deactivates their weapons and swiftly destroys them in one shot.
- Shout-Out: The new threat looks a lot like Slave 1. It also goes from horizontal to vertical, the way Slave 1 does when it takes off.
- Shown Their Work: Similarly to Deep Space 9 last season, the animators have lovingly re-created the familiar Voyager locales in animation: Engineering, Seven's cargo bay, the mess hall, Sickbay, shuttlebay, and the bridge.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Shaxs suggests to Freeman that, because the Cerritos isn't stuck in the Delta Quadrant, they call on the medical and scientific resources of the Federation to find a way to resolve the Tuvix situation without killing T'Illups.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Mariner and Freeman express annoyance at the idea of being sent to the Romulan Neutral Zone.
- Swiss-Cheese Security: Lampshaded. When T'Lyn takes control of the transporter, Tendi asks if that's possible. T'Lyn casually remarks that Starfleet systems are easily circumvented.
- Technology Marches On: In-universe example. T'Lynn (albeit condescendingly) observes the Voyager itself is outdated. While the Intrepid-class and its systems were cutting edge when Voyager launched to pursue Chakotay's Maquis Raider, much has changed in the decade since (such as the Federation's inevitable technological advances generated by the Dominion War).
- Teleporter Accident: Once again, a special orchid ends up in the transporter as two people use it, and its properties merge their matter streams into one coherent fusion.
- Tempting Fate:
- Ransom assures Boimler that his promotion is safe so long as nothing goes wrong. Boimler immediately objects that everything always goes wrong, so he clarifies that as long as Boimler doesn't literally make history, he'll be fine. Boimler and Rutherford do just that by saving/breaking Voyager with Neelix's cheese, getting their own exhibit. Boimler still gets his promotion thanks to his quick thinking.
- Freeman is unfazed by T'illups because all she has to do is check Janeway's personal logs for whatever solution she employed and repeat it.
- While celebrating their promotion, Tendi remarks how now there won't be any more "mysterious threat" to get in their way. The next scene would introduce a mysterious ship that is able to destroy an entire ship in one shot.
- Thousand-Yard Stare:
- T'Illups gets one when Shaxs asks them about whether they have all of their components' physical memories. Understandable, since Billups is a chaste virgin and T'Ana is very kinky, resulting in some cognitive dissonance.
- Everyone who was merged has one upon being separated, awkwardly sitting next to each other.
- Weirdness Magnet: Every Star Trek series and vessel has dealt with this to varying degrees — but VOY in particular got it bad. Naturally, the LD characters lampshade it.Kayshon: [Voyager] was damaged by cheese?
Ransom: It's Voyager. S**t got freaky. - Wham Episode: Boimler, Mariner and Tendi all get promotions, which means moving out of the familiar bunk setting the quartet have lived in for the past three seasons.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
- The Tuvix dilemma comes roaring back once T'illups is created. Freeman is horrified to learn that Janeway essentially killed Tuvix and Shaxs reasons that, being stuck in the Delta Quadrant, they had no choice but to separate him back into Tuvok and Neelix. Freeman decides that, since they’re not stuck on the other side of the galaxy with no facilities, they can send them back to be cared for by Starfleet. T'illups comes up with their own solution by forcibly creating more transporter hybrids with completely unwilling participants, so as to compound the dilemma and render themselves safe through numbers.
- Tendi also expresses the same ethical dilemma for the whole of the episode, right up until all the hybrids are merged into an essentially non-sentient meat blob. At that point, the only reasonable solution is to break it apart into its components.
- With Friends Like These...: The two Klingon lower deckers talk down about their former fellow lower decker Ma'ah behind his back, saying he just lucked into his position as captain and speak as though they are plotting to overthrow him, despite how they were supposedly friends with him and refer to themselves as his "true allies".
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When Boimler reveals to Mariner that he's been messing up during the mission because he's afraid of ruining his friendship with her again and he believes he has bad judgement and doesn't deserve the promotion, Mariner lets him know she told Ransom to promote him and he's capable of saving the ship on his own without her help. After Ransom looks through the security footage and learns of Mariner's talk to Boimler, this convinces him to also promote Mariner despite her objection.
