Kes confronts Neelix on why he never talks about the war, and he says it's too difficult to talk about. She and Janeway team up to convince him to submit to Jetrel's test, and he finally relents. When he meets with Jetrel, though, he grills the Haakonian on his motives, and Jetrel insists that he's just trying to atone for his actions. During the test, Neelix tells a story about building a trap for a garden pest and feeling pity for the pest once it was caught. Jetrel completes his test and concludes that Neelix does have metremia. However, Jetrel is enthusiastic about the possibility of using the ship's transporters to isolate an isotope from the metreon cloud to develop a cure.
As Jetrel works, he admits that he was viewed as a monster by his own family for his war research. He himself has metremia and only a few days left to live. Meanwhile, Neelix cannot forgive Jetrel after seeing the terrible results of Jetrel's work. But at night, Neelix is haunted by a dream of various figures accusing him of cowardice, including a metreon-scorched Kes. After awakening, he finally admits to Kes the reason why he's so angry at Jetrel and closed off about his war experience: he was actually a deserter and now feels shame for doing nothing to stop Jetrel. He goes to see Jetrel during his research, but he finds that Jetrel has deactivated the Doctor and is working on something strange. Neelix leaves to inform the captain, but Jetrel knocks him out.
Janeway quickly discovers something's up anyway and tracks Jetrel down. Jetrel admits that Neelix doesn't have metremia, but he begs Janeway to allow him to continue his research. He says he's found a way to bring back the victims of the metreon cascade by using the transporter to reassemble their disintegrated matter that has been held suspended in the metreon cloud. He has only hours to live, and this is his last chance to make amends, so Janeway agrees. Jetrel uses the transporter to try to reassemble someone from the cloud, but it fails, and Jetrel collapses. On his deathbed, Jetrel says that dying is a fitting punishment for him, but Neelix says that the metreon cascade was itself a punishment for all of their sins. He tells Jetrel that he forgives him, and Jetrel dies immediately afterwards, whereupon a pensive Neelix leaves Sickbay.
This episode provides examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: A Neelix episode.
- And You Were There: Neelix has a Nightmare Sequence where members of the Voyager crew play the parts of the murdered people of Rinax. In particular, Kes appears as Palaxia, the horrifically burned little girl he found there and whom he had to watch slowly die from her injuries over several weeks.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Though for different reasons than Jetrel thinks when he asks Neelix, "How many did you kill during the war?"
- The Atoner: Jetrel.
- Call-Back: The Doctor complained in several previous episodes about people neglecting to shut him off, and in "Eye of the Needle" Janeway suggested giving him the ability to turn himself off. In this episode, he does just that.
- Chekhov's Gun: After witnessing the EMH deactivating itself, Jetrel uses the command sequence to shut down the Doctor later on.
- Cool, but Inefficient: A reaction of 1 KG of matter to 1 KG of anti-matter would create an explosion equal to 43 megatons of TNT which is equivalent to the most powerful nuclear weapon ever invented, the Tsar Bomba of the Soviet Union. Or in other words, anyone with access to a couple of photon torpedoes or a warp core already has the means to kill 300,000 people. The Metreon Cascade was a pointless waste of time and resources as far as the setting of Star Trek goes.
- Corner of Woe: After seeing Rinax again, Kes finds Neelix hiding in his kitchen.
- The Dead Have Names
- Deface of the Moon: Neelix relates how after the initial flash of the Cascade, he looked up and assumed that the moon had vanished, whereas it had actually been instantly enshrouded by cloud cover, reducing its albedo to the point it was no longer visible from Talax's surface.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The creation of the Metreon Cascade is Star Trek: Voyager's retelling of the creation of the atom bomb.
- Draft Dodging: Neelix. He was ashamed to tell Kes this because he thought it would make her think of him as a coward.
- For Science!: Jetrel's justification for creating the Metreon Cascade. That and I Did What I Had to Do.
- Genocide Survivor: Neelix survived the destruction of his home by being on Talax at the time.
- I Am a Monster
- Ironic Echo: "Why don't you call a safety, Neelix?"
- Let Me Tell You a Story: Neelix does this twice to Jetrel.
- Mad Science: What Neelix assumes when he finds Jetrel with a...thing in a biostasis container.
- Miles Gloriosus: Neelix about his war service.
- Mood Whiplash: Neelix recounts the attack on Rinax, to Janeway's obvious horror. The very next scene has her pleasantly greeting Dr. Jetrel and shaking his hand.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The ever-jovial Neelix turns dark and spiteful whenever Jetrel's name is mentioned.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "He's a MASS...MURDERER!"
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Neelix delivers a brutal one, in the form of a story he tells Jetrel:Neelix: After the cascade, a man returns to what used to be his home to look for survivors. The impact of the blast had set off hundreds of fires. There's just smoldering ruins and the stench of seared flesh. In the distance, in the middle of the emptiness, from a cloud of dust, he can see bodies moving, whimpering, coming toward him. They're monsters, their flesh horribly charred. One comes toward him, mangled arms outstretched. He turns away, frightened. Then the thing speaks. He knows, by the sound of her voice, that she's not a monster but a child; a little girl. Her name was Palaxia. He brought her back to Talax with the other survivors. For the next few weeks, I stayed at her bedside and watched her wither away. Those are consequences, Dr. Jetrel.
- Redemption Equals Death: Jetrel's attempt to resurrect the people who have been killed by the Metreon Cascade, even though it ends in failure.
- Reluctant Mad Scientist: Jetrel.
- Shout-Out:
- Like Oppenheimer, Jetrel quotes (inadvertently, one assumes) from the Bhagavad Gita when he says the Metreon Cascade was brighter than a thousand suns.
- The pool hustler calls Tom Paris "Tom Terrific," the name of a 1960s cartoon character, which would be anachronistic to the time period the pool hall is supposed to be set in.
- Single Tear: Jetrel in the face of Neelix's "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
- Survivor Guilt: Neelix is the Sole Survivor of his family because he was hiding on another planet.
- Tim Taylor Technology: "You must increase the power to the pattern buffers, Captain!"
- Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Metreon Cascade.
- Would Rather Suffer: When first informed that he may have metremia, Neelix replies that while he's touched by Jetrel's concern for his health, he would rather be immersed in a pit of Krallinian eels than be examined by him. Later, he personally tells Jetrel that he would rather die than help him ease his conscience. Only when it's pointed out that he might be helping other members of his race does he consent.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Not only is Neelix's homeworld destroyed, but also Jetrel's attempt to resurrect the people destroyed by the Metreon Cascade fails.
- You See, I'm Dying: Jetrel's response to Neelix saying that he wishes for the scientist to live a long life of regret for creating the Metreon Cascade.
