Around the time of Zefram Cochrane's warp test flight, the people of Earth sent out a probe, the titular Friendship One, containing plans and schematics to build, among other things, antimatter technology. Turns out that it landed on a planet in the Delta Quadrant long ago, and the people used the information within it to unwittingly destroy their world, Uxal. Now, racked by radiation and filled with vengeance, a survivor named Verin takes revenge the only way he knows how: on the species who sent out the probe so long ago, which just happens to take the form of the crew of Voyager, whose first official mission from Starfleet in seven years is to find and recover the probe......
Contains examples of:
- The Atoner: Voyager becomes this when they learn how Earth's ancient information became this world's destruction.
- Babies Ever After: D'awww! Unfortunately, it isn't enough to cure Verin's hatred and vengeful feelings.
- Back for the Dead: Poor forgotten Joe Carey, who hadn't had a substantial part in an episode since the first season, finally gets a return appearance that isn't a flashback. Sadly, so does the "build up a character before we kill them off" policy of those early seasons, and Joe Carey dies halfway through the episode. According to the Delta Flyers podcast, Josh Clark was not happy about his character being killed off.
-
Broken Aesop: Janeway laments that exploration isn't worth the cost in life. Except...TNG already made a point that exploration does have risks. To quote Q:"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross, but it's not for the timid."- It is possible that Janeway was referring as much to the people impacted by the explorers, as happened to the aliens in this episode and in countless peoples in Earth's history, as she was the explorers themselves.
- Call-Back: It starts with Janeway messaging Admiral Hendricks and telling him about the Voth from "Distant Origin".
- Cue the Sun: The end effect of Otrin's experiment to purge Uxal's atmosphere of radiation.
- For Science!: At the end of the episode, Janeway concludes that while the launchers of Friendship One had good intentions, the benefits of exploration do not justify the taking of even one life.
- Insane Troll Logic: The Uxali believe that humans sent the probe in order to allow them to destroy themselves to make it easier to conquer them. Janeway immediately points out the flaw in this logic."Do you really believe we'd contaminate a world we'd intend to conquer?"
- Also, no one points out the obvious - why would they contaminate a world, then wait about three centuries to show up to complete the "conquering"?
- Mauve Shirt: The mauvest of them all, Joe Carey, showing throughout the series, is executed here, near the end of the series, simply as a show of defiance towards Voyager. It's with a disruptor, so he can't be revived. Oddly enough, it had been quite a while since he'd appeared in the present day, yet had still appeared in flashbacks (meaning it wasn't an issue of the actor's availability), to which a popular theory is that the writers thought they'd killed him off, and when they realized they hadn't figured they had to go ahead and do it now.
- Never My Fault: Many Uxali don't accept their own role in the destruction of their home-world
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The well-intentioned probe launched from newly-warp-capable Earth leads to the near-destruction of Uxal.
- Offscreen Inertia: The last we saw of Carey (except for the occasional flashback scene), he'd been confined to quarters in the Season One episode "State of Flux", under suspicion of treason. Given the confusion related above, fans joked that he'd been locked in his cabin for seven years.
- Pushy Gun-Toting Villain: Verin becomes this trope, where he is extremely untrusting of the Voyager crew. So untrusting is he, that he takes away a toy from a child, paranoid that it's a weapon. Later, he kills Lt. Joe Carey AS he's transporting up to the ship, trying to make a point to Capt. Janeway. Eventually, people start to get tired of Verin's bullshit extreme tactics and paranoia; Otrin later takes command, after Verin attempts to destroy Voyager with a set of antimatter warheads, paranoid once again that Voyager is attempting to destroy them, instead of helping to clear the atmosphere. One of the other inhabitants, a woman who has just given birth, whose baby was saved by the EMH Doctor, draws an energy rifle out of desperation on him, ready to shoot if he doesn't deactivate the missiles:
- Otrin: You can't fire those missiles![Verin pushes Otrin out of the way]Verin: Hold him!Brin (The pregnant woman): STOP![The sound of an energy rifle cocking is heard off-screen, and the camera pans over to the once-pregnant woman]Verin: What are you doing?Brin I won't let you ruin our only chance for survival.Verin: You'd kill me?Brin: [She looks over at her baby] To save my child... Yes.Verin: Get that weapon away from her.Another individual: No, sir. [He cocks and aims his energy rifle at Verin]Verin: I've kept you alive... ALL OF YOU!Otrin: And we're grateful for that! But survival isn't enough anymore!Verin: Are you in command now?[Otrin looks at everyone in the cave, then back at Verin.]Otrin: If I have to be.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Admiral Hendricks remarks Janeway has made more First Contacts than any Captain since Kirk a century earlier. As Janeway lampshades, this is of course is ultimately due to the advantage of Voyager being the only Starfleet vessel in a hitherto unexplored region of the Galaxy.
- Too Dumb to Live: Torres wants to join the away team to a heavily-irradiated planet while very pregnant.
