Bliss (Voyager episode)
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"Bliss" is a fifth season episode of Star Trek: Voyager, first broadcast on February 10, 1999. It is episode #108, production #514.
Quick Overview: After returning from an away mission, Seven of Nine finds the Voyager crew deceived into thinking they have found a wormhole to Earth.
[edit] Episode breakdown
After Seven of Nine returns from an Away mission she finds the crew have discovered what they think is a wormhole leading to Earth. Suspicious of everyone's unfettered optimism despite signs the anomaly may not be all it appears to be, Seven accesses Janeway's logs. At first the captain reports that scans determined the wormhole was a deception, but in supplemental logs, Janeway suddenly believes it is real.
Seven locates an alien vessel in the wormhole after a re-scan, not originally detected by Voyager's sensors, she hails it. The alien, Qatai, warns her that her ship is being deceived, but they are cut off when Janeway routes power from the lab to another system. When Naomi Wildman tells her everyone is acting strangely, Seven realizes they are the only two unaffected by whatever is manipulating the crew (Seven because she cannot remember earth, and Naomi because she considers Voyager her real home). Suddenly, the crew is ordered by `Starfleet` to take the Doctor (Another unaffected crewmember due to him being a hologram)off-line to avoid system interference, and to put Seven in stasis to avoid attracting Borg attention while Voyager passes through the wormhole.
Seven knows that it is the wormhole controlling the crew, but no one will listen. She decides to act. As Chakotay escorts Seven to her alcove, she tricks him and erects a forcefield to contain him. With Naomi's help, who keeps security at bay, she transports to Engineering and stuns Torres with a phaser. After erecting another forcefield, Seven attempts to shut down the impulse drive to keep Voyager from entering the wormhole. However, Janeway transmits a surge to the engineering console that knocks Seven out.
With Seven knocked out, USS Voyager proceeds to enter the wormhole. Once they enter the anomaly, the crew falls unconscious and begin to hallucinate various events, such as Tuvok being reunited with his wife. When Naomi wakes Seven, the two hail Qatai and convince him to beam aboard. He explains the crew has been a victim of psychogenic manipulation. They are inside a bio-plasmic organism, a beast that consumes starships by telepathically preying on their crews' desires. Qatai has been trying for years to destroy the creature, not always successful at evading its deceptions.
After activating the Doctor's program, Seven informs him that Voyager is being devoured in the digestive chamber of the organism. Realizing that bodies are designed to expel foreign objects, they plan to fire one of Qatai's tetryon-based weapons at a pocket of antimatter released from Voyager's warp core. It creates an unpleasant reaction that causes the beast to expel the two ships through its esophagus. Once Janeway and the others regain consciousness, Voyager resumes its course to the Alpha Quadrant, but Qatai, in true spirit of Dragon Slayer, returns to the beast, determined to defeat it.
