Introduction
“Dark Frontier” is a feature length episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the 15th and 16th episodes of the fifth season.
This episode originally aired as a feature-length episode that was later broken up into two parts for reruns in syndication.
Actress Susanna Thompson guest stars alongside the cast of this Star Trek television show.
The crew of a spacecraft trying to get back to Earth once again encounter a race of cybernetic organisms bent on Galactic domination.
On first airing, “Dark Frontier” aired as a single-length feature.
Outline
After Voyager manages to destroy a Borg probe by beaming a photon torpedo aboard, Seven of Nine finds data nodes filled with tactical information among the debris. With it they locate a heavily damaged sphere nearby, and Captain Janeway decides to plan a “heist” – invade the Borg vessel while its defences are down and take its transwarp coil, which will shave about 20 years off Voyager’s journey. The crew will create a diversion, then send an away team in to steal the technology. Hoping to find information that will give them a tactical edge, Janeway assigns Seven to study her parents’ field notes that Voyager recovered from the Raven.
Once she begins studying her parents’ logs, Seven remembers their encounters with the Borg. She was only a small girl at the time, but she vividly recalls their fascination with the mysterious Collective. Meanwhile, Voyager catches up with the sphere. The sphere’s shields and transwarp drive will be off-line for the next 72 hours, allowing the crew only a short time to plan and execute the mission.
During a holographic simulation, Janeway and the others practice their mission down to the second. They have only two minutes to find and extract the transwarp coil after the sensor grid aboard the Borg sphere is disabled. Their simulated mission fails when Janeway and her team take too long and the Borg regenerate their sensor grid and detect the intrusion. After leaving the holodeck, Seven is unsettled by her close proximity to the Borg, even if it was not real. When Naomi Wildman begins asking her questions about the Collective, Seven hallucinates that the Borg have accessed her neural transceiver and know about Janeway’s plan.
Further research of her parents’ mission lead Seven to conclude her parents underestimated the Borg, which eventually led to their assimilation. It was during this research that Seven discovered the Hansens’ description of a bio-damper in their notes, which they used to move around undetected in a Borg vessel while conducting their field research. The Voyager team replicates the technology for use in their raid on the Borg sphere. Asserting that she is willing to risk her own well-being for the sake of the crew, Seven persuades Janeway to assign her to the away team despite the Captain’s reservations.
The mission goes as planned until Seven once again hears the voice of the Collective calling her back to the hive. In a sudden change of heart, she refuses to transport back to Voyager with the others, and Janeway is forced to leave her before she is assimilated herself. The sphere returns to Borg space with Seven on board, and the Borg Queen welcomes her back to the Collective.
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Production & Filming Details
- Director(s): Cliff Bole and Terry Windell.
- Writer(s): Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky.
- Release Date: 17 February 1999.
- Running Time: 45 minutes.
- Country: US.
- Language: English.
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