Dark Frontier

"Dark Frontier"
Star Trek: Voyager episode
Episode no.	Season 5 Episode 15 & 16
Directed by	Cliff Bole (part I) Terry Windell (part II)
Written by	Brannon Braga Joe Menosky
Production code	211 & 212
Original air date	February 17, 1999
Guest stars
Susanna Thompson as Borg Queen Kirk Baily as Magnus Hansen Laura Stepp as Erin Hansen Katelin Peterson as Annika Hansen Scarlett Pomers as Naomi Wildman
Episode chronology
← Previous "Bliss" Next → "The Disease"
List of Star Trek: Voyager episodes

"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.[1] It is one of only three two-part Voyager episodes that were not season openers or closers and originally aired back to back on the same date. The first half of the episode has an average rating of 4.4/5 and the second half 4.6/5 on the official Star Trek website September, 2009.

Synopsis

Part I

After Voyager manages to destroy a Borg probe, Seven of Nine finds data nodes filled with tactical information among the debris. With it they locate a heavily damaged scout ship nearby, and Janeway decides to plan a "heist"—invade the Borg vessel while its defenses are down and take its transwarp coil, which will shave 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 U.S.S. 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 scout ship. 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 the mission.

During a holographic simulation, Janeway and the others practice their mission down to the second. They have only two minutes to disable the sensor grid and transport the coil to Voyager before being detected. After leaving the holodeck, Seven is unsettled by her close proximity to the Borg, even if it wasn't 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 memories of her parents' mission reminds Seven of their arrogance in underestimating the Borg, which eventually led to their assimilation. Based on the Hansens' description of a bio-damper in their notes, the team replicates the technology in order to go undetected on the 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 luring 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 onboard, and the Borg Queen welcomes her back to the Collective.

Part II

The Borg Queen informs Seven that the Borg "allowed" Voyager to liberate her from the Collective, but she won't be turned back into a drone because they want to study her memories. With her individuality intact, the Borg can look through her eyes to help them assimilate humanity. Meanwhile, Janeway discovers that Borg signals were being sent to Seven in her cargo bay alcove. Determined to rescue Seven, Janeway leads an away team in the Delta Flyer to find the Borg sphere that took Seven away. They use the stolen coil to take the shuttle into transwarp space, and incorporate multi-adaptive shielding based on the Hansens' field notes from the U.S.S. Raven to go undetected by the Borg.

As Seven is given her first assignment to assist in the assimilation of a species, she secretly helps four of the individuals escape. The Borg Queen scolds her, saying that her human emotions of compassion and guilt are weaknesses that are causing her pain. However, when Seven pleads with her to let the getaway ship escape, the Queen grants her request.

After the away team follows the sphere into Borg space, Janeway prepares to send a message to Seven through her Borg interplexing beacon. The Queen gives Seven a new assignment—to assist in the programming of nanoprobes that will assimilate humans. The Borg plan is to detonate a biogenic charge in Earth's atmosphere, and Seven will be turned into a drone if she does not comply. Taunting her, the Queen reveals that one of the drones standing next to her is Seven's father. Suddenly, Janeway's signal comes through, and the Queen discovers it.

As the Borg adapt to the Delta Flyer's shielding, Janeway is forced to beam to the vessel and de-activate the shield matrix around the Queen's chamber. While Paris eludes the other ships, Janeway confronts the Queen and orders Seven to leave with her. A dispersal field is formed around the chamber to block the Delta Flyer's transporter beam, but Seven tells the Captain to target the power node above the chamber. This disrupts the Queen's command interface, and Janeway and Seven are beamed to the shuttle. They quickly enter a transwarp conduit, but not before a Borg vessel sneaks in behind them. On Voyager, Chakotay and Torres fire a full spread of photon torpedoes at the conduit threshold, collapsing it just as the shuttle bursts through. The Borg ship is destroyed, and Seven is home again.

Sidenote

The Monean scientist's instrument shown in the episode "Thirty Days" is the same prop described in the later episode "Dark Frontier" where it is described by Janeway as a Borg "transwarp coil."

External links

• Dark Frontier, Part I at the Internet Movie Database
• Dark Frontier, Part II at the Internet Movie Database
• "Dark Frontier, Part I" at TV.com
• "Dark Frontier, Part II" at TV.com
• Dark Frontier at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• Dark Frontier, Part I at StarTrek.com
• Dark Frontier, Part II at StarTrek.com