Synopsis:
Kim confronts life and death issues when he's held against
his will by an alien race.
While exploring an uncharted asteroid, Chakotay, Kim and
Torres stumble upon what appears to be an alien burial ground.
Not wanting to desecrate the site, Chakotay and his team decide
to make some quick anthropological observations and then return
to Voyager. But before they finish their study, a subspace
vacuole -- a dimensional distortion -- forms and begins to fill
the cavern they're investigating. Alarmed, Chakotay orders
Voyager to beam them up. But when the Away Team appears on the
ship, there is only Chakotay, Torres and the body of a recently
deceased woman.
In the meantime, Kim finds himself trapped inside a
ceremonial burial pod on an alien planet in another dimension;
he has somehow switched places with the corpse. Freed from the
pod, Kim is told that he's on the homeworld of the Vhnori
people. The Vhnori think that Kim has come from the "Next
Emanation," or afterlife, and they are disturbed when he
reveals that he has just come from a place that contained the
dead bodies of many Vhnori.
On Voyager, the Doctor is able to revive the corpse -- a
woman named Ptera. When Ptera realizes that she is not in the
Next Emanation with her deceased family members, she becomes
hysterical. Later, she reveals that her people believe that when
they die, the vacuoles take their bodies to another plane of
reality. To learn that the distortions merely take their bodies
to a barren asteroid is difficult to accept. Not long after,
another vacuole forms, and deposits a second corpse onto the
ship, and still later, a third.
After hearing Kim's story about the bodies on the asteroid, a
Vhnori man named Hatil -- who was about to submit to euthanasia
to ease his family's burden in caring for him -- changes his
mind about dying. On Voyager, Ptera wants to be sent home, even
if that means dying a second time. The crew attempts to beam her
into a forming vacuole, but the procedure doesn't work and when
they retrieve her, Ptera is dead.
Time is running out. The vacuoles are damaging the ship's
warp core. If the crew doesn't find Kim soon, they'll have to
leave him behind. On the Vhnori world, Kim figures out a way to
escape. He'll take Hatil's place in a burial pod, allowing Hatil
to fulfill his own escape option and Kim to transfer to his
universe when the next vacuole delivers the occupant of the pod
into the other dimension. The plan works, and Kim's body appears
on Voyager, where the Doctor is able to revive him.
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Cast:
Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway™
Robert Beltran as Chakotay™
Roxann Biggs-Dawson as B'Elanna Torres™
Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris™
Jennifer Lien as Kes™
Ethan Phillips as Neelix™
Robert Picardo as The Doctor
Tim Russ as Tuvok™
Garrett Wang as Harry Kim™
Guest Cast:
Martha Hackett as Seska
Jefrey Alan Chandler as Hatil
Jerry Hardin as Dr. Neria
John Cirigliano as Alien #1
Robin Groves as Hatil's Wife
Cecile Callan as Ptera
Creative staff:
Director: David Livingston
Written By: Brannon Braga
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