“Deadlock” is episode twenty-one of season two of Star Trek: Voyager.
A very pregnant Ensign Wildman is in the galley and Neelix is getting her to look at a couple of appliances when she suddenly sits down. She thinks she’s having a contraction. She is. Neelix says that’s wonderful, as labour can’t be far behind, and escorts her to sickbay. On the bridge the captain is pacing and Tom – in the previous episode, “Investigations”, it was revealed that his odd behaviour was simply to flush out Seska’s spy – says it’s been 7 hours; how long does it take to deliver a baby? 96 hours for one of his, according to Tuvok. Pregnancy and patience go hand in hand. Janeway isn’t sure whether to welcome their first baby or apologise; Voyager is not a nursery and the Delta Quadrant isn’t much of a playground.
Tuvok detects 20 Vidiian ships on long range sensors and 2 inhabited planets around a G-type star, both occupied by Vidiians. Tom steers the ship through a plasma drift that should block them from the Vidiian sensors. In sickbay, Ensign Wildman suffers from a rare but not unknown complication and the Doctor transports her baby out. Then the ship shakes.
The ship suffered from subspace turbulence coming out of the plasma drift. The warp engines have stalled, impulse engines and manoeuvring thrusters aren’t responding either and they are losing main power. According to B’Elanna, their antimatter is being drained but she doesn’t know why. The containment fields are fine, but it’s as if they’ve sprung a leak with no crack. The captain suggests using proton bursts but, before B’Elanna does this, the ship is hit with something and engineering suffers casualties. In sickbay, the baby’s incubator is losing power and engineering casualties arrive.
The baby isn’t doing so well and there are more casualties. According to B’Elanna, they are being hit by proton bursts, but they seem to be coming from thin air. They are weakening structural integrity and there isn’t enough power to reinforce the structural integrity field. There’s a hull breach and Harry heads to try and fix it with something he’s been working on. In sickbay, the Doctor briefly flickers.
Harry and B’Elanna head to deal with the breach; in engineering, Lt. Hogan is injured and calls sickbay for help and Kes heads out. The breach starts widening and B’Elanna tells Harry to get out. He doesn’t leave in time and gets sucked out into space. As B’Elanna returns to engineering, Kes arrives, then vanishes.
B’Elanna contacts the bridge and tells them there is a spacial rift there, with a breathable atmosphere on the other side. An effort to magnetise the hull to stop the proton bursts works, but the ship has suffered significant damage and lots of injuries. Then another burst hits as the magnetic field collapses and there is a breach on Deck 1. The bridge is evacuated and the captain, as she leaves, sees another bridge with another bridge crew in the same places.
On that bridge, Captain Janeway sees herself run out. A scan of the bridge reveals a minor spatial fluctuation. The captain heads to sickbay to speak to the Doctor. The Kes who vanished is there, but unconscious. She’s identical apart from a slight phase shift. This Kes is woken and she explains what happened. The captain contacts B’Elanna and tells her to stop the proton burst.
The turbulence Voyager experienced just before it exited the cloud duplicated every particle of matter. Both ships occupy the same spot, but slightly out of phase from each other. The current situation is not good for either of them. The currently intact Voyager needs to contact the rather badly damaged one.
The episode is rather weird, as such often can be. It’s even stated in the episode that it’s weird; according to Captain Janeway, they’re Starfleet officers. Weird is a part of the job.