“Hope and Fear” is episode twenty-six of season four of Star Trek: Voyager and the season finale.
Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine are on the holodeck playing a game. The captain wins and Seven can’t understand why. She has superior visual acuity and stamina and should have won. The captain is a frustrating opponent. Janeway says it was intuition that helped. Seven considers intuition a human fallacy. The captain explains it more. Seven finds the explanation intriguing, but implausible. She wants to play again. Janeway does not. Seven thinks the captain is tired and concerned Seven will beat her. Fatigued, yes. Concerned, no.
Captain Janeway is working on the message received from Starfleet in “Hunters”, even though B’Elanna thinks too much of it has been destroyed, in the mess hall when Chakotay enters. By the sounds of it, she’s been working all night. Chakotay tells her that Tom and Neelix are heading back with a lot of supplies and Neelix wants to give a local a lift to the next system in order to repay them for their help. Janeway is wondering what the message could be. A starmap, the location of a wormhole. They could be home tomorrow. Or it could be nothing. Chakotay will speak to B’Elanna and suggests the captain speaks to Seven of Nine. Janeway agrees Seven could be helpful – if she’s in the mood. They seem to be butting heads more than usual.
Tom and Neelix have returned and Neelix is introducing the captain to Arturis, whose people have a way with languages. He speaks over 4,000. It’s a natural ability; they can see patterns where others see only confusion. The captain has an idea; could Arturis help with computational languages? He could.
Working in astrometrics with Seven of Nine and the captain, Arturis says Seven is more attractive than the average drone. The Borg are familiar with his people. Species 116. They have never been able to assimilate them. Yet. Arturis says the Borg are a force of nature; like a storm, you just avoid them. He extracts the data which has a lot of stuff. Seven has found a spatial grid with coordinates less than 10 light years away.
Heading to the coordinates reveals a ship there. Tuvok says it has a Starfleet signature, though it’s unlike any other Starfleet vessel ever seen. No response to hails and no organic life onboard. No sign of damage and the primary systems are online. Janeway wants to finish decoding the message and Chakotay, Tom and Tuvok will head over to secure the vessel. Arturis is surprised that the captain isn’t more encouraged. She’s had other opportunities that haven’t worked out.
Onboard the other ship and the bridge looks different. It’s NX-01A, the USS Dauntless. Its launch date shows it came 60,000 light years in 3 months. There are no crew logs and Tom doesn’t think it had a crew. Helm shows it was set to automatically navigate to the coordinates. There seem to be fluctuations in the warp core. If it can be called that.
Engineering, unlike the bridge, is not brightly light but darker and perhaps a bit more ominous. The drive isn’t antimatter; it’s a quantum slipstream drive. The ship starts powering up and Harry tells the captain, who orders it be pursued. On the Dauntless, they can’t shut down the drive and it enters, well, not warp. When it comes out after a few minutes, it’s travelled over 15 light years and it takes Voyager 2 days at high warp to catch up.
The rest of the message has been deciphered and Janeway shows a video from Admiral Hayes to the senior staff. Quantum slipstream is experimental and high risk. It will take 3 months to reach Earth. The Doctor has found no adverse effects from being in quantum slipstream. As to modifying Voyager for slipstream; they can try, but Tom doesn’t think the ship will hold up.
Dauntless is very basic; no replicators, no shuttles, no holodeck, one transporter. Seven of Nine counsels prudence; Voyager is a proven vessel. The captain is also not as enthused as she could be. She finds everything a little too perfect. An alien genius, a message from Starfleet telling them what they want to hear and a starship on their doorstep. Tuvok agrees it’s a little convenient. Janeway senses something wrong that started when Arturis joined the ship. She wants the Dauntless investigating carefully.
So, it looks like they have a way home. However, with several seasons left, that’s not going to be the case. Although, when Voyager originally came out, it wasn’t known there were several seasons left at this point. If this isn’t a way home, what is going on?