“Infinite Regress” is episode seven of season five of Star Trek: Voyager.
Seven of Nine is regenerating when there’s a sound like voices and she leaves before the cycle is complete. She looks around the cargo bay, then heads into the corridor, sniffing. She goes to the mess hall where she discards vegetables, then finds a piece of meat, which she tears into. Her shadowy reflection in a cupboard door is of a Klingon.
Harry is briefing the senior staff. The overnight sensor logs detected something and the captain says it looks to be over 100km wide. 120. Harry thought it was an asteroid cluster but detected a residual warp signature. Seven of Nine examines the readings and states that it was a Borg vessel. They can’t tell what destroyed it. The debris field is directly ahead soe the captain orders a wide berth; the Borg will send more vessels to investigate. Neelix has something he wants to discuss; there was another incident in the mess hall. He’d like stronger measures. Tuvok suggests an armed security detail; Neelix suggests replicating locking mechanisms for the cabinet doors.
Naomi Wildman is following Seven, watching and making notes. Seven knows she’s there and tells Naomi to state her intentions or she will report Naomi’s activities to the captain. Naomi says she’s just observing Seven. Neelix said the Borg do a lot of the things they do because they want to be perfect, and though Seven is not really a drone any more, she still wants to be perfect. If Naomi can become perfect too, Captain Janeway will have no choice but to make Naomi her bridge assistant. Seven isn’t mad; many crew would benefit from using her as an example. Naomi wants teaching and Seven is saying that would require several months in a Borg maturation chamber when she pauses mid-sentence. She smiles broadly and her whole demeanour changes (which is actually pretty disturbing). Does Naomi want to do something fun? She grabs Naomi’s hand and runs off.
Seven and Naomi are playing Kadis-kot. Seven is winning and Naomi is laying out her plans to become captain before they arrive home. Seven says Naomi studies too much. Like her brother. She has 12. Naomi mentions adapting, like the Borg. Seven hates Borgs. They’re mean. B’Elanna contacts Seven, asking her to report to engineering. On the second attempt, Seven’s personality changes again. She asks what she’s doing there.
B’Elanna has detected a signal with a Borg modulation. A neural interlink frequency, according to Seven, used to integrate the minds of Borg drones. B’Elanna mentions that Seven looks terrible. Seven says she had a brief lapse in memory and feels disoriented. The interlink frequency could explain this. Then there’s the sound of voices again and Seven takes on the personality of a Klingon male. Who considers B’Elanna to be a suitable mate. B’Elanna contacts security and Seven leaves.
The captain hopes that Seven and B’Elanna haven’t finally come to blows. Tuvok is on his way; Seven is cowering on the floor when he finds her, next to an injured crewman. She asks if she did something bad. Tuvok asks who she is. Maryl. Is he a Vulcan? Then she changes back to Seven. Except she hasn’t; the personality is Subaltern Lorot of the Vulcan High Command. Evidently, Vulcan Seven sounds rather like normal Seven. She agrees to accompany Tuvok to sickbay, but changes back to the Klingon personality and Tuvok has to stun her.
Seven sees a floating Borg item, then regains consciousness. She says she’s hearing voices, too many voices, and sees many people being assimilated. The last thing she remembers was being in engineering. The Doctor has found 13 new neural patterns within Seven. The Borg have assimilated hundreds of species and they have been integrated. Now, they’re showing up in Seven’s mind. She has the Borg equivalent of multiple personality disorder. Seven mentions the Borg interlink frequency. They can’t get out of range of it; it permeates subspace. The Doctor says they must terminate the signal; they need to head to the debris field. The Doctor accompanies Seven to her cargo hold; Neelix presents her a drawing from Naomi along the way. They find two personal logs from Seven – or, rather, from two other personalities.
There are no Borg survivors not Borg vessels in the area. The source of the signal is the item Seven saw before waking. She says it’s a Vinculum. The processing device at the core of every Borg vessel. It sees her as an errant drone and is trying to reintegrate her, but it’s malfunctioning. It must be taken offline; they need to beam it aboard for analysis. Captain Janeway is understandably less enthused to have the heart of a Borg vessel onboard her own. However, it would take says otherwise, and more Borg will be coming. They beam the Vinculum aboard then leave rapidly.
Something is wrong with the Vinculum which is causing problems for Seven. More and more personalities are appearing and Seven’s own is getting lost. Unless the Vinculum is dealt with, and quickly, Seven will be permanently lost inside her own mind, if not destroyed.