“The Disease” is episode seventeen of season five of Star Trek: Voyager.
On a very large ship, Harry and a woman enter a room, making out. She throws his commlink aside and he starts to glow from her touch.
Voyager has been assisting with repairing the ship’s warp drive for two weeks, though Captain Janeway thinks the crew would sometimes rather give up warp travel than accept help from strangers. A man, Jippeq, enters the room where the captain is and tells her central control is off limits. She says they need access to finish the job. He says to consider it finished; they’ve been turning his ship upside down for two weeks with no results. Janeway tells him to check the injectors. They are online; not no results. Now, they need antimatter, but she needs access to the ship’s warp assembly. The captain can understand his distrust; they’ve had problems in the Delta Quadrant themselves. She says they have something in common; both on long journeys looking for allies. But the Varro have been going for 400 years. Jippeq agrees to allow access and Tom and B’Elanna enter. Chakotay starts the antimatter transfer from Voyager.
The woman Harry was with, Derran Tal, wakes to see Harry looking out of her room. Harry is fretting over breaking regulations. What they did was a breach of protocol; the captain told all away teams to have no personal interactions with the Varro crew. Tal wonders if all humans are so jumpy. No; only Harry. The ship shakes as the warp engines start coming online. Harry says they’re late and starts dressing. Which Tal finds amusing; he’s putting on her uniform. B’Elanna and Tom are working when Harry, then Tal, finally show. However, they have to abort when the warp engines start destabilising. B’Elanna detects microfractures all over the hull which will take days to check.
Back on Voyager and Tom is talking to Harry, eventually calling him a lousy liar. Hasn’t he learned anything from Tom in the last five years? Tom knows Harry has been seeing Tal. And says that, once again, Harry is going after impossible women; the list is now up to four. A girl from a xenophobic species. Harry says he’s putting Tal out of his mind. Then enters his quarters and calls her.
On the bridge, Tom is telling Tuvok he needs to look at the Varro database, extolling the virtues of their ship. He quickly gives up and Chakotay asks Tuvok how he manages to get Tom to give up after only two minutes. Tuvok waits until Tom’s own logic overwhelms him. Then he detects an unauthorised transmission, contacting the Varro living quarters. Tom thinks he can track the signal down, but then ‘loses’ it when it turns to static. And suggests it was a glitch in the system.
Tom tells Harry he had to sabotage the comm system to cover Harry’s tracks when Chakotay is briefing the crew on what they are going to do to help the Varro. Harry is helping Seven of Nine in astrometrics. Which leads Harry to ask her about love. Specify which type. Romantic love. A condition similar to a disease, according to Seven. Then states Harry is glowing. Which he is. She has him report to sickbay.
The Doctor is quizzing Harry about things he may have come into contact with and is about to enact quarantine protocols when Harry tells him there’s no need. Harry asks Seven to leave then admits what he did come in contact with. The Doctor is shocked. Tal will need to be examined as well and Harry will need to report to the captain.
The captain is not amused. Harry doesn’t know what he was thinking. She does. There is apparently an interspecies protocol and a handbook on personal relationships 3 cm thick. Crew are to seek medical advice before initiating such things with aliens. Perhaps everyone who’s done it before has done so offscreen then. Tal’s people need to be told as well and Janeway reprimands Harry and orders him to break off the relationship.
Harry does not. There are also problems on the Varro ship. It seems not everyone is happy with them steering well clear of any other intelligent life.