“Workforce” is episode sixteen of season seven of Star Trek: Voyager.
Captain Janeway, in something that isn’t her Starfleet uniform, is looking for a supervisor in a facility on a planet. He wants to see her qualifications and is impressed. But would like her to report for her shift on time. She got on the wrong transport. She knows the specs of the place and can already tell it’s going to be much better than her last job. Odd.
The captain is busy working when her console starts complaining of a command code violation. Another worker comes over; he heard Janeway talking to her console. The man, Jaffen, helps, then Seven of Nine comes over. She says the station does not require two operators, addressing them by their employee numbers, and says fraternising is not permitted. Jaffen asks Seven if she has a number. Or even a name. Annika Hansen, the efficiency monitor. Janeway explains they aren’t fraternising; Jaffen was helping her correct an error. After Seven leaves, Jaffen says he thought they were fraternising, and asks the captain if she wants dinner that evening. She says she doesn’t have time – but watches him leave.
Tom is trying to get a job in a bar; he apparently lost his previous one in half a day. Quite an accomplishment in a labour shortage. Apparently, he had a disagreement with the new efficiency monitor. He manages to talk the owner into giving him a job. That night in the bar, Tuvok laughs at a joke that Jaffen made. Far more than it deserved and so he explains why. Which Jaffen thinks makes the joke not funny at all. The captain enters and Jaffen goes to see her. B’Elanna briefly enters, then leaves again. Afterwards, Jaffen and the captain are walking home. She says she’s from Earth. It’s not like here; overpopulated, polluted, very little work. And a lot of violence. More oddness.
An alarm at work indicates it’s time for inoculations against ambient radiation. Tuvok is nervous; he says he’s afraid of injections. And has a memory of being inoculated whilst restrained.
The Delta Flyer, with Harry, Neelix and Chakotay, are heading back to Voyager; Harry is feeling a little ill because of a drink that Neelix convinced him to try. Chakotay calls them both to the cockpit. Voyager isn’t at the rendezvous coordinates, nor are they responding to hails.
Voyager is in a nebula and the Doctor, as the Emergency Command Hologram, is trying to fix the ship and having problems with the computer. An intruder alert takes him to the bridge, where he confronts Chakotay and Harry in environment suits. The Doctor explains he hadn’t fixed life support, as he’s the only one aboard. 12 hours after they left, Voyager hit a subspace mine. The ship was flooded with tetrion radiation and the crew had to evacuate in the escape pods. The Doctor, as the ECH, was left behind to deal with the radiation.
Before the Doctor could start repairs, the ship was put under tow by an alien vessel. The Doctor responded with violence far more quickly than Captain Janeway and disabled it, but had to flee when two other vessels showed up. Every time he left the nebula, there were more ships searching, and their weapon signatures match those of the subspace mine. He’s heard nothing from the crew.
The crew has evidently been abducted and turned into workers who enjoy what they’re doing. The other three need to, somehow, get them back, and Neelix’s ship is seen for the first time in a while. Tuvok is getting flashes of his real memories, Captain Janeway still can’t cook, Tom and B’Elanna are still getting along.
The story continues in the next episode, “Workforce, Part II”.