Eye of the Needle

When Ensign Kim finds a wormhole that might lead to the Alpha Quadrant, the crew believes they may have found a shortcut home. The opening proves too small for Voyager to fly through but Janeway decides to launch a microprobe into it to see what's on the other side.

The probe gets stuck in a gravitational eddy before it makes it all the way through, but Voyager receives readings that indicate the probe is being scanned by someone on the other side. Janeway suggests they transmit a message through the probe, hoping it will be picked up by whoever is scanning it. To their joy they receive a response from the Alpha Quadrant, 70,000 light years away.

When Voyager finally succeeds in achieving voice contact with the Alpha Quadrant ship, they are surprised to find it's a Romulan vessel. The Romulan captain, a scientist named Telek, is reluctant to communicate believing Voyager is a Federation spy. After establishing eye-to-eye communications and speaking with Janeway he becomes more sympathetic to Voyager's plight and agrees to consider sending messages to the crew's families back home.

Meanwhile, Torres believes she's found a way to "piggyback" a transporter beam onto the visual link, which theoretically would allow them to beam the crew to the Romulan ship. They first test the theory with inanimate objects and then the Romulan captain allows himself to be transported onto Voyager.

In the midst of the excitement this experiment generates, Tuvok discovers that the Romulan is from 20 years in the past, due to a time rift in the wormhole. Realizing that transporting to this time period would dramatically alter the timeline of that era. Instead, Janeway again asks Telek to transmit messages to the family of the crew members in 20 years. He agrees, and returns to his ship. After his departure Tuvok reveals that records show that Telek died four years before he was able to deliver the messages.

Back to Episode List