As Commander Chakotay and Ensign Kaplan explore the Nekrit Expanse in a shuttle they receive a communication from what appears to be a Star Fleet transmitter on a nearby planet. When they land to investigate they come under attack, Chakotay is injured and Kaplan is killed. A woman called Dr. Riley Frazier rescues Chakotay and he is told that she was kidnapped in the Alpha Quadrant and left on the planet, the same happened to the rest of the population. He hasn't been there too long when he makes a shocking discovery; these aren't any old aliens; they are former Borg who lost their connection to the Collective. As Chakotay gets more ill they link him to their local collective to cure him, afterwards they with to fully restore their collective in an attempt to stop the various races fighting each other as was happening at the time. Meanwhile Voyager has found a Borg Cube adrift in space. It turns out this is the cube the people on the planet came from and they want Chakotay to help restart some of its systems, he offers to take their request to Captain Janeway but she refuses. It turns out he is still connected to them and they force him to reactivate the cube and even to fire upon his crewmates, perhaps they weren't to be trusted after all, or perhaps they were just desperate.
This was a good episode and an interesting reintroduction to the Borg who had featured in other series of Star Trek but up until this point hadn't been seen alive in Voyager. I liked how we were never sure whether they could be trusted; even at the end it was ambiguous as to what they would do next. It is a pity Chakotay was accompanied by Kaplan rather than a regular character; Kaplan didn't really need to die but as soon as she appeared it was likely that she'd be killed as we'd never heard of her before this episode making her expendable as far as the series is concerned.
This was a good episode and an interesting reintroduction to the Borg who had featured in other series of Star Trek but up until this point hadn't been seen alive in Voyager. I liked how we were never sure whether they could be trusted; even at the end it was ambiguous as to what they would do next. It is a pity Chakotay was accompanied by Kaplan rather than a regular character; Kaplan didn't really need to die but as soon as she appeared it was likely that she'd be killed as we'd never heard of her before this episode making her expendable as far as the series is concerned.