Epis­ode Num­ber: 1×13

Writ­ten by: Marco Rafalá

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 19^th June 2021

Guest Stars:

• Crew­man Samuel Ewendi: engineer
• Ensign Lou Men­d­ola: an ali­en sci­ent­ist mas­quer­ad­ing as an engin­eer, SS Atlantis NX-05
• Com­mand­er Caitlin Mal­lory: act­ing Com­mand­ing Officer, SS Atlantis NX-05
• Lieu­ten­ant Ed Par­ish: act­ing Armory Officer, SS Atlantis NX-05
• Lieu­ten­ant Dar­lene Phil­lips: Chief Engin­eer, SS Atlantis NX-05
• Lieu­ten­ant Shiro Taka­hashi: Chief Sci­ence Officer, SS Atlantis NX-05
• Lieu­ten­ant Ale­jandro Mar­tinez: Chief Med­ic­al Officer, SS Atlantis NX-05
• Crew­man Henry Green: deceased crew mem­ber, SS Atlantis NX-05

On board­ing Atlantis, we appear to have stumbled into the middle of a civil war amongst her crew, an unfor­tu­nate devel­op­ment for a ves­sel stuck in time on the edge of an expand­ing worm­hole. We have encountered mem­bers of two fac­tions, one con­tain­ing what appear to be Engin­eer­ing staff, and the oth­er Com­mand. The lat­ter appear to have kid­napped the Chief Engin­eer, although we know not for what purpose.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate 9842.7, supplemental

Plot: Cap­tain Mas­uda and her away team find they have to resolve the con­flict among Atlantis’s crew before they can res­cue them all.

The ‘A’ Plot: As the inform­ant returns to their fac­tion’s strong­hold, Mas­uda decides the board­ing party needs to fol­low the kid­nap­pers. Lt. Astan first, they climb the Jef­fer­ies Tube to the next deck. As they explore the sci­ence labor­at­or­ies, they see plenty of evid­ence of battle dam­age, with many sec­tions sealed off due to being open to vacuum.

Find­ing the sick­bay, they observe Lt. Mar­tinez, Atlantis’s CMO, con­duct­ing an autopsy on a dead crew­man. He absent-mindedly accepts their assist­ance, and explains that he is try­ing to find evid­ence of radi­ation from a weapon. When it sinks in that they are not part of the crew, he sets off an alarm.

A secur­ity team arrives quickly, led by the Chief Sci­ence Officer, Lt. Taka­hashi, who turns out to be the head of the third, neut­ral fac­tion, mostly com­posed of sci­ence per­son­nel. Mas­uda intro­duces her­self as the com­mand­er of anoth­er Star­fleet ves­sel, care­fully omit­ting the time dif­fer­en­tial, and they learn more about the situ­ation on board. Taka­hashi and Mar­tinez rehash an ongo­ing argu­ment about the nature of the cur­rent con­flict: while the doc­tor believes an unusu­al Romu­lan weapon is mak­ing the crew see things, his sci­ence coun­ter­part is hunt­ing an actu­al Romu­lan bioweapon.

Taka­hashi remains uncon­vinced as to the board­ing party’s true iden­tity, but as he debates wheth­er to take them into cus­tody (and Astan subtly pre­pares to pre­vent this), Act­ing Cap­tain Caitlin Mal­lory makes a ship­wide announce­ment, that Chief Engin­eer Philips is going to be tried for treas­on. All crew are invited to attend, as long as they come unarmed. See­ing an open­ing, Mas­uda per­suades their captors to let her group accom­pany them to the tribunal as the sci­ence fac­tion’s guests.

Sud­denly dis­trac­ted, Taka­hashi agrees, then leaves to attend to oth­er busi­ness. Astan tails him and wit­nesses him arguing with a woman wear­ing peri­od Cap­tain’s rank insignia, while a dead body is taken from a labor­at­ory to an air­lock. He has little time to report back to the Cap­tain before they need to leave for the trial.

The way to the con­fer­ence room lies through the com­puter core, where they are dis­armed, although the board­ing party are able to retain their phaser-I’s, a tech­no­logy dat­ing from after Atlantis’s dis­ap­pear­ance. As the tri­al begins, it rap­idly becomes appar­ent that this is a kangaroo court, lead­ing Mas­uda to offer to serve as a neut­ral arbiter.

Taka­hashi makes an appear­ance wav­ing a gad­get he claims will detect ali­en DNA. No-one is sur­prised when it detects its pres­ence on the accused. Mal­lory declares that Philips is the ali­en intruder and orders her exe­cu­tion. As Mas­uda argues to pre­vent this, the engin­eer­ing fac­tion chooses this moment to attempt a res­cue, and a con­fused mel­ee breaks out. Mal­lory imme­di­ately picks up a phase pis­tol from the table and attempts to shoot Philips her­self dur­ing the chaos. The Lyo­n­esse party mem­bers vari­ously attempt to throw off her aim and res­cue her target.

As they try to sub­due Mal­lory, the ship lurches and the red alert klax­on begins to sound. Moments later, a juni­or engin­eer issues a pan­icked warn­ing over the inter­com, say­ing that the react­or is about to breach and he’s unable to stop it due to the con­trols being rerouted to the engin­eer­ing com­mand centre. Mal­lory dis­ap­pears in the ensu­ing confusion.

A num­ber of people oth­ers flee for the life­boats, but the board­ing party are among the few that head for the com­mand centre, only to find that the doors are sealed shut. Ensign Men­d­ola, a juni­or engin­eer­ing officer inside, informs them that regret­tably, the destruc­tion of the ship is the only way to close the wormhole.

Astan and Ewendi begin work to try and cut the door open, while Mas­uda and Vale attempt to con­vince Men­d­ola to let them in. Gain­ing access, the nego­ti­ations con­tin­ue as they learn that Men­d­ola is actu­ally the ali­en, a shape­shifter from anoth­er uni­verse, stran­ded as a res­ult of his own failed exper­i­ment. His ship’s engine is respons­ible for the worm­hole which is threat­en­ing both uni­verses. He believes des­troy­ing it is the only way to pre­vent this, and that the only way to achieve it is to trig­ger a warp core breach on Atlantis.

Mas­uda explains that it should be pos­sible to trig­ger the det­on­a­tion remotely from Lyo­n­esse, allow­ing the evac­u­ation of the crew and pos­sibly Men­d­ola’s return to his own world. The cap­tain and Astan then find them­selves try­ing to hold the crowd back as Ewendi and Men­d­ola work on the neces­sary adjust­ments to his own modifications.

Ulti­mately, they suc­ceed, evac­u­at­ing the ship by trans­port­er and push­ing Atlantis off to det­on­ate against the ali­en ves­sel. Before the worm­hole closes, Men­d­ola takes the shuttle­pod Gaher­is through to the oth­er universe.

Dia­logue: Lt. Astan: “We could dis­ap­pear them with the trans­port­er. Er, that’s a secur­ity term, Captain.”

Obser­va­tions: The Atlantis crew are all some­what unbal­anced due to their two years in the wormhole.

This epis­ode had a some­what rushed feel to its finale, remin­is­cent of some of the less suc­cess­full Star Trek: Voy­ager episodes.