Workforce Incident

On Stardate 54608.8, Voyager hit a subspace mine whilst passing near the planet Quarrel. The ship was disabled, and in the aftermath of the explosion many of the crew fell victim to tetrion radiation poisoning. With the ship immobilized by the damage, Captain Janeway was forced to evacuate the crew in order to get them clear of the radiation before they received a lethal dose. She left the new Emergency Command Hologram in charge and departed Voyager in life pods. A Quarren vessel attempted to seize Voyager, but the ECH was able to defeat it and hide the Starship in a nearby nebula. He repaired much of the damage over the next few days.

Commander Chakotay, Neelix and Ensign Kim had been on a mission in the Delta Flyer during the initial attack, and on their return they were able to assist the ECH in repairing the ship. They surmised that the Quarren had probably staged the entire incident in order to capture Voyager, and set off to the planet in order to investigate the fate of the crew.

Neelix discovered that the Voyager crew had been abducted and their memories altered by a sophisticated medical technique. Quarrel was undergoing a severe labour shortage at the time, and new personalities had been put in place which made the crew believe that they were newly arrived workers keen to find employment on the planet. All memory of their time in Starfleet and on Voyager had been completely erased.

Voyager attempted to recover the crew, but diplomatic measures were unsuccessful. Commander Chakotay and Neelix went down on a covert mission to the planet, and Neelix was able to beam B'Elanna Torres back to Voyager. Unfortunately, Chakotay was trapped on the planet and the local defence forces drove the ship off. Quarren ships again attempted to capture Voyager, but although they outgunned the Starship by a significant margin the ECH was able to disable the ships by launching a photon torpedo and detonating it with a phaser, creating a powerful photonic shock wave.

The ship hid the ship in a crater whilst the crew helped Torres recover her memories. On the planet, Chakotay made contact with Captain Janeway and managed to convince her of what had truly happened to her. Although somewhat dubious, she agreed to sabotage the power plant where she worked in order to bring down the planetary shields to allow Voyager to beam the rest of the crew up.

Once in orbit, Voyager was again attacked by Quarren defence ships. Again outgunned, Ensign Kim masked the life signs of the few remaining crew and launched three escape pods. The Quarren took them in tow, eagre to capture more workers, but Kim had planted powerful explosive charges in the pods and disabled the enemy ships with these.

Once away from the medical treatments which supressed their memories, the crew began to rapidly recover and Voyager once again set off on its way towards Earth.1

References

#	Series	Season	Source	Comment
1	VOY	7	Workforce, Part 1

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Last updated : 6 Sep 2003

Series:	VOY Season 7 (Disc 4)
Source:	Workforce, Part 1