The Devourer of All Things, Part II (episode)

Real world article

(written from a production point of view)

On the run from their time-erasing pursuers, the Infinity crew and their new ally search for an escape. The Voyager embarks on a rescue mission.

Summary[]

Act One[]

In the safe room in the time ziggurat, Wesley Crusher listens to a vinyl record and rambles slightly about his music preferences. Confused, the Infinity crew demands answers from Wesley who explains that they are in a facility used by the Travelers to train their field agents, the Supervisors, who work in other time periods. Wesley guesses that this one is mimicking Earth in 1968 which is proven by a newspaper with a headline about the launch of Apollo 7. Gwyn orders Wesley to focus, asking if they're safe from the Loom. Wesley reassures her that ever since the other Travelers fled the prime universe, nobody uses this part of the ziggurat anymore and the temple's designed to keep the Loom out. However, when Gwyn turns off the record player, the Loom can be heard moving close by.

Wesley decides that they'll wait the Loom out and then sneak up to the vault so that he can finish his calculations. Wesley can't just open a doorway using his powers because the Loom have those same abilities. Their temporal stabilizers resist the Loom's abilities, but the group still has to survive. Dal R'El suggests fighting them, but Wesley warns him that "you don't get it. There is no fighting them. They manipulate time itself. They don't just consume you. They completely erase the fact that you ever existed. Every memory anyone ever had of you is gone. And the only way to stop the Loom from devouring us and our dying universe is for you to find Chakotay and return the Protostar to its rightful place."

The USS Voyager-A approaches the planet and Commander Tysess prepares an away team in the ship's shuttle bay. Tysess informs Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway that they're nearly ready, but there's strange lifeforms on the planet which both Tysess and Janeway deduce is likely the temporal entity that had infiltrated Voyager. The Doctor insists upon the away team bringing along his newly refined temporal discriminators in case time gets unusual on the planet. Having overheard the conversation, Maj'el asks to join the mission, much to the surprise of Zeph and Grom. Maj'el argues that with life signs difficult to detect on the surface and her telepathic link to Zero, she is the best choice to find them. Although Janeway is reluctant to send a cadet into danger, Tysess backs her up and Janeway finally agrees.

The away team beams into the ziggurat and begins their search for the Infinity crew. Maj'el detects a presence in the ziggurat, one that is faint but alive which she believes to be the crew while Tysess' tricorder detects the exact same thing. In the main area, the away team is attacked by a Loom which freezes time and consumes Ensign Middleton. Tysess manages to activate his armband just in time and before he can completely freeze and activates Maj'el's. Tysess throws a photon grenade and he and Maj'el quickly flee from the creature before it can get them too. Tysess contacts Voyager for an emergency beam out, but Maj'el protests that they need to find Zero and the others. However, Tysess tells her that they are no match for the Loom and his duty is to protect her now. While it's hard, sometimes part of command is making the hard decisions, something that Maj'el agrees is a logical conclusion. However, as they begin to beam out, Maj'el removes her combadge, resulting in Tysess beaming out without her.

On Voyager, Tysess and Maj'el's combadge appear in the transporter room. Janeway explains that he was the only one that they could bring up. Tysess wants to go back for Maj'el, reporting that the creatures were lying in wait, and he had barely escaped after engaging his armband. However, neither Janeway nor The Doctor know who he's talking about when Tysess mentions Middleton, nor does The Doctor have any medical records of anybody by that name. Much to everyone's horror, Tysess realizes that the Loom can erase them from existence.

Act Two[]

Maj'el finds the vault and senses that Zero is close, but somewhere else while Zero senses her presence in return, much to their surprise. A Loom begins trying to break into the vault and Maj'el quickly seals the door shut. Maj'el manages to activate communications on Wesley's machine, causing the phone in the safe room to ring. Maj'el tells Zero that she's trapped, the creatures are coming for her, and she believes that the door won't hold. Wesley brings the Beta 5 computer out from its hiding place behind the bookshelf and views security footage of Maj'el's predicament. Dal orders Wesley to open the dimensional door and let Maj'el in, but Wesley is reluctant as doing so will expose their position and could lead the Loom right to them. As the Loom breaks in and approaches Maj'el , Wesley regretfully decides not to risk it despite Zero's protests. Unwilling to leave her to die, Dal uses the computer to open the doorway beneath her, dropping Maj'el right into Zero's arms.

Maj'el is surprised by Zero's new organic form, and Zero tells her -- quoting The Doctor -- that they have begun to grow beyond their programing which Maj'el seems to have also done. Dal teases Maj'el for making a rash decision to come after them on her own without Starfleet, which she returns by calling it a logical decision given she found them and Maj'el knows that logic is not paramount to Dal's leadership skills. "Hey, even the greatest captains gotta trust their gut sometimes. I should know," Dal quips. At that, Wesley nearly tells Dal something but stops himself before he can reveal the future. Having found them, the Loom begin to come in through the walls and Wesley leads the crew out through another secret passage hidden behind a shelf.

The gateway deposits the crew outside, and Wesley warns them that with the temple overrun, they'll never finish his work. The group tries to escape on the Infinity, only to find the Loom erasing it from existence, leaving them trapped and surrounded on all sides by the Loom. Just as it appears to be over, Voyager suddenly descends into the atmosphere above the ziggurat. "Stay away from my crew. Fire!" furiously orders Janeway from the bridge. Voyager opens fire on the Loom with its phasers, causing the Loom to attack the ship instead, saving Wesley and the others. Wesley tells the kids that Janeway probably just bought them their only shot to fix the universe and they race back inside to take advantage of the time that the admiral has bought them.

As the Loom fly towards the ship, Janeway orders her crew to use maximum shields and to keep firing until the recruits are clear. If they can't hail the Loom, then they'll get their point across the old-fashioned way. Unaffected by the phaser fire, a Loom enters through the front of the bridge and consumes the two crewmen at the helm and ops stations. Janeway orders red alert and with her crew's type 1 phasers having no more effect on the Loom than the ship's larger variety, calls for a retreat to Voyager's battle bridge. As they flee, two more crewmembers are consumed and Tysess reports hull breaches on Decks 4, 5, and 12, and half of their engineering staff is missing. They need more discriminators, or they'll all be erased forgotten but The Doctor, as he fits Zeph and Grom with armbands, warns Janeway that he doesn't have enough as The Doctor was making them for the away team only, not for every humanoid on Voyager. A Loom breaks into sickbay and Zeph fires on it, activating his armband just in time. Ordering the cadets to run, The Doctor tries to block the Loom with a Level 10 force field without any success and sprays the creature with a hypospray. The Loom knocks off The Doctor's mobile emitter, causing him to vanish and reappear on the holodeck.

As the ship shakes from the attack, another crewmember is consumed by the Loom and Tysess warns Janeway that they are losing the battle, and she has to do something. In the shuttle bay, Zeph and Grom find Noum hiding from the Loom. A Loom breaks in and Noum steps up to defend the cadets, before a shuttle parked behind them suddenly rises up with Janeway piloting it. Having matched the shuttle's weapons to the Loom's phase variance, Janeway is able to hurt the creature with the shuttle's phasers. Janeway challenges it to chase her before causing even more damage and flying away. The creature's shrieks of pain cause all of the Loom swarming Voyager to abandon their attack and follow Janeway's shuttle. Janeway uses a fancy move taught to her by Tom Paris against the Loom and fires a full spread of quantum torpedos at it. The shockwave sends Janeway's shuttle spinning out of control and the Loom crashes into the front of it. Janeway diverts all power to shields before the shuttle hits the ground. Tysess attempts to call the admiral with the good news that the creatures are retreating thanks to her actions, but he receives no response. Emerging from the wrecked shuttle and looking at the corpse of the Loom, now crushed beneath it, Janeway quips that "that used to be a lot easier," before heading inside of the ziggurat to find the others.

Act Three[]

In the vault, Wesley readies his machine, and orders Dal, Jankom Pog, Rok-Tahk, Murf, Zero and Gwyn to step under the modified Boreth time crystals near the Orb of Time so that he can get the quantum signature readings that he needs. Wesley explains that "hidden among billions of possible futures, there is a sequence of events. You six save Gwyn, find the Protostar, and fix the prime universe. This will tell me where you go next to make that happen." The hopes of everyone now rides on the Protostar crew and they take their places on the machine's pads. Wesley warns the crew not to look at the data stream or they might see their own future, and nobody likes spoilers. Energy streams connect from the machine to each of the crewmembers and Dal ignores Wesley's warnings, looking into the data stream. Dal sees a vision of his future self telling Gwyn that he had made a mistake and the captain's chair never belonged to Dal.

Wesley is unable to find the future where the temporal causality loop is closed and guesses that there must be some kind of a variable in their future that he hasn't accounted for. Gwyn notices that Dal is shaken up and Dal admits that he had looked and seen a future that he doesn't want. In order to calm a panicking Zero down, Maj'el quotes an old Vulcan proverb: "together we become greater than the sum of both of us." Hit by a sudden epiphany, Wesley has Maj'el stand beneath his machine and scans her. To Wesley's delight the scan reveals what he was missing the whole time: Maj'el is the missing seventh variable and she must go with the Protostar crew.

The machine opens a gateway to where the crew and Maj'el must go next, but before they can pass through it, the vault door opens and Janeway enters. Janeway is pleased to see that the kids are alright, but is less than pleased to see Wesley, especially when she realizes that he was the ghost that had lured everyone there. Rok explains that the universe is fraying, but Wesley knows a way to find the Protostar. Janeway wants to evacuate to Voyager and flee, but Wesley tells her that their only path to saving the future is if the seven enter the gate as it's the only way to save Gwyn, fix the prime universe and find Chakotay. Janeway is reluctant to allow her crew to be hurtled into uncharted peril again, but Wesley points out that it's the kids' decision, not his and not Janeway's.

As the Loom pound against the vault door, Janeway finally concedes, seeing how determined the kids are to finish the mission. Janeway tells them to go, placing her trust in them. Holding hands, the seven walk through the gateway together while Wesley promises to use all of his power to seal off the Loom for as long as he can. Wesley uses another gateway to transport Janeway to Voyager's bridge where she drops into the captain's chair without her weapon and with her full uniform back on, having removed part of it before leading the Loom away from the ship. The Loom break in, but Wesley concentrates and sends out a shockwave that temporarily banishes the creatures from the prime universe, making the time ziggurat and the planet vanish as well. A full multispectral scan run by The Doctor reveals that everything is gone without a trace, leaving Janeway wondering where the kids and Wesley have gone.

Protostar Found — The *Protostar* found on Ysida.

The seven awaken on a beach of red sand on an island surrounded by a vapor ocean of grey clouds on another planet. To their amazement, the USS Protostar rests on the beach in the distance, laying at an angle. The ship is rusting, weathered and dilapidated, having clearly been on the planet for a long time. Sitting atop the Protostar's saucer section watching the sunset is Captain Chakotay who has visibly aged, having a streak of grey hair, a mustache and a beard and he is wearing a torn old Starfleet uniform.

Memorable quotes[]

"Ah. Not bad. I'm more of a Miles Davis kinda guy. Have you ever heard of his record, "Kind of Blue"? It's this ancient earth recording. Oh, it is great for taking your mind off of impending doom. It is just fabulous."

- Wesley rambling

"Uh, excuse me. What is going on?!"
"For once, Jankom speaks for us all."
"A second ago, we're in a crazy temple running for our lives from time-eating monster things."
"Then all of a sudden, you dumped us in somebody's weird living room."

- Jankom, Zero, Dal, and Rok are confused

"Okay, first off, it's not weird, it's groovy. It's an old facility the Travelers used to train our field agents, the Supervisors, who work in other time periods. I would say that this one is mimicking, oh, okay, definitely Earth, um, 1968? Ha! Apollo 7 launches! I nailed it."
"Focus! Are we safe here from whatever those things are upstairs?"
"The Loom? Oh, um, right. Yeah. Yeah, we'll be fine. Listen, after the other Travelers fled our universe, nobody uses this hidden part of the ziggurat anymore. And the temple's designed to keep those things out. So, we are totally --" (Gwyn turns off the record)
"Shh, shh, guys"
[crashing, chittering]
"You were saying?"

- Wesley and Gwyn, discussing Wesley's hideout and how safe it truly is

"Okay. They moved on. Um, we need to make a new plan. Uh... All right. We're gonna wait 'em out. Then we all sneak up to the vault so I can finish my calculations."
"Why not open a door with your space-time-thought power?"
"Because the Loom have them too. These armbands can resist their abilities, but we still have to survive."
"There's gotta be a way to fight them."
"Dal, you don't get it. There is no fighting them. They manipulate time itself. They don't just consume you. They completely erase the fact that you ever existed. Every memory anyone ever had of you is gone. And the only way to stop the Loom from devouring us and our dying universe is for you to find Chakotay and return the Protostar to its rightful place."

- Wesley, Jankom, and Dal discuss the threat of the Loom and their options

"Permission to speak freely, Admiral?"
"What's on your mind, cadet?"
"I would like to join Commander Tysess to recover our missing crew."
"Maj'el, what are you doing?"
"Life signs will be difficult to detect on the surface. And I am the only one aboard Voyager with a telepathic link to Zero. Logically, I am our best choice to find them."
"I appreciate the concern. But while there is precedent for cadets on away missions, I'm not eager to send you into a dangerous situation."
"In truth, admiral, we need the help. I will protect her with my life. I vow by the blood of my ancestors at the Wall of Heroes."
"Well, I suppose I'll hold you to that, Mr. Tysess. Report to Transporter Room 4. Let's see you earn those pips, cadet."

- Maj'el, Janeway, Zeph, and Tysess discuss Maj'el's request to join the mission

"I know it's hard, cadet, but sometimes command means making the hard decisions."
"A logical conclusion, Commander."

- Tysess and Maj'el, before Maj'el removes her combadge during an emergency beam out, choosing to ignore orders and remain in the ziggurat

"One got Middleton."
"Who is Middleton?"
"Ensign Middleton on my away team. The creature consumed him somehow.
"I don't recall any Middleton on the mission."
"I have no medical records of any personnel by that name."
"No, he was with me. I know it. Unless -- those things. They can erase us from existence?"

- Tysess, Janeway, and The Doctor learn the devastating power of the Loom

"No, no, this isn't part of the plan!"
"Who cares, Crusher? Pop open that dimensional door and let her in."
"It's not that easy. The second I do that we expose our position. It could lead the Loom right to us!"
"Oh, sure, and pretend we didn't just hear her last words!"
"No! But =- I need time to think."

- Wesley, Dal, and Jankom argue about saving Maj'el

"I will not leave her behind!"
"I am so sorry. I can't risk it."
"Well, I can!"

- Zero, Wesley, and Dal as Dal takes action against Wesley's wishes

"I am confused."
"As are we all. But it will be all right now. You're with us."
"Zero? You look so -- you have--"
"Begun to grow beyond my programming, in the words of the good doctor -- as have you, it seems."

- Maj'el is surprised by Zero's new form

"Here by yourself, no Starfleet in sight? Seems like a rash decision."
"Or a rational one, given I found you. I know logic is not paramount to your leadership skills."
"Hey, even the greatest captains gotta trust their gut sometimes. I should know."
"Actually, I -- um, never mind. You'll find out."

- Dal and Maj'el tease each other with Wesley hinting at the future

"How many secret passages does this place have?"
"It's a trans-dimensional time ziggurat, so there's a lot, okay?"

- Dal and Wesley as the crew makes their escape

"Stay away from my crew. FIRE!"

- Janeway to the rescue

"Move! Before we're fried and eaten!"
"What about Janeway?"
"I'm pretty sure she just bought us our only shot to fix the universe."
"So, let's not waste it."

- Dal, Rok, Wesley and Gwyn as the crew takes advantage of the opening that Janeway has bought them

"Maximum shields. Keep firing until the recruits are clear. If we can't hail these things, then we get our point across the old-fashioned way."

- Janeway to her crew

"Admiral, we have a problem here. I was making armbands for the away team. Not every humanoid on Voyager. I'm a doctor, not an assembly line."

- The Doctor is overwhelmed

"Run cadets -- now! Take twenty milligrams of vengeance, you other-worldly tyrant!"

- The Doctor, attacking a Loom with a hypospray

"Counselor Noum?"
"Uh, self-preservation is a virtue."

- Zeph finds Counselor Noum hiding

"Think you can board our ship without consequences?"

- Counselor Noum, shielding the cadets Zeph and Grom

"Want my ship? You go through me. You don't like it when I match my weapons to your phase variance? Then come get me, and tell your friends."

- Janeway attacks the Loom

"Tom Paris taught me that one, but this one's my own. Computer, quantum torpedoes, full spread."

- Janeway does some fancy flying

"That used to be a lot easier."

- Janeway's getting a little too old for this

"Now, if you six would step under the modified Boreth crystals near the Orb of Time, I can get the quantum signature readings I need."
"And this crazy machine will save everyone how, exactly?"
"It's not the machine, Dal. It's us."
"Hidden among billions of possible futures, there is a sequence of events. You six save Gwyn, find the Protostar, and fix the prime universe. This will tell me where you go next to make that happen."
"Fascinating. All our hopes now ride on them."
"We came all this way. Now or never."

- Wesley, Dal, Rok-Tahk, Maj'el, and Gwyn prepare to use Wesley's machine

"Fine. But Jankom's still not sure this won't scramble his genes like a Jibalian omelette."
"Oh, it's perfectly safe. Just don't look at the data stream or you might see your own future."
"Wait, what?"
"Nobody likes spoilers."

- Wesley and Jankom talk about the machine's dangers

"I made a mistake, Gwyn. That chair never belonged to me."

- Dal catches a glimpse of his own future

"Oh my, this is all so much. My heart is racing. Is yours? I'm afraid, so terribly afraid."
"Do not fear. There is an old Vulcan proverb. Together we become greater than the sum of both of us. Let my strength become yours."

- Zero is calmed down by Maj'el

"Ha ha! Of course! Oh, it was right in front of me the whole time, I just didn't look. The missing variable was you. It was never six. It's seven. You have to go with them."
"Go where?"
"Exactly where you need to be."

- Wesley discovers that Maj'el is a part of the team

"It's you. All of you. You're alive. And you're Wesley Crusher?"
"Hey, Admiral Janeway. I predicted you might show up."
"Why are you here?"
"Because the universe is fraying, and Wesley knows a way to find the Protostar, or he thought he did."
"It was you. You were the ghost who lured them here."
"Though I prefer the term "omnitemporal Traveler" to ghost."

- Janeway is less than pleased to see Wesley as Rok explains what's going on

"We need to evacuate to Voyager and warp out of here immediately."
"Look, respectfully, Admiral, the only path left to saving our future is if the seven of them enter that gate."
"Whatever you think is happening here, Mr. Crusher, I still have a duty to protect my crew. And I won't let them be hurled into uncharted peril again."
"It's not our call to make."

- Janeway argues with Wesley over their next course of action

"Time's up. Listen, I can keep them at bay, but you have to go through that gate. It is the only way to save Gwyn, fix the prime universe, and find Chakotay."
"Go. I'm trusting you."

- Wesley gets Janeway to trust the kids

"Space. Time. Thought."

- Wesley uses his powers to banish the Loom temporarily

"They're gone without a trace."
"To where?"

- The Doctor and Janeway can't find any sign of the kids or Wesley

"Is that --"
"Woah!"

- Dal, Jankom, Rok, Gwyn, Murf, Zero, and Maj'el spot the Protostar

Background information[]

Continuity[]

The hideout in the time ziggurat is a replica of Gary Seven's office on Earth in 1968. (TOS: "Assignment: Earth")
Wesley uses the Orb of Time from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and modified time crystals from Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds in his machine.
Janeway uses a fancy flight maneuver against the Loom she says that was taught to her by Tom Paris.
Janeway's otherwise-unexplained change of costume (to no jacket) is presumably a reference to VOY: "Macrocosm".

Releases[]

Like the rest of the second season, it was first released on France.tv (a French public television's streaming service) as well as on AppleTV+ France on 22 March 2024, well in advance of the Netflix release in the United States.

Links and references[]

Cast[]

And

Previous episode:

"The Devourer of All Things, Part I"

Star Trek: Prodigy

Season 2

Next episode:

"Last Flight of the Protostar, Part I"