Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
The season opens with Voyager in Kazon hands and its crew stranded on a barren world. On the planet, Janeway and Chakotay lead separate groups through dangerous terrain and conflict with the local inhabitants; Paris coordinates with the Doctor and Suder, who remain aboard ship, to undermine the Kazon takeover. The Doctor reveals that Culluh, not Chakotay, fathered Seska’s baby. Suder sacrifices himself during the effort to retake Voyager, and Paris brings Talaxian help. The ship returns for the stranded crew, Seska is killed in the confrontation, and the Kazon threat that drove the first two seasons ends.
With the crew reunited, the journey resumes through encounters that test the ship and its people, including a trip to 1990s Earth and Kes’s experience of moving backward through her own life. Her visions include a possible future in which Voyager is caught in a devastating conflict, but the episode returns her to the present before the season-ending Borg encounter. As Voyager approaches Borg space, scans show the Collective losing a war against Species 8472, whose attack also infects Harry Kim.
At the season’s end, Janeway proposes a temporary alliance with the Borg, offering the Doctor’s modified nanoprobes in exchange for safe passage through Borg territory. Voyager travels to a Borg-controlled world and begins negotiations, but Species 8472 attacks before terms are settled and destroys the planet. The Borg cube escapes with Voyager in tow, carrying the ship away from the devastation. The crew has neither completed the alliance nor crossed Borg space, and the danger from Species 8472 remains unresolved as the season closes.