Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Season 6 opens in the middle of the Equinox crisis. Voyager pursues Ransom’s damaged ship while the aliens attack both crews; Ransom eventually turns against his mutinous first officer, transfers the surviving Equinox crew to Voyager, and steers his own ship away before its destruction. The aliens withdraw, Janeway strips the surviving officers of rank, and she restores Chakotay to his post. The Doctor returns from the Equinox with his ethical safeguards restored.
A major change in the crew’s long isolation comes when Lieutenant Reginald Barclay’s Pathfinder project establishes a brief two-way link between Voyager and Starfleet. Janeway exchanges messages with Admiral Paris, and Tom hears his father’s voice for the first time since the ship disappeared. The link gives the crew proof that Starfleet is still trying to reach them and provides new communications technology to study. Meanwhile Seven continues learning to relate to others: she discovers that she once shared a romance with Axum inside the Borg’s private Unimatrix Zero, though she has no waking memory of it.
Janeway decides to help the drones who retain their individuality inside Unimatrix Zero and resist the Borg Queen. She, Tuvok, and B’Elanna Torres board a Borg tactical cube to plant a virus in the Collective’s central plexus, which is intended to restore the drones’ individual memories. They are assimilated during the infiltration, while Chakotay orders Voyager to withdraw and leaves them inside the Collective. The cliffhanger ends before the virus’s fate is known and carries directly into the seventh season’s opening episode.