[VOY] Infinite Regress: The Vinicullum is infected with a ... VIRUS!!

[Norman Doering]

Voyager's "Infinite Regress"
SPOILERS
The Vinicullum has been infected by a.... VIRUS!
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This week, a virus invades a Borg Vinicullum and
Seven suffers a curiously Borgish form of multiple
personality disorder. Next week B'Elanna get's a bear
hug from a big buggy parasite. All those words that
give you the hee-bee-gee-bees and make your skin crawl
when you contemplate them; virus, parasite, cancer,
schizophrenia, madness, ... and the flukeworm man is
waiting for you in that out-house too... All those
invisible hidden forms of destructive chaos that
might be lurking beneath the surface of our delusional
god given order, they take on new meanings in TV scifi.
..
Like it or not, whether it makes you gag or not, the
word "virus" on Star Trek has taken on the new
metaphoric meaning of "parasitic, invasive information
replicator," that one aspect that computer virii and
biological virii have in common. It rarely means a tiny
protein coat, smaller than a cell, carrying DNA or RNA.
It's been going on for some time; The holodoc once caught
a cold from a "computer virus," and then there was the
that big virus in Voyager's "Macrocosom" that infected
people, flew out a hole in the victim's neck, and then
grew up into a four foot by two foot modernist art deco
sculpture. On a Next Generation episode Weseley Crusher
got an exotic flu from a holodeck generated virus. I'm
sure you could think of more examples if you're a Trek
fan and you search your memory.
..
Of course, it's quite absurd to be a stick-up-your-[orifice
censored] purist and insist that the word "virus" has to be
used in a taxonomically correct way any time it's used. We
don't do that in common speech and even biologists know
there is a different context for popular use, however, one
must wonder if these various imagined scifi virii do in
fact deserve their own "kingdom" since no mere clade could
contain them. Scifi TV is, after all, a different kind of
"reality" that works according to a different set of laws
and the real work taxonomy just doesn't work well there.
Scifi TV is actually a universe ruled by the laws of
metaphor rather than the laws of physics. You could have
various phylum, classes, orders and species, a different
phyla for virii that infect machines (like the vinicullum),
one for computer virii and another phyla for macro-virii
that become large flying art deco sculptures. In that way
you could claim a more than metaphoric use of the word
every time it gets used.
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I've digressed, back to the show now.
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In this episode my favorite character, Seven of Nine, gets
mind melded by my second favorite character, Tuvok. What
a delight, Tuvok even had more than two lines. I hope they
like it and do it more often. I think those two are in
love and they don't know it yet. They have so much in
common, contempt for the syrupy emotional sentimentality
that Star Trek so often endorses, a clear sense of
themselves, pride in what they are and physical and
emotional superiorities. How could it not happen? Eventually
they must fall into a deep passionate logic with each other.
..
It starts with a Teaser where Seven starts acting mighty
strange, getting up from her regeneration for a midnight
snack and eating with the table manners of Klingon that
hasn't been house broken. Later, Seven now back to her
old self, we see Naomi Wildman following behind Seven
taking notes. Seven catches her and asks the sub-unit of
Ensign Samantha Wildman why. Naomi tells her that she's
studying Seven in order to learn how to be perfect because
she's seeking the currently non-existing position of
Captain's Assistant. Wasn't that cute? Think again, it's
only the first step in Naomi's diabolical plan, for the
next step would be the captaincy itself and then the
assimilation of everyone on Voyager for she is really
a true believer in the Borg religion of perfection.
..
Seven of course approves and says; "There are many on this
crew that would benefit from your example." Isn't that
similar to something Tuvok said to Harry when Harry wanted
to learn how to deconstruct his "love" for a holodeck
character? I'm glad Seven approves and thinks more people
should study her perfection because... we do, we do.
However, Seven also tells Naomi that she needs to spend
some time in a Borg maturation chamber before her neural
matrix is mature enough to learn. Must be where Seven
spent her own childhood.
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Suddenly, Seven changes personalities again, becoming
something like a valley girl with a smile that could light
up Broadway. Naomi, though surprised, doesn't even know
there's something wrong and they go off and play some
children's board game while they talk. It was an excellent
use of Naomi, and it wasn't too much. Some people have
been suggesting Naomi would get over used -- well, I don't
consider this over used. It was quite effective.
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Next time it happens, Seven is in engineering and becomes
a male Klingon personality that starts trying to seduce
B'Elanna, even gives Torres a love bite. Ryan changes her
voice, expression, body language and personality with fluid
ease. I was impressed. Another neat little trick was that
every reflective surface actually was altered to reflect
the person Seven was manifesting so we knew what they looked
like. This horny Klingon gets Seven in enough trouble to
get her sent to sickbay where the Doc diagnoses her multiple
personality disorder and a devises a temporary technobabble
fix that fits to Seven's neck like a Frankenstein bolt and
has little blinking lights in it.
..
Some of the Seven personality change scenes had some real
pathos; Seven takes on the personality of a mother looking
for her son who was lost at the battle of Wolf (three
something) and Janeway tries to console her, but we know
the mother has been assimilated and her son is probably
dead. We feel sorry for all those nice people that were
assimilated, a state, according to Picard, which is worse
than death. I don't think it is worse than death myself,
not after we learn that the Borg collect the neural
patterns of billions of individuals and retain them. They
may in fact be giving their "victims" a form of
immortality, for we do have to ask ourselves why they
would bother. I wonder if Seven could resurrect any of
those personalities as a holographic person on the
holodeck?
..
It turns out that what's causing Seven's problem is
something called a "Vinicullum," (or something like that),
which is a thing, with Borg-green internal lighting, at
the heart of every Borg cube that helps to join all the
minds into a collective. The Vinicullum is transmitting
subspace signals to Seven that cause her to "regress"
into various personalities the Borg assimilated and stored
in Seven's neural implants. It seems there are fragments
of a Borg cube floating in space, and the Vinicullum is
part of the debris feild. They can't destroy it, or run
away from it. They need to take the Vinicullum off line
in order to keep seven from being lost to her "voices."
In order to do that, they need to take it into the ship.
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That's when we learn that the Vinicullum is infected with
a virus, a synthetic engineered virus designed by aliens,
species six thousand and something, as revenge against the
Borg.
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They got desperate and created the virus, infected some
of their people with it who got assimilated on purpose. But
these aliens seem organic humanoid aliens, yet the virus
infects a machine too. "How can that be?" asked B'Elanna.
A biological virus that infects organic tissue where it
invades the cells and injects DNA moves and propagates
to a specific non-living object and alters its function.
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Well, it is, you don't need to know how -- just why.
Perhaps there are organic cells in the Vinicullum, Borg are
cybernetic and made of both organic and inorganic parts.
Perhaps the virus was never the biological type that we know
of and the aliens trying to infect the Borg carried it in
their own cybernetic implants. Perhaps the virus transmitted
itself through subspace in the form of an abstract
metaphoric concept and infected the machine as a viral meme,
similar to the viral meme of individual identity Picard
introduced into the Borg in "I, Borg" and which also failed
to destroy them. Once the virus infected the Vinicullum it
caused the Borg to destroy their own ship.
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B'Elanna tries to take the Vinicullum off line but it's
adapting fast and resists her efforts. So, Voyager seeks
and meets up with the new aliens hopeing they might be
able to cure their own designed infection, instead they
demand that Voyager return the Vinicullum to the place
they found it so the Borg will come back, pick it up, and
infect another cube. Janeway refuses and a short battle
commences. In the meantime, Tuvok has started a mind-meld
with Seven in order to help her. Voyager rocks, the shields
start dropping and B'Elanna tries to take the Vinicullum off
line. A typical Voyager drama ploy. We shift between
surrealistic scenes of Tuvok fighting with a crowd of
Seven's inner personalities, consoles blowing up and B'Elanna
trying to cut power to the Vinicullum and a
space battle. At the last minute, B'Elanna succeeds,
Janeway orders the Vinicullum transported out, The
personalities in Seven's mindscape vanish and the aliens
cease fire. Of course, there are the typical plot device
problems and at first its too hard to bring off line but
at the end of the episode they get it off line in a few
minutes while under fire, systems going down, shields down
to whatever percent.
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