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'Alice' is an episode of '', the fifth episode of the sixth season.

Contents

Plot

Notes

External links

Plot

''Voyager'' finds an alien junkyard and trades for supplies with the junk-dealer, Abaddon. Tom Paris discovers a rusty old shuttle in the yard and convinces his superiors to let him bring it aboard and restore it, just as he has been doing with old cars on the holodeck as a hobby. He discovers that the shuttle is equipped with a neural interface. It reads and communicates directly with its pilot's mind, giving it instantaneous maneuverability. He tries out the interface, and the ship makes a record of his brain patterns.
As time goes on Tom becomes more and more obsessive about restoring and caring for his new shuttle, which he has named ''Alice''. He can even hear "her" speaking to him in his mind. His behavior becomes more and more strange. He wants to spend time with ''Alice'' and no one else, even his girlfriend, B'Elanna Torres, who is distressed about Tom's obsession. He begins to neglect his appearance and duties looking more tired and frantic as time goes on, and he wears a spacesuit designed for use with ''Alice'' instead of his ''Voyager'' uniform. When B'Elanna sneaks aboard ''Alice'' to see what's drawing Tom there so strongly, the ship springs to life, traps her inside, and shuts off life support.
Tom gets B'Elanna out of the shuttle before she is seriously injured, but soon after that he loses control of his own behavior. He boards ''Alice'' and speeds away from ''Voyager'' with her. They head for a space anomaly called a particle fountain. Captain Janeway realizes they cannot fire on ''Alice'' because Tom is neurally linked to her and damage to the ship would kill him. B'Elanna taps into the neural interface from ''Voyager'' and speaks to Tom, her voice appearing in his thoughts alongside that of ''Alice''. She pleads with him to hang on to her instead of the shuttle. Tuvok is able to sever the neural link between Tom and ''Alice'', and the crew beams him away just as the shuttle is destroyed in the particle fountain.

Notes

★ This episode has obvious parallels to Stephen King's ''Christine'' .

★ 'Alice' refers to the ''particle fountain'' as "home", but it is never explained what she means by this since she is apparently nothing more than a program. She could have been an alien who originally came from the particle fountain, but nothing ever indicates this.

External links

★ Episode summary from Startrek.com