Dal repeatedly fails a holodeck captaincy test while Gwyn decodes a hidden enemy message.
A proto-warp jump has carried the Protostar far from its pursuers, and Janeway introduces the crew to the holodeck. Dal throws himself into the Kobayashi Maru, Starfleet's test of command, running it again and again with a simulated bridge crew of legendary officers including Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Odo and Beverly Crusher. He fails every time, until he learns the scenario is designed to be unwinnable and that a good captain must accept situations beyond his control.
While Dal chases a victory, Gwyn uses her gift for languages to decode a section of Janeway's memory banks and discovers that the Protostar's original crew was boarded by an unknown enemy, an early clue to the ship's hidden past. The legacy officers were voiced using archival recordings of their original actors, with Gates McFadden voicing Crusher herself. Aaron J. Waltke wrote the episode and Alan Wan directed.