The crew finds Chakotay stranded for a decade on Ysida and works to restore his resolve.
The cadets discover that the Protostar has been stranded on the planet Ysida for ten years. A broken Chakotay has ejected its antimatter and proto-core, leaving the ship on emergency power, and the holographic Janeway explains that losing his crew shattered him, with the disappearance of his first officer Adreek the final blow. When Dal goes missing in a storm, Chakotay springs back into action to find him.
After escaping giant eels, the search party finds Dal, along with Adreek's body and the antimatter Adreek had been gathering. Restored to purpose, Chakotay agrees to try to launch the Protostar and help fix the paradox. The episode finally explains what became of Chakotay after he vanished before the series began, and it brings together the two captains of the Protostar, the veteran who lost his crew and the young cadet who found the ship years later. Diandra Pendleton-Thompson wrote the episode.