Macrocosm ( episode ) When viruses grow to a meter in length and begin attacking the crew of " Voyager " , Captain Janeway and The Doctor must retake the ship . Summary . Teaser . After returning from a difficult first contact and trade mission with the Tak Tak , Captain Janeway and Neelix return to " Voyager " on a shuttle . The captain had unintentionally insulted the Tak Tak out of her habit of putting her hands on her hips , which happens to be one of the worst insults in Tak Tak culture . Fortunately , Neelix was able to resolve the situation . Janeway says that she might have to promote Neelix from morale officer to ambassador , while Neelix is thrilled at the idea of being an ambassador . The shuttle arrives at the rendezvous coordinates , but " Voyager " is nowhere to be seen . Long - range sensors indicates that " Voyager " is over a light - year away and the ship appears to be adrift in space . After the shuttle arrives at " < nowiki > Voyager ' s < / nowiki > " position while hail ing the ship a number of times to no avail , they land the shuttle , and attempt to investigate the problem . Act One . Moving around the ship , they discover that the crew are nowhere to be seen and still no one is responding on the communication systems . They are also disturbed to find tools where a crew member was performing maintenance , meaning that he or she simply dropped what they were doing and ran . They detect a signal coming from Ensign Wildman ' s quarters , only to find no sign of either Wildman or her daughter and the signal coming from her desktop monitor which is playing Neelix ' s " Good Morning , Voyager " program ( the transmission automatically set to repeat if not shut off ) . Janeway reasons from the molecular decay in the food on the table that whatever happened to the crew occurred eleven hours earlier . Suddenly the two hear a buzz in the corridor . They emerge just in time to see the shadow of something . They hear a loud crash and find a hole punched in a transporter pad , a hole with slime in it . Suddenly " Voyager " ' s main power shuts down , and , with nothing venting it , the heat from the warp engines starts to heat up the ship . Now armed with phaser s , they both head in the direction of the bridge . However , while traveling in a turbolift , a tendril suddenly bursts through the bulkhead and squirts Neelix with some kind of fluid . The two abandon the turbolift and attempt to reach the bridge through a Jefferies tube s and Neelix begins to feel very ill . Janeway turns her back for a few seconds and something begins to approach the Talaxian . Janeway hears a scream and when she returns to the place she left Neelix , she is horrified to find him gone . Act Two . Now alone , Janeway decides to arm and prepare herself before going any further and goes to the weapons locker in engineering , removes her uniform jacket and her undershirt ( to cope with the rising temperature ) , and equips herself with a phaser rifle , a knife , and other tools . She heads for the bridge and is able send a distress call before accessing internal sensor s , which shows her the crew is in the mess hall and the cargo bay s . While she is checking the sensors , however , a small organism about the size of a house fly slowly comes toward her unnoticed and stings her left upper arm . Janeway slaps at the sting on reflex and quickly addresses it . She decides to head to the mess hall . In the mess hall , Janeway finds a large number of the crew all grouped together , including Commander Chakotay and Ensign Harry Kim , unconscious . Janeway notices some sort of growth on the side of Chakotay ' s neck , from which more of the small organisms exit . Suddenly , Janeway is attacked by a large , multi - tendriled creature . She is able to destroy it , but is now beginning to feel the same symptoms that Neelix felt earlier . Janeway heads for sickbay . When she finally pries the doors open , The Doctor sticks a phaser at her chin before realizing who it is . Act Three . While performing minor surgery on Janeway ' s cracked ribs ( sustained while destroying the creature in the mess hall ) , The Doctor explains what happened while she and Neelix were away . " Voyager " received a distress call from a Garan mining colony located on a planet three hours away . The alien s had suffered some sort of disease that had incapacitated almost their entire population . The Doctor suggested to Commander Chakotay that he go down and assess the situation , partially because he was the only crewmember who would be immune to the disease but also because he was eager to try out his new mobile emitter on his first actual away mission . Chakotay agreed to send him , warning The Doctor to be careful as if the emitter is damaged or destroyed then his program could be lost . The Doctor beamed down to the planet ' s surface and attempted to heal the aliens . Once with the aliens , he discovered that they were being attacked by a unique form of virus that could use its victim ' s own growth tissues to increase in size so much they could be seen with the naked eye – something totally new and very dangerous . Having discovered that there was nothing he could do for them without his lab , The Doctor returned to the ship with only his medical tricorder data – as Chakotay refused to have a viral sample brought on board – and following decontamination procedures purged a few of the viruses that were captured in the transporter ' s bio - filter on his beam up , not realizing that one of the macrovirus es had enough time between the beam up and the purge to escape the transporter system into an adjacent system . While The Doctor was working on the antigen , Lieutenant jg B ' Elanna Torres discovered that one of the bio - neural gel pack s in the mess hall had become infected and it subsequently burst all over her hand , releasing the virus . Act Four . The Doctor finishes surgery on Janeway before confirming that she , too , has been infected by the macrovirus . Janeway now can serve as a test subject for his newly - completed ( but untested on live subjects ) antigen on her . During , he continues explaining what happened after Torres was exposed to the virus . It wasn ' t long before the crewmembers in the mess hall were seriously ill , sparking a Level 4 quarantine on deck 2 . The Doctor took a specimen for examination and testing of the antigen , but , as Kes studies it , it soon gave off one of the organisms , forcing him to erect a force field around the microscope . Meanwhile , Thomas Paris notices that Torres now has an orifice on her neck giving off more of the virus and warns The Doctor . The Doctor says he ' s close to forming an antigen , but the virus has now grown much larger and testing the force field . He makes his first test of the antigen , allowing it to come to him . Fortunately , it works and it drops dead . Even though he had now completed the antidote , however , the crew had gotten much worse . Further , there were multiple viruses in the mess hall he tried to inoculate Torres . Attracted to his mobile emitter , they attacked it , forcing The Doctor under a table . Before long , the macroviruses broke out of deck 2 and overwhelmed the ship . Now , The Doctor explains to Janeway he is unable to leave sickbay as the virus attacks his emitter without fail , though now they can work together . Suddenly , several macroviruses attempt to break through the door to sickbay . Act Five . The antigen is a success – Janeway has now been cured of the virus . They decide to distribute the antidote in gaseous form using the environmental systems . Janeway and The Doctor take separate routes to the environmental controls on deck 12 . However , the virus attacks The Doctor ' s emitter again and he is forced to take refuge in a shuttlecraft in the shuttlebay . Suddenly , the ship is rocked by fire from an approaching starship . The Tak Tak consul Janeway had been speaking to recently begins to fire on " Voyager " . Janeway hails the Tak Tak vessel and demands to know why he had attacked " Voyager " . He explains that he had discovered that " Voyager " was infected with the macrovirus and he has orders to " purify " them at all costs . He also tells her that he has already " purified " the Garan mining colony by destroying them . He then explains that the Tak Tak has had problems with this virus before , but never found a cure , and that they have to destroy " Voyager " to prevent the virus from spreading . Janeway pleads with the Tak Tak to stop firing on her ship , mentioning that a cure has been developed and she is willing to share it with them after the crew is cured . He agrees , skeptically , but gives her only one hour to administer the cure . However , main power is off all over the ship and with the Tak Tak weapons fire having disabled the environmental systems , the only things working are items with independent power systems like the shuttlecraft , life support and holodeck s . Janeway remembers that the virus is attracted to infrared signatures and lures all the viruses to the holodeck where Janeway has programmed the holo - character s in the Paxau Resort holoprogram to react to the virus infection . With the way clear , The Doctor rushes off to administer the antigen to the crew . Janeway then throws an antigen bomb into the holodeck , destroying it and the virus . The Tak Tak are appeased by her solution and end their attack as Janeway promises to share the antidote with them . The crew is swiftly returned to full health and " Voyager " resumes on her course . Janeway is working on a painting in her ready room while Chakotay is updating her on the ship ' s repair status . Janeway decides to allow the crew extended rest and relaxation time , and Chakotay invites her to join him and a few of the crew members to go skiing on holodeck . Janeway declines , saying that she has had enough of a workout for the time being . Memorable quotes . " " I may never put my hands on my hips again . " " " " You had no way of knowing you were making one of the worst insults possible . " " " " Grab a phaser , Ambassador . We ' re going to get some answers . " " " " You ' ve got a high fever , fluid in your lungs . " " " " Lung . " " " " As for the larger versions of the virus – what I have termed the macrovirus – I would suggest a flyswatter . " " " " Well . . . one down , ten billion to go . " " " " The heating array overloaded . It incinerated a twelve - kilo pot roast and all the food replicators went offline . " " " " Hmm , looks delicious . " " " " What ' s that ? " " " " You don ' t want to know . . . " " " " We ' ll be right with you . . . " " " " I ' ve been studying the ship ' s infrastructure and I ' m familiar with most of it , but how do I get there from here ? " " " " Jefferies tube 11 , take a left to section 31 and straight down past the tractor beam emitter until you hit deck 10 . Get out of section 3 and follow the corridor all the way around until . . . " " " " . . . until I hit the shuttle bay . Then I crawl through access port 9 , go past three air locks and then two decks down . Environmental control is at the end of the hall . Now I remember ! . . . who designed this ship anyway ? ! ? " " " " Good health . " " ( after terminating communication ) " " Good health . " " Links and references . References . ambassador ; American Sign Language ; amino acid ; antigen ; antigen bomb ; away mission ; biocontainment field ; bioelectric interference ; biofilter ; dispersal node ; dizziness ; Celsius ; centimeter ; chromolinguistics ; consul ; defense perimeter ; Delta Quadrant ; dermal regenerator ; DNA ; environmental control s ; emergency medical kit ; epidemic ; extensor muscle ; Federation ; flyswatter ; Forgive and forget ; Gallagher ; Garan ; gestural idiom ; gesture ; glandular tissue ; " Good Morning , " Voyager " " ; granite ; Growth hormone ; guinea pig ; heatwave ; hip ; holodeck ; immunization ; Indiana ; infrared radiation ; inoculation ; insect repellent ; instinct ; insult ; internal sensor s ; intruder alert ; Jefferies tube ; ; Klingon s ; Ktarian ; lavafly ; level 3 force field ; level 4 quarantine ; Leyron ; lung ; macrovirus ; main computer ; maximum warp ; mess hall ; meter ; micron ; millimeter ; mucilaginous compound ; myelin regenerator ; native ; Non - humanoid ; pneumatic conduit ; pot roast ; power coupling ; protein ; pyroclastic ; red alert ; replicator ; rib ; Rinax marshlands ; Rinax ; Sector 38 ; skiing ; stomach ; synthetic antigen ; Tak Tak ; Tak Tak homeworld ; Tak Tak starship ; time index ; tractor beam emitter ; transporter buffer ; tricorder ; turbolift ; turboshaft ; warning buoy ; ;