Captain Janeway reminisces about her ancestor Shannon O'Donnel, the first of her family's long line of explorers and one who helped build the Millennium Gate on Earth. As Janeway relates the story, the episode revisits the town of Portage Creek on New Year's Eve 1999, as Shannon O'Donnel (played by Kate Mulgrew) nears the deadline to convince the town's last holdout, local bookstore owner Henry Janeway, to approve the building of massive, half a mile high Milliennium Gate, a model for the first colony on Mars.
