Voyager pretty much missed The Dominion War by being stuck thousands of light years away from Federation space. If the caretaker had not brought Voyager and the Maquis ship across the galaxy then what do you see happening to the crews if they'd been around during the war?
Chakotay and company would've been killed by the Jem'Hadar when Cardassia joined the Dominion before the war even started. Tom Paris probably would've gotten out of prison in a few months and lived his life bottle to bottle until he gets killed pointlessly in some conflict. Voyager would be one ship among many, and it's pretty much a coin flip if they made it or not.
Synthehol: The hard drink of choice at the kiddies table. This message brought to you by Montgomery Scott, alcohol connoisseur and Harry Kim, poster boy for synthehol.
Hey! I wonder if there is an age limit for synthehol? I always imagined it got you slightly tipsy but that the effect wore off within a few moments or big breaths, like nitrous oxide.
Exactly what I was going to say. Harry Kim wouldn't have stayed as green for as long as he did if he'd had to fight in the Dominion war.
No he wouldn't. He would spend the war comfortably serving a life sentence in a Cardassian labor camp. Death is not a punishment for Harry Kim, it's a release.
Janeway captures Chakotay, Chakotay rats out Eddington, the Maquis Folds, the Cardassians never join the Dominion. Janeway stays attached to DS9, Janeway and Sisko start dating, Sisko never becomes a prophet, the paradox destroys the universe. Kim marries Libby, has children and is promoted to Captain by the time he is 25. Paris dies of a drug over dose. Neelix finds someone age appropriate, meanwhile Kes eventually dies as a kazon sexslave/barwench bitter and twisted, of old age. Tuvok gets his own ship. The Doctor is turned on for a total of 9 hours, before he's replced by the EMH Mark II.
Honestly, I find this little thought experiment quite fascinating. The devil is in the details, as always, but ultimately I think Voyager would not have been a remarkable part of the Dominion War. It was still a smaller vessel after all. Those unlimited torpedoes might have come in handy though
Neelix continues his remarkable life of space garbageman, Kes is a Kazon slave for a few years and of course Seven remains Borg for the rest of her life. The Doctor would comment but those lazy mark I emh's aren't producing enough dilithium. Happy endings all around.
Sisko destroys Chakotay's ship thinking Eddington is on board. Fooled once again, Sisko! The Voyager is destroyed in the battle with the borg at the beginning of First Contact. Worf attempts to save Voyager with his "tough little ship," but no luck. The Voyager's presence slightly delays the Enterprise-E from entering the temporal vortex after the borg and things are thrown off ever so slightly. As a result, Tom Paris' ancestors are killed due to interference with the timeline when the borg and the Enterprise-E enter the temporal vortex and go to Earth's past, therefore he does not exist. Had they entered just seconds sooner, Paris' ancestors would have survived. Bummer. Oh, and without Voyager there to stop him, Krenim wipes the Ocampa, Kazon and Talaxians from existence with his temporal gadget. But at least he gets his wife back. Unfortunately while he was busy with his own silly race, he didn't consider the fact that the Borg still exist. They assimilate Krenim and his entire race. The Borg then use this temporal technology to rid the universe of inefficiency and weak civilizations. Eventually, all life in the universe is removed from existence except for Seven. But no one is around to enjoy her "spheres," so she self-destructs. The end.
Well the series would only run for three years then get cancelled since there's no Seven of Nine to "save" the show, so they'd have find a way to bring her in so her nanoprobes could defeat the Changelings and Jem'Hadar, whilst giving every Starfleet ship fanwank armour and weapons, making them invincible.
Jeri doesn't have to be Seven of Nine. Actually? If she hadn't been rescued, Jeri could have been one of the two Borg (beer) to survive earth fall form the Borg Sphere in First Contact that troubled Archer in Regeneration... She falls in love with Reed's prim and proper behaviour, and is then thanks to her life extending nano probes a slightly silvering around the temples Admiral in Starfleet by the beginning of the Dominion War 200 hundred years later.
Do you really think the Borg left a working reproductive system inside that girl? They needed many unnecessary places to stuff a lot of gears, pistons, servos, hard drives and processors. That stuff would be the first to go. Maybe Voyager's EMH could replace her plumbing, but could Phlox?
There's a Lorenzo Lamars Highlander rip off called the Immortal that lasted 20 episodes, where Dom plays the Rogue Han Solo/Huggybear Character. Their 22nd century shitty clones only last a couple days. Sometimes they die as babies and other times they race through their entire life cycle like a mayfly. Hell, 200 years later Pulaski's Super clones unwittingly and reflexively turned the common cold into a super virus to service evolution and clear the field for expansion.