Excessive Criticism of "STAR TREK VOYAGER"

[locutus101]

There's an episode of Blackadder where Edmund meets Liz One, and fails to prove that he is a sorcerer by showing her a futuristic rewards points credit-card form the super market chain Tescos.

Morality = A spectrum of behaviour.

Altruism = Doing good for no pay.

Yup.

The end of the episode had a whole bunch of aliens who figured out that they had been lied to and swindled, finally catch up to the Think Tank and try to kill them, because the Think Tank are bad people.

The Tank were tricky trickers tricking the tricked.

If the Think tank had truly met the Vidiians "recently" then the Think Tank had a Star Drive that could get Voyager Home in the same time as it took the Think Tank to get from Vidiian space class to the Caretakers Array to where they were this episode in Season Five.

Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies invented the cure to the common cold decades before she moved to California, and was amazed that Mr Drysdale didn't know, because there was a full page article all about in the Hooterville gazette.

Good lies are unverifiable lies.

No, what I mean is that the Tank were good enough to only list their real accomplishments, without having to make up fake ones. Lying about curing the Vidiians seems pretty useless at this point. That's also a reason why I believe they're truthful, because they had nothing to gain by lying about it. What if Janeway had said "I don't believe you. Prove that you've really cured the phage."
Why risk that? If their objective was to convince Seven to come with them then just as I said they would have known or guessed about her dislike for lies and deceit.

 

[locutus101]

That's easy.
If they can project a hologram into a ship, then it stands to reason their sensors can accurately scan the chemical compound of an object on a vessel where they appear which is information relayed to the user of the said hologram.
Namely, on his side, he is likely either in a holodeck or a specialized room which renders whatever the environment that the hologram appears in.
Foods and certain things appear in an authentic manner on his side, but on the ship's end, his hologram is interactive - namely it can move objects around and even consume food which is likely being converted on the spot inside the body into energy or something else.

It's not baffling technology. Other races can probably replicate the effect... they just might not have thought of using it like that... and for the most part, SF ships (at least in that era) had no need to use holograms in such a manner.

Well, the mobile emitter is four hundred years in the future of voyager, without it they need holoemitters to project a hologram somewhere, but this guys is capable of projecting a hologram that not only can move things and taste food but does so WITHOUT any emitters present. I'll say that baffling.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Vidiians were 25 thousand light years away.

Verification would have required flying in a straight line for 25 years, away from Earth.

Janeway was new to this zone of space, so telling her about the great shit they had done locally is useless, since she had no point of reference, so they mentioned someone that lived half a quadrant away that she does know, claiming to have done something impossible that she would be marvelled by, or at least a version of what may or may not have actually happened.

Senator Vreenak.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well, the mobile emitter is four hundred years in the future of voyager, without it they need holoemitters to project a hologram somewhere, but this guys is capable of projecting a hologram that not only can move things and taste food but does so WITHOUT any emitters present. I'll say that baffling.

To an engineer trying to replicate the technology, maybe it's baffling.

To any one else "Yes. A hologram. We have those."

 

[locutus101]

To an engineer trying to replicate the technology, maybe it's baffling.

To any one else "Yes. A hologram. We have those."

The point being that they are very good. They're not just pretending to be problem solvers, they really are.

 

[Deks]

Well, the mobile emitter is four hundred years in the future of voyager, without it they need holoemitters to project a hologram somewhere, but this guys is capable of projecting a hologram that not only can move things and taste food but does so WITHOUT any emitters present. I'll say that baffling.

Not really... it just means his emitters have the ability to project a hologram to a specific distance and has a few more features.
Voyager did a similar thing when it made holographic replicas of Talaxian ships (decoys which took some fire) to aid it in it's battle with 4 large Kazon Warships.
Those holograms were also interactive and were able to fool the Kazon ships into attacking them. The holographic replicas were taking fire after all.

But you also need to understand that the purpose of each hologram is different.
The Talaxian ships were decoys for dividing firepower between all those Kazon ships.
The hologram of Think Thank had to be both projected at a distance as well and interact with the crew (which it did).
Both instances featured interactive holograms... they just had a different purpose.

Also, the hologram of Think Thank moving things is not a new thing seeing how they can be projected as porous or solid.
Tasting food is as I said, likely a combination of different technologies - not necessarily difficult for other species to do... just they have little need for something like that.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The point being that they are very good. They're not just pretending to be problem solvers, they really are.

The only problem we saw the Tank solve is a problem they created. Giving Janeway a special map that will allow her to allude scumbags that the Tank is paying to chase Voyager.

Yes, they have good tech, yes they are problem solvers, but they also create problems to solve. Given what happened to Voyager, it's a reasonable conclusion that the Think Tank invented the phage, and a cure to the phage, travelled back in time, infected Vidiia, and then returned back to the future and offered to sell the Vidiians the cure that they had had all along.

Unlikely, but still possible.

 

[locutus101]

The only problem we saw the Tank solve is a problem they created. Giving Janeway a special map that will allow her to allude scumbags that the Tank is paying to chase Voyager.

Yes, they have good tech, yes they are problem solvers, but they also create problems to solve. Given what happened to Voyager, it's a reasonable conclusion that the Think Tank invented the phage, and a cure to the phage, travelled back in time, infected Vidiia, and then returned back to the future and offered to sell the Vidiians the cure that they had had all along.

Unlikely, but still possible.

Yes,unlikely, because while they were affected by the phage the Vidiians were unlikely to have much to offer given that most of their resources were absorbed by their constant struggle against the phage and it's devastating effects. It would be like bankrupting a firm first in order to get a ransom out of it. You need people to be rich in order to afford high fees.

So it would be self-defeating.

 

[Guy Gardener]

AIDs.

Millions and millions of people were dying, and the world gave a shit as soon as it was millions of straight people, but now that it's only 10s of thousands or dead per year (in the first world), and the recently infected have 10 to 15 years to get their shit together (with luck) less of a shit is given.

What Denara said about the politicians back home, it's almost like most of the people on Vidiia either do not have the Phage or have an inactive strain of the Phage that is a time bomb waiting to go off.

 

[WebLurker]

For what it's worth, I took the Think Tank to be telling the truth when they said they'd cured the Phage. Their thing seemed to me to be less outright con artistry (as in giving fake cures and what-not), and more of they'd help and produce real results, but the took advantage of the person in need, putting them over a barrel (and/or creating the problem in the first place, so they could "solve" it for whatever price they wanted).

 

[Guy Gardener]

The cure could have been to download their consciousnesses into (clunky) robots.

Ergo, they would be Unrecognisable.

 

[locutus101]

The cure could have been to download their consciousnesses into (clunky) robots.

Ergo, they would be Unrecognisable.

Like that guy sargon, you mean?

 

[suarezguy]

"what were they thinking?" I can only think of one episodes, Threshold. Others that I don't care for I can at least kind of see what they were trying to do and where it went wrong

I think the notoriety of "Favorite Son" is also quite deserved.

 

[locutus101]

I think the notoriety of "Favorite Son" is also quite deserved.

What a dismal piece of crap! I can only surmise that the writer who came up with that was coming down with something.

 

[Anwar]

The reason the Vidiians didn't just use cloning was because the Phage would just destroy the cloned organs as well. Until they ran into Voyager, they'd never found any DNA that could properly resist the Phage. Just random combinations that would last them a while before the Phage adapted and killed the patchwork Vidiians.

 

[locutus101]

The reason the Vidiians didn't just use cloning was because the Phage would just destroy the cloned organs as well. Until they ran into Voyager, they'd never found any DNA that could properly resist the Phage. Just random combinations that would last them a while before the Phage adapted and killed the patchwork Vidiians.

We're told that even on their homeworld there are people who are not infected. Why not use them to make the clones?

 

[Anwar]

We're told that even on their homeworld there are people who are not infected. Why not use them to make the clones?

Because they stayed uninfected by being lucky enough to not be exposed to whatever caused the Phage. It isn't because they're immune, it's because they're isolated. Denara Pel was uninfected until she was exposed to Phage on a colony world.

 

[locutus101]

Because they stayed uninfected by being lucky enough to not be exposed to whatever caused the Phage. It isn't because they're immune, it's because they're isolated. Denara Pel was uninfected until she was exposed to Phage on a colony world.

This would mean that the phage is an epidemic disease and therefore it's strange that after two millennia there are still people that haven't been infected by the disease. The epidemic should be either eradicated or it should have reached everyone. The situation as described in simply impossible.

 

[Sophie74656]

I think the notoriety of "Favorite Son" is also quite deserved.

Agreed, not one of my favorites. Though I did hear Garret Wang talking about how it was the first time on TV there was a kiss between an Asian man a white woman

 

[MacLeod]

Agreed, not one of my favorites. Though I did hear Garret Wang talking about how it was the first time on TV there was a kiss between an Asian man a white woman

I find that hard to believe myself.