Not necessarily.
ALSO not necessarily.
Almost there.
I'll give you a hint: one of them is a story that develops because of a conflict between PEOPLE, and is eventually resolved by the actions of people.
The other is a story that develops because of incomprehensible technobabble, and is eventually resolved by incomprehensible technobabble.
In the first story, the problem is caused by the competing motivations of protagonists, antagonists, and and possibly a moral dilemma that one or both of them has to deal with. In the second story, both the problem AND the solution are ex machina plot devices, and the characters are almost irrelevant.
And this has been my experience with Voyager since Caretaker. The series has some really great episodes, and it also has some really shit episodes, and it also has some really shit moments in otherwise great episodes. The shit moments/episodes all have one important thing in common: they happen when characters (and/or their dialog) are trying to be clever, at the expense of being relatable.
Much like the examples I gave in the post you didn't bother to read. Toskit telling Kim and Torres that their food is delivered "every one point four intervals" tells us that Toskit is very clever and really good at counting intervals.
But it doesn't actually tell us how often the Caretaker feeds them, so the information is meaningless.
Imagine, on the other hand, if Toskit says "The food dispensers give us a random meal just after sunrise and just before sunset. Enough for our daily needs." This actually tells us three important things:
1) The Ocampa only take their meals at per-determined times of the day, and have for many years
2) The Ocampa have no say in what they get to eat or how much
3) On some level, even Toskit would like to get a little bit more, but elects to be satisfied with "enough for our daily needs."
Because the whole premise of "Caretaker" is that the Ocampa have become so dependent on the Caretaker that they can barely think for themselves and have become like a race of children, and going forward there's a question about how they are going to survive after their energy and food run out. These are questions you can ponder after the episode airs, and maybe revisit in a novel or a later episode. On the other hand, the question of "Exactly how long is one point four intervals?" isn't all that interesting; it's a complete waste of words, and ultimate, a wasted scene.
The spinoff series all had a tendency to waste words in this way, but only Voyager took it to such extremes that it became a distraction, or in some cases, the foundations of entire episodes.
