How did the Kazon control such a vast territory? Voyager was dealing with them for the first three seasons. Are they mostly just clusters of ships that act as pirates? They didn't seem to have many planetary settlements.
The last Kazon appearance was in the season 2 finale/season 3 premiere. Also, season 1 was only a half season. I just assume Voyager didn't actually travel that far yet during that time. They didn't come near to the Kazon homeworld until mid season 2.
First, season one wasn't a full season. Secondly, the sects were spread out but the region during the second season seemed to be heart of Kazon's part of space. It wasn't one big power. We hardly saw the Kazon in season one... A bulk of Kazon episodes was between Maneuvers and Investigations. The stardates suggest only a several months...
There is no Kazon homeworld. If there was a Trabe homeworld, the Kazon probably whacked it, becuase being a slave sucks. Unless the Trabe strip-mined the original Kazon homeworld making it uninhabitable, or they just forgot where they got the kazon from, or when the former slaves returned to their homeworld, the Kazons who never left Kazonica are still living in thatched huts trying to figure out how to make fire. Voyager doesn't travel in a straight line. They have to zig-zag targeting resources and life, which they can figure out years in advance, what the tech level of a planet/area they are heading towards has, but not any local politics. 70 thousand light years in 70 years = 1000 light years per year.
If you whacked Russia today, you'd still get Russian presence over the former vast territory for centuries to come. On the other hand, the horse peoples of those expanses have come and gone, yet every single culture has been able to control vast expanses thanks to having the means of movement, and solely thanks to that. It's not as if logistics would be relevant to Trek-style ruling any longer. We're back to the days of the horse peoples there, with self-sufficient fighting units roaming the known universe and at most living off the land for years at an end. This might not work against well-established planets that support fighting units of their own, but such planets would have been Trabe property, and the basic premise is that they got whacked, so the nomads are the top dogs now. At least for a while. But Janeway wasn't all that lucky picking the moment when to enter Delta. Timo Saloniemi
I said they came near to it. The Trabe homeworks is the Kazon homeworld. They took it over. it only means it's possible to travel a thousand light years in a year. It's a rough estimate. They may have travelled only 600 light years in the first two seasons
I watched Alliances many times. I don't think it was said that they were anywhere near the Kazon/Trabe homeworld.
The Kazon live in space. A sect might still hold the Trabe homeworld, but for how long? It's insane to set down roots in a warzone. After reading a bit of the background, I'm 50/50 about whether the kazon evolved on Trabe homeworld, or if they were a transplanted labour force.
If they did, or if they were from nearby, it means that Voyager did not encounter their core territory until they were almost out of Kazon territory.
I sometimes wonder about why there seemed to be no significant power between Basics two-parters and Fair Trade. I figure there may have been an unknown power that disappeared or declined after the fall of the Trabe. Few decades prior, the region may have been quite different.
There was that Swarm species whose territory was vast. Voyager cut through it in a short time only because it found a narrow strip and had remodulated their shields to get through their detection grid.
I think the Swarm is a third-rate power. They'd be nobodies back home. The Romulans, the UFP, Klingons and the Cardies would have found a way to overcome their defenses a long time ago. If it wasn't for the phage, the Viidans would have controlled the entire region from Ocampa to the Nekrit Expanse. They would have helped Voyager find the Barzan wormhole and got home in the third season.
The Vidiians are lying about how pernicious the phage is, on the Home World. "It doesn't happen often, and even then, only to degenerate immoral reprobates." Which is how they handled the Spanish Flu in 1918. It was called the Spanish Flu becuase Spain was the only country reporting accurately, or at all, on how well humanity was being decimated.
The Kazon seemed to control or at least hold large sway in the area from the area to about the Nekrit expanse. IIRC. The Kazon were nomadic and fought constantly amongst themselves, and other species like the Haakonians, Trabe, Viidians, were in the area. The DQ is very much a multipolar region politically speaking. There are no great empires or competing states of roughly equal parity, but lots of smaller powers, that are isolated by the Borg.
(buoy = subspace radio transmitter, declaration of possession = flag.) You claim space putting a buoy down, which is becoming a communication conduit, or a space station, or falls into disrepair, or is lost to a stronger power on a long enough timeline. You put a buoy above a planet, or put people with guns on that planet. Claiming space is easy, holding space is expensive. There are endless valueless tracts of space that no one with actual power wants becuase they have to dedicate their wealth to holding space where their people are trying to live, closer to home. The Kazon are so poor, that they claim everything, and do not care how many days that they can hold their spaces before their buoys are shot down and replaced by an enemy power, who is also probably Kazon.
It made no sense to me that they would see them beyond two episodes. Voyager was a fast ship by Federation standards. Even if it took a circuitous path and made frequent stops, it still should be able to traverse any civilization's space in a matter of weeks or maybe months. I cannot see it taking years. I don't get how two star systems can be part of the same country and be that far apart. I felt like this was one of the failings of the show. I remember reading how in this new series they wouldn't be able to call for help from other Federation ships, they wouldn't be able to keep encountering the same aliens, and they would have to ration things like torpedoes and shuttlecraft. They also said there would be tension on the ship due to them being out of contact with Star Fleet and having to incorporate rebels into their crew. The writes quickly abandoned this and gave us more TNG. Janeway emoting about being far from home rang hollow. The reimagined BSG gave me much more a feeling of truly being alone on a ship with internal conflicts and no home base to answer to.
Voyager plays by Star Trek's rules, where civilizations span multiple planets. If we are to believe other series and films, it would take years to cross the Federation. Voyager encountered the last Kazon 1.5 years after they started, and it was because they were being followed by them.