Well its not like Seven had a Galaxy Class ship in orbit, probably her shuttle with some barely first aid equipment available, so, could he have been saved if proper medical had been available? Yes. In BFE with nothing but a band-aid? Nope, he was going to die, and by what happened, kind of painfull death. Chock another log on the Admiral Janeway fire of deaths that happened because of her Sheer F'n Huberus and brought voyager back early.
If Admiral Janeway had not come back and altered time, Icheb would still be in the DQ...where he only might be dead, as opposed to definitely dead.
I hadn't understood why they killed Icheb off. I liked him. I mean, 7 found him, so she probably could have stunned him temporarily to tranquilize him at least and then get him to her ship and provide basic medical aid until she could get him to the nearest Fenris Ranger facility (or hail his ship) for more comprehensive medical assistance
I watched the final Voyage episode last night and despite it being pretty heavy on 7 I don't think Icheb was even in it at any stage
Fenris Rangers don't have facilities. They are a ragtag band of vigilantes operating in lawless systems with extremely limited resources. Icheb was dying in agony. Seven had no means of accessing medical aid for him. He'd have died long before she could get him to the nearest possible source of help. So she chose to end his suffering.
I was ok with Icheb as a character when Voyager was on; however, as far as I was concerned, he was a very minor character. I thought it was smart and quite dramatic to use someone with a connection to Voyager that 7 could have feasibly cared for, but who was also not a series main. Of course, I also thought it would have been more interesting if the traitor in Star Trek 6 was Saavik rather than Valeris but that's another discussion...
In a way, it was Saavik, everything that Spock told Valeris he could have told Saavik as well, plus with Saavik, well, they had Vulcan sex together... So it sort of creates an extra connection...
The writer of "Stardust City Rag," Kirsten Beyer, is not a writer who looks for "excuses" to do gratuitous violence. A casual overview of her published novels and other episodes makes this clear. This was an example of Beyer and Pulitzer Prize-winning showrunner Michael Chabon choosing to depict graphic violence, for a short period of time, for a specific and legitimate artistic purpose: Depicting the level of suffering that Icheb and Seven of Nine endured at the hands of Bjayzl, in order to establish the emotional stakes upon which Seven acts. This is a story about pain and vengeance, and about whether vengeance destroys us when we pursue it. Depicting that violence was not gratuitous, nor were they looking for "excuses" to have that kind of violence. The decision to depict that violence was artistically justified. It may not work for you, but that is not the same thing as not having a legitimate artistic purpose. You're citing a bunch of plot devices whose effectiveness is inherently going to depend upon the demands of the story being told. This story is one premised on Icheb being mortally wounded beyond the ability of medical science to heal, because "Stardust City Rag" is a story about loss and vengeance, not a story about the wonders of technobabble medicine. Citing plot devices does not invalidate that story premise, and inserting lines referencing such plot devices would only have made the scene clunky. ("I'll put you in a stasis field and bring you to Starbase 525,647 for treatment!" "No, Seven, don't be a fool -- my anticular neurogenic inhibitor implant was damaged beyond repair when Bjayzl was searching for my cortical implant! I'm dead already!") Star Trek: Discovery takes place in the Prime Universe whether or not you agree with its artistic decisions.
Thank God modern ST has better writing...! Meanwhile, if you really want an example of the writers coming up with an excuse for gratuitous gore? The death of the "queen bee" monster in TNG Season One's "Conspiracy." Absolutely disgusting amount of gore that adds absolutely nothing to the episode artistically.
The death of the mother-parasite-in-the-Remmick-suit was no worse of a gross-out moment than any number of other "parasite moments" in "Conspiracy." Or the Ceti Eel scenes in TWOK, six years earlier. And it has a lot in common with the death of the Bug in the first Men in Black movie, nine years later. The violence itself was not gratuitous. The suffering was not gratuitous. The graphic depiction of it in a way guaranteed to gross people out was. And it was also a sloppy shortcut. There would have been any number of more elegant (and probably more effective) ways to show suffering, without falling back on the eye-scream. One of the first rules of good writing, or of a well-designed concert program, is to get the audience on your side. And in the case of writing, that's not just "on the protagonist's side" it's also "on the author's side."