The REAL Voyager Conspiracy...

[Bonzo the Fifth]

Ok, having trawled around the site for a while, I don't think there's any place this has been fully addressed, so I'll make the attempt to find out...

I'm assuming everyone's seen the episode "The Voyager Conspiracy", and thus know most of the plot already, so here goes...

Obviously Seven's ravings were only true to a certain degree. Her conclusions were completely false, but that doesn't dismiss the fact that they were built upon real, substantial questions that were never answered in this or any other episode. I need to watch the episode again to get a comprehensive list of questions requiring explanation, but this is what I remember so far...

What was up with the Cardassian ship? Why was no mention ever made before or since of this vessel (or any other ships that the Caretaker kidnapped--well, besides the Equinox, and that Klingon vessel anyway)

The blue tractor-thingy that Seven shows in the sensor scan... fairly certain that was legit and not made up or fabricated by Seven... so, if true, that leads to some... interesting questions... Where did it come from? Who was controlling it? What were they doing?

Possibly related to the previous: Where did the Alien of the Week get the tetryon array that's supposedly a Caretaker hallmark? If it is, in fact, of Caretaker origin, that would seem to completely strain belief that Voyager would just happen to randomly encounter the catapult unless they were explicitly looking for it, which isn't indicated in the episode, I don't believe, but might be relevant to any 'real' conspiracy.

Tri-Cobalt warheads... 'nuff said.

I need to see the episode again to verify, but I'm pretty sure there are many other relavant questions that were also never properly addressed or answered in it....

The question is: Is/was there a real conspiracy? If so, by whom? Almost certainly Section 31, but to what end? To establish a Federation presense in the Delta Quadrant? To study the Borg? To keep Kim an Ensign for the rest of his career?

Anyone have a good explanation for this? I implore the continuity gurus for an explanation...

 

[mythme]

The Cardassian ship was apparently Gul Evek's battleship. The sensor record was captured by the sensors aboard Neelix's ship. In the year precceding Voyager's arrival he said the he had witnessed 52 alien ship brought to the array. Seven of Nine strongly indicated that this Galor class ship was the same as the one which was pursuing Chakotay in the Badlands during the time he was taken by the Caretaker. Before he grew too weak, the Caretaker would send the ships back to their point of origin. We might assume that Voyager, Chakotay's Raider, the Equinox and Evek's ship were the last four the Caretaker brought to the array. Maybe Evek chose a differnt route home, perhaps heading towards the Gamma Quadrant terminus of the Bajoran Wormhole.

I'm not sure if the tri-cobalt statement above is a question. If you're wondering if its a "new technology" the answer is no. Eminiar used virtual tricobalt satellites to destroy targets in their computer generated warfare in "A Taste of Armaggedon" in the Original Series. Arne Darvin also used a tricobalt explosive in the tribble he planned on using to kill Kirk in "Trials and Tribble-ations".

I dont think there was any real conspiracy. Seven of Nine just took flimsy evidence and overinflated it to produce outrageous conclusions. Happens in politics all the time.

 

[doubleohfive]

I read somewhere (the Trek encyclopedia?) that they (the writers) always just assumed Evek's ship was destroyed in the Badlands right before Chakotay's ship was catapulted to the Delta Quadrant.

 

[Deks]

I read somewhere (the Trek encyclopedia?) that they (the writers) always just assumed Evek's ship was destroyed in the Badlands right before Chakotay's ship was catapulted to the Delta Quadrant.

Evek's ship took damage in the badlands pursuing Chakotay's ship and it was indicated per dialogue that the Cardassians began to retreat.
I would dare hypothesize that the Cardies went out of the Badlands before the coherent tetrion beam hit Chakotay's vessel and as such escaped the shockwave that the Caretaker created.

 

[doubleohfive]

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/library/character/bio/1116304.html

Relevant quote:

Gul Evek commanded the Galor-class warship that pursued Chakotay's Maquis ship into the Badlands in 2371, where Evek was believed killed.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Andrew Robinson wrote in A Stitch In Time (which, AFAIK, is now retroactively part of DS9Relaunch continuity) that Gul Evek, and presumably his ship and crew, survived. In fact Evek is now taking part in the rebuilding of Cardassia.

The only *canon* thing we know is that the Vetar was hit - by one of those random Badlands energy discharges, not by the Caretaker - and severely damaged. Not necessarily destroyed.

As for the Cardassian ship in TVC: That might have been another ship entirely.

 

[Bonzo the Fifth]

I'm not sure if the tri-cobalt statement above is a question. If you're wondering if its a "new technology" the answer is no. Eminiar used virtual tricobalt satellites to destroy targets in their computer generated warfare in "A Taste of Armaggedon" in the Original Series. Arne Darvin also used a tricobalt explosive in the tribble he planned on using to kill Kirk in "Trials and Tribble-ations".

I dont think there was any real conspiracy. Seven of Nine just took flimsy evidence and overinflated it to produce outrageous conclusions. Happens in politics all the time.

I don't mean to suggest Tri-Cobalts were new or even experimental... It's explicitly stated in the episode, however, that they're not part of a standard ship's complement and no one actually had a good answer for why Voyager would have been given them, especially since their first mission was to a spatially unstable place like The Badlands where a Tri-Cobalt warhead (with it's concomitant subspace rending ability) would probably have not been wise to use there. That's the question. Why did they have them to begin with? AFAIK, the Enterprise or even the Defiant doesn't have these in their inventories, so it means something that Voyager would.


As for the Cardassian ship, I'm in the camp that thinks this was a random, hapless victim as opposed to Evek... as mentioned, he's noted in the EU novels as still being around, after all...

And despite the statement that the Caretaker supposedly 'returned' all of the peaoples he kidnapped, it should be noted that the Equinox was certainly not sent home, and it's only stated that he 'sent them away'... which could mean home, or that the Caretaker LITERALLY threw them away like so much garbage to get them out of his yard (which would fit the MO for most callous so-called 'superior' beings in the Trek mold)... Those ships could be ANYWHERE, now, if the Caretaker couldn't be bothered to figure out where to send them.

 

[Jeri]

Just as an aside, was the Caretaker's interference at all responsible for that part of space becoming a badlands?

It seems that it would be rather fruitless for him to search for ships in a part of space that was unlikely to be a high-traffic area. I'm wondering if he didn't create the disturbances.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

Here's an even better question:

Janeway was so concerned about destroying Caretaker technology that she blew their chance of returning home in Season 1. However, upon finding more Caretaker technology, she uses it to advance only 5,000 ly, leaving the "important" technology in the hands of DQ weiners. Guess it wasn't so important to destroy afterall, eh?

http://www.cynicscorner.org/voy_6/voy_609.html

 

[captainkirk]

She didn't want the Kazons to get it because of how they would use it.

 

[Bonzo the Fifth]

She didn't want the Kazons to get it because of how they would use it.

So it's OK if, say, the Borg got their grubby little nanoprobes on it?

I like to think they took the precaution of having it detonated or otherwise destroyed after they used it... but then, one doesn't really know that...

Re: The Badlands. I'd have a hard time believing that the Caretaker 'created' the Badlands, but perhaps it somehow allowed it to more easily access such a distant region of space... perhaps due to it's proximity to the Bajoran Wormhole... but that's just conjecture... Most likely, the Badlands was chosen specifically for it's ability to fog sensors and give a proper excuse for ships 'vanishing'... It's quite possible the Caretaker constantly monitors areas like this across the galaxy (and possibly farther) looking for unsuspecting vessels in the right place and under the right circumstances to allow for an unquestioned 'disappearance'...

Again, though, completely conjecture... I would assume, though, that the Caretaker would want to be circumspect, for the fact that, should it be obvious that a ship was 'taken' that said ship could be followed to the Caretaker's Array.... Another reason why I have a hard time believing that the hapless victims were just handed back over to their respective points of origin, rather than just discarded...

 

[kimc]

She didn't want the Kazons to get it because of how they would use it.

Correct, she knew the Kazon would destroy not only the Ocampa but anyone else they came across.

 

[Renvar]

The question is: Is/was there a real conspiracy? If so, by whom? Almost certainly Section 31, but to what end? To establish a Federation presense in the Delta Quadrant? To study the Borg? To keep Kim an Ensign for the rest of his career?

Empirical evidence seems to indicate the latter objective.

 

[Timo]

The mysterious tractor beam we could dismiss as one of the inevitably myriad side effects when advanced treknology goes kaboom. Probably the Caretaker's dying machinery just let out a final burp of treknoparticles, and Seven desperately wanted to see a tractor beam in it, so she saw it.

The tri-cobalts... Could well be a real conspiracy. That is, many Starfleet vessels, including Picard's and Sisko's, would have these forbidden weapons aboard as a matter of course, merely because Starfleet would secretly hold in contempt any treaty that restricted its operations and potential. No doubt all the other signatories to the treaty would show similar secret contempt, stockpiling subspace weapons wherever they can.

The tetryon gadget being related to the Caretaker in turn was probably another of Seven's misinterpretations: several players across the galaxy could have developed stuff like that.

As for the Cardassian ship, Seven says that it vanished. Seven doesn't establish that no other ships would have vanished - typical of conspiracy theorists. It could be that vanishing was a mundane and regular way for the Caretaker's victims to depart, and that the senile old bugger would send them back from where they came when and if he remembered or had the strength. Or it could be that the Cardassians did something to escape their jailor, and that something either succeeded spectacularly (but was never made public at the Alpha end) or then failed miserably.

The ship could have been Evek's. Then again, the Cardassians were very interested in the Badlands at the time, and they could have had dozens of ships combing the area, including several Galor class vessels.

Timo Saloniemi