If Janeway had not destroyed the Caretaker....

Two things I could never understand:

Why think the Kazon didn't know how to make water? No, the Kazon down on the planet were short on water, but afraid of leaving to get it because then other Kazon would get the planet. The Kazon may be wary of bathing, but they aren't short on water as a species.

Why think timed explosives would have solved something? Janeway did use timed explosives. She just could not utilize the Array for a trip home because there was no time to figure out how (if at all) the Array worked. The timer for that wasn't for Janeway to set, it was set by the Kazon making progress in their attempts at destroying the hero ships.

That said, the writers could have dropped the "Janeway makes a sacrifice" angle because they made relatively little use of it afterwards. But they did get if not mileage then at least meterage out of it - what dramatic benefit would come from deciding that return would have been flat out impossible?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Janeway had two tricolbalt devices, and 40 torpedoes.

The Kazon armada attacking her was 1 city ship and 2 shuttles.

The Val Jean collided with the kazon City ship, after-which both vessels were space junk.

So...

When Janeway sacrificed her only (quick) route home using two bombs that could each remove a Kazon city ship from play, her immediate opponents were two shuttles and an unknown number (and quality) of reinforcements that were an unknown distance (and/or time) away from the current conflict (Kazon ships are much slower than Voyager, so reinforcement could have been a week away, or not coming at all, or even a bluff that the call was made, because why the frakk wasn't Janeway jamming subspace to make sure that no re-enforcements were tapped?).

It seems like she over estimated the threat.

But here's the clincher: How did the Kazon not know that she didn't have 40 tricolbolt devices and 2 torpedoes? This is the bluff that won World War II. America claimed that they had enough atomic bombs to level all of Japan, when really they had already run out of atomic ordinance after Nagasaki. Believing this bluff, Japan surrendered, when really the nuclear threat was totally over already, for at least another year.

"Sigh"

Janeway did not have to fight the Kazon fairly. Jabin could have been transported to Voyager or his entile crew could have been transported into space. Nicole Janeway would have transported the Kazon Crew into Space. If she held Maje Jabin hostage, his people would stand down... Well, we know now that they wouldn't, but it's an assumption that Janeway would have made at the time, unless Neelix advised her otherwise.

They had seen their first transporter sparkle half an hour earlier, so they had no defence against Transporters, yes they had shields, but you can transport though shields if you can figure out their frequencies, which should have been easy if the Kazon were 200 years less advanced than Voyager, which begs another question, if the Kazon shields where using stupidly uncomplicated frequencies, because their tech was far less advanced, then why wasn't Voyager shooting straight through their shields, like what happened to Picard's D in Generations?

 

They only talked about one sect being short on water. Again, they stole all their technology from the Trabe (sp?) they didn't develop it themselves and it's possible they don't know how all of it works. The sect on the planet control that bit of territory, other sects have other territories that probably contain planets with water.

Neelix said that nobody "around here" wastes water so most likely that particular area of space was lacking in planets with water.

 

It wasn't. The Array damaged the ship and killed people bringing them there and going back using it would've done the same. And that was BEFORE it was damaged, meaning using it after the Kazon ship crashed into it would've made things worse.

And the audience wouldn't have been able to blame Janeway for everything the way they still do.

 

It was lacking in planets. That is, the only thing of any worth around there appeared to be Planet Ocampa, which was arid and a difficult place for a shuttler gang to control if they didn't have a proper water supply. Every Ocampa gang around had come ill prepared for their moment of glory at the death of the Caretaker, so there were different dearths. The captors of Kes needed water. And Neelix operated around the captors of Kes.

The claims made in the pilot don't seem to carry far into the series, which is quite understandable if they apply to the specific setting of the pilot only.

The Val Jean ceased to exist. The city ship had a nasty extra collision, but didn't cease to exist. With a city full of brilliant engineers and skilled soldiers (as far as Janeway knew), how could the big ship not be restored to fighting trim in a jiffy?

Could they? Demolition ordnance isn't generally good against vehicles. And Starfleet isn't seen using it that way anyway. Perhaps if the Kazon decided to enter unassuming orbit around Eminiar, I mean, the Array...?

How would Janeway have known the Kazon were weaklings in slow ships? This cuts both ways, and while the bluffing is going on, the Array is another step closer to getting boarded. Janeway could perhaps drive off the small ships by bluffing, but that wouldn't help much against boarders already in for it.

Yet in later episodes, Kazon shields do preclude transporting. We can hardly attribute that to lightning-fast reverse engineering facilitated by their genius.

Primitive may work quite well - sinking a WWII battleship with today's guns or antiship missiles would be difficult indeed, unless one went nuclear, and a medieval stone wall would stop a tank better than a 20th century concrete one. And it's not a difference in modernity that cost Picard his pretty ship in ST:GEN.

Janeway may have miscalculated, but faulting her for that isn't particularly fair. Her death rays didn't cut Kazon shields like butter, so we really shouldn't argue they "ought" to have.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The Kazon did not know that she only had two. That's probably WHY THEY RETREATED. (I'm not yelling, just speaking loudly)
Here's more of the conversation:

Where's the clincher? Why the sigh?

She needed the tricobalt devices to destroy the array. She could destroy ten Kazon ships, and yet still other Kazon would come, and she would still need to destroy the array.

 

Janeway was too honest.

Too much of a girl-scout (at that point in her story) to use the corbonite manoeuvre... You know, lie her ass off.

 

Janeway isn't a war captain-she had a background remember in the sciences which value honesty not tactical deception.

She certainly was capable later in her career-Counterpoint being a good example.

 

I do wonder... why wasn't Ransom and the Equinox able to talk to the Caretaker to get his crew home? If we are to believe some of logs in "THE VOYAGER CONSPIRACY", the Caretaker was able to send the Cardassian ship home. Equinox got there way before them, so almost certainly it was within the Caretaker's ability to send Ransom and his crew home.

So what happened?

 

Ransom's go-to move is to run and hide.

(Not a joke, Janeway said that he uses magnetic poles to hide from opponents and that's how Kathryn found him when he was hiding from her.)

It's possible that Ransom rapidly retreated using such force that Rudy was not aware that there was a return trip on the table.

 

True, that trait was in his file.

Still, I would think he would have at least tried. Or maybe the Caretaker didn't take any of his crew, which might explain why Kim was taken.

 

His brain was cheese.

The Val Jean was full of humans, and he'd already trawled that spot a week earlier... Which he must have forgotten doing?

 

Ahhh, but he was fishing for Cardassian ships that day. He managed to get two for one... A lucky catch.

Then he kept Chakotays crew on the back burner because there wasn't a large enough sample size. Then he cast his line out to the same area looking for more humans. Once he had them all together, the violating began.

 

It would be the height of irony if Equinox had fled the Caretaker, causing damage in the process which led to his inability to send Voyager home.

 

If it were me writing the Equinox episode, I would have changed this.

I never cared for that cheesy conversation that Janeway and Ransom have about the Caretaker. I would have made the tone a little more serious, and had them asking each other questions...like normal people would.

Example:
Person 1- "How are you? I haven't seen you in ages!"
Person 2- "We just got back from vacation; 2 weeks in Rybnik."
Person 1- Seriously?! OHMAGOSH! Nooo Wayyy!!! I was just in Rybnik about 2 years ago!!"
Person 2- "Wow, that's totally crazy! Smaaaall World!"
Person 1- "Tell me everything. Did you still have to pay for..." "Did they still do that weird..." "Did you see...." "How did you go about...
Person 2- "No, but we did have to pay..." "I never saw that" "Yes, but did you see..."

(Okay, that's not very serious in tone, but this is what people do. Captains would of course be more serious, and ask more important questions than the ones Janeway asks.)


So, yeah. It could've been a good opportunity to give us an expodump that's not actually an expo dump, but a natural conversation that gives us insight. Instead they used the above conversation to ask about a few species each. I could see handwaves literally coming from their mouths.

Another(probably better) option would be to nix the 'Rudy Ransom knows the Caretaker' aspect all together. They could hint that it was in fact the Caretaker, but Rudy has no clue, or bring his ship to the Delta Quadrant by some other means.

Rudy says:
"We were sent to conduct a biannual survey(Science!) of an unstable wormhole near the Barzan system."

or Rudy says:
"The Federation is at war. A species known as the Dominion has invaded our space. We were conducting surveys(science!) of the Gamma Quadrant when SF warned us that the wormhole was no longer accessible, and that we could not get home that way. Then we lost communication. I don't blame Starfleet(but he really does), I just wish they had warned us before putting up...a minefield. The commander of that space station over there really oughtta check these things before making such important decisions.

This 'Dominion' also attacked us but we managed to hide in the atmosphere of a planet. ...been workin' our way home evah since."


Edit: And Rudy's always going on about how good Voyager has had it compared to him. He just can't get over the fact that Janeway keeps her house cleaner. She should have said "Oh, please... Compared to some of the ish% we've been through, the Equinox is like my daughter's messy bedroom."

 

Um...that middle bit doesn't work considering Equinox disappeared before Voyager.

 

You're stifling my creativity. Continuity will not stop me.

 

Since we don't know what Janeway would do if she was sent back;

My two cents:

My money is that she would personally work with Sisko to destroy the Maquis maybe develop more effective bombs than what Sisko used. Then take on the Dominion and prevent the Dominion/Breen dampening weapon and polaron beams affecting federation ships finding a tech solution within 24 hours. Thus saving millions of losses on the Federation side and personally side with the Rogue Federation officers To protect her family aka The federation and be The New Empress. Then help Section 31 by infecting the founders with the Mutagenic virus and then killing Julian Bashir and Odo and blowing up the wormhole.

There might be a stand off between the Defiant and Voyager somewhere but we all know that no one can destroy Voyager.

I think that is a realistic outcome if She was sent back home by the caretaker. I mean, if she can take on the Borg, She can take on the Dominion.

 

It would've been better if something had gone wrong with the Caretaker pulling them to the Delta Quadrant, and they never made to the Array and were dumped in some other part of the DQ. So they never met him, they never knew what brought them there, etc.