Have you noticed that the Hirogen get smaller and smaller as they reappear? From giants to below average? What happened? Is that the effect of an anomaly of some kind?
It's been a long time since I watched the Hirogen episodes, but I do remember that they seemed to be more "towering" in the earlier episodes. I wonder how much of it was use of taller actors, and how much of it was tilted camera angles to make us as viewers feel that we were looking up at the characters. Now I need to go back and re-watch some. Kor
It was both. They used people like Tiny Ron and Tony Todd, and filmed them in a way to exaggerate their height.
Dunno. But... https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Hirogen They probably just got sick of having to cast redwoods.
Well, they didn't seem to have much problem finding short guys to play the Ferengi at any rate. With people getting taller and taller (according to statistics) one would think that would be more challenging than finding tall people.
I just figured the ships carried an Alpha and Beta Hirogen who were the two biggest guys, and then other than that there were mostly smaller, younger apprentice hunters. Alternatively, that one Hirogen said their species was on the decline and would possibly be extinct in a millennium(?), so perhaps the size decrease is a response to their malnourishment due to the difficulty of finding worthy prey, and their need to transition to a more agrarian society (with hunting done via holograms until they rebelled).
I think some of them may have gone through an anomaly like the one in DS9's "One Little Ship". For all, we know there could be thumb-sized hirogen trying to get people's attention and being crushed by people thinking they are some kinds of roaches.
Why would they exclusively hunt holograms? They would have been mass kidnapping random space travellers until their numbers built up to the point that they were sacking planets, like the Borg. They banged as much as they hunted.
At some point, the doctor says that they've removed the bones, the internal organs, and the tendons.... It'd be faster to say what they left, IE the skin.
An aftermath of The Killing Game would have been many, many, many pregnancies. If their life span is as short as the Ocampa, there could have two or three generation of Hirogen/Human/Talaxian Hybrids by season seven in Flesh and Blood... Who may become Homesick and think about making their way to Earth to look up their relatives.
Perhaps it wasn't as much the Hirogen shrinking as Voyager and its characters growing larger than life over those years.
Well, the Hirogens seem to have the same kind of protocol as the Klingons, IE when you disagree with your superior, just shoot him!!!