I think a quick mention by Janeway in a log would've been enough to resolve the issue with a baby on board. If the baby was forgotten by the next episode, I'd just chalk it up to Voyager's shitty writing and inability to maintain continuity. However, as I stated in my original post, the baby was forgotten within the episode. Therefore, it doesn't hold up as a stand-alone episode either. Like I said, the writers had a scene where Janeway explains that the children are now on board and how it will be tough and all that yet she doesn't mention the baby that she was frickin holding in sickbay. That was the moment in the episode to say the baby is being cared for by some unseen crew member. Instead, after the baby is needed for the emotional scene, she's just forgotten. That's just really brutal!
The Doctor could have been using that Hirogen mindwashing technology to ease the concerns of the crew after the baby died because he thought the infants passing was too sad for any one else to handle if they didn't have to. I mean it's quid pro quo after the stink ass shit they pulled on him a year earlier in latent Image... And if he is the ships councillor, then isn't he legally and moraly obliged to manipulate the crews mental health towards the success of the mission?
Guy and exodus: thanks for the explanation of how/why both new shows and syndicated reruns air out of order. (Though where I live, syndication usually occurs 6--8pm). That's one reason why I've never sought to obtain a DS9 season. I have a couple VOY seasons on DVD, but I wouldn't want DS9 until I could afford to buy the whole thing to watch in order. With VOY, it doesn't matter: just pick a season with episides you like (for me that was four and five.) Of course I'd like to own all 21 seasons of the three TNG-era series, but it's just too expensive. Some day....
I was lucky enough to get TOS, TNG, DS9 & Voy off ebay years ago for cheap.(ENT. doesn't exist in my Trek universe. As far as I'm concerned, the whole series was one big non-canon holodeck scenario)
Heheh. I tried so hard to get into Enterprise. I watched the first two seasons on reruns before my cable expired. Then I heard about these great arcs in the fourth season. I got halfway through the third Vulcan arc before I just couldn't take it anymore. I don't know why. Maybe it was the characters, odd stories, T'Pol, or the fact that it was in the 22nd century. Hmm. But about the Borg baby: perhaps the story went through many revisions, writers, etc., and the baby got left in there without much thought or almost accidentally. Or maybe they thought down the road it might be interesting to revisit but couldn't fit it into either that story or any future ones. Who knows? It could've simply been an oversight that got left in. By the time they started shooting it was too late to remove it.
Yep, that's exactly what happens more often than not behind the scene in production. Many just dismiss it as sloppy writing but due to stuff like what you've described often has very little to do with the writing. It could be due to budget, time restraints, a deleted scene, etc. Hell, for all we know the animatronics for the baby broke and they couldn't use it anymore or it gotten stolen.
I liked the epsiode and the Borg kids. I adored the scene with Kathryn and the baby but at the end of the episode I wondered where the baby was and was disappointed that the writers didn't include an explanation.
I imagine a story we never saw set between this one and the next where the baby strikes back. Consider, the little bugger doesn't have a personality of it's own yet so the only thing left over inside it's architecture is pure Borg. The rest of the kids, mulled it over about being true to the cause and concluded eventually "hey, fuck this" but a baby is not going to have any humanity to connect with that it's mind can be argued with. Imagine Kim locked in hand to hand combat with that baby suspended upright in a Borg-Walker?
^ hillarious image a quick question every body asumes if a borg drone had kids they would look like the borg baby but and not have their indaviduality but i think that the baby would be a perfectly normal human baby