Biggest single contrivances that make stories "work"?
- Thread starter You_Will_Fail
- Start date
What's your point?
From "Caretaker"
It seems that the Enterprise has a maximum speed three times that of Voyager.
In that whole area they couldn't find a sustainable source of water?
Data said that it would take them 2 years to get to the nearest Starbase, not back to where they were originally. If they were deep in Federation space, then the "nearest starbase" could easily be 5000 LY away from where they were (considering the Federation is 8000 LY in diameter).
As for water, who knows? Maybe that particular tribe was always fighting over the sustainable water areas with other Kazon that had water they could process for their biology (they are aliens after all, they may need to alter things a bit before they eat/drink them).
As for water, who knows? Maybe that particular tribe was always fighting over the sustainable water areas with other Kazon that had water they could process for their biology (they are aliens after all, they may need to alter things a bit before they eat/drink them).
I never denied any of that in the first place.
Your conclusion that people had nothing to complain about is precariously balanced on the prerequisite that Voyager never traveled great leaps away from its starting point -- that they only traveled under their own power the entire time.
That's all well and good. The problem is, the actual show makes abundantly clear that that is NOT what happened. So your entire argument exists in an alternate universe. In that universe, you are right that complaining about this particular contrivance would not make sense, because it wouldn't exist. Meanwhile, however, over here in the realm of reality, it DOES exist and it IS a valid complaint.
Earth's star system is in the Gould Belt, which is in the Local Bubble, which is in the Local Fluff, which is in the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy.
The Orion arm ("thin disc") is some 2,500 plus light years wide and thick. Roughly 6,000 light years separate the Orion arm from the Sagittarius-Carina arm on the inside and the Perseus arm on the outside, the gap between arms isn't quite empty, but contains mostly red dwarf stars.
All thing considered, it's unlikely that the Federation is a sphere in shape. Think of the Orion arm as a long tube, the Federation shares a section of this tube with the Klingons and the Romulans in the same general area, further away spinward and anti-spinward would be the other races of Star Trek.
Picard's description of the Federation as being "spread across eight thousand light years" most likely only indicates the length of Federation space.
Also, the habitable zone of the galaxy is just a thin ring inside the galaxy. Get closer to the core, and there's nothing, get too far away from the core, and there are also no star systems that can support life.
Actually, something we have to remember is that there is no central Kazon authority, just seperate sects fighting it out with each other. So it is possible that Voyager easily entered and left space controlled by the various sects.
For that matter, let's review their encounters. In Caretaker they meet the Ogla, which despite their claim of "you have made an enemy today" we never hear from them again except for the episode Alliances. We can assume Voyager left the space they controlled at the end of Caretaker. Then in State of Flux, they discovered a damaged Kazon Nistrom ship in the star system they were in which it turns out is no coincidence since Seska was in contact with them and helping them acquire Starfleet technology. Cullah's ship arrives on the scene, and Seska flees aboard that ship. From this point onward, Cullah and the Nistrom are following Voyager in the hopes of taking it himself. These are pretty much the only Kazon we see throughout the second season, with the exception of Alliances which features all the Kazon sects. So it's not really that contrived we saw the Kazon for as long as we did.
And like I said, if 2000 LY is a reasonable amount of space for any small sized Empire and VOY traveled less than 1000 per year then the Kazon could've made appearances into the 3rd season without leaving their territory. It actually made LESS sense that we saw them as FEW times as we did.
Well, presumably after the fiasco of taking then losing Voyager, Cullah focused his attention on re-consolidating his power in the Nistrom, and possibly even fedning off the other sects from taking advantage of his recent weakness. The other sects probably felt Voyager wasn't worth the trouble anymore, and happily left the ship to its journey.
Yes, I can see that. But what I mean is that while those stories were happening there were nothing but non-stop complaints that the Kazon and Vidiians kept showing up (and the Vidiians were at LEAST as advanced as Voyager meaning their space would be even bigger) even though it makes sense that they'd show up even MORE than they did.
Seriously, VOY had a totally unpleasable audience. No matter WHAT they did the audience complained.
Seriously, VOY had a totally unpleasable audience. No matter WHAT they did the audience complained.
You mean your non-stop complaints about complainers. You're a broken record. I'm beginning to think this is an illusion caused by your uncontrollable urge to obsessively defend against every little complaint concerning Voyager. If you hadn't spawned a 2-page argument with your rants about "the VOY audience", Nightdiamond's comment wouldn't have stood out any more than every other complaint in this thread. If you were as vigilant of the others as you are toward Voyager, surely you could argue that everything has a "totally unpleasable audience".
Bottom line: Almost every Delta Quadrant alien had appearances both before and after Voyager's multiple giant leaps of tens of thousands of light-years in the opposite direction. Now, since this is a fictional universe, you can come up with all sorts of explanations to make this work. Like Nightdiamond said, that's the thing about plot contrivances. But it doesn't change the simple fact that it is a plot contrivance.
