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If Seska had survived...

They couldn't have bought Martha on more than they did, without firing the most underperforming regular character they'd had in season one.

Who dat?

Harry Kim is the underperforming character of every season, so I'd be fine with that.
 
I assumed that Seska, who was rewritten into the earlier scripts, that her retroactive arrival into a peppering of episodes 3 through 9 stole lines that were supposed to said by Harry, Samantha and Carey.

Although what if there was a dipshit secondary character that was supposed to be there, who was axed to make room for Seska?

Seska: Thief or Murderer?
 
Maybe in a novel she was in the Obsidian order?

(Google approves of the above statement, but I'd like it if you could challenge that, because It's sad that her origin is not hammered down so tight.)

She was a Cardassian Spy, but they didn't explain who in Cardassia she was working for.

Political ranks are real.

If something in Star Trek chooses not employ an element from reality, so far as we know from canon, that's hardly my fault.

Besides, less so than Section 32, the Obsidian Order also does not exist, unless you are in a world of shit, so it's unlikely that if they did have a system of ranks, that they wouldn't be talked about, and clerks wouldn't be tasked with figuring out pecking order protocols for cross-missions between the order and other organizations/departments.

The Voyager section of the book The Badlands had quite a bit of Seska in it IIRC in it but I don't remember the details. I suppose I could hunt around for it and see if it says anything.
 
I typed "Voyager Section 32 Seska obsidian order" into google and this thread was the first top result.

From Memory Beta...

In 2361, Seska was made an intelligence operative for the Obsidian Order, and began a ten-year career as an undercover agent. In 2367, Seska underwent surgical operations to transform her into a Bajoran and sent to Bajor to spy on the Bajoran Resistance. Once the Occupation of Bajor ended in 2369, Seska was assigned to spy on any lingering Bajoran freedom fighters, and later the Maquis. She also attended Starfleet Academy. She acted as a informant for Gul Aman Evek, though she was unable to give vital information on Maquis base.(VOY - The Brave and the Bold, Book Two novella: The Third Artifact; ST reference: Star Trek Chronology; VOY novella: The Badlands, Part III)

The only footnotes available to prove that she's Obsidian Order is from novels.
 
I typed "Voyager Section 32 Seska obsidian order" into google and this thread was the first top result.

From Memory Beta...

In 2361, Seska was made an intelligence operative for the Obsidian Order, and began a ten-year career as an undercover agent. In 2367, Seska underwent surgical operations to transform her into a Bajoran and sent to Bajor to spy on the Bajoran Resistance. Once the Occupation of Bajor ended in 2369, Seska was assigned to spy on any lingering Bajoran freedom fighters, and later the Maquis. She also attended Starfleet Academy. She acted as a informant for Gul Aman Evek, though she was unable to give vital information on Maquis base.(VOY - The Brave and the Bold, Book Two novella: The Third Artifact; ST reference: Star Trek Chronology; VOY novella: The Badlands, Part III)

The only footnotes available to prove that she's Obsidian Order is from novels.

The Badlands take on it is interesting. The bulk of it takes place immediately before Caretaker. Its a fairly good story for Seska fans although the author messes with canon when the scene shifts to Voyager.
 
It seems obvious that Seska is Obsidian Order anyway. I doubt they would put up with anybody else on Cardassia doing spy work. She's certainly devious enough to be an Order operative, anyway.
 
Janeway doesn't execute, or at least, she doesn't unless there's a current ongoing threat to her crew and innocent creatures. But she might have just left her on some undeveloped planet.

I wouldn't want Seska to have continued coming back to annoy Voyager. In that kind of situation they would have kept having to strain to find new ways for Seska to escape and successfully follow Voyager. And it would have gotten real repetitive real quick.
 
What I want to know is, is 'Seska' her fake Bajoran name, or her real Cardassian name?

Ordinarily I'd think it was the former, as it would have been incredibly sloppy for an agent NOT to use a name that's appropriate for the culture they are infiltrating. But there was a 'Seskal' on DS9, who was a Cardassian...perhaps Seskal is the male form of the name Seska?
 
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Seska was retroactively added to all the previous (unfilmed) episodes after the producers were given the script for State of Flux. So in effect Berman was an impatient minutemen who did blow his load instantly.

Up until she gave the Kazon technology, there was nothing illegal that she'd done since Cardassia and the Federation were at peace. Fricking allies even. Not only would the alliance have forced Janeway to protect Seska, but she would have gotten a bump in rank to reflect her Cardassian rank if she had chosen to stay on board and pretend to be amicable.
Is it possible that Seska outranked Chakotay, like how T'Pol outranked Tucker?

Wouldn't she have gotten some demerits though, for her involvement in the spatial trajector debacle?

Janeway doesn't execute, or at least, she doesn't unless there's a current ongoing threat to her crew and innocent creatures. But she might have just left her on some undeveloped planet.

I wouldn't want Seska to have continued coming back to annoy Voyager. In that kind of situation they would have kept having to strain to find new ways for Seska to escape and successfully follow Voyager. And it would have gotten real repetitive real quick.


Janeway doesn't execute, or at least, she doesn't unless there's a current ongoing threat to her crew and innocent creatures. But she might have just left her on some undeveloped planet.

I wouldn't want Seska to have continued coming back to annoy Voyager. In that kind of situation they would have kept having to strain to find new ways for Seska to escape and successfully follow Voyager. And it would have gotten real repetitive real quick.

This. OK she escapes from the brig, overrides security protocols and escapes the ship. Only to show up occasionally as a dangerous, but essentially pain in the ass threat who will slip away at the last minute after being foiled again, No, I don't think so.

Now what might have been interesting, though I don't think there's any way enough time would be allotted to such a development, would have been Seska aligning herself with a worthy power, but not one so advanced that her assistance would be superfluous. I'm thinking perhaps a race that has been degraded, but is working its way back into prominence like the Vaadwaur (wrong period but I couldn't find one close to Basics), that could use a superior operator like her. Such a prospect would allow Seska to realize her ambition to help build a power base in the Quadrant while doing her devious best to work her way up the food chain in the race's command structure. Seeing sequences of such a process throughout a season would have been an interesting change of pace for the show, which they could have culminate in a confrontation with Voyager, still an obsession with Seska, a major action blowout that does actually end with her death.

Too much money, additional sets required, a few semi-regular characters needing to be added, but ultimately too great a diversion from focus directly on Voyager, its crew, and the danger of the week formula, even if just for one season.

I think it would have been a pretty engaging idea though.
 
I'm still not fully convinced that Seska is dead. Every other time I've thought she was, noooope.
 
^ If Culluh examines her again and finds out she's alive, then takes her back with the rest of the Kazon fleet, then she could spell trouble down the line, yeah.

But if it's the Voyager crew who find Seska alive, then either Janeway locks her in the brig forever, and then Seska escapes and is killed in a firefight; or Seska is marooned on an uninhabited planet with no communication. Either way, Seska will one day be space toast. :evil:
 
The Order had two jobs.

1. Monitoring and ending all threats to the Union.

2. Recording what everyone has for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

:)

Chakotay was not a threat, and Seska wasn't trying to end him, and ending him would have achieved jack shit, therefore, if she was Obsidian Order, her only job had been to keep track of everyone in Chakotay's resistance Cell's diet.
 
Iliana Ghemor was definitely an Order agent, assigned to infiltrate the Bajoran resistance. Stands to reason the Order would do the same thing vs. the Maquis...
 
What else might have been interesting, if Seska turned out to be Iliana. I suppose she doesn't look enough like Kira.

Here's an idea that might have justified keeping Seska alive. She escapes and finds the Barzan wormhole as it is passing by. Not giving a crap that there are Ferengi on the planet, she gets home. She shows up again to sabotage attempts to communicate with Voyager.
 
I've never understood Seska's animosity to the Voyager Crew, or Janeway.

What exactly where the opportunities to get home that janeway was ignoring?

1. Caretaker. Let the Kazon eat the Ocampa, go home.

2. Paralax. Nothing happened. It was the equivalent of your back tire getting stuck in mud until it wasn't.

3. Time and Again. She doesn't remember this adventure.

4. The Phage. Janeway declared war on the Vidiians and then didn't fire a shot. Pussy. They almost took Seska's organs. The Vidiian sun should have been bombed to death.

5. The Cloud. They stole candy from a baby. Apologized and then gave the baby all their candy. Seska would have turned the cloud baby into fuel taking all it's candy, and then made a rug from it's spleen.

6. Eye of the Needle. Kill the Romulans. Take their ship, and conquer the AQ 20 year in the past. Only a loser would think of any other plan worth pursuing.

7. Expost facto. #### Tom Paris. Euthanize him and keep on trucking.

8. Emanations. Use the mummies for fuel, and #### Harry Kim, leave him lost in another dimension, and keep on trucking.

9. Prime Factors. Seska got her own way, did she nudge things along, or was she just a passenger as Tuvok sacrificed his honour for the greater good? It all turned to shit anyway. Maybe the Janeway way would have gotten them home playing nice-nice? (A shuttle mission to Cytheria for ####s sake!)

10. State of Flux. Seska discovered as a spy trading resources for political capital with the kazon... Something Janeway tried to do her self only a year later. So is Seska forward thinking, or did it just take Janeway longer to use her principles for toilet paper?

...

Not taking the Romulan Ship was probably the breaking point, but really, if Seska wanted a hand in the decision making process she should have come forward as the highest ranking Cardassian in the DQ, declared herself an ambassador, pitched a flag in her quarters designating it sovereign Cardassian soil, and yelled at Janeway until she stopped being such a wuss.
 
Too much money, additional sets required, a few semi-regular characters needing to be added, but ultimately too great a diversion from focus directly on Voyager, its crew, and the danger of the week formula, even if just for one season.

I think it would have been a pretty engaging idea though.

It would've been a good plot to drive the show if they'd realized that the "Lost Ship" plot only had one or so seasons' worth of life in it.

Then again, that only gives us 3 seasons of a show before it gets stale again.
 
Are we assuming for the sake of argument that the baby was Chakotay's? Either way, I don't know why the'd decide to keep her. They recognized the impracticality of keeping Suder in the brig forever, and they'd have had to confine Seska to her quarters the same way. Thing is, Suder was a pretty cooperative prisoner - if he hadn't been, they'd have had no choice but to either execute him or drop him off somewhere. Seska wasn't going to spend 70 years quietly playing with orchids in her quarters, and no one had any delusions about that by that point.

The only way I can almost see it happening is if the baby was Chakotay's, but even then, it doesn't quite make sense. If she'd done the same things in the AQ, she'd either have gone back to Cardassia or be in jail for life, and I doubt he'd go out of his way to take the kid to visit her or do anything to encourage a relationship. Most people in those situations don't, and that's not even considering that the baby was essentially a product of rape. So why would he put his crewmates' lives at risk just so the baby could have some kind of relationship with its mother in the DQ?
 
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