Well, the Hirogen DID use the subspace relay network which Voyager discovered and used to contact SF in season 4 (I say 'use' intentionally here because if you consider the idea that those stations date back at least 100 000 years and how Hirogen behave, it is rather unlikely they created those stations [though they might have at the height of their past and then just deevolved into a hunting species for the most part - which btw, shouldn't be THAT surprising to Federation science since they easily have the ability to create things that could last as long, because it depends on how you design thing, and SF has the science and tech to accomplish that and even a lot more - it was the writers though that dumbed tech down progressively to make it seem wondrous - I'll grant you it's a nice find that can be studied definitely, but the writers should have placed more effort).
As for Hirogen popping up thousands of lightyears away... well, they are a hunting species, so it does make sense that they would likely disperse in a lot of directions and cover large distances as a result - we were not told how large of a distance they covered though.
Also, they might have set up a different version of their subspace relay network in the meantime and sent transmission to other Hirogen ships in the DQ... the relay network DID span thousands of lightyears... so it is not THAT incredible to think that Voyager wouldn't encounter them.
The Malon popping out however was a tad odd... especially with the distances involved (even for dumping their toxic waste)... though Voyager characters DID address this at one point and said it would be highly unlikely to encounter them at their present location.
They really were morons though - passing up on Voyager's technology to recycle the energy and power their ships?
Fine, let the homeworld continue to produce this toxic waste if they want to destroy themselves (hint hint - analogy for fossil fuels and our own stupidity?), but you can use it on starships as a virtually endless energy source - and there'd be no need to dump toxic waste and contaminate vast regions.
As for the Borg assimilating themselves 'stupid'... highly unlikely, considering that any 'stupidity' is likely filtered out by being replaced with collective knowledge.
Certain species would have nothing to add to the collective since the Borg primarily looks at their technology as an indicator if they are worthy of assimilation or not. In cases where technology is unremarkable but physiology might be, they could turn to assimilate them (like they did with the Talaxians, which were not particularly interesting from a technological point of view, but were from a biological one).
As for Hirogen popping up thousands of lightyears away... well, they are a hunting species, so it does make sense that they would likely disperse in a lot of directions and cover large distances as a result - we were not told how large of a distance they covered though.
Also, they might have set up a different version of their subspace relay network in the meantime and sent transmission to other Hirogen ships in the DQ... the relay network DID span thousands of lightyears... so it is not THAT incredible to think that Voyager wouldn't encounter them.
The Malon popping out however was a tad odd... especially with the distances involved (even for dumping their toxic waste)... though Voyager characters DID address this at one point and said it would be highly unlikely to encounter them at their present location.
They really were morons though - passing up on Voyager's technology to recycle the energy and power their ships?
Fine, let the homeworld continue to produce this toxic waste if they want to destroy themselves (hint hint - analogy for fossil fuels and our own stupidity?), but you can use it on starships as a virtually endless energy source - and there'd be no need to dump toxic waste and contaminate vast regions.
As for the Borg assimilating themselves 'stupid'... highly unlikely, considering that any 'stupidity' is likely filtered out by being replaced with collective knowledge.
Certain species would have nothing to add to the collective since the Borg primarily looks at their technology as an indicator if they are worthy of assimilation or not. In cases where technology is unremarkable but physiology might be, they could turn to assimilate them (like they did with the Talaxians, which were not particularly interesting from a technological point of view, but were from a biological one).
