Size of Malon and Hirogen territory

[Ghost]

Bargain what? Voyager had absolutely nothing to offer that wouldn't radically change the economy in which the Malons live by...

See Season 5 "Night" again. Voyager's crew offered Controller Emck, the Malon encountered in that episode recycling technology that would allow the Malon people to recycle their antimatter waste products, making it unnecessary for the Malon to dump it on other planets or in space.

The Malon controller however refused as while this technology would be a boon for the Malon civilization it would render the jobs controllers like him were performing (transporting and dumping industrial antimatter waste) obsolete.

So it is not that Voyager's crew had nothing to offer, Malon controllers do not want their civilization to acquire antimatter waste recycling technology.

 

[Finn]

See Season 5 "Night" again. Voyager's crew offered Controller Emck, the Malon encountered in that episode recycling technology that would allow the Malon people to recycle their antimatter waste products, making it unnecessary for the Malon to dump it on other planets or in space.

The Malon controller however refused as while this technology would be a boon for the Malon civilization it would render the jobs controllers like him were performing (transporting and dumping industrial antimatter waste) obsolete.

So it is not that Voyager's crew had nothing to offer, Malon controllers do not want their civilization to acquire antimatter waste recycling technology.

How does that fucking negate my post which you quoted??? I'm fully aware of that scene...

 

[Prax]

I suppose they could've gone to the Malon homeworld. That would've been cool to see. If the government accepted their recycling program, the garbagemen would've been hunting Voyager down, though.

 

[Finn]

Pure fantasy

 

[Farscape One]

Do you know how many stars and planets there are in our galaxy and thus within a quadrant of it?

A federation with hundreds of advanced planets is just a drop in the bucket of the Alpha Quadrant.

Agreed, but it's clearly enough to give the Borg problems.

 

[Timo]

If it did, the Borg would probably make the effort to do something about it. Like, say, assimilate it. Instead, they just poke.

Conquest really doesn't appear to be their way, which is sort of understandable: what good would it do to the mosquito to suck utterly dry every animal in the world even if the species could?

How does that fucking negate my post which you quoted??? I'm fully aware of that scene...

Well, by establishing that the heroes did have something to sell - and that by selling, they would be making a huge difference, thus quite possibly getting something in return from all those Malon who could now kick those former Controllers in the teeth and tell them to take their ugly garbage barges elsewhere.

Our problem is with our heroes dealing with these obnoxious Controller folks exclusively. And if the Controllers really travel with such ease in their invincible ships, they might actually have the means to keep the heroes from ever reaching any other sort of Malon!

As for "Juggernaut", it's a stardate-free, consequence-free episode and could easily be decided to take place before "Timeless". Continuity references incude the Malon (doh!), the Doc's holocamera (but that was old news in "In the Flesh" already), and the ongoing Torres/Paris relationship (which is not at any specific stage here, and Tuvok's attempts at controlling Torres' temper are confined to this one episode, too).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[thribs]

I always assumed the Malon episode was a mistake. There is no way their territory is that large.

 

[Timo]

Of course, we're never really dealing with their "territory", because the whole point of the Controllers is that they deliver lightyears-spanning devastation to locations outside Malon territory. But there are bound to be limits on how far they can go, and "Night" already established that the 2,500 ly there was better than any other Controller known to our adversary had achieved by that time. The jumps of "Timeless" and "Dark Frontier" are at odds with this figure.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Finn]

Well, by establishing that the heroes did have something to sell - and that by selling, they would be making a huge difference, thus quite possibly getting something in return from all those Malon who could now kick those former Controllers in the teeth and tell them to take their ugly garbage barges elsewhere.

You seem to be ignoring the last part of my quote..

Bargain what? Voyager had absolutely nothing to offer that wouldn't radically change the economy in which the Malons live by...

We never saw ordinary Malon, so Voyager likely was never near systems populated by the Malon.

 

[Timo]

I'm not sure how the mass retirement of Controllers would "radically" change anything. They're an exclusive bunch of voluntary suicidees to begin with, a minority who does a job that needs doing. With Janeway's offering, the job would still get done, only, a low number of people would no longer have to be paid for volunteering to kill themselves.

As per Fesek's words in this ep, Malon is an important and productive and beautiful and all-around fantastic place that simply happens to produce a lot of waste. Changing the way the waste is dealt with would at most decrease the number of interstellar enemies Malon has; the planet would otherwise just keep going as always - the wet dream of every environmentalist, even if utterly unrealistic in terms of today's realities.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Finn]

I'm not sure how the mass retirement of Controllers would "radically" change anything. They're an exclusive bunch of voluntary suicidees to begin with, a minority who does a job that needs doing. With Janeway's offering, the job would still get done, only, a low number of people would no longer have to be paid for volunteering to kill themselves.

As per Fesek's words in this ep, Malon is an important and productive and beautiful and all-around fantastic place that simply happens to produce a lot of waste. Changing the way the waste is dealt with would at most decrease the number of interstellar enemies Malon has; the planet would otherwise just keep going as always - the wet dream of every environmentalist, even if utterly unrealistic in terms of today's realities.

Timo Saloniemi

There is absolutely no evidence to support that there are a small number of controllers. actually, I'd find it implausible.

 

[trekshark]

if voyager had given them the recycling tech the controllers could become recycling plant engineers. Or use their experience as ship captains to find uninhabited planets to colonize, or run sight seeing space cruises. Seems to me if their society wasn't having to deal with all the waste there would be resources available for other interstellar endeavors that the crews of the waste ships could transition to.

 

[Timo]

There is absolutely no evidence to support that there are a small number of controllers. actually, I'd find it implausible.

How so? Every Controller identifies himself as a special breed.

And small is certainly relative. If every professional soldier today got the boot, the world might notice - but only because they might have access to guns and decide to do something about it. If every fireman did, because fires somehow got outdated, nobody would notice. If every mailman did... Well, we're basically there already. Also, the Malon seem to be devout believers in automation, as the point of the waste dumping is that their homeworld is heavy on technology yet a paradise for the inhabitants (save for the waste problem) and no mention is made of labor-intensive lines of work. Labor management might be a non-issue, including dealing with sudden waves of unemployment.

Although of course we could argue that since Fesek takes such pride in being an artist, he is in fact stating that only the filthily rich, that is, the Controllers, can afford to be lazy and useless like that on Malon...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Prax]

If these controllers are taking all the waste material from the whole world, there must be thousands upon thousands of ships. And the crews must not be able to serve on them for very long.

 

[Finn]

That would be nice...

 

[Voth commando1]

The hirogen don’t really have territory, they are scattered throughout a large swathe of the quadrant in small hunting bands.

The Malon’s territory seemed a bit more contiguous, but it was clear they operated over a large area as well.