The Bad Science of Voyager

[TommyR01D]

You know as well as I do they made it up on the spot to up the stakes and never thought twice about the wider repercussions.

Yes, and of course it was all reset by the end of the episode anyway.
What annoys me is that, even if you accept the enormously difficult conception and the fleeting window of opportunity, the species could still just about work if you established that triplets (at a minimum, but preferably larger litters) were the norm. That would not really have changed the central plot of Elogium, since no babies end up being born at all and indeed the emotional dilemma would probably be made more pertinent given the additional burden of raising multiple children instead of just one. Instead they had to crush any hope of plausibility by showing single births only.

 

[Refuge]

Yes, and of course it was all reset by the end of the episode anyway.
What annoys me is that, even if you accept the enormously difficult conception and the fleeting window of opportunity, the species could still just about work if you established that triplets (at a minimum, but preferably larger litters) were the norm. That would not really have changed the central plot of Elogium, since no babies end up being born at all and indeed the emotional dilemma would probably be made more pertinent given the additional burden of raising multiple children instead of just one. Instead they had to crush any hope of plausibility by showing single births only.

So how is it that Kes had an uncle?

 

[Refuge]

In terms of actually carrying the baby, on the back would be more practical and more comfortable.

Frankly how humans birth babies isn't exactly a design for an easy and painless experience!

 

[TommyR01D]

So how is it that Kes had an uncle?

The writers forgot their own nonsense?

 

[Refuge]

The writers forgot their own nonsense?

Or we accept what they did write and allow the Ocampa had multiple births

 

[TommyR01D]

Frankly how humans birth babies isn't exactly a design for an easy and painless experience!

The combination of wide heads and narrow birth canals is the price we pay for being intelligent bipeds.

 

[Refuge]

The combination of wide heads and narrow birth canals is the price we pay for being intelligent bipeds.

Yeah, and our babies are so reliant for such a long time. No dropping an egg, hatching it and pushing it out of the nest for us.

 

[Discofan]

I learned that there was a competition between placental and marsupial mammals (marsupial tigers, bears ... etc) and the placental won everywhere except in Australia and New Zealand... Weird! One would think that giving birth the marsupial way would have been an advantage...

I wonder what a marsupial man would have been like.

 

[TommyR01D]

And then there’s Tuvix.

Yes, let's talk about Tuvix!

His story is one of the (unfortunately frequent) instances of science fiction crossing into outright magic. A Vulcan, a Talaxian and a flower are teleported together and wind up merged into a single body. I could buy that happening as a transporter accident, but the miracle of a coherent new life-form emerging with the consciousnesses of Neelix and Tuvok intact, rather than a horrifying butchered mess of blood and bones, is beyond credibility.

Also found it irritating that several times during the episode they refer to Tuvix having two different types of DNA - apparently they forgot about the flower itself and the Ocampan lung.

 

[Discofan]

... A Vulcan, a Talaxian and a flower...

That sounds like the beginning of a joke.

 

[Refuge]

I learned that there was a competition between placental and marsupial mammals (marsupial tigers, bears ... etc) and the placental won everywhere except in Australia and New Zealand... Weird! One would think that giving birth the marsupial way would have been an advantage...

I wonder what a marsupial man would have been like.

What marsupials came from New Zealand?

 

[Timo]

I don't see the Elogium being much of a problem, regardless of writer intent or lack thereof.

What do we learn? That unless one goes to specific sort of trouble at a specific time, one can't have kids. With the reverse of that being "If you bother to dance the dance, you can have kids", simple as that. There's nothing in the dialogue of this reverse only being possible once.

It's the scifi reverse of losing your virginity, sort of. Unless you X, you miss your one and only chance to lose your virginity, ever. But if you X, you can have kids like any normal woman, perhaps twice a year, for fifteen years on the average, or whatever. With X out of the way, the species can continue.

There could be all sorts of biological rationales for one having to choose whether to ever breed. Many species on Earth are highly dependent on non-breeding individuals for their survival, even when the instinct of the individual is to breed. Preventing a sapient individual from breeding would in all probability involve rather extreme measures - and weird biology is one of those that might just barely suffice.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Discofan]

What marsupials came from New Zealand?

You're right. Apparently, there were no mammals in NZ except for one species of bat. Bizarre! I guess I was led astray by the Tasmanian fauna.

 

[Refuge]

You're right. Apparently, there were no mammals in NZ except for one species of bat. Bizarre! I guess I was led astray by the Tasmanian fauna.

No worries New Zealand is special... I was born there!

 

[eschaton]

You're right. Apparently, there were no mammals in NZ except for one species of bat. Bizarre! I guess I was led astray by the Tasmanian fauna.

There are some fossil mammals from New Zealand. But my understanding is most of it was submerged at one point after the death of the dinosaurs, which basically nearly killed off the native fauna, leading to the re-colonization of the islands by birds.

 

[TommyR01D]

One last throw before I move to another series - in The Void we encounter a series of humanoid creatures, one of whom the Doctor calls Fantome. They can communicate with each other through music. We then have this little exchange:

Janeway: Could their species be native to the void?
EMH: It's certainly possible.​

Are they on crack? The void is... a void. It's empty space. The only material of any kind is from ships and other objects which occasionally fall into it. There is no steady supply of oxygen, nor any kind of nutrition. This species may be unusually well-suited to surviving this hostile environment. There may even have been some evolutionary adaptation if they have been hopping aboard lost ships for generations. There is no plausibility in a large, sentient biped emerging from nothing here.

This one was just a small side-discussion rather than a plot point of any significance, but it still struck me as rather ill-thought-out.

 

[Discofan]

One last throw before I move to another series - in The Void we encounter a series of humanoid creatures, one of whom the Doctor calls Fantome. They can communicate with each other through music. We then have this little exchange:

Janeway: Could their species be native to the void?
EMH: It's certainly possible.​

Are they on crack? The void is... a void. It's empty space. The only material of any kind is from ships and other objects which occasionally fall into it. There is no steady supply of oxygen, nor any kind of nutrition. This species may be unusually well-suited to surviving this hostile environment. There may even have been some evolutionary adaptation if they have been hopping aboard lost ships for generations. There is no plausibility in a large, sentient biped emerging from nothing here.

This one was just a small side-discussion rather than a plot point of any significance, but it still struck me as rather ill-thought-out.

It's one of the many many things on Voyager that don't make sense (e.g. the dreamers (who the hell feeds them?), the macro viruses that transport people! Viruses are very simple, so simple that they barely qualify as a life form, they don't DO anything!!! And definitely not something requiring senses!!! The people that age backward!! Do I need to explain this one?...etc...)

 

[Prax]

It's one of the many many things on Voyager that don't make sense

It's like...a random comment of speculation. I'm sure we could figure out some plausible scenarios if it were serious enough.

(e.g. the dreamers (who the hell feeds them?)

They feed themselves. They aren't always sleeping. We get the impression that the sleep a lot, but so do cats. Perhaps they're in hibernation season when Voyager comes across them. They use technology to invade the dreams of crews of ships that pass by, and keep them occupied until the crew dies off, or perhaps other reasons. We don't find out. This technology is either used as a defense(perhaps while hibernating), or for piracy.

The people that age backward!! Do I need to explain this one?...etc...)

Certainly not any more farfetched than things we've seen in every other series. For instance, every show has "energy beings." These aliens are somewhat in between.

the macro viruses that transport people! Viruses are very simple, so simple that they barely qualify as a life form, they don't DO anything!!! And definitely not something requiring senses!!!

Wait, what?! What do you mean "transport people"?
It's an alien lifeform that to the doctor resembles a virus, or a parasite, infects its host, and eventually grows into those flying things, which the doctor says "Then there's the big ones, which I have termed 'macrovirus'" I believe they refer to the virus as "the aliens" several times.

This is all just typical Star Trek stuff, from TOS to (I assume)Dis

 

[Silvercrest]

childbirth is apparently done standing up, so without an attentive assistant there's a reasonable chance that the baby will just be dropped onto the ground from five feet up.

Maybe it happened to the writers of the show.

 

[Farscape One]

This is more a curiousity than a bad science observation.

The Equinox... you would think they would have taken a similar path Voyager did, at least at first. How is it Janeway never heard of the Krowtonan Guard that killed half of Ransom's crew?