The Caretaker-not the smartest being around

[Lynx]

I thought it would be fun with a debate about the Caretaker or the Nacene which was the name of the species. So here we go:

As I see it, The Caretaker and his species, the Nacene with all their superb technology, weren't actually the smartest people around. Let's just take a look at how they handled a disaster they caused themselves.

The Nacene were explorers from another galaxy. They arrived to our galaxy and discovered the Ocampa homeworld. One could expect that those superior beings should just watch and study but in some way those clumsy Nacene ruined the atmosphere of the planet.

OK, accidents happen! And they were at least decent enough to wanting to do something to help the people whose world they had destroyed.

So they order two of their own, The Caretaker and Suspiria to stick around and care for the Ocampa. Fair enough. But how did they do it?

One could expect that those super beings could have used their advanced technology, which obviously could transport ships and people across the galaxy to find a new home for the Ocampa, just as captain Picard did with some undeveloped species in that TNG episode where the people were in the holodeck while Enterprise did send them to another place. Or maybe the Nacene could have repaired the damage they had done to the planet in some way.

But no, they drill a hole in the ground and transform the Ocampa to cave-dwellers with a ridiculous short life-span of nine years, a too short time to learn and develope. They could have prolonged the lifespan there and then since they obviously had the technology to do so.

Then Suspiria leaves and The Caretaker himself remains. Does he use his powers to help the Ocampa develope? No, they remain cave-dwellers and, in Kes's words "gained a talent for dependence, to simply taking what they were given."

Then the Kazon arrive and even The Caretaker must have realized that they might become a threat. He has the technology to blast them to kingdom come and once and for all scare them away from that part of space. Did he do that? Oh no! He let them remain on the planet's surface and become a threat to the Ocampa. So much for his protection of the Ocampa.

Then the old super-being discovers that he's going to die. Now what does he do now? Finally realizing that his time is up, did he start to teach the Ocampa how to develope, take care of themselves and survive? Or maybe discover some potential leader among the Ocampa which he could teach and who could take the knowledge of the Nacene back to the Ocampa and teach them to develope and prosper? No!

He starts to kidnap different beings from all over the galaxy in order to find someone who could give him an offspring who would just love to remain on the array and care for the Ocampa. How brilliant! Just imagine if Torres and Kim had been what he was looking for! Would they have lived together happily the rest of their lives on that array 70 000 lightyears from home and cared for the Ocampa, then have had children who would also live their lives on that array and cared for the Ocampa? Hmmmm.....I don't think so.

Then, when the old geezer finally realizes that time's up, what does he do then? He decides to give the Ocampa energy for five years and then he would commit suicide. OK, according to the book "Caretaker" by L.A. Graf which is based on the script for the episode, he did download all his knowledge to the Ocampa database in the last possible minutes of his life so maybe there was a chance for them to learn and survive. The problem is that he should have done that a long time ago and he did actually do it at the last possible moment after Janeway had told him the possibility of the Ocampa being able to learn and develope. Before that, he was just going to give them energy and food for five years. Very narrow-minded, as I see it.

The Caretaker may have had a superior technology. He did also have a compassion and empathy which was admirable. But most of all he acted like a narrow-minded, clumsy fool whose actions in the long run did more harm than help.

Suspiria, the other Nacene who left with some of the Ocampa and settled in another part of the Delta Quadrant was obviously a bit smarter. At least she let the Ocampa she protected develope. But on the other hand, she had a mean streak and the result of her actions weren't that astonishing either.

The Nacene might have had superior technology. But as I see it, they weren't the smartest beings in the universe.

Other opinions, please!

 

[The Borg Queen]

Yes. The "caretaker" was a moron who has probably doomed the Ocampa because of his short-sightedness.

 

[Helmgirlie]

Lynx, you hit the nail on the head. I fully agree with you.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Oh Lynxy. You've barely left any wiggle room for people to ad additional evidence to the further slander of Banjoman's competency...

He was a rapist. Inserting his love spuds into people hoping a baby will grow? Further stupidity would have us believe that his species is so incompatible with human life that it doesn't matter if he tries to procreate with a male or a female. More so that after raping and raping and raping the crew of the Equinox, he seeks out another human vessel some 6 months later to see if humans have suddenly now become sexually compatible with whatever passes for his sausage wand.

CaretaKer claimed the math to send Voyager home was too involved to workout with the amount of time he had left to live... Tuvok claims he figured out the travel device in moments and it would only take him some hours to plot a course home.

The Ocampan ability to convert life energy into nourishment with euphoric effects and a byproduct of combusting whatever they are feeding on... Sounds similar enough to what happened to the atmosphere of Ocampa, that for the Nacene to have been responsible for this ecological disaster as Banjoman claims... They might have pushed the Ocampa up the evolutionary ladder smack face first into these unpredictable consequences. This might also explain why their population halves every generation, that the Caretakers were left on a deathwatch just to watch two parents make one child on and on until there is only one child.

Janeway Found Susperia in just over a year. By accident. Banjoman lost her for 500 years abouts? Maybe she was avoiding him? Maybe he couldn't arrange a piss up in a brewery.

What happened to Gul Evek's ship? Was it sent home? Did Banjoman miss and push it through a sun, which is why he was so hesitant about sending Voyager home, although Neelix said Janeway's story was very familiar in that region of space that, he can't have bothered to send most anyone home? he did something awful to those Cardassians... Unless Seska did when then reminded her that her rank in their hierarchy would have been deck hand?

Banjo man left Kim and B'Elanna to die from a Caretaker cum allergy. he did that to a lot of peoples. The Doctor figured out a cure in minutes.


O... And, Caretaker (the plot was stolen from Charlie and Chocolate factory by the way.) actually thought that his child would (Clark listening to computer Jor-El in the fortress in Smallville?) do what he said even if he was alive, but goodness forbid that "he" was dead because every parent knows that children are bastards who will not do anything around the house unless you really ride their ass.

Caretaker treated the Ocampa like ant children when every single one of them had the capacity to be harder omnipotent space god than he ever could... Unless they were put into a box underground to breed regressively into extinction exactly because their alpowerfulness was proportionate with their sanity and proclivity toward senility in their later years while still being alpowerful that a skurge of godlike Ocampa rolling across the Quadrant would make Q look like Al Gore hamming his shorts. And if that was the case... He ALLOWED Janeway to let these dangerous pariah weapons f mass destruction to go free (if she didn't run from the Kazon thinking someone else would open their cage or that they should build a powerbase before confronting the kazon on the surface of their world??)?

Caretaker was stupid to think "down on the farm" would be soothing to someone from the 24th century? I mean sure Trelane and Apollo made similar mistakes with Kirk, but one forgot about relativity and the other one blinked and we'd changed a scootch.
but then harry and Tom did try to seduce one of his holograms because they are sexual deviants.

Other stuff.

 

[Helmgirlie]

The writers were silly to believe we would fall for that crap LOL

 

[Lynx]

Oh, I won't call it "crap". I think the story and the whole plot is OK. In fact, I'm actually happy to see that even a superbeing can act clumsy and be a bit narrow-minded too.

As for Guy Gardener's questions, yes I think the Caretaker didn't bother to look for Suspiria. I guess he had the attitude of "Oh, she left me and therefore I don't care about her. Besides that, I can't leave the Ocampa". Maybe he was so upset by her leaving that he didn't bother to contact her even when he was close to death. As, I ve stated before, he wasn't so smart.

As for Gul Evek's ship, I don't think that it was pulled into the Delta Quadrant at all. It was damaged when it tried to enter the Badlands and Chakotay's Maquis ship had left it far behind when the Cartaker's wawe snatched them away to the Delta Quadrant.

 

[RoJoHen]

My favorite part of this thread:

"Caretaker cum allergy"

 

[Timo]

I think we're mistaking senility for idiocy here. It probably wasn't for no reason that the Caretaker chose to portray himself as an addled old man.

Odds are, the Caretaker had been running on mental fumes for at least a couple of centuries when our heroes first met him. Set in his ways which once might have made sense but no longer did; powerless to fight back the Kazon; no longer able to operate his own transportation gear in reverse. The idée fixe about the Ocampa probably was but a pretext for the Caretaker's final actions of shutting down shop. Saving the Ocampa wasn't the great purpose in life for a superbly intelligent intergalactic being - it was the equivalent of a dying old man patting a dog he vaguely remembers once having cared for.

As for the Caretaker's failure to notice that he already did this species or that, I'd actually not consider that part of his senility. Obviously, some of Janeway's human crew were more compatible than others, although even Kim wasn't fully fit for becoming mother to the Caretaker's offspring. All humanoids in the galaxy were probably largely identical for the Caretaker's purposes, and the species distinction wouldn't have mattered nearly as much as the distinctions between individuals.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Guy Gardener]

I think we're mistaking senility for idiocy here. It probably wasn't for no reason that the Caretaker chose to portray himself as an addled old man.

There's also a reason the others chose to leave him behind. I've often wondered if he wasn't Frank Burns from M*A*S*H* of Rimmer from Red Dwarf that as quickly as Susperia ran from his company, the rest of their crew ran from the both of them. I think he was an idiot AND Senile, and she weren't much better.

Also... Why do we assume he had skills as an engineer or astronavigator? Banjoman could have as easily have been a councilor or telephone sanitizer that the Captain of the nacene mission decided to leave behind the least expendable members of "its" crew?

 

[Mrs Paris]

Well the caretaker wasn't an all knowing "god" he was just some Nacene average Joe who made mistakes like everyone else

 

[Unicron]

You have some valid complaints, Lynx, but I am curious about something. When was it established that the Ocampan life span of nine years was related to the Caretaker's presence? Maybe it was, but I honestly can't remember it being mentioned anywhere. Only that the cycle was nine years in human terms.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well, it's more so tot he fact that Susperia's Ocampa lived for 14 years that Caretaker didn't institute the same health standards... more than we have any proof that 14 is normal and his Ocampa where crippled to make the care fro them a touch easier like we would put down our pets at a certain Logans Run specific age because they're old and useless.

Bu then if they were allowed to ascend into energy based life forms, they'd perhaps be immortal? It's only a question of if they can breed as an energy form, and if they can stay there in that evolved state since Kes did return to the Flesh in that bollox 7th season episode of hers... Also do they "age" that they return older, the same, or as young as they want when reintergrated to their physical forms after spending a pronounced period as a noncoporial life form... And was Kes' evolution the same or different from Susperia's Ocampa following her into a noncoporial pocket dimension?

 

[The Borg Queen]

Actually the 14-year old's dad lived to be 20...

 

[Lynx]

You have some valid complaints, Lynx, but I am curious about something. When was it established that the Ocampan life span of nine years was related to the Caretaker's presence? Maybe it was, but I honestly can't remember it being mentioned anywhere. Only that the cycle was nine years in human terms.

Sorry, I think I was a bit unclear about that in my post.

The Caretaker wasn't responsible for the nine-year lifespan. They had that before the Caretaker arrived. The point is that he could have done the same as Suspiria did at her array, given them technology and methods to prolong the lifespan and helped them to develope their mental abilities but he did nothing of that.

 

[Meredith]

Yeah the Caretaker was an idiot, but you gotta give props to Janeway for not realizing that she could have replicated some simple timers and some simple 20th century C-4, planted it around the array used the array to get home and set the C-4 to detonate after she had left.... But no..... strand the crew


Yeah the Caretaker was none to bright, why not bring a colony of Ocampa onto the array and train them to be their own caretakers???? That would make more sense, plus the Ocampa would be loyal to race. Heaven Forbid the Caretaker found a Klingon ship and put Klingons in charge.... That would have turned out rather funny, they would have turned the underground caves into a death match arena for glorious bloody entertainment.

 

[Timo]

The Caretaker wasn't responsible for the nine-year lifespan. They had that before the Caretaker arrived.

To be sure, we only have the Ocampan word on that. And the Caretaker had taken care of the Ocampa for too many generations for them to remain impartial and uncorrupted by those wall-high displays of bliss and propaganda.

...set the C-4 to detonate after she had left...

But it was more a question of the heroes not having enough time to figure out how the Caretaker's galacto-teleporter worked in reverse before the Kazon would overrun the place. Tuvok said it would take several hours to do it; the Caretaker then set self-destruct; the Kazon juggernaut collided with the station, in a total loss of about half a minute of screen time; and immediately thereafter, Janeway made the decision to destroy the defenseless array lest it be taken by the remaining Kazon.

Return to Alpha would have required Janeway and pals to defend the array for those "several hours", apparently an untenable position what with one of her ships already gone and the other in serious enough trouble ("Their weapons array has been hit") that the sacrifice of the other one in a ramming attack had made tactical sense.

why not bring a colony of Ocampa onto the array and train them to be their own caretakers?

That would make sense if the goal was to save the Ocampa. But clearly the actual goal was to find a heir for the Caretaker, and the Ocampa would be unsuited by default - a Caretakee cannot be a Caretaker, not in the thinking of the Caretaker.

Janeway tried to reason with the critter till the bitter end, but it was painfully clear that "reason" wasn't going to cut it. Janeway was speaking English and Human, the Caretaker was speaking Senile and Alien. The alleged motivations of the critter obviously weren't its true ones.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kio]

So the Nacene were a "sporocystine" (sp?) life form. What the hell is that? It bugged me that they threw out the term and didn't bother to explain it. Yeah, something to do with spores obviously, but I could've used more info.

Also, I have a hard time believing that a species who could bend space and time, dissolve into energy, sense other dimensions, etc. could be kept like pets so easily.

 

[Mrs Paris]

So the Nacene were a "sporocystine" (sp?) life form. What the hell is that? It bugged me that they threw out the term and didn't bother to explain it. Yeah, something to do with spores obviously, but I could've used more info.

Also, I have a hard time believing that a species who could bend space and time, dissolve into energy, sense other dimensions, etc. could be kept like pets so easily.

well the Nacene were more powerful than the Ocampa people. So what probably happened was that the Caretaker was able to tone down the powers of the existing Ocampa and then after several generations they didnt' even know they had those powers