The Malon are everywhere!

[Richard Baker]

I do agree it trivializes the journey Voyager took when these races keep showing up no matter how far they travel.
I do wonder though is instead of 'Malon Territory' they did not have an area of space they controlled/dwelled in but just kept wandering further and further from their point of origin, maybe for many hundreds of years. No shortcuts or warp tunnel things, just a long time to get that far out using conventional warp.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Instead, it came off like every single Hirogen devoted their entire life to hunting people, and it does not make sense in that vein that their entire civilization has not collapsed in on itself.

Are you kidding? Every major recurring Trek species generally has a one note culture (an Earth based note). Humans are (understandably) the only species with more than one hat (though Trek also did a good a job of making humans fairly homogenous)

Kilingons - warriors
Vulcans - logic
Cardassians - dictatorial
Ferenghi - greed
Bajorans - spiritual
Hirogen - hunters

How many camp Klingons who like to use innuendo and work with animals have you seen?

I understand the limitations of creating large numbers of alien species for a show and totally get why they use a one concept culture to flesh out a species, but my problem with the Malon is that their one note was tedious. A culture based apparently on.....polluting shit.

The others have some possibilities for story telling but polluting.....sigh

I would characterize Klingons more as politicians than warriors, but I see your point.

But even most of the one note recurring races have shown us some hint of depth. Most of the Klingons we saw were nobles and politicians. We see the class dynamic in Klingon culture through Martok and K'mpec's old flame. We see warriors trying to rebel against the modern focus on politics and politicians exploiting them (Heart of Glory, Kahless). We see Klingons who hate the warrior culture (K'elyhr). We see opportunistic businessmen exploiting the warrior ethic for profit (House of Quark). The Cardassians also show a lot of examples of this in DS9, where we see dissenters and scientists. Suspicions show us both Klingon and Ferengi scientists, and DS9 shows us a gradual trend in Ferengi culture toward liberalism that was implicitly always there but everybody was denying out of danger.

Reducing Bajorans to just 'Spiritual' is a gross oversimplification. Within that we see people taking advantage of the spiritualism for personal gains (Winn), progressives (Bareil), stories about nationalists rebelling against becoming a galactic power. We see the healing process from global slavery and gradually learn the full impact the slavery had on their culture, and we see the culture resisting falling under a national hegemony.

Even the Kazon and Vidians are given some degree of depth mostly through individual Kazon who go against the grain.

The Malon, they only really factor in one episode and appear in a handful of others in a crowd. The Hirogen are a main villain and the closest thing to dissenters we get is bizarre stories about trying to kill holograms instead of people.

 

[Christopher]

The Malon, they only really factor in one episode...

Three, actually: "Night," Extreme Risk," and "Juggernaut." The last of which takes place 30,000 light years away from the other two, hence the problem.

 

[hux]

But even most of the one note recurring races have shown us some hint of depth.

Yeah, some of the recurring species definitely get better when the show keeps using them and explores their culture (though it usually takes a while) but they all start out as cartoon cultures that have only one defining aspect to their societies.

One thing I've noticed and always hated though is when a species only develops and evolves.....after they have made contact with humans.

The Kilingons became more three dimensional and less grrr after spending more time with humans. By the end of DS9, the Ferenghi have virtually been converted from their one note culture of greed and acquisition into fully realised beings with equal rights for women and more progressive values in general

The problem is, to make any progress they apparently have to become more human-like

This is why Eddington's speech about the insidious Federation is thought provoking (though in reality, I suspect this was tagged on purely to highlight that the writers were paying attention to the fact that most species end up being very human after a while)

 

[Ethros]

I don't think I've seen Homestead since it first aired; do they really not mention how the Talaxians got that far? Hmm, I just assumed they did, but it has been 14 years since it was on. If not, wow that is lame.

But yeah as others have said thats just ST Voyager for you. Kinda like how in Equinox pt.1 it just glosses over what happened with their crew and the Caretaker. I mean, why didn't he send them back? Did Captain Ransom just go "hmm, so you've stranded us 70,000 light years from home eh?... ok buddy, see ya, we better get a move on then." And just leave the array?

And then also why never ran into any of the species Voyager encountered, or why Voyager never met the Krowtonan Guard, etc*



* Though I try to rationalize this as maybe if Voyager was setting a course back to Earth, then maybe the Equinox set a course for the nearest Federation outpost. So after a while they could end up on totally different paths I suppose.

 

[Finn]

I always figured the caretaker array was near the border of Kazon space and the Krowtonan Guard. The Equinox must have taken a slightly different course. Obviously they weren't sent home like that Cardie ship. There may have been some event that kept them from heading for that anomaly we saw in Parallax or Time and again planet.

Oh! Or they first headed for the Bajoran Wormhole before changing course. Perhaps the Krowtonans did that.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Sometimes I get the distinct impression that all the interesting, powerful species were just beyond that Borg hub. Sadly, all those serious bad ass aliens like the Fen Domar were snatched from us by admiral Janeway.

So basically all the interesting, powerful species Voyager could meet live in the Beta Quadrant

 

[hux]

Well the Delta quadrant did appear to have a disproportionate amount of unimpressive aliens. From memory, only the Voth and the Devore seemed powerful. Some, like the Qomar seemed technologically advanced but not really what you'd call powerful

Otherwise it's a whole lot of Kazon's, Vidian's, Talaxian's, Malon's and other fairly forgettable species

I've often said that the weakness of the Delta quadrant species doesn't reflect well on the Borg. In truth, they conquered the runt of the quadrants. Q over egged their pudding

 

[Hartzilla2007]

I've often said that the weakness of the Delta quadrant species doesn't reflect well on the Borg. In truth, they conquered the runt of the quadrants. Q over egged their pudding

An they haven't even conquered the entire Delta quadrant, just a nice sized chunk of it when they've had 900 years to do that.

 

[Ethros]

To be fair we only ever see species Voyager runs into on its linear path through. There could be a thousand other big civilizations in the Delta Quadrant they just never crossed paths with.

The whole area of Fedeation/Cardassian/Klingon/Romulan/Ferengi etc "local" space we're used to from ENT/TOS/TNG/DS9 doesn't take up the whole of the Alpha & Beta Quadrants. It's barely about 10-20% of each

 

[Christopher]

The whole area of Fedeation/Cardassian/Klingon/Romulan/Ferengi etc "local" space we're used to from ENT/TOS/TNG/DS9 doesn't take up the whole of the Alpha & Beta Quadrants. It's barely about 10-20% of each

Ohh, much, much less than that. You know this "Known Space" inset map from Star Trek Star Charts? The circle including the Federation and all its neighbors plus a lot of empty space beyond them? On this map of the whole galaxy, that entire Known Space map fits inside that little white dot labeled "UFP."

Not to mention that recent discoveries have suggested that the diameter of our galaxy may be 50 percent greater than we'd thought, 150,000 light years rather than 100,000, meaning that what's shown on that galaxy map would be only 4/9 of the actual galactic disk...

 

[MacLeod]

I just watched Juggernaut and I'm wondering how the Malon could be encountered again after the 10,000 plus journey in Timeless and another big journey in Dark Frontier? It seemed to me that a plausible explanation would be that Juggernaut actually took place before Timeless back when Voyager would have been near Malon space. There is a somewhat clear view of Paris's ensign pip, but that seems a much less glaring error than to assume the Malon operate over a stretch of more than a 10th of the galaxy.

The other strange reference to the Malon occurs in just the previous episode, Think Tank. It is stated that they haven't seen the Malon in months, but the thought of encountering them again isn't met with incredulity because they are a decade away from Malon space. And why would the Think Tank guy pretend to be a Malon when it would seem to be such an unlikely enemy?

The only problem I can see with moving this episode up the timeline as well is that Paris is clearly refered to as an Ensign in dialog. I'm wondering if anybody else has any better explanations for these two weird appearances?

Because for the most part the producers didn't like the C word, Continuity. VOY was not alone in disregarding continuity others shows ignore it as well, they simply hope the audiance will either

a.>Have forgotten about
b.>Didn't see it
c.>Couldn't care.

 

[Ethros]

The whole area of Fedeation/Cardassian/Klingon/Romulan/Ferengi etc "local" space we're used to from ENT/TOS/TNG/DS9 doesn't take up the whole of the Alpha & Beta Quadrants. It's barely about 10-20% of each

Ohh, much, much less than that. You know this "Known Space" inset map from Star Trek Star Charts? The circle including the Federation and all its neighbors plus a lot of empty space beyond them? On this map of the whole galaxy, that entire Known Space map fits inside that little white dot labeled "UFP."

Not to mention that recent discoveries have suggested that the diameter of our galaxy may be 50 percent greater than we'd thought, 150,000 light years rather than 100,000, meaning that what's shown on that galaxy map would be only 4/9 of the actual galactic disk...

Yeah, love ma Starcharts. I was just looking at This map of the Delta/Beta Quadrants and just thought it was a very rough 10% of that area shown. But yeah probably a lot less all together

 

[Christopher]

^You must've been looking at the larger "Explored Space" pattern (which is actually a plan of Moonbase Alpha from Space: 1999 superimposed on the map) rather than just the white dot corresponding to "Known Space." The "Explored Space" part is there to account for worlds visited in Trek like Deneb, which we now know to be insanely far away compared to the other stars mentioned by name in Trek (which fits "Encounter at Farpoint" neatly). The important thing to remember is that the territory a given nation has explored can extend far beyond the borders of it and its neighbors -- for instance, think of all the Europeans who explored the Americas and the South Pacific and so forth. (Or think of Americans going to the Moon. That's pretty far from our coastal waters.) So the "local" region containing the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Breen, Tholians, etc. is much, much smaller than the total range of Starfleet exploration -- by roughly the same order of magnitude by which that explored range is smaller than the galaxy as a whole.

 

[MacLeod]

But I have no issue with the Talaxians, as Voyager made the distance (actually more as they started further out than Talaxia...) in less time....

But only through extraordinary circumstances. They got pushed 10,000 light years by Kes's supercharged psi powers, then traveled 300 extra light years using Arturis's quantum slipstream drive, then jumped 2500 light years through the Malon vortex, then traveled another 10,000 light years using their own experimental quantum slipstream drive that almost destroyed them (well, did destroy them until the timeline was changed), then covered another 20,000 light years using a stolen Borg transwarp coil, then jumped another 200 ly through the Vaadwaur subspace corridor and another 600 ly thanks to the graviton catapult. Out of an estimated 46,000 light years (according to Star Trek Star Charts), they only covered 2400 ly -- a mere 5.2 percent! -- under their own warp power. And a key premise of the first season was that Voyager's technology was far more advanced than anything else in that region of space -- i.e. the region the Talaxians came from.

There are likely more Talaxians that far out, all across the galaxy. Dragon's teeth implied Talaxians were warp capable in the 15th Century at the least. More than enough time for a group of Talaxians to venture that far out.

Except that "Homestead" makes it clear that Dexa personally remembers Talax -- and that she and the other colonists left to escape its occupation by the Haakonians, which means that they left less than 21 years before. So they spanned a distance in under two decades that would've taken Voyager at least four to five decades -- probably much more. (If they covered only 2400 ly at regular warp in 7 years, then covering 46,000 ly would've taken 134 years!) So these Talaxians, whose technology is supposed to be so much less advanced than Starfleet's that Neelix was astonished at Voyager's capabilities, were able to travel anywhere from two to seven times as fast as Starfleet's most advanced warp engines.

So the whole thing just made no damn sense. It took what the entire series had portrayed as an incredibly difficult, arduous, and unlikely journey and made it seem casual. And that made a mockery of the entire premise of the series. It's like if Gilligan's Island had done an episode late in its run revealing that the island had been just 8 miles from Oahu the whole time.

I don't think the series really potrayed the journey as incredibly difficult, sure it paid lip service to it on the odd occasion but as you say things like this made a mockery of the entire premise.

But ST and other shows have always been quilty of this with Plot Speed. A journey can take a matter of hours or days or years depening on the need of the plot.


For example take TMP, it would take the Enterprise 4 days to travel 16ly (To vulcan) which gives a speed of 4ly/day. At that speed it would take VOY around 50 years to get home. But to keep it simple for the audiance 70 000ly=70years or 1000ly per year.

What people are willing to over look or let slide varies, so what one person is willing to over look another isn't. But this all comes back down to continuity, the network wanted one type of show and the audiance or at least part examined the premise and decided that this premise leaned towards a more serilased approach.

Some love VOY for what it is was, which is great, others feel dissapointed in the product. Both points are valid.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I've often said that the weakness of the Delta quadrant species doesn't reflect well on the Borg. In truth, they conquered the runt of the quadrants. Q over egged their pudding

An they haven't even conquered the entire Delta quadrant, just a nice sized chunk of it when they've had 900 years to do that.

I've wondered before whether or not maybe the Borg "farm" some civilizations. By which I mean that they come across them, see *absolutely nothing* that would make them worth assimilating, and instead just monitor them, waiting for them to come up with something that makes the resources to assimilate them worthwhile. "The Borg have left us alone for 200 years, but unfortunately they found out that two years ago, we invented a beer that actually tastes great *and* is less filling, and now they have taken our homeworld and are hunting all of us down."

 

[Ghost]

Yeah I also thought of that analogue; the Borg basically being 'farmers' and the civilizations of the galaxy being its 'crops'.
It waits for them to grow and mature, occasionally doing a little raid on a civilization to get some technology samples and specimens and 'push' them forwards (make them develop new tech), and when they are ready come in in full force.

 

[Finn]

^Would that explain why they only sent one ship to Earth twice?

I know the Queen told Seven they "failed" to assimilate Humanity. She may have been BS'ing Seven.

 

[Christopher]

^Would that explain why they only sent one ship to Earth twice?

I figure it was just because the Federation was clear on the other side of the galaxy. We assume we're always the center of everyone's universe, but the Borg have thousands of nearer civilizations to focus the bulk of their attention and resources on. To the Borg, the Federation was just a sidebar, a distant curiosity, before Voyager started making a nuisance of itself in the Borg's home space.

Although in the novels, specifically the Destiny trilogy, we see what happens when the Borg finally decide the Federation has become a large enough problem to devote the majority of their attention to....

 

[Ghost]

^Would that explain why they only sent one ship to Earth twice?

I know the Queen told Seven they "failed" to assimilate Humanity. She may have been BS'ing Seven.

Think so, and what Christopher said.

First Contact kind of messed this theory up as the Borg sought to prevent the formation of the Federation (which doesn't make sense as the Borg want its technology).
But I had been thinking; what if the Borg used the threat of time travel to make the Federation develop some interesting technologies to protect itself from changes in history. (those temporal shields from the Year of Hell)

Having a defence against the actions of time travellers would be quite useful for the Collective as it would make sure that no time traveller could ever unmake the Collective by preventing its creation.