The Voyager Conspiracy: A Question

[cosmic mouse]

What makes the episode work is Seven downloads too much information, and so starts to draw connections and inferences where none(probably) existed. She uses this downloading successfully earlier on, but she starts downloading far more than her mind can handle.

It also tags slightly on the ever-present human "condition" of perception (in the absence of definitive evidence) not being the end-all be-all of everything... this is even more relevant now than it was 20 years ago. This was probably a good lesson for Seven to have learned on her journey to humanity...

 

[STEPhon IT]

Pretty much everything Seven says or thinks in this episode is suspect, because of the damage she sustained. So I wouldn't take any of her lines as gospel.

Hell, for all we know, she dreamed the whole thing up, and it never actually 'happened'.

Agreed, I found her theories quite comical and totally absurd.

 

[thribs]

I do like how she manages to turn Janeway and the XO against each other. That was funny.

 

[rfmcdpei]

I would note that in some of her conclusions, Seven was not wrong. I made the argument over at Reddit's daystrominstitute that she was quite right to suspect that Alpha Quadrant powers would be willing to dissect her for the Borg technology within her body.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromIn...w/the_stripping_of_borg_tech_from_xbs_is_the/

What happened to Icheb, and what was done to many other xBs, was a worst-case scenario that she might have been afraid of for quite a while.

 

[Voth commando1]

I do like how she manages to turn Janeway and the XO against each other. That was funny.

I didn't think it was too implausible. Chakotay had at least two agents on his Maquis ship. So I think he would have been a more receptive to the notion something was up. But yeah them nearly coming to accusations was funny.

 

[darrenjl]

But what makes the episode is the viewer is still left with questions. Was the Cardassian ship really there? Could it have been Gul Evek's ship from 'Caretaker' that too ended up in the Delta Quadrant and wasn't sent home? Was the tractor beam seen the in Caretaker explosion real? Why was Voyager carrying tricobalt devices on its first mission to simply find a missing Maquis member?

How I would have enjoyed an inserted scene later on in the series of a Starfleet admiral dialling Voyager over the MIDAS array and asking the captain if anyone had suspected the real reason for Voyager's mission to the Badlands, leaving the question incredibly open ended if Starfleet knew ships were being lost to the Delta Quadrant, or if Voyager's mission was more than just finding Tuvok.

 

[DonIago]

^I too felt that the episode opened up questions it didn't really answer, and it was vexing because they were good questions. Even a throwaway line about how the data Seven had presented had been faulty which have helped in that regard. But the tricobalt devices? Did even the novels ever address that one?

 

[Voth commando1]

But what makes the episode is the viewer is still left with questions. Was the Cardassian ship really there? Could it have been Gul Evek's ship from 'Caretaker' that too ended up in the Delta Quadrant and wasn't sent home? Was the tractor beam seen the in Caretaker explosion real? Why was Voyager carrying tricobalt devices on its first mission to simply find a missing Maquis member?

How I would have enjoyed an inserted scene later on in the series of a Starfleet admiral dialling Voyager over the MIDAS array and asking the captain if anyone had suspected the real reason for Voyager's mission to the Badlands, leaving the question incredibly open ended if Starfleet knew ships were being lost to the Delta Quadrant, or if Voyager's mission was more than just finding Tuvok.

I concur. The episode does leave some things open and never addresses them again.

You wouldn’t need any ongoing conspiracy subplot, but just enough to leave viewers asking, “wait is there something else going on?”