The *Worst of All Possible Worlds

[at Quark's]

Imagine a parallel universe where they get home every single episode. Only to mysteriously find themselves back in the far reaches of the DQ again by the beginning of the next episode.

I suppose there would be little worse than having to endure that for the next seven years.

 

[Oddish]

Imagine a parallel universe where they get home every single episode.

Or get blown up. Voyager must suffer.

 

[JoseNoodles]

Imagine a parallel universe where they get home every single episode. Only to mysteriously find themselves back in the far reaches of the DQ again by the beginning of the next episode.

I suppose there would be little worse than having to endure that for the next seven years.

Star Trek: Groundhog Day.

 

[FederationHistorian]

Here’s another scenario:

- Tom Paris gets permanent brain damage when Tuvok fails to prove his innocence
- Janeway saves Tuvix
- Arturis delivers Janeway and Seven to the Borg
- B’Elanna follows through in breaking Chakotay’s neck for interrogating her in holodeck in “Extreme Risk”
- Harry Kim and the Delta Flyer are the ones that are thrown out of slipstream and crash on the ice planet instead of the Voyager crew
- The Doctor is replaced by the Equinox Doctor
- B’Elanna and Tuvix are assimilated by the Borg.
- Voyager returns to assimilated Federation space, thanks to the knowledge obtained from Janeway, Seven, B’Elanna and Tuvix

 

[at Quark's]

Here’s another scenario:
- Harry Kim and the Delta Flyer are the ones that are thrown out of slipstream and crash on the ice planet instead of the Voyager crew

- Captain, the shuttle with Chakotay and Kim has dropped out of slipstream!
- Can you track them?
- Trying captain ... it seems they have lost shuttle control are hurtling with great speed towards an ice planet.... apparently they crashed into it
- Well, to abort the slipstream now would mean we would have done all that work for nothing - it could cost years to obtain new benamite crystals. And it's not as if they're crucial to most episodes anyway. We'll have a mourning service for them once we're safely in the Alpha Quadrant.

 

[Oddish]

We'll have a mourning service for them once we're safely in the Alpha Quadrant.

Of course, Chakotay dies messily when the DF crashes. But the essentially indestructible Harry Kim survives, and spends the next 45 years living in ice cavern he carved with his phaser, subsisting on assorted alien fish and having lengthy one-sided conversations to his clarinet, which he's named "Gemeinhardt".

 

[at Quark's]

... and when he is rescued after all, he'll write an autobiography: 52 years an ensign.

 

[Oddish]

Here's a "worst of all possible worlds" situation...

Data on TNG, without justification, had his career prospects level out badly, thanks largely to an immediate superior who just wouldn't move on. But imagine if a Trek character had the exact same thing happen... but at the lowest possible rank?

Worf on TNG and DS9 went through a completely messed up love life. Whenever he fell for someone... yeah. They died. Our favorite Klingon was unlucky in love. But imagine a character who went through eight or nine disastrously unsuccessful romances, from a fiancee half a zettameter away, to a former Borg, a space zombie, a bunch of alien vampires, a three-year-old who never existed, and a woman who caused him to be the only person in Starfleet history to be reprimanded for banging an alien. He couldn't even date a hologram without some sort of disaster occuring.

Chief O'Brien got a lot of nightmare situations thrown at him... killed repeatedly, thrown in an alien prison, tortured by alien bio-weapons, and lost in a messed up timeline... but imagine if someone without his loving family support system got much of the same.

But it's all right. The Trek writers wouldn't do ALL THAT to just one person.

...or would they?

 

[Darth Thanos]

Voyager goes to pursue the Maquis, and find themselves at the Delta Quadrant.

Mariner, Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford come out of cargo bay.

Mariner: I told you guys, it would be fun! Sneaking into a random ship, hide for a day and you don't know where you may appear! Hey, you, in which region are we? We should be going back to the Cerritos by now...

 

[Oddish]

I'll lay you 8 to 5 that Boimler gets taken by the Vidiians and harvested for organs, probably early in the first season. Jack Quaid returns later on as the Vidiian who got Boimler's face and voicebox.

The good news is that because Mariner is relentlessly uncontrollable, she fills the "somebody gotta be duh ensign" trope nicely, getting Ensign Kim (later Lieutenant Kim) off the hook. But Voyager gets relegated to late night because of Janeway channeling her inner Red a decade early and spewing relentlessly potty mouthed monologues about her biggest headache.

Med tech Tendi joins the doc in Sickbay and becomes besties with Kes. After Kes and Neelix break up, Tendi goes for her sloppy seconds, and there are soon a bevy of pint-sized, green, spotted Orion-Talaxian hybrids scampering around the ship.

And Rutherford... hmmm, I don't know. Can't think of anything sufficiently appropriate and bizarre.

 

[Darth Thanos]

And Rutherford... hmmm, I don't know. Can't think of anything sufficiently appropriate and bizarre.

Rutherford would of course end up working in Engineering and goes full fanboy with B'Elanna Torres. But Torres has problems of her own: ensign Vorik is about to fall into Pon Farr, tries a mind meld with her, and kickstarts her own Klingon mating process. Unaware of all this, Rutherford goes after work to visit Torres in her room.

Rutherford: Hello, good night! I came to apologize about the scene in the mess hall. Mariner said that the Warp Core is lame, but I find it awesome, and what you did during the battle with Kazon was...
Torres: Shut up and kiss me!
Vorik: B'elanna, I couldn't wait anymore, we want us to... you!! Take your stinking hands off my wife, you damn dirty human!
Rutherford: Sorry, I just came here to make an apology, and she jumped on me! I have a girlfriend back at the...
Torres: I'm not your wife, you jerk! I would rather do it first with any random guy that comes to my door, like this P'takh!
Rutherford: Hey!
Paris: Sorry, I came running from the other side of the ship. B'elanna, did you just say...?
Torres: You're late, Paris!
Paris: D'oh!
Vorik: I will not stand this! Rutherford, I call a Koon-ut-kal-if-fee!
Rutherford: A what?
Vorik: A mating duel!
Rutherford: [...] Okey-Dokey! Mariner found a fun holosuite we can use, it's called "Wakanda Forever" and in the climax of the story there is a Vulcan and...
Vorik: NO HOLOSUITES! I will kill you right here and now, with my own bare hands!
Torres: And if you survive, we'll make sweet love!
(Rutherford grabs his hair and makes a desperate cry)

 

[johnnybear]

Voyager picks up more Delta Quadrant refugees as she journeys onward, and adds them to the crew.

But they did that with the crew of the USS Equinox and we never saw them again!!! I wonder why they or one or two weren't seen as a member of an away team or on the ship?
Continuity isn't worth a jot if it isn't referenced!
JB

 

[at Quark's]

One scene I would have liked to see in an alternate Voyager where Kes never left, is a confrontation between her, Janeway, and Arcturis (from Hope and Fear).

After all, her 'the weak shall perish' vision, and her statements to the effect that she only felt a 'malevolence, a cold hatred' and that the 8472's were the greater danger, bent on annihilating all life in the galaxy probably contributed significantly to Kathryn's decision to seek an alliance with the Borg, may even have been the main factor.

Of course, the real reason was the 8472's were simply retconned, but hearing Kes account for her 'error' might have been interesting.

 

[Verteron]

Realistically Seven of Nine had it easy - the majority of her implants were removed, her human systems restored, and her psyche, while obviously damaged, was able to come to terms with leaving the collective and the memories of doing what she did as a drone.

Of course, the show runners wanted an attractive female to join the crew and shake things up, which is why she was 'saved' from the Borg for TV, but I imagine a more realistic scenario.

Many of her implants can't be removed. She's been dependent on them since she was a child. Starfleet has a limited understanding of Borg tech, and Borg tech defends and rebuilds itself. Even if you did manage to remove a cortical implant, the nanoprobes would be hard at work building another within minutes.

Seven spends her time on Voyager looking far more like a Borg drone than a human woman, and it alienates her from much of the crew, even moreso than she already was. Janeway and the Doc believe in her, but her appearance is offputting for everyone else. Her implants cause constant irritation and pain, and without the benefit of a Borg cube to maintain, begin to malfunction, leading to dangerous accidents where nanoprobes escape her body.

She becomes isolated, which adds to the extreme trauma and she'd realistically suffer from her memories of being a drone, feelings of horror at the atrocities she witnesses and was forced to participate in, yet also loneliness without the voices of the collective that raised her.

Her arc ends with a violent escape from Voyager, injuring several crew and damaging the ship on her way to stealing a shuttlecraft, heading off to join The Cooperative, which she learned of during her link with Chakotay during Scorpion. During this solo voyage, she's intercepted by a Borg cube who not only re-assmilate her, but with new knowledge of the Cooperative, they're soon after them as well.

Don't provoke the Borg.

 

[Verteron]

But they did that with the crew of the USS Equinox and we never saw them again!!! I wonder why they or one or two weren't seen as a member of an away team or on the ship?
Continuity isn't worth a jot if it isn't referenced!
JB

Crewmen James Morrow and Brian Sofin of the former USS Equinox appeared in the background of several episodes over Seasons 6 and 7.

 

[johnnybear]

Can't remember who they were to be honest but it's nice to know they were there for the scene and thanks for telling me, Verteron!
JB

 

[johnnybear]

At first I could find no reference to them on IMDB outside of their first appearance but upon looking up the Trek database I found out they were considered background performers and not credited but did appear in corridor scenes. Shame that none of the other Equinox crew came back!
JB

 

[somebuddyX]

It's Season 5. "Timeless" airs. The ship crashes and Chakotay and Kim make it back to the Alpha Quadrant. Then fifteen years later they find Voyager except this time there's no temporal shenanigans. Why's that? Uh... So what are some fugitive Starfleet officers to do now with a Voyager at the bottom of a frozen lake? Let's thaw out that ice cube, baby! They use tech to power the ship up, use tech to thaw the ice, and some more tech to get her airborne.
After cleaning out all the bodies from the ship, well look at that, it's time for the continuation of Season 5, where Captain Chakotay, First Officer Tessa, Chief Medical Officer Joe Schmullus and Ensign Harry Kim set a course for the Delta Quadrant to go explore some strange worlds that they haven't seen before...

 

[valkyrie013]

They rescue a borg drone from a planet they encounter, but it doesn't go well. They don't bounce back like Seven, remain comatose for awhile, after a mind meld with Tuvok, or another telepath, find that there psychy is shattered, they went insane living as a borg. They eventually coax them out, but they eventually suicide, Like Bonaventure in the Vendetta book. Someone that couldn't come back.

 

[somebuddyX]

Not a WOAPW but I was thinking about "Non Sequitur" and also Boomer/Athena on BSG and if Harry had stayed on Earth and Danny Byrd had stayed on Voyager at the end of the episode and you just continued on as normal and occasionally had Harry (and Tom Paris!) on Earth stories. Like it wouldn't work for the actors involved but there is something wild to me about what would Harry do in letting people know Voyager was okay. People probably thought the ship was destroyed in the Badlands and then you have this dude who says he should have been aboard telling them it's 70000 light years away. Is he nuts, or has "survivor's guilt" or is a fraud or glory hound? Presumably he doesn't blow up his runabout in this one.