History Headscratchers / StarTrekVoyagerTechnology

** Tuvok was on a special assignment to spy on the Maquis, but still under Captain Janeway's command, making Voyager the ship that would go after him - witness how often that the respective crews of the other series set out to rescue their missing and captured crewmates. Tom Paris was picked as an expert because he'd actually been involved with Chakotay's cell before being sent to the penal colony - that's why he was IN the penal colony, he'd simply been discharged from Starfleet over the accident that killed his fellow cadets. And as for the distance between Earth and the Badlands... That distance is intentionally kept vague - DS9, Bajor, and the Cardassian border are meant to be on the edge of Federation space, but then we also have an episode like Homefront/Paradise Lost where the crew make it between the distance in a short period of time. It does help that runabouts, the primary mode of transportation in DS9's first two seasons, were said to have a maximum warp on the lower end of the spectrum, around warp three-ish. Meanwhile a ship like Voyager, capable of a cruising speed in the warp nine range, could make that journey much faster.

*** And Series/StarTrekProdigy, set only a few years after the end of Voyager, would later establish that the USS Protostar is equipped with the vehicle replicator, essentially a 3-D printer for shuttles. Sure, Voyager itself didn't say they had one, but 3-D printing wasn't on the radar back with Voyager was in production, so [[TechnologyMarchesOn technology marched on]] and it's being retconned into use in that time.

*** It could be a case of TechnologyMarchesOn, as Voyager and the Defiant aren’t Galaxy-class starships, nor were in existence at the time that episode took place. Materials that made the Enterprise may have been replaced by better material that made it resistant to baryon particles so that they’re not required as doing the sweep often (much like how PEEK and polyimide are resistant to gamma radiation and X-rays). Also, another thing to take into account is what is explained in the episode of “Starship Mine”: the Enterprise needed a stronger than usual sweep because it spent more time in war in five years than most ships did in ten. So, as long as Voyager isn’t constantly doing warp speed (as we’ve seen multiple times in the series’ run that they often had to run her sublight to explore, gather supplies, etc), Voyager was nowhere near the level of baryon particles that the D was, and they made it back in seven years, putting her three years back in the Alpha Quadrant before a sweep is needed to be done (not that it matters, as Voyager was decommissioned shortly after she got back).

* In "Demons", Neelix was extremely fussy about sleeping conditions yet he jumped at the chance to seep in sick bay. Aren't sickbay consoles composed of glass or plexiglass like MRI machines? Maybe Talaxian anatomy is conducive to that but there were a lot of humans who followed Neelix into sickbay

*** It could be a case of TechnologyMarchesOn, as Voyager and the Defiant aren’t Galaxy-class starships, nor were in existence at the time that episode took place. Materials that made the Enterprise may have been replaced by better material that made it resistant to baryon particles so that they’re not required as doing the sweep often (much like how PEEK and polyimide are resistant to gamma radiation and X-rays). Also, another thing to take into account is what is explained in the episode of “Starship Mine”: the Enterprise needed a stronger than usual sweep because it spent more time in war in five years than most ships did in ten. So, as long as Voyager isn’t constantly doing warp speed (as we’ve seen multiple times in the series’ run, Voyager was nowhere near the level of baryon particles that the D was, and they made it back in seven years, putting her three years back in the Alpha Quadrant before a sweep is needed to be done (not that it matters, as Voyager was decommissioned shortly after she got back).

*** It could be a case of TechnologyMarchesOn, as Voyager and the Defiant aren’t Galaxy-class starships, nor were in existence at the time that episode took place. Materials that made the Enterprise may have been replaced by better material that made it resistant to baryon particles so that they’re not required as doing the sweep often (much like how PEEK and polyimide are resistant to gamma radiation and X-rays). Also, another thing to take into account is what is explained in the episode of “Starship Mine”: the Enterprise needed a stronger than usual sweep because it spent more time in war in five years than most ships did in ten. So, as long as Voyager isn’t constantly doing warp speed (as we’ve seen multiple times in the series’ run, Voyager was nowhere near the level of baryon particles that the D was, and they made it back in seven years, putting her three years back in the Alpha Quadrant before a sweep is needed to be done (not that it matters, as Voyager was decommissioned shortly after she got back).

*** It could be a case of TechnologyMarchesOn, as Voyager and the Defiant aren’t Galaxy-class starships, nor were in existence at the time that episode took place. Materials that made the Enterprise may have been replaced by better material that made it resistant to baryon particles so that they’re not required as doing the sweep often (much like how PEEK and polyimide are resistant to gamma radiation and X-rays). Also, another thing to take into account is what is explained in the episode of “Starship Mine”: the Enterprise needed a stronger than usual sweep because it spent more time in war in five years than most ships did in ten. So, as long as Voyager isn’t constantly doing warp speed (as we’ve seen multiple times in the series’ run, Voyager was nowhere near the level of baryon particles that the D was, and they made it back in seven years, putting her three years back in the Alpha Quadrant before a sweep is needed to be done.

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** Yeah, this was either a CriticalResearchFailure on the part of the writers, or complete contempt for the intelligence of their viewers. Deuterium is a common isotope of hydrogen, and hydrogen is the most ubiquitous element in the universe. Most high school chemistry students should be able to tell you that.
*** It's not CriticalResearchFailure, it's ScienceMarchesOn. The short answer is that Bussard Collectors don't actually work that way, it turns out that the energy lost to drag exceeds anything they could hope to recover.