WMG / Star Trek: Voyager

Star Trek: Voyager

S6E1 The Doctor never was going to kill Seven of Nine

When the Doctors ethical subroutines where removed, he immediately and gladly jumped to the aid of a hostile captain. This troper believes that even without ethics, at the very least his pride would make this scenario impossible. Instead of doing the described operation on Seven, he used her implants to create a projection of her in Cpt Ransom's holoprogram, in order to persuade him to change his ways, and to mess with him in general. The unpleasantness referred to later on the voyager was not the attempted lobomoty, but the way the Doctor did this without telling Seven, and without making any effort to make her less scared or in pain during this procedure. This troper is fairly convinced that most of this WMG was the original intention, which got lost in editing, likely to have Ransom's heel-face-turn seem more important. This WMG has the advantage of not undercutting the entire story-arc of the doctor being a sapient being and making Sevens presence in Ransom´s holoprogram significantly more sensible.

Friendship One was intended as a Screw You, Elves! to the Vulcans

Having already made first contact with an alien species (the Vulcans) in 2063, it seems a little odd that United Earth would send out an unmanned, warp-capable space probe to seek out and make contact with alien life in 2067. Even more so as the probe was designed to easily yield up its technological secrets to whomever got their hands on it. However, as shown regularly on Star Trek: Enterprise, humanity was massively peeved that the Vulcans were not just casually handing over their science and technology to the human race. So Friendship One may have been a subtle "F—- You! We'll show you how to be real friends with other species!" kind of project. Earth was flaunting how freely they were willing to share their technology, in contrast to the "selfish" Vulcans.

• The way the Vulcans acted in Enterprise certainly makes this a huge possibility.

Janeway really does have it in for Harry

Let's face it, seven years as an ensign? Despite all the different duties he pulls, including sometimes having the comm? Even after communications with Starfleet are reestablished, Janeway does not receive any apparent pressure to promote the poor guy, who by that point had more experience than most captains! Janeway has to be trashing him badly in her personnel reports! That or the alien STD reprimand really damaged his career!

Elsewhere, we have seen that promotions are more likely to come from Starfleet Command, with only the occasional field promotion granted purely at the captain's discretion. So there was a reasonable explanation for Harry's Limited Advancement Opportunities when Voyager was out of touch with the Federation. But these were extremely unusual conditions and she did the extremely unusual if not unheard of for many others. She made Chakotay (a traitor in Star Fleet eyes) first officer, made people who had never been Star Fleet personnel officers like Torres (Lieutenant JG and later promoted her to Chief Engineer), she promoted Paris once, etc. There is no real explanation for not giving a field promotion to Ensign KimBut once they had regular communications you would think that they would recommend some merit promotions to Janeway — unless she was doctoring her reports such that the crew members she wanted to hold at their current rank were listed as losers.

Quantum Leap was a Starfleet/Federation program

At some point before the events of Relativity, Commander Braxton goes back to Earth 1999 and takes over Project Quantum Leap (originally a failure) by sneaking in advanced time travel technology, and is the unknown force deciding Sam's leaps. He observes Sam in both the first leap (undercover as a character named Weird Ernie) and the project's last leap (more openly as Al the bartender) correcting the time stream (aka putting right what once went wrong).

The Caretaker was trying to drive the Ocampa to extinction

The Bizarre Alien Reproduction of the Ocampa has been observed by many fans as making no sense at all, since by definition each generation would be less than half the size of the one that preceded them. At the same time, they were an Innocent Prodigy race with immense latent potential for Psychic Powers. Yet they were actively discouraged from either scientific pursuits or exploring the potential of their minds and instead taught to live passive existences, not questioning their circumstances. They clearly seemed on a steady course headed straight towards extinction. This would appear to conflict with the Caretaker's duty to care for them.

But we already know that he has some major Blue-and-Orange Morality. It could be that he deeply resented being stuck with caring for the Ocampa while the rest of his people continued on their explorations. So, in an act of Loophole Abuse, he redesigns their entire culture so as to put their species into a steady, albeit peaceful, decline. Some modest Population Control measures could have resulted in the one-child-per-female-per-lifetime thing. Likewise, discouraging the study of science or use of their powers would prevent them from uncovering what he was doing. His eventual goal was to have the Ocampa become extinct, thus freeing him from his obligations. It was only when he unexpectedly began to die himself that he became remorseful over what he had done.

This hypothesis is backed by his mate Suspiria grabbing a group of Ocampa and fleeing into space, leaving him with no idea as to where she went or how to contact her. She recognized his genocidal plans for what they were and decided to pursue her own agenda of restoring the Ocampa to being a viable species. If he knew where she and her Ocampa had gone, he would have had to extend his planned genocide to them in order to truly "complete" his mission. But by going off into hiding, not even communicating with him, she kept her charges safe while she worked to jumpstart their evolution again.

Tom Paris accidentally created an Infinite Improbability Drive

Turning into a salamander is nothing compared to a nuclear weapon turning into a whale!Since Tom didn't know what he was doing his improbability drive couldn't create a stable probability state and so the use of the engine itself faded out of continuity. All very improbable!

The holodeck can be used as an emergency generator

It's canon on Voyager that the holodeck power grid is separate from the ship's power grid, so when main power is down they can't use the holodeck power. We have also seen that even if main power is down across every system in the ship the holodeck can still operate. We also saw in an episode of Next Gen the holodeck was configured so that it was generating bursts of energy that were affecting other parts of the ship outside of the holodeck. So given the right configuration the holodeck can shoot energy outside of the holodeck. This means in a pinch they should be able to rig up something where the holodeck can generate power outside of the holodeck that they could tie into the ship.

Two Borg Cubes attacked Earth, both were destroyed, so how did species assimilated in the Alpha Quadrant get to the DQ?

• My theory is that the Alpha Quadrant species encountered by Voyager were in fact not the actual people who were assimilated but were clones with memory implants. Soon as the people are assimilated the collective know has the datafiles of their DNA and memories, and these files are immediately uploaded to the collective. When the cubes over Earth were destroyed the collective created fresh clones of those destroyed and download the memory files into them. Now, they are still grown as Borg and part of the hive mind from inception. This way the collective can always maintain the biological and intellectual distinctiveness of each individual even if they are destroyed.
  • The Queen proves they can do that,so the tech is there.
  • This would explain why Picard could be completely deassimilated by some quick micro surgery performed off screen, but Seven and the triad collective folks, Icheb and the kids couldn't be fully deassimilated. When the Borg grow a fresh clone of someone the parts, especially in the brain, that are replaced by machinery are completely written out of their DNA so even when deassimilated the new body must keep some of its machine part because it doesn't have and can't grow some of its own vital organs.
    • WHOA this means at any time they can bring back Locutus!
    • According to Star Trek Online they did.
    • According to Seven, the memories of anyone ever assimilated by the Collective are retained by the Collective. So technically the answer would be "yes".
  • Actually I always thought the fact that on Voyager they couldn't fully deassimilate Seven was because the Doctor, while good, was just not as good as Dr. Crusher.
    • In "Imperfection", it's implied that age has something to do with it, or maybe the time that the organism has been assimilated. Seven of Nine's cortical node can't be removed without killing her, but Icheb devises a way to have his own node removed. He develops a medical treatment for himself, based on the fact that he has a higher chance of recovery because he is younger. So, the older the drone is, or the longer time it has been in a state of assimilation, the more dependent the body becomes on the implants. Since Locutus hadn't been a drone for long, he was easily reverted to a human state. Since Icheb was young (or because he hadn't been a drone for long), he too could have critical implants removed. But Seven of Nine had been a drone for too long and her body was dependent on some of them.
    • It may be a matter of physical maturity at the time of assimilation. Annika was a pre-pubescent child when the Raven was captured, so she actually grew up as a drone. Picard was already a fully-formed adult at Wolf 359, so the adjustment after having the implants removed would not have been so great.
• This would also explain why when Janeway went onto the cube in Scorpion it just so happened that out of all the Collective across all the galaxy the drone made from Annika Hansen just happened to do be randomly standing next to she and Tuvok waiting to be activated. Not at all a coincidence. When they made the alliance the cube quickly downloaded a random file for a human, getting the Annika Hansen model and quickly grew that drone to be the voice of the collective.
• I always figured drones could beam through the central plexus from one ship to another. So when they began assimilating Alpha Quadrant species they just immediately started beaming them to other cubes around the galaxy. Yes, they still could have beamed the Annika Hansen drone onto the cube with Janeway.
• Actually, the episode where Seven reads her parents' logs explains that they followed a cube through transwarp to get to the DQ, so it's likely that Seven is actually the original Annika, but because she was a child when she was assimilated she still had to keep the organs/parts her body had not learned to grow into adulthood yet. Or that she was damaged in a previous battle (which would lead to the same thing the above troper mentioned, her 'organic' parts had been permanently replaced. Plus Locutus spent far less time actually assimilated than anyone else we see de-assimillated.
• The Borg had assimilated Romulan outposts before they made contact with the Federation in "The Best Of Both Worlds". It's possible that Borg cubes had assimilated other Alpha Quadrant species and then simply returned to the Delta Quadrant.

Assimilation by the Borg is inevitable because the Borg collective will inevitably rise again

1- Hugh's group. Sure they all have become individuals again. Well in a huge group of individuals it would only take one Borg to think that they should start their own collective, being the king or queen of their hive mind. Then they leave the Borg colony and start assimilating people into their new collective. It would only take one, so over a long enough time line the odds of it occurring are pretty good.2-The individuals who tried to assimilate Chakotay. Sure they don't want to forcibly assimilate anyone, but over time...can we trust them?3- So Admiral Janeway dropped a neurolytic pathogen into the collective which killed the queen and probably billions of drones. So we still get billions of drones disconnected from the collective. Most of those drones will just turn to another drone and make a mini collective. Then all the mini collectives will seek each other out, and eventually here we go again.

This is more of a Wild Mass Question than a WMG, what is the in universe rationale for the Department of Temporal Affairs and/or the Time Ship Relativity from stopping Admiral Janeway from going back in time and getting Voyager home early. Any ideas, cause I got nothing.

• Think about everything Voyager did over the run of the series. Helping them to get home early (or just letting Janeway do it herself) would have DRASTIC consequences for the timeline, including the destruction of untold numbers of civilizations by the Krenim timeship and the continued existence of the Borg Collective. Voyager HAD to finish its trip, or things could've turned out much worse.
• Think about the advantages to the Federation! Admiral Janeway loaded up Voyager with a whole bunch of futuristic technology to make their incursion into Borg space possible, as well as allow them to safely use the transwarp conduit network (which we learned in "Shattered" requires some temporal shielding). It's entirely possible that the time-traveling future Federation is a timeline created by Admiral Janeway's actions, and they allowed it to stand unchallenged because their own past depended on it. This may also be the reason other time-traveling powers are engaged in a Temporal Cold War with the future Federation.
• I would assume that during the Cold War, they came up with a date where temporal changes are considered history and not subject to change. Because Janeway's "mission" was JUST after reliable time travel was invented in the alpha quadrant, it was before the cutoff date.

Voyager episodes that would have better Next Gen Ferengi episodes.

See below right there. On Voyager Critical Care, and Work Force were both 'the evils of corrupt economy' episodes. As was the Malon race, who were dumping industrial waste that was killing another species and when given the science on how to clean the industrial waste they rejected it because it would put them out of business. These are the types of things the Ferengi should have been doing rather than jumping around like Jar Jar Binks.

• and Friendship One, where they find a planet devastated by an Earth warp capable probe, would have made a much, much, much better Enterprise episode.

Here is a short re-edit list of Voyager that would make a much better plot point.

Start with Year of Hell, where the Krenim are using a time ship to erase things from history and change the timeline in their favor. In the end Janeway blows up the time ship. I recommend then next the stories should be:Workforce, the one where they get brainwashed into being happy workers, Human Error, eliminate the Seven/Holo-Chakotay but keep the weapons testing range, Critical Care, where the doctor is forced to work for the corrupt medical facility, Drive, a race was being held to celebrate the new peace, Warhead, where the AI warhead went rogue but was recalled due to peace being achieved, Prototype, where the rogue robot soldiers were still fighting.

These episode represent what happened to this sector when the Krenim timeship was eliminated. The result was that instead of the Krenim Imperium rising the sector was subsumed by a 200 year long war. Peace has finally been achieved by the worlds are economically messed up and there are still some weapons, and hard feelings around. The episodes represent what the year that was the 'Year of Hell' looked like for Voyager with the timeship erased.

• Conversely, you could re-arrange: Revulsion, where they meet a psychotic hologram that killed it's crew. Next Flesh and Blood where the holograms go renegade and we find out that they had liberated holograms throughout the sector. Then Workforce, because now with the holograms gone there's a labor shortage. Then Critical Care, where again economic collapse has resulted in questionable medical practices, even though society at large is anti-hologram the space ship medical facility was run by aliens who aren't prejudiced against holograms. Then Body and Soul, where they hide the doctor from Anti-hologram police after a hologram uprising.

On sentience in holograms.

So why was the Doctor able to achieve sentience? Why was Vic seemingly sentient? How come no on in the Federation realizes that holograms are sentient? Here's how: When the Binars took over the Enterprise computer they downloaded a sentient program into the holodeck as part of a distraction plan. When Riker ordered up Minuette the computer put the image and personality of a brunette in a red dress onto the sentient program which then went on to seduce Riker. When the Binars were done the sentient program was no longer accessible. Later Dr.Polaski told the holodeck to create an opponent capable of defeating Data. To choose a program the Holodeck began running internal simulations of Data against programs, Data could easily defeat any program because as a User he could just delete any program even if it was capable of defeating him. The holodeck then discovered one deeply buried program unaccessible by any member of the crew, the sentience program left by the Binars. The holodeck downloaded this program into the Moriarity program. Later when Moriarity came back the crew trapped him in a mobile holodeck hard drive which was given to Reg Barclay. Reg eventually gave the drive to Dr. Lewis Zimmerman. Zimmerman was able to extract the sentience program and make a generic copy of it integrated into a standard holomatrix. His first experiment was his assistant Halley. Zimmerman in his massive ego never admitted that he basically copied the work of the Binars and took the credit for creating sophisticated holograms, all of which now have a nacent sentience within them which is what makes them so lifelike and interactive. The Zimmerman program became the standard for new holoprograms, which Felix used to create Vic. Zimmerman himself never addressed the ethical implications of this, he just enjoyed the fame. When he died his secret died with him.

The Kuvah'magh, the child of Tom and B'elanna, will find, and keep, the Sword of Kahless.

After she grows up while traveling around in the Delta Flyer, which would be her families personal spacecraft. Returning to the Klingon Empire the descendants of the Klingons who took off to the Delta Quadrant will accept her as a religious leader and become her Fedaykin. This causes a great controversy in the Empire, and in standing up for her Worf gets killed. She marries Alexander Rozhenko which brings her into the House of Martok, and those half romulan Klingons Worf rescued become loyal followers to her because she is, obviously, much more accepting to half breeds. This of course sparks a massive civil war in the Klingon Empire. But armed with prophecy, and the Sword she is able to unite the Klingon people and usher in a renaissance in Klingon culture and they move past the warrior culture into something new.

• Because the Klingon/Romulan hybrid children are loyal to her they open up a dialogue with the Romulans and she negotiates a truce between the two enemy Empires. She then leads the charge for the Klingon Empire to formally join the Federation. Even the hardline Romulans realize the balance of power is forever shifted and the Romulans join the Federation, Vulcan and Romulus are unified.

The reason there is no backup files for the doctor.

There are no backups for the Doctor because the EMH is itself basically a backup plan to begin with. He is already the equivalent of a last ditch emergency effort, so there is only one copy of the EMH program. It's like boats have life vests, but the life vests don't have life vests because they themselves are the last line of defense. Voyager tried to make one but somehow it got stolen and ended up on some planet where it wasn't activated for like 700 years, and making that backup was so hard to do that they only tried it that once.

Voyager is a dumping ground

Starfleet lost Voyager on purpose

Like what the Golgafrinchan would do to the worst of their population. Starfleet had within their ranks a psychopath that became captain, a crazy officer who had watched Pocahontas too many times, and Harry Kim, so they sent them off through a worm hole in the hope they'd never return; unfortunately they did, hence why in Star Trek: Nemesis she is an Admiral as she blackmailed Starfleet into promoting her.

Janeway was Kicked Upstairs prior to Star Trek: Nemesis

1. While the Alternate Timeline in "Endgame" forced Janeway to endure the things that earned her the title of Admiral Badass upon returning home, she never did get that chance in the main timeline. With a record of questionable decisions, now without years of strife to make amends, Starfleet made Janeway an Admiral to keep her away from the front lines where she'd screw up the worst.
   • Now we know how there got to be so many Insane Admirals in Starfleet.

• Considering she crippled (or destroyed) the Borg, saved and bolstered relations with the Q, and the Federation was captivated by Voyager's story, I always thought it was more of a publicity stunt.
• To fans who are annoyed that Janeway got a promotion "over" Picard, keep this in mind: Picard was offered promotions before, but rejected them, because he wants to continue to captain the Enterprise and stay with his crew. Janeway, though she undoubtedly loves her ship and crew just as much, has spent seven years lost in space, with no connections to Earth or her family. She probably accepted a promotion gladly, because she was tired and needed to be back on Earth at home. (This does not discredit the hilarious "Kicked Upstairs" theory however. Merely suggesting that Janeway was well aware that she was being "kicked upstairs," and more than fine with it, because she didn't want herself on a starship anymore either!)
  • If that's not good enough: Picard listened to Kirk's advice of "Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference."
    • So not only did Janeway never hear this advice, unlike a lot of starship captains she DIDN'T make a difference. In fact she and her crew missed out on the Dominion War when Starfleet needed all of its people the most. Form some combo of survivors guilt, PTSD and just plain weariness she probably didn't want to be in the captain's chair anymore so Starfleet promoted her to Admiral so that a) it would make good PR, and 2) she could help oversee the integration of all the new and exciting new technology and information she found into Starfleet.

Janeway eventually did marry Mark

Janeway (In a "revenge is a dish best served cold" tone of voice): Delete the wife.

"Fair Haven"

Once she got Kicked Upstairs due to her massive over-qualification for the position of Insane Admiral, Janeway issued a general order requiring a mandatory "upgrade" to the operating system on all Federation transporters invoking the chilling phrase (above) the next time Mrs. Mark Johnson used a transporter, wiping her right out of the pattern buffer mid-transport as the transporter chief could only watch in horror. Despite a mysterious outbreak of transporter accidents involving women with the surname Johnson, the matter never became a public scandal due to the efforts of Section 31 acting at Janeway's behest.

Janeway subsequently used Borg implants that had been removed from Seven-of-Nine to "assimilate" Mark into her own personal "Collective" (within which she was naturally Queen). Mark's friends and family were a bit put off by the way he had begun referring to his late-wife as "irrelevant". But Janeway assured them that it was merely a coping mechanism for dealing with tragic loss and that she had seen it many times during her trek across the Delta Quadrant (of course neglecting to mention that this was in Borg drones).

(Inspired by SF Debris.)

Voyager is responsible for the Obama presidency

1. Jeri Ryan wanted to move to Los Angeles after she got the job as Seven of Nine, but her husband at the time, Illinois politician Jack Ryan, objected.
2. A bitter divorce drama plays out in 1999, where the results are sealed in the interests of their child.
3. In 2004, Mr. Ryan campaigns to be the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. One of the local papers, acting on a tip, sues to unseal the divorce records.
4. The unsealed records tell stories of Ryan bringing his wife to sex clubs against her will, demanding she have sex with him and strangers in public.
5. Ryan withdraws from the race. His replacement loses the race to the Democratic challenger, a fresh-faced state senator named Barack Hussein Obama.
6. Obama wins the seat, which had been held by Republicans for several terms.
7. Four years later...

The Borg Queen is Seven of Nine's mother, cloned and altered to fit the Borg's needs, and Seven is needed as the perfect genetic match to replace her.

The relaunch novels specifically detail the "Royal Protocols", a set of instructions by the Borg to alter and adapt a Borg female into a new queen. As genetic resequencing is a possibility as part of the alterations (and, indeed, would make sense if the Queen is supposed to coordinate the individual thoughts of millions of Borg of mixed species), it wouldn't be surprising if those alterations transformed any species of Borg Female into Species 125, the Borg's own species of Queen. Also, Seven of Nine is expressly listed as a candidate in the Protocols, and the Borg Queen in Voyager certainly seems insistent on regaining her in any manner possible with her individuality intact, usually obsessing over her like a mother would obsess over their child. At one point, the Queen even deliberately taunts and tempts Seven with being reunited with her family using her assimilated father as bait (her mother is nowhere to be found, notably, and she isn't mentioned by the Borg Queen during the offer). Obviously, the Borg Queen being Seven's mother would make Seven the most suitable genetic candidate for succession, but the Queen's push to put her into that position means she still has some of her compassion and motherly instincts about her; she obviously has her individuality intact, as well, to perform her duties as the Queen, and she clearly wants her daughter to join in on the new family business.

• This would also explain why Seven's ship (back before she was Seven) was taken by the Borg before the original timeline's First Contact, and why Seven doesn't want to consider herself human.
• Does not compute. If I see a Zombie, I will kill it before it bites me. If they send a Zombie in my mother's body, I might hesitate, which gives it the chance to bite me; I might be so outraged by the blasphemy that I don't aim properly which gives it the chance to bite me: because I am an emotional Human. Borg purged Seven's emotions: she wouldn't weaken.

Seven of Nine became a Borg Queen when she created the temporary hive mind.

Whether she was prepared or not, the act of creating the hive mind and linking in the others is all it takes.

Tom Paris and Harry Kim are Voyager's One True Pairing

C'mon, it's practically Word of God anyway!

• In the very least,

Fear's first victim died of a natural heart attack

In the Voyager episode "The Thaw", aliens inside a holodeck/cryogenic suspension machine are menaced by a creation created from their minds, a Joker expy named "Fear". It's just a simulation that shouldn't be able to hurt them, but Fear has discovered he can terrify them into having heart attacks. Since all his power comes from Your Mind Makes It Real, he shouldn't be able to hurt them: They know the system is harmless.

But what if Fear discovered the heart attack "exploit" by accident? Perhaps one of the people inside the simulation had a weak heart and happened to die of natural causes while Fear was trying to scare him? Before this, Fear would have been just be a minor annoyance, a character created from their fears about the future with no real power. Once one of them dies, they'd be a lot more afraid of him, giving him more power (since he is a creation of their fears) and making his threats real: The people think he can give them heart attacks; therefore, he can.

Voyager's Deuterium Shortage Was A Cover-Up.

Basically, they ran out of a different material, but the fact that this material is used on Voyager Intrepid-class starships is top secret. Thus, the official transcripts changed its name to something more mundane (there is no guarantee that any type of censor beep used would be nonsense to every race in the Federation). This would imply that Voyager itself was a documentary In-Universe. There should have been a scene where this exchange happened:

Young Officer: Sir, looking over the Voyager records, I could never understand why they were always running out of Deuterium.

Older Officer: Well, that's because they didn't. The records were altered because what they did run out of is considered top secret. So, when they were talking about deuterium, they were actually talking about *obvious voice over* Deuterium.

Young Officer: Ohhhhh!

• Given the patent absurdity of running critically low on deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen, which makes up 75% of the universe), that makes perfect sense.
• Actually, maybe we just heard them wrong: what they were actually looking for was "duoterium" which is the Applied Phlebotinum that runs the "duotronic" circuitry from which all Starfleet technology from the 23rd century onward was developed. Tom Paris regularly dropped the "o" when speaking of duotronic circuitry, and he doesn't seem to have been the only one to do that. Presumably, duoterium's a bit more difficult to get than deuterium.
  • "Doo-TURRY-um" is the 24th century equivalent of "NOOK-you-lurr." Since collecting deuterium is so simple and routine people don't even think about it, so when someone says "doo-TURRY-um" everyone knows they actually mean duoterium.

Species 8472 are an offshoot of the Vorlon race that colonised Fluidic space and eventually reached the TNG universe.

Just look at their ships!

• The Shadows seem more likely.
  • Could be a group of Shadows and Vorlons that were stuck in Thirdspace after they closed the gate and eventually crossbred.
    • That would require Shadows and Vorlons to be able to stand each other.
    • Well, they do work together against the Third Space Aliens according to the movie. Maybe the group that got stuck there decided to keep at it, as they were trapped in hostile territory.
    • You get lonely, centuries pass. You can't get intimate with your blood relatives after all. And after a few beers your hated Neighbor down the road starts looking mighty fine...
• No, they're from Thirdspace. Think about it. It's Another Dimension even from the Babylon 5 perspective, and would likewise be one from the Star Trek universe's perspective as well. They're a kind of Eldritch Abomination. They use Organic Technology and Living Ships. They all possess Telepathy. They seem to have purged all other species from their dimension. Like the Vorlons, the Borg punched through into their dimension. Unlike the Vorlons, the Borg invaded in force, causing the aliens to retaliate. Sub-space is much less "solid" in the Trek universe, as even fairly primitive species can access it. Thus it was much easier for the aliens to simply open up portals into the Trek verse, as opposed to needing an Interdimensional Travel Device the way they would in B5.

"Year of Hell" paradoxed the entire universe out of existence; everything afterwards is a dream...

Or something...

• It did create an extra copy of the Doctor — um, Voyager's EMH...
  • What was always odd about the end of Part II is exactly how Janeway knew to listen to the Krenim and get out of there, versus being the Jerkass she was the first time around who ignored and taunted them.
    • In the original timeline before Annorax interfered, Kes warned the crew about the Krenim in "Before and After". Presumably, this was restored when the weapon ship was erased and Janeway avoided the Krenim because of Kes's warning.
    • She listened the second time because they said it nicely that time. The first time they ticked her off into wanting to defy them since they were so full of themselves.
    • It's another example of Janeway's questionable leadership skills in action. The decision on whether or not to risk the lives of her ship and crew by violating Krenim space isn't based on anything like consideration of the risk involved, but whether or not one person is a bit jerky to her. Even then, you'd think she might have tried negotiating with Nice Version for passage.
    • She wasn't violating Krenim space, as Janeway points out. Voyager was entering Zaal territory, and Janeway is shown negotiating passage with one of their officials. The Krenim vessel was firing on them, then resorting to bluster when their attack proved ineffective. Why should Janeway take him seriously?
  • This must be a trait stuck in the Starfleet character. Like, Ben Sisko straight up started the Dominion War as far as I'm concerned because of this same kind of thinking. In one episode a Jemhdar beamed onto the station and laid down the 'stop colonizing our space' speech, to which Sisko replied no that they were going to keep coming through the wormhole. Now the Jemhdar was a big dick about it to say the least but the Dominion still had every leg to stand on to tell the Federation to stop. But NOOOO just because the jemhdar was a jerk about it Sisko was on principle going to say no. Same with Janeway, Kirk was a lot like that to.
    • In Sisko's defense neither the wormhole nor the area around the wormhole actually belonged to the Dominion. It'd be like if a race were making contact with the Federation and suddenly the Klingons were insisting that race had to leave the Alpha Quadrant or there'd be war. Mind you as the only super power in their quadrant I suppose that sorta thing falls to the Dominion by default but judging just from the refugees (never mind all the other horrible stuff they found) the Dominion wasn't acting in anyone's interest but their own.

Seska from Voyager is the lost daughter of Legate Ghemor from Deep Space Nine

Her Obsidian Order deep-cover programming had an allowance for situations not listed in its parameters, thus enabling Ileana Ghemor/"Seska" to awaken once she was in the Delta Quadrant. Evidence:

1. Even after she knew about Cardassian infiltration techniques and what to look for, Kira never found Ileana among Bajorans.
2. Seska could not have been the spy's Cardassian name. It would have been recognized in a heartbeat by angry Bajorans.

The real Seska probably died during the Occupation.

• Jossed as of the Deep Space Nine re-launch novels Warpath and Fearful Symmetry. Iliana was actually held captive by Dukat as a Kira look-alike sex slave for fifteen years.
  • Novels aren't canon.

Species 8472 are Protoss/Zerg-Hybrids, and the Fluid Space is what the StarCraft universe will turn into when Purity of Form and Purity of Essence are combined.

• Does that make Kerrigan Rei?
  • Perhaps, but she could also be Asuka. Also, the Borg Queen is Motoko Kusanagi.
• Wait....so Species 8472 literally zerg rushed the borg in delta quadrant?
  • Honestly, I thought they were more Protoss dominant.

Harry Kim and Naomi Wildman are actually the originals, and everyone else who was on Voyager during "Deadlock" are in fact the duplicates.

While being heavily implied that both of them are alternates, it was never outright stated or even mentioned again in the series. There is a fifty-percent chance that the Voyager they came from was the 'real' one. If so, they are the only two members of the original crew out of nearly a hundred and fifty to ever make it home.

• Naomi was born inside the Delta quadrant, so make that only Harry Kim.
• It's hard to tell if this is actually a Tear Jerker, or a Funny Moment.
  • It can be both, as it is also very ironic that the resident Butt-Monkey Harry Kim is the only original crew member that isn't a clone or otherwise didn't permanently stay dead.
• What? Both Voyagers were equally original, having split about an hour before one of them self-destructed. One thing it did do was create a funny report. A starship with 149 crewmembers has 150 casualties (Voyager A Harry and Naomi A + 148 Voyager B crewmen) and 150 survivors.
• Notice that the other Voyager started the proton bursts first, before 'our' Voyager had the chance to. Given that both crews and their experiences were exactly the same up to that point, this theory is actually very likely when you think about it. Regardless, one ship and crew was doomed from the start (both Janeways come to this conclusion later) and would have to be destroyed to ensure that the other survives, or else they would all die. At the end of the day though, there is a rather twisted Everybody Lives ending in a sense, and Harry Kim (while talking to Janeway) can't quite comprehend everything that has happened.
• Basically, it's like Thomas Riker x 150.

Kes went insane after leaving Voyager because she learned something she didn't want to know.

When Kes left in “The Gift”, her psychic powers had caused her to evolve into a higher life form (thanks to her experience with Species 8472). When she returned years later in “Fury”, we never learned what happened after she left that made her so bitter and so crazy. She blames Janeway for “filling her head with ideas of exploration.” Since Kes was always so eager to explore, she probably continued to do so after leaving Voyager. In her higher plane of existence, she must’ve learned something upsetting about life, the universe, and everything that drove her insane. Being reminded of who she used to be probably had the effect of reminding this now higher being that, "It's the simple joys of life that matter, not the big picture", or something cheesey like that.

• Maybe Kes' power allowed her to perceive disruptions in time. Considering how Voyager messed up the timeline every few episodes that could have caused her a great deal of frustration or possible harm as the timestream kept altering back and forth.
  • Very plausible; as seen in "Time and Again", Kes really can sense changes in the timeline, at least sometimes. She could also sense the deaths of strangers lightyears away. Having both these abilities increased dramatically could easily have driven her over the edge.
• Maybe her "transcendence" did not include her life span, and she got bitter that even though she was all-powerful, she was still so very mortal.
• The Caretakers and Ocampa are actually the same species, with the Ocampa forming the "larval" stage. Those who "died" after 9 years have actually ascended.

Kes went insane after leaving Voyager because she learned that the Borg had assimilated her world.

The Ocampa were a race that was completely defenseless and possessed massive psychic power, definitely something the Borg would want to add to themselves. They would have learned of the Ocampa through Voyager's many contacts with them (Tuvok was assimilated in full, Seven's memories were downloaded, they had a Collective in their cargo bay for several days which would have been ample time to learn of them). This would explain:-Kes' irrational rage.-her aiming that rage at her forme friends-wating to send herself home, likely out of a deluded desire to protect her peopleAfter she was calmed down she snapped out of shock, which she'd been in sense she becae aware of the destruction of her race, and decided to live out the remainder of her life, quitely.

Kes went insane because of the WMG from The Thing page

If you think about it this also makes somewhat a fair amount of sense in the bottom of the Thing WMG page there is a theory stating that most of the Real Life universe (outside of our galaxy) consists of nothing but Eldritch Abominations and non humanoid horrors like something out of a H. P. Lovecraft story Gone Horribly Wrong and only Ascended Beings and beings who become Abominations themselves could survive and there was nothing that Humanity or any other humanoid species (the Borg against species 8472 was more then enough proof of this) could do absolutely nothing to stop it.

Kes learned this little piece of horror while ascended and slowly the truth began to drive her mad. After a while Kes returned (or was forced to return) to her corporeal (albeit aged) state and began to blame the crew of Voyager (especially Janeway) for ever even going to the stars to begin her evolution with the rest of her kind and learning this horrible reality. However interestingly enough this may lead to another theory...

The Q Continuum is the only thing keeping the Star Trek Universe alive

As is connected with the theory above according to Q himself (albeit he is a Unreliable Narrator) the Q probably already knew about the "Truth" of the universe yet still have a "meh" attitude about it (which unto itself is proof of how pretty powerful and truly badass the continuum really is!). the Q probably eons ago came across the Milky Way galaxy and our little blue ball and slowly over time most of them (at least the ones who weren't complete JerkAsses) grew to have a soft spot for humanity and after a while decided to keep this area of space safe for a while.

This is somewhat proven by the TOS era as it appeared that some Eldritch Abominations were slowly beginning to creep in to our galaxy yet by the end of the Original series movie era they just..stopped with no real reason given as to why. the only explanation as to why is The Q basically they told the rest of the nearby universe not to mess with their region of space..or else. Boiled down it pretty makes us and the rest of the galaxy the Trek universe the Q Continuums Prison Bitch which oddly explains why Q himself wants humanity (Picard mostly) to grovel at his feet.

• After the first extra-galactic aliens entered the Milky Way the Q created the barrier around the edge of the galaxy to keep any more of them out. Then when humans enter the barrier some of them gain psychic powers, this intrigues the Q as it shows them humans have some potential to wield Q power. As humans spread out into the galaxy further the Q figure more humans hitting that barrier and gaining god-like power would be inevitable so they sent Q to test Picard. Why Picard? Because the Enterprise was a new leap forward in star ship design, something close to a generation ship which would GREATLY expand humanity's expansion into space. As the Captain of this new leap forward in exploration he because the focus of the Continuum's test. Testing humanities problem solving, morality and intellectual ability to grasp the illogical in anticipation of humanity inevitably hitting the barrier more and more and gaining Q power.

The Q Continuum is the only hope against mankind.

The Ultimate Question actually is “How many times did the Q Continuum have to restart the Universe after you maniacs blew it up?”
This is the reason Q, during his first and last appearances aboard the Enterprise, put Humanity on trial and orchestrated our removal from History altogether. It was even a directive from the Continuum, where the Federation is later portrayed as a scarecrow and remaining human as the “second worst fate” a Q could possibly imagine.
The eldritch abominations encountered by the old Enterprise have become rarer in the Alpha Quadrant because they learned about humans' true horrifying potential. And of course, this is also what drove Kes insane after she ascended to a higher state of existence.

Neelix is a pedophile.

First, Neelix is dating Kes, who is less than two years old when the shows starts. After breaking up, he starts spending much of his time "taking care" of Naomi Wildman after she's born. He also spends quite a bit of time with the Borg children (along with Seven, whom he doesn't even seem to look twice at). Coincidence? Not on Wild Mass Guessing!

• What persuaded him to leave Voyager? Meeting a Talaxian widow and her young son. Favourite target acquiring method of earth paedophiles? Date a mother who has no contact with the father of her children. Stardate 54868.6, Morale Officer's Log: Jackpot!

• Kes is age 2 and lives 9 years, so at first, we assumed it was kosher. But then episode Eulogium stated that Kes did not expect to become sexually mature so soon.
  • Though for the Ocampa sexual maturity is different than physical maturity and doubles as menopause as well. We don't even have any evidence that Kes did or even could have sex with Neelix. Her reproductive organs are on her hands and she gives birth from a sack on her back, she probably doesn't even have a vagina.
    • Who says Neelix needs . . . I'm done speculating about their anatomy.
    • You can have sex without a vagina you know? Like with oral and anal sex, that’s how gay couples do it (they don’t have vaginas involved either)
• But a problem with this theory is that pedophiles are attracted to children or very young teens because of their anatomy, not because of their “age”, even if he is a pedophile, Kes looks like an adult fully grown woman despite her age so will be not attractive for a pedophile. He could be an ephebophile though (people attracted to teens), Kes does have a certain teen-age look and his attentions toward Naomi might be a way to come closer to her waiting until she reaches the right age. And we don’t know if this is common in his culture, in real life we have cultures where teenage-adult relationships are not taboo, like in Japan or Europe (UK’s consent age is 16 for example).
  • Although the consent age is 16 in the UK, that doesn't say anything about social taboos. Teenage-adult relationships are frowned upon in the UK just as much as they are in other Western societies; the consent age just means two 16 year olds can go at it.

The Doctor's portable holographic emitter is the most powerful technology ever created.

Look, Holograms can do stupidly powerful things in Star Trek canon. Now we have portable ones that can be carried by holograms. All you'd need to do is make a portable emitter, and then have it project a much larger and more powerful holographic portable holographic projector. And behold a self-perpetuating series of mobile holograms. Even if you couldn't do that, you could easily have a holographic space ship crewed by holograms.

• This was discussed in a Strange New Worlds story, where a mega-Enterprise is exploring outside the galaxy, crewed by holographic A.I.s based on the TOS, TNG, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager crews. They came back to discover that the inhabitants of the Milky Way Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence.
• This wouldn't work under the given reasoning. A holographic portable holoemitter would still only be capable of emitting a hologram within the range of the original holoemitter, much as how a hologram that attempts to walk off the holodeck into the rest of the ship will disappear as it leaves the range of the holodeck's holoemitters. The holographic portable holoemitter would only be a projection, and thus any hologram created by the holographic portable holoemitter would actually be created by the original holoemitter, and subject to its limits. Remember, holograms aren't actually physical, they're pure simulation.

Seven of Nine was never part of the collective.

Note how different she acts from any other drone that we have seen, even before leaving the collective. When she is separated she is revealed to have great emotional dependence on the collective, even though this would be suppressed by the Borg. My theory is that she was a 'willing' drone, raised from a young age by the Borg and used for the rare non-aggressive interactions with humanoid species. Basically, the Borg brainwashed her and monitored her thoughts all her life.

• This fits with the above theory that she was being kept around as a potential replacement Queen - they would need a free-thinking individual who honestly cares for the collective and would seek to protect and improve it at all costs, and were grooming Seven to fit that role.
• Two things that don't work with this theory - first, if Seven was being kept unique intentionally, she wouldn't have been on some random Borg cube sent to some random location, and then left for some time as one of only a few survivors when the cube was destroyed - note that, if it was a test or something, the borg would have appeared immediately after Seven demonstrated her capabilities, and the other survivors would have been reassimilated completely. Second, those other survivors show similar properties to Seven when we meet up with them, with the only difference being that they were basically permanently stuck connected to each other.
  • The Queen mentions in "Dark Frontier" that Seven was sent to Voyager deliberately, although that was clearly not the writers' intention when "Scorpion" aired.
  • As such, it is possible that Seven was identified as a potential new Queen after the events following her cube's destruction, and began being groomed for the role, was provided further liberty to think independently at times, and was used as a representative of the Borg because of her initiative. However, she was a regular part of the collective prior to those events.
    • So in the Expanded Universe, Janeway being made a Borg Queen fits. If they can have Seven back, who better than the one who freed her from the Collective?

The Ocampa normally give birth to multiple children at once.

Most Ocampa pregnancies are at least twins, probably more (think litters). The reason Kes gives birth to only one child in the various potential futures we see is because she's giving birth to hybrids, which messed up the usual birthrate. Because otherwise, the Ocampan reproduction cycle just makes no sense.

• This is given credence in one of the alternate history anthologies, where Kes and Neelix manage to have triplets.
• Large litters wouldn't make sense for a race in which the females have just two breasts. But the Ocampa could easily be a case in which the females sequester the sperm from their single mating, and dole it out bit by bit over the course of their reproductive lives. Thousands of invertebrate species have that ability in Real Life, and the short Ocampan life span would make it easier to keep the stored sperm viable for long enough.
• I assumed the Caretaker screwed up the Ocampa in some way that made them only have one child per woman which means their species is cycling down to extinction which is why he care takes them, while Sisperia was like 'screw that stupid little race, I'm outta here.'

The crew deleted all Log entries concerning the Tuvix incident before Voyager returned home.

That's why Janeway was promoted to admiral after their return instead of being charged with murder.

• I contend they didn't have to: Janeway simply reported zero casualties from the incident, since Tuvok and Neelix were both still present in Tuvix and he still remained present in them once they were separate again. For obvious reasons (i.e. the way Neelix's personality always clashed with Tuvok's and the embarrassment of each one having had access to the other's deepest and most personal thoughts) both of them probably had an unspoken agreement to Let Us Never Speak of This Again, but either of them would probably back Janeway's contention in court if she insisted she didn't actually kill anyone.
  • I don't know... while Tuvix was a unique being, was it much different than the time Kirk got split into two people and had to be fused back into one?
• And let's not get started on how she treated Seven (If you decide to return to the Borg, you lack the ability to decide whether you want to return to the Borg or not.).
  • Wait, what? That's like saying Child Services is wrong for not allowing kids with Stockholm Syndrome to return to an outrageously abusive family, that's also raising them to commit crimes against humanity.
• Jossed by Lower Decks, Season 4 episode 1.

During "The Killing Game," Naomi Wildman was...

• ...in the WWII program, hiding in the attic of Neelix's house, singing "I Have A Little Dreidel..."
• ...outside the holodeck with Harry Kim and the other slaves, serving the Hirogen lemonade and biscuits.
  • I'm going with this one, since the Hirogen were shown to be hunters with a rudimentary code of honor, and hunters usually do not consider immature offspring to be fair sport.
• ...hiding in a Jeffries Tube, singing "I Have A Little Dreidel..."
• ...in the Klingon simulation, sitting in a cave in full mock-Klingon makeup, singing "I Have A Little Bat'leth..."

Tom and Harry have a mutual friend Richard whom we never see because he stayed in the Alpha Quadrant.

... you saw what I did there.

• That is evil. Congratulations! Vivat tertius petrus a sole.
• Someone needs to write a Slash Fic called "Tom's dick and Harry".
• That would have been a good name for The Doctor.

Janeway is/was a member of Section 31

...and her real mission (after the failure of the Maquis pursuit) was to acquire technology, information and possible allies that could be used to defeat the Dominion and the Borg. That's why she destroyed the Array and stranded the crew in the Delta Quadrant in the first place, and why she either resisted or outright sabotaged any attempts to bring Voyager home and using any means necessary to keep the true nature of her mission secret (including murdering Tuvix who was slowly but surely figuring out her plans, reprogramming the Doctor whenever necessary and mind-frelling with Seven of Nine in The Voyager Conspiracy when she stumbled onto the truth). But when she was given the order to terminate Seven of Nine (after extracting all useful information from her), she refused because she had grown attatched to her emotionally to the point of obsession. Section 31 had the technology to bring Voyager back at any time, but when Janeway disobeyed orders, they cut off contact completely and left her well and truly stranded.

• Hey Seven, your alcoves overloading your cognitive array again!

Shortly before Voyager returned in the original timeline, Section 31 planned to have her secretly executed but realized that she had taken measures to ensure that certain information would find its way into the "wrong" hands in the event of her untimely death, so they murdered Seven of Nine instead, using Pathfinder to send a code to disrupt her nanotechnology. In order to protect the rest of her crew, Janeway kept quiet, but ultimately decided to go back in time and "set things right" by not destroying the Array and allowing Voyager to return without incident. However, she realized that the information and technology she brought back was indeed crucial to the protection of the Federation, so she opted to go with "Plan B" instead and destroy the Borg in the process. Her promotion to Admiral in both timelines came about when she blackmailed certain top Starfleet brass (many of whom wanted to court-martial her after examining the mission logs and grilling her crew about certain questionable command decisions), and is now using her new position to destroy Section 31 from within.

Janeway = Sarah Palin

I always guessed that after conceiving of a female captain, the writers of Voyager leaned back and basked in their self-satisfaction, and never actually bothered with making her interesting in any way.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand...

Chakotay's "tribe" are just a bunch of new-age hippies.

Among the massive death and destruction of World War 3, the few remaining Native Americans were killed and the records of their actual beliefs and practices were mostly destroyed, leaving behind only a vague legend tarnished by pop culture. Centuries later, a group that included Chakotay's parents or grandparents gathered those legends together and decided to re-create "Indian" culture. They ended up with a bastardized, historically inaccurate version of it that they follow as though it's an actual ancient tradition.

• So basically, it's Wicca all over again?
  • Daaaaaaamn! This troper is Wiccan and just spit coffee all over his keyboard laughing.
• So the reason he's a Hollywood Indian is because he's from a group of Hollywood Indians? That explains so very much.
  • Alternatively, real Native Americans are still around and serving in Starfleet. But Chakotay's tribe isn't one of them; his is one of the new-age hippie variety, that only came into being in the 23rd or 24th century.

Chakotay has multiple real Indian tribes in his ancestry.

In Real Life, it's not uncommon for Native Americans to have multiple tribes in their family history, just as most white Americans have multiple European countries. By the 24th century, when all of Earth is united in one society, any kind of mixed heritage could come about. Chakotay probably has Plains tribes and Latin American ones in his heritage; perhaps one parent was a U.S. Indian and the other was Latin American. Chakotay embraces every part of his heritage, because of he's an anthropologist who loves all cultures.

• All of the traditional Earth cultures we see in TNG, the planet of Irish colonists, Crusher's colony of ridiculous Scottish stereotypes, Picard's crusty ass brother, are all such laughable stereotypes for this reason.

Meta: Tuvok's line in part 2 of the pilot about how it would take hours to get the array back online was inserted after initial production.

They thought after shooting "why didn't they just use a time bomb"? Realizing this plot hole, they reshot the scene where the Caretaker dies to include Tuvok's line. That's why in future episodes they kept acting like Janeway had this big moral decision "save the Ocampa and destroy the array" or "return home", when the choices were really "save the Ocampa and destroy the array" or "try to make a deal with hostile, untrustworthy aliens to give ourselves a slight chance of getting home". It wasn't part of the original series bible and no one remembered to write it down.

Tom Paris is the reincarnation of Captain Kirk.

There's a slight physical resemblance and they're both mavericks. Tom enjoys playing in zeerust-laden holonovels where he gets to play the Big Damn Hero much as Kirk did, and when he had the opportunity he built a control panel with actual knobs and dials - a feature of Constitution-class ships. And how, you may ask, could Tom be the reincarnation of Kirk when Kirk died well after Tom was born? He violated temporal laws for the eighteenth time, that's how.

• This is also a sign of the slow decline of Starfleet. In the 23th century, men like Kirk are given command of Starfleed flag ships, bravely leading Starfleet where no man has gone before. In the late 24th century, such men are dishonorably discharged and thrown into jail.
  • Didn't Paris screw up so badly he got several people killed and tried to cover it up? And his imprisonment was due to him getting caught working for enemies of the state? Pretty sure even in the days of Kirk, an untested, junior officer who gets fellow officers killed and tries to cover it up is going to get discharged, and those who work for violent separatists are going to get imprisoned. Him not getting punishment for the crap he did would, if anything, be even more seen as corruption because he's the son of an admiral.

Dark Frontier was a stealth deconstruction of the idea of children on the spaceships

We see a loving family take their young daughter on a ship into space to contact a species they know incredibly little about and this results in their forced assimilation. It certainly sounds like someone writing it to subtly point out how stupid it is to bring young children with you to contact unknown forces when the universe seems to be filled with creatures trying to kill you.

• The Federation spaceships like the Enterprise were not military ships, they were for diplomacy and exploration, the Federation does have ships for deep space and dangerous missions that do not have places for children or families (the Defiant for example). Even when diplomacy and exploration can be dangerous, clearly is not less dangerous that having colonies or space stations, we see a lot of colonies getting destroyed by alien forces and all the things that happens in DS9, so why leave Earth for that matter if you’re afraid of people getting kill then don’t have ships, nor space stations nor colonies. And like exploration may take many many years, who would volunteer to go if they can’t bring their families with them? Also you couldn’t let crew-members having romances and relationships among them because pregnancies can happen, and don’t let them have pets either because to some degree putting animals in danger is very similar as putting children, so you’ll have an entire ship of sexually frustrated, lonely and depressive explorers doing diplomatic work and handling many first contact situation. Clearly the idea in general is that people in exploration ships are not military, they’re scientists, explorers, diplomats, etc., even though some have certain military training, and thus is necessary for them to have husbands/wives, children, pets, etc., like any normal person, otherwise the ships will be mostly empty. And for the danger, again, is not more dangerous than living in a colony anyway.

Janeway allowed Harry Kim to come to the senior staff meetings out of guilt

It seems odd that Janeway would have allowed an ensign right out of the Academy to take part in critical meetings reserved for the senior staff. However, consider the fact that in the very first episode, Janeway was deeply troubled by the fact that she had separated him from his family in such a fashion. As an attempt to do some 'damage control' for her guilt, she 'adopted' Harry and tried to give him a new 'family' (the senior staff) in order to ease the pain of his separation. She singled out Harry for this treatment because he was the youngest and least experienced member of Voyager's crew after leaving the Alpha Quadrant.

• Harry went to the senior staff meeting's because as Operations Officer he was part of the senior staff. It's why he met with the Captain in the beginning. The weird thing isn't Harry being at those meetings, it's that whoever was head of the science division wasn't. There's an awful lot of blue shirts walking around for there not to be at least one department head in the science division.

The day after Voyager gets home, Seven of Nine is killed by slipping on a banana skin and Tuvok has a shuttlecraft land on him

It would just serve Janeway right for messing with the timeline.

• Possibly jossed because the Memory Alpha (the official Star Trek wiki) lists both characters as "active". Also "serves right" is highly subjective.

• Chakotay, who also died in the original timeline, was piloting the shuttlecraft (of course) and died in the crash-landing with Tuvok.
  • Memory Alpha lists Chakotay as active too.

Therapists or no therapists, Naomi still does not like things that buzz like insects.

She was just a baby when the macroviruses attacked. That would leave an indelible impression on anyone's psyche.

Most of the non-human crew members work Night Shifts.

In most episodes, most if not all of the crew members showing in the background appear human. But in episodes that focus on the "lower decks," the crew is shown as being very diverse, with Bolians, Bajorans, Vulcans, and Betazoids. We know these non-human crew members are on-board. So why don't we usually see them? Granted, Betazoids and Bajorans could both look like humans from afar (if you're not close enough to see their eyes or noses). So maybe those crewmembers have the same shift schedules as the humans. But what about the Bolians and Vulcans, and any other species that would be more noticeable?

They work night shifts. Why? Various reasons. Perhaps crew members from the same planet were more comfortable around each other, and preferred to all work the same schedule (some indirect, unintended segregation if you will). Or perhaps they have sleep schedules that work out best for the Night Shift (somehow).

Seska was mentally ill, and her only hope for a cure was in the Alpha Quadrant.

Up until "State of Flux," Seska, while shady, seemed a smart and mentally stable person. Come "State of Flux" however, and she begins to behave very irrationally. Yes, she is frustrated with Starfleet regulations limiting Voyager's return home; but surely a scientist and spy as brilliant as her would have realized that backwards space-cavemen like the Kazon would not be better help. Then there's "Manuvers," in which Seska either steals Chakotay's "DNA" to impregnate herself, or just lies and claims she did; either choice is quite odd, and never really explained on the show. After her death we learn (in "Worst Case Scenario") that, before leaving Voyager, Seska tampered with Tuvok's holonovel and made it deadly...why again?

Long story short, here's what we know about Seska: she is brilliant, with great problem-solving skills, as well as planning and scheming; she is DESPERATE to return to the Alpha Quadrant; and she makes bizarre, irrational decisions that are not in her own best interests.

Explanation: Seska was mentally ill. She was receiving regular treatment for her illness while spying on the Maquis, whenever she reported into her Cardassian authorities. But once lost in the Delta Quadrant, that treatment was gone. She struggled to keep a grip on herself and get home as fast as possible, but failed in both regards. (She certainly wouldn't be the first Cardassian Trekkies know to go crazy.)

Alternatively she simply panicked. Common sense: she was a Cardassian infiltrator now stuck on a Starfleet ship where half of the crew was ex-Maquis! All it would take would be for one unexpected illness, accidental injury or just Janeway decreeing that all crewmembers receive thorough physicals to cause a situation where her true species would be discovered. Back when she was with the Maquis, she always had the option of contacting her superiors or even stealing a ship to flee back to them. In the Delta Quadrant she had no such option. Once the truth about her inevitably got out, Torres would have probably beaten her to death in Main Engineering!

So, she was increasingly desperate for allies because she faced certain death on Voyager before too long. Hence her seemingly irrational fixation with allying with the first race of Mooks she saw. It was not, as she argued, because it was for the good of Voyager. But rather it was because she needed protection from the Maquis on Voyager, who would have wanted the Cardassian infiltrator dead. Enough to make one act in a seemingly irrational manner.

• There might have been a "third option" for Seska...the Doctor. If Starfleet has a liberal enough doctor-patient confidentiality policy, she could have informed the Doctor and negotiate protection even if the Doctor was forced to inform Janeway. Seeing how Alpha Quadrant politics are of no concern to the Voyager crew, it could have happened. If anything, though, Michael Jonas is the mentally ill one. What would possess him to side with both Voyager and the Maquis' combined enemies?

Tom's duplicate in "Course, Oblivion" died by suicide.

We do not see Tom's duplicate die; last we see him, he is on the bridge, expressing his cynicism and wondering out loud why he's still taking orders from Janeway's duplicate. Come the next staff meeting, Tom is already gone. That last time we saw Tom, the decay had not affected him nearly as badly as some other crewmembers. There may have been internal damage that killed him soon after, but it's not a given.

Tom's duplicate had completely given up hope, once finding out he was a duplicate. Harry asks if Tom wants to try to reach Earth, or "just wait to disintegrate." Tom stares at Harry a moment, as if thinking about that.

After losing Chakotay, Tom decided that no, he didn't want to wait to disintegrate, and he had nothing to live for anyway. So he returned to his quarters and phasered himself.

Chakotay's recurring stiffness and monotone has an explanation.

Much of the time, Chakotay speaks and acts with as much emotion as anyone else. But every now and then, he becomes oddly stiff; he speaks in a monotone, sometimes even tired sounding, voice, and shows little to no emotion, in situations where one should show LOTS of emotion. Why? There are several possible reasons...

• Long ago, Chakotay had a Spirit Quest that went horribly wrong. Now, every once in a while, he gets possessed by the ghost of Nicholas Cage.
• It's just one of his personal quirks. When he's under stress, he "freezes up," and becomes stiff and monotone. (Some people have this problem in real life.) For the most part he's gotten out of that habit, but it still shows up now and then.
• Chakotay had a Spirit Quest gone horribly wrong, and is now aware of the Fourth Wall. For the most part he tries to ignore it, and do his duty as First Officer. But sometimes, he can't help but groan and what the writers beyond the Fourth Wall are doing—and the fact that no one except himself and Q suspects that they are actually fictional characters in a TV series.
• Three words: Indian Peace Pipe.

Chakotay has Asperger's Syndrome.

...But any social or anxiety problems that might have come with the disorder were either "cured" or just worked out, long ago. Because this is the future, after all.

As an adult Chakotay has no problem socializing with others and making friends. But he sometimes has to consciously remember to display facial expressions and voice inflictions; when he doesn't, this accounts for his monotone.

His Autistic "obsessions" don't completely rule his life, but he does really know his sh*t, being able to recall and recite stories from all different mythologies as situations remind him of them. In "One Small Step," it seemed odd to the audience that Chakotay had a childhood obsession with Kelly he never mentioned. But that's because it was just a short-term "obsession."

As a child he was considered a "contrary" in his tribe, and never quite fit in. Asperger's would certainly contribute to this.

Chakotay's is Seven's beard.

How do Chakotay and Seven go from having absolutely no chemistry together to a Last-Minute Hookup where they still have absolutely no chemistry together? Simple - they don't. The Seven/Janeway shippers were entirely right, but Starfleet disapproved of their captain's relationship with an underling still recovering from assimilation trauma, so Chakotay provided them cover.

• So would that make Chakotay Treebeard?

The Krenim timeship has been holding the Borg at bay for centuries.

We know from the assimilated personalities living in Seven's implants that the Borg have assimilated Krenim in the past, it's entirely possible that the Borg have attempted to invade the area of space where the Krenim live on numerous occasions and always been RetGonned; each time they send a ship it gets erased until a scenario plays out in which they decide not to investiage/invade and that's the timeline that gets preserved

Tom Paris and Nick Locarno are double cousins.

Of course, the Doylist explanation of why they look alike is that they were played by the same actor, but in universe, they are two different people, so here's a guess about why they look so similar: because they are double cousins. In other words: Tom Paris's dad is the brother of Nick Locarno's mom; Nick Locarno's dad is the brother of Tom Paris's mom. Each of the Paris siblings married a Locarno sibling and had a child at approximately the same time. Two children of two such couples would have the same degree of consanguinity as brothers, so they would look like brothers.

• They also have near identical back stories. Paris was orignally intended to BE Locarno, but Voyager didn't want to pay royalties to the writers of the TNG episode.

• No, no, no, when Tom Eugene Paris entered Star Fleet he was trying, obviously, to make a big name for himself. He didn't want people to think he was just riding his Admiral Dad's coat tails so he changed his name to names inspired by his mother's maiden name and his mother's father's first name. So Thomas Eugene Paris was officially and informally recognized as Nicholas Lacarno while at the academy, but when he was kicked out he went back to his real name.
  • Interestingly, Robert Duncan McNeil says that he often wondered if they would eventually do an episode where it would turn out that Locarno and Paris were the same person.

Unimatrix 01 is somehow special

It's a preparation ground for drones earmarked for special assignments such as potential Queens. Firstly, it's a very low number, even assuming that there are other levels of subdivision between Unimatrix and the Collective as a whole. Also, it's unlikely that two drones originally from the Federation would be put into the same unimatrix at random (obviously the real reason is that Writers Cannot Do Math) so maybe all of the members are from civilsations that have currently caught the attention of the Collective and are being prepared for use against them, Locutus style

The Federation sent Voyager off to the other side of the galaxy.

The Federation has some secret dealings with beings in the Delta quandrant. They also had a big problem, Janeway. She was to power hungry, but was following the rules of Star Fleet to a T, and kept killing all the assassins they sent after her. To prevent her ascent to Federation dictator, they hatched a desperate plan to set up a Batman Gambit to send across the galaxy, yet make it so she would have to break her sacred Prime Directive to get back home. They didn't expect her to get back.

• Except that the Federation has no death penalty, and no matter how much some fans hate Janeway for some reason, it’s very unlikely that the Federation command is going to send assassins against a captain (or any other citizen for that matter) nor is going to let an entire crew lost in DQ because they dislike the captain.

Neelix's real job is finding salvage and scavenging.

Think of what Neelix was doing when the Voyager crew found him: wiping a lot of junk away from in front of his camera and trying to shoo them away because this was his debris field to salvage. For all his other talents (real or imagined), scavenging was what he was really good at doing, his trading skills being derived mainly from finding buyers for his recycled space debris. This also explains how the Voyager came to have such seemingly Infinite Supplies: while nobody in the Delta Quadrant had quite the same equipment as the Voyager, he knew where to look in the debris fields of destroyed ships for anti-matter, duritanium, power supplies, and other useful substances that the ship's replicators could convert into, for instance, more photon torpedoes. The other stuff he did, such as being the ship's cook or self-appointed morale officer, was mostly to stroke his ego since scavenging, while very useful, is not exactly a glamorous career.

Neelix thinks he is a good chef, survival expert, and an ambassador because people use him as an assassin tool

So, you're a ruler of planet, and need to kill a rival, murder a group, or wipe out a species, but you cannot afford any evidence pointing to you. One of your greatest advisors whispers a suggestion to you, a way to kill all that stand before you, but none of it is trackable. Simple, send Neelix! Put him in your enemies kitchen staff, he will be dead within a week! Send him as a guide for a dangerous planet, all of them will be dead by sun rise! Send Neelix to be their diplomat, he will spark an epic war that will eradicate two enemies within an hour! He has been used as an assassin tool by so many, but nobody told him his skills suck, or he didn't believe him. Why would he, he keeps being contracted by royalty! Janeway puts him in all of these roles because it amuses her.

Before "State of Flux," everything Seska says that isn't backed up by another character or physical evidence is a lie.

In "Parallax," when Seska tells Chakotay about the rumor "we heard" about the Maquis being restricted to quarters and such, that was a rumor Seska herself started, to try to manipulate the Maquis into starting a mutiny. In "Prime Factors," the entire story about Seska's brother and his birthday was made up on the spot; she probably doesn't even have a brother.

In "Counterpoint," Tuvok, Vorik and Jarot weren't the only telepaths onboard; they were just the only ones who couldn't hide their telepathic abilities.

Tuvok, Vorik and Jarot have to be hidden from anti-telepath authorities in this episode. Yet in "Repression" we see a Vulcan female among Chakotay's ex-Maquis crew, and in "Endgame" Janeway asks Tuvok why he can't mind-meld with "some of the other Vulcans on board." Explination: the other Vulcans (and Betazoids) on board either have the ability to mask their telepathic abilities, or simply don't *have* as strong abilities as the three who had to hide.

• The reason said female Vulcan wasn't an option for Ensign Vorik in "Blood Fever" is because she is either married, a lesbian, or for some medical reason unable to have sex.
  • Or she's not going through the pon farr.
• A simpler explanation is that Vorik clearly has the hots for B'Elanna, in an 'opposites attract' way. The pon farr just gave him the impetus to spit it out.
  • That's not very logical.
• Some Vulcans don't have telepathic abilities. Maybe that Vulcan lady is one of the ones who doesn't.

The events of Threshold was a poorly written holo-novel by Tom

Or maybe even a holo-Troll Fic.

Concerning the two continuity errors in "Latent Image"...

Okay, this episode involves flashbacks set a few months before Seven of Nine came aboard Voyager, putting these flashback incidents in Season 3. There are two clear errors fans have noticed here: one, Janeway's hair is short, rather than in a ponytail; and two, Tom Paris assists the Doctor in sickbay, with no mention of Kes. Other fans have also pointed out that Kes would likely have objected to Janeway's tampering with the Doctor's program. Here are a few explanations for those plot holes.

• Janeway tried out the short hair for a very brief period, before settling on it for good later on.
  • It's the 24th Century, and the Doctor certainly has the technology to change the length of a person's hair radically, if they want him to. (Why he can't make hair for himself is a plot hole for another day.)
• Kes was off the ship on a personal mission, during this entire incident.
  • We've seen before that senior officers can leave the ship for a time to attend a conference or other business with alien societies. It's plausible that Kes was away on such a personal mission, and missed both Jetal's birthday and Jetal's death.
  • Tom Paris was assisting in sickbay as early as Season 1, so it's not a stretch that he'd be filling in for Kes while she was gone.
  • All of that being said, it's plausible that Kes was either not informed about the Doctor's psychological problems, or that she was informed and accepted the captain's decision.

That trans-warp corridor to Earth took more than two hundred years to build.

The Borg were busy building that particular corridor from their transwarp hub ever since they got the message from the assimilated crew in Captain Archer's time concerning the whereabouts of Earth. Their cubes got there ahead of the construction, but they still needed a backup plan in case their initial invasion failed. When their initial invasions did fail, they were biding their time and waiting for their construction to be complete. Janeway and her crew showed up to wreak havoc on the hub just one day before the Borg Queen planned to announce the corridor was complete and send a hefty portion of her armada through to assimilate that pesky Federation at long last.

The Krenim Empire flourished because they scared the Borg.

The Krenim Empire was, in at least one timeline, a wide-spread empire of great influence to the surrounding region. Their chronotech allowed them to alter history itself so as to remove undesireable events and promote Imperial interests, but why did the Borg leave them be - simple, the Borg were scared. Without temporal shields, anyone is vulnerable to a Krenim attack that threatens to completely unmake one's entire existance, the Borg were able to successfully assimilate a few Krenim aware of the chronotech (as shown in Repression) and realized that if they attempted to further assimilate the Krenim, the Borg risked unmaking themselves. Unlike Species 8472, another opponent that posed a threat, the Krenim weren't actively hostile to the Borg, so they left them alone for the time being.

Chakotay is a fine pilot; it's landing that he sucks at.

He did a fine job piloting his Maquis ship through the Badlands, and deliberately crashing it into the Kazon ship. He's trusted enough to pilot Voyager and shuttle crafts. It's when he's forced to make a landing that he winds up crashing the vessel.

• So he's Launchpad from Duck Tales. Basically.

The Ocampa were the victims of some genetic engineering failure

The Ocampa's ridiculous reproduction may be because of some catastrophic error by the Caretaker. Maybe they always had that "once in a lifetime"-nonsense going on, but with litters, and he tried to change that to give the species a bit of help - because, let's face it, no matter what, a species with 9 years life expectancy needs any help it can get when it's also restricted in how often it can reproduce. Instead the average child-count went down to 1 due to his meddling. Certainly would explain why the entire race of Ocampa fits inside one cave-system, why he cares so much for them (HORRIBLE guilt because the species is dieing out because of him) and why they can only conceive one child at a time. The Ocampa being a species that would die out in Real Life is not a brainfart - it's intentional.

• Alternatively, the Elogium was merely a hallmark of a menopause-like condition, indicating the final time an Ocampa could reproduce, but thanks to the Caretaker, it became the only time.
• Adding to this, all the reproductive nonsense is because the Caretaker royally screwed up their biology. Perhaps the Caretaker was making extensive use of artificial wombs to help bulk up the population after screwing up, and the reason the Ocampa are doomed without him is because he was supplying them the power to run these things and they don't actually know how to run them. Ocampa do jump on their one chance to reproduce because of cultural mores, because having a child naturally (even in the screwed up way the Ocampa have them thanks to the Caretaker's meddling), is seen as a great privilege.

Ocampan telepathy is dependent on other telepathic lifeforms to properly develop.

In "Cold Fire," the advanced Ocampa of Suspiria's array have a telepathic connection to her (and of course, Susperia is an extremely advanced alien). Kes's powers developed gradually as she trained with Tuvok, and they took off like a rocket after a brief conversation with Species 8472. Before the Caretaker decimated their homeworld, their planet may have been filled with other telepathic lifeforms, and a mental connection to said life was crucial in their telepathic development. And recall that Kes's branch of the Ocampa were a small group of nonconformists who grew their own food; the rest just got everything from the Caretaker. Odds are, their powers dropped not only because they "stopped using them," but because they no longer had the living connections necessary to do so. In other words, how weak or strong or out-of-control an Ocampa's powers are, is directly related to how powerful other telepaths interacting with them are.

Lt. Walter Baxter is a relative of the famed Dr. McCoy.

This obscure character was seen in episodes "Eye of the Needle" (the rude crewmen who addresses Kes, instead of the Doctor), and "Twisted" (the man who ran into Torres in the transporter room, and then said he'd round up his security team, when they realized something was wrong with the ship). Baxter's speech, facial expressions, and mannerisms are very much like Dr. McCoy's. He can come off as rude, like McCoy. Though not in the medical field, he is concerned with his health, as he spends a lot of time working out in the gym (mentioned in both episodes he appears in). It seems like a long-shot. But, long-shot relationships like this are commonplace in the world of "Star Trek," where Reg Barclay helped designed Voyager's EMH, Sisko got Miles O'Brien family on his senior staff, and Dax had a night with McCoy in a former host. It would not be a stretch for Baxter to be a son, grandson, nephew, or cousin of Dr. McCoy.

The crew are actually fairy tale characters, sent to the “Star Trek” universe by the Evil Queen, cursed to be stranded on a never-ending voyage back to Earth.

This explains any plot holes or contradictions that “Voyager” has, concerning the “Trek” universe. Because the starship and its crew were never originally part of the “Trek” universe. All of the characters’ memories and identities are false. Their real identifies are as follows:

• Janeway is the Fairy Godmother: She has the power—and urge—to take misfit low-lifes and transform them into special, powerful people. She does so by bringing them aboard a high-class starship/golden pumpkin carriage.
• Seven of Nine is The Little Mermaid: She wants to become “part of our world,” but is hindered by having a different physiology and life experience. She is alluringly beautiful, with a gorgeous singing voice, but also possesses deadly powers. She is willing to sacrifice her own life and desire to become human to save those she cares about (“Dark Frontier.”) She even play-flirts with a holographic Chakotay, not unlike the mermaid play-flirting with her statue of the prince.
• Chakotay is Robin Hood: Not only was he a leader of outlaws once, but even now he constantly rebels against authority to do what he believes is right. He tends to root for the underdog. On the downside, he’s easily lured into a trap (like Robin Hood lured to the archery contest). True, his tribe never used bows and arrows; but this was an intentional part of the memory curse, because if he remembered how good he was at shooting, he’d be unstoppable.
• Kes is Thumbelina: She loves flowers, and has the personality of a fairy princess. She ages ridiculously fast. She seems young and frail at first, but new powers begin to emerge (a la Thumbelina growing her wings).
• B’Elanna Torres is Red Riding Hood: Assuming that we’re going with the version in which Red and the Wolf are the same person. Her mother wants her to "embrace the wolf", while she rejects it.
• The Doctor is the Genie: All-knowing, all-powerful being, trapped inside sickback/a lamp, discovered by a poor underdog/crew of misfits, biggest wish is to be free.
• Tom Paris is Aladdin: He starts off as a delinquent nobody, but ends up flying around on a super powerful starship/magic carpet. He works with the genie/doctor. He uses his wits to defeat powerful enemies (as in “Basics.”) He wins over the princess/chief engineer, though she didn’t want him at first.
• Harry Kim is Tom Thumb: He’s a tiny little dweeb who goes through every kind of painful and disgusting hell one can think of, yet somehow comes out totally unscathed.
• Tuvok is The Emperor: This is why is worst nightmare is being naked in public, having everyone realize it, and laugh at him.
• Ensign Samantha Wildman is Rapunzel: She is separated from her lover, and gives birth to his child while lost in the wilderness. Note the last name: Wildman, which could refer to her life in the wilderness, or the fact that her mother became pregnant after craving a magical plant.
• Seska is the Evil Queen: She wears a disguise to fool people into thinking she’s an innocent friend. She’s power-hungry, and uses her sexuality to manipulate men. She’s an engineering genius (comparable to being a genius with mixing potions and spells). She makes plans with her fellow schemers though a private laptop screen, much like talking to a magic mirror.
• The Kazon are the Giants: Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, we control the surface of this desert planet, you come up the beanstalk to our territory and we smash you!
• The Borg Queen is the Sea Witch: She forces people to make “deals with the devil” with her, in order to reach their goal safely, or protect those they love. She turns innocents into subservient monsters, like Ursula transforms merfolk into those worm-things. She terrorizes starships, not unlike a sea monster terrorizing ships on the sea. Even her face is kinda’ fishy-looking.
• Icheb and the Borglets are the children taken by the Pied Piper: They were led away from their parents after the Piper/Borg put them under a trance/assimilated them.
• Neelix is the Beast: He’s hideous looking, but manages to land a beautiful girlfriend. He’s obnoxious and selfish and first, but learns to respect and embrace others. He watches out for others, not unlike a prince watching out for his subjects. He cooks banquets and wants everyone to *be his guest.*
• Naomi is Alice: Innocent little girl, wandering around a bizarre environment, but too young to think about how she’ll get back to the “real” world or if she even wants to. She wears a jumper dress, like Alice. Hangs out with a collection of strange friends. Determined to grow up too fast, by becoming a queen/Bridge Assistant, and follows grown women she admires (Seven, Janeway) to accomplish this goal. She is watched over by a protective, but eccentric father figure (Neelix/The White Knight); makes her way through a place where people forget who they are (the forest/the monster in “Bliss”); is well-educated, and often brings up subjects she knows about, to work through a difficult situation.
• Counselor Troi is the Blue Fairy: ‘Nuff said.
• Reg Barclay is Pinocchio: He’s guilty of being secretive and telling lies, spends too much time playing around on the holodeck/living as a puppet than in the real world, and has to be brought back to reality constantly by Troi/the Blue Fairy.
• Q is Rumpelstiltskin: Not the sexy Robert Carlyle one, but the irritating, devilish, tricksy troll-like one from lore.
• Q2 is Peter Pan: Immortally young, immature man-child who refuses to grow up? Check. Tries to convince another youth to join him on his magical, immature misadventures? Check. Even invites said youth to “take a dip with the mermaids of Golos Prime.”
• Joe Carry is Jiminy Cricket: His defining character trait is that he wants to do everything by the book. When Torres is made Chief Engineer, she admits that he can help her become familiar with the rules. He is only seen every now and then in bit parts, not unlike an insect buzzing around, only landing in sight now and then.
• Tal Celes is Cinderella: She’s kept below decks doing manual labor, until Janeway/fairy godmother brings shoves her into a shuttle/carriage, and sends her off to prove herself. Crewman William Telfer and Mortimer Harren were her mice friends, who joined her.
• Vorik is the Frog Prince: He cannot return to his true self until a woman does something for him, something she finds revolting. In Fairy Land this just meant he was a frog, and needed someone to kiss him human again. But here, it means he’s a Vulcan undergoing Pon Faar…
• The Caretaker is the Wizard of Oz: He’s not a bad man. He’s just a very bad wizard/caretaker.

Tuvok's mind-meld with Suder is responsible for his and all other bouts of insanity that show up in the crew.

After his mind-meld with Suder in Season 2, Tuvok lost his Vulcan composure and went crazy at least once a season. Sure, there was an explanation each time, like amnesia or radiation; but it was that mind-meld with a psychopath that weakened his mind, making it more vulnerable to such things. Tuvok, as a Vulcan, is also a telepath, and without realizing it, his slight insanity "leaked" into the minds of other crewmembers. This is why Captain Janeway's actions seem so eratic and inconsistent at times. It's also why all the other Regulars have lost it and gone insane at least once or twice over the series. Captain Braxton, after having contact with Voyager, got it even worse, due to a bad mix of temporal mumbo-jumbo from their encounters.

The Borg Queen is not an intrinsic part of the collective

There is no Royal Protocol written into Borg software. She was an ordinary drone who was part of unimatrix 0, and eventually became self aware in reality. At this point she realized she could assert her will on other drones, taking charge of the entire collective. She tried making other queens who would obey her, but also be able to lead other drones because, as has been seen in The Battle of Wolf 359 and The Battle of Sector 001, a Borg vessel commanded by an individual is dramatically more effective than one not so led. Unfortunately for her, those queens invariably rose against her for control of the collective (the current queen may well be such a usurper). Seven of Nine was being raised to become a queen, and in fact is in a way the queen of Voyager but still bows to Janeway's command, which is why the Queen wants her back so badly. The reason she wants to assimilate humanity is to duplicate loyalty.

Robert Beltran is a masochist.

He ranted in interviews about how horrifically painful it was to work on "Star Trek," having to work with Ethan Phillips and Tim Russ. Yet he also says he'd gladly go back and play Chakotay again. He said it was "fun to get beat up" in "Maneuvers." It was his idea that Chakotay be a boxer, despite also saying in on the DVD features, "I don't like boxing because you get hit." He attends "Star Trek" conventions, where he surely knows there will be many rabid Trekkies after his blood, for the crime of dissing "Star Trek." Conclusion: Mr. Beltran enjoys inflicting pain upon himself.

B'Elanna's animal guide was a tribble.

Hence why she tried to kill it.

After "Faces," B'Elanna's Klingon nature took over a year to reassert itself.

B'Elanna has a fiery temper for most of the series, that takes several of the later season to get under control. Yet Season 2 has her acting oddly...passive. Granted, most of her episodes in this season focus on the engineering side of her character, rather than the Klingon side. But in any other season, incidents like working with Dreadnaught or getting kidnapped by the Prototypes would have B'Elanna a lot crankier, and losing her temper more. Now of course, the real reason for this is because "Voayger" is a TV show, and this early in the run, the writers hadn't fully developed any of the characters yet. But an in-universe explanation can be traced to what happened to B'Elanna in "Faces," in Season 1. She was split into her human and Klingon halves; the Klingon B'Elanna died; and the human one was given DNA from the Klingon, to make her "whole" again. Physically, she appeared normal almost right away. But her internal organs, including her brain, took over a year to return to normal. This is why she had such a fiery temper in the earliest episodes, became passive for most of Season 2, and then returned to her angry half-Klingon self some time around Season 3.

"Course: Oblivion" is a case of Writer Revolt.

Bio-memetic!Janeway is faced with the same dilemma as the original. Salvation for her crew is inches away, all she has to do is blow up some uppity aliens to get it...and she makes the same decision, to let it go. This time it gets everyone killed. It was as close as the writers were allowed to come to say "yeah, we know Janeway's a twit". It's about the only thing that would keep the episode from being a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story.

B'Elanna met K'Ehleyr sometime in her youth

With B'Elanna being so conflicted about her nature, and being one of the only Klingon/human hybrids in the galaxy, it's likely that she would—at some point—have met the famous half-Klingon K'Eleyr. Given "Voyager" and "Next Generation's" respective settings, this would likely have happened when B'Elanna was quite young, perhaps at the Academy, or in high school. With K'Eleyr's diplomatic personality, and being more at ease with herself than B'Elanna, the older woman probably left a positive impression on Torres—and her untimely death probably left a very negative one. B'Elanna once told Chakotay, "I've lost every family I've ever had." The fact that K'Eleyr, the only other well-known human Klingon hybrid in Starfleet, was killed violently, fits in quite nicely with B'Elanna's unhappy backstory.

The Aeroshuttle was originally going to be used from the fifth season onward instead of the Delta Flyer.

Voyager was originally designed with an auxiliary craft called the Aeroshuttle, which can be seen docked to the underside of the ship's saucer section. Its main feature was that it was designed for maneuvering within a planet's atmosphere, which will be important shortly. The show never used this ship, though, as the producers thought it would upstage the similar captain's yacht on the Enterprise-E (seen in "Insurrection"), also deployed from the underside of the saucer section. This much is already known.

Now onto the theorizing: The Delta Flyer's introduction was already problematic. It was built from scratch on a ship with limited resources, would have had problems even fitting inside the shuttlebay as originally designed, and its introduction wasn't even the primary focus of "Extreme Risk," the episode where it first appeared.

Consider this: What if "Extreme Risk" was originally going to feature the Aeroshuttle instead? Unlike the Delta Flyer, it already exists as a working ship and doesn't need the extra resources. It also docks to the underside of the ship and wouldn't use the shuttlebay anyway. Furthermore, the Delta Flyer's mission in "Extreme Risk" was to retrieve a probe from inside a gas giant. The reason a standard shuttlecraft couldn't be used was that it couldn't stand up to the gas giant's high-pressure atmosphere. As the Aeroshuttle was already stated to be built for atmospheric flight, the mission is practically custom-made for it.

In short, "Extreme Risk" was originally going to be the Aeroshuttle's debut episode until the producers told the staff they couldn't use it due to Insurrection, and the Delta Flyer was added as a result.

Neelix never got better in his cooking.

A lot of people can ruin a pot roast with the wrong heat or negligence. It takes a special kind of incompetence to be able to nearly destroy the ship while trying to make cheese. Over the seven years, the Voyager crew had to suffer through meal times with an inept chef who might have been making food amendable to non-humans or Alpha Quadrant aliens.

So, rather than actually teach Neelix how to cook, the crew decided it would be easier to simply lower their standards on what they considered to be food, or even edible. That, or they secretly recycled their meals in the replicators behind Neelix's back.

Neelix kept waiting for Seven.

They never ended their game in "Endgame" (pun intended). He expected to her back from her the next day, but Voyager ended up back in the Alpha Quadrant. Each day, Neelix kept waiting beside the game board, hoping to finish the game that he and Seven had begun. Since he never heard back from her, the game remained unfinished.

The show is imagined by a mental patient.

Perhaps one in the room next door to Benny Russell.

• Benny Russell only seemed insane because he was receiving messages from beyond the fourth wall. The red-haired madwoman in the cell across the hall from Benny Russell really was insane, but was the only one who would listen to the guy's stories. She probably wanted to impress him by writing fanfics of his stories, but they really were insane ramblings. The premise of a ship lost in the Delta Quadrant was introduced after the doctors moved her to a different part of the asylum to avoid Russell's influence after they noticed her writing on the walls as well; she just changed the setting accordingly. She accidentally encountered Russell again around the time she wrote "Message in a Bottle" and was allowed to see him occasionally starting around "Pathfinder". The latter was due to him finally ending his stories after "What You Leave Behind."
• And then Paramount discovers both of their stories while working on TNG...

Only Janeway made it back to Earth.

Downer Ending: At the end of "Endgame," they were one lightyear away from Earth. We never saw all of them make it back. They encountered an anomaly that killed crew members one by one. Janeway tried to save everyone, but she could not. Even the EMH was deleted for good. Janeway took a shuttle or escape pod off of Voyager as it exploded. When she got to Earth, she broke the news to their loved ones and to Starfleet. Admiral Paris was heartbroken that he would never see his son again. He sunk into a deep depression and died from a heart attack. Janeway was promoted to his position as admiral by the time of Star Trek: Nemesis.

Upon return the Doctor's mobile emitter is confiscated.

By Temporal Affairs because the ME is future tech. Not only would they confiscate it ALL of the crew would be under a gag order to keep it secret. Temporal Affairs would need to cover up the fact that the computer revolution of the 20th century Earth was caused by a temporal incursion caused by a future time cop, and if they fixed it the Federation may very well never exist.

Chakotay and Harry Kim inadvertently killed Data.

The original timeline where Voyager is frozen under ice is home to All Good Things, where Data lives into old age (or whatever the android equivalent is). In this timeline, Picard is advised by someone who earned their rank during the Dominion War, and fought alongside Remans, and therefore can give Picard better advice resulting in the mission going more smoothly. In the timeline where they return home, Janeway sends the Enterprise off on its mission to Romulus, resulting in Data's death.

Ocampans bodies give off pheromones, similar to Orion women's.

This explains...well a lot.

It explains why Neelix was so obsessive and jealous over Kes when they were together, but after she left Voyager, his entire personality changed for the better, and soon after her departure he barely even seemed to think about her. (He didn't just fail to talk about her very often; in his dreams, he saw family and current Voyager crew-members but not Kes. He "spoke" to his dead sisters while alone, but not Kes.)

This also explains why, in "Before and After," Tom's personality was so out of character when he was married to Kes. Happy marriage or not, there's just no way Tom Paris would wear such a dorky smile 24/7 and speak in such sappy dialogue unless he was under the influence of some alien chemistry.

Last bit of evidence; in "Partrusion," Kes tells the Doctor that there is no jealousy or distrust in Ocampan marriages. They just pick one mate for life, and there are no problems. Phermones would certainly explain this.

Alternitavely, it's not pheromones, but some kind of telepathic effect that Ocampans have on their mates' minds, similar to Vulcan mating bonds.

The events of "Death Wish" or the Q Civil War didn't happen

It was Q doing another test on humanity. Or Q did it For the Evulz.

Qatai in Bliss is just another of the monster's illusions

Qatai shows up from nowhere with invaluable advice and just so happens to have been devoured by the monster at the same time as Voyager. Isn't that a little convenient? But listen to his advice throughout the episode. He tries to prevent the Doctor from reviving the crew, suggest they go deeper into the digestive tract and does his best to sell the idea that it's hopeless and they all should just give up and die. If they had listened to him, the crew would be dead.

In the end he did give some good advice, such as telling seven that there escape was just an illusion, but not until the doctor had also figured it out. By creating this illusion the monster had several chances of manipulating Voyager to its doom, and even if that didn't work it learnt a lot of how they managed to escape so it can adapt its strategy next time. A small price to pay for one lost meal.

Paris' sentence was a non-issue because it had long since ended when it could have become relevant again

His original sentence was eighteen months at the penal colony, and by the time Janeway showed up he'd already served for long enough that in an alternate reality where the deal fell through and he was returned to the colony to serve out the rest of his time, he was out before the first season would even have been over (he was released on Stardate 48702, in between the given stardates for episode 12 and 13). If the deal included a part about time spent working for Janeway on Voyager counting as time spent serving the sentence (not unlikely), he'd therefore have long since completed it by the time Voyager got back in touch with Starfleet, while from the perspective of Paris and Voyager the sentence ending didn't really matter since he was already well integrated into the crew as a valued officer by then and it's not like he could go anywhere else if he wanted to get home (and hence, it didn't come up on-screen when it happened).

There's a reason Voyager's security sucks.

Yes, if the security on any Starfleet ship was good, there'd be little drama or action. However, that does not excuse how Voyager's security detail never changes compromised codes, and especially not how they were overpowered by a couple of unarmed Ferengi (something that even Worf wouldn't have allowed to happen on the Enterprise). So, there are a couple explanations for this:

1. Voyager's security detail was a training unit. It was intended that they'd get a few months of field experience, with the Maquis mission being a good start, before returning to Earth for further training. Then, Voyager got whisked across the galaxy and despite Tuvok's training, he wasn't quite able to bring them entirely up to speed. He was trying to be Drill Sergeant Nasty, but ended up being The Neidermeyer.
2. For those who follow SF Debris, here's a more snarky one: the security detail was essentially Starfleet's Police Academy unit. All the misfits and idiots who somehow got through training were all assigned to it since Voyager would be doing easy research and thus was a low-priority vessel (compared to the Enterprise or DS9 which required elite security forces).
3. Everyone misunderstood the role of Security Chief. They *think* Tuvok's job is to ensure the security of the ship. But actually, his job is to ensure the security of the *show.* It is part of his job to have pathetic security forces around the ship, that invaders can easily breach, in order to create conflict, and make sure that there is a plot for an episode each week.
4. Janeway's arbitrary management style (and possible Bipolar Disorder) result in nobody being sure of what their job is unless given direction by a member of her inner circle. In one episode, a Security officer with Lieutenant Junior Grade pips asks Harry, an Ensign, if he should report to his duty station during an emergency! Not only is this guy clearly not proactive, he is looking to somebody of lower rank than him (and who actually has a technical job function on the ship) to tell him what to do, apparently on the basis of said lower-ranking guy nonetheless being closer to Janeway.!

Unimatrix Zero was so named by one of the assimilated researchers from the Enterprise episode Regeneration.

"So this is some sort of virtual reality construct, what my people call a Matrix." Add to that the Borg call divisions of drones—and regions of space—Unimatrices...

The "pre-warp" aliens from The Omega Directive were on the verge of developing Iconian-style portal technology.

No explanation was given in the episode for why "pre-warp" aliens would need an energy source great enough to power the Federation, Klingon and Romulan Empires, and the Borg combined! Yet the alien researcher they questioned was adamant that his people badly needed the Omega molecules they had created. What technology could possibly demand so much power? Portal technology might. Rather than being "pre-warp", these aliens were actually on the cusp of becoming "post-warp"! They were bypassing that whole stage of technological development where a species develops FTL Travel using starships and were going to jump (possibly literally) directly to being able to travel anywhere instantaneously at will! It is not farfetched. Their comprehension of the practical application of particle physics clearly exceeded that of the Federation and the Borg!

Janeway may have realized this once they were many light-years away after reviewing what they had learned from questioning the alien researchers. The realization that she just stomped on the technology to get Voyager home in the blink of an eye, and pissed off the species that was developing it, may have been part of the growing pile of regrets that was making her less and less mentally stable as time went on...

The Borg baby was adopted by Marla Gilmore, from the Equinox crew.

For those with scratchy memories, this WMG is referring to the Borg infant rescued by Voyager in "Collective," and one of the five survivors of the Equinox integrated into Voyager's crew a few episodes earlier. Neither the Borg baby nor the Equinox crewmembers were seen or mentioned after their respective episodes. So there's no evidence to contradict this theory.

At least two fanfic authors independently came up with the idea, and at least one more knowingly took it up and began using it in their fics too. It makes sense on many levels. Marla Gilmore was the one crewmember of the Equinox who felt the most guilty about her crimes, and showed a maternal side when she met Naomi Wildman. As a former Equinox crewmember, reduced to the rank of Crewman on Voyager, it's not likely Marla would be given a very demanding or interesting job, allowing for plenty of time to devote to parenthood. Voyager has a crew of roughly 150; are we supposed to believe that all of the life-changing events only occurred to the ten main regulars, while the other 140 crewmembers just pressed buttons for seven years? No. The rest of the crew were having adventures and life-changing experiences of their own, and for Marla and the Borg baby, it was finding a new mother and child. They remained Out of Focus for the rest of the show because, with only two seasons passing between the baby's arrival and Voyager's final episode, Marla was taking care of an infant and maybe toddler (depending on how fast the baby's species matured).

The events of "Threshold" were erased by Annorax's timeship weapon.

During one of his temporal incursions with the weapon, which probably affected a wider area of space than he imagined.

Janeway suffers from a moderate to severe mental illness.

The idea has been suggested before, even by Kate Mulgrew. Even the captain's biggest fans have to admit that her opinions and actions not only don't always make sense, but often don't match up with each other. Some have labeled her a "sociopath," but that's not it; if anything, Janeway's problem is having too much empathy, given how carried away she can sometimes get with rescuing a single crewmember (to the point of committing dangerous or immoral actions, like in "Dark Frontier" or "Tuvix"), or an alien lifeform they *might* have harmed (such as in "The Cloud"). More likely candidates would be Bipolar Disorder, Histrionic Disorder, or Dissociative Identity Disorder. The latter may sound unlikely, but this Tropper isn't suggesting the exaggerated Hollywood version of the illness; just the more subtle version, where the "personalities" aren't always cleanly separated, and the switches aren't always so noticeable.

A mental illness would not only explain some of Janeway's actions, but also her crew's tolerance of them. Chakotay, who grew up with a mentally ill grandfather, has a patience and empathy for his friend's instability, perhaps too much so. He can't bring himself to relieve her of command even when he knows he should, because of his personal experiences with mental illness. B'Elanna, Seven and Tuvok obviously have had their share of experiences with mental and/or emotional troubles, so they empathize with their unstable captain and perhaps also think they're not in a position to criticize her when they have so many problems of their own.

Basically, it's a tremendous irony that of all ships and space stations, Voyager doesn't have a ship's counselor.

The Ocampa and Kazon are highly evolved plants and fungi, respectively.

No, the Ocampa aren't descended from literal flowers or trees. But they're plants like Zhaan from Farscape. If plant-like beings were to start becoming intelligent, telepathy would be a plausible beginning for them (plausible by soft-sci-fi standards at least). Also bear in mind that moving plants exist on Earth. Add millions or billions of years, and you have an animal species that still shares traits with their plant ancestors, including that telepathy, and photosynthesis (or something similar). This would add new meaning not only to Kes's love for plants, but also to the Ocampa having their home tragically turned into a desert, and Kes's anger at the Caretaker keeping them from the sun.

Ocampan ears also have a slightly plant-like effect (shape vaguely like a leaf, ripples vaguely like a tree trunk's rings.)

As for the Kazon, fungi ancestry would not only explain the hair, but also the scavenger tendencies, and the stupidity. And also the Borg's dismissal of the Kazon being "unworthy of assimilation." The Borg aren't interested in assimilating walking mushrooms.

If it seems unlikely that plants and mushrooms would ever take on humanoid form, remember the episode of TNG where it was revealed that all Humanois are descended from one highly advanced species that distributed its DNA throughout the galaxy. Humanoids could've evolved from anything, if alien programing was involved.

• So, the Kazon are Orks? That... Kind of makes sense.

We're actually seeing two different versions of Voyager from different timelines.

This is why Janeway seems to have multiple personalities; we're seeing two versions of her.

The bio-neural gel packs are responsible for the Doctor's sentience

TNG and Deep Space Nine had Moriarty and Vic Fontaine as rough holographic equivalents, respectively. Vic Fontaine had real world awareness but was always strictly limited by his parameters, thus indicating merely simulated sentience rather than actual sentience. Moriarty seemed to come much closer, but due to careless linking of the Holodeck computer and the main computer, he was able to "outsmart Data" even outside of the holodeck. With all said and done, no strong evidence of sentience was presented in those episodes either.

Meanwhile on Voyager, a sentient EMH emerged out of nowhere. It was assumed to have been because he was left running for long periods of time, but holodeck addiction ("holodiction") was a well documented condition for decades by the time Voyager's EMH was activated — the most famous afflicted being Reginald Barclay. One could safely assume that civilians with exclusive access to a holodeck could run programs for months without interruption. This debunks the notion that time + humanoid hologram = sentience.

The bio-neural gel packs seem to be the most likely cause of the Doctor's sentience. They are essentially biological computers, but they also "think" like any biological entity might. They get sick like any organism. They may very well be classified as life forms in the Star Trek universe's future. As for the Doctor, he not only started to show signs of sentience from early in the first season, but he also gained emotions that Zimmerman would have considered superfluous — especially in the episode Real Life. He advanced far beyond Data in a far shorter time span. A biological component would bring sense to what would otherwise be a gaping plot hole. Oh, and in case you're wondering about the EMH Mark I's who were converted to miners, it's likely that the gel pack technology was mass distributed in the Alpha Quadrant by then. (six years after the series began)

With this theory established, it does suggest a couple things. First is that the mobile emitter likely has biological components. Second, and somewhat disturbingly, all holograms on Voyager may have been capable of sentience. Since sentience in humans doesn't manifest immediately, it's possible that the majority of holograms never achieved it. That said, when the pool hall and tropical resort were retired, the crew may have destroyed dozens of sentient beings. Those holograms were subject to similar interactions as the Doctor and were also run for long periods of time.

In other words, modern Starfleet holodecks are like concentration camps and holo-mining operations are like Gulags.

S 6 E 1 B'Elanna's ex-boyfriend/the Equinox's First officer, Maxwell Burke, was emotionally abusive

Evidence: B'Elanna practically glues herself to Tom Paris when Burke approaches her in the mess hall. Also, her line when she sees Burke on the upper level of engineering alone; "Going through my stuff again?"

Icheb grew up to be a doctor

We can safely assume Icheb will go into some field involving science. But growing up, he has repeatedly been used as a weapon against his will—first as a Trojan horse against the Borg, then being assimilated, and then his and the other Borgletts' attempts to assimilate after they were cut off from the Collective. Icheb will want to compensate for this guilt and escape being a tool for murder, by going into the field of medicine.

Ensign Kaplan came back from the dead

Ensign Marie Kaplan appeared in a few episodes before being killed off in "Unity." But one season later, an ensign Kaplan is still mentioned as being alive and well. Memory Alpha assumes Voyager simply had two Ensign Kaplans; but the ship already has two Ensign Langs, so that's a stretch. The fact is, the senior staff have all died and come back more than once, so there's no reason to think no one else onboard did. There's also no reason to think the same ten people had life-changing experiences in the Delta Quadrant while the other 140 crewmembers just pressed buttons for seven years. Kaplan was somehow revived by friendly drones on that planet, got a shuttle and found her way back to Voyager not long after the end of the episode.

Ensign Kaplan simply died, and the dialogue blunder was deliberate

The only time an "Ensign Kaplan" was mentioned being still alive, after "Unity," was in "Vis a Vis" when Harry Kim talked about a golfing match against "Ensign Kaplan" ... to Steth disguised as Tom. Kaplan was dead, and Harry knew it, and Harry knew Tom would know it. He deliberately said that because he was suspicious that something was wrong with "Tom," and wanted to see how or if he'd notice. Had the conversation lasted a bit longer, maybe Harry would've added "And after that, don't forget our double date with Kes and Seska."

The Ocampa were genetically engineered

Honestly, the only plausible explanation for their reproductive biology, lifespan, etc. is that some other species genetically engineered them to be pets or slaves. There is no way a species like the Ocampa would survive for long "in the wild" with natural selection in full effect; they would need their masters to take care of them, much the same way dogs and other domesticated animals are dependent on their humans.

Alternate Interpretation for Neelix's vision quest in "Mortal Coil"

He thinks they're saying, "life is pointless. Go kill yourself", but maybe...

• The Dead People: They represent his doubts. They are saying that life is pointless because that's what the doubtful part of his mind thinks. When Alixia crumbles to dust, it means that he's worried because apparently that's what happens after death. And he saw himself dead because he "died". When Alixia says, "Scared you!" it's because his doubts are (due to evolution and neurology) trying to scare him (like the fight-or-flight response).
• Seven of Nine: She said that "you will be assimilated". This is because at this point, Neelix is still a bit suspicious of Seven and her nanotechnology. But she complies when he says, "Maybe later", which means that she can actually be trusted. Later, when she says, "Life is irrelevant", it's only a memory based on the fact that she's not afraid of death.
• The Afterlife Forest: It still appears, even though Alixia (who might represent his doubts as mentioned above) says it's a lie. That means he still sort of believes in it.
• Naomi and the Doctor: When they say, "You know what you have to do," they could have been suggesting anything. It didn't have to be suicide.
• Tuvok: He says, "We gather on this day to tell Neelix what he must do". That could have been his mind saying, "Talk to your friends. They'll tell you what to do."
• Janeway: If Alixia really does represent Neelix's doubts, maybe enjoying spending time with her means she accepts his doubts and won't shame him for them. When she says, "You stand alone", it means that she can help him, but eventually he has to make up his own mind.
• B'Elanna: She says, "Let go." She might have meant "let go of the doubts."
• Harry: He says, "It's pointless." He could have been referring to the doubt too.
• Tom and Chakotay: They said, "It's a lie". They might have meant, "Those negative voices in your head are lying to you."
• The rest is just memories.

The Borg were not mindlessly trying to assimilate species 8472

The drone we see repeatedly poking the biological tech they left behind seems to be stuck in a loop trying to assimilate. However if they'd had time to properly analyze it thr Voyager crew would have found it was testing different nanoprobe settings and variations based on the collective analysis. They would have eventually found one that worked given enough time to repeatedly attempt assimilation with different types of nanoprobles. That would be why the one member aboard the Cube was slaughtering every single drone to the last man, species 8472 figured out what they were trying to do.

Tuvok has seen Event Horizon

Tuvok got curious one day about how pre-warp Earth felt about the prospect of extraterrestrial life. He decided the best research would be to observe speculative fiction from pre-warp Earth. Event Horizon was one of the works researched. His conclusion from this film was that some pre-warp humans were afraid of the unknown possibilities that lay in the simple act of going into deep space. One wonders what his conclusion from watching ALF would be.

The reason Chakotay thinks "The Frog and the Scorpion" involves a fox, not a frog

In a TheOdd1sOut video, James jokes that "The Frog and the Scorpion" is "The Fox and the Scorpion", and Chakotay learnt about the story from an old file that had the video, but it cut out before the part where he explains it was just a joke.

Captain Ransom had significant prejudices, even before he began murdering aliens for fuel.

And this is the reason his crew lacked the same types of diversity of Voyager, the Enterprise, or the Defiant.

• As mentioned in the Fridge Logic section of the "Equinox" recap, it's a stretch for an entire Starfleet crew to be Human in the 24th Century, and on top of that, nearly all of the Equinox crew seem to have Western sounding first names.
• The all-Human crew is especially ironic for a captain who had previously been an exobiologist (one who studies alien life forms.)
• A Starfleet captain doesn't usually choose his own crew, but he could possibly have some sway in the decisions, so nepotism may have been invovled. Ransom may have requested or even hand picked people from the same general area he himself was from (whether that be North America, some off-world colony settled mostly by Westerners, or what-have-you), simply because he knew them or their relatives.
• He may also have had prejudices against other species, perhaps because of his former work as an exobiologist. Maybe he had several negative experiences with aliens, or just didn't like hearing a non-Human scientist's input contradicting his views. This prejudice could have resulted either in Ransom requesting more human officers, or non-human ones simply not wanting to work with him.

Harry Kim is polyamorous

In Season 2's "Non Sequitor" we learn Harry has a girlfriend named Libby back home, who he was close enough to be sleeping with and missing so bad on Voyager that he called her name at night...yet before Season 1 was over, he was already trying to get lucky with the Delaney twins and at least one alien woman. And Season 6, of course, would (infamously) inform us that Harry had a hard crush on classmate and shipmate Lyndsay Ballard that entire time.

• These were regarded by fans as continuity errors in past years, since a "nice" character like Harry surely wouldn't be "cheating" on his fiancé. However, the rising acceptance of "open relationships" and polyamory may have rendered these "errors" moot. In fact, Harry never actually says anything about monogamous commitment at any point in the series. And his shipmates only ever berate him for his unlucky crushes, not for having more than one at the same time.
• The Delaney twins openly "shared" him on the holodeck, as the Twin Mistresses of Evil.
• As Tuvok might say, the most obvious answer is usually the correct one: Harry and Libby had an open relationship, and Harry often feels attractions to multiple people at once.

They were better off in the Delta quadrant, as was the Delta quadrant better off with them

Had Janeway used the array to get home... for starters, all the Maquis are going to prison. Second, Voyager is eventually forced to fight in the Dominion War, where many(if not all) of the crew may end up dead. Lots of ships and lots of people were lost. The odds of any of the existing crew surviving weren't great. Tom Paris also ends up as a drifter, pardoned but learning nothing. At best Tuvok is cured of his illness faster. Then, in the Delta quadrant, the Kazon repair the array and use it to steal tech from around the galaxy, allowing them to potentially become a serious threat. None of the people that Voyager would encounter ever meet them so many end up worse off. Species 8472 MIGHT destroy the Borg, but then again the Borg may have eventually figured out a viable weapon(if the EMH could reprogram nanoprobes, so can the beings that have them in abundance). If 8472 did win they may stick to their plan to obliterate all life outside of their realm(it took Janeway discussing it with them and a lot of luck to get them to even hold off on their plans). Seven definitely does not become an individual regardless. Oh and what happened to Amelia Earhart is never answered. Equinox is also still out there, continuing to murder aliens for fuel.

Voyager utilized Borg technology to build new torpedos.

It's easy enough to salvage the debri of Chakotay's crashed shuttlecrafts and put all those yellowshirts to work building new ones. But proton/chronoton torpedoes are more complicated. In earlier seasons, Janeway expresses concern over running out of torpedoes. When do torpedoes start becoming no object? After Seven of Nine joins the crew. It's likely that torpedo-building is one of the many areas that Voyager utilized Borg technology.

Tuvok's senario/holonovel Insurection Alpha was his subconscious effort to counter the Marquis resurgence program Teero Anavdis placed in the former

In the seventh season episode Repression it was learned that during Tuvok's infiltration of the Marquis he was brainwashed by Bajoran vedek Teero Anavdis as a sleeper agent.

When Chakotay's Marquis crew merged with Voyager's in the Delta Quadrent, Tuvok created the scenario in case of them started a mutiny but stopped when he observed that it was less than likely to occur, leaving it unfinished and vulnerable to Seska reprogramming it. It was untouched until around the events of the third season episode Worst Case Scenario.

While it is logical that being the security officer, Tuvok would make preparations of a possible mutiny, it may be that his subconscious was reaching out to prevent a possiblity that Anavdis would trigger him to initiate it and tries to prepare the crew. It is also possible that Anavdis programming was a factor for Tuvok leaving Insurection Alpha unfinished to sabotage Tuvok's preventative measures and not just the fact that the crews were getting along.

The Krenim timeship was delayed and that stopped it from significant use

The last scene of Year of Hell shows that the timeship was still designed in the so-far-as-we-can-tell final timeline, so why wasn't it used? The timeship's construction being delayed could have allowed other areas of Krenim chrono-science to catch up… such as the part of the incursion procedure where they calculate what the potential consequences could be. If the Krenim had figured out the risks of removing the Rilnar beforehand, they likely would have refrained — and ultimately shelved the timeship as too dangerous to use for anything other than maybe extreme emergencies and against comparatively very young targets (a Borg cube, for example).

Janeway and Tom's salamander children became the first Gorn.

It makes about as much sense as everythign else in "Threshold."

Janeway's apparent mood swings could be just her and her coffee.

She starts out getting coffee regularly. Then there are stretches of time when she goes though withdrawal. If one lasts long enough, she's no longer addicted. Then she gets coffee again.

Tom was exposed to Getter Rays during his Warp 10 flight.

This would explain the accelerared evolution. The unpredictable nature of his mutations aboard Voyager was due to a lack of environmental pressures. When he and Janeway became salamander things on the planet, a different set of environmental pressures coaxed them into that form.

• As for the "allergic to water" / "no longer processing oxygen" thing, I suspect he might have temporarily become an ammonia-based organism, sort of like an Avali, or perhaps the creatures from the film Evolution.

Harry Kim is declining promotions behind the scenes.

This is the only hypothesis which makes sense in this troper's headcanon, but there's still the question of "why".

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