History WMG / StarTrekVoyager

Honestly, the only plausible explanation for their reproductive biology, lifespan, etc. is that some other species genetically engineered them to be pets or slaves; because there is no way a species like the Ocampa would survive for long "in the wild" with natural selection in full effect.

Ensign Marie Kaplan appeared in a few episodes before being killed off in "Unity." But seasons 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.

[[WMG: S6E1 The Doctor never was going to kill Seven of Nine]]

* 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 Defiance 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 crewmembers 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 militars, they’re scientists, explorers, diplomats, etc., even though some have certain militar 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.

# For those who follow Website/SFDebris, here's a more snarky one: the security detail was essentially Starfleet's Film/PoliceAcademy 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).

[[WMG: Species 8472 are [[Main/{{Starcraft}} 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.]]

* But she did! Don't you remember the final shot of "Scorpion, Part Two", with pre-catsuit Seven lying on the biobed while the camera tracks across her prominently-raised Borg implants?

* 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 Cadge.

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 LimitedAdvancementOpportunities 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 Tores (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 Kim''But 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.

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 LimitedAdvancementOpportunities when ''Voyager'' was out of touch with the Federation. But 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.

* The Caretaker is Literature/{{the Wizard of Oz}}: He’s not a bad man. He’s just a very bad wizard/caretaker.

TNG and DS9 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.

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 STuniverse'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)

As is connected with the theory above according to Q himself (albeit he is a UnreliableNarrator) 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 {{JerkAss}}es) grew to have a soft spot for humanity and after a while decided to keep this area of space safe for a while.

** But she did! Don't you remember the final shot of "Scorpion, Part Two", with pre-catsuit Seven lying on the biobed while the camera tracks across her prominently-raised Borg implants?