Headscratchers / Star Trek: Voyager - Biology and Culture

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Evolutionary Biology:

Evolution

• In the episode "Distant Origin," the crew meets an advanced race of beings that originally evolved on Earth from dinosaurs. How do they know this? Janeway asks the computer in the holodeck to extrapolate along what lines a specific dinosaur (parasaurolophus) would have evolved, based on its DNA, if it had not gone extinct. The computer does just that and produces a perfect hologram of one of the alien species (sans clothes). That's wonderful, except that evolution doesn't work that way. We don't have our future evolutionary state encoded into our genes. Evolution is a result of outside factors such as environment, and occurs as random genetic mutation allows some members of a species to survive long enough to pass on their genetic material where others cannot. This would almost be forgivable, except that they made the same mistake on the episode "Threshold," where Tom and Janeway are turned into future evolutions of humans by going faster than warp 10. I don't think the writers had much of an idea what the whole "survival of the fittest" thing really means.
  • Now here's the thing about Star trek evolution - it doesn't work the same way as in the real world. The universe Star Trek is set in works under different scientific principles to our own; we have sound in space, transporters that defy the Heisenberg Theory and of course warp drive to name but a few. Evolution being a pre-set path instead of a combination of variables has always been consistent in the Trekverse and we can look no further than the Next Generation episode the Chase. Here it is revealed that the lack of variety in Star Trek aliens is not because of a poor make up budget but because an ancient race of aliens spread its DNA across the galaxy and founded all life as we know it. If that situation even remotely happened in the real world, diversity among extra terrestrials would be an order of magnitude higher than pointed ears or wrinkled nose. while we're on the subject of real world verses Trekverse evolution a species such as the Ocampa which only live nine years, reproduce only once, have absolutely no canon evidence of litters or hermaphroditic reproduction and give birth out of a rear mounted sack which increases the likelihood of the mother dropping the child during birth would have died out in a few hundred years due to zero population growth.
    • Given that those cases of bad evolution were unintentional, I don't think this excuse applies. Just because you get something consistently wrong, doesn't mean it stops being wrong. And it was actualy contradited later in Dear Doctor, where Phlox argues evolution of Menk is affected by presence of Valakians.
    • Besides the episode said they evolved on Earth and then left. Basically the transporter was mapping out how they would have evolved further in the same environment. A stagnant environment is still unlikely but a lot more realistic then evolutionary fate.
    • It's still not possible to extrapolate that. Environment determines which mutations last and which ones don't, but the mutations are still randomly generated.
    • If the universe of Star Trek works under different rules than ours, then many of the most fundamental "lessons" it attempts to teach have no meaning. See for instance the frequent attempts to demonize Khan and other genetic superhumans. If evolution in the Trekverse follows some pre-destined path, then what's the problem with intentionally nudging the species further along that path?
    • Actually, the prejudice against genetically engineered beings makes more sense if Trek "evolution" is following some sort of predestination, since an artificially altered being is far more likely to diverge from "destiny" than move "further toward" it. (That's if one stipulates the fallacious idea that chance mutation and natural selection are both irrelevant forces to Almighty Evolution.)
    • The very same episode referenced here specifically states that the two races, the dinosaur people and humans, share 47 base pairs of their DNA and chart this back to a common ancestor. While there are some instances where evolution seems weird in Trek, this particular instance answers the question and is internally consistent.
    • Think you're mistaking base pairs for something else, base pairs are the most fundamental building block of DNA being guanine-cytosine and adenine-thymine. So we would actually share all our base pairs all two of them. Perhaps you mean a sequence of base pairs but the human haploid genome contains 3.2 billion base pairs, so you'd expect to share more than that with any random DNA based lifeform even if you're not related to them. Now I've looked up the episode and apparently what is shared is 47 genetic markers, not base pairs. But without telling us how large those markers are that a meaningless distinction. Could be super related, could not actually be related at all if they're small enough sequences.
  • Going back to that TNG episode, if Picard brought back to the Federation a photo of those progenitor aliens, the computer could be evolving the dinosaur assuming it was being affected by the progenitor genetic seeding as ancient human ancestors were, and that's a lot more plausible. We know that virtually all sentient races were seeded by them, it should be easy to predict what their genetic programming would produce from a source animal, given enough time.

The Borg Collective:

Borg Queen

• Bringing back the Borg Queen in Voyager. This really bugs me, since it completely invalidates all of First Contact. First Contact was about Picard confronting his issues with the Borg and facing them down, ultimately killing the Queen, the single personification of his greatest enemy in an emotional climax. But then she just comes back in Voyager so that their writers can give Janeway the glory of defeating the Borg Queen for good. So all that stuff that Picard went through? Totally doesn't matter. Great job Voyager.
  • You think in such three dimensional terms...
  • Voyager retconned it into either that there is one Queen for every Unimatrix, or that every time the Queen is killed, a drone is promoted into a new Queen. The books take the latter side. It can also be read pretty easily that the Queen in Voyager was grooming Seven to be the next one.
    • Now, what bugs me is that they got Alice Kriege back for the finale. Suzanna Leigh was different enough to be used as evidence that she was a new former drone.
    • Some of the post-Nemesis novels explain that the "promotion" of a drone to a queen involves a biological transformation induced by immersion in a hormone-saturated royal jelly. It may include some sporadically expressed genetic component, which would explain the fluctuation and recurrence of the Queen's appearance.
    • It's not a retcon. First Contact itself established that the queen can somehow come back after being killed. Picard says she was on the first cube that attacked earth. The one that self-destructed.
    • But recall that the Queen immediately reacts with "You think in such three-dimensional terms"... this leaves open the possibility that she either somehow left it in time or was never really there, Picard just remembers it as such. Dying and respawning does not suggest four (or whatever)-dimensionality to me. In any event, the line is more of an evasion than an explanation and leaves the means of her survival/resurrection unclear.
  • Picard saved Earth, and the Federation TWICE, and you're saying it doesn't matter just because he didn't destroy the borg as well? Besides, the borg have suffered enough Villain Decay without the death of one queen bringing down the entire collective. Especially if they are then dumb enough to send their one and only queen on a mission to Earth with only one ship.
  • In a way, the creation of a new Queen is somewhat logical in a screwy sort of way. This is admittedly Fanwank most foul, but consider that it could be the case that the removal of the Borg Queen from the 24th century in First Contact would have immediately have severed her contact with the collective in that time period - something she surely wouldn't have done without the certainty of a replacement taking over straight away. It also explains the apparent contradiction of why her death causes the Borg around her to stop functioning in that time period - they were all that was left of the collective she was in control of (the Delta Quadrant Borg of 2063 having their "own" Queen, a separate collective), and the limited technology they had aboard the Enterprise couldn't produce a second replacement to pick up the mantle.
    • It's worth noting that there are several hints in future Borg appearances that heavily imply that one of the dimensions that the Queen was referring to is time. The seeds of this were sort of planted in First Contact, itself. A Voyager episode would later make use of a "Borg temporal transmitter," which future versions of Chakotay and Harry Kim use in an attempt to send a message to the past. Incidentally, a line of dialogue explains that the specific device that they were using was recovered from a derelict Borg cube in the Beta Quadrant; and given the events of Star Trek: Picard, it seems very likely that the cube in question is the one that became the Borg Reclamation Site. Picard, in fact, takes the thread and starts beating us over the head with it. It's established in the second season that the Queen has some sort of "temporal awareness" which allows her to track changes in the timeline, and that this ability is completely independent of her connection to the Collective. It's also shown that she can calculate and execute a slingshot maneuver with precision that even Spock would envy. Whatever the Borg Queen is, it seems that her existence isn't entirely tied to linear time.
    • The reason the queen has knowledge of alternate timelines is simple: the Borg assimilated the El-Aurians some time before Star Trek: Generations' opening scene. We know from TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" that Guinan has at least some sense of alternate timelines. She demonstrated it by knowing that Tasha Yar wasn't supposed to be there and Yar's death in the other timeline ("The Skin of Evil") was meaningless. Assuming Guinan wasn't unique in having this sense, it stands to reason that the Borg assimilated some of the El-Aurians who also possessed this power. Given how long El-Aurians live (Guinan looked exactly the same when she was talking with Mark Twain in "Time's Arrow"), it is even possible that the queen originally was an El-Aurian. That would also explain the absence of any Rubber Forehead prosthetics since El-Aurians look human.
  • I'd always assumed that the Queens were just programs that the Borg activate to deal with certain situations or manage various parts of the Collective (I'd have preferred it if they'd simply been avatars of the Collective but I have to concede that the show seems to indicate that this isn't the case). The fact that the same actress from First Contact returns in Voyager implies that these are actually "models" of queen rather than simply replacing a dead body with a new drone and so might imply that there are different queens activated under different circumstances
  • My personal theory(ignoring novels which are not exactly canon) is that the Queen has numerous ""avatar" bodies, which makes sense with First Contact's situation- when the Queen was killed, all Borg on the ship shut down instantly. If there was only one Queen who needed to be in contact with the collective at all times or the collective fails, then wouldn't the only queen going back in time disconnect her from the collective and shut the Borg down? For that matter, why didn't the Queen and this small sect of the Collective either A) automatically somehow connect via subspace with the Borg of that era, or B) go a bit nuts with the collective suddenly being cut down to a single Queen and only a few members and no contact with anyone else? I am going with the assumption that the Queen did not have some odd temporal link to the "present" and the rest of the collective. Either way, the Queen can break off an avatar as needed. After all, the Borg are a multi-unit collective with every member linked but the Queen is important. It's also possible that the Queen is more of a program and bodies aren't exactly needed beyond interacting with humanoids directly- it seemed in the finale that they did something to her programming that went beyond physical harm. Don't forget that in Enterprise, two drones from the 24th century reactivate after being discovered, despite not only being of a different technological level than current Borg, but also being nowhere near a collective and their queen having been "killed".
• Logically-speaking, a true "Collective" would be impossible with something like the Borg, since the vast majority of beings in it were assimilated against their will and have to have their individuality and will suppressed in order for the Collective to continue to function without deteriorating into chaos. It is shown repeatedly that Borg that get severed from the Collective often go off the rails (e.g. following android cult leaders like Lore). Something needs to define the overall paradigm of the Collective. In this regard, the Queen acts as set of core principles ensuring that the myriad components of the Collective all stay on-script. Seven has stated that every Borg drone that ever existed has its memories preserved as a part of the Collective. It would only make sense that this is true of the Queen too. But furthermore, the Collective will produce a new Queen (which is after all, just some organic structures, a cyborg body and a mind that is stored in the Collective) as needed. This also explains why the Borg would risk a Queen on a time travel mission just to attack Earth.
  • But that just underscores just how little Voyager and First Contact era Borg have in common with their introduction. In Q-Who the Borg are shown to have nurseries and it's explicitly stated by Q and Guinan that the Borg aren't interested in assimilating individuals or populations. The only thing the Borg wanted was technology (and even then only technology they didn't already have) and raw materials.
    • Not assimilating individuals and populations was retconned as early as their second appearance, though. Locutus's dialogue with Worf in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" makes it very clear that the Borg intend to assimilate everyone they can: "Why do you resist? We only wish to raise quality of life for all species." In the context of "Q Who," one could even argue that the fate of the El-Aurians makes more sense if you assume that the species was assimilated, because if all the Borg were after was El-Aurian technology, there wouldn't be any pressing need to exterminate them. Committing an unnecessary genocide would just be a waste of resources when all you really want is their stuff.
  • I see the above mentioned change in tactics of the Borg to be related to their change in appearance from First Contact onwards. Initially, they only wanted to assimilate technology over people, hence their rather clunky bodies. Later, when they decided to start assimilating more people rather than technology, they grew to be more "organic" in appearance and less bulky. Their ships also change somewhat. Same applies to their menthod of assimilation which in "Best of Both Worlds" appeared to consist entirely of bolting stuff onto Picard, whereas later, they use an injection directly into a person's body. They still manually add stuff, but the process starts with the nanoprobes. As for the change in appearance of the Borg Queen, the Alice Krige version was calculating, and willing to take time over Data to get what she wanted. When that plan failed, the Borg activated the Suzanna Thompson model (from Species 125), who was more aggressive in her dealings even with her own drones. After the damage she caused during the Unimatrix Zero incident, the Krige one was used again.
    • Actually, they did inject Picard in Best of Both Worlds at least once, possibly twice. The "possibly" when he was grabbed on the Enterprise, when a Drone touches his neck from behind (although we are not explicitly shown an injection); and the second time when the Borg assimilate Picard further, he gets an injection directly before his skin changes color - which in First Contact and Voyager was always the first visible sign of Nanoprobes having been injected. Also, the appearance of the Borg didn't change in response to their changed tactics (the tactics changed at the end of TNG season 3, while the appearance only changed in First Contact); but in response to the increased budget for First Contact. Which then meant Voyager had to also give them this appearance, since a devolution of the makeup would probably not have gone over well.

The Ocampa:

Kes and Neelix pt. 2

• In Voyager, Kes is very young (2 years old at the start) although a member of a race who age and die much more quickly than humans (IIRC they tend to live to the age of 9). Neelix often comments on how young, inexperienced and naive she is. Neelix is in a romantic relationship with her, and seems to have been for some time before the programme started. So, perhaps he's exaggerating how young she is? Near the beginning of season 2 she starts to go through puberty and explains that she is half the usual age for this to happen. So she's basically like a 7-year-old human girl in terms of sexual development. Does nobody else on the ship have a problem with this? Even if Neelix is going to wait for her to grow up before doing anything, he's been grooming her for quite a while.
  • With so many alien species that have different life cycles, ages of sexual maturity, and so forth, Starfleet personnel are probably immunized against Squick. At least to some degree. If they try to apply human standards to aliens, even in terms of "a 2-year Ocampa is 14 in human years," they're going to end up making fools of themselves over and over because of misunderstandings. So they give up, even when they shouldn't give up.
    • They couldn't use the "equivalent in human years" standard even if they wanted to. Every species grows and matures at different rates. For example, the old adage that "1 human year is 7 dog years" is a fallacy, based on the semi-true belief that a dog's natural lifespan is about 1/7 that of a human. While dogs do live shorter lives than humans, their biological development is vastly different. See here for a more thorough explanation.
  • Minor point to start. Kes actually turned two in a very late first season episode. She was only a little over one year old in the pilot. But on to the main point. Kes does not "go through puberty" in that episode. The process going on is a once in a lifetime process that allows her to have a baby ONE time in her entire life. Ocampa, however, seem to be like humans and able to have sex for pleasure at any time. In other words, the Ocampa reach sexual maturity and are able to have sex LONG before they can actually have a baby. At 7 or 8 months she's like a teenager to her species. At 1 year it's like she's 20 or so in human terms. Ocampa can't even have kids normally until middle age. It's like a human being able to have sex when she's 16, but not actually being able to get pregnant until she's 40.
    • How did the writers not realize the problem with Kes only being able to have one baby in her lifetime? A species with males and femals in which each female is limited to one child will have reproduction rate below replacement and eventually dissapear. If the Ocampans are about 50% male and 50% female, as they seem to be, and a generation is only a few years long (the time it takes a female to become fertile) this would happen rather quickly.
    • This is actually one of the (rare) moments of presumably accidental Fridge Brilliance in Voyager. We're never told that Ocampan pregnancy is female only — the other member in an Ocampan-Ocampan relationship could well end up a Mister Seahorse — and they were pretty heavily monitored by a stupidly powerful being. Combined with the events of Elogium, where Ocampan estrus was artificially induced and the Doctor thought this would allow Kes to have a second estrus, this starts to make sense. If there's a one to one replacement ratio and the offspring are more directly related to their individual parent, this seems like the perfect way to prevent the species from either having a population explosion or mix of mutations likely to cause a population explosion, while still being able to replace the population in the case of accidents, early death, or violence. Unfortunately, it's not really enough to save the crappy, crappy episode.
    • I don't think that Mr Seahorse can in any way be inferred here. You would think that it would have been mentioned in passing during Elogium. Gee, Neelix, it is really odd to be in a relationship where the guy doesn't get pregnant too. Because that sounds like something that normal people in an extraordinary situation would say. Also, as mentioned below, sexual dimorphism sounds like something that would be far more androgynous in a society that mates through their hands and out of a sack on their backs if both sexes gave birth.
    • Alternately, Ocampans could (like many Real Life invertebrates) be a sperm-sequestering species. The females may only need to mate once to obtain sperm, which are stored internally and then doled out at intervals, providing for a lifetime's worth of pregnancies.
  • This raises more Fridge Logic about when the heck Neelix even met Kes. Putting aside the question of how they met each other, since any number of crazy scenarios might've done it, how fast did she grow up into a seemingly adult female? If she was only about one year old at the beginning of Voyager, and he and Kes were implied to already be in a serious relationship, was she only a few months old when they met? How old did she actually look at that point? Ocampans must reach apparent maturity really quickly, and it's possible Neelix didn't know what he'd gotten into until they were already a couple, but it's still kinda squicky to think about.
    • I don't think Neelix's age was ever stated, so maybe he is a shorter-lived species too, with a maximum age of thirty years? All wild guessing of course, but it would explain why his relationship with Kes developed this quickly and he quickly latched on to the voyager: short-lived species like Kes have been shown to develop personal relations far faster.
    • Here's my problem with the above point that Ocampans appear to be able to have sex for pleasure at any time... not to put too finer point on it, it's been shown that the mating process involves the couple to hold their hands together (no joke) and after an undermined time the child grows out of a sack on their back. In other words Ocampans shouldn't have a penis or a vagina because their reproduction simply doesn't work that way - in fact, outside of the Elogium they shouldn't even have any sexual impulses of any kind because biologically, a sexual impulse is the subconscious desire to want to reproduce - the situation would be far more similar to a dog on heat than anything we would term as sex. Going further with this concept, Kes shouldn't even have permanent breasts considering that they would only be used once in her entire life; they should, again, function like a dog. Basically, if this reproductive system was in anyway realistic, male and female Ocampa would have such spectacularly limited sexual dimorphism you would barely be able to tell them apart.
    • To your objections to the point that Ocampans appear to be able to have sex for pleasure at any time... Your objections would just as easily apply to Homo sapiens. Just take your argument and substitute "Humans" for "Ocampans" and "12" for "once." By your logic, human females post menopause should likewise be indistinguishable from males (= no sexual dimorphism) and have zero sex drive. You are mistakenly equating "having sex" with "mating."
    • "Kes shouldn't even have permanent breasts considering that they would only be used once in her entire life; they should, again, function like a dog". Ok, but so should human breasts. Just because they might be used more than once doesn't mean they need to be enlarged permanently from puberty all the way to death, especially even past menopause.
    • Um, the series didn't really establish very many of those claims at all. The sticky stuff grows on the Ocampa hands, but that doesn't necessarily mean they lock hands with each other: maybe those sticky palms are supposed to be stuck to the mate's body the way tree frogs sometimes do with each other when mating. No penis or vagina? We don't know that. Just because the Ocampan equivalent of a uterus is a temporary sack that grows on the woman's back (and maybe the man's back too) doesn't mean she doesn't have an entrance to it somewhere. A male from one species shown in a Star Trek movie had his testicles on his knees; maybe an Ocampan woman has her vagina in the small of her back! That would lead to some interesting and potentially dangerous social situations (hugging being an easy way to cop a feel, for instance), but it wouldn't necessarily prevent a bit of inter-species romance and sexuality.
    • "Just because the Ocampan equivalent of a uterus is a temporary sack that grows on the woman's back (and maybe the man's back too) doesn't mean she doesn't have an entrance to it somewhere." Also, just because human females have the same reproductive entrance and exit doesn't mean that every alien species would have to.
    • Out-of-estrus sexual behaviors aren't unprecedented as a bonding mechanism among social mammals. Ocampans' non-reproductive sex might serve a social purpose, like it does with bonobos or many cetaceans.
    • Or humans, come to that.
    • Bringing up the Bonobo is a brilliant point; after all Ocampan's seem to be a very emotional and social species that would probably appreciate such contact. However it still doesn't explain how a non-Ocampan could possibly have sex with Kes. Again, trying to be as family friendly as I possibly can be, wouldn't a race who technically shouldn't have genitals (even without the application of Fridge Logic, that is exactly how their reproduction is presented to us) having sex with a race with genitals be incredibly one sided?
    • You know, there are a lot of things you can do sexually that are not vagina-penis related.
  • I would summarize everything said above as: the idea of having a sentient species that only lives about 9 years is completely stupid and impractical, and should have died before making it into any script.
    • Yeah, I think we can all agree that the Ocampa as a species are a huge screw-you to evolutionary biology.
    • Except they aren't supposed to only live for nine years, the current state of the Ocampa are not how they evolved but a result of an outside alien force interfering and causing unspecified levels of damage to both their world and their species. The female Caretaker's group are likely much closer to what the Ocampa are supposed to be while the ones we saw on their homeworld are the ones that are regressing into extinction.
  • Interesting how this is brought about Neelix but not about Tom Paris who is in a similar situation, with the difference that we don't know how long Talaxians live and if they're closer to Ocampas. However, the answer is basically the same. Why no one took the "pedo" accusation against Tom for having feelings toward someone who was literally a 5 years-old? (and in the Year in Hell alternate timeline they married and had a baby). Well, for the same reason they probably didn't do it with Neelix. Kes is, for all practical purposes, an adult. She looks and acts as twenty-something woman. She is mentally and physically an adult. It would be the equivalent of bashing someone for not treating Naomi Wildman as a toddler.
  • It does bring up the function of a birthing sac on their backs... how does THAT work? Wouldn't the spine and ribs get in the way? How do they have a humanoid body with such a birthing method? Does the sac just grow out of the back like a balloon?
• Neelix receives a lung from Kes to replace the one stolen by the Vidiians. They mention tinkering with his immune system so he won't reject the lung, as no one on Voyager was otherwise compatible. But her species lives 9 years. They don't mention any other alterations made and even the Vidiians can barely make use of the tissues they apply to themselves. So did they silently alter the lung somehow or is he utterly screwed when that Ocampan lung gives out in a few years?

Ocampan birthrate

• When the show announced that Ocampa only go into estrus once in their lives, fans started asking how the species managed population growth.
  • Twins?
  • The Ocampa were a dying species who had not only lost the bulk of their telepathic abilities but their lifespans had regressed so far they die at around nine years old. They DON'T manage population growth as they're dying out because they don't live long enough for multiple fertile cycles.
  • However, they also said they've lived there for 500 generations. To be left with at least one person by the end of that, and accepting that each generation would be half as big as the previous, they would have to have started with something like 2^500 people (about 10^150). For comparison, there are only about 10^80 atoms in the known universe.
  • An example of Writers Cannot Do Math and Artistic License – Biology.
  • Combine what we've been told, and a more plausible explanation emerges, along with a bit of Fridge Horror: the female Caretaker's Ocampa had about twice the lifespan Kes and her people did, and were much better at using their telepathic abilities; they were indicated to be returning to their species' former vigor. It could well be that a lot of those 500 generations were longer-lived than the current one and did have more than one reproductive cycle and therefore could sustain their numbers. By the time Voyager arrived, however, the Caretaker for Kes and her people realized their lifespans and reproductive capacity had degenerated alarmingly, was unable to reverse the process, and was trying to hold out a little longer so as to make their extinction less painful. His last-ditch effort to build up their life support reserves before he died was because he thought if he could send them enough, it would last them for the remainder of their generations, which by then were steadily dwindling by half.
  • Or the Ocampa are simply a sperm-sequestering species, like thousands of Real Life invertebates. Just because their females only mate once doesn't mean they can't dole out the male's genetic contribution over a lifetime's worth of pregnancies. Problem (or at least that one) solved. Of course, the issue then becomes why this is never brought up, particularly in Elogium.
    • Good point. There is also the case of Kes' uncle which suggest siblings are plausible.
    • Honestly, I can't see Neelix agreeing to that given how he was so reluctant to have one child. Beyond that though, if true, then that opens up all sorts of fridge horror regarding custody in this scenario. What if come the fourth child he doesn't want his sperm being kept inside her anymore? If he divorces, does he have to put up with her constantly having his children regardless or is she banned from having children anymore? What if she finds another husband, does he have to put up with his wife constantly being pregnant with some other man's children or is there a way to swap out?
    • "What if come the fourth child he doesn't want his sperm being kept inside her anymore? If he divorces, does he have to put up with her constantly having his children regardless or is she banned from having children anymore?" Humans have a similar problem. Humans can get divorced without knowing that the woman is pregnant.
    • Presumably if that's how Ocampan reproduction's always worked, then Ocampan culture will have long since settled on ways of resolving custody issues, e.g. by establishing that once a female has received sperm, they're considered hers under the law, same as her own eggs are, or as blood from a transfusion is considered the recipient's in Real Life. Whether or not Neelix would need to abide by that precedent might depend on whether he knew about it, and whether he and Kes actually married.
    • A later episode showed an (alternate) future where Kes had multiple children with Tom Paris, so its safe to say that Ocampa can have multiple children (however exactly that might work).
    • Not to nitpick, but Kes and Paris only have one child that we see, a daughter named Linnis.
  • Remember, Kes canonically has an uncle, which she doesn't treat as unusual, so multiple births do happen with some frequency.

Q and the Q Continuum:

Do the Q have gender?

• The Next Generation episode Qpid seems to very clearly state that the Q are beyond gender; he constantly mocks the interpersonal relationships between men and women, he tells Picard that he would have appeared as a female if he had known sooner that Picard had a soft spot for the ladies and he even claims that he thought Picard was more evolved than every other human in existence for not allowing him to be swayed by love until he was brought down by a woman as Q put it. All of this would seem to claim that if the Q do have males and females they have a radically different social structure than we do. Fast forward to Q and the Grey and we get the female Q claim she was in a relationship with Q for a billion years and is possibly one of the most stereotypically condescending women we have ever seen in Star Trek - and no there is no indication that it was anything but a bog standard male female relationship nor is there any indication that she has ever been anything other than a woman. So which is it? are the Q a godlike race that have completely out evolved gender or a godlike race that is essentially exactly the same as us but with superpowers?
  • The Q at least try to present themselves in a way that makes sense to the species they are dealing with (b/c you can't have as much fun messing with someone and then having them feed your pride by acknowledging your superiority if they don't have a way of even relating to you). So it's easy enough to presume Q do not have sex, gender, orientation, etc. Any two Q who are "in a relationship" (whatever that means in their terms) may want to present themselves as a heterosexual couple when dealing with a species that has two biological sexes where reproducing takes 1 of each, and where said reproduction at least tends to be somewhat related to romance.
  • I hate the way Voyager watered down and debased the Q in this way and more. If one were inclined to grant some breaks here, one might suggest that it's not such much that they have gender as their self-presentation to their audience on Voyager invokes as a kind of Translation Convention, where the concept of gender gets invoked to make the dealings of omnipotent beings more comprehensible to the limited confines of human understanding.
  • Bad writing, combined with probable Executive Meddling, with an eye towards Hide Your Gays. For starters, the early assumption that the Q are genderless makes perfect sense. Since they do not normally procreate (Amanda Rogers being the actual first Q offspring in canon, long before Q Junior), there is no particular reason for them to need genders. They may usually appear as humans, but they are not. Even Q and his girlfriend "mating" was an act that fell far short of what most people (even the prudish Janeway) would consider "sex". It was more like a fusion of energies. Realistically speaking, any two Q could do it. Then there is Q Junior, raging heterosexual "biped". He appears as a male human teenager and seems quite obsessed with women, but not men. He wants a dance from B'Elanna, strips Seven naked (not that she wasn't already halfway there anyway) and selects a star system to flee to based on the hot women there. So not only are the writers trying to reinforce the idea of the Q having gender, but they also have sexual orientation, specifically heterosexuality. Why they would have these things, being a race of abstract beings from a higher plane of existence who only rarely procreate anyway is a clear cut case of the show trying to "normalize" them and make them conform to preferred human social standards.
    • One possibility - Q trapping q in human form caused q to exhibit human behavior (possibly intentionally as part of his lesson). q wasn't mentally or emotionally mature enough to separate his higher self from his form, so essentially became a hormone-riddled, undisciplined humanoid biped with an IQ in the thousands. Possibly, being human even exacerbated the situation as q didn't have any experience regulating his behavior or dealing with emotions. Q himself has also displayed an appreciation for the opposite gender on occasion (at least in Star Trek:Borg) as well as other human behavior (like getting high during Encounter at Farpoint or liking lemonade later on).
    • The problem is that the episode itself invalidates that theory. Q briefly gets turned into an amoeba, which was apparently disconcerting to him, but had no lasting impact on his personality. Given that we are talking omnipotence here, and the Q could force him into any form, if biology were the problem then why not just change him into some species with a better temperament? How about those peaceful, slow-moving beings that Tam Elbrun said had "glacial" minds? The forms they assume do not appear to alter the Q's basic personalities. If only it were that easy...
    • One possibility is that Q' is older, more experienced, more...mature. q is still young, green, and relatively inexperienced and possibly impressionable, so being trapped in a human body with all that entailed actually had lasting effects on him. Think a person being put into a foreign culture. A young person is much more likely to be shaped by that culture, while a fully mature adult is less so.
  • The only hand wave I can think of if we are willing to be generous is that the Q don't have biological sex but do have gender identity. For some reason or another they just prefer to think of themselves as male or female. I'm battling uphill against the terrible writing here but maybe if a Q spends too long interacting with a patriarchal or matriarchal society they get influenced? After all we have only seen a hand full of Q outside of the Continuum so we can't tell for certain if they all act that way and if for example one spent a long enough time living in the 1950's it would certainly gain a preference to being a male unless it doesn't feel like doing anything beyond sitting in the kitchen cooking and cleaning.
    • That might be reasonable if the Q gave a damn about the social mores of any civilization they decide to play with. But from what we have seen, "blending in" is not one of their preferred habits. Other than the Rogers family, they are not big on pandering to "lower life forms". Although it should be pointed out that Q has stated that perhaps he should have appeared to Picard as a woman instead. Then their Ho Yay would have been a canon romance faster than you can say "James T. Kirk"! Granted, Villain Decay is in affect here big time. But Deanna's initial sense of Q was that he was not even close to humans, which even her pronoun usage reflects.
  Deanna: It it felt like something beyond what we'd consider a life form.

The 'Q' Pun Writes Itself!

• Granted, as alluded to above, The Q and the Grey doesn't really stand up to much analysis, but there's an especially odd choice that has been bugging me for years: Why are the establishment Q represented as the Confederacy, and Q's forces represented by the Union? Shouldn't that be the other way around? If you're using the American Civil War as an analogy for the Q civil war, shouldn't the side fighting to preserve a peaceful union be the Union, and the side fighting for individual rights (Q and friends) be the Rebels^note I'm intentionally ignoring the issue of slavery both for clarity and as an attempt to avoid argument that would derail the topic? Obviously, they probably wanted a conflict that American audiences would be familiar with—one that would clearly telegraph which side was right and which side was evil—so why not just go with the American Revolutionary War? It has everything you'd need in an analogy: it's a war Americans are familiar with, it a clear good guy that the audience could identify with, a ragtag army fighting oppression that doesn't carry the baggage of the Confederacy, and you even have an obvious Q pun title: The Red and the Q.
  • Presumably, besides the television convention of "Union good, Confederate bad," given that this is a visit to the Q Continuum, which, in "Death Wish" was said to be filtered for the perception of mortals, it puts our Q, the one the characters side with (in a loose definition of the term, but still) on the side that they'd most reasonably align with.
    • For a non-American (OK, British) audience the Revolutionary War wasn't a pure "Good v. Evil" clash unlike the American Civil War (and yes, the Civil War wasn't as simple as "Good Emancipators v. Evil Slavers", but that's the Clip Notes version).
  • While Q has indeed started a revolution, it's also a Civil War within the Q Continuum.

The 'Q' Pun Inexplicably Fails to Write Itself

• ...Is there a reason why 'Death Wish' was not titled 'Qicide'? Seriously. It's obvious, it's certainly more fitting than things like 'Q Who' (I'm not even sure if that's a pun at all), and it fits perfectly with the episode. The only argument that I can think of is that 'suicide' is somehow a loaded word...but...you'd think that 'death wish' would suffer from the same thing...
  • Possibly they thought that any kind of pun did not suit the tone of the episode.
    • It was marketed as a Q-episode (and successfully — other than the opener, it was the highest rated episode of the season).
  • Possibly to hide the fact that it was going to be a Q episode.
  • I assume the pun was (read aloud) "Q Who! Borg! Over here! C'mon get it!"
    • It's a pretty clever pun, but probably would have resulted in a lot of people being offended by the word "suicide" being subject to a punny transformation.

Species 8472 (The Undine, if you're nasty)

Odd definition of "Space"

• In "Scorpion" I and II, we get our first glimpse of Species 8472's home, "Fluidic Space", a Lovecraftian realm where there are no stars, no galaxies, no planets near as we can tell. Everything is suspended in liquidious green goo. Soo...isn't "Fluidic Space" a contradiction of terms? The whole place is filled with fluid, i.e. matter, i.e. not vacuum, i.e. not space. "Fluidic Universe" would've flown fine, but then that'd make sense...
  • B'Elanna actually makes this observation in the episode:
  Torres: The entire region is filled with some kind of organic fluid... this isn't space... it's matter.
  • And why don't members of Species 8472 and their ships explode from the pressure differential when they enter our universe?
    • Presumably they've evolved to function in both environments, and designed their ship to do the same. Nothing says they haven't encountered non-fluidic space before.
    • Sheer bloody-minded toughness. I'm not even kidding, EU stuff of the Undine (Species 8472) says that they make Klingons look like weekend warriors in their obsession with strength. Keeping in mind their biology is hardy enough and adaptive enough to shrug off Borg nanoprobes like they were a particularly weak cold virus, their organic ships probably go "Oh, hey, that's a bit uncomfortable. (weird technorganic equivalent of a shrug) There that's better." in the transition.
  • Yeah, they use the term "space" for convenience, not accuracy. It's analogous to space.
  • Or it's "space" as in "volume", not "space" as in "incomprehensibly vast expanse of vacuum with occasional nebulae and star systems in it".

Species 8472 has five sexes?

• In the episode Someone To Watch Over Me the Doctor states that Species 8472 has five sexes. First off, how does he even know that? But secondly and more importantly, is that even remotely likely? It just seems completely contrary to evolution that a creature would have to mate with four others in order to reproduce.
  • Does it all follow that all five are necessary in every instance of reproduction? Maybe some of them can only interbreed with certain of the others.
  • Or some are hermaphrodites, the five sexes do not have to be involved all of them in reproduction.
  • Alternately, the "sexes" are more like fungal "mating types": each individual can conceive with a partner from any of the other four types, just not one of its own "sex".
  • As to why the Doctor would know this, subsequent to "In the Flesh" it's reasonable to think he would have basic medical data on Species 8472.

Medicine, Psychology, and/or Worst Aid:

We only take what organs we need right then.

• Watching Phage again, something occurred to me. Why did the Vidiian who shot Neelix ONLY take his lungs? Sure, the Vidiian might need lungs for his friend right then, but why not take all of his organs to store away for whoever might need them? After all, if you are willing to take someone's organs out and kill them, the very least you could do is make sure their death accomplishes as much as possible.
  • It's possible he was interrupted. Other episodes seem to indicate that the Vidiians normally make use of all the organs of their victims. In this case the Vidiian knew the away team would come running when Neelix screamed so he only took what he needed right at that moment. Or he could have been trying to rationalize his actions. "Oh, it's only one or two organs, I'm not some barbarian!" I know that doesn't make much sense since Neelix only has two lungs and can't live without them, but once you've reached the point where you're stealing other people's organs and grafting them into yourself, logical thinking has gone out the window.
  • As quick as the Phage spreads, and as devastating as it is, it's probable that long-term storage of organs isn't feasible, especially since the nature of how the Phage is spread remains unknown. If it is airborne, then it's likely that organs in storage get contaminated and become unusable. If the Vidians haven't developed stasis technology, then it makes even more sense why they would only harvest what is immediately needed.
  • The fact that Neelix didn't immediately bleed to death from the loss suggests the Vidiian was interrupted. The only reason why his attacker would bother to re-route Neelix's blood flow to bypass the missing lungs (and no matter how alien Neelix's species might be, he couldn't use lungs if they didn't have a blood supply) would be if he expected to have time to detach other organs, one by one, keeping his victim's circulation going until the very last instant. If he just yanked the lungs and ran, Neelix's entire blood volume would've drained into his vacant pleural cavities within a few heartbeats.
    • I like the theory, because it somehow makes a brutal act even more horrifying, but it seems to me that there would be much simpler ways to get the same results without having to reroute the victim's circuitry system. Without the lungs, blood cells are going to die very quickly, so continuing to circulate blood throughout the body becomes useless pretty fast. I think your best, fastest course of action would be to clamp off major blood vessels, remove the organ, cauterize any larger hemorrhages, maybe pack the cavity with ice if you brought any (failing that, use one of those nifty, coffee mug-sized stasis fields like Tuvok used in Innocence), and move on. Though because organs are usually still viable for a short time after death, I don't know why you'd go to even that much trouble.
• So "Faces" demonstrates that the Vidiians have the technology and are capable of achieving the near perfect effect of splitting one person into two fully grown and independent people. In essence, they clone Torres, just splitting the human and Klingon parts along the way. If they can split one person into two, why do they even have an organ shortage and need to go around stealing them!? As distasteful as it would be, I don't think too many people when faced with the prospect of being killed for their organs, would object too strongly to allowing clones of themselves (or maybe just clones of their organs) to be made to help the Vidiians. Yet this awesome breakthrough in combatting the Phage is forgotten as quickly as Durst got his face sawn off.
  • Keep in mind that we never explicitly saw how the other Torres was created, save for the fact that it apparently happened after they'd been captured for at least a day or so, and also note that the Doctor had to reintegrate the Klingon genes into the human Torres to save her life after the fact; given the implications that the Vidiians have carried out a range of medical experiments to treat the Phage, it could be that resources to create that kind of clone are of limited availability and highly complicated to use in the first place.

Warlord

• In Warlord, the Doctor creates a device to interface with the implants Tieran had put in Kes's body, in order to pull his pattern out of her body. He then transfers out of Kes's body and into an anonymous guard, who couldn't've possibly had enough time to have implants installed, and it inexplicably worked, even after the Doctor explicitly stated it worked through the implants.
  • Maybe I misunderstood what was going on but I was always under the impression that only one side needed the body swapping implants and we see Tieran!Kes having some installed not long before; Tieran was essentially trapped inside that guard once he swapped with him. The Doctor's device merely enabled one to delete Tieran's mind. Like all Star Trek technology it is best not to analyse it too much as the headscratchers for the Holodeck prove. Incidentally these implants are a fantastic example of how this franchise forgets galaxy changing discoveries each week and how they willing to kill off fantastic ideas for stories. True Starfleet as a whole is much too honourable to use them maliciously, but nevertheless they ignore the fact that they now have a device that could save the lives of anyone on the crew provided that they are willing to sacrifice themselves. Imagine how interesting an episode like Before and After would have been if Kes's daughter, Tom Paris and Neelix were willing to mutiny in order to save Kes from death.
  • A "device that could save the lives of anyone on the crew provided that they are willing to sacrifice themselves." There's your answer right there. This technology is basically offering people a Sadistic Choice between making a Heroic Sacrifice for their loved ones or living with grief over having lost them, but still keeping your own personality. As for the first question it's answered in the episode. Tieran transfers to Kes using the implants in his hand. His doctor is later shown installing new implants in Tieran!Kes. The synaptic stimulator is placed on Kes but Tieran has already transferred his mind to Ameron (not an anonymous guard). But as Ameron doesn't have the implants, Tieran is trapped inside his body and so Kes can finally kill him off by placing the stimulator on Tieran!Ameron.

Nothing Human

• In Nothing Human the alien sucking off Torres is beamed away, leaving behind a pristine uniform. Um, what? If this thing was acting as a parasite to heal itself, it has to actually touch her, right? Was it impossible to either do the transport offscreen and cut back to Torres after the wings of the surgical bed have covered her (and the blood, etc.) up, or put some cosmetic blotches of blood and gore on tears in her uniform in strategic locations?
• Ignoring the episode's strange opinion on morality and the rights of holograms, the conflict itself doesn't make any sense. If they were able to make a hologram with knowledge of how to cure the disease that means that the information on how to cure the disease was already on the ship's computers. In other words the episode could only happen by everyone forgetting that they already have what they need. There was never any need to create the holographic Cardassian doctor.
  • I'm fairly certain it's implied(or even outright stated) that a great deal of the information they were using from the ship's computers was obtained by Krell, which would also explain why the Doctor was so adamant on using Krell's appearance and personality specifically - the best personality to give the hologram would obviously be the one most familiar with the information it would be using. The hologram being based on Krell wasn't the main issue so much as the Bajoran recognizing him gave the crew the opportunity to figure out how the information they were using was gathered.
  • As for why the hologram needed to be created at all, the information was in the computers, but it wasn't in the Doctor; his program simply can't hold all the medical information needed to treat every known condition for every known form of life. Granted, he probably could've tried temporarily tossing out some of the information that wasn't relevant at the time and dropped the exobiology information in its place, but it would probably make more sense to take a crack at creating a new, temporary hologram with that information then to go mucking about in the programming of their only medical officer.
  • The Doctor needed the Krell hologram for the same reason Dr. House needs his fellows: someone to bounce ideas off of. The Doctor isn't just a walking medical book, he's a thinking, reasoning, decision-making being. Just downloading the information into his head isn't as useful as interfacing with someone else who actually knows it.
  • My understanding was that the EMH is such an amazing achievement precisely because it can hold all the medical information known to the Federation and has the applied wisdom to use it (as opposed to simply reciting Grey's Anatomy). Crell's research was probably filed under "war crimes" instead of "medicine" which is why Voyager's computer had it but not the EMH's computer.
  • So the Doctor literally cannot comprehend any more medical information? He clearly can remember things that happened to him some time ago, he's capable of recognizing that things are happening in the present so what's stopping him from learning more about medicine? Even if there is some semi-plausible reason for why he can retain data about new crew members but can't keep the data about the procedure why don't they remove his nonessential data such as a particular opera? Besides that, how do they have enough information on Krell to know exactly what kind of mind to create and yet they were unaware of his crimes?
  • A set of contrivances allow the episode to take place (didn't "The Swarm" or some other episode state that only one hologram can run in sickbay at once?), and it ends up being a stunning example of how Voyager falls on its face when it tries to take on TNG-style "big moral questions"... in this case the morality of using medical data acquired through horribly unethical means, with Crell Moset as a stock Mengele stand-in. The roundtable discussions in TNG episodes like "Pen Pals" are transfixing compared to the limp copy "Nothing Human" presents, but one wonders why nobody simply says something to the effect of: "this data exists, and not using doesn't make it stop existing, or erase the circumstances under which it was acquired." It doesn't particularly make sense to let somebody die by not using it, which might actually be interpreted as adding to Moset's death count.
  • If I was to WMG an answer to the Krell problem I would say that Zimmerman never felt research conducted in a Cardassian death camp was appropriate for his Federation medical program; after all Zimmerman was bit of a dick but he wasn't cold hearted nor was he blind to the moral implications that could have stopped the ultra-politically correct Federation from publishing his proudest achievement to avoid offending the Bajorans. Perhaps also, given how Voyager was launched from season 1/2 Deep Space 9, we can reasonably assume that he started development of the EMH during a time where the Cardassians and the Federation weren't the best of friends - he may have assumed in depth Cardassian knowledge would be a waste of time or he resented including the spoon heads into his work of art. There are numerous problems with my theory but it's the best I've got.
  • Well, Starfleet certainly has its areas of hazy morality, but I don't think they would be too big on having data gathered that way either. Remember, Krell has published distinguished medical papers and received prestigious awards; I have a feeling that, in-universe, the whole Cardassian Death Camp thing isn't a very well-known part of his bio outside of Cardassia and a few select Bajorans. Remember, the Doctor knew about the disease that Krell cured, but he had no clue how Krell actually did it.
  • In "Nothing Human", the Doctor was going to add the necessary files to his program, and when Torres found out she was pregnant the doctor talked abought adding neonatal data to his program. So in all likelihood he adds and removes specific medical information as needed. He probably cant have all the data running at once like he only has so much RAM so he zips other data until necessary.
  • There may be significant differences between merely adding data to a hologram's repertoire, and actually applying that data in a clinical setting. If, for example, Cardassian medical practice routinely requires that doctors lie to their patients about how painless and certain the treatment's outcome will be, in order to put them into a calm, relaxed state, that could violate the Doctor's basic operational parameters under Federation HIPA laws and prevent him from acting upon what he knows of Cardassian medicine.
• "Nothing Human" is a strange title, when you consider that none of the principle players in the episode's moral dynamics — Moset, the Doctor, B'Elanna, the Bajoran victims — are human (well, B'Elanna is half human but you take my point). Okay, sure, so "Nothing Human" is literally true but... so what?
  • It's a reference to how utterly alien the parasite is as opposed to the other Rubber-Forehead Aliens on the show. Granted, a more accurate title would be "Nothing Humanoid" but but there you go.
• What I found most bewildering about this episode is that it actually broke the one Aesop that you would expect the Star Trek franchise to consider unbreakable - "Racism is bad." Right from the beginning, B'Elanna was unremittingly hostile toward Krell Moset, for absolutely no reason other than that he was Cardassian. The Doctor viewed this - rightly - as an unacceptable prejudice, and objected to it. So what happens? Does B'Elanna learn how wrong it is to condemn an entire race for the actions of some members of that race? A lesson that even Kira Nerys eventually came to understand? Um, no. Instead, Moset turns out to be a war criminal, and the episode becomes a debate on medical ethics. In truth, regardless of what Moset was ultimately revealed to be, it was still wrong to condemn him simply because he was Cardassian. But not only does B'Elanna never learn this, she acts like the discovery of Moset's war crimes actually vindicates her, and the rest of the episode plays it off as if she'd been right all along. What was the point of making racism an issue at all, if the episode was just going to brush it aside, or worse yet, do so by acting like the racist was in the right?
  • B'Elanna's statement, "I had a bad feeling about that Cardassian from the first moment I saw him," would almost come across as comical if it wasn't so sad and ugly. She had a "bad feeling" about Moset? Oh, so she's psychic now? She knew nothing about Moset when she first saw him. The only "bad feeling" she had about him was her own racial prejudice. But nobody ever calls her out on this. Granted, you don't really want to berate somebody who's critically ill, but considering the extent to which Star Trek has traditionally been "message television," you'd think that the issue would have come up in some form eventually.
  • Trek is notorious for Unfortunate Implications due to its standard practice of depicting Planet of Hats cultures for all species except humans. Despite occasional exceptions (usually involving regular characters), most species have a defining trait which is present in nearly all of its members. Hence, B'Elanna herself is supposedly temperamental because she's half-Klingon, not because she just happens to be an ill-tempered sort of person. Likewise, being distrustful of Cardassians or Romulans is justified in-show by the fact that in nearly all appearances they are treacherous and this is shown a cultural/species trait. This serves to further hammer home the Humans Are Special message because humans are morally-neutral and can choose to be good or evil, whereas other species have seemingly genetic predispositions one way or the other that only exceptional individuals can overcome.
  • B'Elanna's hostility to Cardassians was a long-standing character trait derived from years of fighting them as one of the Maquis, not the sort of transitory dispute that could be resolved in a single episode. Yes, Trek has "message television" elements, but it never went so far as to make Kirk become buddy-buddy with Klingons or let Romulus and Vulcan reconcile without decades of negotiations, first.
    • But O'Brien's hostility to Cardassians, understandable though it may be, is at least presented as a personal flaw that he needs to work through (as, ultimately, is Kirk's attitude towards Klingons), rather than something that the writing validates.

Repression

• Repression: Vedek Teero, an ex-Maquis fanatic back in the Alpha Quadrant uses a subliminal message to turn Tuvok into the Manchurian Vulcan and brainwash the rest of the ex-Maquis to mutiny and hijack Voyager in order to....what? What the hell does a fanatical Maquis need with a starship stranded on the other side of the galaxy? For that matter, given that the Maquis formed to liberate their colony worlds from the Cardassians, and that said Cardassians have just been on the losing end of a major war and have been stripped of their non-Cardassian subjects (and probably put under three-power occupation themselves), just what is Vedek Teero's motivation at all?
  • Teero brainwashed Tuvok back in the Alpha Quadrant at a time where the Maquis were still at the hight of their rebellion. Seeing as all the Maquis have are a few small fighters I imagine that converting the tactical officer of one of the Federation's most advanced and powerful starship's would have no end of benefits - even if they couldn't capture it they would still have gained vital intel from it's data banks. Also remember the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Defiant where Tom Riker captures the titular starship and proceeds to wipe the floor with the Cardassian fleet to the point they had to send an armada to stop him. Now we can debate all day whether a Defiant class is superior tactically to an Intrepid class but given just how much damage we see Voyager endure across its seven year mission I refuse to believe it wouldn't have far outclassed your standard Galor class warship.
    • That's all good and well, except for the facts that Voyager is still tens of thousands of light years from Cardassian space, Teero pulls this stunt 2 years after the end of the Dominion War and the Maquis are long dead back home. The plan to have Tuvok funnel information to the Maquis made perfect sense before they got stuck in the Delta Quadrant, but there's no way Teero planned to have the Maquis integrate into a Starfleet ship. My best guess is that Teero was just insane and thought even after the Cardassians lost 900 million to the Dominion that they deserved whatever extra punishment Voyager could dish out when/if it got back home.
  • The answer to this question is right there in the question: Teero's a fanatic. He's not behaving with any sense of logic.

The Brunali

• Eventually we learn that the Brunali, Icheb's people, live right next door to a major Borg transwarp hub and are constantly coming under Borg attack. If they can't find a way to stop the Borg from attacking them, they'll go extinct. In desperation, they've developed a virus which will transfer from the Brunali to the Borg and will disrupt the Borg's ability to . . . do something or other, rendering their ships inoperable. Kind of like the impossible shape on TNG's "I Borg," except it requires the Brunali to sacrifice one of their own to introduce the virus into the Collective.
  Or does it? I'm pretty sure I remember that the virus had no effect on the health of a Brunali individual. So why not just inject it into everybody and warn the Borg not to fuck with them? After the Borg assimilated a few Brunali and lost a whole cube each time, they would quickly realize that it was no longer safe to do so, and would be no more inclined to assimilate the Brunali than a rapist would be to rape someone whom he knew would infect him with HIV. But unlike HIV, this virus would not affect the Brunali and they could just go about their business with nothing to fear from their nasty neighbors.
  • The Borg destroy what they can't assimilate. They wouldn't be much better off.
    • No, they don’t, they didn’t destroyed the Kazons even when, according to Seven, they find them unworthy of assimilation. The series is clear that if the Borg find no reason to assimilate some race they just leave it alone.
    • Yes and no. If the Borg need your raw materials then they will wipe out your whole planet as we saw back in The Best of Both Worlds. And as long as the Borg continue to expand, they will require more and more materials in order to fuel them.
    • The Kazons were unworthy and no threat to the Collective. If the Brunali demonstrated the ability to develop such a virus, then they're a threat to the Borg because they might eventually tell other races how to do the same, hindering the Borg's own expansion. To the Borg, a race that could make others' resistance not futile would be every bit as deserving of elimination as Species 8472.
  • The virus wasn't something injected. Icheb was a living bioweapon, designed to manufacture the virus. All they did was trigger the process. They'd have to engineer the entire civilization with the bioweapon, and even then they would have to be assimilated anyway. There's no benefit. It was a ridiculous plan, anyway. They were clearly too stupid to realize the fact that Icheb's return was obvious proof that their idea had failed, only destroying the cube they had to sacrifice a ship to attract in the first place. The Borg would just keep coming.
    • I don't think they ever thought the plan would destroy the collective; they just thought that if the Borg lost enough ships in that area, then they'd eventually start avoiding it. Of course, that's also ridiculous, and it makes the same mistake the Hansens made when they studied the Borg: it assumes they're robotic scavengers running on mindless instinct. In reality, if the Borg lose too many ships in that area they'll just get even more interested in what's going on, and start coming in force to investigate it.

Seven's cortical implant

• I've been watching Voyager through again, and I couldn't help but notice that the episode before "Imperfection" was "Unimatrix Zero", where three of the crew were assimilated and then brought back to Voyager. From the way it sounded, all Borg are given a cortical implant. Why couldn't the Doctor just use one of theirs?
  • The obvious answer is that Voyager's writers often acted as though each successive episode was almost entirely independent from the previous ones unless a plot point hinged on it. In universe, however, the answer probably has to do with viability - as we see with the cortical node from the dead drone, as well as the Doctor's remark while Seven and Icheb are arguing over who gets his after he disconnects it, these don't seem to have a long shelf life, especially once removed from the owner. Given that it had been long enough for Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok to be recertified for active duty (longer still if we go by original production order, given that "Imperfection" was written to follow "Drive," hence Tom having a visible wedding ring during several scenes), the cortical nodes they'd been implanted with probably had degraded beyond use by the time of this episode.

Genetic engineering

• I know it isn't exactly enforceable in the Delta Quadrant, but isn't genetically engineering a child for ANY reason that isn't life-threatening strictly illegal in the Federation? You would think that SOMEONE would have mentioned it when Be'Lanna was trying to change her baby.
  • Similar to Janeway getting promoted before Picard despite all of her questionable decisions (many chronicled on this very page), it seems very likely that the whole crew got some kind of pardon for exceptional circumstances when they got home. That is my in-universe answer; my real world answer is that the writers simply forgot as this was mostly a Deep Space Nine and Enterprise plot point.
    • As an aside, as it's not relevant to the point, Janeway didnt get promoted "before" Picard, as that implies they actively promited her before trying to do that to Picard. Picard turned down multiple promotions way before Janeway had hers, whereas Janeway took the first one offered her. Had Picard taken any of the ones offered him, he'd have been an Admiral years before Voyager even started.
  • Genetically enhancing a child is illegal. That is all we know; that genetically enhancing a child which is already born is illegal. We don't know where the line between medical genetic treatments and enhancements is drawn, nor where the difference between foetus and actual child is drawn (unlikely to be at conception or early in pregnancy, given how progressive the Federation tends to be), under Federation law. Torres' choices are likely still on the right side of the law of the land, even if only just technically, and still compatible with what we learned in Deep Space 9.
  • It's probably the kind of exception that would be classified under "humanitarian exceptions," if medical intervention is necessary to maintain pregnancy viability and/or health of the infant, it's considered legally different from "enhancing" an infant so that they have superhuman abilities. If it's done to give the fetus the same chances as any other, that's one thing, while the genetic enhancements that Bashir or the Jack Pack received were not only done on children, instead of fetuses, but also done with the expectation that the results would make the children superior to "stock" humanity.
  • There's a level of boundaries between genetic engineering/enhancement, and genetic repairs, that Trek seems to merge or ignore. I don't remember if in Trek they've ever had characters with dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism etc, and so in Trek's future, there's likely treatments or a better understanding of those conditions for people who happen to have them, but maybe there's nothing that they do, or can do, for people with obvious genetic defects who are still developing in the womb? Geordi is the obvious example, being born blind. There's even a remark in an episode of TNG, The Masterpiece Society, where they find a colony who are practicing genetic engineering and selective breeding, and someone remarks that he'd have been aborted due to his blindness.
  • Genetic augmentation is what is forbiden, not genetic engineering. As mentioned before there are episodes were genetic engineering is mentioned and done inside Federation space (which is, well, a Federation so probably local laws would vary).

Flu Season and B'Elanna's Inflamed Head

• At the end of the EMH's Amnesia Episode, B'Elanna has a headache, which the Doctor reveals is caused by inflammation. But what exactly is causing the inflammation?! Similarly, in "Virtuoso", the Doctor claims that Neelix gets paranoid every flu season— but Voyager is a closed environment, how can it have a flu season?!
  • It's a closed environment with at least 160 people in it. If anyone happened to have a cold or the flu when they were tossed to the Delta Quadrant, it could easily hang around, especially since a Maquis ship is likely to be a bit less stringent than a Starfleet ship. And with B'Elanna, any number of things could have caused that, it's not really a huge mystery.
    • Even if the flu hung around because someone is infected, wouldn't it go away once everyone had been treated? And why would it be seasonal?

Miscellaneous:

Vis a Vis

• I am at a significant loss as to how Steth's body swapping ability works. Initially it seems quite simple; he is stealing the DNA of his victim and then replacing it with his old DNA, essentially meaning that he is cloning both him and his target and is not actually swapping bodies in a traditional sense. It's stupid and absolutely impossible but fine I can understand the concept. From here however it gets confusing; the DNA in Steth's body isn't permanent and he eventually ends up reverting back to his old self/previous form. Huh? why don't his victims revert after a set period? (the woman who turns up at the end proves the transformation is permanent without Steth's help.) What happens to any lost mass and where does the new mass come from? If it is a simple cloning technique why and how does it effect clothes on some occasions but not others? after all when he stole Tom's body he was still wearing that identical red jumpsuit and yet later on, when he stole Janeway's appearance, he/she was now wearing the female Starfleet uniform (check the high heels.) Or are we actually supposed to believe that in the five seconds Steth!Tom was strangling Janeway he stripped her?
  • This episode didn't really have any strong backing in science. It would fall apart if you really knew anything about DNA
  • On the stripping Janeway thing. The only difference between Tom's uniform and Janeway's is the pips and the shoes, which I doubt would take much to swap over (stillmore time than he had probably). The only probably would be that Tom and Janeway aren't exactly the same build, unless the uniforms expand/shrink with the wearer like in that TAS episode where everyone got miniaturized...
    • Actually, in the animated episode, the uniforms didn't shrink because they expand/shrink with the wearer; they shrunk because everything organic was shrinking and the uniforms were made from plant-based materials.

Macrocosm

• I think we can agree that the biology of the virus from Macrocosm was beyond ridiculous—and I can live with that in my Sci-Fi. Something that's been bugging me (no pun intended) since the day the episode first aired: How the hell was the macrovirus flying? Was there ever any explanation of how the virus was defying gravity and propelling itself, or is Newton hovering in his grave?
  • It's possible that the "bio-electric field" that the macrovirus produces somehow allows the virus to "fly" around; or that as the macrovirus grows it reduces in density, to such a point that it is "lighter than air," like a balloon (though, the Doctor's description of the macrovirus states that the microscopic virus utilized the host's growth hormone to increase in "mass and dimensions," so this explanation might also be somewhat flimsy). Or, some combination of the two — the reduction in density provides it with some level of buoyancy, while the bio-electric field provides some kind of mobility, not unlike a jellyfish, perhaps.
  • The writers were probably trying to homage the Metroid games- the episode takes cues from the Alien film franchise, and Metroid also took heavy inspiration from that series. Metroid is filled with creatures that fly regardless of it making no sense, especially the titular Metroids themselves. It was probably less of a matter of the biology making sense(of which DS9's changelings have their own issues in that regard) in favor of the deliberate homage.

Ignorance about the Delta Quadrant

• It's dramatically necessary for the show that Starfleet not know much about the Delta Quadrant. But does it make sense? The Federation has had centuries to monitor signals distant parts of the galaxy — shouldn't that be enough provide at least some sketchy information as to the key players, even if there's been no direct communication with them? Likewise, it's sometimes amazing how little knowledge they have of astronomical features — shouldn't something enormous like the Nekrit Expanse (thousands of light years across, we are told) be visible even from the other side of the galaxy, or at least something the ship should have some awareness of before they're right next to it?
  • If they could figure that out from earth, there wouldn't be any reason for five-year missions, would there?
  • In terms of key players, they did know about the Borg but otherwise it probably makes sense they wouldn't know much. Most signals would be far too weak to be understood by the time they arrive back in the Alpha Quadrant (keep in mind that even with the Federation intentionally transmitting signals to Voyager and vice versa they needed a Hirogen communication array to understand each other and even then it wasn't perfect). In terms of visible confirmation, there seems to be a limit to the range of long range sensors. So to actually know what's going on, they may have to rely on observing light transmitted from the Delta Quadrant (like what we do now with telescopes) which would be tens of thousands of years out of date. Not only could some features have changed but it wouldn't necessarily tell them all the information about the areas in the way a detailed scan would. Also, the possibility exists that stellar cartographers might have more information, but given Voyager didn't plan on going to the Delta Quadrant they may simply not have had the entire Federation knowledge of the Delta Quadrant in their computers. What they do have is probably what they use for basic navigation of their way back to the Alpha Quadrant. Regarding the Nekrit expanse, I suppose the difficulty is that there are stars on either side which is what you'd see when you're looking from that side and so you may not realise it's there until you get past them.
  • Recall that what the ship lacks at first is (relatively) two-way conversations with the Federation. They could presumably still send one-way messages; it would just take a while (the Enterprise seems certain that its messages will reach the Federation in "Where No One Has Gone Before," eventually). Yes, that would be a targeted message and probably encrypted, but one would assume that any spacefaring civilization would be constantly broadcasting high speed messages into deep space, just as we do with radio waves, and that they would keep going indefinitely. It would be patchy and partial, but it would be something.
    • This is not actually true. If you're pumping radio waves into space, you're wasting energy shooting a signal in a direction you don't need. The more advanced a civilization becomes, the less energy they are expending shooting signals in random directions. As for subspace, we know from TNG and other trek shows that there are millions, possibly tens of millions of subspace bands, voyager can't possibly monitor them all. We do know from TNG that the Federation builds subspace telescopes, so Voyager probably had at least halfway decent star maps.

Equinox

In "Equinox Part I" Ransom said the Ankari introduced them to their spirits. They then began to use these spirits for fuel at which point they travelled "ten thousand lightyears in two weeks". Chakotay then suggests going back to see the Ankari but Janeway says they're "fifty lightyears" in the wrong direction. Shouldn't they be 10,000 lightyears in the wrong direction? Even supposing the Ankari span 10,000 lightyears as a species, how would Chakotay and Janeway know where to find their nearest location? Did they have an offscreen meeting at some point?

• I think it's flubbed line, and Janeway was supposed to say 50 thousand light years. The "10,000 light years" Ransom mentions is only the first leg of travel that they accomplished with the fuel, which would have been the earliest they would have really started trucking through space. They were originally brought to basically the same point in the Delta Quadrant that Voyager started, so they have traveled the same amount of distance as Voyager, which is roughly 50,000 lys. It makes the Ankari's area of presence even more ludicrous, but that's par for the course on this show.

Tuvok's Eyes

• When Kes psychic-burned Tuvok and nearly killed him, why did his eyes go yellow?
  • Because he is a Vulcan and they have copper-based blood. More importantly... why isn't his blood green, like Spock?
    • His blood is green. His irises turned yellow for some reason.