Nate the Great fixes Voyager

[Nate the Great]

"Phage"


Plotlines:


1. Voyager is looking for dilithium and encounter the Vidiians.

2. The Vidiians have stolen Neelix's lungs and Voyager has to get them back.
3. Paris is being trained as medical assistant, but Kes looks like a better fit.


1. The problem with the Vidiians is the notion that their transplant technology is lightyears ahead of their ability to cure diseases. And even Doc has a problem curing it. Can't they move memories into clones? Furthermore, later episodes establish that not ALL Vidians have the Phage. Don't their unborn children have immunity that could be exploited a la "Genesis"?



I just had a great idea: the Phage isn't natural. The Borg made it. Don't mention the Borg at this point, of course, but have vague mentions of ancient invaders here and there. What if the Vidiians can't be assimilated, but they could still be used by the Borg to test genetic technology? The Vidiians don't know about any of this and neither does the Voyager crew, but there would be a hint here and there that could be built on later.


2. The whole idea of Kes donating a lung is stupid, if only because her lung would be half the size of Neelix's and wouldn't be powerful enough. Just have the Vidiians and the Doctor collaborate and find a way to modify the Vidiian tech to allow for cloning of organs to be used by the original (involuntary) donor. Of course, this would introduce a new power struggle as one group of Vidiians tries to help their victims, another tries to exploit them by "selling a cure", another turns it into a plague that would create lots of new "donors", etc.


3. I never liked Paris as medical assistant. He had enough to do already. Upon reflection Harry should've taken the job. He's the kind of guy that would assume new duties to impress Janeway. Furthermore Paris already had enough to do dealing with the Starfleer AND Maquis crewmembers that hate him. All Harry had to deal with was missing home. But what if his mother was a doctor or something?


Of course, like I said before the nurses should've survived the trip to the Delta Quadrant in the first place.

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

I just had a great idea: the Phage isn't natural. The Borg made it. Don't mention the Borg at this point, of course, but have vague mentions of ancient invaders here and there. What if the Vidiians can't be assimilated, but they could still be used by the Borg to test genetic technology? The Vidiians don't know about any of this and neither does the Voyager crew, but there would be a hint here and there that could be built on later.

The Borg using a species as genetic testers seems antithetical to the Borg ideology. They wouldn't have problems using drones in experimenting with technology.

A more likely culprit would be the Vaadwaur 900 years ago using a bioweapon against the Vidiians.

But Voyager writers in S1 weren't really about setting up things for later.

[Nate the Great]

But you can't test genetic technology with drones; their entire biology has been altered to be the perfect cybernetic life form. Inject a drone with the Phage and the drone would quickly become so corrupted it would have to be destroyed. No useful medical research.

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

But you can't test genetic technology with drones; their entire biology has been altered to be the perfect cybernetic life form. Inject a drone with the Phage and the drone would quickly become so corrupted it would have to be destroyed. No useful medical research.

The Borg lost how many drones when they were experimenting with synthesizing Omega? They have trillions of drones, experimenting on the population of a contained cube would not be much of a loss.

There's also the question of why would the Collective deploy a virus like this. Sure, it could explain some of the adaptive properties of the sickness and the inability to cure it (until that Think Tank episode comes along, ugh), but I just can't see them coming up with a reason for it. It does not appear to be an efficient use of resources, nor a strategy the Collective has been observed using in the past.

With a time frame like two thousand years, that most likely predates the Borg Collective, or at the very least predates its ability to get to Vidiian space. Later, the Collective is only referenced to have a handful of systems 900 years prior to the current date ("Dragon's Teeth"), which would mean that their reach is not as far out as what would be, and implies they do not have transwarp capabilities yet, even at that point.

[Nate the Great]

I guess I should explain. Let's say the Borg encounter Species X, who can technically be assimilated but in the process their biology alters enough to make a not very good drone. The Borg know that better assimilation is possible, perhaps a new strategy could be used: a disease that that can alter a species' DNA to be compatible with "complete assimilation". They go to the Vidiians and infect them with this disease. It's not The Phage yet, but the Vidiians had a genetic factor that the Borg couldn't expect. This assimilation virus mutates into The Phage, making organs less able to be assimilated instead of more able. Now the Borg can't even assimilate the Vidiians now, they wouldn't add to the perfection of the Collective. There aren't even any useful research results to help them with Species X. The Borg give up on the whole thing.

[Flying Gremlin]

No, I get it, I just have problems reconciling the Borg having any influence on Vidiians in that timeframe, when they had not assimilated enough technology to get that far. It's a long way outside of Borg territory in the 24th century, to say nothing about 4th century Borg.

[Nate the Great]

"The Cloud"


Janeway is conflicted about how close she can get to the crew.

A reasonable plot, although this seems like an odd point in the first season to be bringing this up. It should've either been much earlier as part of the necessary "how do we make one crew out of two" plotline that should've been more emphasized earlier, or pushed later in order to establish more about the Delta Quadrant races and political situation. Particularly we needed the Kazon to be much more fleshed out.

In a search for energy, Voyager wounds a lifeform that looks like a nebula.

I would be more incredulous about a gaseous lifeform, but we've seen plenty of such creatures in Trek before now. The big problem here is that the amount of screentime given to it isn't really a good amount. If the point of the episode was supposed to be character development, this plotline should've been had less screentime. If this nebula was supposed to be exciting and a voyage of discovery, the plotline needed to be fleshed out more.


A quick sidenote about the holodeck. I won't go into the full rant about holodeck power compatibility, but a good compromise would be to say that they're trying to only use simpler programs, one setting and at most one holocharacter (i.e. a bartender or waitress). I can think of plenty of simple programs used in other series that could be used in a "power-saving" holodeck setting: anbo-jitsu, a beach like the one Geordi made, a poker table, etc. As the series goes on the programs get more complex as Voyager got more power-efficient.



Neelix is frustrated about the dangerous explorations that the ship does.


While this is a reasonable argument from his perspective (I'm reminded of Andromeda for some reason), this isn't something that should be present this early. We need to like Neelix before the writers start making him seem unreasonable. His conversion to the Starfleet gospel needed to be more prominent, not something that happened in the background.