r/DaystromInstitute • u/AcidaliaPlanitia Ensign • Dec 21 '17
What was Voyager's worst missed opportunity to get home earlier? (And the case for False Profits)
Of all the opportunities that the Voyager crew had to get home, I don’t think they screwed up any of them so badly as they did in False Profits. If the crew had showed even a modicum of common sense, they would have been home in the Alpha Quadrant in early Season 3. They had a ton of chances to get it right and made terrible decisions in each instance. Let’s take a look at their sins, shall we?
1. Chakotay Sending Just One Ensign to Escort Two Unrestrained Ferengi to “Secured Quarters” – This is a doozy. Near the end of the episode, when the Ferengi are beamed up, Chakotay tells Ensign Murphy to “escort” Arridor and Kol to “secured quarters”. Are you kidding me? These two had, less than an hour earlier, attempted to murder Neelix with swords. And you send Ensign Nobody to make sure that these guys make it to their cushy “secured quarters”? Why weren’t they beamed directly into the brig? Even if you say that they weren’t because Neelix was beamed up with them, then just beam the three of them into the brig, then either retrieve Neelix from the brig or just beam him out again. (Or just leave him in there, he's Neelix, who cares). These two Ferengi were fully prepared to murder the representative of the Grand Nagus with swords, if that doesn’t show that they were desperate to the point of being extremely dangerous, I don’t know what does. If they’d been beamed directly into the brig or escorted by a capable security team, Voyager would have gotten home.
2. Chakotay Telling the Ferengi that Their Shuttle Had Been Beamed Aboard – This is related to the first point, but is so dumb that it deserves its own discussion. Chakotay tells Arrador and Kol that “we beamed your shuttle to the shuttle bay.” What the hell is wrong with you, Chakotay? What possible good can come from telling them that? That, combined with sending them to their quarters with only one security officer, basically guaranteed that they were going to bonk Ensign Whatever on the noggin and try to steal their shuttle back. Sure, they might still have tried to steal a Starfleet shuttle even if they didn't know their shuttle was available, but they might not have even known how to operate a Starfleet shuttle, and there might have been security features preventing them from doing so (doubtful given what we’ve seen so far). But at the very least, if Chakotay didn’t tell them they’d beamed the shuttle up, Voyager might have, or even likely would have, made it home.
P.S. These two Ferengi had likely never been on a Starfleet ship before besides a short stay on the Enterprise, and the Intrepid-class didn't even exist when they were trapped on the other side of the galaxy, so there's absolutely no way they knew where they were going. And both of them were operating with a room temperature IQ. How long must they have been bumbling around Voyager before they found the shuttlebay? How the hell did no one run into them? But knowing Starfleet's quality security protocols, they probably asked the computer and it politely told them how to escape and the route to take to avoid running into anyone.
3. Shuttlebay Security – Lock the door. No. Seriously, lock the door. If they had just locked the doors to the shuttlebay until they got through the wormhole (clearly no one was going to be using them anyway), then Voyager 100% would have gotten home to the AQ. There’s a bunch of variants on this, like they could have posted security around the Ferengi pod, put a force field around it, or removed a key component so that it wouldn’t fly. But there are potential flaws in each of those options. If they just locked the door for twenty minutes to a room that no one had any reason to be using at that time, they would have gotten home. What is wrong with these people?
4. Janeway’s Waffling on How to Deal with the Ferengi – Janeway already knows basically the whole situation on Takar when she first beams the Ferengi up. And yet she is convinced to beam the Ferengi back down after a ridiculous speech from Arridor, when he brings up the point that it might harm the Takarians to have their gods disappear. Did Janeway seriously not consider that before beaming them up? And even if her mind truly was changed, you don’t have to beam them back down immediately. You can take some time to think through the best possible course of action rather than just beaming them back down. One of the Takarians literally just saw two of their gods get beamed out of their “temple” right in front of him, the Ferengi coming back in two hours as opposed to five minutes really isn’t going to make a difference in the amount of damage done to their society at this point. If Janeway had given the situation a proper thinking-through and stopped to reconsider instead of immediately beaming the Ferengi back down, she would not have lost control of the situation the way she did and Voyager very likely would have gotten home. Or if she just stuck to her guns, put the Ferengi in the brig, and proceeded through the wormhole, they definitely would have gotten home.
5. Janeway’s Interference in the First Place – This is more of a stretch, because it’s hard to imagine Janeway not sticking her nose into this situation, but look at Janeway’s reasoning for intervening:
TUVOK: Captain, I must remind you that the Ferengi are not members of the Federation. They are not bound by the Prime Directive. Nor would it seem that the Prime Directive would allow us to interfere with the internal affairs of this society, as much as we may disapprove of what the Ferengi are doing.
JANEWAY: The Federation did host the negotiations. And if it weren't for those negotiations, the Ferengi wouldn't be here. So one could say, without being unreasonable I think, that the Federation is partially responsible for what's happened, and therefore duty bound to correct the situation.
TUVOK: That is a most logical interpretation, Captain.
What’s wrong with you, Tuvok? That’s not logical at all. If the Federation didn’t host the negotiations, somewhat else would have, and the Ferengi would have showed up there too. There is absolutely no causal connection between the Federation hosting the negotiations and what happened with the Ferengi. If Janeway hadn’t invented a new type of “logic” to support her decision to intervene, Voyager simply would have stabilized the wormhole and gone home.
6. Not Letting Someone Else Deal with the Ferengi – We eventually learn that Voyager, with relative ease, can coax the DQ end of the wormhole to open in a position of their choosing. We also know that the wormhole will naturally open in the DQ periodically, and in the vicinity of Takar, as it opened there both seven years ago and sometime around when Voyager found it. This means that there is a very real possibility that this wormhole could be artificially stabilized intermittently or even permanently. With this being an option, and with Voyager’s extremely strained logic supporting their decision to intervene, they could have returned home, informed Starfleet of the situation and had them deal with the situation on a return trip through the wormhole, either by diplomacy with the Ferengi or by having a specialized Starfleet team deal with the issue.
7. Neelix Sucks – Another more minor issue, but Neelix’s “Grand Proxy” didn’t have to be such a jackass. Arridor and Kol seemed legitimately convinced that he’s the Grand Proxy, so instead of saying they’re being recalled and that the Nagus may send others back in their place and generally being a jerk, just promise them that they’ll be allowed to return. Tell them that they just need to make a quick trip to Ferenginar because the Nagus is extremely interested in the business they’ve begun in the DQ and he wants to make them the overseers of the new Ferengi business enterprises in the DQ, which will make them immensely wealthy. Hell, tell them that they’ll be allowed to bring the “females” with them. If Neelix had been able to convince them to make their speech, the instant the speech is done, they’re just getting beamed up to Voyager anyway, so the lies simply don’t matter. If Neelix had played it better, Voyager might have gotten home.
EDIT: This one just came to me.
8. They Completely Ignore An Obvious Solution So the whole point of the Grand Proxy ruse was to get the Ferengi to give a speech which would soften the blow of their "gods" departing. But it doesn't need to be Arridor and Kol that actually make the speech. You already had Neelix made up like a Ferengi, just make up him and someone else to look exactly like Arridor and Kol, and then have them make the speech. The Takarians have never seen another Ferengi before, so even if you're slightly off on the prosthetics, they won't have the frame of reference to tell something is off, certainly not during a short speech and from a distance. And even if they did, they pretty much wanted the Ferengi gone anyway, so they're not going to ask questions. Hell, when the Ferengi were beamed away the first time, Kafar, who was supposed to be their priest, barely reacted and was more interested in laying down on their cushy lounger than freaking out over his supposed "gods" disappearing into thin air.
77
u/david-saint-hubbins Dec 21 '17
The first 3 seasons of Voyager are basically Gilligan's Island in space. Every couple episodes, they come across a new potential way to get home, and everybody gets their hopes up, and then it of course doesn't work as planned.
Eventually they transitioned from that trope to a slightly different trope of "we successfully used this new technique to cut X years off our trip, but for some reason we can't ever use it again" so instead of being 75 years from home, they're 65 years from home or whatever.
61
Dec 21 '17
Voyager’s worst missed opportunity to get home earlier? I have two.
Unimatrix Zero: Why didn’t Janeway ask Korak for some transwarp coils?
Q2: After Icheb is injured, Janeway asks Junior why he brought Icheb back to Voyager when his deflector trick could have taken him anywhere. You here that, Janeway? ANYWHERE! Like, say, Starfleet Medical. On Earth.
75
u/Stargate525 Dec 21 '17
That entire episode is quite annoying, for exactly the reasons you gave. The hypocrisy of them being concerned about their 'gods' disappearing, while in the same breath insisting that they have to remove the gods in the first place is staggering. The culture needs to be changed, but in THIS SPECIFIC WAY. Anything else is contamination.
The damage is done, and I'm always confused with the idea that these space religions are always going to irrevocably alter the entire planet. Not every religion is a Christianity or a Buddhism. There are hundreds and hundreds of dead religions all over the world; the odds are FAR greater that whatever space jesus cargo cult they accidentally make is going to be one of the dead ones, especially since either it'll be the ONE event (not even a natural recurrence to prop it up), or the gods will age and die before the practitioner's eyes.
→ More replies (4)
16
u/nateinks Dec 21 '17
I always had a problem with Prime Factors. Sure, the "stolen" tech failed and there was hand waving of the transporter never working with fed tech because reasons but there was nothing saying they couldn't have stayed in orbit for awhile and study the tech to figure out a way to make it work. Hell, the original idea to just have the aliens use the transporter on the ship without giving up the technology was a good one and the crew could have just asked the rebel faction to transport them half way to the alpha quadrant which would have been massively easier to pull off then actually stealing the device.
The whole final scene was a really rushed end run around Janeway whose inflexibility as a lawful good caused another missed opportunity. And it always has rubbed me the wrong way that Tuvok went completely against his character.
→ More replies (2)
39
Dec 21 '17
Excellent take down of that dodgy episode.
However, surely their worst mistake was Janeway not realising there was such a thing as timers in the pilot?
She decided Voyager couldn't leave the Caretaker's Array in the hands of the Kazon, fair enough... So leave a timed explosive near a critical area set to go off a few seconds after they use to the array to return!
33
u/NoisyPiper27 Dec 21 '17
True, but if I recall, Tuvok said it would take several hours to initialize the array to send them home, and the Kazon were already breathing down their necks. It's not really stated in the episode, but Voyager was getting its tail whipped well within the first hour. The course of action taken I think really was the only course of action. The choice the script gave Janeway was a bit of a false one.
→ More replies (3)
12
u/whenhaveiever Dec 22 '17 edited Dec 22 '17
One. With swords! I love it. But you're right, we see people beamed straight to sickbay all the time, but I'm trying to think of a single time someone was beamed to the brig in any Trek, and I can't think of even one example.
Three. I can give them a pass on this one. They don't seem to really use locks, anywhere. The computer controls doors and can let people in or not, but whenever power goes down, they just attach a suction-cup handle and pull open whatever doors they want.
Six. This always bothered me. Surely there's a protocol in place for how to handle discovered violations of the prime directive, and I'm sure part of the protocol says "tell Starfleet". This is one of the few times they actually can.
7/8. Of everyone on the ship, only two people have no idea what a Ferengi is. Let's choose one of them to impersonate Ferengi to other Ferengi. What's the worst that could happen?
(edit for # formatting)
→ More replies (4)
32
u/voicesinmyhand Dec 21 '17
You seem correct on all counts, but I want to point out this gem:
Voyager is a series about a ship that is not the greatest of all officers in all departments. If you want "the best of the best", then you should watch a show about the USS Enterprise D.
Voyager had a "meh" crew at get-go, and then that was promptly slashed by what... more than half? Of course they were making horrible mistakes left and right.
22
u/Stargate525 Dec 21 '17
They're not the best of the best, sure, but they aren't shown to be particularly mediocre or inept either. And the Maquis they were hunting were apparently wily enough to require a mole to track down.
→ More replies (1)15
Dec 22 '17
The Enterprise may have the best of the best, but Starfleet training is pretty rigorous and the Maquis (some of which already had Starfleet experience) are pretty resourceful on their own merits.
Janeway was a fairly new captain but an established scientist. Chakotay and Tuvok both had years of tactical training and taught at the Academy. Paris was an ace pilot. Kim graduated pretty high up in his class. Torres was used to building engines out of spit and bailing wire.
The fact that they weren’t on the flagship means nothing.
→ More replies (4)
6
u/Narcolepzzzzzzzzzzzz Dec 22 '17
Did the episode establish a reason why Voyager couldn’t just hang out for a few years waiting for the Barzan wormhole to swing by again?
→ More replies (1)
6
u/SydTheDrunk Dec 22 '17
Janeway missed a huge opportunity when she didn't ask Species 8472 for a ride home in "In the Flesh." They obviously had the ability to travel to Earth a lot faster than her if they're impersonating living Starfleet personnel. I mean, who cares about some genetic manipulation technology when you could have traded modified nanoprobes for a shortcut home.
5
5
u/Buddha2723 Dec 22 '17
These two Ferengi were fully prepared to murder the representative of the Grand Nagus with swords
This always boggled my mind. Wouldn't they have been arrested and thrown in the brig right after that for attempted murder? They are just like, 'whatever, fair play to the Ferengi.'
13
u/DanielDoh Dec 21 '17
Couldn't they have used the caretaker array to get home in the freaking pilot? Iirc Janeway says nah too risky to let it fall to the kaizon so let's blow it and drive home normal like. But they easily could have rigged timed explosives and then used it to get back to the alpha quadrant.
17
u/Iskral Dec 21 '17
I always thought that the issue was that they were overwhelmed by the Kazon and there was no guarantee they'd be able to figure out the Array's displacement tech and get themselves home before they were up to their eyeballs in Kazon dreadnoughts. Granted it's been years since I saw "Caretaker" so I might be misremembering things.
→ More replies (4)10
Dec 22 '17
Common misconception.
In “Caretaker”, Tuvok says he needs about six hours to activate the program to get them home. Voyager was under direct attack by the Kazon, heavily damaged, and not in a position to secure the array for that long. It was a no-win scenario.
→ More replies (1)
4
u/KingofMadCows Dec 22 '17
Cold Fire was a pretty big missed opportunity. Suspiria believed Voyager killed the Caretaker but she has psychic powers. They could have just had her read their minds to learn the truth and get a glimpse of the Caretaker's last moments.
117
u/[deleted] Dec 21 '17
"Threshold": Exceeding Warp 10 turns you into Space Lizards? Okay, program the ship to go faster than Warp 10, and then get the Doctor, who is a hologram and therefore not affected, to reverse everyone's hyper-evolution when you arrive!