The only flaw being, if one is a dud, or if the Kazon somehow manage to disable one in time, now you've given the Kazon extremely advanced weaponry and altered the balance of power in that part of space
then put multiple tricobalt devices on there. dozens. however many it takes until there's enough to satisfy your silly theoretical "what ifs"
but, remember: when the Kazon got their hands on replicator tech, the worst they ended up doing is turning themselves inside-out and half-fused with metal. I'm not too worried about what would happen if they got half-exploded Caretaker tech. They'd prbably turn themselves into a folksy barbeque.
Hindsight is a powerful tool left to those who cant use it.
Which is to say, Janeway the slayer had no idea how ineffective Berman would make the Kazon, so she acted in a selfless way.
If she knew how sparse coffee would be and how "Borgish" it would get, I wouldn't be surprised if she did take the chance.
and altered the balance of power in that part of space
So the Kazon end up going up against the Borg?
I'm not seeing a downside here...
In-universe reason: Couldn't risk the Kazon destroying the tricobalt devices before they destroyed the array.
Real reason: Had to find a way to strand Voyager in the Delta Quadrant.
In-universe reason: Couldn’t risk the Kazon destroying the tricobalt devices before they destroyed the array.
no matter what, there are always very easy, simple ways around any “what if” theoretical scenarios people often present when arguing about this episode’s major flaw. timing the tricobalt devices to X femtoseconds after the Voyager is sent back. Arming hundreds or thousands of devices so the Kazon couldn’t possibly disarm them all in time. Both. There is not possibility that the Voyager crew couldn’t have - very easily - both ensured the destruction of the Caretaker’s array while simultaneously gotten themselves home. Janeway simply overreacted and/or acted before thinking things though and fucked her whole crew rather than benefitting from, perhaps, 5-15 seconds of planning— which she definitely had. I know, *because I figured it out, in real time, while watching the episode while it aired. As a 16-year old in the feeble 20th century, outthinking a 24th-century Starfleet captain, I was pretty disappointed in this new show, I must admit...
While the first episode is a bit far back, I just watched the Voyager Conspiracy the other night which covers a lot of early dialogue and events to weave into Seven's conspiracy theory, Tuvok points out the yield of the tricobalt device was so high because he wasn't even sure if they could destroy the array.
With that bit of info, it's safe to say this may have actually be a conversation they had about the array that wasn't shown in the episode and why they couldn't just blow it up after using it; they wanted to make sure it was actually destroyed and weren't sure if what they were about to try would actually work.
Time wasn't on their side to make sure everything would work; a whole fleet of Kazon was bearing down on them.
it was eventually made clear that all of what Seven ranted about was unreliable gobbledygook that was skewed and warped because of data overload. None of it was reliable information.
Time wasn’t on their side to make sure everything would work; a whole fleet of Kazon was bearing down on them.
thing is: we were there! it’s the whole pilot episode (a good one, too, by all accounts— including mine,, except for this bs)…but Seven wasn’t. We all know what happened. There’s a record, and it’s very clear that it was possible to plant explosive, program a trip home, and get it done before the Kazon got control of the station.
It was lazy writing that was to blame for not coming up with a more believable scenario for why they had to stay. And it would have ben very easy to do that, they just didn’t bother, which makes it even worse.
it was eventually made clear that all of what Seven ranted about was unreliable gobbledygook that was skewed and warped because of data overload. None of it was reliable information.
-
This specific information was given by Tuvok to Seven himself. It wasn't part of any error on her part.
-
It was never that the information was wrong. It was how she interpreted that information to form links that were never actually made.
It certainly was a plot hole in the first two episodes; but I see this tidbit given by Tuvok in the later episode as a way of retroactively filling in the plot hole.
-
Wasn't there some line about how the array needed several more hours to charge up before it could be used to send a ship back, and the Kazon would have taken it by then?
no, just that it would be “complicated.” There was nothing really preventing them from either using the array to get home nor from taking steps to prevent the Kazon from taking control of it once they left. This absurd plot hole is, really, the result of lazy writing, and would have been pretty easy to fix with little effort.
I went and checked, Tuvok specifically says it'll take several hours before they can send Voyager home (though not specifically that it needed to charge). Here's the exact line:
TUVOK: Captain, I can access the system to send us back to Federation space, but it will take several hours to activate.
They'd have to prevent the Kazon from damaging or taking over the array for quite some time before they could leave. I can understand why Janeway would make the call she did, given the risk of attempting that, but also can see why she would be tortured by the what if...
