Why couldn't the biofilters in Voyager's transporters rid the Vidiians of the Phage?
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Vidian Phage
- Thread starter c0rnedfr0g
- Start date
This might make me a 'bad' fan, but I don't really care why. I don't mean to imply that the question or the answer isn't valid - just that for me, as a Trek fan, sometimes the questions that other people logically have don't matter to me - or aren't important for my enjoyment of the episodes involved and that was true here. The Viddian Phage arc was one of the best series of episodes on Voyager IMO - and I thought those episodes were played beautifully. They were a new and interresting new species that separated Voyager from the other Treks very early in it's run. The makeup was impressive. The stories were fairly dark, and disturbing - but there were others that were uplifting. Just a very good mix of stories. With even the slightest bit of closure.
Phage
Faces
Lifesigns
Deadlock
Resolutions
Coda
Think Tank (has the nice line about the Phage being cured)
I think they might also appear in "Fury", which would be the weakest link in the chain from my perspective - but I only watched that episode once, so I'm not sure.
Phage
Faces
Lifesigns
Deadlock
Resolutions
Coda
Think Tank (has the nice line about the Phage being cured)
I think they might also appear in "Fury", which would be the weakest link in the chain from my perspective - but I only watched that episode once, so I'm not sure.
I agree with Praetor - it makes you a better fan.
Whoever was the great mind behind the Vidiians, deserves a standing ovation. Vidiians were absolutely great villains. They were a race with whom there was only little room for negotiating, if any. They just came after you, no matter what, because they simply had to.
Whoever was the great mind behind the Vidiians, deserves a standing ovation. Vidiians were absolutely great villains. They were a race with whom there was only little room for negotiating, if any. They just came after you, no matter what, because they simply had to.
I wouldn't say it makes me a better fan, so much as a different kind of fan.
I agree to a point, in that they were definitely a more worthy and interesting foe than the Kazon (who could have been written out of the series after the pilot IMO - aside from maybe 1 followup story). But one of the reasons I had a hard time accepting the Kazon as villains was that Janeway and company were constantly on the move and it just seemed like they'd have left Kazon territory behind a lot sooner...and the same could be said for the Vidians. Part of me is glad they appeared in fewer episodes as the writers had less chances to mess them up.
You know of course that the “cure” of the Phage would also be economic disaster for Vidiia. Think about it a race that fought a plague for two thousand years. They had to have invested enormous amounts of resources in just the support of people affected.
There had to be a lot spent on research just to keep people alive. You suppose that because of it there were reservations for Vidiians that didn’t have the Phage, they had to be isolated from the disease, this would be the breeding pool because a disease that affected the DNA would in all likelihood inhibit the victim from producing children.
The infrastructure needed to treat Phage victims had to be enormous, and a “cure” would have brought the Vidiian economy to a screeching halt.
What does all this mean, you might ask. Well considering a people with superior medical technology, that couldn’t cure themselves, one would ask. Whose pocket does all that currency spent on services around Phage victims go into and does that group of people have enough power to actually keep a cure from being found?
Brit
Yeah. I mentioned that in my list of their appearances 6 posts before yours. lol.
That line in 'Think Tank' has always stayed with me as truly classy bit of closure to a successful string of episodes. The Vidiian arc was already fondly remembered at that point, but that one line provided them a nice, subtle epilogue.I think that's all the appearances. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were more references to them throughout the series. That 'Think Tank' reference made that episode for me, so that's the only reason I remember that one. lol Can anyone remember any other references? Or Appearances? I'd like to make a note of them...because I'm a geek.
No, I don't think we know that at all. It's a possability, but nothing more.
I disagree. If the writers are going to introduce all types of fantastical technology, and then expect us to forget about it for plot device reasons, that makes them irresponsible. The audience that truly appreciates the show follows it through the eyes of the characters, and so these questions (the questions that the very character would logically address) are important and valid.
That was a big problem with Voyager; all the money and time that went into quality and unique alien costumes/makeup meant that TPTB would want to get multiple uses out of them (notice how many times the old Klingon costumes and makeup were dug out of Paramount's closets for Voyager).
It was nice to have some sort of tie to the earlier seasons, especially for the devoted fan, but at the same time it seemed cheap. I kinda felt gipped that after all those Vidiian episodes, the race was cured offscreen and the audience got "resolution" through an off-hand remark.
Maybe I'm analyzing wrong, but I always assumed the biofilters filter out infectious agents, not the disease itself.
In other words, if I were to transport to Voyager today, the virus I'm shedding from my cold would be filtered out--so that no one else could catch it, but I'd still have the cold.
Likewise, this would explain why no one else on the crew caught the phage after exposure to the Vidiians (since supposedly, only Klingons were immune). The live virus the Vidiians would shed were filtered out.
Hey I'd rather enjoy the episodes rather than worry about every tiny little detail too.
Then just take a look around you at the housing problems and the horrible effect that had on our economy. I would say that the cure is not just a possible reason for economic ruin but an extremely strong indicator.
I've spent too many years doing a lot of different accounting functions for several companies to not understand the economy of supply and demand. If you have supplies and no demand you have disaster.
Brit
But we don't have all the details of what happened after the Vidians were cured. We weren't even witnesses to the event. So we don't know what happened. I don't doubt that your supposition is a very strong possability, but that doesn't preclude other options or scenarios. Because the truth is we can't know what happened because we weren't provided enough information. Assumptions, no matter how likely they are to be correct, are not the same as facts.
What I mean is, you're guess is a very good guess. But presenting it as the only option seems kind of silly.
