full image - Repost: Star Trek Myriad Universes- Infinity's Prism- Place of Exile by Christopher L. Bennett (from Reddit.com, Star Trek Myriad Universes- Infinity's Prism- Place of Exile by Christopher L. Bennett)
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I really wanted to talk about this story that I read. Myriad Universes was a series of three books with three short stories each about an alternate universe within Star Trek. Each story has a distinct breakway point or two. I particularly liked this one, which is about Voyager and spins off from the episode Scorpion.Spoilers for this entire story, Places of Exile, as well as Voyager episodes Scorpion, Unimatrix Zero and Distant Origin. There is some general discussion of Voyager concepts and aliens as well such as the Vidiians and the Caretaker.In the original episode, "Scorpion," Janeway, in her single-minded determination to get home, makes a deal with the Borg. The Borg opened up a rift into another universe and have since been fighting that universe's native species, Species 8472. The Doctor on Voyager managed to create an effective weapon against this species. Janeway gave this weapon to the Borg in exchange for safe passage across Borg space.In this story, Chakotay talks her out of making a deal with the Borg. Instead, they observe a battle between the Borg and 8472 in which 8472 destroy an entire Borg cube and planet. Voyager flees, but 8472 heavily cripples the ship, leaving it stranded and defenseless. Unfortunately, Tom Paris and Tuvok get killed as well as several other crew members. They are rescued by a species called the Vostigye (pronounced Vost-i-guy as in "rye") who do not live on planets, instead living on space station habitats.The Vostigye have a large minority of anti-refugees in the government, but their voices are overruled. The leadership allows Voyager's crew to remain and fixes their ship in exchange for Voyager's crew working in their society. They have a lot of technical, medical, and scientific expertise that would be helpful. So the Voyager crew agrees and months later they've integrated into Vostigye society.However, a Voth ship shows up, demanding the Vostigye turn over the Voyager crew. The Voth are an extremely powerful species that live on massive city ships filled with millions of people. They originated from Earth, having descended from dinosaurs millions of years ago. This challenges the government's status quo. They claim to have originated in the Delta Quadrant because they believe that gives them the right to rule. When Voyager encountered them, Voyager gave one of the scientists who had this distant origin theory all of the data on the Earth, strengthening that position. He was forced to recant, but Chakotay made sure he had the data anyway, which was now spreading amongst the regular Voth population.In a wonderful, touching moment, the various Vostigye captains of ships that had Voyager crew as well as the heads of institions and hospitals and science stations around Vostigye society all responded all at once. They refused to give up anyone whether ordered by the Voth or by their own govenrment. One crew member joined a religious convent, and even that convent released a statement that they would not force anyone out. This severely weakened the anti-refugee faction in the government.The Voth city ship managed to destroy several Vostigye ships before its transwarp drives attracted the presence of an 8472 ship, thinking it was a Borg ship. The fleet stopped fighting the Voth ship and turned to defend it from the 8472 ship. However, the 8472 ship was far more powerful than any of the ships in the fleet and the Voth self-destructed their ship, but not before beaming as many of their people off as they could. This managed to destroy the 8472 ship, at last.This event, as well as the Doctor going back to Vidiian space to cure the Phage, was the beginning of the Delta Coalition, an alliance of various Delta Quadrant governments and individuals to defend against the Borg and Species 8472 who have been wining the war with the Borg. Some of the people who joined the coalition were from various ships that, like Voyager, were drawn from all over the galaxy by the Caretaker in a desperate attempt to defend the Ocampa. One of these ships was a Dominion ship with Jem'Hadar and a Vorta.The Coaltion managed to create a weapon that would be able to collapse 8472's universe entirely, intended as a deterrent. The Vorta managed to steal the weapon, however, as she was promised by the Voth that they would use their transwarp drives to get her home in exchange for destroying the 8472 threat.The 8472 sent an emissary to negotiate with the Coalition and the Coalition tried their best to get the weapon back. They started developing a counter-weapon. The Voth, begrudingly, agreed not to destroy 8472's universe, but the Vorta believed it was the only way back, even though the Voth had already agreed not to do it. So she went into 8472 space anyway. Followed by a Coalition fleet. She fired the weapon, but Kes used her new found psychic powers to contain the blast. B'Elanna developed the ability to collapse the entrances between the universes and the Coalition gave that technology to 8472, allowing them to control entry and exist between their universe and others.With the help of a Hirogen member of the Coaltion, the Coaltion was able to use the Hirogen relay network to contact the Federation, linking up their communications networks. Finally, Voyager was able to contact home. The Voyager crew decided to stay where they were while the Coaltion petioned for entry into the Federation.So I absolutely loved this story. This was what I really would have liked to see happen on the show itself. Voyager turned out to be rather lackluster, to me. Braga isn't a particularly good writer, something we saw with his time on TNG. And, of course, Berman is Berman. He's extremely rigid in his thinking and stubborn. Not only that, Voyager was supposed to sell the brand new UPN network, so Paramount wanted an action show first and foremost. This was why it, more often than not, ended in some sort of conflict with aliens who refused to see reason. It was also a response to the hatred that DS9 got at the time, a return to the traditional Star Trek formula from TNG.As a consequence, the show couldn't really come into its own as much as I would have liked to see. Much of its potential was squandered. The idea of joining Maquis with Starfleet was a good one, but it rarely came into effect. In this story, we really got to see that with B'Elanna, who joined an anti-Coaltion group because the Vostigye government required the Casciron refugees to have their poisonous stingers in their left wrist removed. She ended up attacking a facility where Kes, as a scientist, was working on a way to immunize people from those very stingers and putting them back on, killing Neelix before Kes brought him back to life.We also see this in Chakotay who struggles with his identity as an outsider the entire time. He uses it to bring people together, eventually running for office and joining the Vostigye government. In fact, Chakotay has more character development in this one story than all the time on the actual show.In the show, we also disgarded Kes in exchange for Seven, an exchange that didn't really need to happen, but it was clear that one was the replacement for the other. Kes was such an interesting character with so much potential, but I don't think most people saw that at the time. Here she gets a lot of development, growing into her own as a scientist and a leader. She is able to control her psychic powers and keep herself alive indefinitely if she wishes, instead of the very small lifespan her species has.In fact, removing these characters from Voyager was one of the best things to happen to a lot of them. Harry Kim actually gets promoted in the Vostigye military, as opposed to on Voyager. He ends up growing into his own as well, becoming a captain, instead of languishing in the lower decks forever like on the show.Janeway gets some time to reflect on her single-minded determination to get home. She decides that it isn't as important as she thought, that she was missing her life go by with an eye on another life far away. She even gets together with Chakotay, something the show hinted at a bit, but never fully comitted to.Neelix's role is greatly expanded. The author took what he supposedly did on Voyager and then expanded that out. He becomes a diplomat and spokesman for his people. First Voyager's crew and then the Coalition as a whole. He become's the Coalition's ambassador to the Federation in the end, and it feels absolutely correct when he says the words to petition for entrance into the Federation.And the Doctor's transformation is very cool. He becomes a massive AI that controls thousands of different bodies around the Coalition. The Vostigye's AI technology is far in advance of Voyager's, so the Doctor becomes something much bigger than just one body. He can perform life saving operations on someone at the same time as he is giving someone a checkup somewhere else light years away.Seven is not actually Seven at all. There were some Borg who, when regenerating, were linked to each other in a virtual world called Unimatrix Zero. While in that world, they had no memory of being a Borg drone, they only rememered what they did there. When Annika was rescued, she was in Unimatrix Zero, meaning she remembered nothing of being a Borg drone, shocked to see Borg parts on her when she awoke in sickbay. Only when she felt she was ready to help the Coalition did she allow those memories of being a drone come out, and she wrestled with them, getting them under control.In the actual show, often Janeway ended up doing some pretty morally questionable things, like make an alliance with the Borg. This story really showcases Federation principles in a way the show so often missed. The anti-refugee faction being defeated, for example, is a great showing of that. The Federation would never reject refugees or, indeed, immigrants of any kind. We get to see people of different backgrounds and ideas working together towards a common goal, and it's fantastic.Imagine if the show had actually done this. We could have had a great ongoing story of Voyager helping to connect with and create this alliance. Instead we do the thing TNG so often did. We create an interesting alien species just for one episode only to then forget they exist for the rest of the show. DS9, as a show set in one place, does this far less and is a better show for it. This story really does make me think of a Voyager that could have been rather than the lackluster show we ended up getting under Berman and Braga.
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