Allegiance

[Mikey]

makes her look all moral and principled and stuff.

Unfortunately, every other week she vacillated from all moral and principled to ruthlessly pragmatic and uncaring.

[Captain Seafort]

In theory, the way the writers went is the better way to go, from a writing point of view. But the way they constructed the dilemma was bad; they needed to arrange things so that Janeway had to choose to either go home or let the Ocampa die, with no other options. They did a pretty poor job of it.

A better way to do it would therefore be to have made the Kazon a much greater and much nastier threat - a serious threat to Voyager and the aim of exterminating the Ocampa, only being stopped by far superior Caretaker technology. Their aim could therefore have been to board the array and use its weapons to punch through the Ocampa's shield, with Voyager too weak to drive them off but having remote access to the displacement wave controls (given them by the Caretaker). Janeway would have been left with the option of activating the array and going home (and leaving the array in the Kazon's hands) or destroying it from long range.

[Teaos]

Or come up with something not involving the Ocampa which are possibly one of the stupidest species ever seen.

[Graham Kennedy]

I quite liked the idea of a short lived species. Kes was 2 in season 1, so if she had stuck around she would have been dying of old age just about the time Voyager got back. It could have been a great way to show a character evolving throughout the show - she's have been almost a child at the start, a middle aged woman by season three or so, etc. She could even have had a kid or two along the way. Unfortunately they didn't bother with all that and just decided to make her a magic woman instead.

Their reproduction also bothers me. Each Ocampan female has one chance to have one child in her life? They don't have to worry about the Kazon, their population must be at least cut in half every generation just because of their own stupid biology.

[Teaos]

Yeah thats the sort of problem that makes you wonder what the writers were thinking.

[Sionnach Glic]

I said the exact same thing in another thread about them: the Ocampa were f*cked long before the Kazon ever encountered them.

Seriously, it would require every member of the species, both male and female, to reproduce to achieve zero percent population growth.

[Teaos]

Woudnt it be -50% population growth?

[Captain Seafort]

Woudnt it be -50% population growth?

Ahem.

Seriously, it would require every member of the species, both male and female, to reproduce to achieve zero percent population growth.

The Ocampa could theoretically have sustained zero population growth, if they were an hermaphrodite species.

[Teaos]

Oh right, didnt even think of that.

[Captain Seafort]

No surprise there - the species' sexual dimorphism proves pretty conclusively that they're not hermaphrodites.

[kostmayer]

Maybe twins and triplets are common.

Or is there dialogue to dispute this, its been a while since I've seen the episode.

[Reliant121]

The idea of the Ocampa short life span i thought was pretty good. it was different, i certainly cant remember a race that lived less time than my flobbadob lump cat.

But the way they were implemented as bloody aweful.

[Captain Seafort]

Maybe twins and triplets are common.

Or is there dialogue to dispute this, its been a while since I've seen the episode.

There's dialogue - in Elogium, where this "one birth per female" stupidity started, Kes repeatedly refered to having her "child". If multiple births were that common she'd have said "children".

There's also "Before and After" where Kes, her daughter, and her grandson were all shown to be only children.

[Teaos]

I suppose the species could be 90% female and 10% male. That way the men all knock up 9 woman each and only have 10% population loss a generation... still stupid.

[Reliant121]

So basically the Ocampa were doomed. unless they developed or were given some form of advanced genetic manipulation that allows them to produce multiple children throughout their lifespan.