Would Star Trek: Voyager have been better had it all been a deliberate conspiracy

The Voyager Conspiracy episode set up a wonderful idea of Voyager being trapped in the Delta Quadrant on purpose.

In the season six episode of Star Trek: Voyager, entitled “Conspiracy”, Seven of Nine begins to download information while she regenerates, turning her alcove into a cortical processing subunit. In doing so she can now download several teraquads of data each time she regenerates. Due to this, she becomes infinitely more astute. At first, it seems like an overreach but early on in the episode, Seven begins to demonstrate the effectiveness of the process and aids the ship in sussing out several minor problems.

So when more significant situations arise, the crew and the captain, believe Seven when she starts piecing together random pieces of information and turning them into a conspiracy theory, built around a web of half-truths.

Due to this, the ship’s crew begins to turn on one another, especially when it’s revealed by Seven that the ship was intentionally stranded in the Delta Quadrant by a joint effort from the Federation, the Cardassians, and the Caretaker.

Of course, all of this is nothing more than paranoid machinations, and after this has been brought to light, Seven quickly shuts down her new subunit and returns to her normal existence. But the whole ordeal really made me think; what if?

Star Trek: Voyager would’ve been far more interesting if Seven of Nine’s conspiracy was accurate

I love Star Trek: Voyager, it’s my personal favorite of all the Star Trek shows. Yet, you can always make something better. You like cheese pizza? What’s better than cheese pizza? Cheese pizza with extra chees and cheese in the crust. It’ll kill ya, but it’ll taste good while it does.

Voyager can be made better in the same instance. It’s a great show, but it always could’ve been better. By having an actual conspiracy theory come to light that the crew of the Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant on purpose, rather than by happenstance and an accident as things originally went, you would’ve added an element over the last two seasons that would’ve added so much intrigue.

Maybe not at the hands of the Federation or the Cardassians, but someone. The Borg, the Hirogen, the Maquis. Somebody, anybody. It could’ve added a bit of heft to the final few seasons of the show, as they try to unravel who and why they were brought out to the Delta Quadrant and who would’ve benefited from it.

They opted to not go that route and make Seven’s delusions simply that, delusions. In an alternate universe maybe that’s how the show goes and I’m curious if it ended up being better than the one we got.