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The question came up in the comments of this question: Does Voyager ever answer a distress call from anyone good?

The mentioned question was about the fact, that very often when Voyager responds to a distress call, the people who issued the distress call were either already dead when Voyager arrived or turned out to be evil / antagonistic towards Voyager.

According to the current answers there are about five episodes were Voyager actually encounters good people when responding to a distress call.

So the question came up, how often did Voyager respond to a distress call and the person / people who set the distress call turned out to be malicious?

Valorum
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Dakkaron
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    Don't forget editorial bias. You only see Voyager on interesting days. You wouldn't want to watch the show about the uneventful day spent warping through space where nothing happened. Likewise, you wouldn't watch the episode where Voyager pulls over to the side of hyperspace to help [local starship #591] fix a flat. – zzzzBov Nov 05 '18 at 14:49
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    @zzzzBov - Agreed. There are multiple references to races that the crew encountered that we don't see on screen, presumably because the interaction wasn't especially interesting. – Valorum Nov 05 '18 at 17:32
  • @zzzzBov Consider that Voyager was in the Delta quadrant for about 7 years. That's around 2500 days. There were 172 episodes, many of which I surmise last multiple days. Let's assume each episode takes on average 2 days. Let's assuming they help someone every 2 days (a ridiculously high frequency); that means there are about 550 encounters. If the show actually shows 100 "evil" distress calls, that would mean their maximum percentage of good distress calls would be something like 81%, which is pretty low. – jpmc26 Nov 05 '18 at 18:18
  • @zzzzBov If we instead make some more reasonable assumptions like they had 200 distress calls over the course of their entire trip (which is still stupidly high for a ship that should be constantly just trying to get their own supplies together to survive), we're talking more like half of them are evil with 100 encounters. So the number of shown evil distress calls can still tell us a lot about how ridiculous or reasonable the numbers are, just because the show has 172 episodes and they're limited to 2500 days. – jpmc26 Nov 05 '18 at 18:20
  • @jpmc26 - Except that there's an extreme case of observer bias. Most benign rescues are probably boring. Most malign rescues are probably exciting – Valorum Nov 05 '18 at 18:24
  • Ah, crud. I typoed while doing my math above. Should be about 1200 encounters if we do every 2 days. Which makes it about 91% good. I still think 200 is more reasonable. – jpmc26 Nov 05 '18 at 18:26
  • @Valorum No, my point is that there's a limit to how many rescues they even attempt, because we know time constraints and they should be under resource constraints. So it's not just observer bias. 172 events of the magnitude of the usual episode is strange to begin with when they're just supposed to be trying to get home. – jpmc26 Nov 05 '18 at 18:28
  • @jpmc26 I'm fairly certain that most episodes of Voyager don't involve distress calls, but I'll leave it to someone else to determine how many episodes actually do involve distress calls (follow-up question?). I think your estimate of 100 evil distress calls is high which is skewing your numbers. – zzzzBov Nov 05 '18 at 18:57
  • @zzzzBov It was less an estimate and more an example. I haven't watched much Voyager. My point is just that if Voyager does answer them frequently, we could still see some pretty ridiculous numbers even if we assume there's a bunch of off-screen more boring stuff. So "editorial bias" doesn't really constitute very useful information all by itself. And if the case is, "Voyager doesn't answer very many distress calls at all," that in itself makes for a useful answer if flushed out a bit. – jpmc26 Nov 05 '18 at 19:05

1 Answers1

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Deceptive

In VOY: Unity the crew answer a distress call from a group of ex-Borg. Although they claim to need assistance in freeing themselves from Borg influence, it turns out that they're being deceptive.

In VOY: Nightingale Voyager responds to a distress call from a ship that claims to be transporting medical supplies. In reality it's transporting experimental technology.

Antagonistic

In VOY: Revulsion the crew render assistance to a holographic person in distress. He turns out to be psychotically anti-organic and tries to murder Torres.

In VOY: Fury the crew responds to an Ocampan distress call from Kes. Unbeknownst to them, she's gone completely doolally tap and wants to kill them all.

In VOY: Equinox the Voyager answers a Federation distress call from the USS Equinox. Although initially appearing benign, the whole crew turn out to have a very slim grasp on morality, with deception, torture and mass-murder among their various transgressions.

Debatable

In VOY: Warhead The ship renders assistance to an artificial intelligence housed in a warhead. It commandeers the ship and resists attempts to prevent it from carrying out its mission to destroy an enemy installation. Although it's neither deceptive, nor antagonistic toward the crew (beyond commandeering their vessel for a short time) its actions aren't what you'd describe as friendly.

In VOY: State of Flux the crew of the Voyager go to the aid of a Kazon-Nistrim vessel experimenting (unsuccessfully) with alien tech stolen from Voyager. The sole survivor dies before we can learn anything about him but in general the Nistrim are not a friendly people.

Given that Voyager responded to an additional seven distress calls/beacons that were broadly benign, the stats would suggest that approximately one third (to one half) of requesters were either deceptive or openly antagonistic.

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Valorum
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    The Equinox did nothing wrong! – Z. Cochrane Nov 05 '18 at 14:37
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    @zabeus - That's certainly an interesting position to take. – Valorum Nov 05 '18 at 14:39
  • Don't forget the time they answered a distress call from a literal bomb: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warhead_(episode) – Benubird Nov 05 '18 at 16:31
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    @Benubird - I really struggled with VOY: Warhead but ultimately discarded it. The device isn't antagonistic, it's merely monomaniacal. It bears the Voyager no ill will and is simply following its programming and its orders. In the end it proves itself to be noble and worthy. – Valorum Nov 05 '18 at 16:40
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    @Valorum But if it is not the antagonist of the episode, then who is? By targeting innocents it was opposing voyager (morally, if not physically, although I'd call taking them hostage pretty antagonistic!), and the fact that it was ultimately defeated by persuasive speech rather than superior firepower merely makes voyagers victory all the more impressive, to my mind. – Benubird Nov 05 '18 at 16:46
  • @Benubird - I've added it to the answer but in its own section along with VOY: State of Flux where the sole survivor dies before we can learn anything about him. – Valorum Nov 05 '18 at 17:10
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    This answer seems to be offering a few anecdotal examples. I read the question as asking for an actual statistic (or something approaching one), which would require examining each episode where they answer a call for help, classifying it, and then counting. Unless this is an exhaustive list? – jpmc26 Nov 05 '18 at 17:58
  • @Valorum: (Re the gif/webp/whatever-its-called-now) I love Robert Picardo. – Kevin Nov 05 '18 at 17:58
  • @jpmc26 - I'm reasonably sure this list is exhaustive (he says, fully expecting to be corrected repeatedly). I'll do some statistical analysis later. – Valorum Nov 05 '18 at 18:13
  • No problem. If you think it's exhaustive, maybe mention that at the beginning? If it is or is even close, then running stats probably isn't necessary. – jpmc26 Nov 05 '18 at 18:32
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    @jpmc26 - I would expect people to spot my name and assume it's exhaustive ;-) – Valorum Nov 05 '18 at 18:58
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    @jpmc26 - Happy with stats? It's a bit vague because how you define "antagonists" is very fluffy but it seems to skew toward distress calls being genuine more often than not. – Valorum Nov 05 '18 at 22:44