Captain Janeway Unleashed A Terrible Villain On The Galaxy

For this strange theory to make sense, you’re going to need a quick primer on the Hirogen. This is basically an alien race who sees themselves as hunters and everyone else as prey, and they treat the Delta Quadrant as their hunting ground. Like all of Janeway’s foes, except for the Borg, this race seemingly had no easy way to escape the Delta Quadrant (this particular fact is very important).

The Hirogen appeared in nine episodes of Voyager, and after that show ended in 2001 there was no reason to believe that Star Trek would ever bring back this species that was seemingly stuck on the other side of the galaxy.

All of that changed in the Picard season 3 episode “No Win Scenario,” which had a flashback sequence in which Starfleet Academy cadets excitedly asked Picard about being hunted by a Hirogen. After demurring a bit, Picard begins explaining how he survived because Worf had constructed a clever deadfall trap, and he ultimately turns the whole story into an inspirational tale of perseverance.

It makes for a great Picard moment (just one more great moment in an excellent final season), but this story about the Hirogen leaves us with many questions. Chief among them: how the heck did a race stuck in the Delta Quadrant make it all the way to the Alpha Quadrant to hunt down Picard? Keep in mind that they didn’t have access to any kind of advanced propulsion, and their most impressive technology was a subspace relay network capable of communicating with the Alpha Quadrant. 

You probably have a question of your own…why am I suggesting that Captain Janeway might be responsible for unleashing the Hirogen on the rest of the galaxy? Simple deduction: the only technology in the Delta Quadrant that could easily transport ships to the Alpha Quadrant is the Borg transwarp network. Captain Janeway seemingly destroyed this network in the Voyager series finale “Endgame,” but we later discover that parts of the network are still operational in the Alpha Quadrant.

Therefore, the simplest explanation for how the Hirogen were able to escape the Delta Quadrant and threaten Alpha Quadrant residents like Picard is that they repaired some of the Borg transwarp network. Once repaired, they would theoretically be able to zip all over the galaxy with the same scary speed as the Borg. If this is the case, then their galaxy-wide terrorism would arguably be Janeway’s fault because she left the Borg tech behind for other nefarious aliens to abuse, potentially disrupting the balance of power in the entire universe.

Now, that might sound overly dramatic considering these guys were easily foiled by Worf, someone who gets his butt kicked even more often than he ignores his child’s emotional needs. However, keep in mind that rogue Jem’Hadar with access to an Iconian gateway (which would similarly let them transport themselves anywhere in the galaxy) were treated as such a huge threat that Starfleet and the Dominion had to team up to stop them. The Hirogen are arguably smarter and more dangerous than the average Jem’hadar, and their ability to transwarp all over the galaxy should be treated as a similar threat.

All of this, though, remains speculation; we don’t know exactly how the Hirogen made it from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant by the late 24th century. Maybe they found other elusive technology that improved their propulsion…the kind of tech Voyager was always searching for. The likeliest possibility remains, though, that by crippling one foe, Captain Janeway might have unleashed another on some very unsuspecting foes, including Jean-Luc Picard.