Ohh man, the “demon planet” melting voyager clone episode really set my teeth on edge with this.

Super interesting premise, the metal clones fly out on their own ship, invent/discover new warp tech that is super useful, almost get to earth, but then begin to melt. People die, Tom gets dark and broody in a realistic way, but then as its getting good they all start to die to wrap it up in one episode. So they super warp home to the devil planet, but they realize they arent going to make it, so they fire off a “stable bouy” about who they are/what they learned. By pure, totally realistic happenstance, this buoy both doesn’t survive and the actual voyager is passing nearby at the time, just close enough to see their destroyed remains.

In the insane vastness of space, the chances of these two ships with vastly different propulsion capabilities passing by each other in the very minutes one of them disintegrates is so unlikely as to be nearly impossible, and of course it failed in a way that fully resets any boons actual voyager might have gained from it.

It would have been way more poignant to have the bouy survive, but to have voyager well past it, not able to learn from it because they had gone beyond. To never have them even see or interact with their copies, just to have those copies set out on their same journey but fail, with only a lone bouy to remember them by. A true reminder, a real boon, but one outside of voyagers reach by random chance. Actual life.

But nah, just reset the whole promise of the episode in the last 2 minutes instead.