posted
After going through "The Void" again, I think I could argue that the theta radiation was jamming all visible-spectrum sensors aboard. Including the Mk I Eyeballs. Which, come to think of it, is only logical. Why should the eyes be a special case?
So everybody's eyes were a bit less sensitive to light due to all that Malon dumpti-dum-dumping. Doesn't show on camera, of course, except as the lack of stars. And doesn't affect the people much, after they get used to it. Except perhaps by making them more interested in monochrome entertainment than they'd otherwise be.
Because they aren't machinery. The radiation was obviously not causing physical interference w/ the operation of people's eyeballs, since they could still see. So, it would have to be physically preventing the light from ever reaching the ship (which is what people are saying is ridiculous). The other option is that the radiation was simply causing the sensors to break, but that doesn't explain why the crew's eyes couldn't see the stars.
Registered: Mar 1999
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It seems very believable that whatever clogs the optical instruments of the Voyager would also clog the eyes, since several of the said instruments could and should work on the same principles as the eyes. And taking away your ability to see starlight doesn't make you blind, as elderly people can testify. The radiation could even have affected night vision selectively, or something.
Once the radiation is gone, the crew again begins to see dim objects, and so does the ship. And the camera, too. In this scenario, the void wouldn't even [i]be[/] there for an outside observer, because his eyes aren't affected - he'd only notice that there is a star-devoid area ahead, but would see the stars beyond that area. It's only from the inside that the thing looks dark.
This would also help explain why the ship got into the Void in the first place, despite the bad psychological experiences they had with their recent long-duration passage of similar sort in "One". Once again, from the outside, the Void simply didn't look that daunting.
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