10 Bizarre Star Trek Theories (That Might Be True)

A meta-theory! You may have seen this one floating around Reddit, where it first cropped up about six or seven years ago. The theory follows as thus, Jeri Zimmerman met future Republican political candidate Jack Ryan in 1990. They married the following year and Jeri Ryan was cast as Seven Of Nine in Star Trek Voyager in 1997. Jeri was cast as an attempt to boost flagging ratings and after her first appearance, viewership went up 60%..

Due to her husband being based in Chicago and Voyager filming in Los Angeles, Jeri Ryan had to split her time, which put an increased strain on their marriage. In 1999, the couple divorced and went their separate ways. In 2003, Jack Ryan ran for the position of United States Senator of Illinois, thus opening him up to a great deal of media scrutiny. In 2004, a judge released previously sealed records from their child custody case.

The Chicago Tribune ran these records, showing that Jack Ryan had become increasingly demanding of his wife, asking her to perform lewd acts in public and forcing her to accompany him to sex clubs in New York and Paris. Jack Ryan then lost the election of United States Senator, with some crediting these revelations as directly contributing to his personal unfitness for office. His opponent in that race? One Barack Obama.

Having won that election in the March of 2004, Mr. Obama then addressed the Democratic National Convention in July. There, senior party officials recommended that, on the strength of his charisma, he consider running for president in 2008. The rest, as they say, is history.

There's no way to directly corroborate what went on in the minds of voters in Illinois in early 2004 with what happened during Jeri Ryan's tumultuous marriage. But if the ratings for Star Trek Voyager hadn't dipped in their third season, maybe life would've been very different.

Resistance, after all, is futile.