What is the distance between Earth and Bajor?

[Infern0]

I know Bajor is at the edge of explored space.

Looking at maps, it would appear to be approx 1/10th the distance between Voyagers starting position in the DQ and earth.

But that would mean it's 7 years from earth at high warp, which we all know it isn't.

Anyone able to explain this? or is it just an error.

[Captain Picard.]

You may get more info here- http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=108410

[King Daniel]

Infern0 wrote:

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I know Bajor is at the edge of explored space.

Looking at maps, it would appear to be approx 1/10th the distance between Voyagers starting position in the DQ and earth.

But that would mean it's 7 years from earth at high warp, which we all know it isn't.

Anyone able to explain this? or is it just an error.

It's not so much an error as it is the time/distance/speed charts in the technical manuals and maps being nonsense that the writers of the shows have never used.

Star Trek ships move at the speed of plot. In The Original Series and movies, the Enterprise zipped around the galaxy from the rim, to Earth, to the center and back again like it was nothing. Voyager slowed warp speed down considerably to make their cross-galaxy journey an epic 75 year one. The other shows pretty much kept going at TOS' wherever-we-need-to-be-in-the-space-of-a-scene-break pace.

[Timo]

I don't think Bajor was ever stated to be at the edge of explored space...

Julian Bashir in "Emissary" considered Bajor "frontier" and "wilderness", but that's apparently just because the region was technologically less developed than what he was used to.

In terms of onscreen maps, we never saw one that would have shown Bajor and Earth both. But during the last two seasons, the War Room featured a wall map showing Bajor and Cardassia to the left, plus the symbol of Romulus to the far right. We might speculate that Earth should be between Bajor/Cardassia and Romulus, as other maps have shown that the Romulan Star Empire indeed lies to the "right" of Earth (that is, antispinward).

We might also accept the backstage distance between Bajor and Cardassia as a scale-establishing fact, or then consider the onscreen evidence that the two are closely neighboring systems.

Combining these, we get a relatively short distance between Bajor and Earth, in the 50-200 ly ballpark. This jibes well with the dialogue evidence: Regulus is said to be about three hundred lightyears from Bajor, and lies about 80 lightyears to the "lower right" of Earth in reality.

What we see and hear thus supports the dialogue idea that our heroes can zip between Bajor and Earth in about a week even without the benefit of superhyperfast ships. Any and all ideas of warp speeds would be compatible with this.

As for a map showing Voyager in the Delta Quadrant, this would necessarily be of such a coarse scale that it would be of little help in establishing the distance between Earth and Bajor. The one onscreen version of such a map, reproduced e.g. in the Star Charts booklet (pp.76-77), shows Earth and Bajor at the very same spot, as dictated by the scale of the map.

Timo Saloniemi

[Guy Gardener]

Caretaker thought Earth was in the 1940s because he didn't compensate for the speed of light after kidnapping Janeway, since probably wanted to find out a little about about his new suitors before he romanced them, which puts Earth 430 light years from the Badlands.

Caretaker was a boob.

[Pavonis]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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Caretaker thought Earth was in the 1940s because he didn't compensate for the speed of light after kidnapping Janeway, since probably wanted to find out a little about about his new suitors before he romanced them, which puts Earth 430 light years from the Badlands.

Caretaker was a boob.

Whut?

The Caretaker was hardly a child like Trelane. And why scan Earth for data on his latest test subjects? Easier to scan the ships' computers, something done regularly by super-aliens anyway. Why he/it picked the hillbilly bumpkin theme for his waiting room is beyond me, but, hey, why not? It kept the test subjects off balance and distracted.

[Guy Gardener]

Caretaker was senile, and before he was senile, he was the least useful member of the Nacene exploration into the Milkyway which is why he was abandoned to look after the Ocampa. I'm thinking that he was possibly the janitor or a prostitute who was charged with keeping Susperia sexually placated, unfortunately before he was senile he was such a terrible companion that Susperior took some Ocampa and ran away so well that he couldn't find her after hundreds of years even though Janeway ran into her after just over a year.

He's quite dim.

The actual scoop which he used to gather his rapees is the device I was saying that he didn't recalibrate, just like some times we don't refocus our binoculars between different ranges if it's "close enough".

Why banjo Man, why the farm, and why the early 20th century?

If he scanned the ship's computers, he would not have tailored his illusions to create Banjoman, the farm or the 20th century... Even if Tom was unbuckling his pants at some point during his incarceration since he didn't really know the difference between a hologram meant to keep him too impotent and distracted to plan an escape compared to 20th century poon tang on the pull.

[Maurice]

Six.

[C.E. Evans]

52 light-years or the duration of a television commercial break.

[dub]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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the duration of a television commercial break.

That's the best answer I've heard yet!