In 2367, captain Telek - knowing that he was dying - sends the personal messages of the Voyager crew to Starfleet four years earlier than requested. He informs Starfleet of the future nature of these messages and advises that they not be sent to their families until 2371.
Starfleet are curious and read the messages and find them to be the harmless correspondence of a missing crew. It occurs to them that if the message are true, Voyager will be lost in the Delta quadrant in four years time. In dark rooms, quiet men discuss the implications and opportunities for Starfleet to learn about the Delta quadrant and the Borg in particular. It's a risk but the knowledge it might provide will be invaluable.
They allow events to unfold without interference.
On their return to Earth, Janeway is informed by Starfleet that they knew Voyager would be trapped in the Delta quadrant for 23 years but that the potential acquisition of information was too good an opportunity to miss. It has provided them with a great deal of profoundly useful information. They have discovered new technologies, weapons, ideas and all manner of things that have massively impacted upon Starfleet and the Federation.
The years go by and Janeway slowly but surely begins to resent that Starfleet allowed this to happen. Anger boils within her. She recognises that the vast majority of profoundly influential information was garnered during Voyager's final 16 years (the first 7 being pretty tedious) in the Delta quadrant. She plans to go back in time and bring Voyager home just before any of those influential years are experienced as a means of punishing Starfleet.
She succeeds.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to vote under your rather straitened constraints, needlessly done I might add as the vote could be offered straight, so to speak. It's an extremely clever and considerate conceit that works in the consequences of a forgotten episode. Well, perhaps not quite forgotten, as the fact that communications wasn't reestablished with Starfleet until Pathfinder, the obvious conclusion is that for whatever reason, the messages weren't transmitted.
First, one has to ask with what degree of plausibility, would Starfleet accept the messages at face value to begin with, coming as they supposedly did from a class of ships, let alone this specific one that was three years away from going into service. If the original development efforts on the class had already begun by 2367, I guess that Command's concerns would revolve around threats regarding security, in that the Romulans would have appeared to being very well informed about a project that was just in its nascent stages. On the other hand, if that was the case, why would they reveal such an intelligence coup at all? Somehow force Starfleet to scrap the design? Thinking about it a bit more though, could these messages even possibly be forgeries at all? Wouldn't they bear markers that would make that potential explanation a near impossibility?
So accepting that Command would come to the conclusion that despite the operation of some paradox being present, these were genuine communications, what process of consideration would they employ to make a decision on what action, if any, to take? I wouldn't discount at least the possibility, perhaps likelihood even, of the cynical line of reasoning being employed by some members making their arguments. In opposition to that proposition would be the normative thinking that a such a concealment, condemning a Starfleet crew to a fate that they had no impact on deciding for themselves, would be inimical to the principles that the organization stood for. Additionally, a contention that would seem to be unknowable to answer and upon which the value of the proposal would ultimately come to depend on, is how could anyone make any kind of realistic guarantee that Voyager would ever make it back to the AQ considering the length of time it would take, barring finding some natural or alien advantage, the almost complete lack of understanding of the level of insuperable challenges the ship would face, and the one risk that they knew would be encountered, the Borg?
I would suggest that a kind of compromise within the realm of possibility that could be agreed upon, one that would allow foreknowledge of the mission at least to the captain, would be to allow the journey. but with the express intent of downloading the Caretaker's mechanism of both transporting and returning vessels the distance that would be required to reach the DQ and have Voyager use that knowledge to do the latter immediately. After all, the messages would've already disclosed that the means of return had been established by Tuvok upon examining those systems on the Array. In this way, if the reverse engineering could be done, and rapidly, an independent means of transporting Starfleet ships to the DQ, under
their control could be implemented without having to be subsequently involved in the matter of the Caretaker, his demise, and immediate conflict with the Kazon. Of course to be able to reach such an ultimate goal, there would have to be a Starfleet source within the DQ to activate the transportation sequence. That might make letting Voyager make the trip when it did rather dicey, in depending on everything that needed to be accomplished aboard the Array would be comfortably done so in the limited amount of time available in that scenario. To preclude that limitation, the plan might be shifted to have either Voyager, if its construction could have been rushed, or simply the first Intrepid class ship completed the year before, undertake the mission earlier so as to avoid the above complications. That in itself would be problematic, by depending on the ship happening to encounter one of the displacement waves in that different timeframe. Also, there would be no way to be assured that the ship would emerge in the DQ in as operable condition that Voyager did originally.
It's an intriguing proposal, with so many potential permutations making a final reckoning so difficult to arrive upon, aside from the neat justification it would provide for the completion of the circle of the Voyager saga as we saw it, if that extreme determination would be the one arrived at.
Perhaps, it warrants taking a drink or two after all,
