Voyager Doesn't Return to Earth in the Finale (hear me out)

This is a long shot and will probably sound incredibly stupid at first (or even second and third) reading, but please hear me out.

In Endgame, Voyager traverses a transwarp conduit back to the Alpha Quadrant. We're told (by Reginald Barclay) that its aperture is less than 1 light year away from "Earth." Moreover, as Voyager is being escorted, we see in the backdrop a planet that looks very much like the Earth, with a prominent North American continent facing the fleet.

But we're never explicitly told that this is the Earth orbiting the star Sol. There is, in fact, another intriguing possibility: What is being referred to as "Earth" is actually "Earth Two" in the solar system FGC-347601 (from the TOS episode Miri), a planet that is a duplicate of Earth in terms of composition, especially geographically.

So, why wouldn't Barclay just refer to it using its "Earth Two" designation? Perhaps Barclay was trying to be politically correct by using its indigenous name, which, given Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development, just happens to be the same as Earth's.

According to the map of Federation (circa 2399) space in Pic: Maps and Legends, the system FGC-347601 is in sector 02-AJ, putting it closer to the galactic core, and much closer to the Delta quadrant.



So, you might ask, why wouldn't the Borg put the exit aperture near Sol? After all, the heart of your enemy's empire is a very good location to attack.

Firstly, do we know what it actually takes to establish a transwarp conduit? Is it built in the same way that a tunnel is built, starting from the transwarp hub and slowly tunneling through subspace until the destination is reached?

Or, does it require another ship to be present at the aperture destination, in order to establish a two-way subspace connection? As far as we know, only three Borg ships (two cubes and one sphere) have ever appeared in the vicinity of Sol (four ships if you count the stolen transport in ENT: Regeneration). All were destroyed, and no on-screen information ever hinted that they had time to construct such an exit endpoint.

What's more, do we know how many ships can exit the aperture at once? If ships have to go through single file, an enemy fleet can concentrate its entire firepower on a single ship, destroying the Borg piece by piece.

It would be to the Borg's strategic advantage to quietly muster as many cubes as possible before dispatching an expedition, and putting the aperture in an obscure part of space (but which is nevertheless close to the heart of the enemy's territory) would facilitate that. It would fit the Borg's preferred military doctrine, as shown several times, which is to swarm an enemy civilization with many ships (sometimes hundreds or more). Everything we've seen suggests that they prefer to use brute force, and only fall back on using sneakier means as a second option.

Finally, the system FGC-347601 is located near the Romulan Neutral Zone (close to Starbase 10), making it a very convenient origin point for the Borg raider that attacked the Romulan and Federation Neutral Zone outposts. Alternatively, that particular Borg ship could have been the long range scout that built the exit aperture.

Thoughts?

 

So the Federation fleet waiting for Voyager to exit the conduit were in orbit of Miri’s planet and not Earth? Why would they be there? And why would they be flying toward Miri’s planet in the final scene?

 

Yes, the Federation fleet is flying towards Miri, the closest planet to them, which is either a Federation or Federation-aligned world.

Why would the fleet be there? FGC-347601 is only 1.5 sectors from Starbase 4, which is a major outpost in the vicinity of important worlds like Bolarus. Starbases, especially important ones, should be surrounded by ships, either docked, on patrol, or conducting exercises.

Starbase 4 is also not too far from the Romulan Neutral Zone and likely serves as a Federation command and control center, overseeing major fleet operations.

 

My thought would be that it wouldn't even really matter that much. The main narrative point would be that they apparently still had returned safely to Federation territory, if Miri is federation-aligned, or very close to it, if Starbase 4 is so close. The trip back to the 'real' earth probably wouln't be fraught with any more adventures and danger. Earth probably isn't even actually home for most crew aboard.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure I see the point here. In this scenario, instead of being a minute or so away from home, Voyager is in fact a day or so away. So I guess they have to wait an extra day before reuniting with their families?

 

Takes far less than a day to traverse 1 light year. In fact, even if you go by relatively slow warp speeds where Voyager took 2 days to cross 15 Ly's at 'high warp' (when they were catching up to the fake Dauntless which crossed 15 Ly's in about 3 minutes - heavily edited of course to make it look like less time passed), it would take Voyager (and escorting SF ships) just over 3 hrs to reach Earth.

3 hrs and some change is not a big deal for anyone in SF to wait it out.

At any rate, the dialogue established the TW conduit is less than 1 LY from Earth, and admiral Paris had about 16 ships at the coordinates of the TW aperture just over a minute of it appearing (which means its possible that most SF ships underwent Warp drive upgrades allowing them to maintain a speed of about Warp 9.93 for at least a minute - USS Prometheus was able to maintain Warp 9.9 indefintiely without problems, and Endgame happened 3 years later - and no, VOY's maximum Warp was actually 9.75 [which makes it more consistent with TNG and DS9 average Warp speeds] it could maintain for about 12 hrs).

Its pretty safe to say that the journey to planet in the last shot was heavily cut/edited to show Voyager and escorting SF ships approaching Earth as we know it in sector 001 where SF and UFP hq are located.

 

'Kay. I was just generalizing anyway.

 

Just as a side... wow, I had no idea that map was so detailed. If we accept that as canon, it actually gives a ton of information. Romulans didn't lose much territory (assuming they were already comparable to Klingons), Cardassian Union is still around

 

Sorry but nothing about that "idea" is intriguing or clever. It's just overcomplicated drivel.

Nothing would be gained by implementing this idea into canon, neither the story nor the show would have been improved by this.

 

1. Why wasn't this posted in the VOY forum?

2. I will say this: Having a Borg transwarp conduit open right on Earth's doorstep was the dumbest thing ever. If the Borg had super-easy access to Earth the entire time, why didn't they already send a thousand cubes through and assimilate Earth before this? And why didn't 7 of 9 tell Janeway that they could use this conduit to get to Earth when they first met? I never got the impression that this conduit was something brand-new. Also, I'm pretty sure the Borg knew where Earth was. Why would they have a conduit open to a planet that, while looking identical to Earth, is a dead world that would serve no purpose to the Borg?

3. But all that aside...as @Orphalesion mentioned, there's no point in making that planet we see into Miri's planet. How would that affect the story they were telling? Why would the audience even know the backstory from the TOS episode it came from, or care? It makes zero sense, OP. Sorry.

 

Ah, ok. Cool

 

Damn, I was hoping this was something super convoluted and fun, like the transwarp corridor took them to another Universe, and that's another Earth, or something like that. Lol.

 

To everyone who criticized my idea (basically everyone who posted in the thread):

Look, I will admit that the theory is somewhat lame and anticlimactic, and that the parallel Earths concept is extremely campy (hello, 1960's).

However, I think that I'm due some credit for coming with something original and logically consistent (vis a vis the Borg's motivation). Just because something is stupid, it doesn't deserve to be dismissed completely out of hand.

 

There are a number of interesting ways to end the series without them returning to Earth. Perhaps Admiral Janeway (somehow) offers them a one-way ticket to Earth, but Captain Janeway turns it down, not wanting to contaminate the timeline any further. Perhaps they glimpse Earth through the transwarp corridor, but destroying the corridor and defeating the Borg "once-and-for-all" is more important than going to Earth. They could even sacrifice themselves to complete this mission, although that would be quite a downer.

An ending with Captain Janeway turning down an easy trip to Earth in order to do the right thing and save others would mirror Caretaker more succinctly. We could even get a flash forward (especially since this was known to be the end of the Berman era Star Trek as they were working on a prequel) that confirms they did really arrive at Earth twenty-five years later amidst fanfare as the opening showed.

The novelverse would have plenty of room to tell twenty-five years of Star Trek: Voyager in the Delta or Beta Quadrant stories.

 

Well, you’re new here and it’s your first theory. I’m sure that if you stay here long enough, you might come up with a better one.

 

We really do not know for sure how much time passed between the Borg sphere and Voyager arrived at the end of that transwarp conduit one light year from Earth and the final shot of the group of ships heading to the nearby Earth in the final shot. It is implied that there was very little time involved but there is no mistaking that distance of one light year as the starting distance.
I think the distance for the arrival was a convenient writers way of tossing a number for the script which sounded close without thinking too much about it- I'll bet a lot of people have no idea how far a light year really is. The most important thing was for them to show Voyager finally reaching Earth in that closing shot, which was the whole point of the series.

Personally I would have really liked to have seen Voyager arrive back at Earth half way through the season and have some episodes showing them getting reunited, trying to explain Seven of Nine, dealing with the fact they used illegal tech from the future (maybe have Dulmur & Lucsly show up again)- lots of story to have fun with.

There were two novels, 'Homecoming' and it's sequel 'The Farther Shore' which did explore some of this but I did not really care much for them myself...

 

The Borg don't want to assimilate Earth, or humanity or the Federation and it's combined species until they have technology worth assimilating.

Every time the Borg fail, every time they take a dive, the Federation has a year or two to invent better technology, that can be piecemeal assimilated by the Borg, who let out a little more slack and then come back a year later to see the Federation's new toys.

It's called farming.

 

Man that sure is a pretty map!

 

Nope. The Borg are all about assimilating Earth and the Federation. Every time we've seen them in the Alpha Quadrant (with the exception of Lore's rogue Borg), that's what they've tried to do.