Alpha Quadrant?

[GotNoRice]

Something I don’t really understand, are all the references to the Alpha quadrant in the various shows. The Federation is certainly considered to be located in the Alpha Quadrant, but even the Romulan and Klingon empires are referred to as “Alpha Quadrant powers” on DS9 where their empires seem to be mostly in the Beta Quadrant.

In fact, isn’t Earth itself right on the Alpha/Beta quadrant border? If so, then assuming Voyager was heading to earth as their destination (which we see in Endgame) their path wouldn’t even take them through the Alpha quadrant at all!

Why no love for the Beta quadrant?

 

[JayTheTrekkie]

Federation Space is located in both Alpha and Beta Quadrant.....Earth is right on the border line of the Alpha and Beta Quadrant. The Romulans and Klingons are in the Beta Quadrant.

As for Voyager, Alpha Quadrant have been stated a few times by Janeway including by the Future Admiral Janeway. You can blame it on the writers for that mistake or error. I think the writers probably didn't know that Earth was on the border line of the Alpha-Delta Quadrant and thinking that Earth & Federation Space itself was only in the Alpha Quadrant....or the other way, forgot or wen't thinking what they were doing.

 

[Anwar]

The Star Charts book that has Earth as on the Alpha/Beta Border stated that this was just a conceit on the part of Fed Map Charters, and that Earth is more generally located in the Alpha Quadrant.

 

[JayTheTrekkie]

The Star Charts book that has Earth as on the Alpha/Beta Border stated that this was just a conceit on the part of Fed Map Charters, and that Earth is more generally located in the Alpha Quadrant.

So Earth is actually in the Alpha Quadrant but would be near the border, eh?

 

[FalTorPan]

Had I designed the UFP quadrant system, I'd have put Sol along the "45-degree radial" within the Alpha Quadrant. This would have placed all of the "regular" territories within the Alpha Quadrant, and not awkwardly split across Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

 

[captcalhoun]

the real reason for the references to the AQ when discussing the Klingons and Romulans and on VGR is: simplicity. it's less confusingto talk about just the AQ rather than the AQ and BQ.

it's like NATO. North Atlantic. yet, now half the members aren't even near the goddamn Atlantic. Some don't even have a COAST!

 

[USS Excelsior]

And in real life Earth isn't actually located there.

 

[Timo]

The Star Charts book that has Earth as on the Alpha/Beta Border stated that this was just a conceit on the part of Fed Map Charters, and that Earth is more generally located in the Alpha Quadrant.

The idea of Earth at the quadrant border was general backstage lore at the time the Charts were made: Okuda and friends say they invented the idea to explain how most of Starfleet could be on "another quadrant" as viewed from Kirk's ship - although this explanation never made much sense, nor was it necessary when in ST2 it was clearly established that a "quadrant" can also be a volume of space that is smaller than a sector.

Then again, the idea of Earth sitting on a "galactic meridian" is dramatically interesting as such. And since Earth encountered hostile and unyielding powers early on, it makes sense that the Federation would not have expanded much into the Beta quadrant if that's where the Klingons and Romulans originated. (In contrast, said hostiles might well have made inroads into Alpha, thereby becoming "Alpha powers" for the purposes of DS9.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Locutus of Bored]

The Klingons and Romulans might have their own equivalent of the quadrant system with the border between quadrants running from the galactic core through Q'o'nos and Romulus respectively. When they say "Alpha Quadrant" they're actually saying their own variation on it and the UT translates it to something familiar to Federation citizens.

The above could work even without them having their own quadrant system, and the UT just substitutes Alpha Quadrant for whatever they consider their primary home and exploration territory to be.

Or, the three allied powers might have a different agreed upon boundary for the four quadrants that avoids politically arrogant markers like making Earth the dividing line between quadrants, and instead focuses on some neutral astral phenomenon that actually places all or most of the three powers entirely within the boundaries of the Alpha Quadrant.

 

[Timo]

That'd probably require the three powers to actually be allied for some length of time before the terminology would become well enough established for the UT to use it without stuttering.

I'd guess that "Alpha quadrant" when used by the Voyagerites is "the quadrant where almost all our homeworlds lie and where our common Federation is the top dog, as opposed to the other quadrants where fewer homeworlds are to be found and where our reign is not supreme". When used by the various players of the Dominion War, it would be more like "the quadrant where the Dominion will first and foremost have an effect and where most of the affected political boundaries like, as opposed to the one where the political boundaries will not be much affected even if the Dominion reaches its war goal of defeating the Federation".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MetalPants]

So was there ever any mention of the Gamma Quadrant?

 

[Anwar]

Well, the Star Charts book gave a figure of putting the Dominion as having a volume of 14,000 LY.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Why no love for the Beta quadrant?

The writers didn't want to confuse casual Star Trek fans.

 

[Timo]

Well, the Star Charts book gave a figure of putting the Dominion as having a volume of 14,000 LY.

It's a bit unclear what the book intends for the size of the Dominion. The scale seems to be off by an order of magnitude, really... But 14,000 ly across would probably make good sense, as we know the Federation is some 8,000 ly across at the widest possible point per Picard's ST:FC words.

It's just that most of the action in DS9 must have happened within a rather tiny and insignificant corner of the Dominion, or actually mostly outside official Dominion space. The journeys of the runabouts that are depicted in the wide Gamma map should probably be considered a "zoom-in", an order of magnitude shorter than shown. And the two Founder hideout planets should both probably lie either on the very outer fringes of Dominion space, or then entirely outside it (after all, the Founders were hiding from their own subjects!).

On screen, no Dominion representative ever quite argues that his or her mighty empire would actually span the entire Gamma...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anwar]

Well, Eris said that the Dominion ruled the Gamma Quadrant but she was a spy...

 

[Jack Bauer]

Why no love for the Beta quadrant?

The writers didn't want to confuse casual Star Trek fans.

And themselves no doubt.