Voyager In The Beta Quadrant

[All Seeing Eye]

Am I to assume that in Season 5 Episode 6 that Voyager enters the Beta Quadrant?

When they fall out of Slipstream they coasted across the Delta/Beta Quadrant border. Even though they crash landed and died the timeline was eventually altered so they didn't die but I assume they still exited Slipstream in the same place and are thus in the Beta Quadrant??

So everything after Season 5 Episode 6 takes place in the Beta Quadrant?

The episodes Dark Frontier occur in the Beta Quadrant?

So am I also to assume that the Borg Transwarp hub in Endgame is in the Beta Quadrant?

 

[Pemmer Harge]

Surely not. There must have been more references to being in the Delta Quadrant after that, and didn't Janeway make Neelix ambassador to the Delta Quadrant (a job that's presumably as meaningful as the one she gave Naomi Wildman), in one of the last episodes?

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Which is precisely why it confuses the hell out of me. It's mentioned clearly in the Slipstream episode that they coast across the Delta/Beta border. They pretty much exit Slipstream at the same moment that the variance is off so they must still cross the border by the end of that episode.

 

[26138]

It seems to me they just ignored the Beta Quadrant, kind of like in DS9 where they were "fighting for the Alpha Quadrant" all the time. Poor Beta Quadrant

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Well I suppose it was kinda ignored except where we get dialogue stating they'd coasted over the border.

So I'm going to live my life assuming that Season 5 Episode 6 is where Voyager enters the Beta Quadrant.

 

[Bill Morris]

I've always assumed that when Kes pushed Voyager past Borg space they entered the Beta Quadrant but that UPN insisted they keep saying Delta Quadrant so as not to confuse casual viewers.

 

[Eyes]

No, they were still in the Delta Quadrant at the end of Timeless. They didn't travel as far with the failed slipstream at the end. The failed drive knocked 10 years off their journey, approximately 10000 ly. As the Delta Quadrant is 50000 by 50000 ly, being one quarter of the galaxy, they are now about in the middle of it (they had to be at the edge in Caretaker with 70/75k ly to earth, + 10000 ly for the first four years and Kes's gift, as well as the jumps in Hope and Fear and Night). Because of the figure of 10 years given by Janeway, it means that when they crashed on the ice planet, they obviously travelled a lot further than if they just shut down the drive.

 

[kipron]

Go watch Renaissance Man. Janeway has a line of dialogue where the mentions the Beta Quadrant specifically. Implying that Voyager was pretty close to crossing into it but not quite.

Granted it was actually the Doctor-as-Janeway.

So yeah, they were still in the DQ as of Endgame. Just.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, the distances they mention whenever there is a big jump do add up to just a tad short of the Beta quadrant at the end of season seven...

The Kes jump was about ten thousand lightyears, among the longer ones. It only took our heroes something like one-third the way from the Ocampa planet to the Delta/Beta border, though. The other jumps were generally shorter; the one in "Timeless" was said to cover ten years of normal travel, which judging by other material is also about 10,000 years or a bit less.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[apenpaap]

I once posted something on my blog about this:

They start out 70000 lightyears from Earth. Since Earth is 30000 lightyears from the centre of the galaxy, this means they end up all the way on the far side of the Delta Quadrant.
Three years later, at the beginning of the fourth season ("The Gift", to be precise), they have thus travelled 3000 lightyears (1000/year), and have 67000 light years to go. However, at this point Kes's powers become very powerful, and she leaves the ship and uses her powers to send Voyager 9500 light years closer to home, meaning they have now traveled 12500 LY, leaving them 57500 LY to home.
At the end of the season, in "Hope and Fear", Voyager travels 300 LY using a quantum slipstream drive. In addition to the 1000 LYs of normal Warp travel this year, that means they've travelled 13800 LYs at this point, leaving them 56200 LYs.
During season 5, Voyager makes three separate jumps: in "Night", "Timeless" and "Dark Frontier". In "Night" they find a wormhole that allows them to skip 2500 LYs, in "Timeless" they use another quantum slipstream drive to travel 10000 LYs, and in Dark Frontier they steal a Borg transwarp coil which gives them another 20000 LYs. In addition to the 1000 LYs of conventional warp travel, this means they travel 33500 LYs, almost half the distance from Earth to Ocampa, in this year. Thus, they have traveled 47300 LYs, leaving them 22700 to go.
Since the distance from Earth to the center of the galaxy is 30000 LYs, they are now in the Beta quadrant, as of Dark Frontier.
During season 6, two more jumps are made: in "Dragon's Teeth", Voyager travels 200 LYs through Vaadwaur underspace corridord, and in "The Voyager Conspiracy" they use some sort of catapult to travel 3000 LYs. Add another 1000 LYs for conventionalwarp, and they have now traveled 51500 LYs, leaving only 18500 LYs.
During season 7 they make no more jumps, but travel another 1000 LYs. This means that, in "Rennaisance Man" (the second last episode), they have traveled approximatly 52500 Light Years. Thus, their last jump in "Endgame" was 17500 Light Years long.

So that means they entered the Beta Quadrant in Dark Frontier.

 

[kipron]

So that means they entered the Beta Quadrant in Dark Frontier.

Assuming they were going in a straight line..

 

[Timo]

And assuming they managed 1000 ly by conventional travel every year. Apprently, neither of those assumptions holds true.

I mean, when an agent on the side of our heroes propelled the ship, one could assume they went more or less where they wanted to. When the travel happened by "natural" means or by hostile or indifferent agents, or when our heroes couldn't steer, it probably wasn't directly towards the goal but at most roughly in the right direction.

Assuming that allows us to have the ship just reaching the Beta Quadrant at the end of season seven, just like the writers say.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Since Earth is 30000 lightyears from the centre of the galaxy

Earth is 26000 LY from Galactic Centre.

You also have to take into account that the Badlands from whence they were thrown to the Delta Quadrant was on the other side of Federation space which could be about 8000 lightyears from Earth and thus the journey from the Delta Quadrant to Earth would be shorter than the distance they were thrown because they'd be returning to Earth and not the Badlands...........if you catch my drift.

 

[apenpaap]

Since Earth is 30000 lightyears from the centre of the galaxy

Earth is 26000 LY from Galactic Centre.

You also have to take into account that the Badlands from whence they were thrown to the Delta Quadrant was on the other side of Federation space which could be about 8000 lightyears from Earth and thus the journey from the Delta Quadrant to Earth would be shorter than the distance they were thrown because they'd be returning to Earth and not the Badlands...........if you catch my drift.

OK, so the distance I produced from my memory was 4000 lightyears off. It still doesn't matter much for the calculation. If the badlands were 8000 lightyears from Earth, it would take 8 years to travel between the two. DS9 clearly shows it's a month at most between the two, which would place the badlands at 80-100 lightyears from Earth.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Does anyone have any software which will allow them to draw a scale drawing of a 100000 LY Galaxy, to place Earth 26000LY from centre and plot a 70000LY circle from Earth?

It would give us an idea of just where Voyager could have landed.

I have a crappy screencap from Endgame. It's a map that was shown on screen in Captain Harry Kims ready room on his Nova Class ship. I assume it's showing us the route Voyager took home and where they landed in the Delta Quadrant. I assume the map has the Delta Quadrant in the bottom left.

 

[Timo]

That's basically the same map as in this graphic:

http://www.stdimension.org/Cartography/Source/map_voyroute.jpg

The graphic here shows the version that got printed in the Star Charts book, and seems to correctly display the various jumps and swerves the ship did on her way home. The wiggly line has three squares: start, middle and end. The middle square is as far as they got in S7...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[dHunter333]

i saw a mid late season 5 ep recently where janeway (it was dark frontier) said that avoiding the borg has added 2 years to their journey

i'd sy they traveled under 1,000 light years per year because of all their stops/escapes
the episode where janeway/chakotay were sick and had to remain on a planet was the longest period of time an episode took place
something like 16 weeks
6 weeks going 6 weeks back, before that a couple weeks looking for cure

and in dark frontier they went 20,000 light years
some reason she said in her log it shaved 15 years off their journey
that always confused me
caretaker 70,000 light years = 70 years
if you do the math, 1,000 light years = 1 year
lets say 3 light years per day at warp 7.5 or so...

lot of inconcistencies
but i agree with most of your statements
at endgame, add a good 7,500 light years and i'd say you are dead on

although i'm sure it said delta quadrant many times
at least through season 6

 

[All Seeing Eye]

caretaker 70,000 light years = 70 years

Incorrect. They state that they travelled 70,000 LY but it would take 75 years to get home.

 

[Timo]

caretaker 70,000 light years = 70 years

Also, Janeway added the qualifier "even at maximum speed". Obviously, they couldn't maintain this maximum speed throughout...

As for what Janeway meant with "maximum speed", she was probably thinking of some sort of a realistic speed, already calculated to include the necessary pit stops, and not seven straight decades of the impossible-to-maintain warp 9.975: 1000 ly/y is not particularly fast as such. But she realized that even this theoretical maximum realistic speed might be beyond their means, so she added the "even".

In "Pathfinder", Barclay's calculations assume a yearly average of warp 6.2 (or only some 400 ly/y if one wants to believe in the Encyclopedia warp chart - but the "truth" is probably a bit faster than that chart). Although Barclay is somehow also factoring in the long jumps made after "Message in a Bottle", which is a bit weird, since he couldn't know about them. Apparently, he's good at statistically predicting such things!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

In "Timeless" they only mention during the disasterous original attempt that they were "just a few parsecs from the Alpha Quadrant", basically saying that the ice planet they ended up pancaked on is somewhere in the Beta quadrant, close enough for Kim and Chakotay to find her with the Delta Flyer after breaking her out of mothballs in the Solar System. Presumably it's within a few weeks' or months' travel from Federation space, which is partially in both quadrants.

The Star Trek Star Charts book has a great breakdown of Voyager's trip, including various stopovers and backtracks they took. Their various shortcuts were rarely on a crow-flies trajectory back to Earth, so there's plenty of negotiating space in there. The fifth season was probably the most ground they shortcutted with the slipstream drive and the Borg transwarp coil, but after that I believe Rick Sternbach and company probably advised the writers not to get TOO carried away with taking decades off their trip and still saying they were "lost in the Delta Quadrant".

Mark