Just was thinking about Eye of the Needle They are about to transport to R'Mor 's ship. So apparently they trust him sufficiently that he won't hand them over to his Romulan government if they do so. Then they find out that if they do, they'll be transported 20 years into the past. Can't contaminate the timeline, so no return trip home. Bummer. But they'd already contaminated the timeline, by having contact with R'mor. So, how about they'd transport over anyway, contact Starfleet HQ, request everything will be kept top secret, explain their situation but tell them nothing else about the future, and ask for an old, mothballed Starfleet ship that could be accelerated to near-lightspeed on a relatively deserted stretch of inner Federation space, -if need be with warning messages to leave the ship alone- and let Einsteinian time dilation do the rest and come out of near-lightspeed, say, a month later (but 20 years later for the rest of the universe)? Or go into tight orbit of an extreme-gravity body to achieve the same effect. I think damage to the timeline might have been quite 'acceptable' had they done this, and they'd still be home.
The other issue is what Chakotay pointed out... they already made a big impact when they arrived in the Delta Quadrant.
The number of ways Voyager could have gotten home and didn't kind of defies imagination. * Use Caretaker array, leave a time bomb on it afterward. * Use the W10 drive, and antiproton everyone afterward. * Use the wormhole instead of the Ferengi. * Have Janeway agree to have a kid with Q. * A few more bursts with the Quantum Slipstream drive. * At the faux Starfleet, ask 8472 if there's a shortcut through fluidic space. Did I forget anything?
How about not going after the mysteriously disappeared Maquis vessel in the first place ? ('Ah well, Tuvok was a good friend, but he's a Vulcan. They're pretty much all the same with their logic and there's more where he came from. Now, let's have lunch.') Joking aside, Tuvok and Janeway are supposed to be very good and long-term friends but the details of how they became friends are sketchy at best.
Regarding Warp 10, they still had the problem of figuring out navigation. You forgot the first time Q comes aboard... if Janeway ruled in the Continuum's favor, they would have been sent home. And since Janeway can apparently beat the Borg singlehandedly, steal a couple more transwarp coils. (This is, of course, ludicrous... but so was getting away with it in "DARK FRONTIER".) I suppose they also could have found a way to go through the Vaadwaur underspace maze to get closer to home.
Yes, that's the main problem. Not to mention that going back with R'Mor's ship would have created a lot of problems. They would be 20 years back in time, there would be duplicates of them on Earth (or more correctlly, they would be duplicates of their 20 year younger selves (well not Kes and Neelix but the rest). There would also be the problem that if they managed to get hold of some old Starfleet or Romulan vessel, speed it up so they could go into the future, then they would meet themselves there. Imagine Tom Paris at the penal colony in New Zealand when Tom Paris from the newly arrived time-traveling Voyager shows up for a visit! I guess that the contamination they had done by simply contacting R'Mor was simply enough. It was also to their advantage that R'Mor was a careful person who probably ordered his crew to keep silent about this and then he stored the memory chip with their messages at home or in some safe at the Romulan Military Headquarters for further norice. But obviously he died before Voyager feft for the Delta Quadrant so I wonder what happened to the memory chip with their messages. Did R'Mor's daughter find them? Is there any book or story which deals with that? I must also state that I really like this episode and that little twist in the turn when Tuvok tells them that R'Mor comes from the past. We all know that the twist in the turn will come, otherwise the serues would have been over after just afew episodes. But when it comes, it's a little surprising.
I'd say those problems wouldn't occur if they stayed in isolation until after Voyager had disappeared into the DQ- they couldn't run into themselves then. Presumably it would even be safer to wait slightly longer still, until after the point in time in 2371 at which they left Voyager to beam over to R'mor's ship (in 2351), so that they would be the only version remaining after that point in time in 2371, in both the Alpha and Delta quadrant. To that I agree - it's a nice episode. In fact, there are nice little clues that are only clear in retrospect. For example, R'Mor being totally unfamiliar with their ship class, despite it not being a secret, and then rationalizing it away as he's been in deep space for over a year, and scoffing that the Romulan government certainly would know about it ....
^^I was hoping there'd be some follow-up in the series, or at least in the novels or such, but Memory Beta doesn't indicate such.
It would be really, really hard for them to go into isolation in the Alpha Quadrant - several people would know where they were and everyone would know they had to avoid the planet they were on. The cover story might not be that good and it would only take one curious person deciding to investigate to blow their cover. And this also assumes that no one on the Romulan ship wants to know what will happen in the future badly enough to try to get information from them. I'm certain the Romulan High Command found out about Voyager from R'Mor somehow because Barclay comments that the Romulans have always been interested in Voyager. I think the Dark Matters trilogy followed up on this, but it's been so long since I've read it that I can't remember.
But wouldn't they be 20 years older than they are expected to be if they beam over to R'Mor's ship and then stay in the Alpha Quadrant until 2371?
Certainly. But 20 years isn't quite as horrible when average lifespans are over 100, and sometimes almost 150.
That's where the near-lightspeed journey would come in after they've moved back to the AQ in 2351. Let the crew experience Einsteinian time dilatation and while 20 years go by on Earth, only, say, 6 months go by for them on the near-lightspeed ship, depending on what time dilatation factor is achievable. (Think twin clock paradox.) Or, as an alternative, let them hang close to an extreme-gravity body such as a black hole (like we saw in the movie Interstellar). So for this, they probably would need to have contact with Starfleet HQ back in 2351 to get an old ship, but the contamination risks could be kept limited, by keeping knowledge of the incident on a need-to-know basis.
Maybe. But imagine Ensign Ricky coming home 20 years older than he was and his girlfriend faints and when she comes to, she dumps him immediately: "You've become so ugly! I'm not interested in some old mummy. Get out!" He would rather have taken the chances with the Kazon and the Vidiians. Hmmm...... It might work but it's a very complicated method and I just get the feeling that it would be some problems down the line. Or to quote Captain Janeway herself: Time travel. Since my first day on the job as a Starfleet captain I swore I'd never let myself get caught in one of these godforsaken paradoxes - the future is the past, the past is the future, it all gives me a headache. Janeway about time travel in Future's End.
Assuming they had chosen to follow this method, of course there would have been unexpected problems down the line. If not, the series would have been over after just 7 episodes instead of 7 years
Well, thinking on past Trek time travel paradoxes why not just do what Kirk did to Captain Christopher and Beam him in to himself?
Maybe in the Mirror Universe they did go through the wormhole to R'Mor's time and maybe he betrayed them and handed them over to his government! Then 20 years later the survivors of the interrogations, torture and other bad treatments were returned to Federation space in exchange for Romulan prisoners! JB
^In the MU Voyager would never have been constructed. No Terran Empire. In fact we see that Tuvok is one of the rebels working with Bashir and Dax.
They could've closed the loop, had they made Seska a Romulan spy as the Rommies didn't want to miss out on this free Delta Quadrant intel opportunity they knew would come along.
Yes I'd forgotten about Tuvok in that mirror universe episode of DS9, Donlago! Well the Terran Empire had fallen because of a revolution led by Mr.Spock and his followers and so it was replaced with something equally bad! JB
Indeed... strangely, though, Tuvok was present in the concept art for MU Voyager (or "Janeway pillages the Delta Quadrant"), even though he was canonically present elsewhere. Maybe the Terran Rebellion ultimately brings it back... isn't THAT a cheerful thought?