How close was Voyager...

[2 of 10]

I was looking at the Star Trek book "Star Charts" and it looks as if when Voyager came across the Borg Trans-Warp Hub, they were actually really close to getting out of the DQ, and getting into the BQ.

Recalling what Admiral Janeway told her younger self in "Endgame" it still would have taken them another 16 years to get back to the Federation, however, just getting out of the DQ would have been a reason to celebrate.

Has anyone else noticed their location when they did make their final jump home by way of the Borg Trans-Warp Hub

 

[Timo]

There has been some discussion about how the writers of the final season(s) did their damnedest to keep the ship in the Delta Quadrant and to omit all references to the approaching Beta Quadrant, apparently for reasons of "clarity". The show was about this ship stranded in the Delta Quadrant; would the audience be able to cope with this radical shift in the show concept...?

Many maps seen in preceding episodes suggested the inevitable approach of the quadrant border. It was probably a deliberate choice by the writers that the journey was ended just before the quadrant crossing, a stylistic one, and one that I rather agree with. Too bad we missed the hazing ceremony that everybody would have gotten for being quadrant-border pollywogs... (unless crossing the Alpha/Beta one counts?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bill Morris]

It seems to me that as soon as Kes pushed Voyager past Borg space at the end of The Gift they were in the BQ and that the backseat drivers at the network insisted on keeping quadrant references to DQ, as if viewers weren't paying attention.

 

[jgdst]

I could be wrong here as I haven't done a proper calculation, but isn't it likely Voyager crossed the boundary already by the time they encountered the transwarp hub after all the jumps and shortcuts that occurred at various points in the fourth, fifth and sixth seasons?

I remember reading an interview with one of the writers in 2000 say he thought the ship had actually overshot the Earth by some distance too, but no-one had picked up on it... I'm not sure how much stock to put in that, then again, we're talking about a ship that has infinite respawning shuttles, a million torpedoes and an ever changing crew complement

 

[Akiraprise]

The torpedo thing annoyed me more then the shuttles when the show first aired, considering the big deal they made of not having that many torpedoes during the first few seasons. I was kind of keeping track. I think it was during "Night" when they started firing them off without any worry of running out. I was like, WTF!? They're gonna run out now. Not to be.

 

[jgdst]

The torpedo thing annoyed me more then the shuttles when the show first aired, considering the big deal they made of not having that many torpedoes during the first few seasons. I was kind of keeping track. I think it was during "Night" when they started firing them off without any worry of running out. I was like, WTF!? They're gonna run out now. Not to be.

I was exactly the same way. I used to get worked up by it and shouting "NOOO, YOU CAN'T DOOOO THAT". I think Night was the episode that upset me most about it too

I bet it's got something to do with Borg nanoprobes. What they didn't miraculously fix isn't worth mentioning

 

[Akiraprise]

^

Before Night when they fired a torpedo it was a big deal, or Voyager was in serious trouble. I think TPTB just finally realized that torpedo launches and explosions are cooler then phaser strikes. Although it was cool when Voyager fired multiple phaser arrays at once or in rapid succession.

 

[Timo]

In all fairness, it should be noted that USS Voyager during the first two seasons was in a very different situation from that of the last five seasons. As long as she was in Kazon space, she was unable to visit any ports offering advanced repair and replenishment, both because she was being given a bad rep by the Kazon, and because the folks living in that area were either backward or then uncooperative. After doing the big jumps in seasons 3 and 4, she suddenly started finding friendlier ports and meeting advanced folks who could easily restock them with stuff like torpedoes or shuttlecraft spare parts.

As for those big jumps, no, the sum total doesn't yet mean that the ship would have to end up in Beta. For example www.stdimension.org has a nice analysis of this, on its cartography page, postulating rather convincingly that the ship traveled something like 35,000 ly out of an original total of 75,000. According to the route map, but also by plausible general assumptions, it would be a bit less than 30,000 ly from Earth to the stretch of Beta/Delta border where the ship would cross, so our heroes wouldn't have quite reached that border yet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Search4]

Besides, "Beta Flyer" doesn't have the same ring to it. Sounds like bad software.

 

[JNG]

In "Renaissance Man," the (fictional) R'Kaal are claimed to control space all the way to the edge of the Beta Quadrant. While theirs was supposed to be a big empire, it at least appears that such a reference had become believable and timely. Depending on how close anyone wanted to cut things to the center of the galaxy (not especially close), the Beta Quadrant could have been a very small part of the trip back to known space, so I am not overly bothered by the small number of references to it.

 

[jgdst]

Besides, "Beta Flyer" doesn't have the same ring to it. Sounds like bad software.

Considering the number of times it crashed, you do have to wonder



I know it didn't crash that much (Chakotay rarely piloted it), but I've got a stack of bad jokes to use before they go off...

 

[Lucy of Nine]

I love this thread, its given me a good laugh! Especially "I bet it's got something to do with Borg nanoprobes. What they didn't miraculously fix isn't worth mentioning" LOL!