If Janeway really had the heart of an explorer in her...

[Anwar]

There are plenty of explanations/justifications for them not knowing where they are if the writers were willing to go with that premise that wouldn't mess with the canon of past Treks.

And

They tried that in DS9 Valiant. A broken Warp Drive to explain why they had been behind enemy lines running silent fora year, which Nog fixed in 4 and a half minutes because he's not an idiot.

He only fixed it because the writers WANTED it fixed. In Voyager they easily could have just had the damage be severe enough beyond whatever Nog did.

No one thought Scotty was an idiot for not fixing the Warp Drive before Spock had to kill himself to do so in WoK.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Um.

I would have taken how long to vent and scrubs the radioactivity from that room?

A hour?

Three?

Hell if there was a sunroof, opening engineering to space would have sucked the place clean.

Spock didn't have the patience to wait for the room to be cleaned of for a couple hours doe Kironide to kick is so that he had telekentic powers change the fuel rods from behind a protective shield with the power of his mind.

 

[Timewalker]

Janeway turned for home because otherwise, she would have had a mutiny on her hands.

In TWOK, Spock had to act FAST. Otherwise, the Enterprise would have ended up being destroyed when the Genesis Wave hit them.

 

[7thsealord]

Voyager was designed for comparitively short-duration deployments, and that was what she was about when the Caretaker yoinked her to parts unknown. There were crew with ties back in the Federation, and doubtless even the most dedicated explorer-types would hold out hope of seeing home again, some day.

Heading back towards Federation space, exploring as they went, was the logical move. Maybe they would turn up a short-cut (as eventually happened, sort of), or maybe the Federation would make some kind of breakthrough (as did also happen, sort of). No way of knowing beforehand, but in order to be lucky you have to give Luck a chance to happen.

Just deciding "We'll never see Home again, let's go off in any old direction and do whatever" makes no damn sense to me. The thing about exploration is that you eventually go back and tell people all about what you have found, so they can benefit from your discoveries.

 

[Destructor]

She is a captain responsible for the safety and well-being of her crew. Explorer or not, that has to be her first concern.

I gotta agree- presumably only certain people sign up for deep space missions that take them away from their homes for years at a time. Most of Voyager would not be up for just 'sticking around'. And besides, surely you're 'exploring' just as much heading toward earth (where the data might actually be used for something) as you would be heading away from it?

 

[Guy Gardener]

We all agree that the Federation is going to span the Galaxy one day right?

(Because every time it looks like an epic fail, they send some one back in time for a do-over.)

Every planet Janeway encountered was only a century from applying for Federation membership when she started for home, and the closer Janeway got to Indiana, the less into the future all these savage worlds would become protected by Federation Justice.

Yes. Even the Kazon.

Rescue ships were not coming to save Janeway, the border of federation space was riding hard and wet towards the Delta Quadrant.

If Janeway stood still, the Federation would have found her in about 70 years, and if she ran away from home, that Empire she holds dear still would have caught up with her eventually too.

So running home was all but redundant, and just like Darla, Janreway should have been thinking about making allies and signing up member worlds early so that when the Federation finally got that far into the Delta Quadrant there would be far less to fuss about.

(This is how Mormons think about their church.)

So really it was Janeway's duty to head further out into the unknown, rather than back towards issues that would soon be dealt to with a fleet of Star Ships cutting of the Klingons, Romulans and Borg at the knees.

For the sake of Universal harmony and peace Janeway had to push on no matter the cost.

It doesn't take much to see that the problems of a 153 poepel don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy mixed up galaxy.

 

[RoJoHen]

We all agree that the Federation is going to span the Galaxy one day right?

I'm confident that the Dominion will make a come back. Instead of trying to attack the Federation, though, they're going to go the long way around and try and conquer the Delta Quadrant.

The Federation will make their way through the Beta Quadrant.

Eventually, the Federation and the Dominion will meet up in Borg Space and start the most epic brawl the universe has ever seen.

 

[Anwar]

Janeway turned for home because otherwise, she would have had a mutiny on her hands.

And I'm saying that it would've served the show better if they eliminated their knowledge of a way home right off the bat to justify the setting of the DQ for the series.

If they weren't willing to actually flesh out the DQ the way the Alpha Quadrant and Gamma Quadrants were in TNG and DS9 they shouldn't have set the show there in the first place.

 

[7thsealord]

If Janeway stood still, the Federation would have found her in about 70 years, and if she ran away from home, that Empire she holds dear still would have caught up with her eventually too.

So running home was all but redundant, and just like Darla, Janreway should have been thinking about making allies and signing up member worlds early so that when the Federation finally got that far into the Delta Quadrant there would be far less to fuss about.

Sorry, don't agree at all.

Seventy-year travel time does NOT equate with border movement. Consider that the UFP would be more or less expanding in several directions at once, not all out in one direction. Also, it would have to defend and look after the ever-increasing volume it claimed, and there are technological limits (communications, starship speed/endurance) that would need to change as well. That the tech will improve is certain, but breakthroughs happen when they happen, not to suit anyone's schedule.

That the UFP (or descendant thereof) would eventually expand as far as the Delta Quadrant I accept as a given. That it will happen within seventy years of Voyager is something I am not so certain about.

Might take a bit less than that time for especially fast and long-ranged exploration ships to begin reaching the Delta Quadrant. But, Voyager exploring its way back towards friendly space still makes a buttload of sense if the Grand Strategy elements are all one thinks about.

For the Federation to reach the Delta Quadrant requires knowing about what lies in between. Voyager's travels could be seen as laying out possible routes for more advanced Federation starships heading in the opposite direction.

 

[spot_loves_data]

To do so they had to pass through/ram "The Galactic barrier" a wall/fence of energy they didn't understand and could barely identify.

Odd. I'm glad that concept didn't stick around. If we're in a galactic pokeball and there's something interesting on the other side, then it would have been cool to see Voyager take a look around. It sounds like a premise for a whole different series, though.

But the Delta Quadrant wasn't unexplored.

The Federation had had unmanned probes in that area for hundreds of years...

Ok, if you count probes, then the DQ was somewhat explored. But how much exploration did those probes do? Voyager's star charts and and general knowledge of the DQ sucked to the point that they actually considered Neelix a valuable guide. Nearly every alien they met was new to them. Didn't some admiral tell Janeway she'd made the most first contacts since Kirk? However we want to define "explored," it sounds like their info on the DQ was piss poor.

Just deciding "We'll never see Home again, let's go off in any old direction and do whatever" makes no damn sense to me. The thing about exploration is that you eventually go back and tell people all about what you have found, so they can benefit from your discoveries.

^This. Voyager met a ship of dissident Klingons who just picked a direction. It seemed like a pretty pointless journey in the end.

 

[Killandra]

The safety and welfare of her crew had to come first, but it wasn't like she didn't do any exploring. How many times did they adjust course to study some anomaly, etc. ? Let's also not forget she has made first contact with more species since Kirk...

Sometimes she did lose focus and had to reminded of the exploring aspect, but who can blame her given her situation? And given areas like Borg-space are perhaps better off left as unexplored as possible....

 

[Guy Gardener]

Janeway decided at least three times to kill her crew rather than see them live as slaves, medical experiments, or infinite organ donors.

At any point in the journey home Janeway, just like any other Starfleet Captain had the moral authority and duty to execute her crew rather than condone them a life not worth living or risk their technology falling into the hands of assholes who will probably slave and war with it, that is unless she's just giving it away to the Malon or the Hirogen.

Quantum Indeterminacy, and I don't care for their fricking Heisenberg compensator, says that that crew was equally alive and dead at any one moment in time during their journey home, that it's really a bit over protective of Kathy to be so liberal in the safeguarding of corpses when there are larger ideals and mission statements to abide by.

 

[Anwar]

See, this is why the whole "Survival Drama" thing wouldn't work in a series like Trek. You have to abandon the "Explore the unknown" part of Trek (which is pretty much the core of it) otherwise it's not about "Survival".

Most of the complaints are that they DID explore things instead of constantly bee-lining back home and ignoring everything around them.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

Yeah, in a way VOY pretty much contradicted what Trek is about.

"We're in an unexplored area of space, let's run away from it!"

Nah, they all meant to return home. It was never about perpetual travel. Besides, they had to travel through unexplored space, there was no escaping it.

Hmmmm.

Picard's Enterprise basically tooled around the Alpha quadrant the whole time he was Captain, except when some alien tossed him onto the other side of the Galaxy for a day and a half.

Guy Gardner wrote:
If they die no matter what they do, then they why play it safe?

or more accurately in this case, why play it stupid?

As Yoda would say in SW:TESB...

YODA: So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?

Luke looks uncertainly out at the ship sunk in the swamp's murky depths.

LUKE: Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different.

YODA: No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.

LUKE: (focusing, quietly) All right, I'll give it a try.

YODA: No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.

And after more philosophic exposition, the little green man does what Luke feels is impossible, he uses his mind & the Force to lift the Xwing fighter from the swamp's clutches.

LUKE: I don't...I don't believe it.

YODA: That is why you fail.

Or, to put it more simply... in ST Voyager terms...

Captain Kathyrn Janeway: If I'd accepted reality six years ago I'd have settled on the first M class planet we came across. Instead, I'm thirty thousand light years closer to Bloomington, Indiana.

The goal for all explorers is to eventually come home, whether they're called Polo, Magellan (didn't make it), Shackleton (made it, then left again) or Armstrong.

Add to that goal, the responsibility a captain feels for her crew... and you have a compelling argument to set a course... "for home."

These men and women didn't sign up for a lifelong commitment, nor did their Captain. To have them simply "head out" to the furthest reaches of space, to explore and die would turn them into the mirror image of their replicants in "Course Oblivion"... a crew who's only effect left behind was that on the aliens they met along their journey.

But we humans seem to crave something more... even former borgified ones admit to this unexpected need.

SEVEN: The Borg have no concept of an afterlife. However, when a drone is deactivated, its memories continue to reside in the Collective's consciousness. As long as the hive exists, so will the part of that drone.
TORRES: You don't seem to take much comfort in that.
SEVEN: My link to the Collective has been severed for nearly four years. If I die, everything that I've accomplished in that time, everything I achieved as an individual, will be lost. My memories, my experiences. It will be as if they, as if I never existed.

Janeway made the decision to save the Ocampa civilization at the risk of her crew's safety/lives. She made the decision to go home for the benefit of herself and her crew. We know this decision was not only her goal...

JANEWAY: ... Am I the only one who's so intent on getting home? Is it just me? Am I leading the crew on a forlorn mission with no real hope of success?
CHAKOTAY: You're not alone. I want to get home, too. And there's not a day that goes by when I don't hear someone mention Earth.

Janeway didn't tuck her tail between her legs and run home. She lifted her head high and placed that goal on her horizon, just like she placed every other goal in her life.

She didn't keep to that goal to the exclusion of all others, she did search out and meet new life and new civilizations along the way like any good Star Fleet Captain would do. Sure, sometimes she strayed from the path but then, she IS only human.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDTEtnnrRJ4&feature=related









[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDTEtnnrRJ4&feature=related[/yt]

 

[Kemaiku]

 

[Finn]

Why? If Harry Kim had said it'd take them 7 years to get back to Earth, I'd agree. But the odds were against them making home so soon they were still exploring. How is checking out each star system on a 70 year journey less of an exploration than zipping among the stars aimlessly??

 

[Elias Vaughn]

If Janeway stood still, the Federation would have found her in about 70 years,

Assuming they knew Voyager had survived, knew exactly where Voyager was somehow, and sent a ship to make a beeline straight for her at conventional warp speeds? Sure.

But the Federation thought Voyager was destroyed up until Ship in a Bottle (ish). They weren't looking. And Janeway had 70,000 light years worth of space to explore between where she ended up and home, which is not an inconsiderable amount of space to explore. The galaxy is very large.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Galaxy is tiny.

One day soon, New Jersey is going to say "Fuck it" and sign up to be part of New York. It's not like they have a choice. And in a Thousand Years maybe Cuba will also become part of New York as well. I mean fuck, Alaska used to be Russian, and Mexico used to own Texas. Borders move. Countries grow.

They did everything they could to cut time off the journey, hell when Seven signed up, she subtract 4 years just be using Borg maps instead of federation maps, but how often did they say, "I think we should do "X" and it will only add "X" years to the over journey."

The closer they got to home the more bullshit these detours might seem, but in the beginning, what's truly the difference much between an 80 year journey home and a 70 year journey home? Especially they had buggered about so much on the edge of the Galaxy that the Federation had colonized Borg Space, the Rim of which was only it would seem 4 thousand light years from Caretakier's Array.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

The Galaxy is tiny.

Oh, you're just trolling.

Never mind then.

 

[Guy Gardener]

When TNG Started, "our" Galaxy was tiny.

Now however, The Gamma Quadrant is explored or owned by a known quantity, the beta Quadrant is in the hands of the Klingons and Romulans, and the Delta Quadrant has ten percent being Borg Space, SOMEHOW 2 percent is Kazon, The Hirgen roam bout another 10 percent clinging to that communications network Voyager broke, but the Skirikans seem to have their grasp extending into the Beta and Gamma Quadrant.

The MIlky Way is Tiny.