My guess - he wasn't much of an explorer, so the two travelled together until he died of old age and Tin Man finally offed himself rather than face such loneliness again. Well, maybe he planned better for Tin Man's future and founded a colony for troubled telepaths within Tin Man's vast interior spaces, where TM could talk to each of them, but shelter the troubled souls from each other as much as they deemed necessary. They pick up troubled telepaths to replace the ones who die and TM has a purpose in life and company, and troubled telepaths have a place of sanctuary. Oh, wait. I don't really know. It seems reasonable, however, they put some distance between themselves and the Federation or Romulans or Klingons, etc. since they might otherwise fight over control of TM and hurt each other, so back to the vast wastes between the stars for the first decade, anyway. Just a guess.
So why did Starfleet call it Tinman , if they didn't know that Tinman needed a heart? I'm only just noticing that storms are named alphasequentially, so maybe there's some preassigned sequence to assign unknown species, rather than giving any old ###hole naming rights when they find a new civilization? The last unknown species Starfleet noticed, they called Scarecrow, and the following, as yet unfound species, when they found it, would be called Cowardly Lion. Also TAM wandering through the opposing Romulan Captain's brain, is this proof that Romulans are not Telepathic in the slightest?
The spec script had Data explain that Tin Man was a cyborg - machine and living creature together - so the reference was to the origins of the character in the Oz, sort of a dual meaning. After the episode, Tam and Gomtuu went off to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud for ice cream.
There were two Betazoids on Voyager. A beautiful woman, and psionically-crippled murderous social disfunctionary. Which would have been an interesting touchstone if Voyager ran foul of Voyager. Lon Suder and Stadi being dead, murdered on Janeways watch, might even be why Tam sours on Janeway, leaving for parts unknown without taking these mostly humans home to the AQ.
Even my Ro Laren-Tasha 2.0 thread (despite the odd comments too there) made more sense.. BTW where is delete account on this site.. Cant find!!!
Considering the ease with which Tam read Picard's mind... Is it possible that Lwaxanna did find all those dirty sexy requests inside Picard's libedo covered in honey?
Gone to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud for ice cream? Preposterous. Travel 158,200 light years for ice cream? The tendency to think such vast distances of space are effortlessly crossed is just silly, even for Gomtuu, and besides, everyone knows the best ice cream is to be found in the Milky Way.
Okay, since this is an official statement published by the writer of the episode, I will edit Memory Alpha and Memory Beta accordingly with the information regarding the fate of Tam Elbrun and Gomtuu.
Space milk. Lactating Animals in space. Drinking your own milk is gross. So Gomtuu found another Tinman, and milked her? Oh. You know how Tinman is a natural phenomena that can travel faster than light? Then why did Data say...
I'm pretty sure various Trek characters HAVE encountered natural phenomenon capable of traveling at warp speeds, despite what Kirk or Data have said. Neutronic storms, for example.
Spoilers, sorry. Farpoint was a wish granting space whale. Speaking of the other weirdo they encountered at Farpoint, the special effect used to show the Enterprise being pushed through space to safety in Tinman, was familiar. It looked (from memory) like in Q-Who when Q threw the Enterprise at the Borg. I don't think Tinman is a Q, just that there is a constancy to certain aspects/forces in the universe, like gravity, light and magnetism.
That, or he got a wacky sitcom deal wherein he played a standup comic with several self-centered and narcissistic friends who just couldn't make relationships work. His enemy became an obese asteroid who always schemed to destroy Gomtuu's career.