Voyager's starting position
- Thread starter pinkpower
- Start date
^Have you watched DS9? They tried to blow it up several times, mined it once and the prophets closed it for a while. Janeway couldn't afford to waste time going out of the way when the wormhole might not be passable when they enter the Idran System....
Earth isn't going anywhere....
Earth isn't going anywhere....
Someone here has a most excellent 'map' of the galaxy. It shows that the gamma quadrant end of the wormhole was almost as far away from Voyager as Earth was
I think it actually would have been a slightly longer trip (by a few thousand light-years). The Voyager would have had to cross a great deal of both the Delta and Gamma Quadrants to reach the wormhole near Idran, IMO.
http://images.wikia.com/borgcollective/images/4/48/2-quadrants.jpg
http://images.wikia.com/borgcollective/images/4/48/2-quadrants.jpg
Unless the Xindi, the Borg, crazy Romulan miners, ancient Earth probes, whale loving alien probes, giant space amoebas and crazy Picard clones get their way.
Stardate 956788.7. After 50 years, Voyager is home.....
*cloud of rubble on viewscreen*
OLD JANEWAY: "Fuuuuuuuuuu--!"
Wouldn't have been much worse than Endgame...
But the star systems they are familiar with would be still there. They prolly have relatives and friends on other worlds in or around the Federation. Even if Earth explodes, they would still have people to get back to.
Careful! That kinda talk will get You_Will_Fail all angry!
True, but Janeway did not know any of that. Voyager should have only known of 2 seasons worth of DS9's continuity.
Still, it make more sense heading to Earth than to a wormhole that may, or may not, still be there. Also, i think it would logically make more sense to head to Earth and cover the Delta Quadrant and some of the Alpha Quadrant, because at least you would be traveling in known space when you hit the Alpha Quadrant vs. traversing both the Delta and Gamma Quadrants which are both unknown.
First contact with the Dominion was established in 2170, about a year before Voyager's launch in 2171. If nothing else, they already knew one thing - there's a huge, possibly lethal but definitely not all that friendly player in charge of the Gamma Quadrant, which may or may not still have the wormhole.
The direct approach was ultimately safer.
In theory... Only if Earth explodes, is most of Janeways crew going to not be frogmarched back into a Gulag for consecutive life sentences because of terrorism and genocide charges.
From the map I saw, it did look like a shorter trip into Dominion Space and then through the wormhole by a little, but, that would entail having to go between the arms, so that wouldn't have practical, I don't think. If they went down the arm, and then back up, it would've been a longer trip.
Here are some maps.
http://www.loony-archivist.com/lowerdecks/maps.html
I heard that Berman has been seen throwing things at his Q and A audience screaming "Equidistant! Equidistant! It's the same same same! SHUT-UP SHUT-UP!" more than once.
http://www.loony-archivist.com/lowerdecks/maps.html
I heard that Berman has been seen throwing things at his Q and A audience screaming "Equidistant! Equidistant! It's the same same same! SHUT-UP SHUT-UP!" more than once.
She'd rather set a course directly through Borg space rather than a species that other than the destruction of the USS Odyssey and 'removal' of a Bajoran colony in the Gamma quadrant had been relatively silent up to the launch of Voyager.
Let's see, "The Jem'Hadar" took place on stardate: 47987.5. "Caretaker" took place on: 48315.6. About three maybe four months later. No doubt about it, she knew of the Dominion, but thats about all she knew other than when the Jem'Hadar captured the Defiant, held it for a week, and then let it go in "The Search". Compared to the Borg, at this point historically the Dominion weren't the immediate threat that the Borg seemed to be at any given time even being on the other side of the galaxy.
Hardly a reason to think her chances were better forging directly through Borg space and then much later maybe Romulan space.
Shouldn't Riker have told them to turn around and head towards their Klingon allies rather than the dead dominion if that's where Janeway was headed, which she wasn't, in Deathwish.
Q did say that he was going to mind wipe Riiker and it could have been Riker from the past considering his classic uniform but Janeway completely forgot to pump him.
Q did say that he was going to mind wipe Riiker and it could have been Riker from the past considering his classic uniform but Janeway completely forgot to pump him.
Despite what we saw in TOS, I think that relatively little of the Alpha Quadrant (and Beta Quadrant, for that matter) had been explored by 2371. Federation-claimed space itself was only about 7,000 Light Years across and 150 planets. Oddly, the area/volume of Federation-claimed space isn't given, but even if we assume it's a distance, you're still only talking less than 7,000 light years in any direction from Earth (3,500 if you assume its a diameter and not a radius). Explored/known space would be only slightly more than this distance due to the time requirements to travel that far.
Any benefit to going through the Alpha Quadrant wouldn't be realized until late in the journey by conventional means, especially if they hadn't encountered any wormholes or shortcuts.
Compared to the size of the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation is barely a blip on the radar. There are probably dozens of planetary alliances or Empires throughout the quadrant.
So I took that map, corrected for the distortion in Photoshop and then drew lines from Ocampa to Earth and Ocampa to idran.
The wormhole is closer, according to that map.
Behold.
Mankind had no idea where "Borg space" might be when the Voyager sailed out, mind you. (Well, Bev Crusher in ST:First Contact claimed that they resided somewhere in Delta, but we never learned how she came to that unlikely conclusion.) And wherever that space was, it wasn't in a spot that Janeway would inevitably have to visit.
On the other hand, the very last thing Janeway would have learned before leaving Deep Space 9 was that the station's commander had destroyed the wormhole once already and would do so again in a heartbeat. And the presence of an enemy at the wormhole mouth was 110% certain.
Ultimately, if one stable wormhole existed, odds are that dozens more would exist as well. There was nothing particularly unique or exclusive about the Bajoran hole thing, save for it being the only so far known one. Certainly a monomaniacal drive to the known hole wouldn't be a risk worth taking when success would not appreciably shorten the trip and failure would double it...
Timo Saloniemi
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