What if... they never got home?

[F. King Daniel]

What if the series ended with Voyager still in the Delta Quadrant? Would leaving the ship and crew's ultimate fate open have angered or annoyed you? Or would you have maybe preferred it that way?

I think Stargate Universe's finale (although intended as a cliffhanger prior to the show's cancellation) was fantastic. Could you imagine an alternate version of Voyager's "One" being the finale and the show coming to a similar inconclusive end?

 

[GeneHunt]

 

[F. King Daniel]

Oh, come on. It's not that bad.

 

[spooky spice]

For those of us who haven't discussed this before, it's an interesting topic...

I've often wondered what would they have done? Have them bravely accepting their fate and still be heading for home, or give up and settle down on a nice M class somewhere in Delta, and then spend their lives wondering if they could have made it home? Perhaps word would have spread that there were people somewhere looking to get home and an advanced race would come visit...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Lots of them didn't make it home.

And some of those dead, their corpses didn't make it home either.

Some were eaten.

Shat.

And then picked over by dinosaur anthropologists.

Of course, some of their corpses woke up, came back and frakked Kim.

Sexually.

 

[JarodRussell]

The entire show would have been pointless?
They could as well have Janeway wake up realizing it was all just a dream.

 

[JanewayRulz!]

I didn't like it when they ended Quantum Leap that way, and I think i would have run screaming into the streets if they ended Voyager that way.

 

[The Dominion]

Would have been better than the time warp ending we got.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's just a jump to the left.

And then a step to the right.

Put your hands on your hips.

You bring your knees in tight.

But it's the pelvic thrust

That really drives you insane.

Let's do the time-warp again.

Let's do the time-warp again.

 

[Ln X]

If Voyager didn't get back home then what was the point of watching seven fricking seasons? I thought the whole point of VOY was getting out of the Delta Quadrant. If VOY didn't do that then the series would be left unfinished and we would have hundreds of people on this site whining about how VOY was left unfinished.

No thank God they came home.

 

[Dukhat]

Unfortunately, Voyager was not produced and scripts were not written in such a way that not getting home at the end would even have been an option. Each episode was too stand-alone, with the final scene having Voyager continuing on it's journey home. If Voyager's story arc was such that it stayed in just one place, making a new home there and dealing with whatever that section of space dealt them, then it would have been different. But that's not what happened.

The problem with this type of episodic stroytelling however, is that the viewers now know that Voyager will eventually get home, but it won't be until the last episode of the series. So any eps that dealt with some newfangled way of getting back to the Alpha Quadrant, we the viewers already knew that it wasn't going to work. They'd still be in the Delta Quadrant by the end of the episode, even if they were able to cut a few light-years off their journey. When things become predictable, then it's not good stroytelling anymore.

 

[RyuRoots]

It would've been better than the rubbish we got with Endgame, but it would've required some leading up to that point, like maybe spending the last season accepting their place in the DQ for some reasons or others. The problem with Voyager is that it became a quaint, predictable show in some regards, and I knew they'd make it home without even a tiny sliver of doubt in my mind. And sure enough they did, without doing anything at all interesting with or after the arrival.

So it would've been nice and would've been more interesting, but the show wasn't prepared for that, tonally.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Not getting home wasn't an option. The only real question was how.

But for the sake of discussion, had the Voyager never returned home, it would have been an epic fail seven years in the making and validation that it was a hopeless journey. It would have been better for the Voyager crew to make the Delta Quadrant their new home.

 

[Guy Gardener]

When Sisko said that he never wanted to go back to earth, that he was going to build a home on Bajor for himself after he retired, that seemed like an Epic win.

 

[Anwar]

Sisko's arc in DS9 was about him accepting life with Bajor though, so wanting to stay was proper development in that arc.

 

[Guy Gardener]

But he didn't get Bajor.

He sacrificed Bajor, his wife, his child and happily ever after on purpose only to become a god just because he was all too human.

 

[Saquist]

What if the series ended with Voyager still in the Delta Quadrant? Would leaving the ship and crew's ultimate fate open have angered or annoyed you? Or would you have maybe preferred it that way?

I think Stargate Universe's finale (although intended as a cliffhanger prior to the show's cancellation) was fantastic. Could you imagine an alternate version of Voyager's "One" being the finale and the show coming to a similar inconclusive end?

I think Voyager not getting home at the end is a good idea.
It's something nice to comeback too instead of tying everything up in a tidy bow.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Not getting home wasn't an option.

If they were cancelled, it sure was.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The wrote endgame half way through season 4.

They would have been fine with almost no warning to have the final story show up out of no where, just like they did three years later.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Not getting home wasn't an option.

If they were cancelled, it sure was.

Nope. Had VOY been cancelled, the same scenario would have unfolded for VOY as it did for ENT upon its cancellation. They would have been told in advance that the series wasn't going to be renewed for another season and would have been allowed to do a finale. If VOY had been on another network other than on UPN, yes, it probably would have ended unceremoniously (perhaps even yanked abruptly off the schedule with a few unaired episodes), but that wasn't the case.

The wrote endgame half way through season 4.

They would have been fine with almost no warning to have the final story show up out of no where, just like they did three years later.

This.