Why did Janeway choose the long way round?

[TheGodBen]

EDIT: And once again GodBen says it even more eloquently.

Nyah-nyah!

Your response makes no sense whatsoever. The Federation had NO MAPS of the Delta Quadrant. The Enterprise-D had not been in the Delta Quadrant long enough for any extensive maps.

Sense matters not, canon has set a precedent.

Your response also convinces me that DS9 may have committed a blooper. How in the hell did Sisko and Jadzia knew exactly where they were in the Gamma Quadrant, when they were the first from the Alpha Quadrant to appear there?

From the script:

Identification of Idran is based on the hydrogen-alpha spectral analysis conducted in the twenty-second century by the Quadros-One probe of the Gamma Quadrant.

There is no reason to believe that similar probes were not sent into the DQ, in fact we know that they were (Friendship One).


Edit:

From the dialog of Emissary ...

Blast! You beat me to it.

 

[Michael]

Blast! You beat me to it.

Nyah-nyah!

 

[Toban Kal]

Yes. When Sisko and Dax first travelled through the wormhole in Emissary they knew where they were and what star system they were near, and that too was 70,000 light years away from where they were.

Actually Sisko and Dax travelled 12,000 light years. I saw the episode the other day, the fact is still fairly fresh in my mind.

 

[Toban Kal]

The Cytherians lived in the centre of the galaxy, which was more than within range of sending a one man mission towards in Primefactors before Seska and Tuvok stole that tech and alienated their hosts.

Whether the Bazarn wormwhole was "unstable" or not, it should have been a hail mary worth keeping tabs on, but in Janeways log during the episode in question, she was only just then discovering that such things ever happened that a wormwhole was there and there might be Ferengi out there beginning their own empire.

With the Bazarn wormhole it had been established that it's opening was unpredictable. They only knew where it was once it had opened and it didn't stay open long so by the time they got there it was gone. It would be like playing space Marco Polo.
while in the episode they managed to arrange where it would open it was a trick that could only work once. the reason they gave escapes me because I haven't seen the episode in a while. But thinking of it as a 'hail mary' is wrong. They only had the one shot and the Ferengi f*cked it up. then they didn't even bother telling anyone Voyager was out there.

As for the Cytherians, they lived near, not in, the centre of the galaxy. but still they might have been on the opposite side to janeway.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've seen this question pop up every once in a while, and one possible answer that tends to come about is that the trip to the Gamma Quadrant end of the Bajoran wormhole was really not much (if any) shorter than the trip back to Earth.

 

[Michael]

Actually Sisko and Dax travelled 12,000 light years. I saw the episode the other day, the fact is still fairly fresh in my mind.

The I guess you should watch it again. Here's what Sisko says ...

SISKO (stunned)

The Gamma Quadrant. Seventy thousand light years from Bajor? I'd say we just found our way into a wormhole ...

 

[Toban Kal]

Actually Sisko and Dax travelled 12,000 light years. I saw the episode the other day, the fact is still fairly fresh in my mind.

The I guess you should watch it again. Here's what Sisko says ...

SISKO (stunned)

The Gamma Quadrant. Seventy thousand light years from Bajor? I'd say we just found our way into a wormhole ...

that's me educated.

 

[ProStar]

Why do the people say that Q flung the Enterprise into the Delta Quadrant I have viewed the Episode and they never mentioned it Guinan said the Elaurians was probaly in that region and the Enterprise wouldn't want to visit as it was now in borg controlled space. Q flung the Enterprise TOWARDS the Delta Quadrant but it was into the deep Beta Quadrant almost 10,000 (7000) Gunans race could have been attacked the Borg and arrived as a rag tied fleet and there ships that were in Generations were ferrying them to Earth

 

[Guy Gardener]

Um? Yes?

Who are you bitchslapping and owning, because I don't know any one who says that.

I haven't seen the episode in years but I recall that Picard was only just more than a years travel from federation space.

The Borg "patrol" most of the galaxy at s[peeds it would seem that make an endround trip from tip to toe mesures in hours if not days, so it would seem, but they only assimilate cultures worthwhile wgho pique their interest.

I posed a hypothesis once that the Borg pretend to assimilate knuckledragging low tech worlds to encourage them to invent technology worth assimilating, which is why it took them so long to get around to earth after they sampled the neutral zone outposts and didn't ind much anythign of intrest worth a second helping... but there's absolutely no proof they're so devious.

 

[Toban Kal]

Guinan's race didn't need to be a rag tag generational ship. They seem to have extraordinary long lives.
Guinan for example was visiting earth when Mark Twain was alive.
So the people who ran away from the borg are quite likely the same people who arrived at earth.

 

[Brit]

I posed a hypothesis once that the Borg pretend to assimilate knuckledragging low tech worlds to encourage them to invent technology worth assimilating, which is why it took them so long to get around to earth after they sampled the neutral zone outposts and didn't ind much anythign of intrest worth a second helping... but there's absolutely no proof they're so devious.

I think that this is an interesting exchange from the Episode "Dragon's Teeth" season six. The Vaadwaur, looking for a place to live after being in suspended animation for 900 years.

GEDRIN: That star cluster in grid fourteen twenty one? Nearly half the planets are inhabitable.
SEVEN: Unfortunately they are already occupied, by the Borg.
GEDRIN: The Borg? In my century they'd only assimilated a handful of systems. It looks like they've spread through the quadrant like a plague. No offence.
SEVEN: None taken.

So what ever happened to allow the Borg to spread out, happened within that 900 year span. I find this very interesting and it makes plot bunnies form in my mind lol.

Brit

 

[Anwar]

I ignore that line of dialogue because it doesn't gel with what Q said about the Borg growing for thousands of centuries. Or maybe Gedrin only encountered a growing Borg cluster and didn't realize how big they were 900 years ago.

 

[apenpaap]

OTOH, it was mentioned that the Vaadwaur had a huge empire, so maybe he meant that the Borg were small at the time by their standards.

 

[freak]

Hmmm..it's kinda like that question..why did you go all the way around the anomoly when you could go through it just as easily? Or why couldn't you go over it instead of under it? That was from that Vegas con with most of the cast and it was absolutely hilarious! Some fan asked: ok, you guys always have to go towards some anomolies..and you always went around them..how come you didn't go over or through them?

 

[Guy Gardener]

in the timeline preceeding the current Captain Chakotay couldn't find Borg Space in the Delta Quadrant while following roughly the same course as captain Janeway.

Without upgrades from the future (Star trek XIII: First Contact) it seems that the Borg ain't much to write home about.

The Borg don't invent. If they first rose up inside a prewarp culture, they could have been content to think they were the masters of the universe for hundreds of thousands of years before some able traveler with a warp coil stumbled upon their civilization and let the genie out of the bottle.

 

[Fish1941]

Hmmm..it's kinda like that question..why did you go all the way around the anomoly when you could go through it just as easily? Or why couldn't you go over it instead of under it? That was from that Vegas con with most of the cast and it was absolutely hilarious! Some fan asked: ok, you guys always have to go towards some anomolies..and you always went around them..how come you didn't go over or through them?

What are you talking about?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Star Trek two when they leapfrogged over Khan.

Space has at least three dimensions.