Why didn't Voyager head to the Gamma Q?

[Guy Gardener]

It's also a question of certainties vs. uncertainties. The Bajoran wormhole's Gamma end was guarded by an almost rabidly hostile star power with superior armaments; hoping that this star power should withdraw would be futile. The Bajoran wormhole's Alpha end in turn was guarded by an almost rabidly protective officer who had already destroyed the wormhole once, even if only in his dreams, and had sworn to do it again - this would be the hottest news when the Voyager visited DS9.

Nothing the heroes might face on the direct route to Earth would be as certain as those two major threats... There would be the possibility for nice surprises such as shortcuts home, and nasty ones such as meeting the Borg or something worse, no matter which route was chosen, but it doesn't pay to bet against certainties!

Timo Saloniemi

According to the timeline, only the colony of New Bajor, had been destroyed by the Jem'Hadar at the end of season 2. The true threat and nature of the Dominion was as yet unknown inbetween season 2 and 3 of Deep Space Nine.

Although Kes was attacked by Jem'Hadar fighters in a simulation while learning to pilot a shuttle, so maybe Caretaker did take place after The Search?

Consider the actual course they laid out for themselves, after the DQ, then into the BQ through to home.

Maybe the Borg, then the Romulans who hate them, and then the Klingons who Starfleet was almost at war with during season 3 DS9, and probably a dozen other species that Fire on Star fleet at first sight.

First contact is sometimes a hell of lot easier than established enmity.

 

[Lance]

I believe Captain Kate also seen it as an opportunity to chart unknown space. If she'd just hopped over to the Gamma Quadrant and hot-tailed it back to the Bajorian Wormhole from there, then Starfleet's knowledge of the Delta Quadrant wouldn't have been expanded in the way it was.

I would have thought that the safety of your ship and crew were more of a priority over exploration. I wouldn't want to make the decision Janeway did when there was no backup or nearby help for your ship and your crew to simply venture off into the unknown as much as they did.

Fundamentally, Starfleet are scientists and explorers.
(Or at least, that's what their propaganda tells us.)

The opportunity to map new swathes of the Quadrant is a romantic notion that I suppose could be easily justified to her crew, given that many of them may have signed up to do exactly that. I suspect that the chance to add to Starfleet's knowledge of the DQ, an almost complete unexplored region, would've appealed to a lot of them. Sure, the Maquis might grumble about it. But the Maquis would have grumbled no matter what. Except for Commander Chuckles, of course. He was a domesticated Maquis.

Plus, the backstory goes that Cap'n Katy was a science officer before she was a captain, so the allure of charting spatial anomalies and mapping galactic phenomena would be something that runs thick in her blood, alongside all the caffeine and the six-packs-a-day that she smoked.

Putting the moral dilemma involving the Ocampa aside, if she had any true inclinations towards putting the safety of her ship and crew above all other matters, then she wouldn't have destroyed the caretaker's array in the first place. As Kirk once said, "Risk Is Our Business", and for all her later pontificating about how important her crew were to her, she (and they) knew the risks, and they would have been happy to skirt the danger line in favor of expanding their knowledge.

 

[Praxius]

It's also a question of certainties vs. uncertainties. The Bajoran wormhole's Gamma end was guarded by an almost rabidly hostile star power with superior armaments; hoping that this star power should withdraw would be futile. The Bajoran wormhole's Alpha end in turn was guarded by an almost rabidly protective officer who had already destroyed the wormhole once, even if only in his dreams, and had sworn to do it again - this would be the hottest news when the Voyager visited DS9.

Nothing the heroes might face on the direct route to Earth would be as certain as those two major threats... There would be the possibility for nice surprises such as shortcuts home, and nasty ones such as meeting the Borg or something worse, no matter which route was chosen, but it doesn't pay to bet against certainties!

Timo Saloniemi

But when Voyager was tossed into the Delta Q, the Dominion wasn't a threat or even known of other than some passing comments by some Gamma Q aliens to DS9. Voyager didn't hear about the Dominion until they finally got into contact with Starfleet a few years later. And Sisko wasn't that nuts.... he had to make difficult choices in order to protect DS9, the Bajorans and the rest of the AQ..... so again, at the time Voyager figured out they were in the DQ, those "Two Major Threats" didn't exist.

Even still, I would have rather faced the Dominion by myself than the Borg, despite Janeway somehow taking them on and winning *shrugs*

 

[Anwar]

Like I said, they had no idea where Borg space was in the DQ. There was a good chance they'd just fly through their narrow vector of the DQ without running into them.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I suspect that Sisko invites most passing Starfleet Captains to dinner, especially early on when his posting was still seen as the frontier which no civilized person would bother with.

Stories of Earth, in exchange for showing off his ingredients that he grew in soil.

The Emissary is a hipster like that.

"Real cooks don't use replicators"

So, for an hour or two, Sisko dining with Janeway and Cavitt would've been discussing the State of the Federation over several bottles of wine.

Ben could have put the fear of god into them about the Dominion.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

You're all overthinking this. Berman just didn't want to complicate the 'Let's all get home' narrative.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Berman got the map inverted.

When I first got here, they insisted that the map of the milkyway in my encyclopaedia was wrong... but it's hard to prove that any one was ever that stupid since history has been Orwelled better than I can google.

oh look

The Delta Quadrant was originally suggested as the setting for Star Trek: Voyager by Michael Okuda. On 27 September 1993, he sent a memo to Rick Berman that stated, "Since the Gamma Quadrant is the province of ships from DS9, suggest that this new show be set in the Delta Quadrant. One of the few things we know about the Delta Quadrant is that the Borg homeworld is located somewhere there. This might present opportunities for the Borg to be recurring bad guys." (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager, pp. 207-208) Although fan lore and non-canonical novels had situated the Borg as residing in the Delta Quadrant, they were first canonically cited as residents of the region in Star Trek: First Contact. (Delta Quadrant, p. 189) That Star Trek film was released about three years after Okuda's memo to Berman.

Berman knew that there were Borg in the Delta Quadrant as far back as 1993, so why didn't Janeway?


I have this quote in my head, "we knew this was coming that they were out there" or something like that, but I can't seem to find it, and hells, it might even be from a novel or a novelization.

 

[SPCTRE]

^Best. Final episode. Ever.

Also, beautiful in a way. Karmic, even.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Berman got the map inverted.

When I first got here, they insisted that the map of the milkyway in my encyclopaedia was wrong... but it's hard to prove that any one was ever that stupid since history has been Orwelled better than I can google.

oh look

The Delta Quadrant was originally suggested as the setting for Star Trek: Voyager by Michael Okuda. On 27 September 1993, he sent a memo to Rick Berman that stated, "Since the Gamma Quadrant is the province of ships from DS9, suggest that this new show be set in the Delta Quadrant. One of the few things we know about the Delta Quadrant is that the Borg homeworld is located somewhere there. This might present opportunities for the Borg to be recurring bad guys." (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager, pp. 207-208) Although fan lore and non-canonical novels had situated the Borg as residing in the Delta Quadrant, they were first canonically cited as residents of the region in Star Trek: First Contact. (Delta Quadrant, p. 189) That Star Trek film was released about three years after Okuda's memo to Berman.

Berman knew that there were Borg in the Delta Quadrant as far back as 1993, so why didn't Janeway?


I have this quote in my head, "we knew this was coming that they were out there" or something like that, but I can't seem to find it, and hells, it might even be from a novel or a novelization.

Didn't Chak say it?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe? But which episode?

 

[SPCTRE]

Pretty sure it was Chuckles, yeah.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe? But which episode?

 

[2takesfrakes]

"Scorpion," I would suspect.

 

[Guy Gardener]

This?

JANEWAY: If we manage to survive the next few days, I'm going to have a little chat with Ensign Hickman. Imitating the Captain, huh? Surely that violates some kind of Starfleet protocol. This day was inevitable. We all knew it. And we've all tried to prepare ourselves for the challenge ahead. But at what point is the risk too great? At what point do we come about and retreat to friendly territory? Could the crew accept living out the rest of their lives in the Delta Quadrant? I keep looking to all these Captains, my comrades in arms. But the truth is, I'm alone.
CHAKOTAY: If that moment comes. we'll face it together. And we'll make the right decision. You're not alone, Kathryn.
JANEWAY: Three years ago, I didn't even know your name. Today I can't imagine a day without you.
TUVOK [OC]: Captain Janeway to the bridge.

Even though the Borg are the threat at hand, it sounds like she is talking about opposition in general rather than the Borg themselves being some looming menace on the horizon they knew was imminent someday since Caretaker.

Meh?

 

[SPCTRE]

Yeah, I also thought there was a line about the Borg, specifically, but I couldn't find it.

 

[Christopher]

You're all overthinking this. Berman just didn't want to complicate the 'Let's all get home' narrative.

Rather, the producers and the network surely wanted Voyager to stand on its own rather than be tied in too closely to concepts from DS9. After all, they were different shows broadcast in different contexts -- DS9 in syndication, VGR on UPN. There was no guarantee they'd both be showing in any given market, or that all viewers of one show would be familiar with the other. So the producers sought to keep them independent of each other. That's probably a large part of the reason for sending Voyager to the other end of the galaxy in the first place -- so that it would be easy to justify the lack of overlap in the two series' storylines. Sure, they threw in some DS9 scenes in the pilot, but after that they wanted the show to be self-contained.

But you're not wrong: Saying "We need to get home to the Federation" is more straightforward and easier for the new or casual viewer to grasp than "We need to get to the Gamma Quadrant because there's a wormhole there that can get us home to the Federation." When something is the foundational mission statement of your series, you want it to be straightforward. Find the one-armed man, get off the island, cure the Hulk, make the leap home.

 

[Timo]

Ben Sisko destroyed the wormhole on Stardate 48212 or thereabouts. Kate Janeway paid a visit and then left for Gamma on Starfate 48315 or thereabouts. And at that point, the fact that Galaxy class starships are just tissue paper for the Jem'Hadar (and the Jem'Hadar have very runny noses and like to blow hard) was already old news.

Had Janeway left a bit earlier, she might not yet have known about the Dominion. Had she left a bit later, she might have witnessed Starfleet's first-ever combat victories against the Dominion. As matters stand, she was only aware of a completely invincible enemy and an equally it not more dangerous ally...

As for the Borg being in Delta, we are never told how Starfleet might have learned of such a thing, and whether it's even true (that is, whether there are more Borg in Delta than in Alpha, Beta or Gamma). It would make sense for Janeway not to suspect any Delta connection.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anwar]

It was in Descent. There was a line on the screen when they were analyzing the Transwarp Conduit that said "Exit point Delta Quadrant" or something.

 

[Catarina]

This?

JANEWAY: If we manage to survive the next few days, I'm going to have a little chat with Ensign Hickman. Imitating the Captain, huh? Surely that violates some kind of Starfleet protocol. This day was inevitable. We all knew it. And we've all tried to prepare ourselves for the challenge ahead. But at what point is the risk too great? At what point do we come about and retreat to friendly territory? Could the crew accept living out the rest of their lives in the Delta Quadrant? I keep looking to all these Captains, my comrades in arms. But the truth is, I'm alone.
CHAKOTAY: If that moment comes. we'll face it together. And we'll make the right decision. You're not alone, Kathryn.
JANEWAY: Three years ago, I didn't even know your name. Today I can't imagine a day without you.
TUVOK [OC]: Captain Janeway to the bridge.

Even though the Borg are the threat at hand, it sounds like she is talking about opposition in general rather than the Borg themselves being some looming menace on the horizon they knew was imminent someday since Caretaker.

Meh?

Chakotay "Looks like this is it, Captain. Borg Space.'- Scorpion part I

The dumb line of the ep: "Their system appears to be vast. Thousands of star systems all Borg (really? Did expect them to have non Borg neighbors? Unless it is a planet of idiots they might)

 

[Lance]

I suspect that Sisko invites most passing Starfleet Captains to dinner, especially early on when his posting was still seen as the frontier which no civilized person would bother with.

"Take A seat, WON'T you CAPtain?! I REcomMEND the VEAL!!!"