Skip to main content

star trek - How was Voyager still in the Delta Quadrant at the end of the series?


In "Course: Oblivion", the duplicate of Chakotay indicates that Voyager has not been traveling in a straight line. The most logical conclusion would be that they were traveling along one of the galactic arms in a kind of S pattern toward, and eventually away from, the galactic core. Alternatively, they could be traveling down an arm until they were close enough to Federation space to "make a run" across one of the "null" regions between two arms/spurs.


Either would make sense since they would need to stop for supplies, fuel, repairs, maintenance etc. and the best places to do that would be in areas where there were stars, planets and, hopefully, advanced civilizations.


In "The Gift", Kes throws Voyager "about 10 years" (9,500 LY) further along on their journey and safely past Borg space. In "Night", they find a wormhole that takes them to the other side of a 2,500 LY "void" in space (don't get me started) which should equate to at least another 2 years. In "Timeless", they use the slipstream drive and take another 10 years off their trip (somewhere between 9,000 and 10,000 LY based on previous statements). Finally, in "Dark Frontier", they use a Borg transwarp coil to go another 20,000 LY, which Janeway oddly estimates to be 15 years (odd since up to now 1,000 LY = roughly 1 year).



Based on statements made on screen they should be about 42,000 LY further along by the middle of season 5 not including their normal progress which should, in itself, account for between 3,000 and 4,000 LY (since they like to stop and poke at stuff). That accounts for a great deal more than half of their trip by the middle of the 5th season.


Assumptions:



  • According to Memory Alpha, the Milky Way is 100,000 LY wide.

  • The Delta Quadrant borders the Beta Quadrant and the Gamma Quadrant but Voyager set a course for Earth, not the Idran system (Gamma Quadrant side of the Bajoran wormhole) which implied that would be a shorter trip.

  • The Beta Quadrant was mentioned a handful of times in the series, the Gamma Quadrant was (almost) never mentioned which implied they were going through the Beta Quadrant.

  • The would have to go from one border of the Beta Quadrant to the other.

  • Earth/The Sol System lies on the boundary between the Beta and Alpha Quadrant

  • The Caretaker array was closer to the Beta/Delta Quadrant boundary than the Delta/Gamma Quadrant boundary.



All of that said, shouldn't Voyager have crossed the boundary into the Beta Quadrant while they were using their stolen transwarp coil in "Dark Frontier" at the latest?



Answer



The short answer is that they shouldn't have still been in the Delta Quadrant, but that would have dramatically conflicted with the average viewer's understanding of their situation.


In an interview with Ex-Astris-Scientia, Rick Sternbach (Star Trek Senior Illustrator and Technical Advisor) dealt with this specific question in a Q+A;



I can only guess that the writers simply wanted to keep only the Delta Quadrant in people's minds, without having to deal with anything new. They didn't deal with what I call "situational tech" like Voyager's location/trajectory terribly well, even with adequate explanations and diagrams.



Most trek nerds agree that since Janeway confirmed (in VOY: Renaissance Man) that the R'Kaal control "thousands of parsecs from here to the edge of the Beta Quadrant" and that since Voyager effectively jumped them (in VOY: Dark Frontier), that Voyager actually entered the Beta Quadrant at the end of season 5...



Janeway (V/O) : Captain's Log, Stardate 52619.2 : We got another 20,000 light-years out of the transwarp coil before it gave out.




... which places the entire 6th and 7th season in the Beta Quadrant.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...
Post a Comment
Read more

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more