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

Popular posts from this blog

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir

the lord of the rings - Why is Gimli allowed to travel to Valinor?

Gimli was allowed to go to Valinor despite not being a ring bearer. Is this explained in detail or just with the one line "for his love for Galadriel"? Answer There's not much detail about this aside from what's said in Appendix A to Return of the King: We have heard tell that Legolas took Gimli Glóin's son with him because of their great friendship, greater than any that has been between Elf and Dwarf. If this is true, then it is strange indeed: that a Dwarf should be willing to leave Middle-earth for any love, or that the Eldar should receive him, or that the Lords of the West should permit it. But it is said that Gimli went also out of desire to see again the beauty of Galadriel; and it may be that she, being mighty among the Eldar, obtained this grace for him. More cannot be said of this matter. And Appendix B: Then Legolas built a grey ship in Ithilien, and sailed down Anduin and so over Sea; and with him, it is said, went Gimli the Dwarf . And when that sh

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l

What is the etymology of Doctor Who?

I recently decided to watch Doctor Who, and started viewing the 2005 version. I have the first two episodes from the first season, and I can't help but wonder what is the etymology of the name "Doctor Who"? And why does the protagonist call himself "the Doctor" (or is it "the doctor")? Answer In the very first episode of Doctor Who (way back in 1963), the Doctor has a granddaughter going by the name "Susan Foreman", and the junkyard where the TARDIS is has the sign "I.M. Foreman". Barbara, who becomes one of the Doctor's companions, calls him "Doctor Foreman" (probably assuming that is his name given his relationship to Susan), and Ian (another early companion) does the same in the second episode, to which the Doctor says: Eh? Doctor who? What's he talking about? "Foreman" is most likely selected as a convenient surname for Susan to use because it happened to be on display near where the TARDIS landed.