When Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant, it would seem they had two options: either fly straight towards Federation space in the Alpha Quadrant, or go to the far end of the Bajorn wormhole in the Gamma Quadrant.
A common response to this question is that the end of the Bajoran wormhole would have been no closer. Indeed, maps of the galaxy that I’ve seen show that the distance is pretty much the same. This makes distance a non-factor, but I can think of two others:
The Federation knows about the approximate location of Borg space because Q took the Enterprise D there. Voyager should have known that flying directly towards Starfleet HQ would take them through Borg space. The Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant would surely be a much lesser evil.
The direct route to the Alpha Quadrant would take Voyager closer to the centre of the galaxy, where stars are denser, therefore there would likely be more civilisations, therefore more potential for conflict. (Voyager could not know in advance that they would be able to circumvent this region of space.)
The only downside I can think of is that the Bajoran wormhole may no longer be there when they get there. Why didn’t Voyager fly to the end of the Bajoran wormhole in the Gamma Quadrant?
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