I always thought Blink of an Eye would have been their best bet. The civilization was moving at astronomical speed. They could have simply waited a few hours out of range of the planet to see if they had developed some kind of faster than warp technology. Always bugged me!
Yeah, I always thought that also. Kinda the same with that civilization on The Orville actually. And we got a payoff from that one, never did on Voyager.
No guarantees they ever would though. If they found there was no way to bring their homework in sync with the rest of the galaxy they may never have bothered with warp drove because what would be the point?
@@andylongman355 no guarantees, sure, but give it a few hours and see if this super advanced civilization comes up with any solutions! Plus the starship was basically part of their religion. Even though they found out the truth, I’m sure they may have put some of their best minds on it if asked for help 🤷♂️
@@holodoctor1 Eh. If they had, then what would of stopped them from just tracking Voyager down later to help them? If they new FTL wasn't fast enough to catch up with Voyager having a few hours head start, it could hardly be expected to get them all home.
There’s a map of the galaxy in the DS9 Tech manual that shows the Gamma Quadrant end of the Bajoran Wormhole is actually slightly further away from where Voyager was than Earth was, and Voyager wasn’t so much traveling towards Earth as it was towards the Federation, so the last few years of their journey would be through familiar and friendly territory, whereas the Gamma route would be through largely unexplored and possibly contested territory
Indeed. The presenters on this channel don't seem to understand that Federation/Romulan/Klingon space is a small part of the Alpha quadrant. Just entering the alpha Quadrant would still mean a decade or two more travel.
@@danielebowman I don't think the writers of the show even got that point. "Returning to the Alpha Quadrant" was spoken of as being tantamount to arriving home; which is not at all the case.
What gets me is that in one episode Voyager crosses the Mutara Nebula. At that point they were back in territory familiar to the Federation. Hell, they weren't that far from where Regula One was. From there it would have been simple to plot a course to the nearest Federation colony or starbase.
@@danielebowman Romulan and Klingon space were always shown as majority parts of the Beta quadrant on Star Trek maps but both did occupy small parts of the Alpha quadrant too.
Geordi La Forge: "I don't like the person I would have to thank." Translation: "Thanking him would make me feel awful forever, even if what he gave me is wonderful beyond all belief."
The episode that indtroduces the Doctor's mobile emitter, where Voyager is at Earth but in the past, they could have slinged around the sun like Kirk did in ST4
@@scockery The Temporal prime directive allows for pretty much anything that did happen to happen while anything that didn't won't or can't (or if you prefer it's a crime......). Essentially anything Kirk or especially Archer did or more crucially may have done has to play out. Daniels and (maybe) Gary 7 see to that, it also explains Daniels screw ups. As for Janeway, Picard and Sisko that's easier, by the 24th record keeping is better and the temporal prime directive exists. You also have temporal investigations established and S31 ingrained, either or both of which could be a part of the temporal cold war or in contact with their future selves, which doesn't break the TPD as long as records show that's what happened. The upshot is they aren't selective, any instance where they shouldn't interfere is just known. It also explains why their only known overt instance takes place far from Fed space, that report is essentially the equivalent of a UFO meeting a ship of ours beyond pluto. Credible but not in your face enough for mass consumption/worry.
You missed three major opportunities…. 1. They could have made the deal with Q or a new deal with him at subsequent encounters. 2. The first time they encountered a borg cube it was abandoned. They could have simply helped themselves to transwarp coils and whatever else. They had another chance to do this when they adopted the borg children from the disabled cube. 3. They could have easily made a deal with the Voth (the evolved dinosaurs) to be returned home in exchange for “protecting doctrine”. They had significantly superior transwarp technology that could transport them quickly.
2 would of been risky they didnt have 7 at the time and it would of been guess work on getting it to work and could of ended up summoning another borg ship to get said tech as Seven states they offen return to salvge tech and ships 3 the voth would of taken that as blackmail and just killed them
@@realhollow3675 Agreed. The Voth were not a kindly type...they would have just killed them. The Sicarians though...they didn't want to give them their technology...why not ask for them to build a larger gateway they could fly voyager through...they keep the technology, voyager gets home? Or just let their people pass through to Earth...keep whatever data the ship had and detonate the rest so it didn't fall into enemy hands?
With the Voth, they wouldn't have tried to make such a deal with the leadership. As another mentioned, that would come across as blackmail and it could get them all killed. Instead, I always thought that Chakotay should have offered a deal to the Voth scientist who actually wanted to explore his people's distant origin: "Please come to Earth and get to know what is quite possibly your planet of origin. Bring your whole family with you, since your government just threatened them in order to get you (the scientist) to stop you from sharing your research with the rest of the Voth. And while you're at it, could your ship possibly tow Voyager all the way there?" 😂
The Bajoran Wormhole option was addressed while Voyager was still airing. Earth and the Gamma Quadrant side of the wormhole were both 75,000 light years away from Ocampa. But as wormholes are notoriously unstable Voyager could have spent 75 years getting there only to find it’s gone and they have another 65,000 light year trip from the Gamma Quadrant. Not to mention they would have to have crossed all of Dominion space to get to it.
The Dominion was definitely known as hostile at that point, as the Odyssey was destroyed in the episode that aired June 13, 1994, while Voyager premiered January 16, 1995. On the other hand, if it was a choice between facing the Borg or the Dominion, which would most choose?
The Barzan Wormhole would have been the best option had they gone through after discovering what Arridor and Kol were doing on the planet, then let the Federation and Ferengi authorities deal with it after Voyager returns. Voyager would have reported they used a verteron particles to help stabilize the Delta quadrant end of the wormhole to get back. Had the Federation setup a way to stabilize the wormhole more long term, just imagine the stories this could have opened up?
I wish those two had turned up as the Ferengi trying to steal Sevens nanoprobes in the later episode Inside Man. Voyager crew owed them some comeuppance.
The Bajoran wormhole was approximately 60,000-65,000 lightyears away meaning the trip would have been only 5-10 years shorter, AND Voyager left DS9 AFTER the federation had received a warning to stay out of the gamma quadrant in DS9 2-26 "Jem-hadar" so the majority of the time would have been spent traveling through territory known to be controlled by a hostile force instead of unknown territory then the last few years in Romulan territory.
Not to mention they had no way to know it would even still be there by the time they reached it. They could travel those 65000 light years to find it had collapsed and still have another 70 years to get home.
@@WillWatkins92 Even without factoring in the Dominion, traveling almost the exact same distance to get to a wormhole that may or may not be there, resulting in only shaving about 10 years off their trip if they're lucky and doubling their return time if they're not is a pretty stupid idea.
@@WillWatkins92 That's not a plot hole - that's not what plot hole means. It's just a line of dialogue that suggests that Chakotay didn't know about the Dominion, or at least knew that Torres didn't, where as Janeway would have. Given that Chakotay was still a barely trusted Marquis captain at the time of Caretaker, when the topic would have come up (and considering the Federation had just recently, within the last 3 or 4 months, lost a Galaxy Class starship, one of its most powerful vessels, in a straight fight against the Dominion, the topic was maybe even classified), it seems reasonable she might not have felt it appropriate to tell him. And the conversation was moot and irreleant by the time Janeway would have trusted Chakotay completely. The Dominion weren't relevant to anything they were dealing with, except maybe in that first episode when Janeway made the choice, and it's simply not a very reasonable expectation that a Starfleet Officer know about every alien species, faction, culture, phenomenon, technology, or event that happens in and around Federation space. Remember, we only ever see the adventures of maybe two crews at a time, out of thousands of Starships, in a few fairly narrow windows of time (4 years in the 2150s, 4 years in the 2250s, 5ish years in the 2260s, a couple of weeks here and there scattered throughout the 2270s-90s, a fairly well fleshed out run of time between 2365 and 2381, and then the adventures of one retired Admiral in 2399-2402. And a couple of years in the 32nd century.), and even the nerdiest of us struggle to recall all the details of every race they encounter. Imagine how many topics of conversation there must be after 220 years of nearly uninterupted exploration of the Galaxy by thousands of Federation Starships? The expectation that Chakotay know about the Dominion prior to the news that they wiped out the Marquis, when the Dominion were nothing more than one new dangerous thing (of many) very recently found in the distant Gamma Quadrant (and therefore pretty irrelevant to the immediacy of the Marquis' tussle with the Cardassians) at the point he was taken from the Alpha Quadrant, is, I think, illogical. It's not a plot hole. It's a perfectly reasonable supposition. There's no reason to think he would know about them even if Janeway had been briefed.
@@davidmansell5562 True. The Maquis was most likely so occupied in their fight against the Cardassians, they didn't cared for the bigger politics. Also outside of Tuvok all Maquis-Members on Chakotays ship were already away from Starfleet for several years = they most likely didn't knew anything about the Odyssey and other occasions. But Janeway did.
Ironically enough, there is another piece of technology if Tom Paris was given the opportunity to study it and be able to implement on Voyager. It's on the episode "Vis a Vis", it was called a coaxial warp drive. It would give the vessel using that drive the ability to "fold" space therefore shortening the journey. This technology previously thought only hypothetical by Starfleet.
And the Coaxial warp drive was of course completely forgotten by next week and never mentioned again, despite them _having a shuttle fitted with it_ sitting in their shuttle bay. Not to mention Paris completely understood the tech and in fact solved its major glaring issue. Voyager could have been fitted with it, and if there was some "size based" limitations (which didn't effect the big ship belonging the original pilot who'd had their body stolen and caught Paris in the bodyjumpers body) then at least the Delta Flyer could have been equipped. Even if it didn't shave that much time off due to having to recharge or recover or whatever, it was still a great "get out of dodge" jump drive that would leave any hostiles eating vacuum as they would just vanish, with nothing such as a warp trail to follow. Also very useful when you want to sneak past some unfriendly territory (such as a anti telepath Empire).
@@casbot71The species you're thinking of is the Devore. Where they were helping those telepathic refugees cross their space, and Janeway uses her wits, with a touch of her feminine wiles, in order to outsmart Inspector Kashyk.
@@casbot71 Imagine making 200 trips to ferry everyone home. Or just go home, give that thing to Starfleet and come back with a ship once they ironed out whatever flaws it had.
When watching the pilot I always thought 'Why didn't they activate the caretaker array to take them home and leave behind a photon torpedo to detonate on a timer delay?' Did no one on the bridge think of that?
Exactly! Janeway was in such a rush to destroy the Array because of the Kazon ships threatening the Ocampa. Early in the episode, she had Tuvok examine the Array technology to see how it worked. You mean that they couldn't figure out how to use the Array to push the Kazon ships a few dozen light years away? Once the Kazon were out of the picture, Voyager could figure out some way to make the Ocampa self-sufficient for centuries or more and also protect them from any further Kazon attack. After all that, it'd be time to learn how to move the Array to Federation space and bring Voyager along for the ride.
I'll play devils advocate. Lets say they do that, they set a timer and go. So first some questions, how long doe sit take to power on the array? and does it have to be on the entire journey? how long does it take to get into position? Any number of things could have gone wrong, from the torp being set to fast, or to slow. To the kazon getting on the array and disarming or moving the torp before it went off once voy leaves. Logic would make this not be the best option. Also iirc more kazon were on the way, so while the voyager crew was mucking around trying to figure out how it work, it would of attracted more kazon. And iirc they array would have to repower up after use. So when they pushed the first group away, more would arrive before it recharged. Voy also did not know the kazon were split by sect and not united at the time. There are many spots where this could of gone wrong. Destroying the array, in the scenario played ou tin the pilot, was the best option. Being how the federation consider other lives and things. If Janeway was say Romulan they would of said 'f the ocomba' and just left.
One thing Janeway could have done to aid Voyager’s return home would be to put all non-essential crew in stasis. This would save on ship resources and consequently reduce the need to seek out resources. In addition, for those in stasis, the journey home would appear to go by in an instant. Also, Janeway could have prioritised getting the crew home above exploring the delta quadrant. Likewise, in the story ark of Future’s End where Voyager is sent back in time to 1990’s Earth, Janeway could have put the whole crew in stasis, hidden on the outer edges of the Solar System, to be woken up when sufficient time had passed to reach the 24th century. Janeway could have just refused to follow Captain Braxton’s instructions to follow him through the time portal, back to the 24th century in the Delta Quadrant. She owed Braxton no favours, and, Voyager had already stood up to Braxton and came out on top in another time line. The Botany Bay, 1990’s technology in Space Seed from Star Trek the original series kept Khan and his crew in suspended animation for 271 years, so, within the Star Trek universe, extreme long term suspended animation is possible.
@@DavidKnowles0 I suppose the number of essential crew would be based upon whether Janeway was focused on exploration or getting the crew home. Prior to being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager was a ship of exploration, so, part of the crew complement would be made up science officers, alongside the engineering, combat trained crew and command officers. If Janeway focused on getting the crew home, the science officers could probably be safely placed in stasis without impacting on the running of the ship. In the fourth season episode ‘One’, Seven of Nine and the Doctor (who was restricted to the medial bay) were the sole active crew for a month due to the rest of the crew having to go into stasis due to the ship’s journey taken them through a toxic nebula. So, I think there would be some wriggle room as to who was an ‘essential’ crew member. Even putting 20 people into stasis would represent just over 13 percent of the crew compliment of 152 (as mentioned in the 37’s episode) - which could offer a saving on resources.
@@jeffwalker7185 Except that the Voyager was on a shakedown cruise when the series starts so didn't have a full crew compliment onboard. They were side tracked to hunt for the Maquis because the Voyager had been designed to fly through the plasma storms the Maquis were hiding in, and because Tuvok was already slotted to be Janeway's second in command after he finished his undercover mission to arrest Chakotay.
She could have parked near a black hole for a bit until time dilation brought them into sync, or create near light speed travel for a while to do the same thing. No stasis needed, so technology wouldn't be required to operate for a long time. (I'm not sure why it didn't cost them centuries/millenia when they were inside the event horizon of a black hole in one of the first episodes.)
@@jeffwalker7185 except the stasis wouldnt have worked, given that even in the ep with 7 and the doctor being the only ones awake they were constantly 'on duty' if only to keep up with maintenance duties, and if this had happened beforehand with no extra crew awake they would never have made it
The reason the Bajoran wormhole was a bad idea was that it wouldn't have shaved much time off of their journey. And if they got there, and it turned out it was unusable for whatever reason (like being surrounded by murderously hostile Dominion ships, for example), then the detour would have added a huge amount of time to their journey. The risk/reward balance just doesn't work.
counterpoint: Voyager, by the end of the show run, had a bunch of new tech they made via help from other races. If they went in that direction and ended up near the wormhole, they would have had stuff they could have used to clear a path. And if it was unusable, they could have just parked near the wormhole and waited until it became usable.
By that time the wormhole was well known to be stable and inhabited by the prophets so I don't see why they wouldn't have used it. The dominion threat prpbably wasn't known at the time so again, I don't see why not.
@@ast5515 *nods* Also, with the time it took for Voyager to make its trip through the galaxy, the dominion war would have likely ended or is in the middle of ending when Voyager finally does get back, if they headed for the wormhole.
I agree, it's easy for everyone to say now that the wormhole was stable but the risk was it could of no longer be available (I think even in DS9 there was an episode where people couldn't use it). As a captain who has to make the final decision do you go with travelling how ever many years to something that may or may not take you home or do the direct route which is longer but at least you get home.
@@ast5515 Voyager left only a few weeks after the disastrous first contact with the Jem'Hadar, and was shown to have information in their database on them, as holographic Jem'Hadar and their ships make brief appearances on the show a couple times, both before and after they regain communication with Starfleet. For all they know, the wormhole could have intentionally been collapsed at any time before they even got to it, as was shown in the original timeline from "The Visitor" when the Klingons took control of the Bajor system and immediately blew it up to keep the Dominion out.
1- They could ask Q for a lift. 2- They could use the discovery spore drive 3- They could have negotiated tech with the earth dinossaurs from the "distant earth" dinossaurs.
1. That would depend on Q. If Q was in the mood, he could have sent them to Earth, but in a bunch of pieces. 2. Wasn't that a experimental drive that only that ship could have handled? 3. If I remember that episode correctly, didn't those guys sort of said no to them a whole bunch and got so mad that they decided not to work with Voyager in the end?
1- Q would only do it if they agreed to cause problems on purpose for him, so no. 2- The spore drive was classified at the highest level over a century before Voyager and stayed secret for the next 900 years, so also no. 3- The Voth were extremely uninterested in negotiating with anyone, much less a species whose very existence disproved the religious dogma that their entire society was built upon, so again also no.
@@jonnyf3374 the omega particle is also classified and is in the databank. Classified does not mean deleted. Janeway just can't tell ppl about it and probably would take some years replicating a 100+ years old experiment
If I remember the Sikarian trajector could only work on something as large as Voyager while it was in close orbit to the planet due to some unique quality in the mantle
@@BuhurtUK I am sure the Borg likely changed a few Sikari into Borg, pulled the info out of them, then mined other planets that had the same mineral before building their own drive.
@@TwinPeaksIndustries That is precisely what I was thinking. Offer them the federation story collection in exchange for a boost. They were against giving the technology to Voyager and that is fine Starfleet has similar rules. but what about a ship-sized trajectory. It wouldn't have been all the way but 40.000 lightyears would have been over half the way.
@@ADMNtekLiving without money has obviously made most humans (and other Federation citizens) pretty dumb and gullible, and not know how to make any profit.
@@molybdaen11The idea behind Voyager was that it was a Federation ship stranded on the other side of the galaxy, far from anything familiar and completely on its own. And the only way to get home was to travel through unknown and possibly hostile territory. So if only 2 seasons follow the original concept and then for five more seasons it's just seen as “another ship in the Alpha Quadrant”, that wouldn't really fit with the original idea.
I'm pretty sure they never figured out how to plan the exit of warp 10. Since you technically occupy all spaces in the galaxy at once. You'd really just be rolling a die hoping you end up closer and hoping the doctor could revert everyone every single time. And its dangerous that you could end up in some kinda spacial phenomenon that eats your potentially damaged ship and incapacitated crew on exit.
This was the big reason. In the episode, Paris stated that he knew the crew was looking for him and he shut down the drive. That brought him back to the start. So Voyager would first would have to figure out how to exit, probably by doing a lot of tests, then scale it up to Voyager. It also is unknown how many times one can be devolved back to original before complications happen.
Sounds like the improbability drive. Occupy every point in space and you don't know what species you will be when you exit. Probably a good thing they never pursued it further, illegitimate lizard babies are enough from one odd coupling but a whole crew of them.
I feel like they could have had the ship pull up a point in space it has records of, then have that coordinates being pinged a whole bunch while having a holographic version of the bridge and some of the crew keeping track of where the ship is going on the holodeck. Once the ship comes out of warp 10, just have the holo crew park the ship somewhere safe while the doctor turn the incapacitated crew back to normal. If a holographic Moriarty can control the Enterprise from its holodecks, then it should be simple to do the same on Voyager.
The thing is that you don't need to go all the way to warp 10. If they never reach warp 10, they never have to deal with the advanced evolution nonsense. The higher you go above warp 9.9, the closer you get to infinite velocity. This was possible because of the unusually high quality dilithium Voyager found on that one planet. Voyager should have mined as much dilithium as they could stuff into their cargo holds, to bring back home. Then use it to fly at warp 9.9999 or whatever, with some kind of safety mechanism to kick them out of warp if they got too close to 10. A 70 year journey at normal warp speeds therefore becomes only a few months' trip.
Klingon: "I am Korr! Now in charge of this Borg Sphere. Let´s destroy the tactical Cube and we´ll be on our way" Janeway: "That´s good, but before u leave, don´t forget to leave us present, like a Transwarp Coil" Klingon: "We can´t, Coils won´t be installed until tuesday"
@@scockery VOY: Bioneural gel packs are fancy new tech and can't be replicated." Also, "Photon torpedoes can't be replicated, we only have X amount. Also VOY: It's a shame we couldn't make more gel packs, or replicate transwarp coils, but hey! We were able to magically make 10X more torpedoes and a second Delta Flyer! Rocks to replicators, baby! ('Cept when it really counts...)"
@@xileets The anti-matter is the issue with torpedoes and the Flyer (and second Flyer), so I guess they got more anti-matter at Auntie Matta's Space Truck Stop. Or torpedoes from an arms dealer that wasn't framed by Seven of Nine's faulty memories or junk dealer that didn't have a "Carrie" shuttle craft.
9:10 Seven of Nine was scared of sending Voyager home because she knew what type of Welcoming Committee would be waiting for her, since was ex borg....after assumlating data and learning about the Federation, the more she wanted to keep the ship away. As someone who knows everything, she sure kept the crew in the dark for a lot of reasons. Either she knew what was going on at Earth or she was afraid to go get herself.
The Dauntless was also an option. In the episode where Voyager came across the “star fleet” ship with slipstream drive they could have over powered the alien and took the Dauntless home.
The entire third act of the episode disagrees with you. The controls had been locked out and Janeway and Seven were only barely able to get beamed out in time before the Dauntless exited slipstream directly in front of a bunch of Borg cubes. If Chakotay had sent a team to try to secure it, everyone would have gotten assimilated.
@@williambryant6175It was big enough, it just didn't have luxury accommodations, replicators, or holodecks. There'd be more crew in bunks, but it would have been much faster. (Although, from what we know about warp speeds, it should have only take 5-10 years in Voyager, anyway.)
At the time, I thought the Barzan wormhole was the best option and fastest if they had used time travel. They could have gathered extra dilithlium, slingshot back like three months, repaired and wait for the wormhole to reappear at a location that they had missed. Maybe alter their warp signature so the past voyager wouldn’t have noticed. And being three months out of sync with the rest of starfleet is not the end of the world. It’s not as bad as the Bozeman.
Although it always worked in Star Trek, they frequently mentioned how unlikely success would be for using the slingshot method. Janeway wouldn't have risked it.
You forgot about the episode where Q offered to snap his fingers and bring the crew home if Janeway slept with him and had his kid. What captain wouldn’t open their legs for their crew’s safety? I bet even Picard would have taken a shot to the face if he was captain of voyager.
@@KanchidoShinokyoufu Well in fairness, no one knew that was how the impregnation would be happen. Until that point it was assumed they were talking a sexual exchange. Also we don't know what her being pregnant would have entailed. For example...it obviously would have been "not normal" by our standards...and we don't know what would happen after birth. The point of the child was to understand parenting...would Janeway have kept the child? Would she have had to go to the Continuum? Would she have had to have powers like Riker to deal with a Q child? Those types of things.
As a female captain I would've... But then again my sister keeps telling me I'd be a "Sloot" as a woman... Still, it's the the benefit of the crew, sis !
Regarding Item 10, they supposedly had just enough special dilithium to do this with a shuttlecraft. They didn’t have enough to do Voyager’s warp core.
Also, the shuttle's engines had to be reinforced, because they kept leaving the shuttle behind. Doing the same to voyager would have been a massive undertaking, and exponentially increase the risk. Small shuttle = minimal risk.
Death Wish (S2 E18) was Voyager's earliest, best bet at getting back without the use of alternate timelines or out-of-character decisions. Janeway has one Q who wants to be given asylum on Voyager and another Q who wants her to deny the request. Literally one omnipotent being on either side of the issue at hand. Janeway decides to hold a hearing on the request, but DOESN'T demand that whichever Q she finds for send Voyager and crew home? Two Q's, no waiting, but Voyager manages to pull what felt like an homage to Gilligan's Island's habit of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory for the sake of keeping the show going.
Here's an option to consider: Bring Ocampas onboard in Episode 1. After 3 years, they become one with the Force and can apparently send Voyager 10,000 lightyears away... I think 10+ Ocampas will do :P
In the episode “Q2”, the crew get to babysit a teenage Q, son of the regular recurring character(and John DeLancie’s actual son). He does something clever with a shuttlecraft and folds space so as to travel further. Couldn’t they just analyse the computer records to see what he did and copy that on Voyager? If they really understood it, then maybe they could choose the exit point close to home.
She didn't even have to sleep with him, just help him procreate. As we saw with Q and .... umm... Q , all they did was touch fingers and Q (Trellane) was conceived. Everyone home, Janeway has to endure carrying a Q for 9 months, happy ending, no-one dies.
I'm very much appreciating (intentionally or not) that you saved the 10th entry on this list to mention breaking the warp 10 barrier. - tips hat - Well played :)
1) Q 2) older Kes ??!? During her original departure she kicked them 10 years farther into their journey. As an older & more advanced Kes couldn't she have gotten them home or much farther along? (after she cooled off & remembered the crew was good to her)
I doubt the Borg would have been willing to share their technology with an enemy force, Janeway wouldn't have trusted them to not just immediately assimilate Voyager the second they handed over the nanoprobe designs, and the Borg also couldn't trust Janeway to not take the transwarp tech and run if it meant also leaving the Borg to their doom.
The Borg couldn't be trusted to give the tech in a way that Voyager could actually use. And even if they did they could still probably overtake Voyager.
I am the same way on Threshhold. I tried to reason why they didn't try warp 10. 1: they figured out the Voyager may not hold up at warp 10 for the whole trip back. 2: (most importantly) Not everyone is human. The Doctor could reverse humans, but could he reverse all the other non-human crew? This is the one I settle on, not that it matters.
I'd include the episode "Shattered" where Voyager is split into different time periods by a chronokinetic surge. The Captain Janeway from before Voyager gets sent to the Delta Quadrant offers to present day Chakotay to align the chronoton serum injected into the gel packs to *her* time period so she can prevent Voyager from going into the Badlands and being sent into the Delta Quadrant in the first place.
regarding #9, i think it has been said in other youtube Star Trek lore channels and maybe even canon, that to fly to the gamma quadrant and hitting the Bajoran wormhole was an even longer trip than just going back to the Alpha Quadrant and would have taken many more years than just flying back to the alpha quadrant.
The plothole with Threshold could have been solved by a single line by the Doctor akin to "This procedure has a 50% probability of success." And then it's self explanatory why they wouldn't subject the whole crew to it.
It would be easier to deem it an unviable means of travel. By fixing the point of achieving infinite velocity as an anchor from which deceleration will always occur, leaving no way to come out somewhere else.
that might be true but you know who could pilot a warp 10 ship with no problem. a Hologram or maybe another form of autopilot. they could have used it to at least establish 2-way contact with Starfleet. who could have potentially looked into the tech and made it safe.
To be fair, I thought the Treaty of Algeron was only about the use of cloaking tech in the Alpha quadrant ... hence why the Defiant could get away with it going to the Gamma quadrant. So technically, Janeway is free to use cloaking tech to enter a transwarp hub in the Delta quadrant as long as it's turned off before she exits on the Alpha side ...
They'd have to get hold of a cloaking device first. The Defiant's was provided by the Romulans, it's not something that any Starfleet ship could just whip up in the replicator if they decided the treaty didn't apply. While they were on good terms with at least one Delta quadrant species that had cloaking technology (the Kraylor) the value of cloaking technology is generally depicted as too high for any species to be interested in trading it.
The treaty applies anywhere, the Federation was only allowed the use of one cloaking device to only be used in the Gamma Quadrant and only in exchange for all intel regarding the Dominion, and that agreement was made after Voyager had already arrived in the Delta Quadrant.
It would probably not have worked on the borg. Even the federation knew how to detect any ship with tachions. Ans the borg fought many exotic species before.
The thing with the bajoran wormhole bothered me the whole time, but I said to myself, maybe Janeway thought `What if something happened to that wormhole in this unstable times because of the dominion threat?´
Voyager left the Alpha Quadrant before the Dominon war started. Unless they got a update about it when they talked to Reg through the wormhole I don't see how Janeway would know.
Voyager got lost, after The Search. So while the war hadby begun proper, the Dominion were a clear and present threat. But would it have saved much time? For all we know the journey from the caretaker array to the gamma quadrant end of the Wormhole might not have been much shorter.
I´m not sure, if everything was aired in the right order in my country and maybe that got me confused about the timeline. And even if, I might not have been that observant back then as you guys. 😆
My mind went straight to number 10, which I'm afraid is sadly (but hilariously), at this point, one of the most iconic of all Voyager episodes. Also I just love the scenario of Voyager showing up in the Federation on autopilot with an all space salamander crew and a very put upon EMH.
I always wondered why they didn't head for the Bajoran wormhole too. I think I saw where someone explained that given the position of the wormhole in the Gamma Quadrant, the trip would have taken just a long or longer.
Sources put it a similar distance compared to Earth, give or take 15,000 light years either way. Assuming best case it being closer at 60,000 light years it still wasn't a good option. Firstly despite being a known stable wormhole they had no idea what it's condition would have been like by the time they reached it, especially considering the existence of aliens (the Prophets) who live inside and showed in the very first episode of DS9 their control over it and willingness to close the entrances due to disruptions ships entering causes them. Secondly even before Voyager left The Dominion was a massive known openly hostile threat having already destroyed multiple ships & colonies from the Alpha Quadrant inside the Gamma Quadrant including easily destroying The Federation's Galaxy-class USS Odyssey and had also beaten their new prototype warship The Defiant taking its crew captive. At the time The Federation saw war with The Dominion as being inevitable. So choosing the Bajoran wormhole would have meant facing a massive hostile civilisation with ships that greatly outclasses their own, and even if they somehow made it to the wormhole it was a massive gamble whether they would actually be able to use it which would have meant another 70,000 light year journey towards Earth if not.
In the episode “Hope and Fear” they meet Arturis, who is broadly quite enlightened and speaks countless languages. He has a ship with slipstream drive capability. At this point, however, they already did the deal with the Borg to defeat Species 8472, which angered Arturis(understandably, he is a rather tragic villain). But if they had met him much earlier, they might have been allies, and he might have helped them travel home.
is he a villain? he wanted justice in the form of Janeway being punished for her crimes against his people (Genocide being a rather serious crime) He's only considered a villain because Janeway unilaterally declares that he didn't want justice, but revenge. I'll have to keep that one in mind in case I ever find myself on trial.
I think that the most obviously easiest way to get home is for them to simply ask Q to send them there. My head exploded every time I saw an episode involving Q
Basically most of these hinge on the crew choosing to be worse people in order to get home, which was generally the moral dilemma of those episodes that led to them deciding it was better to uphold their principles than cause harm to others in order to shorten their trip like the Equinox crew did. As for just going through the Gamma Quadrant instead, let me remind you that Voyager departed Deep Space Nine only a few weeks after first contact with the Jem'Hadar, and if the Galaxy-class USS Odyssey got its nacelles fatally handed to it that day, they probably didn't want to risk what would happen to their much smaller, less heavily-armed vessel. And if a quick shuttle test flight breaking the Warp 10 barrier was as catastrophic for the entire genome of its pilot as it was, I'd say they probably didn't want to take the risk that a much longer flight might cause even more, even deadlier problems. For instance, what do you do if your ship's critical bio-neural circuitry hyper-evolves over the course of a 70 thousand lightyear flight home, to say nothing of what unknowndamage the stresses could also put on Voyager's inorganic components. There were too many variables that hadn't even explored yet to take the risk.
Ha ha, voyager beamed a Horgon through the micro wormhole to a romulan 20 years in the past. I wonder if he kept it for himself or left it on Risa (accidentally on purpose). And R2D2. Hilarious. I did blink and miss it the first time. And a video in video of Tom Paris rubbing his face in a "not this again" manner is a nice touch. Lots of others spotted, some clever, some amusing but too many to mention.
The Bajoran Wormhole idea is a good for a Voyager reboot. Let's just say the Caretaker brought a third federation ship to the delta quadrant (Voyager, Equinox and our newest ship). In this series, they DO go for the wormhole, but they get the more modern trek darker storylines with actual consequences for each episode. No magically repaired ship! Voyager was a brilliant concept, but the story of the week/episodic format took away some of the inherent danger of the concept.
It is silly that the Sicarians wouldn't allow the Voyager crew to transit to the alpha quadrant. They didn't have to share the tech, they could have sent just the crew with resources to contact starfleet for a pickup.
This was something I never understood. They could travel "up to 40,000 light years" earth was 70,000 light years, why wouldn't they have negotiated to build a outpost on a planet with the correct core so they could planet hop. then disassemble the second one after sending Voyagers crew home.
The Sicarians weren't the altrusitic type, they were all about self-indulgence through their bountiful resources and tech and having novel experiences with new aliens and civilizations - a more Risa approach to Starfleet's mission. They heard rumors about Voyager, the Lost Ship from some distant corner of the galaxy, and just thought, "Nice! This'll be fun!" Giving Voyager practical resources? _Building_ another outpost? "Sounds too much like work."
@@Brasc Thats a good idea, but go with me on this one... The chance to visit federation worlds, interact with their people and eat their amazing pie? A entire quadrant of the galaxy full of sentient people with stories, food, and art to explore, just by building one more spatial projector, which the crew of voyager would probably do most of the work on.
Torres did touch on the fact figuring out how to navigate at Warp 10 would need to get figured out even though Paris was able to stumble his way back to Voyager I guess the idea of winding up in another galaxy by accident was to big of a risk.
as we later learned in discovery, the galactic barrier is quite a complicated blockade. neither wormholes can penetrate it (wormholes always stay inside the galaxy), the spore drive that works universewide and through all the parallel universes can't penetrate it, why should warp 10 manage that?
Janeway - "I'm telling you Chakotay, I feel like every time we get close to a way to get home, some invisible force creates some problem that makes it impossible" Chakotay - "I know how you feel captain, maybe Q is just messing with us" Janeway - "I don't think it's Q but I get the distinct feeling we are being manipulated for the entertainment of somebody" Star Trek Voyager writing team leader - "Guys I think she is onto us, we need to be more careful, if she learns the truth and breaks the fourth wall we are all out of a job"
It was a ridiculous plot line that Starlet negotiated they wouldn't develop cloaking tech while their enemies could. That would be dumb AF. "Okay, to keep the peace we won't develop or use cloaking tech, while you still can so you can surprise us with a huge cloaked fleet outside out planet and/or spy on us. Deal!"
Star Trek IV, the voyage home... Do you remember that one? When Kirk and the original crew hijacked a Klingon bird-of-prey and went back to Earth in the 80s... Then returned with two humpback whales. I always wondered why Voyager didn't just return to the Future the same way Kirk and crew did in the movie. After all, they were home, just in the wrong time. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm referring to Future's end... The episode where voyager's crew was in California in the 90s. It has been a long time since I've seen the episode, but I'm pretty sure Janeway could have gotten away and pulled the old Crew's time travel maneuver
Out of all people and all scenarios, I think Janeway being stranded in the Delta Quadrant is the one time where breaking the Treaty of Algeron is allowed. Plus during the Dominion War, the terms were amended to only forbid Federation cloaking in the Alpha and Beta quadrants. Meaning using it coming from the Delta Quadrant would have been fine provided they remove the device after arriving in the Alpha Quadrant.
Excellent list, however the ENTIRE premise of the show, as you pointed out, would be gone. Q, whom Captain Janeway encountered 3 times could have easily done it
@@MrEscape314 then the series ends, just like it did in the series REAL finale ENDGAME in the final scene. If you are one of those people who saw some of them streaming but not all then you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about😎😎
@@batgurrl I've seen them all, most live. Not saying they should have given us a snap ending. You pointed out q could have done it, I was just adding that there were multiple q that could have done it.. especially q after they helped him out. I never meant to suggest they should have because of plot/story reasons. Otoh, it's hard to see how omnipotent beings could feel appreciative and not do something so careless as to send them home..
@@MrEscape314 the entire object of the series, from my point of view was that Captain Janeway main mission was to get the crew home in a timely manner. Even though the finale was a bit ‘contrived’, I really enjoyed the second part very much. Destroying the Borg trans warp hub leading to the Alpha quadrant right after she emerged in Voyager, and also the damage she did to the Borg queen and god knows how many drones thrilled me at the time. Logic wasn’t that relevant to me at the time, if you know what I mean. The starfleet complaints that they didn’t allow Species 8472 to wipe out the Borg was kind of dumb because of the message they sent to Kes about ‘purging our universe’ Far worse outcome than millions of humanoids being turned into drones. The lesser of two evils IMHO☮️🖖
It's classic in shows where the narrative is about the protagonists trying to find a way to return home. Sliders, the animated Dungeons & Dragons show, or Lost in Space. These shows featured multiple episodes where they find a way back, but something gets in the way and they continue being trapped.
Another thing about Prime Factors is that while the Sikarians had the tech to transport them halfway home but were unwilling to share the technology with Voyager... ...Voyager never asked if the Sikarians would have been willing to use the technology *THEMSELVES* to transport Voyager halfway home. IE: Keeping the technology fully in the hands of the Sikarians. And that was infuriating to watch, considering how friendly and helpful the Sikarians were.
Umm...yes they did. Janeway had that conversation with Gath while eating pecan pie. He made the excuse of having to discuss it with the other magistrates.
Wasn't there something about the device that it would only work at the Sikarian homeworld, something about the fields around the planet. Hence the need to try it right away, otherwise Janeway was about to depart.
I'd go with Eye of the Needle.. traveling forward in time is so easy that we all do it every day. Going forward in time faster than others isn't hard at all either. General Relativity anyone? Hangout in high speed or by a black hole for a bit.. or slingshot or... So many options.
With 'Timeless' what always got me was the Quantum Slipstream Drive was able to knock 10 years off the journey home before it had to be shut down. It would mean leap frogging, but they could have relatively gotten home that way, just drop out of slipstream before it got to the danger zone.
there are a lot of silly thing about Voyager, like how there seems to be an unlimited supply of shuttlecraft that can get destroyed and magically reappear on the ship the next episode.
The issue with going in a straight line through the core is they’d have to pass the black hole at the centre, not to mention all the stars orbiting it, the radiation levels would likely be too high. As for the bajoran wormhole, the gamma side of it is either in, or very close to dominion space, and by the time voyager would have reached it, the war would either in full swing, or about to start. And yes, the transwarp coils and hub thing annoy me too. The hubs are only mentioned at the end, with no buildup, like that god awful wormhole drive in SGA. If the Borg had those hubs all along, then wtf weren’t they ever used? And how many times did voyager find damaged Borg ships? The one icheb was found on was still in good condition ffs!
Considering that they went there for harvesting aliens with the Equinox crew, I'm really surprised they didn't bring up Q's offer to send them home if Janeway had accepted his offer. If you're going to go into the bad moral decisions that could've gotten them home, it seems like a strange omission. As far as threshold is concerned, there's three problems with just using warp 10 anyway (aside from fuel or other technical limitations). The first is assuming everyone would evolve the same way as what was seen from experiencing it in the Delta Flyer. Evolution is caused by adaptation to a specific environment. A full sized ship is a different environment from the smaller Delta Flyer. The second is you have more than one race on that ship besides human and there's no way of knowing who would envolve into what and/or if they would become dangerous to the others. The third being that it's a lot of work for one holographic doctor to handle. Even when they had to put the crew into stasis for crossing a certain region of space, he needed Seven's help. Sure warp 10 would have gotten the ship home, but probably not the crew...
The Sicarian Tech episode always bugged me. I get why Voyager couldn’t use the tech themselves (which is explained by needing to use the planets core and other stuff) but why couldn’t Janeway have traded the stories in exchange for Voyager being transjected 30,000 light years closer to the Alpha Quadrant. They say in the episode the size of the object doesn’t matter AND Harry used it with the Sicarian woman. OK it’s not 70,000 light years but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.
they tried that in the episode and the 'leader' of the sicarians had no intention of helping them as thats what janeway DID ask for when she found out, and they refused to give tech, she asked about a boost they still said no
@@Guardian582 I always wondered about that episode too. When Harry was sent briefly to the Alpha quadrant, he wasn't given the tech, the lady took them there and back. I always wondered if Janeway could've asked them to just send Voyager and the crew to the alpha quadrant without giving them the tech.
@@jimdigitalvideo she did, they said no..well technically they hummed and hawed, until that told them the leader had no intent to help them, AND the leader admitted he wasnt going to
8:25 The treaty of Algeron technically doesn't apply. When the Romulans installed a cloaking device in the defiant, the treaty was changed slightly to state that the Federation can't use cloaking technology in the Alpha and Beta quadrants. That does technically mean that Janeway could use a cloaking device in the Delta quadrant without breaking the treaty.
@@tortenschachtel9498 Hard to say. I think the Defiant came in with the cloak at the start of season 3 of DS9. This is also the season where Voyager started. However, Voyager only has 16 episodes, where DS9 has 26. I don't know how these two series align, but I do know that the first season of DS9 only had 20 episodes, and Keiko O'Brien was in TNG Season 6 episode 7, Rascals, which means DS9 was aligned with the later episodes of TNG. So there is a fair chance that the treaty change happened before Janeway left deep space 9 in Voyager Season 1 Episode 1, The Caretaker. But even if the change did happen before they got lost, that's not a guarantee that Janeway knew about it, but it is definitely possible that she did.
Ok. But part of the warp 10 mutation effect was Tom's desire to go to the planet he & Janeway had kids on. That was JUST 1 PERSON in Tom that outsmarted EVERYONE to get off the ship. If Voyager went to warp 10 & the WHOLE CREW became those salamanders, THEY ALL would've been bound & determined to get to that planet. The Doctor couldn't stop Tom...HOW COULD HE STOP THE ENTIRE CREW????
Over a day went by before Paris went nuts enough to do all that. And he only progressed that far because the Doctor hadn't figured out a workable cure yet. By the end of the episode, that no longer applies, as he knows how to reverse the problem immediately.
Eye of the Needle would have been perfect, because even though they would be 20 years in the past, they know how to do the "breakaway maneuver", as its been done even with a broken down Bird of Prey from a near-century earlier. So, hop across the distance, hope a stripped down ship with nothing but a functional life support and a warp drive capable of 9 or better (certainly not classified by even Romulan standards) and do a quick reverse sun slingshot. Boom, back home
"Could have got Home" sounds a bit strange to me. In my opinion "could have gotten Home" sounds better. But I'm not a native speaker. So what do you say?
This is an American vs British English thing. "Gotten" is widely used in American English, but British English usually uses "got" instead. Although "gotten" is becoming more common in Britain these days. As a British English speaker, I would probably say "got". But either sounds fine to me.
Gotten is actually a native English word but it fell out of use in British English centuries ago, and we use got. Due to the mixing of British and English cultures since the internet or even just TV some words get used interchangeably now but anyone that uses the word cell phone or even worse just cell, should be tried for treason😂.
@@Psyk60 Okay, I've looked it up in a verbform chart/table, and it lists both forms as the present perfect and the conditional perfect (get, got, got/gotten), but it doesn't specify one beieng british english or american english. Thanks for your input.
@@clairewilliams9416 😂 Since you mentioned the mixing of languages. Do you know what germans call "cell phones"? It might be british slang for something else. We call a "cell phone", a "Handy".
One you missed was going to the Cytherian Home world. In the 4th season TNG episode "The Nth Degree", Barclay is exposed to an alien probe that makes him smarter. This culminates into the Enterprise being sent to a position near the center of the galaxy to meet the Cytherians. An advanced race that never leaves home but explores the galaxy via probes. Voyager could have gone to the Cytherians and asked for help. Even trading the data they would have accumulated along the way for passage back to the Alpha Quadrant.
Dominion would have never allowed a Federation Starship to go that far into its space. Moreover Voyager might be the very reason the Dominion was paranoid. They could have heard of the Federation ship destabilizing the Delta Quadrant.
Another one that I just realized, "Future's End." Voyager did return to Earth, but back to the late 20th century. Though risky, they could have tried the slingshot effect that returned the Enterprise to the 23rd century, or Picard and the La Serina back to the 21st century. Damn you, Captain Braxton!!
The idea of heading towards the gamma quadrent and bajorn space would have been juat as good as what we got, potentially safer and not so many deaths crew wise too
LOL at 6:56... Someone at TrekCulture edited the clip to have R2D2's head on the console of the Ferengi shuttle in place of it's usual instrumentation dome!
It has been several years since I watched Voyager but there was one episode where they found a Starfleet Acadamy Simulation that they discovered was built by Species 8472. (I don't remember if that was their actual number hopefully you know the one that I mean). In the episode the female friend of Chakotay said they were training for a mission in the Alpha Quadrant in a few weeks. That means they were going to go from the Delta Quadrant through the Alpha Quadrant through fluidic space in a very short amount of time. At the end of the episode there is a very tenuous cease fire between Voyager and Species 8472 so they were not likely to let them use fluidic space to get back home. However, it would have made sense for Voyager and Species 8472 to both hang around the space station and get to know each other. Even if it took perhaps a year for Voyager to build their trust to let them use their space to get home that would still have been quicker than traveling through normal space.
The coaxial warp drive in vis a vis is my favourite example of this- could have got them home in months. They had a 100% working shuttle with the drive on it at the end of the episode, even if it was too difficult to scale up, they could have at least taken a few crew with the tech back home and organised a proper rescue. It's never mentioned again though, and the episode ends with paris and torres making out in a car instead.
I always thought Blink of an Eye would have been their best bet. The civilization was moving at astronomical speed. They could have simply waited a few hours out of range of the planet to see if they had developed some kind of faster than warp technology. Always bugged me!
Yeah, I always thought that also. Kinda the same with that civilization on The Orville actually. And we got a payoff from that one, never did on Voyager.
At the rate they were advancing they could have easily become a rival for the Q within years!
No guarantees they ever would though.
If they found there was no way to bring their homework in sync with the rest of the galaxy they may never have bothered with warp drove because what would be the point?
@@andylongman355 no guarantees, sure, but give it a few hours and see if this super advanced civilization comes up with any solutions! Plus the starship was basically part of their religion. Even though they found out the truth, I’m sure they may have put some of their best minds on it if asked for help 🤷♂️
@@holodoctor1 Eh. If they had, then what would of stopped them from just tracking Voyager down later to help them? If they new FTL wasn't fast enough to catch up with Voyager having a few hours head start, it could hardly be expected to get them all home.
There’s a map of the galaxy in the DS9 Tech manual that shows the Gamma Quadrant end of the Bajoran Wormhole is actually slightly further away from where Voyager was than Earth was, and Voyager wasn’t so much traveling towards Earth as it was towards the Federation, so the last few years of their journey would be through familiar and friendly territory, whereas the Gamma route would be through largely unexplored and possibly contested territory
Indeed. The presenters on this channel don't seem to understand that Federation/Romulan/Klingon space is a small part of the Alpha quadrant. Just entering the alpha Quadrant would still mean a decade or two more travel.
Plus add in that we are looking at a 2D map of a 3D galaxy, making it potentially even FURTHER than the map makes it appear.
@@danielebowman I don't think the writers of the show even got that point. "Returning to the Alpha Quadrant" was spoken of as being tantamount to arriving home; which is not at all the case.
What gets me is that in one episode Voyager crosses the Mutara Nebula. At that point they were back in territory familiar to the Federation. Hell, they weren't that far from where Regula One was. From there it would have been simple to plot a course to the nearest Federation colony or starbase.
@@danielebowman Romulan and Klingon space were always shown as majority parts of the Beta quadrant on Star Trek maps but both did occupy small parts of the Alpha quadrant too.
You missed one: Accepting Q's offer in "Death Wish" and returning Quin back to his prison; thus, Q returns the ship back to Sector 01.
I guess that one is the unlisted #11
Doesn't Q actually do it for like 15 seconds?
@@supermanprime6758 iirc all he does in hand Janeway a map with an optimal course to take.
Horrified just to think about it.
Geordi La Forge: "I don't like the person I would have to thank."
Translation: "Thanking him would make me feel awful forever, even if what he gave me is wonderful beyond all belief."
Quark would totally give children sweets… he KNOWS they won’t just want one, and will pester their parents until they pay his high prices for more.
No doubt such a strategy is codified somewhere in the Rules of Acquisition.
First hit is free.
Not only that... the wrapper could be advertising... and maybe a 5% off coupon... when spending a large amount.
@@wolphin732"Two for the price of three."
yes, the 1st piece of candy is free.
The episode that indtroduces the Doctor's mobile emitter, where Voyager is at Earth but in the past, they could have slinged around the sun like Kirk did in ST4
Tuvok isn't nearly as smart as Spock and couldn't do the calculations.
Temporal cops wouldn't let them. Funny how those temporal cops are selective about when to interfere.
@@scockeryTBF in ST4 they did it to save the entire planet so I can see why they would turn a blind eye to that.
@@scockery Yep, funny they did not care for the Krenim Timeship *gg*.
@@scockery The Temporal prime directive allows for pretty much anything that did happen to happen while anything that didn't won't or can't (or if you prefer it's a crime......). Essentially anything Kirk or especially Archer did or more crucially may have done has to play out. Daniels and (maybe) Gary 7 see to that, it also explains Daniels screw ups.
As for Janeway, Picard and Sisko that's easier, by the 24th record keeping is better and the temporal prime directive exists. You also have temporal investigations established and S31 ingrained, either or both of which could be a part of the temporal cold war or in contact with their future selves, which doesn't break the TPD as long as records show that's what happened.
The upshot is they aren't selective, any instance where they shouldn't interfere is just known. It also explains why their only known overt instance takes place far from Fed space, that report is essentially the equivalent of a UFO meeting a ship of ours beyond pluto. Credible but not in your face enough for mass consumption/worry.
Changing the test cylinder into a Horgon made me laugh very loudly!
R2D2 also had me rewind for a moment XD
You can see why R'Mor was taken aback by the horga'hn's appearance. Starfleet being a bit _too_ friendly.
I scrolled all the way down to here to be sure before I mentioned that.
I caught that too! Hilarious!
I saw. that too!
You missed three major opportunities….
1. They could have made the deal with Q or a new deal with him at subsequent encounters.
2. The first time they encountered a borg cube it was abandoned. They could have simply helped themselves to transwarp coils and whatever else. They had another chance to do this when they adopted the borg children from the disabled cube.
3. They could have easily made a deal with the Voth (the evolved dinosaurs) to be returned home in exchange for “protecting doctrine”. They had significantly superior transwarp technology that could transport them quickly.
All excellent points.
2 would of been risky they didnt have 7 at the time and it would of been guess work on getting it to work and could of ended up summoning another borg ship to get said tech as Seven states they offen return to salvge tech and ships
3 the voth would of taken that as blackmail and just killed them
@@realhollow3675 Agreed. The Voth were not a kindly type...they would have just killed them. The Sicarians though...they didn't want to give them their technology...why not ask for them to build a larger gateway they could fly voyager through...they keep the technology, voyager gets home? Or just let their people pass through to Earth...keep whatever data the ship had and detonate the rest so it didn't fall into enemy hands?
With the Voth, they wouldn't have tried to make such a deal with the leadership. As another mentioned, that would come across as blackmail and it could get them all killed. Instead, I always thought that Chakotay should have offered a deal to the Voth scientist who actually wanted to explore his people's distant origin:
"Please come to Earth and get to know what is quite possibly your planet of origin. Bring your whole family with you, since your government just threatened them in order to get you (the scientist) to stop you from sharing your research with the rest of the Voth. And while you're at it, could your ship possibly tow Voyager all the way there?" 😂
The Bajoran Wormhole option was addressed while Voyager was still airing.
Earth and the Gamma Quadrant side of the wormhole were both 75,000 light years away from Ocampa. But as wormholes are notoriously unstable Voyager could have spent 75 years getting there only to find it’s gone and they have another 65,000 light year trip from the Gamma Quadrant. Not to mention they would have to have crossed all of Dominion space to get to it.
i was gunna menton about the dominion war so it wouldnt have been such a smooth ride either
both the same distance? that's not how circles work!
@@lizardgirl413 Space isn't flat.
@@posindustries counterpoint: the universe is a spheroid region, 705 metres in diameter
The Dominion was definitely known as hostile at that point, as the Odyssey was destroyed in the episode that aired June 13, 1994, while Voyager premiered January 16, 1995. On the other hand, if it was a choice between facing the Borg or the Dominion, which would most choose?
The Barzan Wormhole would have been the best option had they gone through after discovering what Arridor and Kol were doing on the planet, then let the Federation and Ferengi authorities deal with it after Voyager returns. Voyager would have reported they used a verteron particles to help stabilize the Delta quadrant end of the wormhole to get back. Had the Federation setup a way to stabilize the wormhole more long term, just imagine the stories this could have opened up?
I wish those two had turned up as the Ferengi trying to steal Sevens nanoprobes in the later episode Inside Man. Voyager crew owed them some comeuppance.
The Bajoran wormhole was approximately 60,000-65,000 lightyears away meaning the trip would have been only 5-10 years shorter, AND Voyager left DS9 AFTER the federation had received a warning to stay out of the gamma quadrant in DS9 2-26 "Jem-hadar" so the majority of the time would have been spent traveling through territory known to be controlled by a hostile force instead of unknown territory then the last few years in Romulan territory.
Not to mention they had no way to know it would even still be there by the time they reached it. They could travel those 65000 light years to find it had collapsed and still have another 70 years to get home.
@@WillWatkins92 Even without factoring in the Dominion, traveling almost the exact same distance to get to a wormhole that may or may not be there, resulting in only shaving about 10 years off their trip if they're lucky and doubling their return time if they're not is a pretty stupid idea.
@@WillWatkins92 That's not a plot hole - that's not what plot hole means. It's just a line of dialogue that suggests that Chakotay didn't know about the Dominion, or at least knew that Torres didn't, where as Janeway would have. Given that Chakotay was still a barely trusted Marquis captain at the time of Caretaker, when the topic would have come up (and considering the Federation had just recently, within the last 3 or 4 months, lost a Galaxy Class starship, one of its most powerful vessels, in a straight fight against the Dominion, the topic was maybe even classified), it seems reasonable she might not have felt it appropriate to tell him. And the conversation was moot and irreleant by the time Janeway would have trusted Chakotay completely. The Dominion weren't relevant to anything they were dealing with, except maybe in that first episode when Janeway made the choice, and it's simply not a very reasonable expectation that a Starfleet Officer know about every alien species, faction, culture, phenomenon, technology, or event that happens in and around Federation space. Remember, we only ever see the adventures of maybe two crews at a time, out of thousands of Starships, in a few fairly narrow windows of time (4 years in the 2150s, 4 years in the 2250s, 5ish years in the 2260s, a couple of weeks here and there scattered throughout the 2270s-90s, a fairly well fleshed out run of time between 2365 and 2381, and then the adventures of one retired Admiral in 2399-2402. And a couple of years in the 32nd century.), and even the nerdiest of us struggle to recall all the details of every race they encounter. Imagine how many topics of conversation there must be after 220 years of nearly uninterupted exploration of the Galaxy by thousands of Federation Starships?
The expectation that Chakotay know about the Dominion prior to the news that they wiped out the Marquis, when the Dominion were nothing more than one new dangerous thing (of many) very recently found in the distant Gamma Quadrant (and therefore pretty irrelevant to the immediacy of the Marquis' tussle with the Cardassians) at the point he was taken from the Alpha Quadrant, is, I think, illogical. It's not a plot hole. It's a perfectly reasonable supposition. There's no reason to think he would know about them even if Janeway had been briefed.
@@davidmansell5562 True. The Maquis was most likely so occupied in their fight against the Cardassians, they didn't cared for the bigger politics. Also outside of Tuvok all Maquis-Members on Chakotays ship were already away from Starfleet for several years = they most likely didn't knew anything about the Odyssey and other occasions. But Janeway did.
Ironically enough, there is another piece of technology if Tom Paris was given the opportunity to study it and be able to implement on Voyager. It's on the episode "Vis a Vis", it was called a coaxial warp drive. It would give the vessel using that drive the ability to "fold" space therefore shortening the journey. This technology previously thought only hypothetical by Starfleet.
And the Coaxial warp drive was of course completely forgotten by next week and never mentioned again, despite them _having a shuttle fitted with it_ sitting in their shuttle bay.
Not to mention Paris completely understood the tech and in fact solved its major glaring issue.
Voyager could have been fitted with it, and if there was some "size based" limitations (which didn't effect the big ship belonging the original pilot who'd had their body stolen and caught Paris in the bodyjumpers body) then at least the Delta Flyer could have been equipped.
Even if it didn't shave that much time off due to having to recharge or recover or whatever, it was still a great "get out of dodge" jump drive that would leave any hostiles eating vacuum as they would just vanish, with nothing such as a warp trail to follow.
Also very useful when you want to sneak past some unfriendly territory (such as a anti telepath Empire).
@@casbot71The species you're thinking of is the Devore. Where they were helping those telepathic refugees cross their space, and Janeway uses her wits, with a touch of her feminine wiles, in order to outsmart Inspector Kashyk.
@@casbot71 Imagine making 200 trips to ferry everyone home. Or just go home, give that thing to Starfleet and come back with a ship once they ironed out whatever flaws it had.
When watching the pilot I always thought 'Why didn't they activate the caretaker array to take them home and leave behind a photon torpedo to detonate on a timer delay?' Did no one on the bridge think of that?
Timer delay? They couldn't get those till Tuesday.
Exactly! Janeway was in such a rush to destroy the Array because of the Kazon ships threatening the Ocampa. Early in the episode, she had Tuvok examine the Array technology to see how it worked. You mean that they couldn't figure out how to use the Array to push the Kazon ships a few dozen light years away? Once the Kazon were out of the picture, Voyager could figure out some way to make the Ocampa self-sufficient for centuries or more and also protect them from any further Kazon attack.
After all that, it'd be time to learn how to move the Array to Federation space and bring Voyager along for the ride.
Then it would have been a movie, not a series.
They don't have fuse technology in the 24th century.
I'll play devils advocate. Lets say they do that, they set a timer and go. So first some questions, how long doe sit take to power on the array? and does it have to be on the entire journey? how long does it take to get into position? Any number of things could have gone wrong, from the torp being set to fast, or to slow. To the kazon getting on the array and disarming or moving the torp before it went off once voy leaves. Logic would make this not be the best option. Also iirc more kazon were on the way, so while the voyager crew was mucking around trying to figure out how it work, it would of attracted more kazon. And iirc they array would have to repower up after use. So when they pushed the first group away, more would arrive before it recharged. Voy also did not know the kazon were split by sect and not united at the time. There are many spots where this could of gone wrong. Destroying the array, in the scenario played ou tin the pilot, was the best option. Being how the federation consider other lives and things. If Janeway was say Romulan they would of said 'f the ocomba' and just left.
One thing Janeway could have done to aid Voyager’s return home would be to put all non-essential crew in stasis. This would save on ship resources and consequently reduce the need to seek out resources. In addition, for those in stasis, the journey home would appear to go by in an instant. Also, Janeway could have prioritised getting the crew home above exploring the delta quadrant.
Likewise, in the story ark of Future’s End where Voyager is sent back in time to 1990’s Earth, Janeway could have put the whole crew in stasis, hidden on the outer edges of the Solar System, to be woken up when sufficient time had passed to reach the 24th century. Janeway could have just refused to follow Captain Braxton’s instructions to follow him through the time portal, back to the 24th century in the Delta Quadrant. She owed Braxton no favours, and, Voyager had already stood up to Braxton and came out on top in another time line.
The Botany Bay, 1990’s technology in Space Seed from Star Trek the original series kept Khan and his crew in suspended animation for 271 years, so, within the Star Trek universe, extreme long term suspended animation is possible.
Voyager didn't have many non essential crew. In Voyager 37, Chakotay say they could only lose about 20 people
@@DavidKnowles0 I suppose the number of essential crew would be based upon whether Janeway was focused on exploration or getting the crew home. Prior to being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager was a ship of exploration, so, part of the crew complement would be made up science officers, alongside the engineering, combat trained crew and command officers. If Janeway focused on getting the crew home, the science officers could probably be safely placed in stasis without impacting on the running of the ship.
In the fourth season episode ‘One’, Seven of Nine and the Doctor (who was restricted to the medial bay) were the sole active crew for a month due to the rest of the crew having to go into stasis due to the ship’s journey taken them through a toxic nebula. So, I think there would be some wriggle room as to who was an ‘essential’ crew member.
Even putting 20 people into stasis would represent just over 13 percent of the crew compliment of 152 (as mentioned in the 37’s episode) - which could offer a saving on resources.
@@jeffwalker7185 Except that the Voyager was on a shakedown cruise when the series starts so didn't have a full crew compliment onboard. They were side tracked to hunt for the Maquis because the Voyager had been designed to fly through the plasma storms the Maquis were hiding in, and because Tuvok was already slotted to be Janeway's second in command after he finished his undercover mission to arrest Chakotay.
She could have parked near a black hole for a bit until time dilation brought them into sync, or create near light speed travel for a while to do the same thing. No stasis needed, so technology wouldn't be required to operate for a long time.
(I'm not sure why it didn't cost them centuries/millenia when they were inside the event horizon of a black hole in one of the first episodes.)
@@jeffwalker7185 except the stasis wouldnt have worked, given that even in the ep with 7 and the doctor being the only ones awake they were constantly 'on duty' if only to keep up with maintenance duties, and if this had happened beforehand with no extra crew awake they would never have made it
The reason the Bajoran wormhole was a bad idea was that it wouldn't have shaved much time off of their journey. And if they got there, and it turned out it was unusable for whatever reason (like being surrounded by murderously hostile Dominion ships, for example), then the detour would have added a huge amount of time to their journey. The risk/reward balance just doesn't work.
counterpoint: Voyager, by the end of the show run, had a bunch of new tech they made via help from other races. If they went in that direction and ended up near the wormhole, they would have had stuff they could have used to clear a path. And if it was unusable, they could have just parked near the wormhole and waited until it became usable.
By that time the wormhole was well known to be stable and inhabited by the prophets so I don't see why they wouldn't have used it.
The dominion threat prpbably wasn't known at the time so again, I don't see why not.
@@ast5515 *nods* Also, with the time it took for Voyager to make its trip through the galaxy, the dominion war would have likely ended or is in the middle of ending when Voyager finally does get back, if they headed for the wormhole.
I agree, it's easy for everyone to say now that the wormhole was stable but the risk was it could of no longer be available (I think even in DS9 there was an episode where people couldn't use it). As a captain who has to make the final decision do you go with travelling how ever many years to something that may or may not take you home or do the direct route which is longer but at least you get home.
@@ast5515 Voyager left only a few weeks after the disastrous first contact with the Jem'Hadar, and was shown to have information in their database on them, as holographic Jem'Hadar and their ships make brief appearances on the show a couple times, both before and after they regain communication with Starfleet. For all they know, the wormhole could have intentionally been collapsed at any time before they even got to it, as was shown in the original timeline from "The Visitor" when the Klingons took control of the Bajor system and immediately blew it up to keep the Dominion out.
1- They could ask Q for a lift.
2- They could use the discovery spore drive
3- They could have negotiated tech with the earth dinossaurs from the "distant earth" dinossaurs.
1. That would depend on Q. If Q was in the mood, he could have sent them to Earth, but in a bunch of pieces.
2. Wasn't that a experimental drive that only that ship could have handled?
3. If I remember that episode correctly, didn't those guys sort of said no to them a whole bunch and got so mad that they decided not to work with Voyager in the end?
1- Q would only do it if they agreed to cause problems on purpose for him, so no.
2- The spore drive was classified at the highest level over a century before Voyager and stayed secret for the next 900 years, so also no.
3- The Voth were extremely uninterested in negotiating with anyone, much less a species whose very existence disproved the religious dogma that their entire society was built upon, so again also no.
@@firetoacat Janeway could have agreed to Q proposition in exchange for the return of her crew.
Or she could have asked Q Jr
@@firetoacat I must rewatch the dinosaurs episode.
Can't recall the ending.
@@jonnyf3374 the omega particle is also classified and is in the databank.
Classified does not mean deleted. Janeway just can't tell ppl about it and probably would take some years replicating a 100+ years old experiment
If I remember the Sikarian trajector could only work on something as large as Voyager while it was in close orbit to the planet due to some unique quality in the mantle
Correct, it had some sort quartz minerals or something. Makes you wonder what the Borg did.
@@BuhurtUK I am sure the Borg likely changed a few Sikari into Borg, pulled the info out of them, then mined other planets that had the same mineral before building their own drive.
They still could have struck a deal, though. Give the Sikarians something in return for them giving Voyager a boost home
@@TwinPeaksIndustries That is precisely what I was thinking. Offer them the federation story collection in exchange for a boost. They were against giving the technology to Voyager and that is fine Starfleet has similar rules. but what about a ship-sized trajectory. It wouldn't have been all the way but 40.000 lightyears would have been over half the way.
@@ADMNtekLiving without money has obviously made most humans (and other Federation citizens) pretty dumb and gullible, and not know how to make any profit.
We all know why these other plans did not work. Because we needed 7 seasons of this show! The fun is in the trying though!
we could have still had seven seasons if they turned right
They could have done the other 5 sessions in the alpha quandrant too?
@@molybdaen11The idea behind Voyager was that it was a Federation ship stranded on the other side of the galaxy, far from anything familiar and completely on its own. And the only way to get home was to travel through unknown and possibly hostile territory.
So if only 2 seasons follow the original concept and then for five more seasons it's just seen as “another ship in the Alpha Quadrant”, that wouldn't really fit with the original idea.
I'm pretty sure they never figured out how to plan the exit of warp 10. Since you technically occupy all spaces in the galaxy at once. You'd really just be rolling a die hoping you end up closer and hoping the doctor could revert everyone every single time. And its dangerous that you could end up in some kinda spacial phenomenon that eats your potentially damaged ship and incapacitated crew on exit.
This was the big reason. In the episode, Paris stated that he knew the crew was looking for him and he shut down the drive. That brought him back to the start. So Voyager would first would have to figure out how to exit, probably by doing a lot of tests, then scale it up to Voyager. It also is unknown how many times one can be devolved back to original before complications happen.
Sounds like the improbability drive. Occupy every point in space and you don't know what species you will be when you exit. Probably a good thing they never pursued it further, illegitimate lizard babies are enough from one odd coupling but a whole crew of them.
I feel like they could have had the ship pull up a point in space it has records of, then have that coordinates being pinged a whole bunch while having a holographic version of the bridge and some of the crew keeping track of where the ship is going on the holodeck. Once the ship comes out of warp 10, just have the holo crew park the ship somewhere safe while the doctor turn the incapacitated crew back to normal. If a holographic Moriarty can control the Enterprise from its holodecks, then it should be simple to do the same on Voyager.
Ahhh see that's what the spice is for, and I don't think Janeway would be down with people spicing on her ship.
The thing is that you don't need to go all the way to warp 10. If they never reach warp 10, they never have to deal with the advanced evolution nonsense. The higher you go above warp 9.9, the closer you get to infinite velocity. This was possible because of the unusually high quality dilithium Voyager found on that one planet. Voyager should have mined as much dilithium as they could stuff into their cargo holds, to bring back home. Then use it to fly at warp 9.9999 or whatever, with some kind of safety mechanism to kick them out of warp if they got too close to 10. A 70 year journey at normal warp speeds therefore becomes only a few months' trip.
6.56 had me crying, i had to replay that
?
6.56 what? Degrees? Latitude? Milliliters?
Klingon: "I am Korr! Now in charge of this Borg Sphere. Let´s destroy the tactical Cube and we´ll be on our way"
Janeway: "That´s good, but before u leave, don´t forget to leave us present, like a Transwarp Coil"
Klingon: "We can´t, Coils won´t be installed until tuesday"
More likely some b.s. about how they sphere only has one and they cannot create a second one.
@@scockery VOY: Bioneural gel packs are fancy new tech and can't be replicated." Also, "Photon torpedoes can't be replicated, we only have X amount.
Also VOY: It's a shame we couldn't make more gel packs, or replicate transwarp coils, but hey! We were able to magically make 10X more torpedoes and a second Delta Flyer! Rocks to replicators, baby! ('Cept when it really counts...)"
@@xileets The anti-matter is the issue with torpedoes and the Flyer (and second Flyer), so I guess they got more anti-matter at Auntie Matta's Space Truck Stop. Or torpedoes from an arms dealer that wasn't framed by Seven of Nine's faulty memories or junk dealer that didn't have a "Carrie" shuttle craft.
9:10 Seven of Nine was scared of sending Voyager home because she knew what type of Welcoming Committee would be waiting for her, since was ex borg....after assumlating data and learning about the Federation, the more she wanted to keep the ship away. As someone who knows everything, she sure kept the crew in the dark for a lot of reasons. Either she knew what was going on at Earth or she was afraid to go get herself.
The Dauntless was also an option. In the episode where Voyager came across the “star fleet” ship with slipstream drive they could have over powered the alien and took the Dauntless home.
Iirc, Dauntless wasn’t big enough for the entire crew, and you’d run into the previous issue of having to leave the Doctor behind
@@williambryant6175 you could make multiple trips. The doctor had his mobile emitter.
The entire third act of the episode disagrees with you. The controls had been locked out and Janeway and Seven were only barely able to get beamed out in time before the Dauntless exited slipstream directly in front of a bunch of Borg cubes. If Chakotay had sent a team to try to secure it, everyone would have gotten assimilated.
@@williambryant6175It was big enough, it just didn't have luxury accommodations, replicators, or holodecks. There'd be more crew in bunks, but it would have been much faster.
(Although, from what we know about warp speeds, it should have only take 5-10 years in Voyager, anyway.)
At the time, I thought the Barzan wormhole was the best option and fastest if they had used time travel. They could have gathered extra dilithlium, slingshot back like three months, repaired and wait for the wormhole to reappear at a location that they had missed. Maybe alter their warp signature so the past voyager wouldn’t have noticed. And being three months out of sync with the rest of starfleet is not the end of the world. It’s not as bad as the Bozeman.
Although it always worked in Star Trek, they frequently mentioned how unlikely success would be for using the slingshot method. Janeway wouldn't have risked it.
You forgot about the episode where Q offered to snap his fingers and bring the crew home if Janeway slept with him and had his kid. What captain wouldn’t open their legs for their crew’s safety? I bet even Picard would have taken a shot to the face if he was captain of voyager.
But Sleeping with Q would just be Janeway & Q touching index fingers together… AND with the snap of the fingers they would’ve all be home.
Please stop.
That's why Janeway is better. She doesn't put up with Q or his bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I like Q, but Janeway's reaction to him is priceless
@@KanchidoShinokyoufu Well in fairness, no one knew that was how the impregnation would be happen. Until that point it was assumed they were talking a sexual exchange. Also we don't know what her being pregnant would have entailed. For example...it obviously would have been "not normal" by our standards...and we don't know what would happen after birth. The point of the child was to understand parenting...would Janeway have kept the child? Would she have had to go to the Continuum? Would she have had to have powers like Riker to deal with a Q child? Those types of things.
As a female captain I would've... But then again my sister keeps telling me I'd be a "Sloot" as a woman... Still, it's the the benefit of the crew, sis !
Regarding Item 10, they supposedly had just enough special dilithium to do this with a shuttlecraft. They didn’t have enough to do Voyager’s warp core.
Well...if that's the case...why expend the resources on the experiment in the first place, if it was never going to get them home?
Could sure be solved somehow... sorry They damn had unlimited shuttles and builded 2 Deltaflyers....
Also, the shuttle's engines had to be reinforced, because they kept leaving the shuttle behind. Doing the same to voyager would have been a massive undertaking, and exponentially increase the risk. Small shuttle = minimal risk.
They mined dilthium before, back when its was still relevant to the plot.
@@XentorAntarix, builded? Built...
This whole list is why my friends and I called Voyager “Gilligan’s Starship”.
Death Wish (S2 E18) was Voyager's earliest, best bet at getting back without the use of alternate timelines or out-of-character decisions. Janeway has one Q who wants to be given asylum on Voyager and another Q who wants her to deny the request. Literally one omnipotent being on either side of the issue at hand. Janeway decides to hold a hearing on the request, but DOESN'T demand that whichever Q she finds for send Voyager and crew home? Two Q's, no waiting, but Voyager manages to pull what felt like an homage to Gilligan's Island's habit of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory for the sake of keeping the show going.
Here's an option to consider: Bring Ocampas onboard in Episode 1. After 3 years, they become one with the Force and can apparently send Voyager 10,000 lightyears away... I think 10+ Ocampas will do :P
In the episode “Q2”, the crew get to babysit a teenage Q, son of the regular recurring character(and John DeLancie’s actual son). He does something clever with a shuttlecraft and folds space so as to travel further. Couldn’t they just analyse the computer records to see what he did and copy that on Voyager? If they really understood it, then maybe they could choose the exit point close to home.
What about Q? Janeway could have sleeped with him and they were home :D
Sleeped?
@@DMSProduktionsSlept. 😁
She didn't even have to sleep with him, just help him procreate. As we saw with Q and .... umm... Q , all they did was touch fingers and Q (Trellane) was conceived. Everyone home, Janeway has to endure carrying a Q for 9 months, happy ending, no-one dies.
That was never going to happen, let’s be real.
@@Sci-Fi9131 ;o)
I'm very much appreciating (intentionally or not) that you saved the 10th entry on this list to mention breaking the warp 10 barrier. - tips hat - Well played :)
1) Q
2) older Kes ??!? During her original departure she kicked them 10 years farther into their journey. As an older & more advanced Kes couldn't she have gotten them home or much farther along? (after she cooled off & remembered the crew was good to her)
I've always thought Captain Janeway should have traded the modified nanoprobes for transwarp tech instead of safe passage.
I doubt the Borg would have been willing to share their technology with an enemy force, Janeway wouldn't have trusted them to not just immediately assimilate Voyager the second they handed over the nanoprobe designs, and the Borg also couldn't trust Janeway to not take the transwarp tech and run if it meant also leaving the Borg to their doom.
The Borg couldn't be trusted to give the tech in a way that Voyager could actually use. And even if they did they could still probably overtake Voyager.
I am the same way on Threshhold. I tried to reason why they didn't try warp 10. 1: they figured out the Voyager may not hold up at warp 10 for the whole trip back. 2: (most importantly) Not everyone is human. The Doctor could reverse humans, but could he reverse all the other non-human crew? This is the one I settle on, not that it matters.
Put all the non-humans in biochemical stasis cryogenic suspension something-something shielded containers...
@@scockery Stick them in the transporter buffer.
Not to mention there's no way to know what could happen to the ship's bio-neural circuitry, either.
@@posindustries Perhaps the ship would become sentient? Somebody get on this what-if! 😀
@@EJRichardsonFubaraA sentient ship?? You zora be kidding 😂 😂 😂
I'd include the episode "Shattered" where Voyager is split into different time periods by a chronokinetic surge. The Captain Janeway from before Voyager gets sent to the Delta Quadrant offers to present day Chakotay to align the chronoton serum injected into the gel packs to *her* time period so she can prevent Voyager from going into the Badlands and being sent into the Delta Quadrant in the first place.
We don't know that the Caretaker wouldn't have taken Voyager from somewhere else.
Are you sure that episode was not just a dream Chakotay had?
regarding #9, i think it has been said in other youtube Star Trek lore channels and maybe even canon, that to fly to the gamma quadrant and hitting the Bajoran wormhole was an even longer trip than just going back to the Alpha Quadrant and would have taken many more years than just flying back to the alpha quadrant.
The plothole with Threshold could have been solved by a single line by the Doctor akin to "This procedure has a 50% probability of success." And then it's self explanatory why they wouldn't subject the whole crew to it.
I was thinking a comment about how the procedure wouldn’t work on Klingons or Vulcans or some other species, but that would work too.
It would be easier to deem it an unviable means of travel. By fixing the point of achieving infinite velocity as an anchor from which deceleration will always occur, leaving no way to come out somewhere else.
that might be true but you know who could pilot a warp 10 ship with no problem. a Hologram or maybe another form of autopilot. they could have used it to at least establish 2-way contact with Starfleet. who could have potentially looked into the tech and made it safe.
@@ADMNtekPlus some crew in stasis? Make fifty trips?
@@AndrooUK if i remember correctly they had that one episode where they did put the entire crew in stasis for a month or somting.
To be fair, I thought the Treaty of Algeron was only about the use of cloaking tech in the Alpha quadrant ... hence why the Defiant could get away with it going to the Gamma quadrant. So technically, Janeway is free to use cloaking tech to enter a transwarp hub in the Delta quadrant as long as it's turned off before she exits on the Alpha side ...
They'd have to get hold of a cloaking device first. The Defiant's was provided by the Romulans, it's not something that any Starfleet ship could just whip up in the replicator if they decided the treaty didn't apply. While they were on good terms with at least one Delta quadrant species that had cloaking technology (the Kraylor) the value of cloaking technology is generally depicted as too high for any species to be interested in trading it.
F that stupid treaty. 😤 Give enemy an advantage, never!!!
@@hackman669 Calm down, Admiral.
The treaty applies anywhere, the Federation was only allowed the use of one cloaking device to only be used in the Gamma Quadrant and only in exchange for all intel regarding the Dominion, and that agreement was made after Voyager had already arrived in the Delta Quadrant.
It would probably not have worked on the borg. Even the federation knew how to detect any ship with tachions.
Ans the borg fought many exotic species before.
The thing with the bajoran wormhole bothered me the whole time, but I said to myself, maybe Janeway thought `What if something happened to that wormhole in this unstable times because of the dominion threat?´
Voyager left the Alpha Quadrant before the Dominon war started. Unless they got a update about it when they talked to Reg through the wormhole I don't see how Janeway would know.
Voyager got lost, after The Search. So while the war hadby begun proper, the Dominion were a clear and present threat.
But would it have saved much time? For all we know the journey from the caretaker array to the gamma quadrant end of the Wormhole might not have been much shorter.
I´m not sure, if everything was aired in the right order in my country and maybe that got me confused about the timeline. And even if, I might not have been that observant back then as you guys. 😆
My mind went straight to number 10, which I'm afraid is sadly (but hilariously), at this point, one of the most iconic of all Voyager episodes.
Also I just love the scenario of Voyager showing up in the Federation on autopilot with an all space salamander crew and a very put upon EMH.
There is one question, what became from vulcans, or half klingon, or another non human, maybe there will be only well feed B'ellana :D
Will you guys do ups and downs for older episodes of Discovery and other shows?
I always wondered why they didn't head for the Bajoran wormhole too. I think I saw where someone explained that given the position of the wormhole in the Gamma Quadrant, the trip would have taken just a long or longer.
Sources put it a similar distance compared to Earth, give or take 15,000 light years either way. Assuming best case it being closer at 60,000 light years it still wasn't a good option.
Firstly despite being a known stable wormhole they had no idea what it's condition would have been like by the time they reached it, especially considering the existence of aliens (the Prophets) who live inside and showed in the very first episode of DS9 their control over it and willingness to close the entrances due to disruptions ships entering causes them.
Secondly even before Voyager left The Dominion was a massive known openly hostile threat having already destroyed multiple ships & colonies from the Alpha Quadrant inside the Gamma Quadrant including easily destroying The Federation's Galaxy-class USS Odyssey and had also beaten their new prototype warship The Defiant taking its crew captive. At the time The Federation saw war with The Dominion as being inevitable.
So choosing the Bajoran wormhole would have meant facing a massive hostile civilisation with ships that greatly outclasses their own, and even if they somehow made it to the wormhole it was a massive gamble whether they would actually be able to use it which would have meant another 70,000 light year journey towards Earth if not.
In the episode “Hope and Fear” they meet Arturis, who is broadly quite enlightened and speaks countless languages. He has a ship with slipstream drive capability. At this point, however, they already did the deal with the Borg to defeat Species 8472, which angered Arturis(understandably, he is a rather tragic villain). But if they had met him much earlier, they might have been allies, and he might have helped them travel home.
is he a villain? he wanted justice in the form of Janeway being punished for her crimes against his people (Genocide being a rather serious crime)
He's only considered a villain because Janeway unilaterally declares that he didn't want justice, but revenge. I'll have to keep that one in mind in case I ever find myself on trial.
I think that the most obviously easiest way to get home is for them to simply ask Q to send them there. My head exploded every time I saw an episode involving Q
For me Star Trek was always about going out exploring the unknown, not trying to get home. Each to his own I guess.
Right
I see what you did there at 6:55 :D
Basically most of these hinge on the crew choosing to be worse people in order to get home, which was generally the moral dilemma of those episodes that led to them deciding it was better to uphold their principles than cause harm to others in order to shorten their trip like the Equinox crew did.
As for just going through the Gamma Quadrant instead, let me remind you that Voyager departed Deep Space Nine only a few weeks after first contact with the Jem'Hadar, and if the Galaxy-class USS Odyssey got its nacelles fatally handed to it that day, they probably didn't want to risk what would happen to their much smaller, less heavily-armed vessel.
And if a quick shuttle test flight breaking the Warp 10 barrier was as catastrophic for the entire genome of its pilot as it was, I'd say they probably didn't want to take the risk that a much longer flight might cause even more, even deadlier problems. For instance, what do you do if your ship's critical bio-neural circuitry hyper-evolves over the course of a 70 thousand lightyear flight home, to say nothing of what unknowndamage the stresses could also put on Voyager's inorganic components. There were too many variables that hadn't even explored yet to take the risk.
I Stand With Tuvix. ✊🏻
I don't remember the transport test cylinder getting turned into a Risian Horgon! 1:46. Very nice! 😂 Maybe Janeway sought Jamaharon?
how about asking Species 8472 (in the flesh) for help as they would have already been to earth or have a much quicker way given their simulation.
Ha ha, voyager beamed a Horgon through the micro wormhole to a romulan 20 years in the past.
I wonder if he kept it for himself or left it on Risa (accidentally on purpose).
And R2D2. Hilarious. I did blink and miss it the first time.
And a video in video of Tom Paris rubbing his face in a "not this again" manner is a nice touch.
Lots of others spotted, some clever, some amusing but too many to mention.
The Bajoran Wormhole idea is a good for a Voyager reboot. Let's just say the Caretaker brought a third federation ship to the delta quadrant (Voyager, Equinox and our newest ship). In this series, they DO go for the wormhole, but they get the more modern trek darker storylines with actual consequences for each episode. No magically repaired ship! Voyager was a brilliant concept, but the story of the week/episodic format took away some of the inherent danger of the concept.
0:11 ayo what poster of Jeri Ryan is THAT!?!?
It is silly that the Sicarians wouldn't allow the Voyager crew to transit to the alpha quadrant. They didn't have to share the tech, they could have sent just the crew with resources to contact starfleet for a pickup.
This was something I never understood. They could travel "up to 40,000 light years" earth was 70,000 light years, why wouldn't they have negotiated to build a outpost on a planet with the correct core so they could planet hop. then disassemble the second one after sending Voyagers crew home.
The Sicarians weren't the altrusitic type, they were all about self-indulgence through their bountiful resources and tech and having novel experiences with new aliens and civilizations - a more Risa approach to Starfleet's mission. They heard rumors about Voyager, the Lost Ship from some distant corner of the galaxy, and just thought, "Nice! This'll be fun!" Giving Voyager practical resources? _Building_ another outpost? "Sounds too much like work."
@@Brasc Thats a good idea, but go with me on this one... The chance to visit federation worlds, interact with their people and eat their amazing pie? A entire quadrant of the galaxy full of sentient people with stories, food, and art to explore, just by building one more spatial projector, which the crew of voyager would probably do most of the work on.
After the last one. I love you for doing this one. I just made a list of Voyager best. Thanks brother!
Torres did touch on the fact figuring out how to navigate at Warp 10 would need to get figured out even though Paris was able to stumble his way back to Voyager I guess the idea of winding up in another galaxy by accident was to big of a risk.
as we later learned in discovery, the galactic barrier is quite a complicated blockade.
neither wormholes can penetrate it (wormholes always stay inside the galaxy), the spore drive that works universewide and through all the parallel universes can't penetrate it, why should warp 10 manage that?
@@robertheinrich2994 Discovery used a wormhole made by the 10C to get back to Earth, The Enterprise D left the galaxy and returned via the traveler.
@@JaredLS10 you are right. the 10C could penetrate the barrier with a wormhole.
You should have shown the frozen Voyager ... a longer shot ... that was a great image ... I remember it well.
You missed meeting their clones. The silver blood
If they had met them they could have gotten the enhanced warp drive
I scrolled a long way to find this comment, but I'm glad I did. In theory, Voyager could have done it all by themselves.
Janeway - "I'm telling you Chakotay, I feel like every time we get close to a way to get home, some invisible force creates some problem that makes it impossible"
Chakotay - "I know how you feel captain, maybe Q is just messing with us"
Janeway - "I don't think it's Q but I get the distinct feeling we are being manipulated for the entertainment of somebody"
Star Trek Voyager writing team leader - "Guys I think she is onto us, we need to be more careful, if she learns the truth and breaks the fourth wall we are all out of a job"
Definitely in the pilot, go back through the Caretaker’s Array after placing a bunch of explosives on it with a timer and anti tampering sensors
6:57 nice R2 cameo
Dang it thought I might be the first
I loved Voyager, but the "'let's never mention this again" is a recurring motif for the show, which is a shame.
That and the magic space repair shop they found after every episode.
For all of Star Trek, except Lower Decks...
It was a ridiculous plot line that Starlet negotiated they wouldn't develop cloaking tech while their enemies could. That would be dumb AF. "Okay, to keep the peace we won't develop or use cloaking tech, while you still can so you can surprise us with a huge cloaked fleet outside out planet and/or spy on us. Deal!"
Star Trek IV, the voyage home... Do you remember that one? When Kirk and the original crew hijacked a Klingon bird-of-prey and went back to Earth in the 80s... Then returned with two humpback whales.
I always wondered why Voyager didn't just return to the Future the same way Kirk and crew did in the movie. After all, they were home, just in the wrong time. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm referring to Future's end... The episode where voyager's crew was in California in the 90s. It has been a long time since I've seen the episode, but I'm pretty sure Janeway could have gotten away and pulled the old Crew's time travel maneuver
Out of all people and all scenarios, I think Janeway being stranded in the Delta Quadrant is the one time where breaking the Treaty of Algeron is allowed.
Plus during the Dominion War, the terms were amended to only forbid Federation cloaking in the Alpha and Beta quadrants.
Meaning using it coming from the Delta Quadrant would have been fine provided they remove the device after arriving in the Alpha Quadrant.
I love Voy so much.
Best Trek. Full Stop !!
No mention of the Q offer?
Excellent list, however the ENTIRE premise of the show, as you pointed out, would be gone. Q, whom Captain Janeway encountered 3 times could have easily done it
Q could have done it too, or even Q..
@@MrEscape314 then the series ends, just like it did in the series REAL finale ENDGAME in the final scene. If you are one of those people who saw some of them streaming but not all then you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about😎😎
@@batgurrl I've seen them all, most live. Not saying they should have given us a snap ending. You pointed out q could have done it, I was just adding that there were multiple q that could have done it.. especially q after they helped him out. I never meant to suggest they should have because of plot/story reasons. Otoh, it's hard to see how omnipotent beings could feel appreciative and not do something so careless as to send them home..
@@MrEscape314 the entire object of the series, from my point of view was that Captain Janeway main mission was to get the crew home in a timely manner. Even though the finale was a bit ‘contrived’, I really enjoyed the second part very much. Destroying the Borg trans warp hub leading to the Alpha quadrant right after she emerged in Voyager, and also the damage she did to the Borg queen and god knows how many drones thrilled me at the time. Logic wasn’t that relevant to me at the time, if you know what I mean. The starfleet complaints that they didn’t allow Species 8472 to wipe out the Borg was kind of dumb because of the message they sent to Kes about ‘purging our universe’ Far worse outcome than millions of humanoids being turned into drones. The lesser of two evils IMHO☮️🖖
@@MrEscape314 that’s true, but there is no ‘drama’ there☮️☮️😎😎
It's classic in shows where the narrative is about the protagonists trying to find a way to return home. Sliders, the animated Dungeons & Dragons show, or Lost in Space. These shows featured multiple episodes where they find a way back, but something gets in the way and they continue being trapped.
Another thing about Prime Factors is that while the Sikarians had the tech to transport them halfway home but were unwilling to share the technology with Voyager...
...Voyager never asked if the Sikarians would have been willing to use the technology *THEMSELVES* to transport Voyager halfway home.
IE: Keeping the technology fully in the hands of the Sikarians.
And that was infuriating to watch, considering how friendly and helpful the Sikarians were.
Umm...yes they did. Janeway had that conversation with Gath while eating pecan pie. He made the excuse of having to discuss it with the other magistrates.
Wasn't there something about the device that it would only work at the Sikarian homeworld, something about the fields around the planet. Hence the need to try it right away, otherwise Janeway was about to depart.
@richard77231
Technically yes, but it obviously worked on other planets. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to get back.
I'd go with Eye of the Needle.. traveling forward in time is so easy that we all do it every day. Going forward in time faster than others isn't hard at all either. General Relativity anyone? Hangout in high speed or by a black hole for a bit.. or slingshot or... So many options.
With 'Timeless' what always got me was the Quantum Slipstream Drive was able to knock 10 years off the journey home before it had to be shut down. It would mean leap frogging, but they could have relatively gotten home that way, just drop out of slipstream before it got to the danger zone.
Cue Kenny Loggins.
Sean you cheeky bastard I love the opening line! Lol
At least they had an *infinite* amount of shuttle crafts? 🤔😅
Heck, they built a brand new one in the Delta Flyer.
there are a lot of silly thing about Voyager, like how there seems to be an unlimited supply of shuttlecraft that can get destroyed and magically reappear on the ship the next episode.
The issue with going in a straight line through the core is they’d have to pass the black hole at the centre, not to mention all the stars orbiting it, the radiation levels would likely be too high.
As for the bajoran wormhole, the gamma side of it is either in, or very close to dominion space, and by the time voyager would have reached it, the war would either in full swing, or about to start.
And yes, the transwarp coils and hub thing annoy me too. The hubs are only mentioned at the end, with no buildup, like that god awful wormhole drive in SGA. If the Borg had those hubs all along, then wtf weren’t they ever used? And how many times did voyager find damaged Borg ships? The one icheb was found on was still in good condition ffs!
Going through the core of the galaxy would also mean meeting god...
@@thobu6576 at which point, he’d demand the ship be ‘donated’
@@TheGuardianofAzarath but as Kirk said, why would God need a starship?
Also when they found the Borg children, there was also a cube that is practically abandoned.. grab the transwarp coils in an abandoned Borg cube..
Considering that they went there for harvesting aliens with the Equinox crew, I'm really surprised they didn't bring up Q's offer to send them home if Janeway had accepted his offer. If you're going to go into the bad moral decisions that could've gotten them home, it seems like a strange omission.
As far as threshold is concerned, there's three problems with just using warp 10 anyway (aside from fuel or other technical limitations). The first is assuming everyone would evolve the same way as what was seen from experiencing it in the Delta Flyer. Evolution is caused by adaptation to a specific environment. A full sized ship is a different environment from the smaller Delta Flyer.
The second is you have more than one race on that ship besides human and there's no way of knowing who would envolve into what and/or if they would become dangerous to the others.
The third being that it's a lot of work for one holographic doctor to handle. Even when they had to put the crew into stasis for crossing a certain region of space, he needed Seven's help.
Sure warp 10 would have gotten the ship home, but probably not the crew...
6:56 I see you R2-D2!
What about Kes, she could've pushed Voyager even further into the borders between Delta and Alpha Quadrant.
She pushed them as far as she was able with her powers at the level they were at
@@andylongman355 So maybe Janeway keeps looking for Ocampa to harvest for their psychic energy...ha-ha...she becomes Ransom.
This made me realise how long it's been since I've watched Voyager as there were bits I have no memory of ever watching.
The Sicarian Tech episode always bugged me. I get why Voyager couldn’t use the tech themselves (which is explained by needing to use the planets core and other stuff) but why couldn’t Janeway have traded the stories in exchange for Voyager being transjected 30,000 light years closer to the Alpha Quadrant. They say in the episode the size of the object doesn’t matter AND Harry used it with the Sicarian woman. OK it’s not 70,000 light years but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing.
they tried that in the episode and the 'leader' of the sicarians had no intention of helping them as thats what janeway DID ask for when she found out, and they refused to give tech, she asked about a boost they still said no
@@Guardian582 I always wondered about that episode too. When Harry was sent briefly to the Alpha quadrant, he wasn't given the tech, the lady took them there and back. I always wondered if Janeway could've asked them to just send Voyager and the crew to the alpha quadrant without giving them the tech.
@@jimdigitalvideo she did, they said no..well technically they hummed and hawed, until that told them the leader had no intent to help them, AND the leader admitted he wasnt going to
8:25 The treaty of Algeron technically doesn't apply. When the Romulans installed a cloaking device in the defiant, the treaty was changed slightly to state that the Federation can't use cloaking technology in the Alpha and Beta quadrants. That does technically mean that Janeway could use a cloaking device in the Delta quadrant without breaking the treaty.
Did they know that when Voyager departed, though?
@@tortenschachtel9498 Hard to say.
I think the Defiant came in with the cloak at the start of season 3 of DS9. This is also the season where Voyager started.
However, Voyager only has 16 episodes, where DS9 has 26.
I don't know how these two series align, but I do know that the first season of DS9 only had 20 episodes, and Keiko O'Brien was in TNG Season 6 episode 7, Rascals, which means DS9 was aligned with the later episodes of TNG.
So there is a fair chance that the treaty change happened before Janeway left deep space 9 in Voyager Season 1 Episode 1, The Caretaker.
But even if the change did happen before they got lost, that's not a guarantee that Janeway knew about it, but it is definitely possible that she did.
Ok. But part of the warp 10 mutation effect was Tom's desire to go to the planet he & Janeway had kids on. That was JUST 1 PERSON in Tom that outsmarted EVERYONE to get off the ship. If Voyager went to warp 10 & the WHOLE CREW became those salamanders, THEY ALL would've been bound & determined to get to that planet. The Doctor couldn't stop Tom...HOW COULD HE STOP THE ENTIRE CREW????
Suppose the suggestion is that maybe The Doctor could have found some way to protect the crew once he knew the full extent of the evolution....
Over a day went by before Paris went nuts enough to do all that. And he only progressed that far because the Doctor hadn't figured out a workable cure yet. By the end of the episode, that no longer applies, as he knows how to reverse the problem immediately.
keep in mind they didn't know that this would happen with Paris. also, they could have had help from all of Starfleet medical once back home.
Yay!...another instalment from Sean!.....(and he's looking as adorable as ever) 🤤
Eye of the Needle would have been perfect, because even though they would be 20 years in the past, they know how to do the "breakaway maneuver", as its been done even with a broken down Bird of Prey from a near-century earlier. So, hop across the distance, hope a stripped down ship with nothing but a functional life support and a warp drive capable of 9 or better (certainly not classified by even Romulan standards) and do a quick reverse sun slingshot. Boom, back home
Lol, how did I not think about the bojorn wormhole!! That was a good one!
"Could have got Home" sounds a bit strange to me. In my opinion "could have gotten Home" sounds better.
But I'm not a native speaker. So what do you say?
As a native speaker, I say it does sound strange.
This is an American vs British English thing. "Gotten" is widely used in American English, but British English usually uses "got" instead. Although "gotten" is becoming more common in Britain these days.
As a British English speaker, I would probably say "got". But either sounds fine to me.
Gotten is actually a native English word but it fell out of use in British English centuries ago, and we use got. Due to the mixing of British and English cultures since the internet or even just TV some words get used interchangeably now but anyone that uses the word cell phone or even worse just cell, should be tried for treason😂.
@@Psyk60
Okay, I've looked it up in a verbform chart/table, and it lists both forms as the present perfect and the conditional perfect (get, got, got/gotten), but it doesn't specify one beieng british english or american english.
Thanks for your input.
@@clairewilliams9416
😂
Since you mentioned the mixing of languages. Do you know what germans call "cell phones"? It might be british slang for something else.
We call a "cell phone", a "Handy".
There was another option you forgot. Janeway should have mated with Q. The needs of the many. . .
6:56 What the......?
Bajoran Wormhole? Maybe the Dominion would have taken umbridge at that, they certainly were a touchy bunch.
One you missed was going to the Cytherian Home world. In the 4th season TNG episode "The Nth Degree", Barclay is exposed to an alien probe that makes him smarter. This culminates into the Enterprise being sent to a position near the center of the galaxy to meet the Cytherians. An advanced race that never leaves home but explores the galaxy via probes. Voyager could have gone to the Cytherians and asked for help. Even trading the data they would have accumulated along the way for passage back to the Alpha Quadrant.
Dominion would have never allowed a Federation Starship to go that far into its space.
Moreover Voyager might be the very reason the Dominion was paranoid.
They could have heard of the Federation ship destabilizing the Delta Quadrant.
Would have been a right laugh if they made haste for the Gamma wormhole and got just got destroyed, cut to Sisko being angry.
Another one that I just realized, "Future's End."
Voyager did return to Earth, but back to the late 20th century.
Though risky, they could have tried the slingshot effect that returned the Enterprise to the 23rd century, or Picard and the La Serina back to the 21st century.
Damn you, Captain Braxton!!
10:16 YES!! Its the “Salamander” episode!!!
The idea of heading towards the gamma quadrent and bajorn space would have been juat as good as what we got, potentially safer and not so many deaths crew wise too
LOL at 6:56... Someone at TrekCulture edited the clip to have R2D2's head on the console of the Ferengi shuttle in place of it's usual instrumentation dome!
Guilty 🙋♂️
It has been several years since I watched Voyager but there was one episode where they found a Starfleet Acadamy Simulation that they discovered was built by Species 8472. (I don't remember if that was their actual number hopefully you know the one that I mean). In the episode the female friend of Chakotay said they were training for a mission in the Alpha Quadrant in a few weeks. That means they were going to go from the Delta Quadrant through the Alpha Quadrant through fluidic space in a very short amount of time. At the end of the episode there is a very tenuous cease fire between Voyager and Species 8472 so they were not likely to let them use fluidic space to get back home. However, it would have made sense for Voyager and Species 8472 to both hang around the space station and get to know each other. Even if it took perhaps a year for Voyager to build their trust to let them use their space to get home that would still have been quicker than traveling through normal space.
I may have missed it, but there was also a time where Q said "Have a baby with me, and I'll send everyone home." Janeway refused.
my most favorite star trek series of all time ❤❤❤
The coaxial warp drive in vis a vis is my favourite example of this- could have got them home in months. They had a 100% working shuttle with the drive on it at the end of the episode, even if it was too difficult to scale up, they could have at least taken a few crew with the tech back home and organised a proper rescue. It's never mentioned again though, and the episode ends with paris and torres making out in a car instead.