Wait: how DID the Equinox get that far?

[Mogh]

By the time it encounters the Equinox, Voyager has crossed over 30,000 light years - c. 30 years of maximum warp travel for a ship exceeding warp 9. Most of this was achieved by shortcuts (9,500 boost from Kes; 10,000 from the quantum slipstream drive; 10,000 from the Borg transwarp coil; 2,500 from the Malon wormhole).

The Equinox has a maximum speed of warp 6, but has crossed the same distance. We surmise early on that this is due to their experimental core and sacrificing aliens. This is backed by Ransom explaining that he needs to sacrifice another 63 aliens, and that he's done this many times already. Given that 63 aliens will get him a further 40,000 light years, it sounds as though his numerous experiments so far got him most of the current way (given he started at the same point in space as Voyager).

However, when Voyager then decides to solicit help, it turns out that the Ankaro homeworld - where Ransom acquired the technology to call the aliens - is ONLY 50 light years behind them.

So:
- Either the experiments haven't yielded much yet - in which case how did the Equinox get the 30-35,000 light years from the Caretaker's away that it has?
OR
- They did encounter the Ankari much closer to the Caretaker - in which case why are they only 50 light years away?

Thoughts?

 

[Phil123]

That’s some good math! Real world I’d say the script was a little lacking in terms of sorting the story, Trek world, they perhaps encountered some similar or very different short cuts. Voyager certainly ran into a few, would be odd if no one else did.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Ransom mentioned a Wormwhole.

resources.
RANSOM: I wish that I could take all the credit, but we stumbled across a wormhole, and made a few enhancements on our warp engines. I'd like to ask you something, Captain to Captain.
JANEWAY: Mmm hmm.

The Space Dolphins can't be found galaxy wide, and they probably don't have good enough navigation to track a star ship moving that quickly.

Ransom was going in circles, and waiting for the Space Dolphins to find him, so that he could keep killing them.

This is actually good.

I spent years assuming that the Space Dolphins would destroy the Earth.

But maybe a shuttle can outrun the Dolphin Swarm and Burke is not an idiot.

 

[Timo]

It is also quite unclear how the two starships happen within hailing range of each other, after all those years of dissimilar travel.

To be sure, nobody mentions "homeworld" in the Ankari context - just a planet or perhaps two on which they are to be found. We might assume the Ankari are to be found all across the galaxy, if they benefit from their special relationship with these "spirits" and can somehow ride them between stars. But nothing suggests the Ankari are that common, either in Ransom's backstory or in the events of the episode.

In any case, Ransom never tells when exactly he started resorting to burning those space dolphins - except that his ship was already shot to hell by that point. So it's probably a recent development after all. Still doesn't explain how he gets an explicit 10,000 ly boost yet a) doesn't manage to shed the pursuit or b) ends up right next to Janeway anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mogh]

Good point, I'd forgotten he reported a 10,000 LY boost (if all that from one, why a need for 67 more?!)

As @Phil123 says, real world explanation was surely a sloppy script. From an in-universe perspective, we'd have to assume the Ankari spanned at least 10,000 light years which would make them pretty widespread; and the ship near Voyager certainly seemed to know who the Equinox crew were, so word must equally be able to travel that far (in which case, maybe a deal with the Ankari to use their comms or propulsion?).

 

[The_Baroness]

Equinox was going downhill.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I doubt Ransom started out an amoral dipshit.

He probably started with small compromises here and there in his quest to go home.
Gradually he took more and more ethical shortcuts, unlike Janeway (no matter her reputation in fandom), normalizing very questionable behavior among his crew because he got results.

It’s easy to infer that he managed to cut the distance short on occasion by being ruthless and amoral before.

 

[Mogh]

So, assembling all the above suggestions, the most plausible version of events:

• The Equinox managed to get almost 30,000 light years closer to Earth ahead of Voyager, having started somewhat earlier. Ransom mentioned a wormhole and some warp drive enhancements, but it's unclear how true this was. Either way, he achieved it without the Space Dolphins. As @Timelord Victorious says, he quite possibly resorted to other amoral means.
  
• The first (accidentally killed) Space Dolphin corpse took them 10,000 LY in two weeks. During this time, it's most likely a decision was taken to go back and collect more. This would make the Ankari a localised race and remove the need for the Space Dolphins to be able to chase the Equinox anywhere in the galaxy and track it, though we do see evidence that they can cover quite a wide range of space and catch up with ships at warp (possibly due to the nature of how their portals form).
• The Equinox was most likely harvesting, but not actively using the Space Dolphins: killing enough to store up the fuel to make the full trip home. The plan presumably was to start the full journey home once a remaining 63 had been caught.
• The fact that a single alien gave them a 10,000 LY boost - despite presumably it being their first attempt - suggests that either a) the process becomes less efficient during use, or b) there's a wide variety in the amount of use each corpse provides, and they happened to get an unusually rich one first time round. The former seems more plausible. There might be wear and tear on components of the engine which cannot be replaced (given they were starving and barely holding the shop together when they met the Ankari, we can assume they are resource-poor); or it might rely on some sort of intermix with another fuel which they are rationing (and so like producing energy when you can't get enough oxygen, it becomes rapidly less efficient).
• Pure serendipity brought Voyager within a few light years of the Equinox - albeit they were both following a similar trajectory home, so it was merely a question of being on the same part of that route at the same time.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It doesn't take long to kill 63 space dolphins.

So?

Had it only been "weeks" or "days" since they started butchering these creatures?

If they had found Janeway one month earlier, Equinox never would have gone down this road?

 

[Timo]

The first (accidentally killed) Space Dolphin corpse took them 10,000 LY in two weeks. During this time, it's most likely a decision was taken to go back and collect more.

This seems to be the only way to bring some sense back to the script.

However, it's quite difficult to grasp the thinking behind this. Ransom is 10,000 ly closer to home - and turns back for fuel even though home now is just 20,000-30,000 ly away, rather than the original 75,000 or so. Okay, so perhaps he figures he'll never make it across those 20k-30k ly without superboost, his ship having but a few months of life left. But how does he get back?

When the first corpse runs out of oomph, Ransom is again stranded. And since he ran that first corpse for weeks, it's not as if he would have turned back after a brief test run - he must have milked the corpse for its full value, unknown to him till the engine again stalls. Janeway felt it takes about a year per every 1,000 ly in a ship that isn't shot to hell. Ransom thus spends TEN YEARS going back?!?

Pure serendipity brought Voyager within a few light years of the Equinox - albeit they were both following a similar trajectory home, so it was merely a question of being on the same part of that route at the same time.

This is the other weakness here. A big plot point is made on Janeway and Ransom choosing different routes from the very start, so that they face completely different opponents. When they two meet, they are at the halfway point of their respective voyages. This is the point where two different paths will be at their most different: they will only start converging again when both ships are nearing the UFP. By all rights, Ransom and Janeway ought to be separated by at least ten thousand lightyears.

Then again, 10k ly was just established as a week's travel or so for Ransom. If he is willing to make a detour that long just to refuel, he would be likely to make the detour in order to meet Janeway, too. How does he know Janeway is out there? (Gilmore says right off the bat that he doesn't know, but he may be lying, or then Ransom is lying to him...)

So let's modify the above with "Ransom burns one corpse for 10,000 ly of travel, but has another stowed away for the return trip. He ends up using it for meeting Janeway instead."?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mogh]

This seems to be the only way to bring some sense back to the script.

However, it's quite difficult to grasp the thinking behind this. Ransom is 10,000 ly closer to home - and turns back for fuel even though home now is just 20,000-30,000 ly away, rather than the original 75,000 or so. Okay, so perhaps he figures he'll never make it across those 20k-30k ly without superboost, his ship having but a few months of life left. But how does he get back?

When the first corpse runs out of oomph, Ransom is again stranded. And since he ran that first corpse for weeks, it's not as if he would have turned back after a brief test run - he must have milked the corpse for its full value, unknown to him till the engine again stalls. Janeway felt it takes about a year per every 1,000 ly in a ship that isn't shot to hell. Ransom thus spends TEN YEARS going back?!?



This is the other weakness here. A big plot point is made on Janeway and Ransom choosing different routes from the very start, so that they face completely different opponents. When they two meet, they are at the halfway point of their respective voyages. This is the point where two different paths will be at their most different: they will only start converging again when both ships are nearing the UFP. By all rights, Ransom and Janeway ought to be separated by at least ten thousand lightyears.

Then again, 10k ly was just established as a week's travel or so for Ransom. If he is willing to make a detour that long just to refuel, he would be likely to make the detour in order to meet Janeway, too. How does he know Janeway is out there? (Gilmore says right off the bat that he doesn't know, but he may be lying, or then Ransom is lying to him...)

So let's modify the above with "Ransom burns one corpse for 10,000 ly of travel, but has another stowed away for the return trip. He ends up using it for meeting Janeway instead."?

Timo Saloniemi

I should probably have clarified - I think they got less than a week into the original 10,000LY trip, realised they were halfway burned down, and took the decision to turn about and go back for more. On the thinking that even if the ship wasn't shot to hell, he can go a maximum of Warp 8, versus Voyager's Warp 9.975. Due to the warp scale, that makes his ship about 10 times slower than Voyager. So even if he were only 20,000LY away - approx a 20 year trip in Voyager - it's a 200 year trip for him. To that end, 10,000 LY is an impressive jump, but he might as well be 100,000LY away for all the difference it makes.

I think they initially thank their lucky stars, and then realise it's still far short of what's needed, and return to the scene of the crime. Honestly, given the odds, it's more surprising he and his crew didn't choose to settle down somewhere: for Voyager, it's one hell of an odyssey (as Annorax says, "the odds against you are astronomical"). In Equinox, it feels like a suicide mission.

On the subject of different routes: they may be different but I imagine not *that* different. Suppose Voyager passed within 50LY of a wormhole and never knew it? We don't know what was waiting just off their own route. You are correct thought - it does seem logical that they'd diverge more than they did.

EDIT: I originally put that the Equinox was limited to Warp 6. In fact, in Part 1, Janeway observes that it's Warp 8. In Part 2, she says that without the enhanced drive, the Equinox can only make Warp 6. We can assume that it is functioning suboptimally by Part 2. However, Ransom would still have started off with a 750-year trip home...

 

[Mogh]

I should note, @Timo - I do like the idea that Ransom may have intentionally crossed Voyager's path to get support when under attack, however. It's a delicious idea!

 

[Timo]

As regards speeds without extra boost, the bottom line after all the travails of a typical year in Delta seems to be "average warp 6.2", as Barclay puts it in "Pathfinder" (and, regardless of how he figured that out, he seems to hit the mark).

Possibly the lithe Equinox could have moved more or less as fast as Janeway's more muscular ride, then, in a scenario where Ransom had fewer pit stops, had to abscond from those more often and with more haste, and in general stayed at warp more with bad guys in hot pursuit. This would raise Ransom's average speed for the first couple of years, and then make it plummet as his ship broke down from the abuse. Janeway certainly appeared to spend a lot of time at impulse, supposedly out of some sort of necessity!

(OTOH, as regards Ransom's use of the space dolphins, we might choose to dump the idea that one dolphin carcass gives them 10,000 ly of travel. Ransom's line could equally be read as all the dolphin abuse so far having yielded the 10,000 ly - in which case the numbers could match, with X giving 10k, and 63 giving the still missing 30k or so, us now being at liberty to define X=20 or so.

I guess the big question then goes, how many dolphins does Ransom already have aboard? And are they alive or dead?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[STEPhon IT]

I doubt Ransom started out an amoral dipshit.

He probably started with small compromises here and there in his quest to go home.
Gradually he took more and more ethical shortcuts, unlike Janeway (no matter her reputation in fandom), normalizing very questionable behavior among his crew because he got results.

It’s easy to infer that he managed to cut the distance short on occasion by being ruthless and amoral before.

Maybe he was an amoral person from the start but suppressed it, I doubt if GOAT Janeway was in a similar situation she would do things Ransom had done. It's not in her character, but it was for Ransom.

 

[Mogh]

Maybe he was an amoral person from the start but suppressed it, I doubt if GOAT Janeway was in a similar situation she would do things Ransom had done. It's not in her character, but it was for Ransom.

...to channel Mr Data, why is she a classified as a caprine quadruped?

 

[STEPhon IT]

GOAT = Greatest Of All Time

 

[Markonian]

According to the novelization, the journey was thus:
1. Snatched by Caretaker.
2. "Week of Hell" through Krowtonan Guard territory.
3. Relief from Ankari. Receive the iDevice to call Spirits of Good Fortune.
4. For science, a Spirit of Good Fortune is called, and unintentionally dies in confinement. The crew studies their remains, and travel 10.000ly. They leave it at that.
5. Equinox becomes stuck in a spatial phenomenon. Unable to escape, they face certain death. They summon the second Spirit of Good Fortune to escape.
6. Then they begin to morally decline and catch them to speed home. Attacks commence.

 

[Mogh]

GOAT = Greatest Of All Time

Basically, it's like a non-religious version of "Peace Be Upon Him"

 

[Mogh]

According to the novelization, the journey was thus:
1. Snatched by Caretaker.
2. "Week of Hell" through Krowtonan Guard territory.
3. Relief from Ankari. Receive the iDevice to call Spirits of Good Fortune.
4. For science, a Spirit of Good Fortune is called, and unintentionally dies in confinement. The crew studies their remains, and travel 10.000ly. They leave it at that.
5. Equinox becomes stuck in a spatial phenomenon. Unable to escape, they face certain death. They summon the second Spirit of Good Fortune to escape.
6. Then they begin to morally decline and catch them to speed home. Attacks commence.

So in the novelisation, they encounter the Ankari early in the Delta Quadrant - meaning they must be able to freely roam and communicate over a 30,000 LY range?

 

[XCV330]

I doubt Ransom started out an amoral dipshit.

depends on if he and Jack Ransom are related