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The final episode of Star Trek: Voyager, "Endgame" has this sequence:

  • Voyager enters transwarp tunnel.
  • Sphere seen bearing down on Voyager
  • Sphere exits tunnel + explodes

At this point, the visuals seem a bit unclear, but the dialog and description in the transcript seem to corroborate the idea that somehow Voyager was inside the sphere.

So just how did the Voyager get there? Or does "right where we expect it to be" just mean the Alpha quadrant hidden close to the sphere and they explode the sphere from inside by some other trickery and/or excellent marksmanship?

Was this some sort of plan? What was Janeway's 'endgame' in Endgame?

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  • I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Are you wanting to know how the Voyager ended up inside the Borg Sphere?
    – Valorum
    Commented May 20, 2016 at 15:28
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    youtube.com/watch?v=Wvqme6qYtME
    – Valorum
    Commented May 20, 2016 at 15:35
  • @Valorum: Essentially yes, if that is indeed what is supposed to have happened.
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented May 20, 2016 at 16:41
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    Hmm. That's quite a good point. It's not clear from the script, the actual episode or the novel quite how the Borg took the Voyager inside, nor why they'd have done that in the first place.
    – Valorum
    Commented May 20, 2016 at 17:02
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    @Valorum: In the clip that you linked to, what happened to Chakotay's face tattoo? When he relieves Paris and takes the helm his face tattoo is missing.
    – sfhq_sf
    Commented May 20, 2016 at 23:13

5 Answers 5

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Wikipedia gives the details of how the Borg are destroyed.

I found a reference that the Borg were chasing Voyager with an entry open and overtook it as they reached the Alpha quadrant. While the Borg were fighting the fleet, Voyager launched torpedoes from inside. The following from the script gives the implication, however I do not have the novel reference

Endgame script

(The Sphere prepares to activate its tractor beam.)
PARIS: I can't stay ahead of them, Captain.
JANEWAY: Mister Paris, prepare to adjust your heading.
PARIS: Yes, ma'am.

This implies that the script statement means that they realize that the sphere will pull them in and will be vulnerable to the torpedoes.

Memory Alpha Wiki hints the same thing but deliberately obfuscates the description.

Endgame (Star Trek: Voyager)

Meanwhile Captain Janeway and her crew have entered a transwarp corridor and fire torpedoes at the unprotected manifolds while traveling back to the Alpha Quadrant, but are pursued by a Borg sphere that has managed to withstand the pathogen's effects and assimilate Admiral Janeway's adaptive armor upgrade. It is now following the Borg Queen's final orders to destroy Voyager so that the Admiral (and her sabotage) will never exist. Unable to fight back against the ship's exterior defenses, Janeway takes her ship inside the sphere, where, upon its arrival one lightyear away from Earth's solar system, she detonates a torpedo that destroys the sphere from the inside.

In the show's final minutes, the crew stand dumbfounded that they have finally returned home after seven years lost in the Delta Quadrant and are greeted by a fleet of Starfleet vessels which had arrived to fight the Borg. Settling down in her chair, Captain Janeway issues her final orders with the same words she used at the start of Voyager's journey: "Set a course...for home."

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  • "Unable to fight back against the ship's exterior defenses, Janeway takes her ship inside the sphere" -I'm unclear where the Wiki got that from.
    – Valorum
    Commented May 20, 2016 at 16:27
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    @ThePopMachine The armor of the sphere would have protected it "behind" just as well as "in front". It is not like a surface ship or tank that would have a difference in armor on the front or sides. That is another reason to be a sphere (besides the volume to surface area ratio and the ability to fight in all three dimensions).
    – sabbahillel
    Commented May 20, 2016 at 22:47
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    "It is now following the Borg Queen's final orders to destroy Voyager so that the Admiral (and her sabotage) will never exist" That makes no sense. This is clearly already an alternate reality so destroying Voyager is not going to have any effect on what's already happened in this episode.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented May 21, 2016 at 17:57
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    @ThePopMachine The clip linked in the question shows the sphere opening up to take in Voyager at 0:40
    – Izkata
    Commented May 22, 2016 at 8:08
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    Well going inside the Sphere happened in Elite Force 2 but I'm that's Memory Beta content
    – IG_42
    Commented May 22, 2016 at 20:28
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According to Captain Picard (as narrated in the PC game Star Trek: Elite Force II), the Voyager was captured by the Borg Sphere on its trip through the Transwarp tunnel network and held in a dampening field, presumably for later study after the Borg had dealt with the more immediate threat of the tunnels collapsing behind them.

After somehow deactivating the field (in the game this was accomplished by the Hazard Squad) and determining that the ship was indeed in the Alpha Quadrant, Voyager used one of her enhanced quantum torpedoes to destroy the Sphere from the inside-out before scarpering at high speed from the wreckage.

As to the question of planning, it seems abundantly clear that this was something that Janeway improvised after she realised that she could neither outrun the Sphere, nor make it to the next off-ramp. When she ordered Paris to

"adjust your heading"

she was evidently doing so in a way that would allow the Sphere to capture the Voyager, but that would also make it impossible for them to exit the tunnel network anywhere other than the Alpha Quadrant, right where they expected to be.

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  • Maybe this is the 'canon' way it happened, but it's incredibly poor, "The Last Jedi" style writing where completely weird, impossible stuff happens every minute or two with no explanation of how. Then some twit on Twitters later explains how it might have happened, or the writers later think something up and stick it in a game. Either way, you just have to accept "it's magic" because the writers are just SO awful.
    – Chris Bordeman
    Commented Feb 9, 2021 at 4:11
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I found the moments before leaving the transwarp conduit to be confusing as well. Chakotay asked how long until the nearest conduit exit and Seven tells him "30 seconds away, but it will deposit them back into the Delta Quadrant" but Voyager did not go back to the Delta quadrant and they seemingly adjusted their heading to go inside the sphere. If the Borg were able to implement the special shielding acquired by the Borg Queen while chasing Voyager then the only way to destroy the sphere was to get inside of it. Perhaps this was a misplaced suspense element that was never clarified.

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    I'm having a bit of trouble with your answer, could you edit it to make it a bit clearer? It also looks like there's some off-topic stuff as well as maybe a question in there. Please only use the answer box to answer questions. If you have a new questions press the Ask Question button. Thanks and have a nice day.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Nov 10, 2017 at 10:13
  • This seems to be an extended comment rather than an answer in its own right.
    – Valorum
    Commented Nov 10, 2017 at 11:15
  • "There is no good answer" is an answer, too. And in this case, I think this is the correct answer. Basically, the writers got lazy and decided to give up and blatantly leave out the segment. So the end became an incoherent mess the writers decided to fill in in a later PC game.
    – Chris Bordeman
    Commented Feb 9, 2021 at 4:17
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I always assumed that their ability to "wear" the Borg ship without getting assimilated had to do with the Borg being infected with the SpaceHerp that future Janeway infected them with via her own bloodstream when the queen tries to assimilate her (Future Janeway). the death of the queen would probably wreak enough havoc with the Borg systems, possibly even killing them, that they wouldn't be in any state to defend themselves, which would include shielding, repair, etc...

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  • This seems more like a comment than an answer in its own right.
    – Valorum
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 23:39
  • You may be right - that's what I get for trying to add something in at work!
    – CaptainCowfish
    Commented Mar 21, 2018 at 15:15
  • @Valorum No it doesn't. It's an attempted answer, an educated guess essentially, since the episode itself did not fill in any of the necessary details to understand the most important plot point of the entire series. Answers don't have to be provably correct!
    – Chris Bordeman
    Commented Feb 9, 2021 at 4:20
  • @ChrisBordeman - In the absence of anything to back it up, answers based on mere supposition are (imho) better posted as comments.
    – Valorum
    Commented Feb 9, 2021 at 8:10
  • @Valorum All the answers are 'mere suppositions' since the episode didn't answer the question. Without the follow up game, it's total guesswork how it got there, writing at its worst.
    – Chris Bordeman
    Commented Feb 18, 2021 at 16:27
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(if I remember correctly)

Voyager was tractor-beamed inside the Borg sphere just as it arrives in the Alpha Quadrant; and they just blasted their way out at the same time the rest of the fleet pounded on the Sphere.

At the same time, Voyager triggered the destruction of the Transwarp infrastructure; which more or less removed the Borg threats by removing their mode of transportation.

They just ended the Borg game.

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