Doing another Voyager rewatch and something caught my eye that I hadn’t noticed before.
From season 7’s 22nd episode Homestead the writers forgot what year the show was set in. Even contradicting themselves within the same episode.
In the opening of the episode they are celebrating the 315th anniversary of first contact on Earth. So this puts the date at April 5th 2378. However season 7 is set in 2377 with a stardate given during the same episode of 54868.6. Or November 14th 2377. Which being at the end of season would be correct.
Even Memory Alpha lists the wrong year the episode is set in despite having the correct stardate shown.
The in-universe dates for the penultimate and final episodes are also wrong on Memory Alpha.
Renaissance Man takes place on stardate 54890.7 (November 22nd 2377) but is listed as 2378.
Also Endgame is set on December 22nd 2377 and is the day Voyager returns home. Again Memory Alpha says 2378.
It seems someone at Memory Alpha worked out the date first contact day was in Homestead and just went with that instead of converting the star dates to normal calendar dates.
I know it’s a bit of a nitpick but small errors like this bug me.
Maximum warp is not maximum cruising speed, even negating the need to refuel.
It is said in the pilot that their top speed and sustainable cruise velocity is warp 9.975.
At that speed 75,000 light years would take 14 years 7 months. Even stopping for fuel and maintenance every 5,000 light years would probably only add a year or two.
Even warp just 8 would be 73 years 3 months.
The Enterprise G could cover it just 2 years 4 months.
On-screen dialogue is cannon which states repeatedly that Voyagers maximum speed is warp 9.975. For how interesting these tech manuals are they aren’t considered cannon.
However I had no idea there was a Voyager technical manual. Do you have a link to the whole thing?
Google Lens turned up this: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/star-trek-voyager-technical-manual.php
So the writers had a manual their disposal and still managed to make a shocking number of mistakes.
Whatever they said, Warp 9.975 is NOT the maximum sustainable speed of an Intrepid-class starship. It's the maximum possible speed... for a few hour at best, before the warp core needs to be powered down to prevent everything from melting.
It's not a stretch to assume that the initial 75-year estimate was based on average sustainable speed and taking into account time needed to stop, refuel, maintain, repair, etc. Over that long a time, it wouldn't be enough to just pour more deuterium into it. Most of the warp engine would have to be rebuilt or replaced.
Also, the computer was struggling to figure out exactly where they were, so it might have been off by a few years at first. When Seven built astrometrics, they immediately updated their ETA.