Why Didn't Voyager Use The Wormhole? 

I'm pretty confident they would have reached home in 7 years, regardless of which route they took.

It’s a huge gamble going 60000 light years, bleeding resources, to a region of space you know is actively hostile against you. For a possibility that you could access a wormhole to get you home. The wormhole was pretty temperamental too

Honestly, if it was me i would have laid in a course for the Cytherian home world. They live near the center of the galaxy and are able to move ships rapidly from one quadrant to another, as shown in the TNG episode "The Nth Degree". Very friendly, and only want to learn. If a price is needed, give them all the data you have accumulated from the Delta Quadrant.

I think in the very early episodes they were relying on Nelix's knowledge of the Delta quadrant and their hopes of finding the other caretaker,.

Imagine watching DS9, and Voyager pops out of the wormhole. The possibilities are abound.

Random theory: during the war with the dominion, starfleet had a classified plan known to all captains that destroying the wormhole may have been an option to end the war. Knowing this as a possibility, Janeway didn't even consider it as a viable option.

Funny Story: 24 years ago or so, i had started up a small email correspondence with Michael Okuda, I can't remember how I got his email, but he was very polite to answer a few of my emails. Seemed like a pleasant person. I was mainly contacting him on a design I had for a new star-ship and just wanted his approval whether or not it was a good design. He declined comment, stating that, if he did take a look at it, it could be problematic if my design matched something that showed up on any of the shows. I told him, I no aspirations that I would contest that in any way, I just wanted to know if my ship was bad-ass or not. Sorry, the point to this story was, that I made the very same reference to him; "Why doesn't Voyager head for the Gamma quadrant and the Bajoran wormhole? That journey, by my calculations, should only take them, roughly, 50 years instead of your 78 years." The only answer I ever got back on this was something along the lines of, "Hmmmm?? You know what? I guess we just missed that. You're right, that would have been a quicker trip." And that was my one brush with Star Trek fame LOL

If this was a Pitch Meeting, the obvious answer would be "so the show could happen!" "Ok, then!"

If you are starting a journey that takes a lifetime to complete, you'll make sure that at the end you actually arrive at the place where you want to go. You're not leaving that up to chance.

I think the capricious nature of the Prophets, who Starfleet never really got comfortable with, is also a factor. 55 years is a big investment if you can't be sure the door will be open.

Having the show end at the same place it started would have been a fitting ending, I think. Would have also served as nostalgic advertisement to rewatch DS9 without breaking the fourth wall

I'm pretty sure that the Voyager crew never heard of the Dominion until they were able to have limited contact with Starfleet in a later season. B'elanna and Chakotay got a letter from one of their old Maquis friends telling that that they had been wiped out "By something called the Dominion."

What constantly amazes me is the incredible history of Star Trek, your narratives amazing...

I think you’ve hit on the reason in this video: traversing the Delta Quadrant followed by the Beta Quadrant gives Voyager a fighting chance, as the Beta Quadrant contains familiar species and familiar territory; whereas going to Delta to Gamma Quadrant route means traversing two unknown regions, in the hope that the wormhole is still there once they arrive. Janeway chose the route that was more likely to be successful because it cuts the risks down to a relative minimum.

That's similar to the situation of being on foot away from home. You can walk straight home, through familiar neighborhoods. Or walk through neighborhoods you don't know, to a bus stop that is a shorter distance away. You know the first route, but unsure of the second. You have to think about the possibility of the bus not showing up for some reason, like the possibility of the wormhole not being there for some reason. If Voyager showed up in the Gamma Quadrant, and couldn't use the wormhole, their trip would have doubled. Me, I'd rather take the slightly longer, more guaranteed route.

The Galaxy is not a perfect disc at its “edge “ but instead has spiral arms … with large areas of empty space between. From this perspective we should view voyager as a large wagon, the areas with stars as dry land and the areas without stars as empty seas rivers or lakes. Voyager is in constant need to replenish its resources , something it cannot do in very deep space. Therefore it is not possible for voyager to plot a straight line course to the Bajorian worm hole’s terminus in the Gamma quadrant as that would require it to cross the void space between spiral arms several times… where as a voyage back to the alpha and Beta Quadrants border is achieved by traveling along the spiral arm it is currently on and traveling through the denser packed main mass of the galaxy . The safest and easiest path is rarely a straight line

Putting myself in Janeway’s shoes, the Neelix factor is most important. Being surrounded by unknowns, listening to someone with knowledge and experience in the neighborhood is the most practical choice.

"Set course for the Gamma quadrant wormhole" "But captain, the Gamma quadrant hasn't been fully mapped so we're not entirely certain of it's position? Besides, it may collapse in the 60 years it takes us to get there" "Shut up Paris"

When Seven and Kim created the Astrometrics Lab, Seven managed to plot a quicker route home based on Borg alphanumerics. If she thought it was quicker to go to the Bajoran Wormhole, she would have done

I am so glad there as so many ST fans that can map things out so clearly and who have so much info to offer up. It’s really awesome to see how invested people are in this show. You guys are great!

Imagine if they used all their resources to reach the Gamma side of the wormhole in just 7 years, and Sisko wasn't bluffing about destroying it.

I love how voyager used a huge space relay that one time and then they broke it, making the hirogen pissed at them even more xD

Janeway didn't have Wesley Crusher on board so she was willing to take the long way home.

Having them return back where they started, DS9, would have been a poetic ending

More importantly, why didn't they just beam timed bombs onboard the Caretaker Array and go back home in the second episode?

Any theoretical route home that might have prevented Voyager from encountering Seven of Nine is totally unacceptable.

As briefly touched on at the end of the video, I always figured there was no guarantee that the wormhole would still be open by the time they reached the gamma quadrant; imagine travelling 60,000LY in the wrong direction, only to find out the wormhole is closed for business

Wormhole stability is always questionable in the Star Trek universe. 55+ years through hostile Dominion territory only to find that the mouth of the wormhole has either closed or changed locations would be a very bad investment.

I can imagine the crew discussing it. Heading for the wormhole would, if all went well, shave a couple of decades off their journey but it would have been a massive risk in large part due to the inherent instability of wormholes. Furthermore, there's the issue of morale. While many species served on Voyager it was made up of a largely human crew. Voyager wasn't just heading for the Alpha Quadrant, it was heading for Earth. Going to the Gamma Quadrant would have meant moving further away from Earth and even if meant a shorter journey, given that we're talking about decades either way I think it would have been demoralising to many in the crew to be going further away from Earth with each passing day whereas by going in a relatively straight line towards Earth it was at least always directly ahead of them and getting closer every day.

Imagine what it would have been like for the Voyager crew, after they finally passed into the Beta Quadrant (if they had to take the whole journey with no short-cuts), seeing something familiar for the first time, even if it WAS the Romulans. What an incredible feeling.

At the time that Voyager departed they still weren't 100% sure it was a stable wormhole. It was *more* stable than anything they'd discovered until that point, but they had no reason to believe that it would be there in 60 years. They took the guaranteed route.

They knew that they’d get home in X years aiming directly at earth. Aiming at the wormhole MIGHT save them 20 years, or it might not even be there when they arrive. Thus adding what, like 60+ years? Probably just not worth the risk

There is also the fact that Neelix was guiding them thru a good part of the trip and know his way around to get missing ressources.

Flaws and all, I still have very fond memories of Voyager; and I still rewatch it after rewatching TNG. Thank you for this video.

Why didn't the Captain just sleep with Q and then talk him into sending them back?

Could you imagine if they had done a 2 part cross-over episode where Voyager finally makes it through dominion space to the wormhole and then it picks up on the finale of DS9, and VOY breaks through the wormhole to help out. That would be epic.

Even "stable" wormholes in Star Trek have the tendency to close and never open again so it would be a great risk to fly in one direction just to come to a collapsed wormhole

Yeah, I'm going to seriously under-think this and go for the simplest possible explanation. Voyager was thrown into the Delta Quadrant when all that is known about The Dominion is that it is a vast, technologically advanced and extremely hostile power in the Gamma Quadrant. Beyond that, intelligence about 'The Founders' is as close to non-existent as makes no odds. Janeway isn't above taking risks; but they're calculated ones. Soon after their arrival, she has more than enough on her plate -- most of her command crew is dead, she's trying to fill the gaps with the surviving terrorists she was sent to capture, and she can't exactly book her battered ship in at the nearest Starbase for repairs. Heading through totally uncharted space for the terminus of a wormhole she doesn't even know is still there, and probably through the space of an intensely xenophobic galactic empire. Yeah, but... no.

Voyager did play a very small role in the dominion war when they prevented the prometheus from being taken by Romans. Likely not a significant event, but consider the ship was an advanced starship it likely saw action following that incident and played some role in the overall outcome.

Because flying right into Dominion space didn’t seem like a good idea. At all.

Another factor I look at is there is a far higher density of stars on the original path of Voyager. More stars means more potential civilizations with potential technology. Also, more stars means more potential raw materials they'd need to resupply.

I can imagine two additional reasons. First one being that the closer they would get to federation space the easier it would be to establish communication with the federation and receive their assistance as they actually did. Another reason would be the moral of the crew of the ship. When they started from the other side of the Galaxy with the combined crew of two opposing factions the tensions must have been quite high and their moral quite low. To keep the crew together they had to have some goal they all could stand behind and focus on. And what grabs the imagination of everyone involved better than aiming for home. Then getting the sense of everyday getting closer to home. Instead of increasing the literal distance to home that aiming for the wormhole in the gamma quadrant would have meant.

Imagine if Voyager was responsible for saving the Federation from the Dominion by providing valuable intel back to the Federation from their journey through the Gamma Quadrant.

I would have loved to have seen this addressed in Voyager, even if it was just a quick throw away line in the first couple of episodes, like someone suggests it but then Jayneway gives reasons for why it’s a bad idea.

Voyager: Enters Dominion space during the war Is destroyed immediately like she just went out of bounds on CoD

I think there's also a human element. Feeling you're heading in the right direction is reassuring even if you think it's not the shortest route. The pull would be to plot a direct course to federation space.

While the Dominion War had not yet begun the Dominion had already closed its borders to the Federation. Shortly before the destruction of the Odyssey the Dominion declared that they would no longer allow Federation vessels to violate their territory. Going to the Bajoran Wormhole would require either a circuitous route around the Dominion or fighting through them. Even without the war it was still a non starter as a route

Unofficial maps do place Ocompa "geographically" closer to the Gamma aperture of the wormhole Janeway (and Tuvok) probably knew about The Dominion....Voyager launched a few scant weeks after the Odyssey Incident, likely they decided to give the Gamma Quadrant a wide berth without knowing the extent of Dominion Territory

I'd like to think they'd have encountered an Iconian gateway or two on their way through the Gamma Quadrant. That would have been the ultimate shortcut to look for, really.

If Janeway had ignored those Ferengi they would have been home in two years.

I'd say Janeway took the route she did because she is a part of Starfleet. They are all about exploring new parts of the galaxy, so being flung into the delta quadrant would be an opportunity that she, and probably the rest of the Starfleet crew, wouldn't want to pass up.

If I were in command I would travel to the Cytherian's from the TNG episode "The Nth Degree". They are apparently in the centre of the galaxy, so closer than earth would be. They have tech that can travel long distances in what seems like seconds. Which has the added benefit of having demonstrated compatatibility with Starfleet technology (unlike that think Turvok stole that ended up not being compatible. As for what information I would trade in return for being taken home, you could trade all the information you have of the space and species encountered up to that point, and trade any new information about the alpha quadrant since they were last encountered.

Memory Alpha lists "Caretaker" as stardate 48315.6 which puts it in between DS9 season 3's "The Abandoned"(stardate 48301.1) and "Civil Defense"(stardate 48388.8). So yes, Voyager would have known the Dominion was hostile at that point and that the gamma quadrant was too dangerous to go near. Let alone the whole "the wormhole may not even be there for all we know" aspect in the time it would take to get there as, until that point, "stable" wormholes were thought impossible and no one knew that one would last as the Prophets kept it going and could close it whenever they wanted. Plus even with the possibility of massive shortcuts and getting past Dominion ships, it would have been a tremendously bad ending if they somehow got there when DS9 had the other side blocked with a minefield. They also likely weren't totally aware of the location of "Borg space" until they got close enough to it to see it, since the Borg typically expanded and relocated their domain constantly. I know Voyager wasn't perfect but I swear some people(as seen in the comments section, not directed at any one person, but several) have an irrational hate of the show- more annoying when it's the crowd that defends that smear of used toilet paper that is Discovery or the trashfire canon defilement that was the Abrams film. Especially since these canon stardates took all of 2 minutes to look up to debunk the "they didn't know of the Dominion" argument(what? I don't remember this stuff! Memory Alpha does the job for me)

I'd say the easiest answer is kind of... "Meta." It's easier to explain to the audience to set a course "for home" than it is "set a course for a place that's nowhere near home but wherein lies a portal than can get us home 20-something years sooner."

I thought this was obvious? The worm-hole leads to the Gamma quadrant, and Voyager was in the Delta quadrant. The distance between Voyager and the worm-hole exit in the Gamma quadrant was almost as far as Earth was to them, and it's not like they'd know for a fact it was still operational by the time they'd get to it.

I've wondered this as well and personally concluded that it was due to the uncertainty of the wormhole being there or even if DS9 would be under federation control in the 50 years or so it takes to get there. However, now that the Dominion has been defeated I assume that future slipstream journeys to the delta quadrant would launch from DS9 and use the wormhole.

My thoughts? Trusting a wormhole, even a rather stable one, to remain open for 55 years (and they couldn't count on it being less at the outset) is a gamble. The payoff is a 15 year reduction in trip length, but the risk is 55 years wasted (if it closes in that time). I would think that gambling 55 years to save 15 wouldn't be something Janeway would have done at the outset of the journey. She didn't really favor high risk strategies until later in the show.

Just by the information given in the show itself, we do not know for certain the Bajoran wormhole is closer. Although it would have been nice of the show to discuss it. But even if we assume it was: -Heading for the alpha quadrant means they had more navigation data than for the mostly unexplored gamma quadrant. -There is no guarantee the wormhole was still there when they reach it. -The wormhole could be controlled by a hostile power when they reach it. Since their target is a single point, they can't go around enemy space. -The other side of the wormhole could be controlled by a hostile power when they reach it. It would be quite a nasty surprise to be greeted by a minefield on the other side. I remind you the exit of the wormhole really was mined at some point.

Their primary mission was still to explore. So it would make sense for them to go through the Gamma quadrant and learn as much as they can considering that they might not be able to make it home either way

Don’t forget, Janeway would have known about the Barzan Wormhole. She also knew it was unstable in the Delta Quadrant but that it remained in one place long enough to possibly get through. She would not have told the crew about this as to not get their hopes up only to be disappointed. This may have been Janeway’s motivation for the course set she did. They did find the Barzan Wormhole, but thanks to Ferengi greed the Delta quadrant side became even more unstable and disrupted the Alpha quadrant end as well.

When you mention Voyager approaching Romulan space, it is directly stated in a later episode of Voyager that the Romulans "have been interested in Voyager for years". They would have known it was coming.

Thank goodness they went the way they did. If they hadn’t been there to help, Species 8472 would have killed the Borg and like half the galaxy.

I love this idea! It's a concept I never thought about. I woukd love to see them make another Roddenberry lore version of trek and give us an exploration of the gamma quadrant.

I've always wondered why, when facing a blockade, or a hostile species border or something like that, don't they just fly "up" and over (I know there's no up, but you know what I mean)

You have a 70 minute journey to work, you've heard of a different route that would only take 60 mins if the final stretch of road is open, but you'd still be a further 60 mins away if you get there and it's closed, you have no way of finding out ahead of time if the road is open or not, do you take the alternative route and risk doubling your journey time to save 10 mins? The wormhole was nearly the same distance as Earth, through completely unmapped space (flying direct from DQ to Earth at least has the final 3rd or so of the journey traversing the much better understood Beta quadrant) and might be gone or blockaded by a Dominion fleet by the time they get there. It would be a stupendously reckless gamble to risk doubling your journey time in the hope to shave off 10%.

The odds of being "delayed" would have been perceived has high with either route. Being "delayed" while getting closer to home is better than being "delayed" while moving away from home (or not getting any closer). Also, the communication ability with starfleet could have taken place (even without the hirogen tech) well before arriving home which would have allowed for significant advantages in many ways. The gamma wormhole would have been an "all eggs in one basket" solution with no other benefits and subject to: "if it doesn't work, now what". Fun video.

There’s also the fact that Federation Space is a much bigger target than the wormhole, and there’s something comforting about heading in the direction of home, even if it’s not the fastest route.

• The Pythagorean theorem is more reliable than a temperamental wormhole. Ultimately it was as Rick said, between going throw two unknown quadrants or one mostly familiar quadrant and one that is mostly familiar to Neelix. • If they had decided to _Go West_ instead, they would still have had Kes and Neelix, but they wouldn't have had Seven or the Doctor's mobile-emitter.

The lack of a map and basic rules on distance and travel has always been one of most annoying things about all of Star Trek. That kind of ambiguous thing from the 60s just doesn't work any more, post Got and Expance

Well: 1) You're assuming it's closer based on flimsy evidence. 2) The series premise hinges on them taking a route through Delta and Borg space. 3) Wormholes are never stable and they had no knowledge of what it's long term state was. 4) Any sudden major change would potentially require heading through the center of the galaxy, which is effectively a nest of uninhabitable star systems, high radiation and giant nests of super black holes. So, a pretty bad plan to try to go after a vague notion that an anomaly may shave off a little time. Only seems better if you apply viewer logic gained after the fact.

Short answer is that Voyager was in the Delta quadrant while the wormhole was in the Gamma quadrant. It was far away no matter what. There I saved you 10 minutes.

The wormhole had only been discovered for a year ish, and before that point wormholes were not stable, so they wouldn't bank on that chance.

The map you use makes the route to the Gamma quadrant look very sparsely populated with stars compared to the route they actually took. This makes me think we should consider the ability to procure food and other supplies needed for such a long journey.

Couple reasons to go the way they did: 1) Space is 3D, and the "short cut" to the wormhole at DS9 may not have been a short cut. 2) It would have taken Voyager close to the center of the galaxy collecting valuable data. 3) Given that Starfleet wouldn't have known where they were, a straight line home would make better sense in order to contact home at some point. 4) Availability of resources. Going from one arm to another farther out from the center gives more space to be crossed without coming across planets for water, food, dilithium, etc.

I always loved their photon torpedo's, and how they kept multiplying lol.

They went the route that Nelix was familiar with. Besides, that's a long way to take to reach a wormhole. Although it's known to be stable, they can't know if it would remain as such. They would be pretty screwed if they showed up at the wormhole only to find the Pah-wraths had taken over or the Prophets closed it up. Therefore, they took the most direct route, but kept a lookout for a shortcut.

There’s another question. The Enterprise D has a specific mission to explore unexplored space. Yet Starfleet never assigns it to the Gamma Quadrant and instead sends it on every mission except the one it’s supposed to be conducting!

Janeway: We'll use the Bajoran Wormhole, it'll shave 15 years off our journey! Dominion: Are we a joke to you?

Because the journey needed to last as long as the series. They couldn’t get there too quickly and run out of stories. ‘We can use the Caretaker array to get home.’ Janeway - ‘Let’s Blow it up’ ‘This new fuel could get us home faster’ Janeway - ‘No, I don’t like where it comes from.’ Q - ‘I can send you home if you want right now?’ Janeway - ‘Not on those conditions, and I’m not going to be in debt to you.’ Old Janeway - ‘Go through the aperture and go home.’ Janeway - ‘No I want to blow it up.’ There’s probably a load I’ve missed it’s been awhile since I watched the series. I think deep down Janeway just liked cruising the Delta Quadrant looking for coffee without the Federation telling her what to do.

A bigger question IMHO is why Voyager in “False Profits“, simply didn’t take that wormhole back. They could deal with the Ferengi later.

I think you've given a reason already that being the show's route was the route with the most mapped regions. That route had the most data so there was a significantly less likely change at unknown factors, events, ect. even with the large section of unknown space and the slightly longer voyage.

I remember that this came up a lot when the show started airing. I think the offscreen explanation at the time was that the Gamma Quadrant end of the wormhole was a longer trip.

Actually, there was a heated argument about it. Chakotay wanted gamma. To avoid demoralizing the crew, Janeway and Chakotay went and replicated a coin to flip. Because "the sceenery never changes unless you're the lead dog of the pack," Janeway called heads, and the rest is history.

From an internal-to-story, logical standpoint - travelling 60 years to get to an artificially created wormhole that is home to non-linear time beings (in the hope that they haven't seen fit to close up shop after all the increased travel within their living room, or that some other power (Federation, Klingon, even Dominion) haven't forced it shut) just to shave a decade off their journey would be foolish in the extreme. At the time they were thrown to the Delta Quadrant, they wouldn't have known how bad the Dominion situation would have gotten, but they DID know that Dominion Space was huge, vastly bigger than the Federation (the next biggest they knew of) and they DID know the Dominion were powerful and aggressive. One Galaxy Class ship had already been handily blown to hell by the point they left on their mission. They also knew that the Wormhole was a home to aliens they couldn't understand and didn't fully trust. It would be a hell of a thing to have made it (somehow) to the Gamma end of the Wormhole, only to find it closed forever, then face another 70+ year journey to get home. The straight line route would have been the surer bet. You don't walk 45 miles to the nearest bus stop to get home five minutes quicker from a presented 50 mile walk - what if the busses have been cancelled? Then you'd have another 50 mile trek on top of your already covered 45 miles. You just walk the 50 miles... in the hope you get a lift from a kindly soul, or something.

It's actually very easily explained, nobody knew exactly where the end of the wormhole was in the Gamma quadrant. At least at the time of Voyager being lost. The Gamma quadrant was very little explored, chances are Starfleet wasn't quite sure the exact location of the wormhole, so searching for it simply wasn't a viable option. The Dominion would have destroyed Voyager if their ship was detected, and they would have been if they were going around asking everyone where the wormhole is. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's mentioned in the show.

i think the simplest explanation is that since we don't have a canon star chart of Gamma that the wormhole is closer to Alpha than the middle and would, from where Voyager started, in the end be as far if not farther than the straight line

Because Voyager's 75 years journey was to *Earth,* not to Federation space. Even if the wormhole was closer, help from Federation and Starfleet personnel was probably easier to find on the direct route, see the USS Prometheus. But we all know, truth is because it was essential to the plot, and that's that :)

This has me thinking the unofficial mission of Voyager was specifically to collect Borg technology... Some of Janeway’s most dubious ethical decisions (in multiple timelines) put them on a direct collision course with the Borg (destroying the Caretaker’s Array, forcibly removing a highly autonomous drone from the Collective). They infiltrated a fucking Tactical Borg Cube and let themselves be partially assimilated. Remember that, how Tuvok almost got them all killed because of his telepathic sensitivity and odd infatuation with the undeniable logic of the Collective... Janeway became an Admiral very quickly as a result of the insane contribution the Borg tech they integrated into their ship represented for Starfleet... not to mention the highly temperamental Quantum Slip-Stream Drive that they never quite managed to integrate into their ship. It’s all almost too perfect for Janeway and Tuvok to not be Section 31 agents. They take a highly experimental new class of ship out; since classes of ship are typically named after the prototype we can assume they’re not taking such a rare asset that it represents too significant a loss. Still, we know Intrepid Class ships have a number of unique and or bleeding edge characteristics that made Voyager an odd choice of ship for that particular mission. Said mission necessitated a fairly sparse crew and a sleeper agent aboard a Maquis ship, whose crew is essentially assimilated into Voyager’s through the necessity of circumstance. Not saying the original doctor’s death was planned, but they do stress test the absolute shit out of the new EMH program. And I’m pretty sure they use Borg nanites to augment or rejuvenate their supply of experimental gel-packs. If you stop to consider that Starfleet Temporal Affairs is in all likelihood an arm of Section 31 (mysteriously ever-present throughout Starfleet history, “from the beginning”), it makes perfect sense. Temporal Affairs after all would’ve been responsible for undoing future Admiral Janeway’s alterations to the timeline, but they don’t for some reason... Temporal Affairs would know they needed to send *that ship on *that day after *those alleged terrorists. They even gave the ship an ironic name, since it’s not initially on a mission of exploration, but it becomes their cover motivation for taking the route they take... with the real mission being to seize as much alien technology from the Delta Quadrant as possible, and specifically to investigate the Borg threat. But also to confiscate 29th Century technology out of the hands of a private 20th Century Earth citizen. And perhaps even, ultimately, to recruit a prisoner hotshot pilot, a terrorist warp engineer and a severed Borg drone (specifically) to create a new class of ship, the Delta Flyer.

I remember asking that question after seeing one of those maps that had the Gamma end of the wormhole closer to the Delta Gamma border. Some quick trigonometry had me thinking "Why would you go for a 70-year trip when a known shortcut is 20ish years away?" That map had it so that the wormhole was between Voyager and Dominion space a far more attractive gamble.

They didn’t use the wormhole because Paramount wanted 7 seasons of Voyager. Ba-dum-Tiss.

Voyager didn’t head for the Bajoran Wormhole because 60 years is a long time to fly to risk finding out the wormhole de-stabilized and disappeared and you still have another 75000 light years to travel. As it stands, that was the first known stable wormhole, and nobody had any reason to believe it would remain open. So they planned the least risky flight plan possible - a straight line with no chance of “oops, our journey just got way longer.”

All those 3rd party maps really annoy me since virtually all of them seem to show the Romulans and Cardassians on opposite sides of the Federation. This is unquestionably incorrect since DS9 states on multiple occasions that the two powers share a border. Most of this comes from In the Pale Moonlight where the Feds are outraged that the Romulans keep allowing the Dominion to cross Romulan territory to take the Feds by surprise (something hard to do if they were on opposite sides of the Federation). Later on its mentioned that after joining the fight the Romulans have already hit a bunch of outposts along their shared border. As such any map showing them on opposite sides of the Federation is just wrong.

I'm just going to say that going for the wormhole might've seemed like somewhat of a gamble, seeing as how the Gamma end was under the control of an antagonistic government and they had no idea how politics were going to play out with them. Traveling all that way just to be denied access made the old-fashioned way seem safer.

Would have probably been the better option in hindsight, as spooky as the Dominion is the Delta quadrant proved to be a utter hellhole. But they didn't know that at the time... Also the real best route would have been "use the caretaker array in episode 1" :)

Perhaps they originally went to the wormhole and future janeway changes the timeline to get Neelix to get past Janeway to go that way instead.

Are we forgetting that Jayneway was adamant to find the partner to the Caretaker which led her to head the way she did?

Actually, the Barzan wormhole was the best way back. But Janeway screwed that up playing morality games with those ferengi in season 3 episode 5 "false profits". If she could have adhered to the prime directive, then they would have made it home right then.

One thing that MAY have not been considered is the 3D aspect of where the exit from the Bajoran wormhole is located in the Gamma Quadrant. Although it appears to be a shorter distance, It may be longer should Voyager have a vertical diagonal course to the Bajoran wormhole. For example, as Spock said to Kirk in The Wrath of Khan; Khan was only thinking TWO dimensionally. Taking this possibility into account may have factored into Janeway’s choice of route. You not only have to factor in the x and y axis but the z axis also.

Go through the Delta with the first few years having a guide, or go west to end up with a likely hostile empire to get to a wormhole that may or may not still be active once you get there. And if it isnt.... you are pretty much the same distance from home. Correct choice was made.

they had no guarantee the wormhole would still be there when they arrived.