Headscratchers / Star Trek: Voyager S2 E1: "The 37's"

• Whether or not the Briori had propulsion technology that could take them great lengths in short periods, one has to ask the question: if, assuming the Briori were native to the Delta Quadrant, why would they travel to the other side of the galaxy to abduct humans for slave labor, rather than pursuing the more cost-effective, lower risk option of abducting and subjugating more nearby non-warp/pre-warp species?
  • Maybe they were afraid that any nearby race would develop their own warp tech and come for vengeance or one of their slaves would steal a ship and try to head back home. The farther away from the home planet, the less likely they could find their way through the vastness of space.
• If Warp 9.9 is four billion miles per second, then Voyager could get home in under three and a half years, not seventy.
  • It's established canon that starships can't sustain Warp 9.9 without severe structural damage and antimatter depletion. Even prolonged flight at Warp 8 is ill-advised without regular maintenance layovers at Starbase. Presumably maximum speed is only meant to be used for emergencies.
  • Tom made this statement against a 'laywoman' so it could be a quick-and-dirty conversion to get the point (stupidly fast from her perspective) across.
  • But Stadi said in the pilot episode that Voyager had a sustainable cruise velocity of warp factor 9.975. So it's clearly not just for Hyperspeed Escapes but a speed that can be maintained over time.
  • Voyager was badly damaged in "Caretaker" including a near warp core breach. Its possible she simply couldn't safely hold max long term without the kind of repairs only possible in a starbase drydock.
  • Simple answer: Warp 9.9 isn't 4 billion miles per second. The real question is whether this means Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale or Paris is Book Dumb.
    • One possible explanation would be that Paris fudged the conversion to Imperial units, since it has been consistently shown that the Federation uses the Metric system.