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The quadrants of the Milky Way
Alpha QuadrantBeta QuadrantGamma QuadrantDelta QuadrantGalactic quadrants
The Delta Quadrant is located in the lower right
(click to navigate)
For the reference book of the same name, please see Delta Quadrant (reference book).
"The Borg, telepathic pitcher plants, macroviruses – the Delta Quadrant is a death trap!"
– Kathryn Janeway, 2377 ("Shattered")

The Delta Quadrant was the common designation for one-quarter of the Milky Way Galaxy. This quadrant was adjacent to the Beta Quadrant and to the Gamma Quadrant. The quadrant's closest point to the United Federation of Planets was located in the galactic core, which was located approximately thirty thousand light years away. (Star Trek: Voyager, Season 7 production art [1])

The Delta Quadrant was home to thousands of species, including the Kazon, Talaxians, Ocampans, Borg, Vidiians, Hirogen, Krenim, and many others.

History[]

Millions of years ago[]

Millions of years before recorded Human history, it was speculated that the Voth left Earth and traveled to the Delta Quadrant, where they established a powerful and reclusive civilization. (VOY: "Distant Origin")

45,000 years ago[]

Around 45,000 years ago, a humanoid species from the Delta Quadrant traveled to Earth, where they discovered a tribe of Humans. Though the Humans at this time had no language or tools, the humanoid visitors admired their respect for the land. The humanoids continued to visit Earth for thousands more years, seeing the tribe they visited become the Native American people, and they came to worship the humanoids as the Sky Spirits. The humanoids stopped visiting when European settlers started to conquer their land. (VOY: "Tattoo")

3rd century[]

Around the 3rd century, the epidemic known as Phage spread throughout the Vidiian Sodality, reducing a previously renowned culture to subsisting on organ piracy and slave labor. (VOY: "Phage", "Faces")

15th century[]

In the 15th century, the Vaadwaur controlled many colonies and exerted influence across much of the Delta Quadrant, if not further, via a series of underspace corridors. In 1484 an alliance of species led by the Turei destroyed the Vaadwaur empire and homeworld, forcing survivors to undergo cryostasis in the hopes of preserving their society. (VOY: "Dragon's Teeth")

20th century[]

Humans were first planted in the Delta Quadrant by a race known as the Briori around the year 1937 as a form of slave labor. The slaves rebelled and their descendants built a new civilization on a class L planet. (VOY: "The 37's")

21st century[]

Following a discussion between the consciousnesses of Agnes Jurati and the Borg Queen, the newly-amaglamated Borg Queen left for the Delta Quadrant aboard CSS La Sirena, intending to start a new Borg Collective based on salvation rather than forceful assimilation in the search for perfection.

24th century[]

Jal Sankur united the Kazon sects in 2346 to overthrow their enslavers, the Trabe. Virtually all Trabe territory fell under the control of the various sects, which soon began fighting among each other. (VOY: "Initiations", "Maneuvers", "Alliances")

The Delta Quadrant was first visited by Humans of their own free will on stardate 32629.4, when the USS Raven followed a Borg vessel into a transwarp conduit. (VOY: "Dark Frontier")

The first Starfleet mission into the Delta Quadrant occurred during an inspection of the Barzan wormhole in 2366. (TNG: "The Price")

In 2369, Q told Vash that there was still the Delta Quadrant for her to explore with him. (DS9: "Q-Less")

Transwarp conduit topology

The Enterprise tracks a Borg transwarp conduit's termination point to the Delta Quadrant

Later that year, the Enterprise extrapolated the termination point of a Borg transwarp conduit to the Delta Quadrant. (TNG: "Descent")

Prior to 2371, an entity known as the Caretaker, while not claiming any specific territory per se, was a major factor in the sociopolitical climate near the outer rim of the Delta Quadrant, in the midst of Kazon space. (VOY: "Caretaker")

Due to the considerable distance between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants (an Intrepid-class starship would take thirty years to reach the edges of the quadrant at its maximum warp velocity), the Federation knew very little about this region of space until 2371, when the starship USS Voyager was pulled into the quadrant by an alien force called the Caretaker. When contact was reestablished with the starship in 2374, hundreds of kiloquads of data on the region was received, increasing the Federation's knowledge of the quadrant immensely.

When Q discovered Voyager, he assumed Quinn was responsible for transporting it there, stating that Humans weren't supposed to be in the Delta Quadrant for another hundred years. (VOY: "Death Wish")

Borg transwarp network

The Borg transwarp network

The Borg maintained at least one transwarp hub and thousands of exit apertures in the Delta Quadrant until 2378, when the entire transwarp network was destroyed by the USS Voyager. As later revealed by the Borg Queen, the Borg were decimated to the point of near destruction by a neurolytic pathogen that an alternate timeline Kathryn Janeway had infected them with at the same time, freeing the Delta Quadrant from their hold. (PIC: "The Last Generation")

When Voyager subsequently returned to Earth, the Federation's knowledge of the quadrant was expanded considerably. (VOY: "Endgame")

The Tars Lamora prison colony, run by the Diviner, held many prisoners of many species from across the Delta and even other quadrants. In 2383, several of its prisoners escaped on the derelict USS Protostar. The ship had been on a return mission of exploration under the command of Captain Chakotay following Voyager's return to the Alpha Quadrant. (PRO: "Lost and Found", "Kobayashi")

Political makeup[]

The greatest power in the Delta Quadrant, until at least 2378, was the Borg Collective. In addition to a vast swath of territory which they had completely assimilated, the Borg used a transwarp network to routinely visit different points scattered throughout the quadrant. Following the Borg-Species 8472 War, the insurrection led by Axum, the destruction of a part of the transwarp network, and the destruction of Unimatrix 01, it was unclear how the Borg's status in the Delta Quadrant had been altered. (VOY: "Scorpion", "Unimatrix Zero", "Endgame")

Other alien species that controlled significant areas of the quadrant included, among others, the Vidiians, the Devore, the Kazon, the Voth, the Hirogen, the Hierarchy, and the Malon. Species 8472 had also established a presence in the Delta Quadrant until they returned to fluidic space. (Star Trek: Voyager)

The political power of the Krenim Imperium depended largely on its temporal weapons, and as such its influence may have been altered dramatically by its own manipulation of the timeline. (VOY: "Year of Hell")

Locations[]

Spatial landmarks[]

Homeworlds[]

Colonies and outposts[]

Other planets[]

Appendices[]

See also[]

Related links[]

Background information[]

The Delta Quadrant was originally suggested as the setting for Star Trek: Voyager by Michael Okuda. On 27 September 1993, he sent a memo to Rick Berman that stated, "Since the Gamma Quadrant is the province of ships from DS9, suggest that this new show be set in the Delta Quadrant. One of the few things we know about the Delta Quadrant is that the Borg homeworld is located somewhere there. This might present opportunities for the Borg to be recurring bad guys." (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager, pp. 207-208)

The Delta Quadrant had first been depicted as being home to the Borg in the episode "Descent" that had aired earlier that year, as an okudagram graphic visibly noted that the Borg were from that area. The Delta Quadrant is the only named galactic quadrant referenced in Star Trek: Enterprise. It is referred to in "Regeneration", again in connection with the Borg.

Apocrypha[]

In the post-Voyager novels, Starfleet created "Project Full Circle", an initiative to return to the Delta Quadrant and further explore it with an expeditionary fleet consisting of Voyager and other ships that used Starfleet's perfected quantum slipstream drive.

In the Star Trek: Starfleet Academy novel The Delta Anomaly set in the alternate reality, there's a holo-karaoke bar called "The Delta Quadrant" located in San Francisco on Earth.

External link[]

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