To be fair, they did only make two short "transwarp" jumps, not the extended one needed to get back to Earth.
Not that they operate as transwarp ever has in another ever form of the series outside of a Kim mention, and Starfleet's best scientific minds couldn't do it, and Tom Paris does? Considering they couldn't even handle traveling half the Delta Quadrant in quantum slipstream a technology that already existed, there's no way this batch of idiots (See: the entire series) could have ever figured out how to transwarp back to the Alpha Quadrant.
There's a reason the writer of the episode says:
I wrote the episode, or at least the teleplay. It's a terrible episode. People are very unforgiving about that episode. I've written well over a hundred episodes of Star Trek, yet it seems to be the only episode anyone brings up, you know? Out of a hundred and some episodes, you're gonna have some stinkers! Unfortunately, that was a royal, steaming stinker. And... it had some good intentions behind it. It had a good premise, breaking the warp 10 barrier. I don't know where this whole "de-evolving into a lizard" thing came from. I may have blocked it out. I think I was trying to make a statement about evolution not necessarily being evolving toward higher organisms, that evolution may also be a de-evolution. You know, we kind of take it for granted that evolution means bigger brains, more technology, you know, more refined civilization. When in fact, for all we know, we're evolving back toward a more primordial state. Ultimately, who can predict? Unfortunately, none of this came across in the episode. And all we were left with were some lizard... things crawling around in the mud. So. It was not my shining moment.
The fact that Braga had a hand in running the franchise into the ground doesn't get him a pass.
Voyager is borderline offensive at points, same as early TNG. Voyager never had sexy strapping Scott Bakula to come on screen and get our pants off.
Calling Robert Picardo the best actor on Voyager is like calling NBA 2K10 the best NBA game on PC this year. There weren't any others.Stealth attempt to create a Trek thread on here. Especially since I started re-watching DS9 in the background when TV sucks. Not just good Trek, good TV.