Star Trek: 10 Times Voyager Could Have Got Home
6. Dark Frontier - Borg Transwarp Coil
This one hurts because, in all fairness to the crew of Voyager, it really had a good chance of succeeding. The plan to go after the Borg, of all races, and attempt to steal technology - well frankly, that's a plan with more guts than a butcher's floor. Yet, perhaps a little unsurprisingly, the Borg were one step ahead.
The thing is, Voyager actually does get a transwarp coil. So, on the one hand, the plan was a success. However, the Borg Queen had other plans, specifically for Seven of Nine. Tapping into the former drone's fears, she manages to gaslight her into returning to the Collective, even if she has to pretend Seven's individuality means something to her.
That leaves Janeway with a conundrum. Here they have a Borg coil, ready to get them almost all of the way home. However, one of the crew is captured, so it seems like an open and shut case. But, does it? From Janeway's point of view, she saw Seven choose to stay behind with the Borg. She had already made the unilateral decision to strand Voyager in the Delta Quadrant to begin with, so honestly - no one would blame her if she washed her hands of Seven altogether.
However, this is Star Trek, and that's about as likely to happen as Quark handing out sweets to children. At least they were able to salvage some of the transwarp coil's capacity and knock a few years off the journey.