Star Trek: 10 Times Voyager Could Have Got Home
4. False Profits - The Barzan Wormhole
This is arguably the most frustrating entry on this list, as if one removes alternate timelines or some sort of out-of-character decision, this was the first, and best opportunity, for Voyager to return home.
False Profits serves as a sequel to The Price, depicting two Ferengi - Kol and Arridor - living it up as gods in the Delta Quadrant, having been stranded there by the unstable Barzan Wormhole. However, before we discover any of that, Kim and Torres locate and work on a plan to stabilise, the wormhole.
This was it - two years in the Delta Quadrant, and the ship had been handed a lifeline. Absolutely nothing should have come before this - and then the bloody Ferengi enter the scenario. They manage not only to convince Janeway to let them return to the planet, but even as the crew of Voyager think they've outsmarted them, they overpower a security guard (fire him immediately), use their shuttle to blast out of Voyager's bay (despite being ten years older than the Intrepid-class ship, and by technological nonsense, destablise the wormhole once again.
They're pulled in, and Voyager moves as slowly as she ever has trying to catch the event horizon - to no avail. It's a deeply annoying wasted opportunity. Kim's final line, that the wormhole is now destabilised on both ends, is quite the kicker - despite there being no way he should have been able to know that.