My headcannon: having read the Absolutely 100% canon books “Q-zone, W-Strike, and Q-space”, my personal belief is that since Q is partially responsible for the entity in the center claiming to be god, Q decided to artificially speed up their journey to the barrier and back home. Nobody on the ship brought it up because nobody was even thinking about travel time in the middle of all that.
Reading between the lines of The Nth Degree, one might suppose the entity was a Cytherian, who granted Sybok the knowledge to get the ship, as would later happen with Barclay. And maybe the other Cytherians helped them get back home as well?
Of course, this all contradicts my preferred theory was that there was no entity. At least, not until Sybok arrived and found his supposed “Eden” to be an empty wasteland. Unable to deal with his whole belief system falling apart, his subconscious leveraged his advanced mental abilities to conjure an appropriate godlike being. But of course, like him, it was a little bit mad…
My headcannon: having read the Absolutely 100% canon books “Q-zone, W-Strike, and Q-space”, my personal belief is that since Q is partially responsible for the entity in the center claiming to be god, Q decided to artificially speed up their journey to the barrier and back home. Nobody on the ship brought it up because nobody was even thinking about travel time in the middle of all that.
Reading between the lines of The Nth Degree, one might suppose the entity was a Cytherian, who granted Sybok the knowledge to get the ship, as would later happen with Barclay. And maybe the other Cytherians helped them get back home as well?
Of course, this all contradicts my preferred theory was that there was no entity. At least, not until Sybok arrived and found his supposed “Eden” to be an empty wasteland. Unable to deal with his whole belief system falling apart, his subconscious leveraged his advanced mental abilities to conjure an appropriate godlike being. But of course, like him, it was a little bit mad…
Fun fact: Cytherean is the demonym for Venus.
Wow, I did not know that! The TNG crew met Venusians from the centre of the galaxy. That’s wonderful.
Could also be a rogue Cytherian who gave Sybock the Nth Degree probe flash which is what compelled him to the center.