What Happened With V'Ger?

A few weeks ago, someone on Facebook asked what movie has the highest death toll. I proposed Star Trek: The Motion Picture, because V'Ger digitized "planets, moons, whole stars" on it's way to Earth. At the end of the movie, when Decker, Ilia, and V'Ger merge, what happens to all of that data? Presumably, like Ilia, the patterns could have been used to recreate everything that was stored, down to the molecular level, essentially bringing them back to life.

My theory is that, like Spock said, "all of this is V'Ger". V'Ger wasn't a Voyager probe that collected enough data that it became sentient, it was a collective consciousness, controlled by the Voyager programming. So, when V'Ger, Decker, and Ilia merged, everything that made up V'Ger merged. That means that all of the stored data that made up V'Ger's consciousness, as well as the physical parts of the "ship", were all joined together into a new being.

Now the question is, what happened to that new life form? We don't see it after the flash of light that the Enterprise comes out of. Since the dialog in the movie includes talk of "Other dimensions. Higher levels of being" it seems reasonable to assume that this is where it went to, never to return. Why never? If the Voyager programming was still in control, as well as Decker & Ilia's Starfleet training, then the new being would want to explore the entirety of whatever dimension it found itself in. Once that was done, it would continue on to many of the other infinite possible dimensions out there.

What do you think? Am I way off the mark? Do you have your own theory? Please let me know, since this is one of my favorite movies of all time.

=========================
Like what I'm doing here on the blog and podcast? Why not check out my Patreon Page to see how you can help me do more? http://www.patreon.com/TheHammerStrikes