Because "Use them just twice" isn't a very good option. Neither is "Have the Borg leave scars" because they never did that before, not in TNG. You keep saying that Voyager weakened the Borg, and "Scorpion" is hated by Borg-lovers because it dared to show that there was at least one alien species out there that could beat up the Borg like they were nothing. So having most of the Borg be annihilated by the 8472 would be the same as "weakening them" like how VOY-proper did. Every single time they tried (The Kazon, the Vidiians, the Krenim, the Hirogen) the reaction was always "They shouldn't keep running into these guys!" making it clear that the audience was never going to accept a continuing enemy. Yet they never complained about the idea of the Borg showing up more than once meaning they were the only option for a recurring external enemy.
Jennifer Sisko had to die. How can you be sure that the Prophets didn't sponsor the Borg in the Best of Both Worlds?
Scorpion was fine it was later episodes like Dark Frontier and Unimatrix Zero were Voyager is actively looking for Borg ships to engage. In I Borg the Enterprise hides from a Borg scout ship. It's not that they were encountering the same race all the time but the same individual people. It made no sense when you're supposed to be constantly moving away from them. Having a season long enemy would have been fine if you were encountering different members of that race as they moved through that area of space. The Gift had Kes throw Voyager 10,000 light years clear of Borg space yet they still showed up all the time.
Ok, I'll toss out a misconception I watched Voyager while it was in premier and since then, I must have watched the series through at least a dozen times (skipping a lot of the meh episodes, but watching a good majority of them). During the original run, I always felt like Voyager felt too unrealistic because it came across as the little ship that could (IE it was practically indestructible). However, after as many times as I've rewatched it, I've come to realize the ship wasn't quite as "indestructible" as I precieved it to be while the series was in premier, it simply seemed like there were a bunch more space battles then there actually were. Most times when Voyager got in a skirmish they were able to manuver out and a threat loomed that more ships may pursue them, they had the good sense to make haste getting out of that sector. The Borg and the Herogan are the only two species I still feel like they didn't have enough trouble with and in fairness, it seems like they had too much trouble with Kazon.
About the Borg - at the start of First Contact, Picard pwned that Borg cube within three minutes of arriving, using his knowledge as a former drone. Voyager had a former drone too. Seems fine by me.
The fleet had engaged with that one cube for at least the last 16 hours. It's like with opening the pickle jar, you're sweating and grunting for 20 minutes but then that pretentious wanker your sister married taps the lid and it practically falls off.
Come on even in a war certain areas receive more resources than others. TOS was supposed to be about them exploring the unknown and be on their own while doing so. Yet they freely violated that premise repeatedly, with no one caring. Just because other shows possible did without much critisim is not really a good defense about VOY doing it. Perhaps it could be a case a part of the audiance had simply had had enough of that and VOY was the tipping point. Sometimes in life peoples patience for things has a limited and for some perhpas VOY exceed their patience in that regard. That's a weak argument, the premise wasn't limited and unsustanainable and even if you except that it was if it was so weak and unsustainable then they should never have ran with it.
The episode that ruined the Borg in Voyager was Dark Frontier. Giving the Borg Queen that freaky dominatrix-mommy personality and making her willing to negotiate with people completely reversed everything established about the Borg. What didn't really make sense about the Borg was the number of Borg cubes. If one was enough to almost destroy the Federation, the thousands they had should have conquered the entire quadrant. Either that or all the worlds around borg space should have been much stronger than the Federation.
...Because that's what made them good villains in their first few appearances. Without unstoppability they're just a bunch of jerks with a freaking dominatrix-mommy as a leader.
There are supposed to be something like ten billion Earth-type planets in our galaxy. The Borg could be expanding out and assimilating a thousand worlds a day and it's still take hundreds of years for them to reach the Federation space in full force.
Why not just use the transwarp hub that exits near Earth send a dozen cubes through and assimilate Earth.
According to canon, (Voyager Sixth Season - Dragon's Teeth) "GEDRIN: You're Borg. SEVEN: How do you know that? GEDRIN: Don't you recognize my people? The Vaadwaur? SEVEN: The Collective's memory from nine hundred years ago is fragmentary. GEDRIN: I've had many encounters with your kind." "GEDRIN: That star cluster in grid fourteen twenty one? Nearly half the planets are inhabitable. SEVEN: Unfortunately they are already occupied, by the Borg. GEDRIN: The Borg? In my century they'd only assimilated a handful of systems. It looks like they've spread through the quadrant like a plague. No offence." Looks like they did a lot in a few years.
1. The Borg are not redundant. They're not going to send ten cubes when one should do. Because the Borg are not aggressive. They don't invade. they invite. By their logic everyone wants to be Borg. It's a gift. They shouldn't need any guns at all. Which is why the drones arn't armed probably. 2. The Borg have standards. They don't want to assimilate everyone. Only the truly awesome, who will make them even more awesomer. Everyone else who sucks, is mostly safe.
It's not about what I want. It's about the factual premise on which they were introduced in the show. Q wanted to show Picard a race that was beyond them in every measurable sense, that they weren't ready. Picard had to beg Q to save them. When they returned a single ship destroyed a whole fleet without blinking an eye. So that's what the Borg were supposed to be. Yet Voyager effortlessly dodges entire fleets of them, engages them routinely, and steals whatever plot devices they need for this week's episode from them. Voyager turned them little more into the lumbering dumb giant, and a convenient tech depot. If they wanted that, they should've introduced a new race instead of fundamentally changing an old one.
Yeah, that exit point that Voyager used in Endgame that conveniently led right to Earth sure would've been useful in Best of Both Worlds or First Contact.
This doesn't make much sense to me. Even if you're physically weak they can enhance you. A drone is a drone. The Kazon not being good enough isn't explained properly.. do they have some physiological flaw that makes them a liability? Sure we can say they aren't that bright but how much IQ does a drone need anyway?
Guy's comments make a lot of sense. I've always thought of the Borg as technology gone wrong. At the Collective's heart is a machine mentality, and the Queen is the mouth piece, the one who speaks. She translates for the machine, and what ever persona she projects is one deemed suitable by the machine. This machine has billions of memories, feelings, desires, and ambitions locked up in it's vinculums and yet neither the machine or its drones understand any of it. This is the great flaw in the Borg and it has been since the beginning when we were only aware of cubes and drones. The flaw was not as complex at first, but it was always there. Think of this, in TNG they didn't even understand that they needed to protect themselves from the simple command of sleep. I do understand the dominatrix persona and that some might not like it, but I find nothing wrong with that plot line. However I am somewhat insulted that you seem to think being a Mommy is a bad thing. Even in this day and time a sizeable majority of human females aspire to that designation, and a whole lot more have earned that designation and are very proud of it. Hon, I really hate to break this to you but being a Mommy is mostly a very good thing. I don't think any of this reversed a canon thing although it may have reversed some assumptions by part of the audience. The only reason the Queen agreed to work with Janeway on Janeway's terms is because just like Davy Jones in The Pirates of the Caribbean, Janeway had two cannon pointed at the Borg's heart. That's really blackmail not negation. Why would that be true, it may very well be (and there is some canon evidence to this fact) that the Delta Quadrant species had spent years studying and evading the Borg because they were a familiar enemy, in much the same way as the Federation became more adapt in defeating the Borg themselves. Guy is right, they only send one cube because it never occurred to them that they might need more. That's a flaw, it shows the lack of creative thinking, and that is why all Borg roads lead to oblivion.
Apparently we were posting at the same time, but yes this is what I was asking for and I see your point. I don't particularly agree with it, but it does make your position make more sense to me. Thanks.
What's wrong with running into the same people? Farscape had them run into Crais and Scorpius and Grayza and no one complained. It's just another case "Damned if you, damned if you don't." What about that Sphere the Enterprise destroyed immediately? It was never implied anywhere that DS9 got more resources than other war areas. What the show needed was an actual plot beyond "Lost Ship going home" because that plot could never be resolved without ending the show. Give them something else, like "The 8472 are invading the Universe and Voyager must form a Delta Federation to stop them." The DQ has aliens like the Voth in it as well, like I said there are probably hundreds of aliens in the DQ that could easily annihilate the Borg. So they don't go for outright assimilation because they know they'll end up destroyed. It's only the weaker civilizations they go after. They didn't create that particular one until during VOY, at which time it was destroyed. Guinan said that one day the Feds and Borg would be on the same level and be able to reach an understanding, VOY just sped up the process a bit. VOY's audience made it crystal clear they weren't interested in new aliens. It's why the audience considered it "heresy" when VOY invented an alien race that could defeat the Borg (8472) and the show had to get rid of it. If the Dominion was a VOY creation, Trek fans would hate the Dominion too.
I just have to point this out; subtle hints were tossed about that the borg were already looming at the end of Season 1 in TNG in the episode "The Neutral Zone" (S01 - E26). When Picard confronted the Romulans in the Neutral Zone, upon comparing notes, the Enterprise found that the Federation colonies that were destroyed along the neutral zone mirrored Romulan colonies that were destroyed along the neutral zone. In "Best of Both Worlds", when Riker's team surveyed the colony that was destroyed, it was noted that the colony's destruction mirrored that of the colonies that were destroyed in "The Neutral Zone" (both in episode title and in region). Q kicking the enterprise to see the Borg wasn't REALLY speeding up the first documented encounter by a few years. If anything, even though it didn't seem like it at the time, Q was actually doing the Federation a BIG FAVOR giving them a chance to actually see who was destroying those colonies in the Neutral Zone so it gave them a true chance to prepare instead of being blindsided by a Borg Cube when it finally would have made its way to Sector 001. Q, in fact, did Picard a huge solid in "Q Who" (S02-E16). The dots just weren't exactly that clear and still aren't that clear unless someone really connects the dots. I'd actually go so far as to say that the Federation does, in fact, owe its continued existence post "Best of Both Worlds" to Q simply because he made them aware the Borg were on the approach. Sadly, even later episodes don't ever actually make reference to this. Picard even says to Q at one point (I forget which episode) "... and you introduced us to the Borg, thanks for that" (sarcastically). I honestly am forced to blame this one on the writer who threw that line in there (or maybe Patrick Stewart's execution of the line, or maybe the direction of the episode).