Was Picard wrong in I,Borg?

[Nardpuncher]

Dennis wrote:

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No. For a single human being to unilaterally decide to destroy an entire species would be not only abhorrent but dangerous.

Arguably, if any other species recognized afterward that human beings granted authority and agency to individuals capable of such things, that species would be fully justified in committing genocide against humanity and wiping us out to the last man, woman and child - for their own protection against us.

They might do that but then they would be wrong, as the Federation and humanity are not homogenous, like the Borg.
The great thing about debating this sort of thing is that we know how each and every Borg is meant to act. It's a given that its hive mind will tell it to assimilate.
The thing is it's only fiction, even if we had a "KILL ALL TERRORISTS" button in real life it would be to dangerous (as in difficult to define the paprameters of 'terrorist') to use.

[indolover]

Neutral Zone wrote:

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I think if Picard had gone through with the plan it would have only slowed the Borg down, they always had a knack of surviving. I always thought the early introduction to the Borg by Q was wrong. Up to then they never knew we exisisted and they were busy eating up the Delta Quadrant.

Archer met the Borg.

Seven of Nine was assimilated years before Q Who happened.

It's a screw-up in continuity from the writers, since we were led to believe that Q Who was the true first contact between the Borg and the Federation.

[Admiral Shran]

indolover wrote:

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Archer met the Borg.

Seven of Nine was assimilated years before Q Who happened.

It's a screw-up in continuity from the writers, since we were led to believe that Q Who was the true first contact between the Borg and the Federation.

The Borg in Enterprise isn't a continuity issue, since the Collective in the Delta Quadrant didn't learn of the incident until about the time of "Q Who."

Having Seven and her parents assimilated when they were, however, was a continuity error, IMO. Though, I can believe that the Borg didn't think humanity was that important to worry about after those three individuals were assimilated and only decided to try to assimilate the race at a later date.

[Blueicus]

Admiral Shran wrote:

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The Borg in Enterprise isn't a continuity issue, since the Collective in the Delta Quadrant didn't learn of the incident until about the time of "Q Who."

Having Seven and her parents assimilated when they were, however, was a continuity error, IMO. Though, I can believe that the Borg didn't think humanity was that important to worry about after those three individuals were assimilated and only decided to try to assimilate the race at a later date.

But the Borg were already active in and around Federation space prior to Q Who, such as those outposts destroyed around the time of the episode "The Neutral Zone". You could justify what happened by assuming that the Borg destroyed those outposts because they assimilated Seven's parents' ship and decided to probe these new species they just learned about.

[Admiral Shran]

Blueicus wrote:

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But the Borg were already active in and around Federation space prior to Q Who, such as those outposts destroyed around the time of the episode "The Neutral Zone". You could justify what happened by assuming that the Borg destroyed those outposts because they assimilated Seven's parents' ship and decided to probe these new species they just learned about.

You could also say the Borg decided to probe these new species after the transmission from "Regeneration" was received in the Delta Quadrant. Once they found out that some Borg had, without the Collective's knowledge, been at the location of Earth in the 21st and 22nd centuries, they decide to give the situation a closer look.

The whole Borg story arc revolves around a predestination paradox. The Borg wouldn't even be interested in Humans if their interest hadn't been aroused by a 200 year old message they received from themselves. In "Dark Frontier" the Borg Queen flat out says that humanity is an unimpressive candidate for assimilation. That's why I believe they didn't go after all of the race after the Hansens were assimiliated. They're interested in humanity, and other nearby species, because their own time travel paradoxes have caught their attention.

The "first contact" between the Borg and the Federation at the hands of Q in "Q Who," then, isn't what it appears to be. It was a situation where the Federation "officially" met the Borg for the first time. However, the Borg where aware of humanity's existance long before Q introduced the Enterprise-D to them.

[Tiberius]

Firstly, it wouldn't have worked.

The Borg would have just thought, "We'll, I've been looking at it for three years now, and it's obviously a paradox. I'm gonna stop now."

Besides, if a paradox could destroy the Borg, they would have encountered one long before Picard came along.

And if it really would work, why not just send a different ship out with a captain who wouldn't balk at it?

And for the record, here's my interpretation of the Borg timeline with the Feds.

• Sphere is destroyed in Earth orbit just before Zef's warp flight.
• A century later, the research team comes across the wreckage of the sphere and defrosts some drones. They end up transmitting a message, and it will take the Borg 200 years or so to receive it and then come and have a look at this Federation thing.
• A long time later, the Hansens go to investigate the Borg after hearing rumours etc. They end up being zipped to the other side of the galaxy and being assimilated. No one in the Federation knows about that for a long time though. As far as they are concerned, the Hansens just vanished.
• Tombaugh is assimilated. Again, its disappreance is a mystery.
• Q Who. And we know the rest from there.

I think that works pretty well.

[USS KG5]

Timo wrote:

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Yet the direct consequence of taking the war to unconditional victory was to create a brutal, evil, genocidal dictatorship for half of Europe. That happened exactly because everybody was so eager to wage war. Giving the Nazis a little bit of that famed Western thing they call mercy would have saved millions from the horrors of communism, while still winning the war, ending the Nazi evils, and making the world think a bit.

As soon as Hitler died the Nazis surrendered, given a chance they would have done in 1944 but Hitler and those around him would never have accepted this.

Why blame the allies? "Unconditional Surrender" is a good thing to ask for when fighting a "total" war, and honestly I don't think anyone was keen to be fighting, literally millions were dying.

Also how would giving the Nazis mercy have stopped the Russians from taking over Eastern Europe? The Nazis certainly would not have surrendered if they were not losing very badly, so at the absolute earliest mid-1944, after D-Day when the Russian summer offensive had already taken most of the ground they would later have.

Sure Soviet Russia was bad, but Hitler was much worse. The western allies saved as much as they could from communism without provoking another war. Sure it was not all sunchine and lollipops but a tremendous amount of good was done.

Not really "except". The victors spilled more blood. Much of it just happened to be their own.

So the Nazi invasion of the whole of Europe was a fun romp we should have laughed off, Britain should have just let Hitler cross the channel and take over? Liberating France did not create a liberal ,left leaning democracy? The European Union is not a freely co-operating alliance of Imperial powers that bickered for centuries until the utter destruction of WW2 compelled us all to change our ways?

Your argument to me seems really ludicrous.

Who said anything about letting the Nazis win? Suffering would have been avoided by not letting the Allies win. That's completely different from giving victory to Hitler.

Well it was a total war - one side or the other. Hitler was MAD he was not going to give back his conquered lands and live in peace with the west or the USSR, no idea why you think he would have.

Armies up till the 19th century understood that perfectly well. But it seems that when the United States got to play real war for the first time, on somebody else's turf, it didn't bother to find out how it's properly done. "Unconditional surrender" is not a valid goal of war, and is completely unassociated with "victory".

The twentieth century saw war fought in a completely different way to the 19th, with vastly more technology and total industrialisatino allowing a whole population to contribute to a conflict. This is also going to lead naturally to a change to the definition of "victory".

For over two years Britain was simply fighting to survive, as was the USSR for over a year. That in the end all three powers agreed that the Nazis should simply be wiped out is fairly sensible.

Most of the suffering in the big 20th century wars really comes from the US not knowing how to wage war. "Winning" is a goal for little children, and for the deranged who think war is a game.

Nice idea but in reality you have to accept WW2 as a one-off in this respect. Whereas the conflict in Northern Ireland, Iraq and hopefully eventually Afghanistan can be resolved with a constructive peace from a cease fire, the Nazi regime could not be allowed to stand. They were fundamentally too dangerous.

By 1944, said leadership would have been perfectly willing to negotiate with the West, in the unlikely situation where the West would have stopped to think and listen.

Utter crap, sorry but it just is total nonsense. Hitler would never have negotiated in good faith. Never. Nothing I have ever read about him suggests he would have.

They were humans, after all, not Borg.

They were genocidal maniacs. The Prussian aristocracy who ran the upper echelons of the Wermacht probably would have negotiated a cease fire, but their various plots to kill Hitler and do so all failed largely due to lack of support.

one Europe saved from most of the destruction, which had been minimal during Germany's expansion phase. In Europe, that is.

You might not want to travel back in time and mention that to the 50,000 dead British civilians from the Blitz, or the millions of dead Russians from Barbarossa. Or the citizens of Rotterdam or Warsaw.

I'm just telling why the eventual outcome really sucks from my European point of view, and why the idea of "taking wars to their conclusion" is not the antithesis of Nazi atrocities for me, but their direct continuation.

I do see your point and applied to virtually any other conflict I'd almost agree, but not WW2, not with what the Nazis did and stood for.

Sometimes you really do need "total victory" and while a negotiated peace would probably have ended the war in 1944 with hundreds of thousands saved had Hitler been removed, while he was in charge and had broad support it was never going to end. If Hitler had somehow survived Berlin the allies would probably have had to liberate Denmark and Norway with force as well!

[Canuck69]

I think someone mentioned this already, but I thought I would just say it my way. I always got the impression Picard was supposed to be wrong in I, Borg. He was suppossed to make the wrong desicion, to teach his character that his morals and expectations will not always work in his favor. I think maybe the writers were trying to show a flaw in his character.

We see a lot of episodes that preach his good morals, and more often than not it always works out for him in the end. I feel this is one of those times that required Picard to reach beyond the safety of his view of the universe and the Federation, and he failed. And not only does he pay the consequences, but damn near loses his mind in the process.

I thought it was refreshing to see him fail, have to live with the fact that his "We are the Federation, we do no harm" line of thinking was shattered, and eventually thrown out the window with the likes of First Contact.

[Rush Limborg]

^Amen.

I think, as of "First Contact", when Lily confronts him about the hypocrisy of all his speeches on "evolved sensibility", he finally gets off for good the stupid high-horse so many "intellectuals" have...and face the facts. It took a while for him to reach that point, but by then, he has understood that sometimes, going by "values" and "principles" are just going to get us all killed.

It's the same lesson Sisko begrudgingly learns in "In The Pale Moonlight"--and which Bashir is dragged, kicking and screaming, into accepting in "Inter Arna..." and "Extreme Measures".

[Anwar]

Which was kind of annoying really, all that talk of how "the dream will never die!" and all that stuff. Then a few episodes later Sisko goes and destroys the dream himself. The writers were schizo on whether or not they wanted to discard idealism.

[Admiral Shran]

Rush Limborg wrote:

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^Amen.

I think, as of "First Contact", when Lily confronts him about the hypocrisy of all his speeches on "evolved sensibility", he finally gets off for good the stupid high-horse so many "intellectuals" have...and face the facts. It took a while for him to reach that point, but by then, he has understood that sometimes, going by "values" and "principles" are just going to get us all killed.

It's the same lesson Sisko begrudgingly learns in "In The Pale Moonlight"--and which Bashir is dragged, kicking and screaming, into accepting in "Inter Arna..." and "Extreme Measures".

I'd say it's also the same lesson that Janeway teaches the rest of the Voyager crew in "The Omega Directive." Omega must be eliminated. She fully accepts this and agrees with Starfleet that the greater good has to come first. If that means destorying an alien race's means of energy production and violating the Prime Directive, so be it.

She's clearly setting aside her "values" and "principles" in order to achieve what absolutely needs to be achieved. That's the reason why "The Omega Directive" is one of my favorite Voyager episodes.

[Rush Limborg]

I wonder if folks realize the irony of Omega:

The Section 31 novel Cloak establishes why the Omega Directive came to be--it was due to an expirimentation on the molecule by a group of ambitious scientists supposedly subsidized by Section 31.

This book, and the other books in the miniseries, go to great lengths to demonize The Bureau as either incompetent or just plain evil. Our heroes dismiss the arguments of the 31 agents out of hand, swearing to bring them down, someday.

And yet...Janeway is forced to effectively employ Section 31's methods to do what is neccesary to save lives...the justification Section 31 asserts, as well.

[Hartzilla2007]

Rush Limborg wrote:

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This book, and the other books in the miniseries, go to great lengths to demonize The Bureau as either incompetent or just plain evil.

Actually that is pretty much what most of their Book appearences and the last arc of DS9 show.

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Nardpuncher wrote:

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They might do that but then they would be wrong, as the Federation and humanity are not homogenous, like the Borg.

No more wrong than Picard would have been, and not one bit more guilty of genocide.

Anyway, how homogenous might humanity appear to an alien? Fleas can probably tell the difference between other fleas, after all.

[JRS]

In my opinion, the biggest problem of wiping out the entire Borg race is the fact that the assimilated drones can be severed from the hive mind, and thus saved from the Collective.
We saw this happen to 7 of 9, Hugh and even to Picard himself.
Im suprised that there never was attempt to try to rescue the Borg, rather than destroy them...