Why do people keep saying Voyager weakened the Borg?

[Anwar]

ALL the Borg ships encountered after BOBW were smaller than the one from Q Who?/BOBW (I stand that they were the same ship). The one in FC was smaller, and VOY kept to the standard set in FC (because that one was the CGI model in the system).

The Borg couldn't destroy the ENT-D in TNG either, that massive ship somehow couldn't destroy the Ent-D in a single shot the way it did to the others at Wolf 359.

And there weren't any other Galaxy-Class ships at Wolf 359, they were mostly older vessels like Oberths, Mirandas and Excelsiors. We saw a Nebula and an Ambassador but no Galaxy-Class.

The Intrepid-Class was a post-Borg ship like the Defiant, so naturally it would have more survivability against the Borg.

I suppose if Voyager ever used a solar flare to destroy a Borg Cube, there'd be an outcry of "Voyager shouldn't be able to do that!" or "The Borg are more powerful than a star, its' power shouldn't have been able to SCRATCH them!"

[exodus]

Deks wrote:

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I respectfully disagree on the Queen bit.
It was an unnecessary addon to the Collective which in turn made them look idiotic.

As TNG promptly explained about the Borg: A single leader can make mistakes... in a collective, you minimize the chances of that happening.

I think the collective was rounding up the mistakes ever since the Queen appeared - even though Voyager barely got out of every encounter.

I understand you're issues but this doesnt matter from a production stand point going from small screen TV to a big screen movie. You have to introduce a new bigger element into the films from the TV series or else you asking folks to pay big money for nothing more that a 2 hour TV episode. It was that type of under thinking that made "Insurrection" and "Nemesis" such lackluster.

The same writers/producer from TNG are the same ones on Voyager. Doesn't matter what was quoted in TNG about the Borg, they altered the dynamic of their own creation, just as they've done before with Klingions Trill, Cardassians, etc. We've ignored and often accepted the changes in the past, so we allowed them to continue to make creative changes in the future. We've seen Klingons go from being like pirates to honor bound Samurai. Trek has always been inconsistent in developing alien customs and cultures.

[Dick_Valentine]

Civ001 wrote:

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So I watched some STV and I see a lot of comments on spacebattles.com and other sites that Voyager totaly weakened the Borg a lot. Why do people assume this?

Wow Spacebattles.com. that's a blast from the past, don't think I've been there for ten years or more....amazing.
They still putting out their animations, they used to be highlights of my geeky childhood

froot wrote:

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Repeating what I said above: No - that never happened.

Outside of a small scout ship, Voyager never killed a single Borg ship on its own without outside help of some kind, much less "entire groups." "Endgame" was the only thing I'd consider overkill, but even then they were working with fancy future technology and someone who had spent years upon years dealing with and studying the Borg.

We saw a large group of Cubes just once, in "Scorpion." And the only thing Voyager did was sit there and wet its pants as they flew by.

I think the one I have a problem with is Unimatrix Zero Part 1...
The new looking cube is talked up to be a "Tactical cube" (why they'd need one of them is debatable but...there it is) and then Voyager dances around it and gets its shields down by making the Delta Flyer explode slightly near to it, or whatever their plan was.
Then Kim calls out that they have lost a Nacelle then in the NEXT effects shot the nacelle is shown to take damage (seriously, someone dropped the ball there, switched the FX around or something) and despite that they somehow jump to warp on one nacelle, something that's never been possible in Trek before that...

Yeah, then the whole "assimilation is mind-rape, its the worst thing that can ever happen to you, but we're going to voluntarily choose to do it for a laugh then forget all about it next week" thing was taking the pee a bit too.
Also the Vulcan, the one with the strongest mental discipline of the lot of them, is the one that is overwhelmed....what?

Anwar wrote:

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The Intrepid-Class was a post-Borg ship like the Defiant, so naturally it would have more survivability against the Borg.

When the series started (and I used to have Fact Files to back me up on this) Voyager was a science vessel with less armaments and defences than a Galaxy class vessel, obviously designed that way by the writers to make the delta quadrant situation more of a struggle for them than if they were sauntering around in a Galaxy class...

Its only real tactical advantage was a higher warp speed which it could cruise at for longer...

At some point it was retconned to be a super powerful warship with the Science vessel stuff ignored, I don't know if this was a fanboy thing or the producers change to suit the more action oriented later series...

[Anwar]

Dick_Valentine wrote:

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Yeah, then the whole "assimilation is mind-rape, its the worst thing that can ever happen to you, but we're going to voluntarily choose to do it for a laugh then forget all about it next week" thing was taking the pee a bit too.
Also the Vulcan, the one with the strongest mental discipline of the lot of them, is the one that is overwhelmed....what?

None of them were really assimilated, their minds were protected from the deeper effects of assimilation (and before you say that this shouldn't be possible, don't you think Doctor Crusher's records of Locutus, Hugh and the EMH's own studies of Seven would've given them a better understanding of Borg tech that a temporary vaccination would be possible?).

As for Tuvok, his fully alien biology might've metabolized the vaccination out of his body faster than either Janeway and Torres.

[Dick_Valentine]

Anwar wrote:

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None of them were really assimilated, their minds were protected from the deeper effects of assimilation (and before you say that this shouldn't be possible, don't you think Doctor Crusher's records of Locutus, Hugh and the EMH's own studies of Seven would've given them a better understanding of Borg tech that a temporary vaccination would be possible?).

I won't say that it shouldn't be possible, but the Borg to a lot more to you than just mind-rape, look at what they do to your body (poking eyes out for ocular implants, etc), no-one would voluntarily submit to that to save a CG reality...

[Anwar]

Picard didn't have HIS eyes popped out or body parts replaced, no one complained there...

[Ian Keldon]

Anwar wrote:

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Picard didn't have HIS eyes popped out or body parts replaced, no one complained there...

Actually, he DID suffer the former (see the flashback scene in FC).

VOY didn't do anything to the Borg that wasn't well underway long before. They were just too powerful as initially written, so they had to be pulled back so that the hero ships still had a fighting chance.

[Deks]

Dick_Valentine wrote:

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I won't say that it shouldn't be possible, but the Borg to a lot more to you than just mind-rape, look at what they do to your body (poking eyes out for ocular implants, etc), no-one would voluntarily submit to that to save a CG reality...

Except that saving a CG reality as you so put it was only one of the benefits to the mission.
It ultimately resulted in numerous Unimatrix Zero drones to sever their ships and drones from the rest of the Hive mind and become independent...
That means that the Collective would effectively encounter much larger resistance in future assimilations if the 'rebels' teamed up with regular star-faring races.

The whole plan was based on the premise of creating something akin to a 'civil war' with the Collective.

[Guy Gardener]

Imagine this...

TUVOK: Turbulence is increasing.
KIM: I'm reading two Borg vessels. Make that three, four, no, five. Fifteen Borg vessels. Distance two point one light years and closing!
JANEWAY: Shields to maximum! Stand by all weapons!
TUVOK: They're in visual range.
CHAKOTAY: My God. Captain.
KIM: I'm picking up a polaron beam. We're being scanned.
JANEWAY: Scanned? I'll show them being scanned. Tom, get my gun. I'll meet you on the observation deck in 3 minutes for target practice.
TUVOK: Captain, it is unlikely that you will be able to use the weapon for very long before the Q realize that we did not return all their armaments after hostilities were ceased after their civil war.
JANEWAY: I doubt it will take more than a few seconds to blow 15 cubes out of space, after that the Q are welcome to their damn gun back, because I doubt the Borg will dare tangle with us again after... Never mind, I had friends at Wolf 359. This is going to feel damn good. TOM! I said GET MY GUN!

[exodus]

Dick_Valentine wrote:

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I think the one I have a problem with is Unimatrix Zero Part 1...
The new looking cube is talked up to be a "Tactical cube" (why they'd need one of them is debatable but...there it is) and then Voyager dances around it and gets its shields down by making the Delta Flyer explode slightly near to it, or whatever their plan was.
Then Kim calls out that they have lost a Nacelle then in the NEXT effects shot the nacelle is shown to take damage (seriously, someone dropped the ball there, switched the FX around or something) and despite that they somehow jump to warp on one nacelle, something that's never been possible in Trek before that...

Yeah, then the whole "assimilation is mind-rape, its the worst thing that can ever happen to you, but we're going to voluntarily choose to do it for a laugh then forget all about it next week" thing was taking the pee a bit too.
Also the Vulcan, the one with the strongest mental discipline of the lot of them, is the one that is overwhelmed....what?

Agreed 100%
I love Borg episodes but Unimatrix Zero was one Borg story too many too much. Too know the Queen didn't have full control and full knowledge completely destroyed the whole concept of them being of one mind. The Borg Civil Wars idea is stupid. Voyager left those drones to die. Who's going to be there to give them medical care when their bodies start to reject the Borg implants? Plus, as we saw with Seven. If their nanoprobes aren't suppressed, they'll just reassimilate all of them. Nobody in the crew remembers that Seven gets wacko when she gets near anything with a Borg signal?

...and yes, Voyager could barely escape a regular Cube. A Tactical Cube should have torn it to shreds. My issues is, why nobody turned to Seven to ask "If that's a Tactical Cube., then what the Hell is the function of the regular ones???"

[Anwar]

That's why I say that the Tactical Cube is weaker than the Assimilation Cube.

[Guy Gardener]

One smashes a planets defences and the other assimilates the population?

There are species that the Borg will not assimilate, but the Borg think that the Borg are Benevolent and nice, so would they answer an SOS or render humanitarian aid to some disaster happening to a species that they do not intend to assimilate?

Do the Borg possess pity?

[AFEK ESLCAFE W]

This is all the more reason why I gave away my DVD copy of "Star Trek: Fan Collective - Borg" last year to a South Korean friend.

After "I, Borg" I call B.S. to pretty much everything contrived that came afterwards, except for the entertaining Star Trek: First Contact. The whole mythology behind them keeps changing everytime a new episode comes along.

They were mysterious and formidable when you first saw them on screen, but how many more times can you resurrect this unstoppable and relentless juggernaut -- making them incredibly more stronger and appearing invincibly indestructible, only to be defeated so easily by a lone starship?

UPN probably meddled with that to boost ratings; I really don't know what more to say, but they dried the milk out of that one.

[Deks]

Anwar wrote:

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That's why I say that the Tactical Cube is weaker than the Assimilation Cube.

Except that nothing on screen corroborates that notion.
In fact, the Tactical Cube was seen as VERY large - that thing was a monster compared to Voyager.
Might be a bit smaller than the 'Assimilation Cube', but doesn't mean it's any less powerful - only that their primary functions are different, and even then, if the Assimilation Cube is larger, then that can easily be interpreted in a way that it needs extra space for assimilated drones and possible storage of technology.

Also, Voyager's battle with the Tactical cube came after several key factors:
The Drone 'One' enhanced Voyagers defensive/offensive systems, 7 of 9 was present on board which probably helped in the battle either way, and SF sent Voyager tactical upgrades in the episode 'Lifeline'... plus the ship was already modified by the crew quite a lot by the time the battle with the Tactical Cube happened, so it's really no wonder the ship was able to hold out as long as it did - and their attacks were surgical in the first battle -they were likely protecting the Warp drive from being knocked out.

[Anwar]

The Tactical Cube is a lot smaller than an Assimilation Cube, though.