Species 8472: What were their motives?

[teacake]

Why are you all assuming that the malevolent thoughts were their actual plan rather than just a collective xenophobic hostility directed at anyone different than them, much like you hear babbling out of drunk racists. Their default position.

[Guy Gardener]

Their xenophobia was understandable.

They were alone.

Anything else, any other life-form, friend or foe, was outside the limits of their imagination.

The usual first contact routine.

Well, except that 8472 had explored all space and time, only to find that they were alone.

Until the Borg.

Question?

If they were alone... Why were they so well armed?

However.

Humans in the real world are very well armed too, despite that we're alone as far as we know.

But you get my point.

8472 doesn't have a unified front.

What they did to the Borg, they must have already routinely done to themselves.

Why else have a pre-existing war machine?

[teacake]

If that had occurred to Voyager they could have attempted to pit one faction against another, though they were too alien to get a handle on really. The opposite of the cartoon Kazon.

Still Kes could have been misreading them, whether it was projected at her or she was just scooping it out of the nether. Maybe to some fluffy delicate race of telepaths humans seem to be seething with hostility because we are always ready to defend ourselves be it our words or whims.

[Guy Gardener]

Kes is a Unicorn that farts rainbows.

Who doesn't seem like unquenchable evil from her naive childlike hick perspective?

[King Daniel]

Species 8472, plan A: Kill everything, everywhere. Just because.

Species 8472, plan B: Spy on everyone to make sure they don't secretly want to kill you.

Species 8472, plan C: Total surrender to Janeway.

[The Overlord]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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8472 was going to destroy the Borg.

No pretence.

Remember World War Two?

I mentioned it earlier.

It was in all the papers.

What's a paper?

Anyway.

The US had two atom bombs.

Just two.

Boom.

Not so bad.

Boom.

Starting to get annoying.

The point is that Truman, threatened to continue bombing city after city unless Japan surrendered unconditionally.

Which they did, fearful of a third strike.

Even though the US only had two bombs.



It's how you play the game of kings.

You win or you die.

I don't think your analogy works, because the Borg and Species 8472 are very different from human nation states.

My point is, if Species 8472's goal was simply to destroy the Borg, why were they sending out thoughts saying they wanted to kill all liefe forms in the universe. That won't scare the Borg and may ensure that others join the war against Species 8472, which is what happened. So why are they projecting malevolent thoughts if they don't believe in them. These thoughts do nothing to scare the Borg and many other telepath would believe them to be true and thus rally other forces against Species 8472. Species 8472 presenting themselves as pure evil was very counterproductive and had no real benefit, so why did they do it?

teacock wrote:

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Why are you all assuming that the malevolent thoughts were their actual plan rather than just a collective xenophobic hostility directed at anyone different than them, much like you hear babbling out of drunk racists. Their default position.

Except Kes described their thoughts and feelings as a cold malevolent hatred, not some flash of white hot anger you might get from some drunks at a bar. They seemed more like cold predatory psychopaths, then foolish ignorant people. When they were ripping Borg bodies apart and stacking them together, that seemed like a serial killer would do, not a solider. Besides if not all of them had those feelings, why didn't Kes pick up on that. Again all of this makes Janeway look pretty foolish, if Janeway joined with the Borg because she thought Species 8472.

Besides are there different types of extreme xenophobes. The Nazis were xenophobes and they expressed this by invading other countries and wanting to kill "weaker" races. There was no room for diplomacy with the Nazis and the Nazis aggressiveness ensured war was inevitable. However North Kora is also xenophobic, but they express it differently. They favor isolation keeping foreign elements and culture out of their country, to ensure that outside influences do not taint the "purity" of their people. So what kind xenophobes were Species 8472, aggressive war like ones who wanted to kill everything else in the universe or simple isolationists who want nothing to do with anyone else and only wanted to destroy the Borg because they made incursions into their realm.

[R. Star]

Species 8472 had every right to regard Voyager as hostile and as a threat.

During their first encounter Voyager attempts to both tractor beam the bioship and beam it away. Both hostile acts. Then they board it as if they had every right to. The pilot had every right to regard them as hostile and attack. Possibly consider them in cooperation with the Borg even too.

During their second encounter the Borg are actively protecting them. It's only by this point that Kes has established any kind of telepathic communication with them. Before this Kes just had a premonition of dead Borg and "Voyager's destruction" and she didn't foresee Harry getting hurt until they had already boarded the 8472 ship. So they had already proven themselves hostile by that point and the vision of Voyager's destruction, well that didn't come true so how reliable was it?

During the 3rd encounter, Voyager actively invades their realm and uses biomolecular torpedoes to destroy a bunch of their ships.

So yeah, Voyager was really the hostile power here. The most provocative thing 8472 did was defend themselves and have the gall to counter attack aggressive forces crying out "the weak shall perish!" which could just be a battle cry for all we know. Given they were perfectly willing to stand down despite all of this in In the Flesh, proves them to be reasonable.

[Guy Gardener]

Kes engaged telepathic contact.

8472 replied.

What has that to do with the Borg?

I'm not even sure if the Borg ever even tried to negotiate or surrender, but I doubt they tried either, because they still knew for a fact that resistance was futile.

[Anwar]

It's half them being wimps who change their minds quickly, half changed premise.

The 8472 aliens were originally just supposed to be Modern Trek's take on the "Evil Alien Beings from another dimension!" cliche that had been around since HP Lovecraft, they were basically Trek Cthulu.

However, the writers realized that this isn't viable for anything more than a one-short species and that there was no way to wipe out the 8472 to the point they wouldn't have to mention them again so they changed their minds and made them more like semi-reasonable versions of the Founders in "In the Flesh" to end the story because they didn't want to do some big "Borg/8472 War" storyline.

[Guy Gardener]

It would have been far more interesting if Chuckles made out with an 8472 who actually looked like an 8472.

[TiberiusMaximus]

"Interesting" is one way of putting it...

Why are we assuming there isn't more than one faction of 8472? Some of them want to kill everything, some of them don't care, some of them want to stay home and write Janeway/Chakotay fanfic. Or something. Whatever it is they do in their spare time.

[The Overlord]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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Kes engaged telepathic contact.

8472 replied.

What has that to do with the Borg?

I'm not even sure if the Borg ever even tried to negotiate or surrender, but I doubt they tried either, because they still knew for a fact that resistance was futile.

Why didn't 8472 reply by saying "The Borg invaded our space, so we are at war with them. We have no quarrel with you, but stay out of our way". If they had done that, Voyager would not have gotten involved, they wouldn't have developed the weapon that put such fear into their hearts and Species 8472 would have destroyed the Borg. So Species 8472 replying the way they did really did screw themselves over. If Species 8472 didn't believe in that rhetoric, why did they bother thinking it, they knew other telepaths might pick up on these thoughts and see them as the bigger threat.

Sending a message of "all inferior races must die!" instead of something reasonable made them more enemies and made it less likely people would leave them alone.

TiberiusMaximus wrote:

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"Interesting" is one way of putting it...

Why are we assuming there isn't more than one faction of 8472? Some of them want to kill everything, some of them don't care, some of them want to stay home and write Janeway/Chakotay fanfic. Or something. Whatever it is they do in their spare time.

Then why didn't Kes pick up on this? Why did Kes only sense genocidal ones and did not sense one of the reasonable ones? This really comes off as a bad ret con, the way they were portrayed in Scorpion seems completely different then they were portrayed in "In the Flesh".

Anwar wrote:

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It's half them being wimps who change their minds quickly, half changed premise.

The 8472 aliens were originally just supposed to be Modern Trek's take on the "Evil Alien Beings from another dimension!" cliche that had been around since HP Lovecraft, they were basically Trek Cthulu.

However, the writers realized that this isn't viable for anything more than a one-short species and that there was no way to wipe out the 8472 to the point they wouldn't have to mention them again so they changed their minds and made them more like semi-reasonable versions of the Founders in "In the Flesh" to end the story because they didn't want to do some big "Borg/8472 War" storyline.

Well in Dr. Who they have gotten a lot of stories out of the Daleks, who hate all species besides themselves and want to kill them all.

Frankly I think I prefer "Space Cthulu" version of these characters, its a bit naive to assume that all space aliens are easy to understand. In Scorpion they came off as creatures that were beyond our understanding, so beyond humans it be like an ant trying to make peace with a person. In "In The Flesh" they came off as a generic Star Trek alien race, all the other worldly qualities were gone, they went from something beyond our understanding into poor misunderstood creatures who just need a hug. Its such a U turn, it happens too quickly to make sense. That is why it comes off as a bad ret con, rather any sort of natural development. It took way longer for the Klingons and the Federation to make peace and the Klingons came off as more reasonable then Species 8472 did in Scorpion.

All of this makes Janeway look stupid for allying with the Borg in scorpion. If Species 8472 were not genocidal psychopaths, then Janeway's alliance with the Borg was the biggest strategic mistake any Star Fleet captain has ever made. Species 8472 could have destroyed the Borg, removing any future threat they pose to the Federation and the DQ. Instead the Borg are free to assimilate other races now that the greatest threat to their existence has been dealt with and species 8472 decided that the Federation is the bigger threat and planned to destroy them. Janeway is lucky that she stumbled across their base in the DQ, otherwise they would have gone to the AQ and destroyed the Federation and it would have been her fault. See this ret con makes all of her decisions in Scorpion look stupid, it makes her look bad in the process.

[Guy Gardener]

Because they're idiots.

Your argument is that what they did, didn't make sense, so what we saw can't have been the full story.

My argument is that what they did didn't make sense because they're idiots.

[TiberiusMaximus]

Both arguments have merits.

Guy's is funnier. So he wins.

[teacake]

But that means he wins everything.