Why do people keep saying Voyager weakened the Borg?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by Civ001, Jul 21, 2011.

  1. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    What's the vessel with 64 thousand drones from Unimatrix Zero look like?

    Was it abnormally large?
     
  2. zar

    zar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    No, not clearly. Remember Fesarius?
     
  3. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    The Fesarius was pretty friggin big, yes. The chart puts it as 1600 M in diameter. Nearly as big as the Tactical Sphere.
     
  4. zar

    zar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Yep, but at first it was visually a lot smaller than that. "It's so far away but it still fills the screen!" When you have a featureless geometric shape hanging in space like Fesarius or a Borg cube, you have no way to tell how close or how large it really is.

    Since Voyager is in the foreground in that shot, all it implies is that Voyager is smaller than the cube. The beam weapon goes off to a vanishing point. How far away is it? How relatively fast is Voyager moving toward the cube? We don't have any of that information, so this shot is useless as evidence for measurement.

    I suspect Schneider reached his conclusion using more informative visuals. Whatever happened to deferring to the judgement of the more obsessed?
     
  5. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    ;), you only suspect Schneider in the more obsessed one.

    In all Borg appearances of the Assimilation Cube, no matter how far away, it's ALWAYS been shown to be much more massive compared to the Galaxy class than VOY was to that Tactical Cube.
     
  6. Luminus

    Luminus Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Is that why the ablative hull armor that Voyager gets from the future was able to successfully shake off weapons fire from 3 borg cubes in "Endgame"?


    That's what confuses me so much. In what universe are the words "heavily armed" ever considered as describing something that is weak?:wtf:

    Tactical cubes are the same size as the other cubes seen on Voyager. You can tell this easily, because Voyager happened to pass over or under a cube in "Endgame" and in "Unimatrix Zero." The cubes are clearly the same size. I gave you a source to the designer himself saying the it's just a cube with a flack jacket and there's still a debate? Do I have to go to Memory Beta and get ship dimensions to put this one to rest?:confused:

    Well, it looks like someone beat me to it...

    Okay, now we're bringing out the dimensions. Thanks you for that link. Unfortunately for you, it only proves my point. I read the article and looked at the ship sizes, THEN, I clicked on the source link like the site's author suggests. Here is what I found:

    Tactical Cube length: approx. 3000m
    Cube variant 2 length: approx. 3000m
    Cube variant 1 length: "a huge vessel" ??? Not seen again, after BOBW.

    Cube variant 1 is the largest cube we've ever seen (credit to Anwar). The speculation is that borg cubes grow as new technology is added and since this cube was traveling to the Alpha Quadrant, it had grown in that time. This can actually be confirmed by Enterprise's "Regeneration" episode and TNG's "Descent" episodes.

    That is why that cube in the chart is so large.

    Case closed.
     
  7. Saquist

    Saquist Commodore

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    All I have to do is put it in sketchup to find out which one us is right. I have a Voyager model and the station is a simple circle. All I would have to do is scale the ship to the station see if it's the right size.
     
  8. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Borg ships are "generically huge". That's all they were ever designed to be.
     
  9. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    So basically Luminus has helped point out that ALL the Borg vessels in VOY were smaller than the one we saw in TNG, right? None were as massive as that Assimilation Cube?

    So then they were ALL smaller and weaker than in TNG, explaining discrepancies in why VOY had an easier time.
     
  10. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    But I can guarentee the producers and writers of the show never gave a thought to them being bigger or smaller than the TNG cube and how their strengths would compare. It came down to the CG artist's idea of what looked nicest. That's all. Therefore it has no meaning.
     
  11. zar

    zar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I was paraphrasing what you said:
    I meant he's more obsessed than you or me, not more than the guy who did the chart. You're trying to do your own analysis now, but your analysis is shallow and inconclusive as I explained. I suspect both Schneider and the chart creator used more useful shots than the ultimately meaningless one you posted.

    The problem is you're placing higher importance on special effects shots, which have a known history of inconsistencies (even the chart creator acknowledges this in his FAQ) and ignoring all other evidence that points to the fact that they were intended to be of the same base cube.


    Nonsense.

    [​IMG]

    This shot is much more informative than the VOY one you gave. There's no ambiguity about distance.

    First of all, since the cube is in front of the Enterprise, we know that the distance of the Enterprise is the minimum distance the cube could be from the camera.

    Not only that, but this shot continues to stretch on until both the cube and the Enterprise pass by the camera, at a steady speed. From that we learn that the cube is at least one full cube length ahead of the Enterprise and thus closer to the camera, and thus smaller. Do the simple math and this shot puts this cube at a much smaller size than both the one in Q Who and the tactical cube.



    Actually the chart doesn't show any distinction between variant 1 and 2, it only has 2 cube types: Assimilation and Tactical. For the larger Assimilation cube it uses the size of variant-2: 3000M, but then it puts Tactical at 1500M which contradicts its own source.
     
  12. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    This is Trek, we use these sort of discrepancies to solve things all the time. This one just happens to fit well.

    http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/schematics/borg_ships.htm

    The article says that the Borg Cube from TNG was a "massive" ship with no specific measurements. Compared to the VOY Cubes where the specifications are given.

    Hell, that shot YOU used doesn't match up with other shots in BOBW itself. Like when they fight the Cube for the first time or when they fly away from it when it's self-destructing.
     
  13. zar

    zar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Exactly my point!

    You're the one who said ALL the shots from TNG ALWAYS show the cube as bigger than in VOY. You were wrong; I provided evidence. Accept it for once instead of changing the subject.



    He's talking specifically about the one from Q Who. The ones from BOBW and FC are the same as the ones in VOY.
     
  14. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    The article says variant one was from Q Who? and BOBW. From FC onwards the type seen were Variant 2.

    Hell, the perspective used can even say that the Cube in BOBW was still massive and it's just the pursuit speeds and how fast we see them that make it seem smaller.
     
  15. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    To me as well. If you look at the sizes of the docking arms (towers?) in comparison to each ship, the Enterprise Dee is clearly significantly larger than the Voyager.

    Zar, use the docking arm as a fixed reference point.

    What you're missing zar, is that "every other source confirming" can't actual confirm anything. Only what is in the episodes is canon. What production staff, writers, artists "intended" is completely meaningless.

    You might simply concede that Anwar is right.

    :)
     
  16. zar

    zar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    No, you can't say that. The cube is in front of the Enterprise. Therefore it's closer to the camera, and we know that a direct size comparison would require us to place the cube farther back to be at the same distance as the Enterprise, thus making it even smaller.

    Since there is no acceleration or deceleration throughout the whole shot we can count how long it takes Enterprise to reach the same point as the cube was to determine just how far apart they are.

    But even ignoring that, this obviously can't be showing what you suggest. Even if we imagine that the starships are nose to nose with the cubes in both shots, it can't possibly work out that way:

    http://i.imgur.com/U0YTr.png

    I scaled down the VOY image so the reference points (the starships) match up, based on the widths of the saucers. I've given this as much leeway as I can manage to, but they still come out as roughly the same size. And you're claiming that the one on the right is over twice as long.



    As you've seen, the effects are often inconsistent. Sometimes they agree with Anwar's claim, but often they don't. He's choosing to ignore all the ones that don't AND dialog that suggests they aren't weaker ships AND the behind-the-scenes info, all just to defend the idea that VOY didn't make the Borg seem weaker.

    Now I'm all for suspension of disbelief, but none of this flimsy justification changes the fact that VOY made no attempt to give us the impression that Voyager was up against a weaker version of cubes than before. It did just the opposite.


    I'm willing to do that should the circumstance ever arise. :)
     
  17. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    So what do you want, for them to just say "Huh, all these ships are smaller and weaker than the one that attacked Earth."?

    Seriously, no wonder folks says things were dumbed down in later Trek, subtlety flies over peoples' heads!
     
  18. zar

    zar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    So you're suggesting that they intended to imply that they were smaller and weaker?

    ...Even though we already know from official sources that they intended the exact opposite?
     
  19. Anwar

    Anwar Admiral Admiral

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    If they did come out and say it, would you accept that or would you just complain some more?

    If it's the latter, again VOY is no-win scenario.
     
  20. zar

    zar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    :wtf: Why wouldn't I accept it? I'm basing everything I'm saying on reality: what actually happened. If something different had happened, I would have naturally reached a different conclusion.

    Now you, on the other hand, seem to be basing your conclusions on something other than reality. You're now claiming that the creators were subtlely hinting at the direct opposite of what they were actually trying to create!