Picard was right, Sisko was in the wrong..

Er.... shouldn't the Vulcan CO in Emissary have ordered all families off the ship PRIOR to the battle? Why even have families on board starships? That's cruel. what if a child just via a skirmish with Romulans, in which the ship is not badly damaged, gets PTSD or some trauma?

That aside, I doubt how a CO of a ship, faced with a massive vessel of FAR greater power, could not stave off defeat, assimilation, or capture without luck or extreme resourcefulness.

 

To be fair, the reason why later Star Trek ships abandoned the concept of families on board has been attributed to perhaps being exactly because the Battle of Wolf 359 acted as such an eye-opener. The idea of having families on board ("generation ships") was perhaps something Starfleet was experimenting with at the time of TNG, until incidents like the Borg incursion shown how foolhardy this could be.

Having said that, I agree that the armada that faced the Borg Cube knew they were going into battle, and the knowledge they had about the Borg meant they knew it might not be very pretty for them. So there really is no excuse for them not having off-loaded all of their non-essential personnel (like families) the moment that the mission briefing came through.

Same goes for the Enterprise, although as The Old Mixer says at least Enterprise has allegedly got a contingency plan (the saucer-sepper, not that Riker used it that way in the event!).

The best excuse I can offer is: the Titantic went out despite grave concerns being raised before she set off, about the massive gulf between the amount of passengers booked on her maiden voyage vs the paltry number of lifeboats. Sometimes it takes a big catastrophe in order to open the eyes of people to the most obvious of things. Sometimes idealism outweighs common sense, and it'd take families dying aboard ships like Saratoga to convince Starfleet maybe it isn't such a keen idea to put civilians on these things...

 

I agree, maybe it might have been an emergency situation, but I still think there should've been the possibility to scramble and get as many people off ship as possible, maybe via the shuttlecraft?

That said, we have no reason to believe this wasn't the case. The only family we see on-board Saratoga are Jennifer and Jake Sisko, so maybe leaving the ship was a voluntary thing for the civilian personnel and they just opted not to leave with everybody else.

 

I don't see how this has anything to do with Sisko. He was not the CO of the Saratoga, and we know nothing of the circumstances by which the Saratoga entered the battle. On the other hand, Sisko orders civilians to evacuate DS9 on two occasions. He was more sensitive to their vulnerability.

 

Just thinking about loud.

Just to me it's not a case of Sisko being the absolute victim, even though it was normal for him (who would say otherwise) to assign blame to Picard in some sense.

 

I agree, Picard was right.

 

Depends whether you see Starfleet as a military or as explorers who occasionally have to fight.

And whether the Star Trek world you live in is the one where people readily accept death.

 

If the Cube had of got to Earth they might not have been much safer there. Picard still lost his family in Generations. They might have been safer in a Starship.

Besides, the Enterprise wasn't evacuated before engaging the Borg was it? Riker was prepared the ram at warp speed later on.

 

There's not clear indication that Sisko blames Picard for Wolf 359. The animosity is symbolic of Sisko's own psychology, his inability to move beyond his wife's death. To that extent, Sisko is a reminder of the tragedy that Sisko has faced. It's a bit much to claim that Sisko is "the absolute victim," as if he is just acting selfishly, even when in daily life people might normally have difficulty facing people indirectly involved in their loved ones' deaths.

 

"Unfortunately, we cannot always serve in the ideal environment." (Sips tea. Reclines back in chair. Mr. Mott enters and gives Picard scalp massage...)

If you freeze frame on Picard just after Sisko stands up and says, "In the meantime!" you can actually see Stewart empty his bladder.

 

Maybe somehow everyone except Sisko's wife refused to evacuate because she refused to be apart from Sisko? I dunno, has Jennifer ever been stated to not be stupidly in love with Benjamin?

 

They could put the kids somewhere safe, like Earth, in case the battle doesn't work out. Or, well, maybe … New Berlin? Delta Rana IV? Minos? Bre'el IV? New Providence?

 

Well you could get them out on Shuttles or half the escape pods before going into battle. Pick them up after if all went well.

I'd still say Picard's decision in Descent to send everyone he could spare down to (potentially) a PLANET OF BORG one of the more questionable choices of the run.

 

Sure in an ideal situation they would evacuate non-combatants. But that takes time and i got the impression that 40 starships was all that Starfleet could cobble together into a fleet given the time that they had.

Ships might have been nowhere near a Class M planet/starbase or one they could detour to and still make the rendezvous.

 

How do we know they didn't offload people in shuttles before they arrived at Wolf 359? All we know for sure is that there were civilians still on board when the battle started. Maybe they evacuated as many people as they could before running out of shuttles.

 

Or that the Saratoga could have been in the Wolf 359 system.