Were any Galaxy Class ships lost at Wolf 359?

[Dukhat]

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/USS_Tombaugh

The only time we heard about this ship was when 7of9 made an offhand remark about it.

I think that there were lots of ships engaging the Borg at one time or another that we just didn't hear about.

 

[Anwar]

Probably not, but then again we don't actually know if what we saw in Emissary was the exact beginning of the battle, or just some point during it, since we didn't see all 40 ships, only six.

I'm pretty sure the Borg wouldn't bother sending out a "Surrender now" message more than once. I think Emissary was the start of the battle.

The Saratoga may have just gotten there and joined the Armada, since they hadn't unloaded civilians or armed themselves yet.

 

[Vger23]

Hanson was supposed to be on a Galaxy Class ship at Wolf 359, but I don't know if that made it to the televised version.

Where do you get this? Hanson's ship was shown at the beginning of part 1, and it was an Excelsior-class starship.

 

[Orphalesion]

if Starfleet had any other major engagements against the Borg, we would have known about it...

It wouldn't have to be a major engagement. Some episodes of Voyager made it seem like the Borg and the Federation clashed a number of times on a much smaller scale.

 

[Dukhat]

I'm pretty sure the Borg wouldn't bother sending out a "Surrender now" message more than once. I think Emissary was the start of the battle.

Really? Because the Borg pretty much say the exact same thing about resistance being futile and that you will be assimilated to pretty much every person, place or thing they come across, at any time. So I don't think that would be a determining factor for hypothesizing that it was the start of the battle.

FWIW, I don't think Hanson's ship was the Melbourne either, if only because at the time of BoBW, the Melbourne was supposed to be a four-nacelled Nebula class ship. But seeing as he came aboard the Enterprise from an Excelsior and presumably left the same way (thank you, stock footage!), it stands to reason that he was on said ship during the attack, and the red alert display sorta lends credence to that.

 

[Anwar]

Hanson was supposed to be on a Galaxy Class ship at Wolf 359, but I don't know if that made it to the televised version.

Where do you get this? Hanson's ship was shown at the beginning of part 1, and it was an Excelsior-class starship.

That was the ship transporting him, but I'd imagine he'd upgrade to a better ship for such an engagement.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Hanson was supposed to be on a Galaxy Class ship at Wolf 359, but I don't know if that made it to the televised version.

Where do you get this? Hanson's ship was shown at the beginning of part 1, and it was an Excelsior-class starship.

It was from the script of the episode (just search for "galaxy").

But as Anwar mentioned, that detail didn't really make it to the episode as aired.

 

[Timo]

What "made it into the episode" is a rather flexible issue. Was there a four-naceller named Melbourne there, or a four-naceller named Ahwahnee? We never saw either of those - all we saw were nearly shapeless blobs that may or may not have had a name stenciled on their hulls, in whole or in mere "surviving parts".

Backstage photos indicate the two ships mentioned above were used for the photography. But so was a ship model labeled Alka-selsior. We never saw that one up close, either, but she apparently was there anyway.

We are fully entitled to decide, then, that no Ahwahnee was either lost or salvaged in relation to that battle, or that no Nebula lookalike with 2 large and 2 small nacelles was there, under any name - true visual evidence of such is completely lacking. In their stead we may insert another ship shaped in the Cheyenne class four-nacelle fashion (because even with VHS tapes of original low-res broadcasts, we can sort of see that shape), and another vessel that matches the "2+2-nacelled" wreck in visible detail but "in fact" looks completely different and more aesthetically pleasing. And so forth.

As for ships surviving the fight, there's no particular reason to assume such a thing. OTOH, we can assume that, say, five ships survived: the only things really established are that "forty" (a round number) were summoned and may have arrived; that more would have been better and Admiral Hanson hoped more would come; and "39" (an exact number for anybody using the decimal system) were lost. And nowhere is there any onscreen mention that a ship or ships would have survived the fight, although we know of at least two people from the Starfleet side who survived it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

OTOH, it's just as simple, if not simpler, to take everything we see and hear at face value. Hanson said his fleet consisted of 40 ships, so 40 ships it was. Satie said 39 ships were destroyed, so 39 ships were destroyed. One ship then survived; we see that the Ahwahnee is part of the tachyon grid, hence we can logically deduce that it was the ship that survived. We saw several wrecked ships on the viewscreen in BoBW. Background info shows the designs, names and registry numbers of many of those ships, so we can logically conclude that those same ships were what we saw on the screen, even if they were too far away to make out. Two Melbournes at Wolf 359? Simple: One Melbourne was the new replacement for the older one, and both had been sent into the battle because both happened to be available at the time.

There's no reason to make things more difficult or convoluted than they need to be.

 

[Timo]

I'd rather argue that there is no need to make things, period. Nothing calls for us to make the "some ship survived Wolf 359" thing. No ship need have survived, and indeed it might well have warranted mention if some ship did.

There's nothing particularly logical in assuming that a ship seen in the distant background is the same ship seen in some other situation, for example. Few Starfleet ship classes feature only one vessel; if one is a wreck and another is seen in action later, the default assumption ought to be that those are two different ships.

If we really wanted to insist that the models seen are the fictional ships supposed to be seen, then Starfleet in TNG only has one Excelsior class vessel - theoretically, her registry number is visible in all the stock shots, and she's one and the same model factually anyway...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

^ No ship survived but people did, we know that much.

 

[Timo]

Yeah, we do know two people survived. We can speculate that others in the lifeboat that carried those two people out of the battle also survived - or that everybody died and the Prophets stepped in and brought the Siskos back anyway. As for ships, everything is possible, and there's no real point in voting for the likely option as, like so often established, this is science fiction!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tharpdevenport]

Three people survived it, if you count Voyager. In one episode a woman who escaped the Borg said she was assimilated at Wolf 359. As I recall, she said she was on the Rosevelt. But it's unclear how she survived. Her being there makes ZERO sense. Another Voyager fuck up where the writers didn't seem to care what they wrote.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Hanson said the fleet at Wolf 359 was comprised of 40 ships, and (in "The Drumhead") 39 were said to be destroyed. So the simplest explanation is, one was not. (Hanson would have no reason to 'round off' the number of ships he said he was assigning. If he said he sent 40 ships, then he did send 40 ships.)

The surviving ship, BTW, can't be the Enterprise, which wasn't even at the battle.

As for which ship was Hanson's: We have no idea. The Excelsior-class ship from the beginning, just drops him off and then leaves. There's no reason to think that it was his flagship.

 

[Dukhat]

^Exactly. Occam's Razor states that, all things being equal (i.e. we take the dialogue at face value), if there were 40 ships and 39 of them were destroyed, ergo that leaves one ship surviving. And there's nothing to "debate" about it, since that's pretty cut and dried info.

 

[Orphalesion]

Okay....why are we now speculating whether Sisko and his son were the only survivors of Wolf359?
That makes absolutely no sense, why shouldn't more people have escaped? It was a giant battle -> lots of chaos -> lots of opportunities to slip away or hide from the Borg in the rubble and space is a big place, big enough for both the Borg Cube and the Enterprise to overlook a number of floating escape pods...

Besides that I think if the Siskos were the only survivors of Wolf359 then something like that would have been mentioned. Often.
Was there ever any explanation given why the civilians on-board Sisko's ship weren't evacuated before he engaged the Borg? Were they pressed for time?

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Three people survived it, if you count Voyager. In one episode a woman who escaped the Borg said she was assimilated at Wolf 359. As I recall, she said she was on the Rosevelt. But it's unclear how she survived. Her being there makes ZERO sense. Another Voyager fuck up where the writers didn't seem to care what they wrote.

One among a great many!

 

[Timo]

Hanson would have no reason to 'round off' the number of ships he said he was assigning.

He wasn't "assigning" out of a pool, he was gathering everything he could get, including enemy vessels! He had no clear idea how many would make it in time - he hoped forty would be "just for starters".

The Excelsior-class ship from the beginning, just drops him off and then leaves.

How could she leave? By the time she reaches Earth or Wolf 359, the Borg threat is already well known - failing to participate in the battle would be odd to the extreme.

There's no reason to think that it was his flagship.

...Other than certain other flagships in TNG supposedly being Excelsiors (we never quite learn what class the Gorkon in "Descent" ought to be, but backstage books say she's another of that class), and the red alert graphic indeed harkening back to the days when Starfleet built Excelsiors.

Why do we count an assimilated crew member as a "survivor"? Anyway, no doubt hundreds at least were assimilated in the battle: the Borg like to do boarding, and if they managed to get one assimilated Fed from Wolf to the Delta Quadrant, this probably means they assimilated a ship for the purpose and plenty of other people along with it...

But speculation is speculation. The only "clear-cut" things regarding the battle are the survival of the two Siskos, the perishing of 39 ships (only four with known names - Tolstoy, Kyushu, Melbourne, Saratoga) and 11,000 people (only one known name, Hanson, although that VOY "Survival Instinct" assimilee was probably counted among the 11,000 rather than separately listed in some other category), and that's it. No information whatsoever of other surviving ships or personnel, except in speculation.

Was there ever any explanation given why the civilians on-board Sisko's ship weren't evacuated before he engaged the Borg? Were they pressed for time?

Nothing given, but it's easy to see Ben Sisko knows what he is facing from the first close-up in "Emissary" already. It's a decisive fight for the entire human civilization; if Ben fails and dies, it's probably much better for Jen and Jake to die as well than to be subjected to the horrors of surviving. At least a starship offers reasonable chances of committing suicide if assimilation looms... Somebody will remain unassimilated long enough to kill the others with a push of a button, a maneuver less likely to work on some colony or homeworld.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Orphalesion]

Nothing given, but it's easy to see Ben Sisko knows what he is facing from the first close-up in "Emissary" already. It's a decisive fight for the entire human civilization; if Ben fails and dies, it's probably much better for Jen and Jake to die as well than to be subjected to the horrors of surviving. At least a starship offers reasonable chances of committing suicide if assimilation looms... Somebody will remain unassimilated long enough to kill the others with a push of a button, a maneuver less likely to work on some colony or homeworld.

Sorry, but that's incredibly stupid. As long as a person is alive there is hope, there'd be a chance for Jennifer and Jake to escape somehow somewhere, just like many of Guinan's people survived the assimilation of their species.
Sisko does have some odd opinions (his Starfleet uniform worship/fetish for one) but I doubt he'd willfully decide to take his wife and son along on a suicide run.
As for it not working on a planet...well obviously the Federation would not provide its citizens with easy access to suicide, but IF it would really be necessary I can imagine they could replicate and distribute cyanide pills or something.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Timo:

Why do we count an assimilated crew member as a "survivor"? Anyway, no doubt hundreds at least were assimilated in the battle: the Borg like to do boarding, and if they managed to get one assimilated Fed from Wolf to the Delta Quadrant, this probably means they assimilated a ship for the purpose and plenty of other people along with it...

If you're refering to my post, we coutn it because she's no logner assimilated. So, she survived Wolf 359 all the years later.

But it still makes zero sense. There was no time to assimilate. I'm going with the TNG Borg, not the retconing later with instant assimilation via nanoprobes. It took time to assimilate a person and evne then they possibly growing their own humanoids (assuming these weren't kids left over from assimilated vessels).

And how in the world did they get her? The cube was destroyed. Not only is there no dialogue on a vessel emerging from the Borg ship and heading off but there is also never a mention of a Borg captured from Wolf 359, 'cause that's the only way she could have survived; she's have to had some miraculous "quick" assimilation, been jettisoned from the Rosevelt in an escape pod, picked up by the surviving ship, since the Enterprise didn't pick anybody up, and then later be taken by the Borg some how.

That's all about as likely as Riker turning out to be a secret Romulan spy.