Who can explain this scene from 'Q who' to me?

[at Quark's]

<The away team is in the Borg cube, investigating, and Riker calls to the bridge>
RIKER [OC]: The Borg seem to be using their combined power to repair the ship.
PICARD: Transporter Chief, beam the away team directly to the Bridge.
(O'Brien does so)
PICARD: Let's get the hell out of here. Warp eight. Now, Mister Crusher. Engage.

The moment Riker tells Picard the Borg are repairing the ship, Picard stands up, alarmed. It is as if he realises only at that moment how dangerous the Borg truly are.

But why? They already knew the Borg ship was far less critically damaged than scans from the outside indicated, and that the Borg survived as this is something Riker tells Picard at the very beginning of that away mission. And making repairs after a ship is damaged is something almost all species would do. Also, they already knew/speculated that the Borg had a collective mind, and that they could directly interface with the ship and each other and literally think the ship forward, so that they repair the ship in this way too would also only be logical.

So what is it in this little bit of information that so greatly alerts Picard? Is is the fact that they are repairing the ship and hence probably will soon be combat ready again? Is it the single-mindedness of it, even to the point of ignoring the away team? Something else?

 

[Mojochi]

I just always assumed that the notion of them being combat ready at any moment lit a fire under his butt. lol

I mean, until then, sure, they began to understand that the Borg operate as a collective mind, & it was reasonable to assume they would be working to repair damages, but they had no working knowledge of just how rapid that process would be. I seem to recall that they were even surprised to see anyone alive over there at all, because there were no individual life signs

I just think once the realization set in that at any moment they could be getting carved like a roast again, he wanted to get gone

 

[matthunter]

Yeah, the Enterprise or other Alpha Quad species vessels would take hours or days to be combat-capable after taking hits like the Borg Cube did (check their repair times in the followup Best of Both Worlds), but Riker realised they might be back on the assault in minutes.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Before that they thought they might have more time.

 

[at Quark's]

Ah, ok. So according to you, it's the speed with which this regeneration happens that is implied. Never explicitly stated in the script as such, but shown to be true afterwards, when the Cube proves more than able to pursue and catch the Enterprise again.

I came up with a slightly different explanation myself - one that can be combined with the above reason, I think.

It seems to me that in any combat situation in which you are damaged but not fatally so (like the Borg are), you'd first eliminate the direct threat that caused the damage, -to prevent more damage occurring, before you start effectuating repairs. Not so the Borg. The implication of which is that they don't even consider the weapons potential of Enterprise (despite what it just did to their Cube) a significant factor in the entire equation. The Enterprise is not a threat to be dealt with, but something that can be consumed at their leisure, after tending to their repairs (and having adapted to their weapons, though the Enterprise crew wouldn't know that yet ). If actually true (and it proves to be true) that is a disconcerting, (and frankly humiliating) thought for the flagship of Starfleet,

 

[Spot261]

Yes and no, I mean something that stands out for me is just how easily the D actually inflicted that damage pre adaptation. The Cube was not inherently all that resilient to damage at that stage for such a large vessel.Had the D been flying under virtually any other flag the cube wouldn't have survived anyway, a Klingon or Romulan commander would not have stopped firing when Picard did.

Picard clearly grew alarmed when he realised how he had underestimated the tech of the Borg and how imminent the threat was. This was confounded when he realised he couldn't outrun them and the D's weapons were no longer effective.

 

[at Quark's]

Perhaps those few phaser blasts that damaged the cube were all they were going to get in anyway, even if they had continued firing straightaway. We just don't know how quickly the Cube would have adapted. Could it have done so on the run or did it require several minutes of analysis? We don't know, since in later Borg encounters, we see both happening. Probably also dependent on how 'new' the Federation weapons really were to the Borg-- they might have encountered dozens of races before with weapons similar to those, speeding up the adaptation process.

From the Enterprise viewpoint, what I didn't understand is why they didn't at least retry the phasers (after being captured again), and photon torpedoes had proven ineffective multiple times already.

 

[Spot261]

Possibly, but it seems a strange coincidence that Picard would order a ceasefire just as his weapons were about to become ineffective unbeknownst to him....

I'm more inclined to base this on what we later saw in Voyager, that for the most part the Delta Quadrant was not commonly populated by vessels that could put out the sort of firepower a galaxy class could, so cubes were simply not built to accommodate it. The phasers blew a galaxy class sized hole in the cube, but require several shots to seriously damage a BoP. The implication for me is that Borg vessels simply aren't engineered to be all that robust at this point.

 

[at Quark's]

Possibly, but it seems a strange coincidence that Picard would order a ceasefire just as his weapons were about to become ineffective unbeknownst to him....

True. On the other hand, the Borg already had stated that 'We have analysed your defensive capabilities as being unable to withstand us.'. Suppose that the Borg had these awesome adaptive capabilities, that would render them practically invulnerable to whatever Federation weapon after the first few shots, making their statement generally true-- except that they'd be shot to hell first. The Borg wouldn't be very effective as an enemy if they would just ignore such inconvenient little facts in their analysis. Nor do I believe the Borg are lying here - except for the Queen perhaps, I don't think the Borg lie.

Also, if the cube being destroyed was a real possibility at that point in time, why wouldn't the Borg have taken immediate action instead of just sitting there 'in stasis' and 'regenerating'? At the very least they could have fled to a safe distance. Did they already learn that the Federation wouldn't be that aggressive?

Would have been a very different episode though.

<Enterprise blows Cube to kingdom come>

Picard: OK, Q, you see? We are ready for anything out there! Now I will exercise my right to gloat over you and pontificate some more!
<end episode>

I'm more inclined to base this on what we later saw in Voyager, that for the most part the Delta Quadrant was not commonly populated by vessels that could put out the sort of firepower a galaxy class could, so cubes were simply not built to accommodate it. The phasers blew a galaxy class sized hole in the cube, but require several shots to seriously damage a BoP. The implication for me is that Borg vessels simply aren't engineered to be all that robust at this point.

I don't think an agressive civilization would build vessels based on the capabilities of other vessels your region is 'commonly populated' with, but rather build vessels that can withstand the strongest enemies you'd reasonably expect to encounter. And we have seen that there are a few races out there that seem technologically superior to the Federation, some of which have had confirmed contact with the Borg for a long time (Arcturis' species, for example, that were able to hold off the Borg for a long time. Somehow, I don't buy that his race would have superior sensors, intelligence, particle synthesis, and slipstream among other things, while still having inferior weapons and defense systems. Not impossible though, as we have seens species such as the Satarrans in TNG.)

But at the end of the day, all this is of course nothing more than trying to reconcile a bag of mixed information created on the run, and at different times by different writers who just had to come up with a good story in time ....

 

[Spot261]

I don't think an agressive civilization would build vessels based on the capabilities of other vessels your region is 'commonly populated' with, but rather build vessels that can withstand the strongest enemies you'd reasonably expect to encounter. And we have seen that there are a few races out there that seem technologically superior to the Federation, some of which have had confirmed contact with the Borg for a long time (Arcturis' species, for example, that were able to hold off the Borg for a long time

Not when you consider the sheer volume of cubes they produce, they are seemingly a disposable resource, whose value lies in their being cost effective and numerous its only later on we start seeing upgrades such as the oft maligned "tactical cube". Perhaps one represents the rank and file assimilation tool, the other a heavy duty version for dealing with such races?

Also, if the cube being destroyed was a real possibility at that point in time, why wouldn't the Borg have taken immediate action instead of just sitting there 'in stasis' and 'regenerating'? At the very least they could have fled to a safe distance. Did they already learn that the Federation wouldn't be that aggressive?

Good point. Maybe they just didn't care given that another, fully adapted, cube would be along shortly?

 

[at Quark's]

Good point. Maybe they just didn't care given that another, fully adapted, cube would be along shortly?

I don't know. On the one hand, I'd like to believe that the Borg aren't stupid. We know that the Borg don't have qualms sacrificing entire cubes to gain (or protect) something more even important (see Scorpion), but to sacrifice a cube -possibly containing over 100.000 drones- where it probably could have been easily avoided at no loss otherwise? That would be very wasteful resource management (and we know the Borg like efficiency), unless something valuable were gained by running the risk of destruction of the cube that couldn't be gained any other way. We know that this 'gain' can't be how to adapt to those federation weapons, since they adapted anyway, before the Enterprise fired another shot at them. I can't really think of any other 'gain', so this line of reasoning would again lead me to the conclusion the Cube was never in any real danger at all.

On the other hand, they do actually seem to sacrifice at least individual drones that easily (and hence possibly larger units of resouces, such as ships and cubes, too). All those drones just walking slowly towards someone who has all the time in the world to aim and discharge a phaser at them .... what would really be lost if the drones attempted to seek cover before their shields adapted ? Or would analysis of enemy weapons be only possible if drones or ships are directly hit with it ?

 

[Timo]

For all we know, Picard did enough damage to prevent the Borg from responding, fleeing, firing back, whatever. It's just that whether the Borg panic or go to frantic action, it looks like a late-night round of sarabande in a senior home...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

^Perhaps, yes. But if I recall correctly, they state that about 20% of that cube was damaged, and Shelby later makes this projection:

Projections suggest a Borg ship like this one could continue to function effectively even if seventy-eight percent of it was inoperable.

Now, I'm not sure what 'function effectively' would entail, exactly, but I'd wager that it would at least imply the capacity to take basic measures to prevent immediate destruction (even if that 'measure' would be to flee) .

Returning to my previous post: I just remembered the Queen destroys entire cubes in Unimatrix Zero, only because she can't hear just one of the drones. So perhaps they do dispose of their cubes that easily.

 

[elamigodemiamiga]

Depends, i don't see how they could have realised that......give people slack.

 

[cgervasi]

The moment Riker tells Picard the Borg are repairing the ship, Picard stands up, alarmed. It is as if he realises only at that moment how dangerous the Borg truly are.

But why?

I agree with most of the other great comments on this thread. I will add that maybe Picard realized that the Borg's ship's decentralized nature would make the Borg ship combat ready faster. If it it were a ship like the Enterprise with a hole blown in it, the power conduits would have be re-routed, and then systems would start becoming usable. With Borg it was more like cutting off part of a plant, thinking it's like cutting off an animal's arm. Someone (Riker in this case) realizes it's still growing, and then Picard realizes he hasn't damaged it as much as he thought.