Wolf 359 Questions

[Christopher]

It also brings us back to the question why did they not send 15-20 cubes in one burst some time and kept always sending one.

Because the Federation wasn't important enough to them. It was a power located very far from the heart of Borg territory, and the Collective was no doubt devoting most of its resources to assimilating and battling other civilizations much closer to home -- probably dozens, even hundreds of other civilizations, given the sheer size of Borg territory. We humans like to think the whole universe revolves around us, but as far as the Borg were concerned, the Federation was just a sidebar -- first a curiosity, then an annoyance.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

It also brings us back to the question why did they not send 15-20 cubes in one burst some time and kept always sending one.

Because the Federation wasn't important enough to them. It was a power located very far from the heart of Borg territory, and the Collective was no doubt devoting most of its resources to assimilating and battling other civilizations much closer to home -- probably dozens, even hundreds of other civilizations, given the sheer size of Borg territory. We humans like to think the whole universe revolves around us, but as far as the Borg were concerned, the Federation was just a sidebar -- first a curiosity, then an annoyance.

So your saying the universe does not revolve around us?....erm...well....er....WITCH!!!!!!!!!

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

It also brings us back to the question why did they not send 15-20 cubes in one burst some time and kept always sending one.

Because the Federation wasn't important enough to them. It was a power located very far from the heart of Borg territory, and the Collective was no doubt devoting most of its resources to assimilating and battling other civilizations much closer to home -- probably dozens, even hundreds of other civilizations, given the sheer size of Borg territory. We humans like to think the whole universe revolves around us, but as far as the Borg were concerned, the Federation was just a sidebar -- first a curiosity, then an annoyance.

So your saying the universe does not revolve around us?....erm...well....er....WITCH!!!!!!!!!

Burn him! Burn him! He turned me into a newt!

Ahem, anyways, there having been multiple assaults, I find it odd that the Borg didn't attack once during the Dominion War (obviously the DS9 producers didn't want to have anything to do with them, but I digress). Did they just give up after the attempt in FC? I mean in Voy, we saw like 1 invasion plan, which was the virus thingy or whatever. I doubt they've attacked since, since Starfleet seems to be sitting quite happily in late Voy/Nem.

 

[Christopher]

Ahem, anyways, there having been multiple assaults, I find it odd that the Borg didn't attack once during the Dominion War (obviously the DS9 producers didn't want to have anything to do with them, but I digress). Did they just give up after the attempt in FC?

Well, the Dominion War was 2374-76, and the Borg suffered a devastating invasion by Species 8472 in late 2373/early '74. So during the Dominion War, they would've been busy concentrating on rebuilding their strength and wouldn't really have been in a position to go after the Federation.

I doubt they've attacked since, since Starfleet seems to be sitting quite happily in late Voy/Nem.

Ironic that you should mention that now...

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Destiny-Gods-Night/dp/1416551719/

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

I doubt they've attacked since, since Starfleet seems to be sitting quite happily in late Voy/Nem.

Ironic that you should mention that now...

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Destiny-Gods-Night/dp/1416551719/

Oh snap.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

I like the discarded idea that the one cube was it...all the borg. As the ultimate users, they have no need to increase their numbers (more numbers = more users)

Instead we got some cyber-vampire stuff.

 

[Timo]

But TNG and TOS already had several such one-package wonders, against odds and reason: the Crystalline Entity (which everybody in "Silicon Avatar" still treated as a unique thing, rather than an individual from a species), the Doomsday Machine (why build one when you can have two at twice the price?), the Space Amoeba (those were assessed to be capable of multiplying, so where are all the others?), the Beta XII cloud... It's definitely time this sort of thing came back to bite our careless heroes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ryan8bit]

Why? Lingering on the battlefield would be the absolute last thing a surviving starship would attempt. Chasing after the Cube would be one possibility, either with the intent of keeping on firing, or with the intent of joining defenses at Earth; realizing that resistance was futile, and heading in the exact opposite direction at maximum warp with survivors onboard, would be a more realistic one.

If the surviving ships took the first option, they probably were no longer surviving when the E-D reached Sol. If they took the second one, they would have refused to answer the hails of the E-D, suspecting a Borg ruse or at the very least fearing a comm trace that would compromise their escape.

Obviously they weren't at Wolf 359 anymore, as there were no intact ships, and obviously they didn't pursue. The best course of action would have been to retreat to somewhere else, but not in a tuck-tail fashion. If they were retreating, it's probable that they would contact any other Starfleet vessels and try to mobilize a fleet to engage them at Earth. Contacting Enterprise, the flagship, would've been a great bet. The Borg didn't care about their communications, and they probably didn't even consider them a threat, so they wouldn't go out of their way to try and stop them. For them to just go and hide would be dumb, and Captain Amasov would've been completely stripped of rank.

It's just not the best explanation. If one really wanted to explain the difference, aside from rounding, there are many other more plausible answers. I found it strange that the Encyclopedia writers would make such an assumption based on such limited info.

In First Contact, Picard does suggest that there have been multiple Borg assaults on the Federation -- he had that speech about how "every time" they pushed forward and Starfleet pushed them back. There may well have been other Borg incidents that we weren't shown in TNG. It's a big galaxy, and not every important thing that happens in it would happen to starships named Enterprise. (Or Defiant or Voyager.)

I don't doubt that there were other encounters by ships other than the Enterprise after BoBW. But the way the episode plays out is that this is the only contact with the Borg since System J-25 (again, aside from the Lalo). This is evidenced by what Hanson says:

"We expected much more lead time.
Your encounter with the Borg was
over seven thousand light years
away..."

There obviously hadn't been any contact in that period.

About Picard's lines in First Contact, they are this:

"They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here."

Not much can be assumed from this really since it is mostly rhetoric. If "we" means the Federation and not just living species in general, then how does the Federation fall back when worlds unrelated to it are assimilated? I don't see how these lines relate to there being any other major encounters without a wild amount of speculation.

 

[Finn]

He might have memories of different races assimilated by the Borg, like Seven did in that episode, so it might have an effect on his mind during the events of the movie.

 

[AlanC9]

But TNG and TOS already had several such one-package wonders, against odds and reason: the Crystalline Entity (which everybody in "Silicon Avatar" still treated as a unique thing, rather than an individual from a species), the Doomsday Machine (why build one when you can have two at twice the price?), the Space Amoeba (those were assessed to be capable of multiplying, so where are all the others?), the Beta XII cloud... It's definitely time this sort of thing came back to bite our careless heroes.

That's why all those things came from outside the galaxy. Except the Crystalline Entity. Maybe that popped in from some other space-time continuum? It was alien enough.

 

[Christopher]

Starfleet's only charted a few percent of the galaxy. There could be other examples of such creatures elsewhere within the Milky Way. Indeed, in my novel Orion's Hounds, I postulated a whole species of Crystalline Entities, and alluded to a second vampire cloud encountered by the Klingons sometime in the early 24th century. And we've seen additional Doomsday Machines in Peter David's TNG novel Vendetta and Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch's VGR comic-book miniseries Planet Killer. The Beta XII-A evil pinwheel thingy has appeared in The Q Continuum and a story in Tales of the Dominion War, both by Greg Cox, but was the same specific entity from "Day of the Dove" in both cases. I don't think the space amoeba has ever been established as having any, err, cellmates. (You may now groan.)

There was a late Gold Key comic-book story that was a sequel to "Metamorphosis" (although it got most of the details wrong) and postulated a whole community of the Companion's species living in a parallel dimension.

 

[Timo]

It might be possible for unique individuals to evolve in the depths of space, I guess. Even if a Space Amoeba originated from a population of some sort, it might spend sufficiently many aeons alone to evolve into a species of its own before again encountering a "cellmate" (thanks, Christopher!). Generally, though, I'd indeed like to see the family background of the monster-of-the-week explored.

As for Spock's repeated claims that the monster-of-the-week was extragalactic, I'd tend to dismiss those. Just because one can backtrack the movements of the menace across half a dozen systems and draw some sort of a line that points towards intergalactic space proves nothing at all. All straight lines will lead to intergalactic space when one travels long enough. And it is frankly rather inconceivable that, say, the Flying Pancakes or the Doomsday Machine would have been moving in a straight line anyway. They had to travel from star system to star system, and the systems would in general not lie in a straight line.

The Kelvans, well, they said and by their actions indicated that they really were from Andromeda. Apart from them, though, there's no direct evidence that any other threat would have come from outside the Milky Way - except in the sense of being from outside our universe entirely.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

The Kelvans, well, they said and by their actions indicated that they really were from Andromeda. Apart from them, though, there's no direct evidence that any other threat would have come from outside the Milky Way - except in the sense of being from outside our universe entirely.

Sylvia & Korob also claimed the Andromeda Galaxy as their home, and Mudd's androids claimed their makers came from there as well.

What I'm wondering, though, is: where are all the invaders from the Magellanic Clouds and Triangulum? Or any of the couple of dozen dwarf elliptical or irregular galaxies that are closer to us than Andromeda is?

 

[Nebusj]

What I'm wondering, though, is: where are all the invaders from the Magellanic Clouds and Triangulum? Or any of the couple of dozen dwarf elliptical or irregular galaxies that are closer to us than Andromeda is?

On the other hand, we are told explicitly that Andromeda is suffering from a something that's going to leave it uninhabitable, giving Andromedan species good reason to go looking for alternate homes.

That Andromeda and the Milky Way appear to be converging is an unfortunate side point, but perhaps they're figuring they can move on from here.

 

[Finn]

Not really. It won't occur for several billion years. They can wait here for a long time.

 

[Christopher]

On the other hand, we are told explicitly that Andromeda is suffering from a something that's going to leave it uninhabitable, giving Andromedan species good reason to go looking for alternate homes.

But why go 3 million light-years out of their way? Why not relocate to Triangulum, which is much closer to them?

The problem is that Andromeda is popularly known as the "closest galaxy," when it's really just the closest spiral galaxy. And just because it's closest to us doesn't mean the reverse holds.

That Andromeda and the Milky Way appear to be converging is an unfortunate side point, but perhaps they're figuring they can move on from here.

Not an issue. For one thing, as Finn said, it's billions of years away. For another, there's little danger in a "collision" of galaxies, since they're mostly empty space. Stars would just pass by one another and have their courses changed. Over the long term, the collision of dust clouds would cause bursts of star formation which would generate more radiation, supernovae, etc., and many stars might be flung dangerously close to the galactic centers, but these are processes taking millions of years.

 

[Timo]

...But if Andromeda really is undergoing some dangerous cataclysm unimaginable to 21st century science, the collision might have grave consequences nevertheless.

One wonders if there's something special about the Milky Way in the degree of protection it would allow. Obviously, Andromeda doesn't have a Galactic Barrier, or the Kelvans would have known about such things. Perhaps the non-spiral galaxies around us are poorer harbors for life if they, too, lack this nifty feature?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Finn]

^But the danger might go away by then...

 

[Christopher]

Indeed. It makes no sense to assume that a cataclysm affecting Andromeda in the present would still be ongoing three billion years in the future. That's like assuming that if I have a cold today, I'll still have it when I'm 60.

 

[Timo]

Good point. What might the nature of the calamity be, to allow for resettlement after a few thousand or million years? If it's just a long duration gamma sweep of some sort, classic treknology should protect any civilization capable of intergalactic travel. If it's something that blows up stars or melts down planets, why wasn't it described on those terms?

Timo Saloniemi