Regeneration - non ENT viewer questions

[JoeZhang]

OK - I'm not an enterprise viewer - I watched the first two seasons and thought it's sucked donkey's balls.


Any-ho - after discussing the new ENT books over in the literature forum, I thought I'd take a look at some of the later season episodes.

One of the ones I watched was regeneration - a few questions

1) Why are Star Fleet in the dark about the borg in the future ? Yes it's two centuries later but we often saw Starfleet officers get information about the 20th century, so what would the problem be?

They take extensive readings off the "corpses" which is surely going to include photos and the like add to the database. After the first borg incursion, Star Fleet had teams of people researching the borg - and nobody came across any of this information?

2) Why is it that (while they were on the borg ship) Archer's and em.. the english guy's phasers work for about twenty shots while the security guards on enterprise (at the same time) don't even work once?

3) Did the borg take the time to remove all of their wreckage from the crash site? otherwise, wouldn't Star Fleet have over two centuries to reverse engineer 24th century technology?

4) Why do the borg beam back to the ship when they invade the enterprise - why not take over that ship?

 

[dave_R_treker]

1) Why are Star Fleet in the dark about the borg in the future ? Yes it's two centuries later but we often saw Starfleet officers get information about the 20th century, so what would the problem be?

They take extensive readings off the "corpses" which is surely going to include photos and the like add to the database. After the first borg incursion, Star Fleet had teams of people researching the borg - and nobody came across any of this information?

I think starfleet did know a little bit about the Borg. Though I think maybe only a few knew about them. Probably top brass at starfleet security. We have seen on Voyager (I think the epiosde Raven) That the Hansons knew about the Borg, they didn't know really much. This took place before the TNG episode QWho.

 

[Nebusj]

1) Why are Star Fleet in the dark about the borg in the future ? Yes it's two centuries later but we often saw Starfleet officers get information about the 20th century, so what would the problem be?

They take extensive readings off the "corpses" which is surely going to include photos and the like add to the database. After the first borg incursion, Star Fleet had teams of people researching the borg - and nobody came across any of this information?

What makes you think Star Fleet didn't have this information in its databases? (I know there will be people waving Section 31 as a magic wand to cover up everything that might conceivably be interpreted as a continuity error, but since Section 31 can't be concerned with making Trek Canon Rational that's a silly idea.)

Thing is, first, the 22nd Century gets yet another encounter with an inexplicable hostile species --- for which they don't even get a name, incidentally --- and then after this hears nothing for two centuries and thousands of contacts with thousands of other species. You'd need a bit of a stroke of luck to find the connection in the first place, or to prove there was one, and, really, what 24th Century Trek established that There Was No Connection?

For a historical parallel consider the debate about whether syphilis is a disease which came from the New World, or whether it could be found in Europe before the time of Columbus. The question wasn't even asked for surprisingly long, and it's a controversial one even now. And that's one planet, with a pretty well-defined disease, and the ability to go digging around archeological sites for microbiological research. Why should ``early Borg contacts'' be any easier to answer?

3) Did the borg take the time to remove all of their wreckage from the crash site? otherwise, wouldn't Star Fleet have over two centuries to reverse engineer 24th century technology?

Assuming there's enough hardware to recover --- wouldn't the useful pieces be taken by the Borg? --- very likely it would take about two centuries to reverse engineer. You need the tools to study and the intellectual framework behind and invention before you can construct, or reconstruct, it. Piercing together a technology where the most familiar components --- stuff stolen from 1701-E --- is from two centuries, thousands of species' intellectual heritages, and tens of thousands of genius's life's masterpieces ahead of you is daunting at minimum.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

Oh! Oh! I'll try to play the rationalization game.

1) Starfleet probably knew that a small group of strange cyborgs were found on their planet, hocked a shuttle and flew away. Information about cyborg corpses can only be so helpful. Then when the Battle of Wolf 359 came about they were able to collect all sorts of data on the Borg with modern scanner technologies and even have Picard's knowledge of what it's like to be assimilated. By that point the data they got from the strange Cyborgs would be a moot point, and the fact they showed up would be one of those oddities. Unless the events of First Contact were well documented. Then it would make sense by that time.

2) That was one of two of my main critiques of the episodes. They were just mowing them down with their old timey phasers. I also thought it was cheap that Dr. Phlox was able to prevent himself from being assimilated.

3) I don't think people that in Picard's time could reverse-engineer Borg technology. People in Archer's time were gunning for things like Warp 7 and Warp 8 and tractor beams and stuff -- slipstream drives and nanites were way beyond them.

4)By beaming back to 'the ship', it was souped up shuttle craft, right? It's been awhile since I've seen this episode. They probably figured that it would be more efficient just to keep the shuttle craft and that they would arouse less suspicion on their journey back home than they would with the hijacked flagship of Earth.

 

[Timo]

I'd argue the wreckage down on the ice was mostly just that: wreckage, without any meaningful technology remaining in it.

Also, I'd argue the Borg here were significantly weaker than the Borg our other heroes normally run into. The speed of adaptation is probably a function of the size of the local group, and this tiny, recently thawed group couldn't achieve much. The assimilation of an entire starship might have been too much effort for them.

The phaser question is an intriguing one here. Remember that our ENT heroes started out with small pistols that fired plasma bolts, and large rifles (modified Jem'Hadar props) that also fired plasma bolts. On the second half of the pilot, they broke out the phaser pistols for the first time, and started firing red beams from them, but the rifles stayed plasma guns, spitting out white fireballs.

Now, at some point the rifles were upgraded with a dedicated phaser barrel, a separate but attached weapon similar to the grenade launchers that are sometimes bolted onto assault rifles today. That was pretty clever of the props people... In "Regeneration", we could argue that the bolted-on phaser functionality of the rifles was far less flexible than the purpose-made functionality of the pistols, and thus easier to adapt against.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hermiod]

1) Why are Star Fleet in the dark about the borg in the future ? Yes it's two centuries later but we often saw Starfleet officers get information about the 20th century, so what would the problem be?

It's possible that Starfleet knew about the Borg and almost certain that the Borg knew about Starfleet (after assimilating the Hansens) before Q interfered.

However, Star Trek: First Contact changed everything. That wreckage was not present in the version of history seen right up until the Enterprise-E blasted the Sphere to pieces. There was no Borg wreckage on Earth when Q flung the Enterprise to system J-25 or during the Borg incursion a year and a half later.

We can't see the Borg's history of conflict with Starfleet as one continuous line here.

They take extensive readings off the "corpses" which is surely going to include photos and the like add to the database. After the first borg incursion, Star Fleet had teams of people researching the borg - and nobody came across any of this information?

That information didn't exist when Admiral Hanson and Commander Shelby started studying the records from the Enterprise-D's encounter with the Borg as, at that point, the Borg had never launched their second attack on Earth and had never sent that Sphere back to the past.

History, at that time, would record no mention of any wreckage, unusual cyborg corpses or anything else Borg related on Earth.

Why is it that (while they were on the borg ship) Archer's and em.. the english guy's phasers work for about twenty shots while the security guards on enterprise (at the same time) don't even work once?

Reed's weapon may have been of a completely different design to his security team's.

3) Did the borg take the time to remove all of their wreckage from the crash site? otherwise, wouldn't Star Fleet have over two centuries to reverse engineer 24th century technology?

As Timo says, most of it was probably just junk.

4) Why do the borg beam back to the ship when they invade the enterprise - why not take over that ship?

Insufficient numbers. The Borg assimilate a complete area before they expand further.

In First Contact, for instance, they assimilate the ship deck by deck, only progressing further when they have complete control over the previous deck.

 

[Timo]

However, Star Trek: First Contact changed everything. That wreckage was not present in the version of history seen right up until the Enterprise-E blasted the Sphere to pieces. There was no Borg wreckage on Earth when Q flung the Enterprise to system J-25 or during the Borg incursion a year and a half later.

Oh, that's far from said. It's also possible that we are witnessing a more "cyclic" time intervention, where there always is Borg wreckage back on Earth in the 21st century, and then in the 24th the Borg go back in time and create that wreckage all anew.

Indeed, if we are really witnessing just one cycle out of an iterative series of cycles, it makes sense that the Borg fail and seemingly leave it at that. Since they can time travel, they must have tried again, and again, and again, until they succeeded - but we only saw a cycle where they failed by the narrowest of marigins, because that's more interesting than all those cycles where they completely failed, let alone the one where they succeeded.

...Assuming that we didn't already see them succeed. After all, it's quite a favorable outcome for the Borg that a Federation is born and, by the 24th century, provides them with all sorts of cool stuff to assimilate. Perhaps Cochrane would never have flown had the Borg not helped him out this way, by calling in Picard and LaForge to assist?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JoeZhang]

The junk always has to be there - because if as some are claiming that it wasn't there originally, then why do we have the character of Archer close the loop at the end by saying that they got the signal off and that they'd be back in the 24th century?

 

[Timo]

...Of course, it might be that the loop doesn't close that way. Perhaps nobody ever receives the message of the "Regeneration" Borg - perhaps the interest displayed by the Borg towards the UFP in the mid-24th century is for wholly different reasons.

But certainly the Borg metal could sit there among with the other untold tons of alien hardware that has rained down on Earth before humans realized what is was and where it came from. By the 22nd century, we are probably just scratching the surface of the evidence on pre-2063 contacts with alien life. I mean, there's so much of such life there in the Trek universe that it would be absurd to think that the Trek version of Däniken could have been wrong...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hermiod]

Oh, that's far from said. It's also possible that we are witnessing a more "cyclic" time intervention, where there always is Borg wreckage back on Earth in the 21st century, and then in the 24th the Borg go back in time and create that wreckage all anew.

Indeed, if we are really witnessing just one cycle out of an iterative series of cycles, it makes sense that the Borg fail and seemingly leave it at that. Since they can time travel, they must have tried again, and again, and again, until they succeeded - but we only saw a cycle where they failed by the narrowest of marigins, because that's more interesting than all those cycles where they completely failed, let alone the one where they succeeded.

...Assuming that we didn't already see them succeed. After all, it's quite a favorable outcome for the Borg that a Federation is born and, by the 24th century, provides them with all sorts of cool stuff to assimilate. Perhaps Cochrane would never have flown had the Borg not helped him out this way, by calling in Picard and LaForge to assist?

You can only continue to keep trying to prevent Earth's first warp flight as long as you survive. Since Picard kills all of the Borg on the Enterprise-E they cannot make even a second attempt.

Now, the Borg message from the end of the episode might have been a detailed account of what went wrong as far as they knew so that next time the Borg might know to reinforce the vulnerable areas of the Cube that Picard was able to exploit, we don't know.

The junk always has to be there - because if as some are claiming that it wasn't there originally, then why do we have the character of Archer close the loop at the end by saying that they got the signal off and that they'd be back in the 24th century?

I saw that as a callback to the end of "Q-Who ?" where Picard and Guinan come to a similar realisation that the Borg are coming, and also a callback to the end of "Conspiracy". Originally, the Borg were to be insectoid creatures and the Conspiracy Parasites were only the first wave. Only budgetary reasons caused them to become cybernetic humanoids instead.

It wasn't until season three of Enterprise that technologythe cost of using that technology and the series' budget had improved to the point where convincing large insectoid aliens was possible.

 

[Timo]

Since Picard kills all of the Borg on the Enterprise-E they cannot make even a second attempt.

To the contrary: when the Collective in the 24th century launches the time travel assault team and realizes that nothing has changed the way it was planned to change, it will simply launch a second team, with slightly different instructions, or with more firepower. And if that, too, fails to change anything, a third is launched. There is no need to wait for a team's return... The team is probably presumed lost no matter what, and its loss might in fact be part of the plan.

Or, in the alternate interpretation where the Borg wish for no change but feel that they must interfere in order to preserve the status quo, they will keep sending teams to the past until things stabilize in the 24th century end.

That's the way it logically should go. Failure necessarily prompts a response. Only when all is well do the Borg lose the motivation to send time assault teams.

Assuming, of course, that the Borg use a time travel method that doesn't just create a new branch for the history of the universe, but actually modifies the branch that sends the meddlers into its past. But most Trek time travel methods seem to work that way.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SFRabid]

For me the problem is not the series Enterprise, it is time traveling Borg from First Contact and as said above, why only one time? You would think they would use this tech everywhere, and especially to defeat Janeway in Voyager.

Time travel is the bane of the Star Trek franchise.

 

[Timo]

We can always argue that the Borg and other players are using time travel all the time, and that the universe is in constant flux. It just so happens that we follow a single timeline through that complex storm, the one with the greatest dramatic potential... And refuse to explore all the dull side branches where the villains triumph or disappear.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dane_Whitman]

This whole discussion about wether First Contact changed the timeline is useless, because the VOY episode Relativity confirmed that the Borg were meant to travel back in time.

From Memory Alpha:

In temporal mechanics, the Pogo paradox is similar to a predestination paradox, but where interference designed to prevent an event actually triggers the same event. (VOY: "Relativity")

In 2373, a Pogo paradox resulted as a Borg sphere attempted to prevent the launch of humanity's first warp ship, the Phoenix by traveling back in time to the year 2063. The interference was halted by the actions of the USS Enterprise-E, and history was restored. (Star Trek: First Contact; VOY: "Relativity")

And this dialogue from Relativity:

DUCANE: Let's see how much you've assimilated. The Dali paradox.
SEVEN: Also known as the Melting Clock Effect. It refers to a temporal fissure which slows the passage of time to a gradual halt.
DUCANE: The Pogo Paradox.
SEVEN: A causality loop in which interference to prevent an event actually triggers the same event.
DUCANE: Excellent. Can you give me an example?
SEVEN: The Borg once travelled back in time to stop Zefram Cochrane from breaking the warp barrier. They succeeded, but that in turn led the Starship Enterprise to intervene. They assisted Cochrane with the flight the Borg was trying to prevent. Causal loop complete.
DUCANE: So, in a way, the Federation owes its existence to the Borg.
SEVEN: You're welcome.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

On the subject of why the Borg didn't try a second attempt at changing the time line I've always figured that whatever they used to travel through time in FC was a one-shot deal. The Borg didn't seem to be time travelers during the rest of Voyager that followed. So I imagine they must have located/stolen a working time machine device that they couldn't replicate and rather than wait until they could reverse-engineer it they decided it would be more efficient to just use it and wipe out humans so that they could complete the reverse engineering without human interference. But things went bad for them.

Does that theory contradict anything?

 

[The Borg Queen]

Why travel to Earth first and then go back in time?

All they had to do was go back in time to some period before Q Who? was set, and then travel to Earth for all it's assimilationy goodness.

The writers made the Borg so bloody retarded it disgusts me.

 

[Unicron]

Thing is, first, the 22nd Century gets yet another encounter with an inexplicable hostile species --- for which they don't even get a name, incidentally --- and then after this hears nothing for two centuries and thousands of contacts with thousands of other species. You'd need a bit of a stroke of luck to find the connection in the first place, or to prove there was one, and, really, what 24th Century Trek established that There Was No Connection?

If we're thinking of the same race with large ears, they didn't simply drop off the map until TNG. There was just little direct information available to the Federation and rare, if any, actual contacts. But Picard mentions them by name in "Encounter at Farpoint."

 

[Dane_Whitman]

Thing is, first, the 22nd Century gets yet another encounter with an inexplicable hostile species --- for which they don't even get a name, incidentally --- and then after this hears nothing for two centuries and thousands of contacts with thousands of other species. You'd need a bit of a stroke of luck to find the connection in the first place, or to prove there was one, and, really, what 24th Century Trek established that There Was No Connection?

If we're thinking of the same race with large ears, they didn't simply drop off the map until TNG. There was just little direct information available to the Federation and rare, if any, actual contacts. But Picard mentions them by name in "Encounter at Farpoint."

Yeah, and Picard had encountered them ten years before season 1 and they refused to identify themselves.

 

[Hermiod]

Why travel to Earth first and then go back in time?

All they had to do was go back in time to some period before Q Who? was set, and then travel to Earth for all it's assimilationy goodness.

The writers made the Borg so bloody retarded it disgusts me.

Time travel was plan B. The mistake they made was underestimating Picard's understanding of their ships, a mistake Data made too.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, the end result of the time incursion was to the Borg's liking no matter what: there now existed a Federation full of cool assimilable gadgets, one that still didn't pose any real threat to the Collective. Why meddle further?

Timo Saloniemi