Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!
^ I dunno. What makes it important enough to send a single cube then? What makes it important enough that they try time and time again? What makes it important enough to warrant an attempt to travel back through time to alter this history of Earth in order to defeat it? What makes it important enough to actually assimilate a human being to act as an individual voice of the Borg in order to assist in humanity's assimilation? From their actions, I'd say the Borg clearly see the Federation as being important.
The first Borg contact seems to have been along the Neutral Zone. At that time they assimilated Federation colonies and did not drive right for Earth or any other Federation planet, suggesting they weren't super interested in what they found. Now Q whisked the Enterprise away from the Borg in "Q Who?" and they had no idea it was Q who did that, so clearly watching the Enterprise display capabilities beyond their own would have piqued their interest.
The time travel thing had a predestination paradox aspect, so this may help us understand it as a plan when it surely could have been done better if the only real goal was to assimilate Earth (and what would make Earth so much more important than the other Federation members they'd be passing on the way?). As for the other stuff you said, it pains me to type this, but the canonical explanation is, more or less, that the Borg Queen wanted Picard to be her boyfriend.
The fact that the Borg do not come in force suggests that, as with Seven's storyline, the whims of the Queen are what's dictating all this. Again, it is a shame, as it has defanged the Borg somewhat from their rather scary initial appearance in "Q Who?" But it was inevitable that they lose if we wished to see them again.
^ I dunno. What makes it important enough to send a single cube then? What makes it important enough that they try time and time again? What makes it important enough to warrant an attempt to travel back through time to alter this history of Earth in order to defeat it? What makes it important enough to actually assimilate a human being to act as an individual voice of the Borg in order to assist in humanity's assimilation? From their actions, I'd say the Borg clearly see the Federation as being important.
The first Borg contact seems to have been along the Neutral Zone. At that time they assimilated Federation colonies and did not drive right for Earth or any other Federation planet, suggesting they weren't super interested in what they found. Now Q whisked the Enterprise away from the Borg in "Q Who?" and they had no idea it was Q who did that, so clearly watching the Enterprise display capabilities beyond their own would have piqued their interest.
The time travel thing had a predestination paradox aspect, so this may help us understand it as a plan when it surely could have been done better if the only real goal was to assimilate Earth (and what would make Earth so much more important than the other Federation members they'd be passing on the way?). As for the other stuff you said, it pains me to type this, but the canonical explanation is, more or less, that the Borg Queen wanted Picard to be her boyfriend.
The fact that the Borg do not come in force suggests that, as with Seven's storyline, the whims of the Queen are what's dictating all this. Again, it is a shame, as it has defanged the Borg somewhat from their rather scary initial appearance in "Q Who?" But it was inevitable that they lose if we wished to see them again.
1. The implication from the novels is that the Borg were only sending one cube at a time as a way of testing the Federation, determining its ingenuity and resourcefulness -- and possibly to prompt the Federation to develop newer and better technologies for the Borg to assimilate.
2. As lame as the emotional aspects of the Queen's character have seemed in the canon, I promise anyone who reads this that they all make more sense -- and are far more poignant -- if you read Star Trek: Destiny.
I would also like to add that the Borg are in fact in a superior position regardless of how you put it.
Many of the Queen's escapades can easily be explained as testing humanity in one way or another.
When she mentioned that they have a desire to assimilate humanity, it's entirely possible she was not completely sincere.
It was more like a game to her and the Hive to begin with.
Voyager was able to inflict as much damage as they did for two reasons:
They had access to future technology that provided a fighting chance, and second ... they were in an area where crucial Borg structures were located.
The Federation and SF in general cannot reach Borg structures such as the hub or Unimatricies with regular Warp drive and inflict damage.
The Dominion is the same in this regard.
Voyager was only partially successful against the Borg in the TV series and in no way did they win going up against an actual cube before Endgame.
They were able to destroy a probe (interceptor) in 'Dark Frontier' by beaming a torpedo onboard and only because it detonated near the power matrix and took the rest of the ship with it.
The Queen ALLOWED Voyager to steal the TW coil as she was interested in 7of9 to begin with.
Again, it's entirely possible the Queen let the Delta Fyer reach Voyager and have the crew think they defeated the Queen by destroying her Diamond through destabilizing the conduit.
In Child's play, they repeated the procedure with transporting a torpedo aboard, yet were unsuccessful at destroying the Sphere (only causing severe damage) and immediately ran away.
In Unimatrix 0, the tactical cube was ridiculously overpowered compared to Voyager ... but the ship didn't last long in that battle as they only had to transport their away team on board.
Let's also keep in mind that 7 was on Voyager who likely further assisted in preventing Voyager's crucial systems from taking severe damage (not to mention that One ... a highly advanced drone from 29th century enhanced Voyager's systems which likely aided the ship in combat).
Voyager is essentially a downsized Galaxy class, yet much better prepared for handling the Borg from the get go, and with all the enhancements they got over the course of the show, it's no surprise they would be able to hold out in an all out combat for a specific amount of time (but not really emerge victorious against a cube).
I'll definitely have to read Destiny if I can get my hands on it.
How about the Borg attacking in the Gamma Quadrant via the Delta Quadrant, and the Dominion and Federation have to team up to Have the Gamma Quadrant because the dominion are getting their changeling asses handed to them?
Way back in the Spring & Fall of 1996 before DS9 became The Dominion Show I thought they should've had several Jem'Hadar/Dominion refugee ships scurrying through the Wormhole to DS9.
These refugee ship's Vorta would then be begging Sisko's help as The DOMINION had just been mowed over by a surprise immense gargantuan Borg invasion. The Vorta would sadly tell Sisko that the Founders had been assimilated.
I thought of this as a way, see, of putting the Dominion on ice, permanent-like, before IT body-snatched the show, which it did later on.
Resolving this problem? Will do that now as I never did before.
Simple:
2-3 episode arc ala BOBW ending in Sisko's Team, NOT the UFP proper, saving the Great Link & their silly little changelingdom.
Dominion is back, & in an informal, uneasy peace with just the UFP & maybe the Klingons too.
Then the Dominion takes at least a 10-12 episode vacation. As for the Borg? Arc solution expels them out of the GQ for a long time to come, leaving them to show up on V'GER.
I would also like to add that the Borg are in fact in a superior position regardless of how you put it.
Many of the Queen's escapades can easily be explained as testing humanity in one way or another.
When she mentioned that they have a desire to assimilate humanity, it's entirely possible she was not completely sincere.
It was more like a game to her and the Hive to begin with.
Voyager was able to inflict as much damage as they did for two reasons:
They had access to future technology that provided a fighting chance, and second ... they were in an area where crucial Borg structures were located.
The Federation and SF in general cannot reach Borg structures such as the hub or Unimatricies with regular Warp drive and inflict damage.
The Dominion is the same in this regard.
Voyager was only partially successful against the Borg in the TV series and in no way did they win going up against an actual cube before Endgame.
They were able to destroy a probe (interceptor) in 'Dark Frontier' by beaming a torpedo onboard and only because it detonated near the power matrix and took the rest of the ship with it.
The Queen ALLOWED Voyager to steal the TW coil as she was interested in 7of9 to begin with.
Again, it's entirely possible the Queen let the Delta Fyer reach Voyager and have the crew think they defeated the Queen by destroying her Diamond through destabilizing the conduit.
In Child's play, they repeated the procedure with transporting a torpedo aboard, yet were unsuccessful at destroying the Sphere (only causing severe damage) and immediately ran away.
In Unimatrix 0, the tactical cube was ridiculously overpowered compared to Voyager ... but the ship didn't last long in that battle as they only had to transport their away team on board.
Let's also keep in mind that 7 was on Voyager who likely further assisted in preventing Voyager's crucial systems from taking severe damage (not to mention that One ... a highly advanced drone from 29th century enhanced Voyager's systems which likely aided the ship in combat).
Voyager is essentially a downsized Galaxy class, yet much better prepared for handling the Borg from the get go, and with all the enhancements they got over the course of the show, it's no surprise they would be able to hold out in an all out combat for a specific amount of time (but not really emerge victorious against a cube).
I'll definitely have to read Destiny if I can get my hands on it.
Can someone show me the Cannon source where We learn that the Intrepid Class is up there in terms of power with the Galaxy Class, because I keep hearing this, yet I was under the impression it was basically a scout/science ship, I mean Janeway was a science officer, I thought that was why she was there, and also before Chakotay the XO was only a Lieutenant Commander, surely for something Up there with Galaxy class they would have got a Full Commander, there are so many more reasons but I can't be bothered listing them.
If the Dominion had issues conquering the AQ with a combined force of both the Breen and Cardassians (and the Dominion likely sent about a half of their fleet initially), I have issues with the assumption they'd put up a fight.
The Breen were late into the fight, the Cardassians weren't in great shape after their conflict with the Klingons. Nor do we know how much of their fleet were sent before the wormhole closed. They also lost perhaps a vital tactical advantage by only having one Founder in the Alpha Quadrant.
The Dominion have caused more death and destruction in the Alpha Quadrant than the Borg (including assimilated people). One Jem'Hadar ship took out a Galaxy class ship by itself. The Dominion actually captured a Federation planet. They inflicted casualties on Earth with no time travel nonsense. Not only was it fighting the Federation, it also was fighting the Klingon Empire and later the Romulans for a sustained period of time.
Yet you have issues with an assumption that they might put up a fight?
Weyoun would have the Borg Queen licking out of his hand.
1. The implication from the novels is that the Borg were only sending one cube at a time as a way of testing the Federation, determining its ingenuity and resourcefulness -- and possibly to prompt the Federation to develop newer and better technologies for the Borg to assimilate.
2. As lame as the emotional aspects of the Queen's character have seemed in the canon, I promise anyone who reads this that they all make more sense -- and are far more poignant -- if you read Star Trek: Destiny.
I'm aware of these, but since this isn't Trek Lit forum and I think the books are laughably bad in general and their ideas on the Borg especially painful, I didn't figure it was super useful to address the rest of the thread. Still, people who would like to see the Borg be blown up left and right and have their origin demystified repeatedly (of course Earth is involved in all events throughout galactic history!) may enjoy these works. Why, the books give you multiple takes. Just so everyone knows, Shatner says that Kirk and Picard flew a Defiant-class ship named Enterprise to the Delta Quadrant and it fought off a Borg fleet while the two beamed down and then Kirk punched out Picard and pulled a lever that blew up the Borg homeworld to stop the Collective and their alliance with...the Romulans. No, really. That wasn't fanfic. It was published.
They couldn't come close. The Dominion is roughly on par with the Federation and the other major powers local to it. Like them, fleets of Dominion ships would be required to put a dent in a single Borg vessel—or probably would be completely unable to without the intel Our Heroes had. You mention the suicide attack incident as if this makes them superior, but I'm not sure such tactics would make much headway against the Borg at all, and the rest of Dominion technology is wildly outclassed.
Without the special luck Our Heroes always get, such as Q intervening or the Borg Queen falling in love with Picard or Hugh wanting to be best pals with Geordi and then somehow "infecting" other Borg with the individuality that...any assimilated victim would already have possessed (okay, I admit I never got this), other bad guys like the Dominion would get eaten up by next-level sorts of enemies like the Borg.
Can someone show me the Cannon source where We learn that the Intrepid Class is up there in terms of power with the Galaxy Class, because I keep hearing this, yet I was under the impression it was basically a scout/science ship, I mean Janeway was a science officer, I thought that was why she was there, and also before Chakotay the XO was only a Lieutenant Commander, surely for something Up there with Galaxy class they would have got a Full Commander, there are so many more reasons but I can't be bothered listing them.
Well, let's see ... Tom Paris stated in one of the episodes to Kim (who was playing his Clarinet and got complaints from the neighboring crewman because the walls were not sound-proofed enough) that 'the ship was built for combat'.
Also, Neelix stated in one of the later episodes as part of his self appointed ambassadorial duties to alien visitors that one of the main functions of Voyager was deep-space exploration.
In unofficial sources, people who worked on the show and designed Voyager stated that it comes equipped with identical defensive/offensive systems as the Galaxy class.
Unofficial sources not withstanding, we saw good enough references on-screen that the Intrepid is virtually identical in terms of power like the Galaxy class.
The only main difference between the two would obviously be size, how much people/resources can each ship store, and the fact that Intrepid featured new technologies at the time of it's launch such as bio-neural gel-packs for faster response times (not forgetting the fact it was launched nearly 7 years after the Galaxy class, and we also saw numerous on-screen references from all Trek series that smaller ships are capable of packing just as much power as large ships).
If the Dominion had issues conquering the AQ with a combined force of both the Breen and Cardassians (and the Dominion likely sent about a half of their fleet initially), I have issues with the assumption they'd put up a fight.
The Breen were late into the fight, the Cardassians weren't in great shape after their conflict with the Klingons. Nor do we know how much of their fleet were sent before the wormhole closed. They also lost perhaps a vital tactical advantage by only having one Founder in the Alpha Quadrant.
The Dominion have caused more death and destruction in the Alpha Quadrant than the Borg (including assimilated people). One Jem'Hadar ship took out a Galaxy class ship by itself. The Dominion actually captured a Federation planet. They inflicted casualties on Earth with no time travel nonsense. Not only was it fighting the Federation, it also was fighting the Klingon Empire and later the Romulans for a sustained period of time.
Yet you have issues with an assumption that they might put up a fight?
Weyoun would have the Borg Queen licking out of his hand.
Your over fascination with DS9 (as far as I get the impression) is clouding your rational judgment.
Let's not forget that the Dominion was sending plenty of ships and resources from the GQ (for some time) initially which basically helped Cardassians recover from being attacked by Klingons and whatnot BEFORE the war with the Feds started.
The Dominion was NOT fighting alone. They had Cardassian territory and resources at their disposal which provided a ripe foothold for combined cooperation between the two powers which quickly saved the Cardies and established them as a serious threat alongside the Dominion (that was in effect using the Cardies).
Even the Dominion admitted that the Federation was extremely large and problematic to take down in an all out war at least a year before the war started.
The Breen may have been late to the fight, but they also had LOTS of ships to contribute to the overall fight, and the Klingons, despite being vastly outnumbered held the line until the Feds were able to devise a method to counter the Breen energy draining weapon.
So the Dominion captured a Federation planet. Big deal. The Feds captured Chintoka which was initially in the hands of the Dominion, lost it, and then re-captured it.
Betazed was liberated, and the way it was initially taken was stupid to say the least.
DS9 dumb things down on it's own plenty of times to make certain aspects of the war quite unrealistic for Trek terms.
As a standalone power, Dominion would fare exactly the same as the Feds, and would have to send a fleet to stop one cube.
In an all out war with the Borg, the Collective can easily send 20 cubes and be done with it.
The Dominion lacks TW technology.
They wouldn't even be able to get behind enemy lines and inflict any damage.
And it's also questionable if the Founders shapeshifting would be enough to circumvent Borg sensors for too long or even do anything from inside the vessel which is essentially HUGE ... and can operate even with 80% of it's systems being non-operational.
Drama not withstanding, the Dominion would lose big time just as the Feds would being faced with 20 cubes (and the Borg can easily dedicate hundreds of thousands of ships to this cause ... something neither the Feds or the Dominion are able to do).
How about the Borg attacking in the Gamma Quadrant via the Delta Quadrant, and the Dominion and Federation have to team up to Have the Gamma Quadrant because the dominion are getting their changeling asses handed to them?
Way back in the Spring & Fall of 1996 before DS9 became The Dominion Show I thought they should've had several Jem'Hadar/Dominion refugee ships scurrying through the Wormhole to DS9.
These refugee ship's Vorta would then be begging Sisko's help as The DOMINION had just been mowed over by a surprise immense gargantuan Borg invasion. The Vorta would sadly tell Sisko that the Founders had been assimilated.
I thought of this as a way, see, of putting the Dominion on ice, permanent-like, before IT body-snatched the show, which it did later on.
Resolving this problem? Will do that now as I never did before.
Simple:
2-3 episode arc ala BOBW ending in Sisko's Team, NOT the UFP proper, saving the Great Link & their silly little changelingdom.
Dominion is back, & in an informal, uneasy peace with just the UFP & maybe the Klingons too.
Then the Dominion takes at least a 10-12 episode vacation. As for the Borg? Arc solution expels them out of the GQ for a long time to come, leaving them to show up on V'GER.
So the Dominion captured a Federation planet. Big deal. The Feds captured Chintoka which was initially in the hands of the Dominion, lost it, and then re-captured it.
Betazed was liberated, and the way it was initially taken was stupid to say the least.
DS9 dumb things down on it's own plenty of times to make certain aspects of the war quite unrealistic for Trek terms.
The Dominion also captured Benzar. It is a pretty big deal given that up to that point we never had a member of the Federation have their homeworld fall to an enemy.
Chin'toka was never said to be recaptured by the Federation nor was Betazed said to be liberated prior to the end of the war.
As a standalone power, Dominion would fare exactly the same as the Feds, and would have to send a fleet to stop one cube.
In an all out war with the Borg, the Collective can easily send 20 cubes and be done with it.
The Dominion lacks TW technology.
They wouldn't even be able to get behind enemy lines and inflict any damage.
And it's also questionable if the Founders shapeshifting would be enough to circumvent Borg sensors for too long or even do anything from inside the vessel which is essentially HUGE ... and can operate even with 80% of it's systems being non-operational.
I agree that transwarp is the Borg's biggest asset. The Dominion is different from the Federation in that it is more militaristic and it can create a vast army far quicker then the Federation. It also doesn't care about losses as the Jem'Hadar and Vorta are expendable. They would be more open to going down roads the Federation bauks at - destroying star systems with inhabited planets, biological warfare, genocide. I can see the Dominion utilising a scorched world policy. If the planet looks like it will face the wipe out the population to stop them from adding to the Borg numbers. Terribly futile since the Borg can gain new drones from any of the three other quadrants or from areas beyond the Dominion's reach but still can see them doing it.
Then you have the Dominion's military machine's biggest weakness - Ketracel white. If the Borg disrupt the supply by destroying manufacturing plants and supply convoys, then the Dominion would practically rip itself apart for the Borg. Probably would be a more efficient way for the Borg to fight any war with the Dominion, specifically target the distribution and supply of white and let the Dominion fall apart.
Drama not withstanding, the Dominion would lose big time just as the Feds would being faced with 20 cubes (and the Borg can easily dedicate hundreds of thousands of ships to this cause ... something neither the Feds or the Dominion are able to do).
I don't recall any evidence that the Borg have anything near a hundred thousand ships, let along hundreds of thousands. The largest number I can remember in 312, which is the number of ships they lost in a battle with Species 8472.
The Dominion would put up a fight, as would anyone when faced with an invasion (with the exception of the Mizarians), but to suggest the Weyoun would have the Borg Queen licking out of his hand is absurd...and I like Weyoun.
^ I dunno. What makes it important enough to send a single cube then? What makes it important enough that they try time and time again? What makes it important enough to warrant an attempt to travel back through time to alter this history of Earth in order to defeat it? What makes it important enough to actually assimilate a human being to act as an individual voice of the Borg in order to assist in humanity's assimilation? From their actions, I'd say the Borg clearly see the Federation as being important.
The first Borg contact seems to have been along the Neutral Zone. At that time they assimilated Federation colonies and did not drive right for Earth or any other Federation planet, suggesting they weren't super interested in what they found. Now Q whisked the Enterprise away from the Borg in "Q Who?" and they had no idea it was Q who did that, so clearly watching the Enterprise display capabilities beyond their own would have piqued their interest.
The time travel thing had a predestination paradox aspect, so this may help us understand it as a plan when it surely could have been done better if the only real goal was to assimilate Earth (and what would make Earth so much more important than the other Federation members they'd be passing on the way?). As for the other stuff you said, it pains me to type this, but the canonical explanation is, more or less, that the Borg Queen wanted Picard to be her boyfriend.
The fact that the Borg do not come in force suggests that, as with Seven's storyline, the whims of the Queen are what's dictating all this. Again, it is a shame, as it has defanged the Borg somewhat from their rather scary initial appearance in "Q Who?" But it was inevitable that they lose if we wished to see them again.
1. The implication from the novels is that the Borg were only sending one cube at a time as a way of testing the Federation, determining its ingenuity and resourcefulness -- and possibly to prompt the Federation to develop newer and better technologies for the Borg to assimilate.
2. As lame as the emotional aspects of the Queen's character have seemed in the canon, I promise anyone who reads this that they all make more sense -- and are far more poignant -- if you read Star Trek: Destiny.
IMO the goal of the Borg is never to defeat another race. Like the Wraith they cull the best of the tecnological and biological distinctiveness while allowing the society to survive to improve itself and thus the future of the Borg. Riker and the Enterprise survived in TBOBW because that cube hadf its fill of Starfleet vessels and was looking to cull earth itself.
The Dominion could never lose because it will survive and the Borg was not interested in political control of the founders. Some species would have some members assimilated but the Great Link was unlikely to be effected in any significant way.
Let's not forget that the Dominion was sending plenty of ships and resources from the GQ (for some time) initially which basically helped Cardassians recover from being attacked by Klingons and whatnot BEFORE the war with the Feds started.
Again we don't know how many ships. The Dominion seemed to be based in the Cardassian system and relied on the Founders to infiltrate the Klingons and the Federation. An advantage they lost with the closure of the wormhole.
The Dominion was NOT fighting alone. They had Cardassian territory and resources at their disposal which provided a ripe foothold for combined cooperation between the two powers which quickly saved the Cardies and established them as a serious threat alongside the Dominion (that was in effect using the Cardies).
Even the Dominion admitted that the Federation was extremely large and problematic to take down in an all out war at least a year before the war started.
Betazed was liberated, and the way it was initially taken was stupid to say the least.
DS9 dumb things down on it's own plenty of times to make certain aspects of the war quite unrealistic for Trek terms.
Drama not withstanding, the Dominion would lose big time just as the Feds would being faced with 20 cubes (and the Borg can easily dedicate hundreds of thousands of ships to this cause ... something neither the Feds or the Dominion are able to do).
The Dominion would put up a fight, as would anyone when faced with an invasion (with the exception of the Mizarians), but to suggest the Weyoun would have the Borg Queen licking out of his hand is absurd...and I like Weyoun.
1. The implication from the novels is that the Borg were only sending one cube at a time as a way of testing the Federation, determining its ingenuity and resourcefulness -- and possibly to prompt the Federation to develop newer and better technologies for the Borg to assimilate.
2. As lame as the emotional aspects of the Queen's character have seemed in the canon, I promise anyone who reads this that they all make more sense -- and are far more poignant -- if you read Star Trek: Destiny.
IMO the goal of the Borg is never to defeat another race. Like the Wraith they cull the best of the tecnological and biological distinctiveness while allowing the society to survive to improve itself and thus the future of the Borg.
I'm afraid that the canon has demonstrated that this concept is false. The Borg were seen assimilating entire species, such as the assimilation of the unnamed Species 10026 in "Dark Frontier" (wherein the Queen didn't want even one ship of theirs to escape), or the nearly complete assimilation of Aturis's people, Species 116, from which only ten to twenty thousand escaped, established in "Hope and Fear." There's the assimilation of all 22 billion members of Species 259 referenced in "The Gift," the assimilations of Species 262 and 263, established in "The Omega Directive," and the nearly complete assimilation of the unnamed Species 6339 established in "Infinite Regress."
The Borg Collective's goal is rather explicitly the enslavement of all "worthy" sentient life into the Collective -- and, logically, since they define "perfection" as gaining power, likely entails the extermination of races deemed unworthy of assimilation or of those considered a threat.
The Dominion could never lose because it will survive
Of course they are -- if we expand our understand of the term "political control" to encompass mind control and enslavement. The Borg are interested in enslaving everyone to their will.
Some species would have some members assimilated but the Great Link was unlikely to be effected in any significant way.
Are you kidding? The Founders are capable of shapeshifting to a degree where they can change their mass (as evidenced by the times we've seen Odo shift into something with much lower mass) and even replicate faster-than-light propulsion systems in their bodies (as seen in DS9's "Chimera"). Of course they would want drones capable of those kinds of things.
And if they couldn't assimilate the Founders, they'd likely try to exterminate them as a potential threat.
1. The implication from the novels is that the Borg were only sending one cube at a time as a way of testing the Federation, determining its ingenuity and resourcefulness -- and possibly to prompt the Federation to develop newer and better technologies for the Borg to assimilate.
2. As lame as the emotional aspects of the Queen's character have seemed in the canon, I promise anyone who reads this that they all make more sense -- and are far more poignant -- if you read Star Trek: Destiny.
I'm aware of these, but since this isn't Trek Lit forum and I think the books are laughably bad in general and their ideas on the Borg especially painful
Resistance was, by all accounts, laughably bad. Before Dishonor was controversial, though I tend to agree that it had some very absurd parts.
Destiny, on the other hand, was sheer brilliance, as is any novel by David Mack and as are the vast majority of Trek novels published since 2001. You've obviously not read, for instance, A Time to Heal or Articles of the Federation or Reap the Whirlwind or The Sorrows of Empire or the DS9 Relaunch or Greater Than the Sum or Ex Machina or Places of Exile or Taking Wing or Orion's Hounds or...
I didn't figure it was super useful to address the rest of the thread. Still, people who would like to see the Borg be blown up left and right and have their origin demystified repeatedly <SNIP FOR SPOILER> may enjoy these works.
The Borg were not being blown up right and left in Destiny. In point of fact, one of the more moving -- and distressing -- parts of the trilogy was their final push into Federation territory, exterminating one world after another after another in a matter of hours despite everyone's best efforts. And the Borg origin was a very disturbing, emotionally powerful origin that addressed one of the fundamental themes of the trilogy: How one responds to one's own mortality. It also explained every weird thing about the Borg, especially their worship of the Omega Particle.
I'll grant that learning that the first Borg were created through the forced bonding of three Human MACOs with a Caeliar was a conceit of the drama, but I felt that it lent a thematic unity to the trilogy that would have been lost if they had just been a generic alien species.
Why, the books give you multiple takes. Just so everyone knows, Shatner says that Kirk and Picard flew a Defiant-class ship named Enterprise to the Delta Quadrant and it fought off a Borg fleet while the two beamed down and then Kirk punched out Picard and pulled a lever that blew up the Borg homeworld to stop the Collective and their alliance with...the Romulans. No, really. That wasn't fanfic. It was published.
Yes, The Return by William Shatner and Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens was published.... 14 years ago. The publishing program today bears no resemblance to the program of 14 years ago. Hell, none of the editors who were around at Pocket then are still there.
They couldn't come close. The Dominion is roughly on par with the Federation and the other major powers local to it. Like them, fleets of Dominion ships would be required to put a dent in a single Borg vessel—or probably would be completely unable to without the intel Our Heroes had. You mention the suicide attack incident as if this makes them superior, but I'm not sure such tactics would make much headway against the Borg at all, and the rest of Dominion technology is wildly outclassed.
Exactly. The Borg, like the Voth, are one of the few species that Trek has ever depicted that are so much more powerful than the Federation that none of the Federation-comparable powers would ever actually stand a chance against them if they came in force.
Exactly. The Borg, like the Voth, are one of the few species that Trek has ever depicted that are so much more powerful than the Federation that none of the Federation-comparable powers would ever actually stand a chance against them if they came in force.
Exactly. The Borg, like the Voth, are one of the few species that Trek has ever depicted that are so much more powerful than the Federation that none of the Federation-comparable powers would ever actually stand a chance against them if they came in force.
The Borg have never come against the Federation in force -- and both times they came at the Federation with a single cube, the Federation only barely won. God help them all if the Borg had invaded the Federation with two cubes prior to Voyager's acquisition of transphasic torpedoes. And God help them all if the Borg come at them with enough ships to eventually adapt to transphasic torpedoes -- let along with an armada of over 7,000 ships, as they do in Destiny.
The Borg have never come against the Federation in force -- and both times they came at the Federation with a single cube, the Federation only barely won. God help them all if the Borg had invaded the Federation with two cubes prior to Voyager's acquisition of transphasic torpedoes.
Which they didn't leading to the Federation have multiple victories over the Borg. The fact that the Borg didn't send enough ships is their tactical mistake.
The Borg have never come against the Federation in force -- and both times they came at the Federation with a single cube, the Federation only barely won. God help them all if the Borg had invaded the Federation with two cubes prior to Voyager's acquisition of transphasic torpedoes.
Do two pyrrhic victories really deserve the title of "multiple victories?" In both instances, the Federation lost so many ships and personnel compared to the Borg that they might as well have lost.
The fact that the Borg didn't send enough ships is their tactical mistake.
Do two pyrrhic victories really deserve the title of "multiple victories?" In both instances, the Federation lost so many ships and personnel compared to the Borg that they might as well have lost.
or Hugh wanting to be best pals with Geordi and then somehow "infecting" other Borg with the individuality that...any assimilated victim would already have possessed (okay, I admit I never got this), other bad guys like the Dominion would get eaten up by next-level sorts of enemies like the Borg.
ORG vs DOMINION. Well, a pretty good demo, a scaled-down miniature really. 
