Why do people keep saying Voyager weakened the Borg?

[F. King Daniel]

There are some interesting non-humanoid Borg mentioned in the Shatner/Reeves-Stevens novel The Return. It's a shame the TV shows and even movies of the era couldn't afford stuff like that.

There was also a comic where Borg from the future, including assimilated Species 8472, were travelling back through time.

 

[Lilyful]

I think for me the Borg became too action movie in Voyager. They were much more cerebral in TNG.

 

[stj]

As I recall the Borg have always been emphasized to adapt to threats. The Voyager crew modified the Hanson's tech to sneak in, the Borg adapted. SOP. The real thing is that the Borg Queen held back as she was busy trying to seduce Seven of Nine. This is often held as weakening the Borg but Picard in BOBW and Data in First Contact basically got the same treatment.

Survival Instinct never gets complained out, but the Borg drones there are freed, as I recall, by merely being out of range. They certainly manage to "escape" later on, which makes the notion of being a mindless slave somewhat moot. And of course Seven of Nine gets to be the Borg Queen in this episode. This one really does violence to the power of the Borg Collective.

 

[Saquist]

Note: the beam wasn't a tractor beam it served the purpose of draining the shields. Later they muffed this up in Emissary because the Beam is clearly blue that does the same task.

Well it also had them trapped so if it isn't a tractor beam, what is it? It's uh... it's green.

They didn't call it a tractor beam at first.
They merely said the beam was holding them in place. It didn't look like a tractor beam either.

The point is they didn't spontaneously decide to make everything green in FC, they were just beefing up the original style.

That's your point.
My point is that everything when radically green. Noticing a touch of green isn't the same as throwing a bucket of green paint on everything. That's what they did. The Ships turned green, green spot lights green shields, green control panels...

The shields were being drained by the blue tractor beam in BOBW as well.

I still can't tell from You Tube what color that is...some look blue others look green but the difference is that after Qwho the beam has that fluctuating tractor beam effect and the original didn't.

 

[Anwar]

Doesn't Worf say in BOBW that "Shields are being drained" after the tractor beam hits?

 

[Saquist]

Definitely.
There may no actually be a differnce between that holding beam and the tractor beam but in Q Who they acted as though it was some thing unknown...then again they also called the cutting beam "a type of laser".

 

[G2309]

There are some interesting non-humanoid Borg mentioned in the Shatner/Reeves-Stevens novel The Return. It's a shame the TV shows and even movies of the era couldn't afford stuff like that.

There was also a comic where Borg from the future, including assimilated Species 8472, were travelling back through time.

Any pictures available of the comic?

 

[Sadara]

But the real culprit is Star Trek First Contact.

I don't agree. Voyager encountered the Borg so incredibly often, that it made them look weak. Look at how massive the Cubes were in First Contact and in The Best of Both Worlds; they dwarf the cubes in Voyager. This makes them a much less threatening enemy in my opinion in VOY. Then Voyager goes on to destroy entire groups of Borg ships without getting a scratch, while in TNG one cube took out 40 starships and in FC one cube is back to being very threatening to large amounts of ships. 8472 also didn't help the Borg in being that powerful race that was supposed to exemplify why humans were naive in exploring the galaxy. Instead this species easily destroyed the Borg, making them look weak. This is just my opinion though, so feel free to rip me apart.

I never got the whole notion of humans being naive exploring the galaxy. I think it's more naive to think that by just staying home on Earth that somehow makes us safe. Sure there are dangers; by wandering into space you let other species know about you, but I think I'd rather know what's out there then wait for the baddies to just drop in on us a la Independence Day.

 

[Saquist]

It is sort of strange to call humans dangerous and savage and naive in the same sentence.

 

[Sadara]

It is sort of strange to call humans dangerous and savage and naive in the same sentence.

I must be missing something. Where exactly did you see that?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Actually, it was TNG: The Best of Both Worlds Part II that hopelessly kneecapped the Borg, by so easily defeating them with the sleep command. Before anyone tries to come back with "but it wasn't so easy", let's imagine how many species the Borg have assimilated. Are we to believe that none of them are as ingenious or capable as humans? Puh-lease.

Really the problem is: Humans, and especially our hero-ship, must prevail. Therefore, we can't have an arch-enemy that is truly bad-ass. TBOBW1 was an excellent episode and ended with a brilliant cliffhanger, no question about it. But it painted the Ent-D into a corner for which the resolution was lame, lame, lame. And afterwards, in later episodes, we were beaten to death with the "individualism will win out over collectivism" metaphor in I Borg, but most egregiously in the Descent two-parter. The idea that the Borg would malfunction just because Hugh was re-assimilated was ludicrous. Again we have to imagine just how many times this problem must have come up before for the Borg. Are we to assume that no species except humans interacted with a drone temporarily isolated from the Collective? PUH-LEASE.

All this having been said, Seven of Nine was an excellent character, beautiful and intellectually gifted. I found her to be a welcome addition to VOY. Yes she was great to look at, but the show would not have been as engaging to me as it was without her character.

I believe any unrealistic weakness the Borg displayed in being vulnerable to those pesky humans is traceable to TNG:TBOBW2.

 

[zar]

They didn't call it a tractor beam at first.
They merely said the beam was holding them in place. It didn't look like a tractor beam either.

Yes they did, they specifically said they were caught in a "tractor beam" when it first appeared, and said "the tractor beam has released us" when it went away. I think you might have Emissary and Q Who mixed up. In Emissary it was blue and they didn't say what it was (but the same weapon shown there was also specifically called a tractor beam in BOBW).

That's your point.
My point is that everything when radically green. Noticing a touch of green isn't the same as throwing a bucket of green paint on everything. That's what they did. The Ships turned green, green spot lights green shields, green control panels...

My point was "what became green that wasn't already green?" They didn't just indiscriminately dump green paint all over everything. Greens and blacks were already a defining characteristic, and they built on that.

The cube in QH was predominately black with a green glow coming from inside... so was the cube in FC. The green glow was even in the original concept art.

The torpedoes in QH and cutting beam in BOBW were green, so the Borg weaponry is green in FC.

Green control panels? Here they are in BOBW: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Borg_viewscreen.jpg

 

[Anwar]

I love how the viewscreen in BOBW was also a Cube. They should have maintained that and had the viewscreens inside the Spheres be Spheres.

 

[Luminus]

It's partly a valid complaint in that we do see the Borg quite a bit, which does kill a little of the mystery (well, for some - I never found the Borg design to be visually nightmare-inducing - even in TNG, when they were rampaging around Wolf 359. The BQ is the only thing that really looks truly scary to me.)

However, save for one tiny scout ship, there is never a point in which Voyager single-handedly takes on a Borg ship and wins. They usually run away, are helped by another powerful ship or set of ships, or get showered with magical future technology from a bitter older lady.

The fact that ordinary little Voyager sans backup was absolutely zero match for the Borg was always maintained.

Unimatrix Zero shows Voyager disabling a Tactical cube - something that's supposed to be more powerful than an ordinary cube - and warping away without chase. Q-Who? shows Enterprise disabling an ordinary cube and warping away, only to be immediately chased down by the same cube and nearly assimilated (thanks to last minute save by Q).

Hence, Voyager borg equals week and pathetic.

The funny thing here is that I think the writer's realized this and tried to explain away the weakened borg with one line in "Dark Frontier," where the queen reveals to Seven that the borg put Seven on Voyager deliberately (a sleeper cell, sort of). But that explanation only insults the character of the Borg as we know them.

Especially, when in said episode, the Delta Flyer is able to escape several pursuing Borg ships. This simply isn't believable.

 

[Anwar]

The Tactical Cube is smaller than an Assimilation Cube, and the designation "Class 4 Tactical" implies it's also weaker.

Funny thing is, if VOY was always able to put together armadas and they always got wasted by the Borg in every encounter, and all of VOY's Borg stories were the same except they had an armada at their command, no one would complain. The quality wouldn't matter, the number of cannon fodder ships getting trashed would redeem those stories.

The Cube in "Q Who?" and BOBW was something meant for taking on entire civilizations and assimilating their important worlds, a "Tactical" Cube by comparison is going to be for tactical battles BEFORE the major assimilations happen. Softening them up for the Assimilation Cube's major attack.

The real problem was overpowering the Borg so much, making them so numerous along with the overpowering, and being lazy in not better defining them earlier on.

 

[Luminus]

The Tactical Cube is smaller than an Assimilation Cube, and the designation "Class 4 Tactical" implies it's also weaker.

Funny thing is, if VOY was always able to put together armadas and they always got wasted by the Borg in every encounter, and all of VOY's Borg stories were the same except they had an armada at their command, no one would complain. The quality wouldn't matter, the number of cannon fodder ships getting trashed would redeem those stories.

The Cube in "Q Who?" and BOBW was something meant for taking on entire civilizations and assimilating their important worlds, a "Tactical" Cube by comparison is going to be for tactical battles BEFORE the major assimilations happen. Softening them up for the Assimilation Cube's major attack.

The real problem was overpowering the Borg so much, making them so numerous along with the overpowering, and being lazy in not better defining them earlier on.

Doug Drexler, the man who designed the tactical cube describes the drawing that was chosen as basically "a Borg cube wearing a flak jacket!" Source

So, no, it is NOT smaller than a cube. Why would you even say that? Also, a Tactical Cube is described as a Class 4 tactical vessel that is a type of heavily armed Borg cube utilized by the Borg Collective. Where did you get the idea that Class 4 somehow implies weak? The fact that it has hull armor already makes it more powerful than a cube and that's before we start talking about weapons capabilities and other features.

How do you know what the cube in "Q Who?" was for? Or what a Tactical Cube is for? There is no mention of purpose for these things on screen... ever. It is more likely that the Tactical Cube exists solely to combat Species 8472 or others like them, but this is just speculation.

 

[Anwar]

Then they should've made that more clear, since the image we see of it is smaller than an Assimilation Cube.

If it was a "Class 1", then I'd think it was a powerful vessel. And "Tactical" is lesser than "Strategic", "Tactical" is for individual battles as compared to conquering civilizations.

Having hull armor doesn't mean anything for Trek ships, never has never will.

As it is, the Tactical Cube comes off as weaker than an Assimilation Cube.

 

[zar]

If it was a "Class 1", then I'd think it was a powerful vessel. And "Tactical" is lesser than "Strategic"

I don't even...

What?

 

[T'Girl]

If it was a "Class 1", then I'd think it was a powerful vessel. And "Tactical" is lesser than "Strategic"

I don't even...

What?

I believe what Anwar is alluding to is the comparison of tactics and strategies in military terminology, tactics are small scale and local, strategies are large scale and global.

Tactical nuclear weapons are small/medium sized and strategic nuclear weapons are huge.

Tactical Air Command had fighter planes, Strategic Air Command had big bombers.

Also, in America, to be first class is considered far better, than to be fourth class.

The old British Royal Navy used first rate to refer to its largest ships of the line. First rates comprised those ships mounting 100 guns or more on three gundecks. A fourth rate ship had a single deck and a few dozen guns and was usually considered to "weak" to stand in the line of battle.

 

[froot]

Okay, but here's the real problem.

If the Borg want to assimilate the Feds, why just send one Cube? Why go to all the trouble to time travel a la First Contact? Why try and formulate some kind of plot like Dark Frontier?

All they'd really need to do is gather up a few thousand Cubes, transwarp to Earth (or use a hub) and get busy, honestly. Maybe a few million, if they really want to make sure they'll clean house.

You've got to have a little suspension of disbelief with these guys, both in TNG and VOY.