Why do people keep saying Voyager weakened the Borg?

Its kind of pointless "defending" something by making crap up

 

Defending TV shows is the never-ending battle, buddy...

I try.

I try to point out the differences between the Borg ships encountered so to better justify VOY's survival without having to say "The Borg were weakened." I don't see the problem with pointing out the differences between the Assimilation Cube (I got the name from the Armada video games) and the Tactical Cube so to extrapolate that the Tactical Cube was weaker than the Assimilation Cube. Yes, they said it was heavily armed, but they never said "It's heavily armed compared to the Assimilation Cube."

If Voyager had done the same thing to the Tactical Cube, the response WOULD be that the ship should've survived the power of a Sun. BOBW never said that a Sun was powerful enough to destroy a Borg ship, after all.

And that ship was a Borg vessel, we see it again on a Borg viewscreen in "Dark Frontier". And even if it wasn't, it still had to have been built from the original Borg ship Hugh and his crew were traveling in (it has the Borg colors, the same green energy and sound FX).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bkw69E_C4g

The idea being that VOY should've been destroyed in one shot from any Borg vessel, never should've been able to run from any Borg vessels, any assimilated people should never be de-assimilatible (despite TNG showing otherwise).

Seeing how a lot of the stuff about the Borg is really just made up/fandom assumptions, fair's fair.

 

Do you remember the opening sequences to The Last Boy Scout?

The Foot ball player with the gun only shot the players directly inbetween him and the goal line.

I saw the pilot to Benson this morning.

kraus and Benson had this hilarious altercation in two parts.

The first was about how she now works under him.

"I do not work under you! I work around you, or through you. The choice is up to you!"

The second was about leftovers in the fridge.

"If I see anything in my fridge dressed in clingwrap, I will kill you."

I think that's relevant?

 

It's a never ending battle alright. Especially when it comes down to one guy repeatedly yelling about a Hatedome that doesn't exist, counter-attacking against outrageous claims that were never actually made, and rolling back the conversation every time it comes up again, acting like the previous twenty blow-ups never even happened.

Way to miss the point.

Let me spell it out: the bit after the word "Disclaimer" was the important part.

So you're saying that you don't see the problem with:
-declaring that the BoBW cube is called an "Assimilation Cube"... even though it's not
-then declaring that it's substantially different than the "Tactical Cube" encountered by Voyager and described by Seven... even though there is no proof that it IS all that different
-then "extrapolating" that it's not only substantially different, but weaker than the other cube, despite the fact that the tactical cube is the only Borg ship in the history of Trek to be referred to as "heavily armed"
-and the basis for this is that the crew didn't explicitly say that it WASN'T weaker.

...yeah, no problem there at all.

I'm not going to waste time writing huge paragraphs of text debunking this - again - so I will just say: no, the response wouldn't have been that. That's nonsense.

So? All that proves is that as of several years after "Descent", the Borg were aware of the ship type used by Lore and the rogues. Doesn't mean it was one of theirs.

Yeah, cause only the Borg have green energy weapons.

Let's also ignore the fact that it uses a method or propulsion that the Borg are NEVER seen using, and that if it were a "proper" Borg ship, it would be the only one that is asymmetrical and blocky and lumpy and... looks nothing at all like a Borg ship, basically.

Seriously? So some random Youtube guy thinks Voyager shouldn't be able to take on a probe, and that proves your point?

Ah yes, back to the extremes. You do realize the only one on this board who has ever brought up this "ALWAYS DOOMED ALL THE TIME" scenario is you?

Not really, no.

Even if the above were true, it would mean that you were admitting to taking arguments that someone somewhere made once, years ago, and then throwing those arguments in the faces of other people - people who never made them - and accusing them of... well, of making them.

You are yet again treating those who criticize VOY as one giant monolithic entity. We are not responsible for what some irrational haters might have said eight years ago, or whatever.

Sheesh.

 

Who would win in a fight?

Francis Drake's HMS Golden Hind circa 1620 or John Kerry on his Swift Boat half way through his tour of duty during the Viet Nam War?

Without cheating, a significant tactical advantage, or a magnificent tech upgrade, Voyager shouldn't have stood a chance against a Borg Row Boat if it drew a bean on Kathy,

 

Even GodBen said he was a VOY Hater when he and I first entered into our own "I Hate Voy/I Love VOY" debates.

VOY wrecked the Borg was never said by anyone?

I'm trying to explain how it's not an emasculation of the Borg that VOY wasn't instantly destroyed by the Tactical Cube.

I gave it the name it was given by the video games, since the show just has it as generic "Cube". It's not a made-up name.

It is different, even sites that try to give us facts on ship sizes and charts done by said fans say that the Assimilation Cube was much bigger than the Tactical Cube.

http://www.sideshowsito.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/ultimate_starship_chart.gif

For example.

It's smaller, the name suggests it's for smaller-scale battles (Tactical, not Strategic), we don't see it at any major planetary assimilations (like in "Dark Frontier"), and saying it's "Heavily Armed" without any further comparison doesn't mean much. Heavily Armed compared to what, the Probe ship?

The audience didn't like how being caught in a collapsing wormhole/conduit destroyed a Borg ship in "Dark Frontier", why would they be any more forgiving of a Star?

They're the only ones who use that specific type of grey hull coloring, the only ones that give off green energy, and that TYPE of green energy weapons (compared to the Romulans, for example), yeah.

The Borg Probe wasn't a perfect sphere, no one complained. And they DID use a Borg method: Transwarp Conduits.

That said people exist? Yes.

No, in the current VOY viewing thread "Does it get any better?" AdmiralScreed says that none of the VOY Borg stories were good because there was no sense of unbeatable doom. Especially Scorpion.

The Borg aren't Galactic Enemy No.1, there are aliens out there as powerful as them if not stronger, assimilation is reversible, Borg ships can be destroyed with weaponry. All these things are true, yet the fandom act like they're not.

The principles behind the hatred of VOY haven't changed, why should the arguments?

It's following a legacy, just one that's lost momentum.

 

Point out where I said "There are not, and have never been, any individuals who are or were 'haters'."

That's different from claiming the existence of an entire LEGION of angry, Voyager-hating lunatics who were out to hate the show simply for existing from day one. THAT'S what you've claimed is the case, many many times, and that's bollocks.

Sure it was. Since "VOY wrecked the Borg" is not one of the outrageous claims I was referring to, it's irrelevant.

Yes it is. With a few exceptions (i.e. STO, which was this HUGE project that CBS seemed to have a large hand in), the games are free to do what they want to some degree. In terms of maintaining story consistency with the body of filmed canon, TPTB are even less concerned with games than they are with novels. So it's essentially made up; i.e., it has no bearing on anything.

Yes, and those sites are speculating. There is no way to know for sure, which is the point I am trying to make. Yet you keep asserting that the Tactical Cube is way less powerful as if it's accepted fact.

Meaningless. The Sovereign is smaller than the Galaxy, but is tactically superior.

Meaningless. I can't think of a single instance in Star Trek where a ship - fielded by ANY power/species - was referred to as a "strategic anything". In Star Trek, "tactical" = "tailored for combat." That's how the word is used, throughout Trekdom, consistently.

Maybe that's because it has less of the equipment needed for assimilating large number of people than the standard cube, because it instead devotes its systems and internal volume to weapons. Hence, "Tactical" cube. Hence, it would be MORE powerful.

Seven said it in a vacuum, comparing it to nothing. She chose that wording as a warning, to try and give Janeway pause before she implemented a plan to attack it. The only logical conclusion from this context is that is is a very powerful ship, even by Borg standards.

I never said they didn't.

I'll preempt your inevitable reply pointing out that I said "no one said that!", and just explain now that that's just an expression. A very common one. "Oh come on, no one does that!" or. It doesn't mean LITERALLY NO ONE on the planet. It just means that at the most, a statistically insignificant portion of the group in question (Trek fans, and mainly TrekBBS posters) say it.

I wasn't referring to "a sense of unbeatable doom", therefore what Screed may have said about that is irrelevant. I was referring to your EXTREME (as extreme as you can get; it would end the show) assertion that "people" wanted to see the Borg taking out the ship in one shot and other such nonsense.

Thank you for those utterly irrelevant non-responses.

I'll try asking the question again.

Why do you continue to take arguments that someone somewhere made once, years ago, and throw those arguments in the faces of other people - people who never made them - accusing them of taking positions they never took?

Not that I'm expecting to get an answer that makes any kind of sense.

 

Sans the massacre of Wolf 359, the Enterprise-D managed to last in a firefight with a Borg cube for a small amount of time as well.
If you're going to bash Voyager for weakening the Borg, then have some courtesy to admit that other shows made the hero ships equally 'too powerful' against them... such as TNG.

 

"SLEEP."

What's idiotic is a imperialistic race that nearly wiped out an entire armada with one ship... a ship that was put to sleep by one recalcitant drone and they DIDN'T IMMEDIATELY SEND ANOTHER CUBE to finish the job with the sleep command disabled.

The BORG were so "frightened" of the almighty Federation that they actually sent their QUEEN years later to go up against that mighty "ship"... Picard/Data and slip into the PAST to assimilate Earth.

 

No, not really. They don't have their own webpage or Anti-VOY Legion meetings, but there are plenty folks who just never liked the show right from the start for a variety of reasons: Woman Captain, "Lost in Space" knock-off, etc.

But it's still a common critique made by the Hatedom.

So I use a name from a game that's not contradicted by the shows, forgivable.

They sure put more research and effort into their findings and conclusions than anyone saying the TC is bigger and stronger.

It really isn't significantly smaller, just stretched longer. Not the best comparison.

I'm using real life terminology, Tactical is short-term and immediate combat whereas Strategic is the long-term war-winning stuff.

Which again, indicates it's more for the battles and engagements before proper assimilation (With the big Cubes) and thus less powerful than the bigger Cubes needed to take out planets.

And without true comparison to other Borg vessels, it could just mean "Heavily Armed compared to that Probe you fought a year ago."

They do a better job of showing they exist than anyone who likes VOY, that's for sure.

We see the Borg one-shot killing Fed ships in "Emissary" and FC, that's what they're talking about and wanted to see happen in VOY. Nevermind that the ENT-D, ENT-E and Defiant don't get one-shot killed.

Because the common arguments of VOY haters all come from those same arguments, one way or another. They didn't say the exact same things, but their stances are similar enough to indicate common origin.

 

There are "plenty folks" who dislike lots of things from day one for various reasons, including every TV show in the history of TV shows. Some of it is rational, some of it is not. Still doesn't prove the existence of a Hatedome.

And yes, there is a HUGE difference. You can refuse to acknowledge that if you like; it's not my problem.

(Que counter arguments: they hated Voyager for existing, or for not being exactly like TNG and/or DS9, they made your life miserable for ten years as you valiantly rode to the show's defense, etc...)

Even if it is a common complaint, it still has absolutely nothing to do with the point you are responding to. I will take your refusal to even acknowledge that point as an admission that the outrageous claims to which I WAS referring (i.e. the idea that VOY detractors wanted the ship destroyed, wanted every character to be a blubbering mess suffering from PTSD, wanted Janeway to be blowing up planets, etc.), claims that you have made dozens of times, are all in fact nonsense.

And for the last time, there IS. NO. HATEDOME! It is pure fiction. You made it up. Or, someone else made it up, and you latched onto it. Either way, it doesn't exist.

"They" (meaning the link you provided) say nothing about the tactical cube's power, only its size. The only one trying to say it's actually significantly weaker than the BoBW cube is you.

And it's also worth pointing out that some in-depth fan sites agree with me: that the tactical cube is, if anything, more powerful than a "normal" cube, and that the relative size is too hard to pin down. DITL, for example.

Yeah, being 13-18 (depending on which of the three provided deck #'s you go with for the Sov) decks shorter, and only a little over half as wide, as the Galaxy sure isn't significant.

I know what you meant. It still doesn't make sense. There's no inherent meaning of "more powerful/effective" or "less powerful/effective." It's really more like "larger scope/long term" vs. "shorter scope/short term".

And even in real life, applying "tactical" to something usually means it's more powerful than a normal thing that lacks the word. This is especially true in Trek, where "tactical" is used to mean "combat specialist" all the damn time, and "strategic" is never used to designate anything, except for Worf on DS9 (because of his role in coordinating large numbers of Starfleet assets; it has nothing to do with how strong anything is).

That's ridiculous. The ship that's "more for battles" as you say would need to be more powerful in combat. "take out planets" clearly doesn't mean "blow up planets with firepower", since we've never seen the Borg DO that. The only thing that would be required of an "assimilation" cube would be lots of equipment for processing large groups of people, and for "scooping up" (to quote Worf) machinery or structures of interest. This would occur AFTER the planet's defenses had already been softened up... which would probably be done by tactical cubes. Because they have better weapons.

You are proving my point. Thanks man.

No it couldn't. Because that would be a stupid thing to mean on Seven's part.

The context of the conversation is: Janeway wants to attack a Borg ship. "How about this one?" Seven isn't so sure. "That's a tactical cube, heavily armed."

The CLEAR implication is "heavily armed as Borg ships go. REALLY tough to fight. Pick a different one, please."

If you don't see the logic in that, then I don't know what to tell you.

The rest of your post is all utter hogwash that has been debunked repeatedly, so I'm not going to bother.

 

VOY is the only Trek show that gets its degree of hatred even from the mainstream. Even Enterprise isn't as harshly treated.

Go read any "VOY should've been like NuBSG!" topics out there.

It does, not on these forums (anymore) but it does.

It's smaller, slower and doesn't one-shot kill anything like the Assimilation Cube did.

That's still nowhere near as big the difference as the Tactical Cube/Assimilation Cube gulf (with the TC being like 1/4 or so the size of the AC if not smaller).

Typically, something meant for long-term usage/large scope is going to be more powerful/important than something for shorter-scope/short term usage.

In real life, I'm pretty sure they don't refer to one warship as a "Tactical Warship" compared to another. Warships are warships, but in Trek the term "tactical" is used synonymously with any type of warship. Seeing how all Borg vessels are Warships more or less, the Tactical name probably just is the same as the real-life meaning of a shorter-term/smaller scope battle-vessel.

More for short-term battles meant for softening them up for full-on Assimilation (which requires more effort than just blowing up ships), like the first wave/opening salvo of an invasion.

All of which would require a lot more power, strength and durability/endurance than a vessel meant solely for fighting starships (and more likely to be destroyed).

Or because they're smaller, weaker, more expendable and less likely to do well with a planetary assault. Like how the Feds still send in Peregrine Fighters and Mirandas as part of the first wave in fleet engagements instead of the big tough Capital ships all the time.

The Sphere from "Drone" was also "Tactical" but she said nothing like that, and by then they'd already faced a Probe (even though reaction to them beating THAT was negative) so that was the gauge by which they measured Borg vessel strength (seeing how they never fought an Assimilation Cube themselves). "Heavily armed compared to the other vessels we've fought" not "It's the most powerful Cube ever!"

Look, we've seen in TNG and DS9 that the Borg one-shot kill Feds ships but the ENT-D always survived the same type of assault. So why does VOY have to be one-shot killed but not the ENT-D, ENT-E or Defiant?

 

This is a fascinating contest over who can make the most unnecessarily long post with the most quotations in it.

Because whoever makes the longest post is the true winner of the argument.

 

Why are people saying Voyager weakened the Borg? Well its because of episodes like Unimatrix Zero:

http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/voy-unimatrix-zero-review-part-1-5933235

http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/voy-unimatrix-zero-review-part-2-5944871

http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/voy-unimatrix-zero-review-part-3-5950213

 

Look, being de-assimilated is NOT the huge emasculation everyone thinks it is because we knew it was possible from the very first time we ever saw assimilation. Picard got de-assimilated between scenes, all he had were some bandages on his face! His real trauma was the mental one, and what the Borg forced him to do (slaughter thousands, nearly destroy Earth) none of which happened to Janeway and co (they weren't used to kill people or destroy Earth).

Nearly everything about Unimatrix was set up from prior episodes:

1) Renegade Borg? We saw how it happened in "I, Borg" and "Descent" except here it's beneficial rather than to create a new threat.

2) Being able to develop ways of resisting assimilation? They had Crushers' studies of Locutus and Hugh, as well as their own studies of Seven and other Borg tech. It's silly to think that they wouldn't even try to create some vaccination against assimilation.

Hell, maybe it's just because VOY played an important role in this story that riles people up. If it had been Hugh and his group of Rebel Borg who cooked up the scheme and VOY offered to help, the audience wouldn't have been so pissed.

 

Let me put it another way. You have claimed, repeatedly, that people actually wanted the ship to be in "Year of Hell" shape, all the time, and that the majority of the cast should be cold-blooded killers, and or post-breakdown, PTSD-suffering messes, and that Janeway should have been going around demanding supplies from alien races and blowing up their planets if refused. You claimed that VOY detractors actually wanted those specific things on multiple occasions.

Direct enough for you?

(My prediction: No.)

It doesn't. Never did.

There's no definitive proof of that, sorry.

That doesn't make any sense. We are talking about ships. There's no such thing as a "strategic ship." That difference between strategy and tactics that you are referring to has more to do with doctrine and methodology than it does the actual firepower present in a given combat vehicle.

Trek uses "tactical", as applied to ships and people, to mean "focused on combat." It may not sync up perfectly with how the term is used in real life, but that's still how Trek does use it.

So the ships that move in after the fighting is over, tasked with assimilating lots of helpless civilians and dismantling/transporting machines and structures, need more strength and durability than the ships that move in initially, fighting enemy starships, breaking down their defenses, and taking the brunt of whatever resistance the species might offer.

In other news, the sky is purple and up is down!

Never claimed it was "the most powerful cube ever!". All I've been trying to do is point out the lack of logic implicit in claiming that it must be weaker than a "standard" (or "assimilation") cube. Which I have more than adequately done, and this particular topic has run its course.

As to the rest: you responded to my assertion that it was all hogwash by yammering about the Borg one-shot killing this ship or that. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but my statement about hogwash stands.

What do I get if I win?!

Aww, this post is substantially shorter than the previous ones, so I guess I lose.

 

Except the Borg often replace people's arms and eyes with robotic replacements, so trying to get assimilated on purpose is like playing Russian Roulette with your body parts. Picard got lucky and didn't have any major body parts removed and he didn't choose to get assimilated. Janeway and friends letting themselves willingly get assimilated is extremely foolish.

Plus assimilation seems far less scary if the Voyager crew can just use technobabble to counter it.

That doesn't make it good, especially when these rebels manage to take over a Borg Sphere, despite being a tiny minority in the Borg, there shouldn't have been enough rebel drones on the Sphere to take it over.

That's a huge leap, going from Dr. Crusher's research and seven's knowledge of the Borg, to just whipping up a Vaccination against assimilation. Sounds like the worse kind of techno-babble to me.

Except a lot of people didn't like Descent either, but Unimatrix Zero is worse in terms of writing.

Plus there are other things you didn't touch on that were mentioned in that review, like the Borg Queen blowing up her own ships. That makes the Borg seem supremely stupid, no one won a battle by destroying their own forces.

 

I'll reply to Saito later.

But bottom line is, Picard didn't have his limbs/eyes/other stuff replaced. And aside from the thing on her eye that also goes inside her head, which is more likely from being assimilated as a child, neither did Seven. The two regular characters who were Borg and neither had themselves sliced up like that, so why can't Janeway get away with the same thing?

It's not technobabble, it's vaccine. And it was only temporary. Hell, all it took for Hugh to be de-assimilated was being bounced around a lot in a ship crash.

There shouldn't have been enough Renegade Borg in Hugh's group to crew that huge ship while still leaving an army on their HQ planet (their ship was just a scout vessel). Didn't stop them.

They studied Hugh well enough to know how to program a mental virus into him if need be. And they studied Borg nanites pretty extensively in "Scorpion" as well to learn how to re-program them. From all that, is it SO hard to believe they could make a vaccine that temporarily would stall the nanites?

But Descent still happened with nowhere near the complaining all of VOY's Borg stories got (Unity, Scorpion, etc).

It was her sadistic way of saying "Look, the Collective is so vast and these Renegades are so few in number that blowing up one Cube does more damage to their forces than to the Collective."

It'd be no different from the Dominion being willing to blow up an entire ship of Jem'Hadar if it meant killing a few of the crew who were the "don't need Ketracel-White" mutants.

 

And in Russian Roulette, not everyone who plays dies, still doesn't make playing a good idea.

There is a possibility that your body parts will be replaced, so Janeway and friends being assimilated on purpose still seems stupid.

And that's pretty silly too.

Hugh's scout ship is the one that crashed on the planet, I'm pretty sure Hugh was retrieved by a Borg Cube.

Perhaps, but frankly it does make Assimilation seem less scary if they can just whip up a vaccine for it. The event that scared Picard's life is treated as trivial in this ep.

Why don't you go over the TNG board and ask them if they think Descent was a good episode.

The Borg are supposed to be obsessed with efficiency, that's why they only send one Cube to conquer Earth. The Queen blowing her ships is extremely wasteful. It goes counter to watch the Borg are supposed to be.

Sfdebris mentioned that if the Queen had simply disconnected drones from the Collective and then had them beg for their lives before killing them, that have a bigger impact than blowing up a ship far away and be more efficient.

 

IMO I often find Sfdebris' reviews/opinions very short sighted.
He doesn't understand metaphor's at all.
The Queen saw Unimatrix Zero as a cancer within the "body" of the Borg.
You don't make cancer beg, you cut it out to stop it from spreading.
Making the Drones beg would ruin the meaning of the metaphor
Blowing up the Cubes was her cutting out the disease.
It still holds true to the metaphor Dr. Crusher used to describe the Collective.