Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone..

[Gary7]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

They weren't even using nanoprobes at the time, so that's a non-starter.

What? Of course they were. Nanoprobes is how they assimilate other beings. Maybe you're thinking of the tubules. We didn't seem them used on Picard, but that can be explained away as being done out of view (after they beamed away). They also had to glorify the experience, showing all of the implant surgery going on. Of course later on, we see it's totally unnecessary as all of those implants mysteriously manufacture themselves inside the being and surface at the appropriate time.

Actually, I'd be happier if the Borg never bothered to ASSIMILATE anyone at all. We saw in Q-Who they apparently raise their own young, so why would they need to assimilate people in the first place? As Q said, they're only interested in your technology, raw materials to be consumed. I think the only reason to ever take live captives from the ships and worlds they assimilate would be to eviscerate them for spare parts and organ/tissue replacements for their own drones.

You make an excellent point. The Borg nursery certainly implied that they "cultivate" their own people. But I look upon that as the foundation... when they're not acquiring other species, they have to reproduce in order to grow the population. The spare parts thing is way too messy to really work, at a bacteria level.


Anyway, you an Anwar launched into a rather intense discussion that is hard to follow... I'll take a distant position.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

They did the same thing in Star Control II. The only difference is the telepathic critters they used for the trick were specifically trained to do exactly that. They didn't just make some shit up at the last minute and pray it would work.

They had already established that the 8472 were a telepathic species (and seeing how they didn't have mouths it seems that was their primary method of communication). So using another psychic species to call out to them is reasonable.

Let me get this straight: you think "made up technobabble and convenient psychic trick that inexplicably works exactly the way it's supposed to work" is better than "Take a huge personal risk and in the face of desperate odds."

Are you SURE you weren't on Voyager's writing staff?

No, I think that using a hostile enemy's method of communication (Telepathy) against them and framing another hostile enemy in the way (The Borg) for it to get both to destroy each other long enough to get by both of them (and hopefully get them to destroy each other enough that they aren't a threat anymore) without needlessly risking the safety of the crew is a better idea than thinking that maybe, just MAYBE these guys will blast away at each other when I provoke one and fly into the others' space. It's not like the 8472 or Borg were as irrational or easily manipulated as the Reavers were.

You keep using this "the audience would hate it because it's Voyager" thing as if it's actually based on anything. I repeat again: the audience hated Voyager because it was BADLY WRITTEN. It's not enough to have a good outline if the story is executed in such a way that has the audience rolling their eyes saying "Feh... yeah, right." Even TNG had several of these moments; the technobabble solar flare was one of them, though the metaphasic shield--which had been the subject of an entire episode--was not.

It's just that, looking back, no one ever gave anything the show ever did a fair chance the way TNG/DS9 did and only tuned in to heckle it or ridicule it from day one. I personally thought that VOY's premise itself was flawed and needed more work, and that it was mildly sexist (the first major female Captain and she's the ONLY one who can't control her crew. Great message). But I still gave it the fair shake and enjoyed a great deal of it (moreso than NuBSG).

Nothing in Trek history has established any general trend or common practice of using mechanical amplifiers for telepathy.

They had established artificial means of mind control, so psychic technology WAS possible. But if an amplifier is out of the question, just have some other species they run into have one designed so they appropriate it for later use. Running into species with unique techs is a Trek staple (a staple of ALL science fiction, really).

Or just have the other psychics join with Kes and try to all give off the psychic call together. Gestalt psychics, if you will.

The Ocampa might, but the only plausible way of establishing that would be to either display that ability in an earlier episode or (annoying, but acceptable) have them playing around with such a device in the beginning of the episode but not being able to think of a good use for it. The way you're describing it, it sounds like another one of those B'elanna Torres conference room hobbyist moments a la "I could modify a tricorder diode array to emit a resonant tetryon pulse that would amplify your telepathy." That's usually the point where I change the channel.

Just have Tuvok suggest with the Doctor that maybe if all the psychics onboard tried their hardest to call out to the 8472 at the same time it might resonate enough to get their attention. As in, it's a long shot but it might work. They had shown already that Suspiria had some tech she could use on the Ocampa to give them back their powers (or she charged up their powers on her own).

Why not? Sensors are used for gathering information from a distance. The Borg never do ANYTHING from a distance, they walk right up to you and start taking samples. Considering their ability to quickly dismantle almost any known defensive system, their only sensor capability might be detection and ranging, with SOP to close with a target, grab it with a tractor beam, board it, analyze the data, and if it looks interesting, chop it up for further analysis.

That makes sense, but given how in cases like that the audience DOES need to be spoonfed they'd have to mention that in some kind of debriefing or something. Maybe Neelix asks why the Borg haven't come for them and someone explains their sensors aren't great as long-range.

Do the Borg have a concept of "war"? Last time I checked, they do not. If they do, they sure as hell shouldn't.

I don't know, personally. But given all the folks they've assimilated they must understand the concept. And they HAD to have encountered powerful species who could destroy them before so maybe a state of combat beyond "assimilate" does exist for them ("adapting" to a powerful species and all).

Come to think of it, it just might.

You mean, introduce the 8472 before "Scorpion" and their psychic mind that can be contacted, so that it is more like "Wait, remember those super-powerful aliens who only speak telepathically? Why don't we call out to them and lure them to the Borg?".

Or

"We're about to run into where we think Borg space is in a month. Aw damn, first we've run into these other aliens from another dimension that are ignoring us so far but are capable of blowing up entire planets and we STILL have the Borg in front of us too. Wait, why don't we trick them into fighting each other long enough for us to get by? They're telepathic, right? And our psychics got a message from those guys earlier so maybe we can call THEM and get them to head into Borg space."

I'll grant that it got them past the Borg. The issue here--as with many things on Voyager--is whether or not it was believable.

I thought so, I just think they should've had the Borg be wiped out/crippled by the 8472. As in, not just damaged but REALLY messed up by them.

The colonials in Battlestar Galactica (both versions of it) spent almost the entire series running from the cylons and nobody ever accused them of being cowards.

They had too many civilians to take care of to waste time on a military mission. And when the Pegasus arrived in NuBSG the Cylons lost all their threatening firepower until the Pegasus was destroyed by the reset button.

Hell, all four of the Terminator movies basically derive from the basic premise "Protagonist being chased by unstoppable killer robot(s)." It turns out that even in the future, the most viable tactic for dealing with Terminators is to set a trap, open fire, then run like hell.

But in all those movies (except maybe Salvation, I haven't seen it) they still managed to destroy the pursuing robot.

True, it wouldn't be. INVENTING one all of a sudden would. That's the main problem with the "telepathy amplifier" thing.

Fine, they just get all the psychics onboard to call out together with the theory that their powers might resonate together.

(which, IIRC, is basically how Voyager resolved the ongoing threat from 8472).

Well, that was resolved super-fast I admit but I saw the idea: The 8472 were drunk with their perceived superiority that when they DID lose to VOY's modified Borg weapon it made them rethink their stance. As in "Uh-oh, we can't strut around like the Big Man anymore since they can kill us now." and decided to try something other than killing.

Then they shouldn't have used 8472 and should have stuck with the Borg. It otherwise makes no sense whatsoever to introduce totally new story elements at huge expense and dramatic implication, only to be used once, and then specifically for the purpose of nullifying another story element that you don't feel like dealing with.

They only wanted to do a two-parter of getting past the Borg, not a 100-parter (and they have every right to want to do it like that). And one-shots are also a Trek staple, like how they never thought out using that "Huge Deflector cannon" weapon again with a phaser frequency that the Borg HADN'T adapted to. Or how they only used renegade Jem'Hadar once or so in DS9.

OTOH, Voyager spent a considerable amount of time running from INFERIOR enemies for reasons that were never adequately explained (the Kazon, for example). If you can't run from the Borg, who can you run from?

They weren't so much on the run from those guys, as those guys just kept bothering them while they were going through their space and it was easier to survive given that they weren't superior to VOY by a huge margin. The Borg would likely be actively chasing them with VOY always running away without even considering tricking them into something that would destroy them.

That's what people do when they're about to get their asses kicked, they RUN LIKE HELL. Standing your ground against a clearly superior foe when you have nothing to gain in doing so isn't courage, it's incompetence.

But in BOBW and Descent they still managed to destroy the Borg ship even after initially running. And their attempts to evade them failed in both cases too (the Borg KNEW they were in the Nebula, and in Descent they knew that the ENT-D had to come out of the corona eventually and were there to get them when it happened until Crusher used the Sun as a weapon). VOY would have to find a way of destroying the Borg ship chasing them too, and even they spread it out over several episode then the audience would just think they were cowards or incompetents for not doing it as fast as the ENT-D crew did.

 

[I am not Spock]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

Q Who, Best of Both Worlds, First Contact, and Scorpion were all great.

I Borg, Descent, and several VOY Borg eps I have problems with. 'Unity' is a case in point.

 

[Eckauskas]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

After Q Who?

I thought the use of them there, and the context was brilliant.

They were literally an unstoppable force, shown by Q to show the humans what was out there, a reminder basically of how vunerable humanity was.

After that i thought they really weakened with every appearance, eventually becoming cannon-fodder for god-ger

Best Of Both Worlds should have been it for the Borg. That episode made them seem totally invincible, only for them to fall away through time.

BOBW was, the first time I saw it, a rather scary episode. I utterly loved it, my favourite episode of any series.

'Mr Worf, dispatch a sub-space message to Admiral Hansen. We have engaged the Borg.' - Chilling.

But then Voyager made them seem no more threatening than the Romulans.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

When the Borg first appeared they had the affect of sending chills down the viewer's spine.

The voice, the hugeness, the sense of being invincible.

After BOBW, with each episode, that affect diminished more and more.

They became less dangerous because the Voyager crew always outsmarted them, even going as far to "mess" with them

After "Scorpion" (pretty good episode) it seems like Voyager was just harvesting the Borg for ideas.

I think they harvested it too much, there are lots of contradictions with TNG as a result.

The cube that attacked the Alpha quadrant was destroyed, yet they were Klingon Borg?

The Borg concept was exploited too much.....

 

[Eckauskas]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

The cube that attacked the Alpha quadrant was destroyed, yet they were Klingon Borg?

Could a Klingon ship have been sent to the Delta Quadrant as some sort of mishap? Perhaps involving the Caretaker/wormhole?

 

[Anwar]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

The Borg had already been to the Alpha Quadrant before "Q Who?", they were the ones who attacked the Neutral Zone outposts in "The Neutral Zone". So, seeing any Federation species and Romulans who had been assimilated makes sense. We can postulate that the Borg also attacked Klingon/Cardassian/Ferengi ships that were alone and assimilated them too, their disappearance being chalked up to "Ship lost in deep space" MIA type stuff.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

They weren't even using nanoprobes at the time, so that's a non-starter.

What? Of course they were. Nanoprobes is how they assimilate other beings.

Out of universe, of course, they were not; the concept of nanoprobes was invented later on--after First Contact, if I remember correctly--to justify the whole "assimilate you with just a touch" thing. Picard, on the other hand, was SURGICALLY altered, starting with a basic deep-brain implant and followed by upgrades that progressively borgified him more and more as time went on. Even Crusher explicitly says that if it wasn't for the link to the collective, removing his Borg implants would be (and indeed, WAS) a fairly routine surgical procedure.

The in-universe reason is rather tricky. It may be that that particular cube just didn't use nanoprobes, or that the nanoprobes themselves are a technology the Borg acquired only recently, probably not long before "Unity," since the crew of that particular ship was able to de-assimilate themselves just by virtue of having been disconnected. Borg nanoprobe technology was probably in the prototype stages at the time, since several Borg drones recovered by Voyager DID have injection tubules and let the drones themselves were not carrying them.

Actually, I'd be happier if the Borg never bothered to ASSIMILATE anyone at all. We saw in Q-Who they apparently raise their own young, so why would they need to assimilate people in the first place? As Q said, they're only interested in your technology, raw materials to be consumed. I think the only reason to ever take live captives from the ships and worlds they assimilate would be to eviscerate them for spare parts and organ/tissue replacements for their own drones.

You make an excellent point. The Borg nursery certainly implied that they "cultivate" their own people. But I look upon that as the foundation... when they're not acquiring other species, they have to reproduce in order to grow the population. The spare parts thing is way too messy to really work, at a bacteria level.

It worked well enough for the Vidiians. Besides, it would add an extra dimension of menace to the Borg. We've seen what they do to the starships they capture, slicing them apart with a cutting beam to enhance their own ship. I happen to think being surgically eviscerated while still alive is slightly more unsettling than being assimilated into a giant hive mind.

Frankly, this is because being part of a hivemind isn't all that scary to me... maybe I've been spending too much time on 4chan?

 

[Anwar]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

I can't remember where I heard this, but originally in FC they weren't going to use nanoprobes but would surgically alter and implant devices in the captured Fleet personnel to "Borg" them. But it got so messy they switched to the nanoprobe idea to give them less than an R rating.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

Let me get this straight: you think "made up technobabble and convenient psychic trick that inexplicably works exactly the way it's supposed to work" is better than "Take a huge personal risk and in the face of desperate odds."

Are you SURE you weren't on Voyager's writing staff?

No, I think that using a hostile enemy's method of communication (Telepathy) against them and framing another hostile enemy in the way (The Borg) for it to get both to destroy each other long enough to get by both of them (and hopefully get them to destroy each other enough that they aren't a threat anymore) without needlessly risking the safety of the crew is a better idea than thinking that maybe, just MAYBE these guys will blast away at each other when I provoke one and fly into the others' space.

A plan that depends on FIVE maybes is better than a plan that depends on ONE.

It's just that, looking back, no one ever gave anything the show ever did a fair chance the way TNG/DS9 did and only tuned in to heckle it or ridicule it from day one.

If by "day one" you mean "halfway through season three," you might have a point. I'm a trekkie from a family of trekkies; we tuned into Voyager every episode for the entire first season. We cut them every break imaginable, we gave them plenty of time. We looked the other way on the lack of character development, the sloppy story structure, the peculiar emphasis on technobabble and an even more peculiar emphasis on exploration and scientific research in a show that was supposed to be about a ship lost in deep space trying to get back home. We told ourselves, "It's only the first season, they're still getting their stride." A few of us dropped out, I and a few die hards said "It's slowly getting better; second season's pretty good. How about 'Basics'? That was sweet!" (Hell, I even made myself look the other way after "Threshold." My Dad, god bless him, still does).

About halfway through Season Four, though, most of us had run out of excuses. Even my dad--the last of my clan who still calls himself a Voyager fan--can only bring himself to tolerate the one episode in four that was actually watchable.

You talk about this like nobody ever gave Voyager a fair chance. The fact is we [the fanbase, most of us] gave it PLENTY of chances. It definitely got a warmer reception than Enterprise did, and obviously higher ratings to boot, since it somehow managed to hold on for a whole seven seasons.

They had established artificial means of mind control

LOL so has the CIA. That doesn't mean anyone at the Pentagon knows how to telepathically talk to aliens.

Just have Tuvok suggest with the Doctor that maybe if all the psychics onboard tried their hardest to call out to the 8472...

Yeah, I get it. You think psychics are cool. Well, it's your baby, I'll let you call it beautiful if you like.

That makes sense, but given how in cases like that the audience DOES need to be spoonfed they'd have to mention that in some kind of debriefing or something. Maybe Neelix asks why the Borg haven't come for them and someone explains their sensors aren't great as long-range.

Or it could be as simple as someone on the bridge mentioning that Borg only use their scanning beams to identify targets of interest, they prefer to gather detailed information up close and personal. As long as you give them a wide berth and don't draw attention to yourself, they'll usually ignore you (and you could have Neelix say something like "Reminds me of the Talaxian mountain wolf. They're very vicious, but they never just up and attack you, they try to sniff you first to see if you're edible.").

I don't know, personally. But given all the folks they've assimilated they must understand the concept. And they HAD to have encountered powerful species who could destroy them before so maybe a state of combat beyond "assimilate" does exist for them ("adapting" to a powerful species and all).

You mean, introduce the 8472 before "Scorpion" and their psychic mind that can be contacted, so that it is more like "Wait, remember those super-powerful aliens who only speak telepathically? Why don't we call out to them and lure them to the Borg?".

Or

"We're about to run into where we think Borg space is in a month. Aw damn, first we've run into these other aliens from another dimension that are ignoring us so far but are capable of blowing up entire planets and we STILL have the Borg in front of us too. Wait, why don't we trick them into fighting each other long enough for us to get by? They're telepathic, right? And our psychics got a message from those guys earlier so maybe we can call THEM and get them to head into Borg space."

Something like that. It would definitely give the audience a sense that the ending solution is routed in a pre-existing chain of events and doesn't simply manifest out of thin air just because the crew really needs it to.

They had too many civilians to take care of to waste time on a military mission. And when the Pegasus arrived in NuBSG the Cylons lost all their threatening firepower until the Pegasus was destroyed by the reset button.

I would consider the entire "Occupation of New Caprica" arc to be pretty damn threatening, but whatever.

But in all those movies (except maybe Salvation, I haven't seen it) they still managed to destroy the pursuing robot.

In the end, yes. After spending two hours RUNNING FROM IT. Even in Salvation both the resistance and the unaffiliated characters spend most of their time hiding from/avoiding terminators, either waiting for a clear shot, or hoping to survive long enough to exploit a possible weakness. You only destroy the Terminator because that's the only way to stop the fucking thing from chasing you, and even if you SUCCEED, you still wind up getting your ass kicked.

The Borg are kinda like that. They can't be bargained with, they can't be reasoned with, they don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and they absolutely will not stop--EVER--until you are assimilated.

Well, that was resolved super-fast I admit but I saw the idea: The 8472 were drunk with their perceived superiority that when they DID lose to VOY's modified Borg weapon it made them rethink their stance. As in "Uh-oh, we can't strut around like the Big Man anymore since they can kill us now." and decided to try something other than killing.

Yeah, sure... they go from "The Weak Shall Perish!" to "We were only doing it because we felt threatened by you. We're really sorry."

They only wanted to do a two-parter of getting past the Borg, not a 100-parter (and they have every right to want to do it like that). And one-shots are also a Trek staple, like how they never thought out using that "Huge Deflector cannon" weapon again with a phaser frequency that the Borg HADN'T adapted to.

I think we've been over this once before... the only way to know which phaser frequencies the Borg HAVEN'T adapted to is to hit them with EVERY frequency and see which one works. With Drones you don't have this problem since only half of them are even shielded, but the cube won't give you time to start blasting it with deflector beams and then hanging dead in space while your chief engineer spends the next day and a half putting the engines back together ("Riker to Locutus... er... that frequency wasn't effective either. Would you kindly hold still for a few hours while we make repairs and try again?")

Anyway, the point is if you're only interested in doing one-shot deals, then you need to come up with a one-shot premise. As it stands, Voyager even wound up compressing the entire "Year of Hell" arc--what was originally planned to dominate an entire season--into a two-part special with a reset button. Compressing "Epic War Between Two Enormously Powerful Enemies" into a two hour special has many of the same problems, as did Best of Both Worlds for reasons that have already been thoroughly analyzed.

Any time you try to do something epic in the space of a single episode, the results are slightly awkward. TNG partly avoided this problem by limiting the invasion to a single ship; Scorpion, arguably, could have saved themselves alot of trouble by trumping the idea that Borg even have a well-defined "space" and make the entire episode about a conflict between a single cube and a small fleet of bioships it just happened to piss off somehow.

That's what people do when they're about to get their asses kicked, they RUN LIKE HELL. Standing your ground against a clearly superior foe when you have nothing to gain in doing so isn't courage, it's incompetence.

But in BOBW and Descent they still managed to destroy the Borg ship even after initially running. And their attempts to evade them failed in both cases too

Because in neither case was EVASION their goal. In BOBW their objective was to stall the Borg until the fleet was gathered in Wolf-359. In Descent, they were trying to rescue their stranded crewmen, who were themselves sent to rescue Data.

You'll also note that in neither case were the Borg especially interested in pursuing the Enterprise once they had what they wanted. Remember, the Borg aren't being cast as mere two dimensional villains, they don't have a Darth Vader complex where they MUST stamp out any trace of their mortal enemy the accursed Federation (at least, not if we leave the Borg queen the hell out of the picture). They're not interested in power or political conquest as you know it. They're just users: they crave technology and raw materials. Your computers, your electronics, your engine parts are LUNCH to them. Like any predator, if you can avoid them long enough, they'll take off and look for easier prey.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

The Borg had already been to the Alpha Quadrant before "Q Who?", they were the ones who attacked the Neutral Zone outposts in "The Neutral Zone". So, seeing any Federation species and Romulans who had been assimilated makes sense. We can postulate that the Borg also attacked Klingon/Cardassian/Ferengi ships that were alone and assimilated them too, their disappearance being chalked up to "Ship lost in deep space" MIA type stuff.

Well, there's also that lost Klingon ship from "The Emissary" on its super secret mission to God knows where. It's entirely possible that K'Tamok's mission was trace the origin of a Borg ship that very sudden carried off one of their colonies and figure out who the hell the new aliens were and what they wanted from the Empire.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

A plan that depends on FIVE maybes is better than a plan that depends on ONE.

I just don't think a "Fire at them and get them to chase us close to the Borg Armada" works out that well. The 8472 aren't as simple-minded as the Reavers were, they'd see VOY heading for a massive armada and think "Wait, why are we following them into an obvious attack?".

If by "day one" you mean "halfway through season three," you might have a point.

Well, it is what I mean.

an even more peculiar emphasis on exploration and scientific research in a show that was supposed to be about a ship lost in deep space trying to get back home.

I always thought the "Lost in space heading home" type story was a bad one, which is why I say VOY's very premise had problems. In a rewrite I did I made it more like Farscape where they just didn't know where they were at all, which justified staying in one spot longer and exploring.

You talk about this like nobody ever gave Voyager a fair chance.

I don't think they did, they were expecting something that wasn't what the show was going to be about in the first place (a "grim and gritty" survival drama with unlikable characters like NuBSG). And then there was the underlying sexism about Janeway.

LOL so has the CIA. That doesn't mean anyone at the Pentagon knows how to telepathically talk to aliens.

We saw the Ferengi have a device that can implant scenarios and such into peoples' minds. Basically an artificial telepath in and of itself. Is it THAT much a stretch they could also find a way of boosting ones' natural power if they can synthesize that power to begin with?

Yeah, I get it. You think psychics are cool. Well, it's your baby, I'll let you call it beautiful if you like.

I just figure "Okay, the beat the Borg by using their Collective mind against them. Why not just trick and use the 8472 by using their telepathy against them?"

Or it could be as simple as someone on the bridge mentioning that Borg only use their scanning beams to identify targets of interest, they prefer to gather detailed information up close and personal. As long as you give them a wide berth and don't draw attention to yourself, they'll usually ignore you (and you could have Neelix say something like "Reminds me of the Talaxian mountain wolf. They're very vicious, but they never just up and attack you, they try to sniff you first to see if you're edible.").

Having the Bridge crew discuss stuff they should already know amongst themselves just comes off as random info-dumping. Having one of the outsiders like Neelix or Kes just ask randomly why the Borg haven't detected them at long-range and get an answer about them not using long-range scanners might work better.

Something like that. It would definitely give the audience a sense that the ending solution is routed in a pre-existing chain of events and doesn't simply manifest out of thin air just because the crew really needs it to.

I don't see much difference. Hacking into Picard to try and find a weakness in the Collective only came up in the last half-hour of part two, whereas Scorpion similarly established in the first encounter that the 8472 are a telepathic species. Afterwards, and remarking that Kes could hear them when no one else could, would reasonably lead up to them trying to use their telepathy against them and the Borg.

I would consider the entire "Occupation of New Caprica" arc to be pretty damn threatening, but whatever.

And they didn't have either the Galactica or the Pegasus at all to help them during then. When they showed up, they smashed through the Basestars, got everyone off the planet, and then the need for the reset button resulted in the idiotic destruction of the Pegasus.

In the end, yes. After spending two hours RUNNING FROM IT.

Even still, the resolution is with them finding some way to destroy it.

Yeah, sure... they go from "The Weak Shall Perish!" to "We were only doing it because we felt threatened by you. We're really sorry."

More like "Well, the only contact we ever had was from the Borg and we could whoop them but good so we figured that being as weak as they are they should perish. Once you started killing us that made US the weak ones too so we had to rethink some things."

Which reasonably could have been better received if it were stretched out longer, but the cost of the 8472 put the kibosh on that.

I think we've been over this once before... the only way to know which phaser frequencies the Borg HAVEN'T adapted to is to hit them with EVERY frequency and see which one works.

By FC it seems that the Feds have weaponry the Borg can't adapt to anymore (otherwise the weapons wouldn't have scratched the Cube before Picard got there). You'd think they'd just find a way of channeling whatever it is about the new phasers and quantum torpedoes that make them effective into a big cannon and just blow them away with it in a single shot.

Scorpion, arguably, could have saved themselves alot of trouble by trumping the idea that Borg even have a well-defined "space" and make the entire episode about a conflict between a single cube and a small fleet of bioships it just happened to piss off somehow.

But if the issue was that the 8472 existed at all, then the negativity would still be the same.

I do agree that the Borg were overpowered by giving them such a massive area of space and numbers, though.

Because in neither case was EVASION their goal. In BOBW their objective was to stall the Borg until the fleet was gathered in Wolf-359. In Descent, they were trying to rescue their stranded crewmen, who were themselves sent to rescue Data.

But their examples of triumphing over the Borg would still cause negative reactions to the VOY crew not managing to do the same in THEIR Borg encounters as well. They'd just go "Well, before the good guys only had their one ship so why is it these losers can't find some way of epically defeating the Borg before moving on?"

Like any predator, if you can avoid them long enough, they'll take off and look for easier prey.

But if they are that insatiable and aren't used to anyone getting away, then they shouldn't leave until they get you. We've never seen one case of the Borg ever just "losing interest" and moving on to somewhere else before. Except in BOBW but that was because they're greater goal never included the ENT-D in the first place. In the VOY scenario there wouldn't be any bigger goal than just getting VOY.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

With the Klingons and Romulans that could explain it.

One problem is that for humans it was specifically mentioned in a few episodes that they were assimilated at Wolf 359.

That inconsistency is something even the casual fan would notice.

Too many trips to the well, IMO.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

Yes, but we also never found out what happened to the Jouret IV colonists either. Most likely, after a major assimilation they send some of the folks back to the DQ on one of the Spheres in the Cube.

 

[Tulin]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

They had been pretty much emasculated by the time Hugh showed up on TNG but VOY killed them dead.

Like most things VOY touched, the Borg were completely worthless by the end of that show.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

That's what happens when you invent an enemy that requires cannon fodder to be sacrificed to them, and then put them in a show with absolutely no cannon fodder.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

A plan that depends on FIVE maybes is better than a plan that depends on ONE.

I just don't think a "Fire at them and get them to chase us close to the Borg Armada" works out that well. The 8472 aren't as simple-minded as the Reavers were, they'd see VOY heading for a massive armada and think "Wait, why are we following them into an obvious attack?".

Why wouldn't they? Unlike the Borg, Species 8472 DOES have a concept of war. The Borg are their sworn enemy, I doubt they'll miss an opportunity to strike a blow against a large Borg armada.

OTOH, you yourself are making the assumption that Species 8472 really IS that single minded since you think they're going to respond to a telepathic signal from an unknown source with anything other than a "Who are you? Where'd you get this number?" The only unknown in this case is whether or not Species 8472 hates the Borg more than they hate random interlopers who attack without warning. Reduce the number of unknowns, and let the rest depend on the crew's collective skill and/or luck.

I don't think they did, they were expecting something that wasn't what the show was going to be about in the first place (a "grim and gritty" survival drama with unlikable characters like NuBSG). And then there was the underlying sexism about Janeway.

I don't know who you've been talking to, but for everyone I know, we were very much expecting to see "Star Trek in Very Very Deep Space." On some level that's exactly what it was, but very poorly executed all around.

We saw the Ferengi have a device that can implant scenarios and such into peoples' minds. Basically an artificial telepath in and of itself. Is it THAT much a stretch they could also find a way of boosting ones' natural power if they can synthesize that power to begin with?

Yes, I'm sure they could simply download the plans for a Ferengi thought amplifier off the internet and then with no experience whatsoever in working with such a device, quickly modify it to do something it was never designed to do in the first place.

I just figure "Okay, the beat the Borg by using their Collective mind against them. Why not just trick and use the 8472 by using their telepathy against them?"

Because that would require CAPTURING one of the 8472s and somehow getting it to cooperate with them, if even unwittingly. Even in TNG, they only managed to trick the Borg using equipment and technology that was already available and only slightly repurposed for the job. It's not as if Data pulled some kind of quantum transmitter out of his ass and used it to successfully hack the Borg ship without otherwise knowing anything about their systems (or, if you prefer, Naomi Wildman locking out the bridge controls by repeatedly pushing a five-button combination on Seven's alcove).

Having the Bridge crew discuss stuff they should already know amongst themselves just comes off as random info-dumping.

Indeed. It's a requirement of stage play that information be refreshed and reestablished from time to time to keep everything in context (believability is important in these types of things). The tricky part is finding a way to do this that doesn't seem forced or corny or disruptive. The easiest way of doing this is by voiceover narration, but Star Trek has never employed a narrator, so the second easiest method is lampshading/idiot balling. Take a long from the movie Space Camp:

Andie: Great. No oxygen was provided for the life support system.
Rudy: What about the propulsion system? We can direct the liquid oxygen from there.
Katherine: The propulsion system uses nitrogen tetroxide. We wanna breathe, not dry-clean our lungs!

Whether Rudy knows this or not is kind of irrelevant (he probably should, considering how much studying he's supposedly been doing). The point is most of the AUDIENCE doesn't know this, and it needs to be established that the two systems are incompatible.

And they didn't have either the Galactica or the Pegasus at all to help them during then. When they showed up, they smashed through the Basestars, got everyone off the planet, and then the need for the reset button resulted in the idiotic destruction of the Pegasus.

I think you and I saw two completely different episodes, as I vividly remember that Galactica came out of that battle on fire and shot full of holes. I also remember that Pegasus managed to destroy two out of the five base stars by CRASHING INTO THEM. Not exactly overwhelming tactical superiority (which also partly explains why the two ships initially got the hell out of dodge rather than fight and defend the planet).

By FC it seems that the Feds have weaponry the Borg can't adapt to anymore (otherwise the weapons wouldn't have scratched the Cube before Picard got there). You'd think they'd just find a way of channeling whatever it is about the new phasers and quantum torpedoes that make them effective into a big cannon and just blow them away with it in a single shot.

Except the deflector blast can't be used while the Cube is at warp, and you can't power up for a deflector blast while still in pursuit. The fact that they fought the cube all the way to Earth kind of suggests the Borg didn't bother to stop and fight and just power dove straight through, with Starfleet hacking away at them with phasers and torpedoes all the way. If the whole Time Travel thing was the plan all along, then the cube was just a carrier for Queenie's TARDIS that for some reason could only open the time portal while it was right next to Earth.

Of course, not much about the plot of FC makes a great deal of sense to begin with, so the lack of deflector blasts may well be one of them.

Because in neither case was EVASION their goal. In BOBW their objective was to stall the Borg until the fleet was gathered in Wolf-359. In Descent, they were trying to rescue their stranded crewmen, who were themselves sent to rescue Data.

But their examples of triumphing over the Borg would still cause negative reactions to the VOY crew not managing to do the same in THEIR Borg encounters as well.

Why? Voyager's entire premise was fundamentally different. Nobody expected Janeway to single handedly hunt down and wipe out the entire collective, in fact her preference for doing so was kind of annoying. Like "Excuse me, you're lost on the ass end of the galaxy... don't you have better things you should be doing right now?"

They'd just go "Well, before the good guys only had their one ship so why is it these losers can't find some way of epically defeating the Borg before moving on?"

Fuck it. Switching to automated responses: YOU ARE NOT LOCUTUS, YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR THE TREKKIE HIVE MIND. Stop pretending like you know what everyone else would do as if that excuses what the writers failed to do..

But if they are that insatiable and aren't used to anyone getting away

I never said they were insatiable. I said they were PREDATORY. They're also pretty damn smart, and are able to make a cost-benefit analysis about how much energy is worth a particular acquisition. If you make it too expensive for them, they'll look for easier prey.

If you're really unlucky, then you're the easiest prey around, in which case you have to find a way to kill them. Otherwise, it might just be a cat-and-mouse episode where you get to outwit them and count your blessings.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

OTOH, you yourself are making the assumption that Species 8472 really IS that single minded since you think they're going to respond to a telepathic signal from an unknown source with anything other than a "Who are you? Where'd you get this number?"

At the time, they were xenocidal so I'd assume they'd just kill anything from our dimension that called out to them. Like I said, I based the whole idea off of the "Psi-Emitter" thing from Starcraft. Only difference being that in the game the protagonists stole the device from the bad guys instead of building it on their own.

I don't know who you've been talking to, but for everyone I know, we were very much expecting to see "Star Trek in Very Very Deep Space." On some level that's exactly what it was, but very poorly executed all around.

Mainly my family, and folks who I watched the show with 15 years ago. They wrote it off mid-way through the premiere.

Yes, I'm sure they could simply download the plans for a Ferengi thought amplifier off the internet and then with no experience whatsoever in working with such a device, quickly modify it to do something it was never designed to do in the first place.

If the ENT-D team could modify the Deflector Dish into a huge phaser cannon I don't see how changing what kind of mental pattern a psychic device is meant to tap into would be that hard. It would basically be "Okay, just change it from "human brainwaves" to the brainwaves recorded in Kes when she talked to the 8472".

Because that would require CAPTURING one of the 8472s and somehow getting it to cooperate with them, if even unwittingly. Even in TNG, they only managed to trick the Borg using equipment and technology that was already available and only slightly repurposed for the job. It's not as if Data pulled some kind of quantum transmitter out of his ass and used it to successfully hack the Borg ship without otherwise knowing anything about their systems (or, if you prefer, Naomi Wildman locking out the bridge controls by repeatedly pushing a five-button combination on Seven's alcove).

Kes gets a message from the 8472, then decides to try and reply back to them. I mean, Spock somehow got messages from V'Ger all throughout TMP and no one thought it was strange he was the only semi-psychic that happened to.

I think you and I saw two completely different episodes, as I vividly remember that Galactica came out of that battle on fire and shot full of holes. I also remember that Pegasus managed to destroy two out of the five base stars by CRASHING INTO THEM. Not exactly overwhelming tactical superiority (which also partly explains why the two ships initially got the hell out of dodge rather than fight and defend the planet).

Prior episodes showed the Pegasus being able to fight off Basestars, they only resorted to stupidity like ramming them to get rid of the Pegasus for the reset button's sake.

Why? Voyager's entire premise was fundamentally different. Nobody expected Janeway to single handedly hunt down and wipe out the entire collective, in fact her preference for doing so was kind of annoying. Like "Excuse me, you're lost on the ass end of the galaxy... don't you have better things you should be doing right now?"

The TOS Ent and TNG Ent were still basically "On their own" vessels, managing to overcome all the weirdness they encountered. Not saying she should've destroyed the Collective but she should have been able to overcome any Borg in the way like Kirk overcame his obstacles and Picard his.

Fuck it. Switching to automated responses: YOU ARE NOT LOCUTUS, YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR THE TREKKIE HIVE MIND. Stop pretending like you know what everyone else would do as if that excuses what the writers failed to do..

They didn't want to be sexists for having the ship Captained by a woman to be a bunch of losers who ran from everything. Seems clear to me. If Janeway was a guy then maybe weaker stances from the crew and running away with their tails tucked between their legs would've worked out better.

It sort of hurt that it was preceded by shows where the heroics crews always overcame everything. Farscape and NuBSG didn't have that "They were heroes but these guys are losers" stigma.

I never said they were insatiable. I said they were PREDATORY. They're also pretty damn smart, and are able to make a cost-benefit analysis about how much energy is worth a particular acquisition. If you make it too expensive for them, they'll look for easier prey.

But have we ever seen any evidence of that in the show? They just seem to keep coming and not stop in their goals. Sounds insatiable to me.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

At the time, they were xenocidal so I'd assume they'd just kill anything from our dimension that called out to them.

So they would simply kill anything in our dimension that they encounter, PERIOD. All you have to do is bring them into proximity of a large Borg fleet and let the fireworks begin.

If the ENT-D team could modify the Deflector Dish into a huge phaser cannon I don't see how changing what kind of mental pattern a psychic device is meant to tap into would be that hard.

Because the Enterprise' engineering team was specifically trained to work with that equipment, they had experience working with it, they had its specifications, design notes, they knew its tolerances, AND they had access to it long enough and intimately enough to figure out how to make those modifications... and even then, it still almost exploded.

Is anyone on Voyager experienced in working with Ferengi thought makers? Or in light of the fact that none of them served on the Enterprise, what makes you think any of them had ever HEARD of such a device, let alone knew how to make one, let alone knew how to modify one?

Kes gets a message from the 8472, then decides to try and reply back to them. I mean, Spock somehow got messages from V'Ger all throughout TMP

Spock never replied to V'ger telepathically. As it stands, it took several minutes to figure out how to do that with ordinary radio.

Kes is smart cookie, but she's no Spock.

Prior episodes showed the Pegasus being able to fight off Basestars

"Fight off" in the sense of "They shot us full of holes, boarded us and then killed a third of the crew and we somehow made it out alive." Color me impressed.

The TOS Ent and TNG Ent were still basically "On their own" vessels, managing to overcome all the weirdness they encountered. Not saying she should've destroyed the Collective but she should have been able to overcome any Borg in the way like Kirk overcame his obstacles and Picard his.

Perhaps you could give me an example of when it was that Scotty and his engineering team worked to create an alien device completely out of thin air that was capable of luring an entire alien race into a genocidal conflict with another alien race.

Or maybe--just MAYBE--the more dramatically pleasing solution is also the simplest, the least complicated, and the most suspenseful?

I never said they were insatiable. I said they were PREDATORY. They're also pretty damn smart, and are able to make a cost-benefit analysis about how much energy is worth a particular acquisition. If you make it too expensive for them, they'll look for easier prey.

But have we ever seen any evidence of that in the show?

Yes. The El Aurians are still alive. In point of fact, so is Icheb's entire civilization, after a fashion, having been reduced to a technical level that the Borg no longer find interesting.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Anyone else think they should have left the Borg well enough alone

So they would simply kill anything in our dimension that they encounter, PERIOD. All you have to do is bring them into proximity of a large Borg fleet and let the fireworks begin.

And then find some way of getting away despite both species have superior FTL to them (whereas in "Serenity" neither the Alliance nor the Reavers were faster than the good guys) and easily being able to blast them apart in a single shot before the battle heats up. A safer and more intelligent way would be to get them fighting without having to rely on such an unstable strategy as "Hope we get there before they kill us".

Is anyone on Voyager experienced in working with Ferengi thought makers? Or in light of the fact that none of them served on the Enterprise, what makes you think any of them had ever HEARD of such a device, let alone knew how to make one, let alone knew how to modify one?

Spock never replied to V'ger telepathically. As it stands, it took several minutes to figure out how to do that with ordinary radio.

Kes is smart cookie, but she's no Spock.

Then we go with my other suggestion of Tuvok (who'd know something about psychic ability) suggesting that the combined psychic power of all the telepathic species onboard try to resonate off of one another to get the 8472's attention. Or they manage to capture the 8472 that attacked Harry and use IT as the focal point for their call.

"Fight off" in the sense of "They shot us full of holes, boarded us and then killed a third of the crew and we somehow made it out alive." Color me impressed.

I was referring to how Pegasus could just go right at Basestars, fire off nukes and blow them up. Before the Pegasus arrived the Basestars were like instant doom, afterwards they were beatable.

Perhaps you could give me an example of when it was that Scotty and his engineering team worked to create an alien device completely out of thin air that was capable of luring an entire alien race into a genocidal conflict with another alien race.

Stuff like finding out how to use the engines' of the Constellation to destroy the Doomsday Machine (yeah I know it was more because Decker killed himself), creating a bomb powerful enough to kill the Space Amoeba, etc.

Or maybe--just MAYBE--the more dramatically pleasing solution is also the simplest, the least complicated, and the most suspenseful?

It makes the VOY crew seem suicidal and not even bothering to try anything else. At least with the "Ram it!" moment in BOBW it was only AFTER trying anything more complicated failed.

Yes. The El Aurians are still alive. In point of fact, so is Icheb's entire civilization, after a fashion, having been reduced to a technical level that the Borg no longer find interesting.

Good point, and they did say that they didn't go for the Kazon for being less advanced. The continued existence of others like the Vidiians, Hirogen, Krenim and others shows that either they can fight off the Borg or they weren't interested (although they are more advanced than the Feds in some ways).