Best of Both Worlds Nitpick Special

[Nakita Akita]

I always thought at the end when Riker didn't want to stop the Borg feedback to keep the ship from exploding was his attempt to kill Picard and keep command of the Enterprise. The crew gave several good reasons to stop it, but he just said "I don't think so" knowing there was a serious risk to Picard.

Also, at Wolf 359, they said there were no life signs, but the DS9 pilot showed that was not the case. Of course, that came later, but even at the time BOBW II aired it seemed odd that there was no one left alive when a lot of the ships were still at least partially intact.

Maybe by the time the Enterprise showed up in the area all of the few survivors were already far away in the escape pods?
And they just meant that there were no survivors on the ships that were blown up.

 

[Timo]

We still don't know how many survivors there were overall. Just the Emissary and anybody lucky enough to be in the same divinely protected lifeboat with Him? Hundreds? Thousands? The average number of people lost per ship, as per "Drumhead", allows for any and all interpretations: ships deliberately pared down to combat crews could have been lost with all hands, while a high percentage of larger "peacetime" crews could have survived.

That an entire starship would have survived is also completely unconfirmed and daresay unsupported. Why would the Borg be that sloppy?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vanyel]

That an entire starship would have survived is also completely unconfirmed and daresay unsupported. Why would the Borg be that sloppy?

Wouldn't dialogue confirm that one ship survived. In "Best of Best Worlds Part II," Admiral Hanson says that they have assembled a fleet of 40 ships at Wolf 359. Then in "The Drumhead" retired Admiral Satie says that 39 ships were lost along with over 11,000 lives. That would be canon that 1 ship survived, whether or not it was salvageable is another story. Admiral Hanson also said the Klingons were sending ships, it's implied that it is to Wolf 359, but it could have been to intercept the Borg along the way to Wolf 359, or they didn't make it until after the 1701D arrived and left.

We don't know how many of the 11,000 lost were assimilated or how many more the Borg Cube could assimilate and take with them. The 40th ship may have been deemed no longer a threat and ignored. Hanson also mentions that the fleet would engage the Borg in 24 hours, that would mean the 1701D was at least 24 hours away from Wolf 359, most likely more. From what was shown in DS9's "Emissary," the battle probably did not take long. And whatever personnel the Borg took for assimilation could be assimilated en route. So we have a Borg cube with enough drones it can carry and/or needs and 1 ship that posed no threat and 1 ship on the way and possibly Klingons on the way too, it makes sense for the Borg to leave that last ship and continue with its mission. Once Drones were on Earth they would spread like a plague and even if the Cube were destroyed, Earth would be compromised and with Earth compromised, more Cubes could be sent.

Those are my thoughts anyway.

 

[MacLeod]

Yep, there is supporting dialouge to support that 1 ship survived the battle who knows perhaps it rescued the survivors in the escape pods and limped away from the battleground.

 

[Timo]

Wouldn't dialogue confirm that one ship survived.

No, there is no dialogue about surviving ships. Anything to that end is conjecture from dialogue, not confirmation.

In "Best of Best Worlds Part II," Admiral Hanson says that they have assembled a fleet of 40 ships at Wolf 359. Then in "The Drumhead" retired Admiral Satie says that 39 ships were lost along with over 11,000 lives. That would be canon that 1 ship survived, whether or not it was salvageable is another story.

Not really. Hanson said he was mobilizing far more than 40 ships, so 39 lost might leave 156 survivors for all we know - but OTOH 40 is a round number and in fact only 39 ships may ever have taken part.

From what was shown in DS9's "Emissary," the battle probably did not take long.

Yet the Cube still lingered when the E-D arrived: following some "eddy currents" took our heroes to the Cube in no time flat, despite the Cube being able to outrun the E-D if it so desired.

And whatever personnel the Borg took for assimilation could be assimilated en route.

OTOH, as some of those people ended up in Delta Quadrant, the Borg may have lingered for the purposes of turning the shipwrecks into further Cubes, ENT "Regeneration" style, and then overseen their launch.

If so, the Borg would again aim at perfection, disabling and converting every single vessel within range. And they do go for perfection in several ways on several occasions, down to hunting down individual survivors in "Dark Frontier" (I guess Guinan best beware!).

So we have a Borg cube with enough drones it can carry and/or needs and 1 ship that posed no threat and 1 ship on the way and possibly Klingons on the way too, it makes sense for the Borg to leave that last ship and continue with its mission.

It never made sense for the Borg to engage those 39 ships to begin with. Why stop rather than just go to Earth and assimilate the planet? It's not as if the Borg couldn't have gone past Wolf 359. Or through the blockade without stopping, ST:FC style. Or much minded if 39 ships did their worst while assimilation of Earth was proceeding.

Stopping to fight was probably a Locutus decision - that is, Picard sneakily suggesting that assimilating some starships would be good for the Collective, thus delaying the assimilation of Earth. If so, though, stopping one ship short would be silly, when the Borg could have stopped 39 ships short just as well.

Once Drones were on Earth they would spread like a plague and even if the Cube were destroyed, Earth would be compromised and with Earth compromised, more Cubes could be sent.

Can the Drones really spread like a plague? Assimilation is far from simple: without transporters, the clumsy zombies could never reach their victims. And even the injection of nanoprobes does not create all-new Drones: some surgery is needed in addition to that. Cubes may be crucially important to the assimilation of crowds.

Those are my thoughts anyway.

And that's the great thing about the Borg: after decades of exposure, some pretty basic things about them still remain open to debate. Trek rarely does alien aliens, but these worked out just perfect!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kirk Prime]

My nitpick actually gets to Voyager, which had an episode where there was some ex-drone assimilated at Wolf 359. Um, how could that be if there was one ship, and it was blown up?

 

[Timo]

ENT "Regeneration" provides one answer: any shipwreck can become a Borg ship on short notice.

VOY "Dark Frontier" provides another: the notion that Picard's encounters with the Borg would have been the first time there were Borg near Earth is false. The Borg are already everywhere, and probably have been for hundreds of millennia. There might be no shortage of Borg ships near Earth at the time of the adventure.

The same episode also shows what is not going on in that TNG adventure: the assimilation of Earth. The Borg handle such things differently, sending dozens of Cubes and hunting down every last single survivor. What more probably is happening in "Best of Both Worlds" is what we see in VOy "Child's Play", with the Borg teasing a planet in order to goad it into developing new and shiny survival techniques the Borg can then harvest.

So the Borg urge to press on with the single ship that has Locutus aboard might not tell about a shortage of Borg assets, merely of a desire to use a specific asset while others ferry assimilees to Delta (and Gamma and Beta and the far corners of Alpha).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kirk Prime]

None of that is even implied.

 

[Timo]

Of course not, because it had not been invented yet. But by the time VOY introduces Wolf 359 victims in Delta Quadrant, that show has already provided its own answers, which retroactively are very much implied.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gary7]

I posit that it was illogical and wasteful for the Borg to completely destroy vessels. All they'd need to do is disable navigation, computer control mechanisms and weapons arrays. Leave the rest of each vessel intact. This way you've got plenty of people to assimilate and intact ships to extract technology, plus raw materials. The wreckage we see is far more grave... and looks like little was salvageable.

 

[Timo]

To the contrary, that the wreckage even exists is proof enought that amazing restraint was displayed by the enemy. Elsewhere in Trek, it's almost completely unheard of for the losing ship to survive in wreckage form - the standard end result is a cheap-to-film fireball followed by nothing but stark vacuum remaining.

The art department couldn't drill too much out of their little plastic models lest they fall completely apart. So the extent of damage is only on the same order of that quoted as survivable for a Borg ship - or, conversely, when the Borg convert a ship into one of their own in "Regeneration", in no time flat, Borg components cover as much of her as there are holes in the Wolf 359 wrecks...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Prax]

I think there were multiple cubes. The whole thing was some kind of test. We know the Borg were operating in the area both before and after this episode. I think the were taking samples of federation species, technology, alloys, u name it, and sending it back to their Borgish Base in some Nebula somewhere. They were also testing Federation defenses, allies, networks, etc. The cube that was destroyed was meant to be.

This whole fiasco is basically the Borg version of first contact. Afterwards, the Feds will develop ways to beat the Borg, the Borg will attempt to assimilate those ways and thus come closer to perfection.