Biggest Flaw in Frst Contact

[ToddKent]

Apologies if this has already been covered but after the umpteenth viewing of First Contact it occurred to me that the Borg should have been much more prepared. For example, Picard uses a machine gun to kill a few Borgs and Worf uses a blade to incapacitate one.

But after all the years of assimilating various alien cultures it seems logical that the Borg had been exposed to bullets and blades and would have adapted to have appropriate defenses against such primitive weapons. Hell, if anything, the shields they use against phasers should be more than enough protection against such attacks.

Any thoughts?

 

[Aldo]

The bullets were from holographic weapons, perhaps they had never encountered such a weapon prior to that. I mean it's not like people would think to hide in a Holodeck when cybernetic Zombies were chasing you.

 

[Timo]

Naah. The Borg always sacrifice two or three Drones to the enemy attack. It's got nothing to do with being prepared: no matter how often our heroes apply hand phasers against them, the first couple of shots per adventure still count.

The Borg don't believe in being prepared. They believe in reacting and adapting, is all. Perhaps they get better intel that way?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[retroenzo]

Naah. The Borg always sacrifice two or three Drones to the enemy attack. It's got nothing to do with being prepared: no matter how often our heroes apply hand phasers against them, the first couple of shots per adventure still count.

The Borg don't believe in being prepared. They believe in reacting and adapting, is all. Perhaps they get better intel that way?

Yeah the sacrificial drones seem to be there to prod their enemy and make them show their hand. I can imagine that they send them in and go...

"Ah, energy weapons. Right. Activate modification 3243 - energy shields".
"Oh right. modulating energy weapons. Okay. Activate modification 3243 beta - modulating energy shields".
"Okay really? Bladed weapons. In that case, send in the heavily armoured drones."

Maybe that's the best way to beat the Borg is to keep weapons of every kind, from every culture. And just take them out by attrition.

 

[Relayer1]

I thougthought it's biggest problem was that it wasn't particularly good...

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Such low-tech wouldn't interest the Borg, if they found a race that solely utilised projectile or melee weapons they would be deemed inferior and therefore not worthy of assimilation, so however many drones were sacrificed on the initial contact/assessment would be necessary casualties.

 

[USS Firefly]

I thought the biggest flaw was that the Borg only send one cube or that they didn't go back in time while they still were in Borg space

 

[Jedi Marso]

2 Problems with FC:

1. They punched the time travel card- again. If Borg cubes are timeships that can travel to the past at will, then the Federation is toast. They can go back as far as they want and either destroy or assimilate every world in the Federation, and they can try over and over and over until they succeed.

2. The whole portrayal of ZC and the first warp flight not only made no sense whatsoever, it stomped pretty hard on some fairly well established fanon/canon. Why do you need a rocket engine to get into orbit to test a warp engine? It made it look as if we went from 20th Century tech to warp drive with nothing in between. Mankind would have been all over the solar system by that time, war or no war, and ZC wouldn't need to be living like a refugee in a camp in Montana while building the first warp driven ship.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

My main problem with FC was how they re-wrote some of the rules concerning the Borg. Like their preferred atmosphere being hot and moist. Yeah, sure bionic creatures like it hot and moist.

 

[Shalashaska]

It's good popcorn Trek, just not a standout, even if it's much better than Generations. It works technically and it's a good little story but it's missing something, an idea or concept under the surface that's deserving of a feature-length film. Even Generations, for all its flaws, was more ambitious.

It's fine, it achieved its goal as a fun popcorn flick, but you don't come away with anything that you didn't already know prior to watching the film. People can nitpick all they want about the Borg's time travel logic, Picard's turn to action Picard, the Borg Queen and her silliness, but they're not as important to me. It has a certain emptiness to it. It doesn't challenge you as a viewer, it doesn't have anything to say like many of the original films or the latter two reboot films.

It's fun, it's adventure, it's a good little roller coaster ride. Nothing wrong with that. But it could've been done on TNG, and in terms of the Borg it was, and it was done much better.

 

[Cyke101]

The bullets were from holographic weapons, perhaps they had never encountered such a weapon prior to that. I mean it's not like people would think to hide in a Holodeck when cybernetic Zombies were chasing you.

This is my reasoning, too. Had there been one or two more drones, maybe they would have adapted with forcefields to compensate.

 

[Kor]

It's good popcorn Trek, just not a standout, even if it's much better than Generations. It works technically and it's a good little story but it's missing something, an idea or concept under the surface that's deserving of a feature-length film. Even Generations, for all its flaws, was more ambitious.

It's fine, it achieved its goal as a fun popcorn flick, but you don't come away with anything that you didn't already know prior to watching the film. People can nitpick all they want about the Borg's time travel logic, Picard's turn to action Picard, the Borg Queen and her silliness, but they're not as important to me. It has a certain emptiness to it. It doesn't challenge you as a viewer, it doesn't have anything to say like many of the original films or the latter two reboot films.

It's fun, it's adventure, it's a good little roller coaster ride. Nothing wrong with that. But it could've been done on TNG, and in terms of the Borg it was, and it was done much better.

I agree.

Kor

 

[urbandefault]

Despite the Borg's hubris (resistance is futile), they were shown to be lacking on several occasions. Finding the holes in Borg "perfection" is something that apparently only Starfleet officers have ever been able to do.

Borg are scary, but they suck at smarts.

 

[uniderth]

The biggest flaw? The idea that you can go back in time and change stuff. Clearly if the Borg ever did go back in time to assimilate earth they failed, because even before the movie began, earth was never assimilated.

Next biggest flaw? Borg quantum torpedo explosive yield is no bigger than a 1990's movie pyrotechnics explosion.

 

[Kor]

I like the name-dropping of fractals when Data programmed the "fractal encryption code," as fractal geometry seemed to have a burst of popularity in the 1990s, so such a reference would obviously make Trek seem so very cutting edge.



Kor

 

[Tracy Trek]

Mankind would have been all over the solar system by that time, war or no war, and ZC wouldn't need to be living like a refugee in a camp in Montana while building the first warp driven ship.

Yes, wouldn't John Christopher's son Sean Jeffrey Christopher have made his space journeys long ago by this point?

 

[Tenacity]

wouldn't John Christopher's son Sean Jeffrey Christopher have made his space journeys long ago by this point?

In the Star Trek universe he did.

 

[Timo]

And that's the universe that the movie is compatible with. Super-rockets that can lift their own weight to translunar trajectories are common as muck and thus accessible to all sorts of hillbillies in the postwar chaos. This is not unlike aircraft being a dime in a dozen after WWI, giving birth to all-new industries often founded by lone crazy entrepreneurs; before the war no king could have afforded an aeroplane, after the war a random farmer could buy five.

As for time travel and the Borg ability to retry, we just have to assume the Borg got all they wanted. Which, as we already knew, is not the total destruction of the UFP, nor its immediate assimilation, because no other Borg attack has had such goals (or at least has been incompatible with the usual Borg means for attempting such)...

Timo Saloiniemi

 

[OtherGene]

In First Contact there's that memorable moment where the Borg Queen is finally revealed, slowly descending from the rafters of Engineering.

Except that for the whole time that headless body must have been standing around looking weird waiting to receive her. Or it wandered up, headless, to the landing spot also looking kind of weird. Data must have noticed it stood there, like a half finished shop mannequin or Kraftwerk gone wrong. Knowing old Data he probably thought "Any minute now a massive head attachment is going to get stuffed into that"

Also, after the flight of the Phoenix how did the crew get back? I didn't see any landing gear (although I accept it could've been secreted somewhere). But if the capsule parachuted back to Earth Apollo 13-style how did they recover the Phoenix for it to end up in the Smithsonian for Picard to visit as a boy. Also, the jettisoned rocket section, there was no way that could've been recovered to be put on display either.

OK, OK, yes I've just watched the movie for the first time in a while and after twenty years those two things have only just occurred to me.

 

[uniderth]

Also, after the flight of the Phoenix how did the crew get back? I didn't see any landing gear (although I accept it could've been secreted somewhere).

Apollo style landing perhaps.

But if the capsule parachuted back to Earth Apollo 13-style how did they recover the Phoenix for it to end up in the Smithsonian for Picard to visit as a boy.

Probably just sat in orbit until somebody brought it back.

Also, the jettisoned rocket section, there was no way that could've been recovered to be put on display either.

Yes, there could. Like this:

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