Destiny Why did they not... BEWARE Spoilers

[Sci]

So... you're telling me an extra three or four years wouldn't do any good? Best action is to sit and hope the tooth fairy comes and saves your ass?

Frankly, yes. Say you wait three or four more years? What does that mean? It means that the Borg come back in four years and exterminate you then because you'll have shot your wad back in '81 and you have no new superweapons they haven't adapted to already, and in the meantime, all hell breaks out -- if nothing within your space, then just outside it, thus rendering all your potential allies in a Borg invasion impotent, and all because you used a thalaron.

Really, you might as well just ask the Tooth Fairy to help you. It'd do about as much good.

Wow... just wow. We won't do anything because if, by chance, it is successful the bad guys might come back at a later date.

1) No, it's not that the bad guys might come back. They will, and then they will exterminate the Federation. It's not a possibility, it is an absolute certainty.

2) Not, "don't do anything." Pursue other means of neutralizing the Borg threat, up to and including actively soliciting the intervention of more powerful species such as the Caeliar. But trying to develop a new weapon against the Borg is a fool's errand that will end in the death of the Federation; weapons don't work against them.

Or it may cause some strife in the meantime.

Not might. WILL.

Essentially, I'm arguing that it's pointless to go down the thalaron route because there would be no real benefit -- that scenario still ends with the extermination of the Federation -- and the costs would be enormous. It's like deciding to react to a gun pointing at your head by taking up smoking; it accomplishes nothing and it hurts you in the meantime, and all that on top of being absolutely disgusting and immoral.

I mean, hell, at least Sisko's immoral decision during the Dominion War was effective. This wouldn't even be that.

If you destroy seven thousand-four hundred Borg cubes, it may take them a bit longer to recover than the times they sent one cube.

Maybe. Or maybe they'll divert seven thousand more cubes from the Beta Quadrant that hadn't been assigned to target the Federation before. Even if it buys the Federation time, that's just delaying the inevitable. The Borg had decided to exterminate the Federation -- that wasn't going to stop just because a small fraction of ships belonging to the most powerful space force in the Milky Way Galaxy was destroyed.

Plus, we do seem to be pretty adaptive on our own turning back more than one Borg invasion.

Nonsense. The Borg had never invaded en masse before; the Federation only barely defeated a single cube at a time (and then never before the damn thing reached Earth orbit). The idea that the Federation would be able to turn back yet another Borg fleet, especially after suffering the losses it had already suffered from the invasion of 2381, is bordering on delusional.

I'm just bewildered that people chose to just give-up.

I did not advocate just giving up. I said that developing a thalaron weapon would be about as useful as praying to the Tooth Fairy, because, at the end of the day, the inevitable result of either scenario would be the extermination or assimilation of the Federation.

Let's remember that Picard (which was the whole reason I responded in this thread) attempted to block contacting the Caeliar.

And he was wrong to do so.

The morality of Star Trek is not that far off from reality. There is the idealized version... what we want to be, there is also the realist...what we truly are. We are survivors and we would fight to the bitter end. It is who we are. I'm not sure that I would want to be part of a race that just gives up.

Again, I'm not saying just give up. I'm saying that the means to defeating the Borg threat cannot be found in conventional, symmetric warfare. If you want to gain power over the Borg, you have to do so asymmetrically, through nonconventional tactics -- such as convincing an allied species with vastly superior technology to penetrate the Collective consciousness, strip it of its motivating personality, and then dissolve the Collective, liberating every single drone in the universe simultaneously.

Picard said that someone would be better off dead than be a Borg drone in First Contact. If the Federation falls he is essentially condemning the galaxy to being enslaved by the Borg.

Which is why he was wrong to try to prevent contact with the Caeliar and wrong to try to prevent Hernandez from "impersonating a Queen."

You completely misunderstood the book. The Caeliar didn't kick anyone's anything. They redeemed the Borg. They saved the Borg, liberated them from the trap of Sedin's hunger.

Erm. Sort of? Depends on how you define "the Borg." I would argue that in the context of the Caeliar's final confrontation, the term "Borg" refers not to the drones or to the Queen (who is herself as much a slave to the Royal Protocol as the drones are slaves to her), but to the motivating personality and drive behind it all -- to Sedin. And Sedin was not redeemed. She was exposed as a mentally weak creature who had betrayed her own beliefs in the name of survival and then compounded that immoral choice by continuing to act immorally according to her most primitive drives.

Spoiler: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

She was no more redeemed than, say, Lord Voldemort was at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And they both had to be destroyed.

Fortunately Picard exercised better judgment here, with help from Geordi.

I'm still trying to figure out how having your race wiped out is somehow better judgement. Guess I'm just one of the simple masses.

How one acts in the face of death is just as important as how one lives.

Yeah, and whether or not you give your children a future is at least as important as both--if not more so.

I should be clear here:

In such an extreme scenario -- the honest-to-goodness extermination and extinction of every single species in the Federation and every species with the bad luck to be located near them -- I don't favor the idea of morality above all. I would have no compulsion against killing every single Borg drone and destroying every piece of Borg technology in the galaxy, because the Borg are not a species and it would therefore not be genocide. If they could build a thalaron weapon that would work, that would permanently end the Borg threat -- and make no mistake, that's what it would take to prevent the destruction of the Federation, the permanent end of everything Borg in existence -- then I'd be all for it. I don't favor making immoral choices when the stakes are high but not existential. But this is existential for both the Federation AND its neighbors.

But by the same time, I'd bloodly well want an immoral choice to work. If the Federation has to sell its soul to the Devil to save both itself and the entire galaxy, then so be it. But there's no point selling your soul to the Devil if he's trading you a defective product.

 

[nx1701g]

We are ignoring one critical thing dealing with the Thalaron Weapon. The Borg have learned to adapt in the past and could probably adapt to it eventually too. What happened when the Borg assimilated the weapon?

 

[DimesDan]

We are ignoring one critical thing dealing with the Thalaron Weapon. The Borg have learned to adapt in the past and could probably adapt to it eventually too. What happened when the Borg assimilated the weapon?

The Federation and all the powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants would be right royally screwed!

 

[Stevil2001]

What is innately immoral about thalaron weaponry? (Or atomic weaponry for that matter?) It strikes me that the problem is the fact that they cause mass destruction; they do not differentiate between military targets and civilian ones. But the thing about the Borg is... there are no civilian targets.

 

[JD]

Now what about if they did use the Thalaron and (temporarily) stopped the Borg? What's to stop the Alpha\Beta quadrant powers from using the weapon on each other before the Borg showed back up? If that happened then it would pretty much guarantee everyone's destruction when the Borg did show back up.

 

[Stevil2001]

What's to already stop them? Obviously the Romulans (or some faction thereof) already have the technology.

 

[BillJ]

We are ignoring one critical thing dealing with the Thalaron Weapon. The Borg have learned to adapt in the past and could probably adapt to it eventually too. What happened when the Borg assimilated the weapon?

The Federation and all the powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants would be right royally screwed!

I sure hope there was a touch of sarcasm there. How much more 'right royally screwed' could the Federation be at that point?

 

[BillJ]

We are ignoring one critical thing dealing with the Thalaron Weapon. The Borg have learned to adapt in the past and could probably adapt to it eventually too. What happened when the Borg assimilated the weapon?

I don't know... they may try to exterminate the Federation?

 

[JeremyW]

You know, I am enjoying reading all of this, but here's the one thing that I know wasn't addressed in Destiny per se, but I'm sure other novels will look at it. I like how Bacco gave Picard (and company) the carte blanche to do what he needed to stop the Borg. And, by extension, that included pretty much anything. One thing that's unique is that in the book, there are some very pointed parallels between Min Zife and Nan Bacco that are looked at and suggested, and one cannot help but wonder whether or not how Zife was ousted from power might play a role in the post-Destiny environment. Starfleet's allowing its officers to do whatever to stop an imminent threat, and the President was sanctioning it. Granted, cooler heads prevailed and Picard didn't install the thalaron weapon on the Enterprise, but what would have been Starfleet's response if he had? It's a great question because even though he would have been given the right to do so, it was illegal, and in the game of politics, someone would have to take the fall for it. Zife took the fall for Tezwa, even though it was the right thing to do. (The only things he failed to factor in were: one, actually telling the Klingons he did it after deposing the Martok Founder and two, Kinchawn acting like a complete idiot and arming the guns) I guess some of the moral questions will be responded in the 2009 titles, but I'd like to see if the whole Borg Invasion / Tezwa Solution parallels are explored further. If not, then life goes on.

 

[Sci]

You know, I am enjoying reading all of this, but here's the one thing that I know wasn't addressed in Destiny per se, but I'm sure other novels will look at it. I like how Bacco gave Picard (and company) the carte blanche to do what he needed to stop the Borg. And, by extension, that included pretty much anything. One thing that's unique is that in the book, there are some very pointed parallels between Min Zife and Nan Bacco that are looked at and suggested, and one cannot help but wonder whether or not how Zife was ousted from power might play a role in the post-Destiny environment. Starfleet's allowing its officers to do whatever to stop an imminent threat, and the President was sanctioning it. Granted, cooler heads prevailed and Picard didn't install the thalaron weapon on the Enterprise, but what would have been Starfleet's response if he had? It's a great question because even though he would have been given the right to do so, it was illegal, and in the game of politics, someone would have to take the fall for it. Zife took the fall for Tezwa, even though it was the right thing to do. (The only things he failed to factor in were: one, actually telling the Klingons he did it after deposing the Martok Founder and two, Kinchawn acting like a complete idiot and arming the guns) I guess some of the moral questions will be responded in the 2009 titles, but I'd like to see if the whole Borg Invasion / Tezwa Solution parallels are explored further. If not, then life goes on.

I don't think they're parallel situations. Bacco acted out of desperation to end an existential threat, but she also made it a point to trust Picard's judgment. I have no doubt that if he had done something wrong, when the dust settled, Bacco would have accepted public responsibility for her choice and taken the consequences.

Zife, on the other hand, acted with a small cohort to violate Federation law when they were not facing imminent extinction, committing a criminal act by installing classified technology on foreign soil when such an act was unnecessary for the Federation's survival. Then, after doing this, he failed to inform an allied state whose treaty with the Federation banned this (in addition to Prime Directive concerns). Then, on top of this, he failed to inform that allied state or his own military of the existence of those weapons, thus leading to thousands of Klingon deaths and millions of Tezwan deaths. Then, to cover up his criminal negligence in informing the Klingons and the Enterprise of the cannons, he ordered Starfleet to invade and occupy Tezwa, leading to thousands of Starfleet and Federation deaths and thousands more Tezwan deaths. Then, on top of that, he tried to plant false evidence indicting uninvolved foreign states for the development of the weapons, risking inciting a war on multiple fronts.

The sheer audacity of Zife's actions, and the causes for which they were committed -- essentially to cover his own ass -- make Bacco's choice, however questionable it might be, pale in comparison to the magnitude of Zife's crimes.

 

[Silversmok3]

The thalaron weapon would never have worked.

By the time Picard gave the order to modify the Enterprise to 'fire' thalaron radiation (explcitly banned by Federation law) ,there were 7,000 Borg cubes in Alpha quadrant space.

Since by then the bulk of the quadrant's allied fleet was a debris field in the Azure nebula, a simultaneous attack wasn't possible.

And without a simultaneous strike the Borg would have adapted -and the few hundred cubes left wouldn't need help in exterminating the quadrant,it just would take longer.

All the Federation would gain by using an illegal weapon is another week to pack their bags.

So that was a fool's errand from the jump.The fact that use of the weapon is illegal only adds insult to loss.

And as explained in the book,the Borg couldn't be defeated like that.Any weapon made to kill them would be eventually adapted,so any military solution not including simultaneous extermination of ALL Borg was doomed to failure.
Since the Borg don't reproduce,casualties are meaningless.
Without a government to corrupt or overthrow,political action wasn't an option either.
And of the billions assimilated only hundreds (at most)have sucessfully defected from the collective since its mistaken beginnings 4000 years ago.

Literally every known tactic for warfighting has failed against the Collective.All the thalaron weapon could do is ,to quote Bacco,"..ruin a perfectly good apocalypse"

Speaking of the Prez,I imagine she gave the blanket pardon so to spare Picard the absurdity of officially requesting permisson to save the Federation .Or being court-martialed over some lame regulation .

Keep in mind Zife ordered the Enterprise into an impossible and unecessary position just to save his own hide,and some Starfleet crew paid the ultimate price because of his cowardice.

 

[Fireflywyo300]

Interesting discussion.

All I can say is, "You don't bring a knife to a gun fight."

Law enforcement officers, do everything in their power to prevent murder and death which goes against our societies laws. However, they are also authorized to use whatever force is necessary to stop the threat if their attacker threatens to extinguish their life or the life of another. If this means that a law enforcement officer has to use a GUN to stop an ATTACKER wielding a KNIFE, ROCK, or any other object that can take your life (and by attacker I mean someone making a physically aggressive attack against you after you have given them verbal commands to drop their weapon and back away), then he does so. In that circumstance, it is considered a justified use of force. It isn't easy, and there will be questions asked in the aftermath. However, in this circumstance, as a law enforcement officer doing his/her duty, the following applies:

"It's better to be judged by twelve, than buried by six."

I enjoyed the story and its resolution and I applaud the morality behind it. However, had I been Picard, and my entire species was facing destruction, for as horrible as it is, I would have used the Thalaron emitter.

As a former law enforcement officer, they test us on these types of situations. They test your judgment, they test your resolve, and they test your will to live in a life or death situation. I'm not talking about excessive force against a compliant citizen or minor brawl or apprehension, I'm talking about LIFE or DEATH. For any law enforcement officer, they stress that as long as you're breathing, one way or the other, you fight as long as you physically can. You do so, because you're NEVER sure if back-up will arrive to pull you out of a situation because it may not make it there in time.

Now, I applaud the author/collaborators for this wonderful story and I applaud all the posters for their insight and well argued and insightful views. However, I will say that having been exposed to these sorts of situations before, it is never an easy decision to make. For as painful as it is for a law enforcement officer to take a life, there is an understanding between them all that if it ever comes down to the bad guy or you, your partner, or going home to your family at the end of the shift, you choose your life and those of your partners FIRST.


It's great to believe in an idealized world, but that world just doesn't exist folks. If you haven't ever really faced the wolves just beyond the door, then consider yourself blessed. If you have, then perhaps you'll understand what I mean.

You don't have to agree with me or even attempt to understand. We all have our various life experiences and I just present MINE in a world that exists outside of fiction.

For the developing story arc, I actually thought that it would have been interesting to unleash thalaron radiation as I believe that it would have offered the authors an incredible possibility to present a discussion on the proliferation of WMD's which fit with contemporary events.

Once again, well done. I enjoyed the series immensely.

 

[Sci]

Fireflywyo300, I don't want to in any way disrespect your experiences as a law enforcement officer, or to question the validity of your descriptions of how police officers view life and death struggles.

But your analogy doesn't work at all. The Borg are not criminals for whom there is a possibility of capture or subduing them by backup. They are not even an invading army. They're more equivalent to a force of nature -- one that will adapt to every weapon you throw at it, one that will keep coming back until your entire society is literally dust.

That's why the thalaron weapon was a dumb idea. Not merely because of the morality of it -- though I quesiton why a thalaron weapon is considered immoral yet a quantum torpedo isn't -- but simply because it would never work. The Borg would just adapt to it and come back and destroy all life in the Federation later.

 

[Christopher]

And as explained in the book,the Borg couldn't be defeated like that.Any weapon made to kill them would be eventually adapted,so any military solution not including simultaneous extermination of ALL Borg was doomed to failure.
Since the Borg don't reproduce,casualties are meaningless.
Without a government to corrupt or overthrow,political action wasn't an option either.
And of the billions assimilated only hundreds (at most)have sucessfully defected from the collective since its mistaken beginnings 4000 years ago.

Literally every known tactic for warfighting has failed against the Collective.All the thalaron weapon could do is ,to quote Bacco,"..ruin a perfectly good apocalypse"

Absolutely right. It's been proven over and over again that the Borg can't be conclusively defeated by any weapon. There's no reason to think a thalaron weapon would be any different. It would cost them a few cubes, sure, but then they'd adapt and keep coming -- and they'd have their own thalaron weapons to boot. It would just make them more dangerous. It's a stupid and useless notion, and the only reason Picard was pushing for it was because his judgment was critically compromised and his desire to lash out at the Borg in anger was overriding his common sense.

No, you don't bring a knife to a gunfight, but you can't use a gun to stop a tidal wave, and switching to a different kind of gun won't change that. As Santayana said, the definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting different results. Using bigger and better weapons against the Borg has always, always been a one-time, stopgap solution, something that stops them once and is useless thereafter because they've adapted. The only reason it seemed to work at all in the past was because the Borg just weren't that interested in the Federation; if their minor, single-cube sorties failed, they bided their time before trying again because they had other priorities to focus on. So it only "worked" to the extent of buying some time until the next attack. But now they were bringing their whole attention to bear on exterminating the Federation and wouldn't stop until it was gone. So the interval before they adapted and attacked again would've been in hours or days at best. It would've been a futile gesture.

 

[LightningStorm]

Interesting discussion.

All I can say is, "You don't bring a knife to a gun fight."

Law enforcement officers, do everything in their power to prevent murder and death which goes against our societies laws. However, they are also authorized to use whatever force is necessary to stop the threat if their attacker threatens to extinguish their life or the life of another. If this means that a law enforcement officer has to use a GUN to stop an ATTACKER wielding a KNIFE, ROCK, or any other object that can take your life (and by attacker I mean someone making a physically aggressive attack against you after you have given them verbal commands to drop their weapon and back away), then he does so. In that circumstance, it is considered a justified use of force.

I think the issue with this argument is that while law enforcement is empowered to use a gun to take lethal force against an aggressor, they are not allowed to use say a rocket launcher or a nuclear weapon or some other such illegal weaponry.

Picard using Thalaron would be the equivalent of using a rocket launcher to take out a large group of hostile gang members, or say some sort of cyanide bomb. While effective and would get the job done it's not legal to do so.

 

[BillJ]

I guess it it just comes down to the type of person I am. I would surely give up my freedom, my life, even my eternal soul to protect those that depend on me.

I just cannot imagine giving up all those things I hold dear without a fight. Whether that fight is a lost cause changes nothing. I'd fight with whatever weapons I could.

 

[Christopher]

^^And you're still clinging to the straw-man argument that looking for another alternative means "giving up without a fight." You're defining the very question in terms that presuppose your desired conclusion, and are therefore rejecting any alternative formulation out of hand. That's circular logic and it's intrinsically invalid.

 

[BillJ]

Mr. Bennett sometimes things are what they are. Without the intervention of the Caeliar things were bleak (to say the least). There is nothing circular about it, either fight or die (or fight and die). I've waited with baited breath for your solution to the events minus the Caeliar. I'm still waiting. You talk in abstracts about how there is a better way, without actually offering one.

Would I use a thalaron weapon to stop the Borg? You bet.

Would I use a biological weapon to stop the Borg? You bet.

I'd do whatever it takes. If someone were to offer a solution that didn't obliterate the Borg... I'd use that.

But I wouldn't sit around and wait for them to kill a trillion people because I have a moral hang-up.

 

[LightningStorm]

Mr. Bennett sometimes things are what they are. Without the intervention of the Caeliar things were bleak (to say the least). There is nothing circular about it, either fight or die (or fight and die). I've waited with baited breath for your solution to the events minus the Caeliar. I'm still waiting. You talk in abstracts about how there is a better way, without actually offering one.

Would I use a thalaron weapon to stop the Borg? You bet.

Would I use a biological weapon to stop the Borg? You bet.

I'd do whatever it takes. If someone were to offer a solution that didn't obliterate the Borg... I'd use that.

But I wouldn't sit around and wait for them to kill a trillion people because I have a moral hang-up.

Why are you excluding the Caeliar? They are such a solution. You say you'd use a solution that didn't obliterate them, but you excluded that very solution from your options.

Whether or not conventional weapons work, while is an issue, is not the issue. The issue is that Thalaron weapons are illegal and when thought is put to it, wouldn't even accomplish the goal, so by necessity other options must be explored. One such option was to ask a more powerful more technologically advanced race to step in on their behalf. They did, and it did work without the messiness of the aftermath of a weapon that ultimately wouldn't even accomplish the goal, but only delay it.

 

[BillJ]

Mr. Bennett sometimes things are what they are. Without the intervention of the Caeliar things were bleak (to say the least). There is nothing circular about it, either fight or die (or fight and die). I've waited with baited breath for your solution to the events minus the Caeliar. I'm still waiting. You talk in abstracts about how there is a better way, without actually offering one.

Would I use a thalaron weapon to stop the Borg? You bet.

Would I use a biological weapon to stop the Borg? You bet.

I'd do whatever it takes. If someone were to offer a solution that didn't obliterate the Borg... I'd use that.

But I wouldn't sit around and wait for them to kill a trillion people because I have a moral hang-up.

Why are you excluding the Caeliar? They are such a solution. You say you'd use a solution that didn't obliterate them, but you excluded that very solution from your options.

Whether or not conventional weapons work, while is an issue, is not the issue. The issue is that Thalaron weapons are illegal and when thought is put to it, wouldn't even accomplish the goal, so by necessity other options must be explored. One such option was to ask a more powerful more technologically advanced race to step in on their behalf. They did, and it did work without the messiness of the aftermath of a weapon that ultimately wouldn't even accomplish the goal, but only delay it.

Hernandez freely admitted that the Caeliar may not be willing to help, plus there was doubts as to whether they'd be able to handle the Borg. That leaves you exploring options beyond that if you're serious about fighting the Borg. There was no guarantee that the thalaron weapon would work... but its best chance to succeed was when the Caeliar had drawn them back to the Azure Nebula.

My original point stands... Picard has no business commanding a starship.