Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy?

[Tachyon]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Yes, I think the Borg are less intimidating.

No, I don't blame Voyager.

This.

Voyager did its share, though. I agree that the introduction of the Queen did change the Borg for good, but it had nothing to do with Voyager at the time. But what Voyager did... well - I would have been more than okay without seeing stories like Unimatrix Zero, for instance. And in Dark Frontier the Queen's obsession with one drone among billions (Seven) was a bit ridiculous.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Yes, I think the Borg are less intimidating.

No, I don't blame Voyager.

This.

Voyager did its share, though. I agree that the introduction of the Queen did change the Borg for good, but it had nothing to do with Voyager at the time. But what Voyager did... well - I would have been more than okay without seeing stories like Unimatrix Zero, for instance. And in Dark Frontier the Queen's obsession with one drone among billions (Seven) was a bit ridiculous.

I'll agree with this. The Queen going after Seven because the Collective force of the Borg Hive Mind cannot figure out how to effectively assimilate humanity is ludicrous.

 

[Bishop76]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

No, TNG killed the Borg as a major enemy with "I, Borg". Voyager just continued beating the corpse.

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

That's because most of the other recurring enemies sucked.

Given VOY's status as a lone ship with a small crew, it's not like they could have dozens of crew get killed by a new enemy when they wanted to show them as tough and cool. VOY's audience simply never gave any of them the chance to become anything and wrote them all off after their introduction episode, no matter how good they were.

Especially the Kazon. And the Malon. So again, we're back to bad writing and lack of ideas. Exceptions are Species 8472 and maybe the Hirogen, who were both kind of cool.

The Kazon couldn't be tougher or smarter because then the show would be over. This isn't like DS9 where they had the entire Trekverse to play with, they couldn't have the bad guys kill with impunity.

Species 8472 was an enemy which couldn't be used too often either (and they became lame in "In the Flesh"). The Hirogen were discontinued on the writers' own initiative after only five episodes (but at least brought back later in Season 7, except that it didn't make much sense this late anymore, because Voyager had travelled tens of thousands of light-years since the last encounter).

This is another case of unfairness, VOY couldn't keep running into their enemies more than a few times since they were always moving but yet SOMEHOW the audience expected the VOY writers to be able to make their enemy aliens as deep and developed as the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans etc within SIX EPISODES.

Seriously, it took TNG and DS9 YEARS to develop their foes and the audience somehow thought VOY could do the same in 1/1000th of the time.

Exactly.
Not to mention most on the enemies on TNG & DS9 had be around and started development in TOS & their films.

 

[Navaros]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

You couldn't do that with VOY, since it needed all its crew and it was only one ship.

VOY didn't need all its crew, not by a longshot. Most of the crew is never seen on-screen, ever. They could have killed them off by the truckloads and it wouldn't have made any difference.

Most of the main characters on VOY could have been likewise killed without it making any difference, i.e. Neelix, Kim, Paris etc.

 

[froot]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

You couldn't do that with VOY, since it needed all its crew and it was only one ship.

VOY didn't need all its crew, not by a longshot. Most of the crew is never seen on-screen, ever. They could have killed them off by the truckloads and it wouldn't have made any difference.

Most of the main characters on VOY could have been likewise killed without it making any difference, i.e. Neelix, Kim, Paris etc.

You do not want Chakotay flying the ship. Kaboom! Plus they wouldn't have Astrometrics without Harry.

 

[Kai Winn]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

the borg never bothered to send more than single cubes of their fleet of tens of thousands into federation space, and they wreaked substantial havoc. even if we assume their transwarp network was utterly destroyed, lots of ships and planets must still be around, and continue the business.
timeless indicates there are borg in the future, even if the happenings of this episode were undone, and again changed by endgame. if the borg reason the federation is not worth bothering with because it inflicts a lot of damage on the borg, they can resort to collecting federation ship wrecks in order to obtain new technologies, the federation did this many times as well.
yes it was puzzling how easy voyager coped with the borg, but star trek has always been like that, foes introduced as nearly invincible diminished rapidly. ferengi, dominion, breen, xindi, sphere builders.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

You couldn't do that with VOY, since it needed all its crew and it was only one ship.

VOY didn't need all its crew, not by a longshot. Most of the crew is never seen on-screen, ever. They could have killed them off by the truckloads and it wouldn't have made any difference.

Most of the main characters on VOY could have been likewise killed without it making any difference, i.e. Neelix, Kim, Paris etc.

It was stated in the show that they did need all of them. That's all the audience needs to know. Neelix, Kim, etc, weren't expendable. They didn't have thousands upon thousands of faceless extras to kill off like DS9 and NuBSG did, nor did they have anywhere to GET all those extras either.

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

You couldn't do that with VOY, since it needed all its crew and it was only one ship.

VOY didn't need all its crew, not by a longshot. Most of the crew is never seen on-screen, ever.

That's because they were all working.

Didn't you ever notice that they changed out of their Starfleet uniforms like one ep. a season? How about how Tom & Be'Lanna still had to schedule time off to spend time together? If they're senior officers and work all the time, image the work those under them do & the hours they must put in?

You've got a ship in flight nearly 24/7, most times at high warp. That's going to take constant maintenance and a crew running in rotation to cover all the other operations.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Plus, imagine how hard the crew has to work to restore the ship to its condition post-battles with whoever?

I never really got that criticism of how Voyager could get the warp plasma beaten out of it and look as good as new an episode later. Considering the fact that

A) There's not really any way of knowing how much time elapses between episodes unless it's stated, or can be calculated by the Stardate (which is risky)

B) The Delta Quadrant is certainly not just empty space, and

C) With Neelix's knowledge up to the Nekrit Expanse, among other things (I refuse to believe that the crew just sailed along without actively scanning and examining the local commnets and everything)

It's not hard for me to accept that Voyager made stopovers at various repair stations and other places along the way.

It just seemed like that criticism was being offered for the sake of offering criticism. I mean, shit, the Enterprise-D and original Enterprise often suffered intense damage, and yet were often fine by next episode, except for when the plot wanted otherwise.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Precisely, this isn't like NuBSG where the humans and Cylons were the only sentient life out there (aside from "God"). The DQ was full of life and potential aid.

 

[SpyOne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Galactica kept the Cylons dangerous by blowing up some of their Ragtag Fleet ships and killing everyone onboard (all of which were faceless extras of course), without harming the Galactica or any of the show's characters.

I said I was talking about the original Battlestar Galactica: the best the Cylons could muster (after the pilot) was to damage the airlock on the agro ship and ruin the crops.
And that's why out of 24 episodes (counting the pilot as 3 and each 2-parter as 2), only 12 of them feature the Cylons (including half the 2-parters). That was still too often: the Cylons were comically inept, even when I was a kid. They were supposed to be scary, but they weren't.

Edit: okay, to be more serious, the Cylons did manage to set Galactica on fire. But 90% of the time it was the threat of what the Cylons could do, and they never succeeded: They have a big gun that could kill us all, unless our dirty dozen can take it out. They started a fire that threatens the ship, and putting it out will kill the captain's daughter and grandson unless we can figure out how to prevent that. They could kill a lot of us unless a couple of guys can sneak aboard their ship and cripple their sensors. They could ride horses around at night unless a handful of children and one of the Landers sisters succeed in a guerrilla campaign to liberate their father who inexplicably was not executed long ago.
I may love that show, but I am keenly aware of it's flaws.

 

[Lynx]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

No, Voyager didn't "kill" the Borg asa a major Trek enemy.

That was already done in TNG when Hugh and The Borg Queen appeared.

As soon as a superior mysterious enemy is "humanized", most of what make the species so superior and mysterious is gone.

There's also one problem with creating a villain which seems to be invincible. You have to come up with some extraordinary, something almost ridiculous to beat them. When that is done, the particular villain is finished. It will never be the same.

That's one reason why I think that the Cardassians were a better enemy. They weren't superior in any way but still scaring and intimidating in their own way.

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Plus, imagine how hard the crew has to work to restore the ship to its condition post-battles with whoever?

I never really got that criticism of how Voyager could get the warp plasma beaten out of it and look as good as new an episode later. Considering the fact that

A) There's not really any way of knowing how much time elapses between episodes unless it's stated, or can be calculated by the Stardate (which is risky)

B) The Delta Quadrant is certainly not just empty space, and

C) With Neelix's knowledge up to the Nekrit Expanse, among other things (I refuse to believe that the crew just sailed along without actively scanning and examining the local commnets and everything)

It's not hard for me to accept that Voyager made stopovers at various repair stations and other places along the way.

It just seemed like that criticism was being offered for the sake of offering criticism. I mean, shit, the Enterprise-D and original Enterprise often suffered intense damage, and yet were often fine by next episode, except for when the plot wanted otherwise.

Well said.

I just think many forget the ship lands.

All repairs can be made on a planets surface.
Those that stuck around saw this in "Nightingale".
The ship was getting it's Necelle coils replaced.

We know replicators are super futuristic recycling machines.
We know what goes in them gets broken down on molecular level and can be spit back out brand new.
We know the replicators are tied into the transporters.
So you can beam a big panel to a damaged section without having to worry about size.

We know the Neelix is a trader.
We've seen him show the skill in "Resistance", "Fair Trade" & "Macrocosm".
Neelix trades for supplies.
Supplies that provide food & energy for the ship.
He's also in charge of inventory.

The writers didn't bother to explain this in great detail because they figured after watching Trek since TNG, we'd already know this stuff.
All of sit and debate & talk Trek every day, why do we not know this stuff by now?

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Like I said, I think people used it as another excuse to bitch about Voyager.

As if Beltran's "wooden protest acting" (Yeah, okay guy, whatever helps you sleep at night) and writing inconsistency weren't enough.

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

As for the Borg, they were flawed from the start.

The fact that you could walk into their ships and they wouldn't do anything was absurd.
Shouldn't just beaming on their ships be enough of a threat?
They allowed it even when Worf & Data went to rescue Picard.
You tokk him, so we'll just take him back.
It was that easy.

If it wasn't for the Federation's over blown morality, the Borg would be done for.
They don't even stop you from beaming a torpedo rigged to blow onboard!!

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

^For what it's worth, the Destiny books in Trek Lit resolve all of that.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Well, to be fair Worf and Data were only able to get onboard because they got past the Borg anti-teleporting field thing due to their battle with the ENT-D.

As for torpedos, seeing how the Phasers and torpedoes were ineffective after the first barrage, detonating one inside the ship probably wouldn't do anything since the ship is decentralized and the auto-repair would've been calibrated to repair photon damage REALLY fast.

Blowing up a small probe ship with a torpedo, yes. Blowing up a massive Cube? No dice.

 

[SpyOne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Read an old interview in Star Trek: The Magazine where Ron Moore admits to ruining the Borg.
He was helping with the script for First Contact, and the Borg just weren't working as movie villains, and then he figured out how to fix that. But he had mixed feelings, because while he had saved the movie, he had ruined the Borg in the process. He did it by giving them a queen.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Read an old interview in Star Trek: The Magazine where Ron Moore admits to ruining the Borg.
He was helping with the script for First Contact, and the Borg just weren't working as movie villains, and then he figured out how to fix that. But he had mixed feelings, because while he had saved the movie, he had ruined the Borg in the process. He did it by giving them a queen.

Thank you... that's just what I said. TNG ruined the Borg.