Did the Normandy Invasion begin when the first RAF planes started crossing the Channel in 1940 to bomb German targets?
Dumb and Bizarre Trek Novel Moments...
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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Did the Normandy Invasion begin when the first RAF planes started crossing the Channel in 1940 to bomb German targets?
I think this confusion stems from the use of the term "Borg Invasion." I know that on Memory Beta, we've chosen to use that term to refer to the entirety of the Borg conflict of early 2381, not just the final twelve hours.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
The final borg invasion took 12 hours, yes. But the trauma caused by those events just began then. Yes, some planets escaped unaffected - beyond the weeks of borg terror, anyway - but all the federation will soon feel the impact of its losses.
Pearl Harbour took only a few hours, 9/11 even less - and yet, the trauma and social and political changes they signaled only began then.
The trauma the federation suffered dwarfed my real-world examples to insignificance both in terms of loses and self-confidence:
Not only did BILLIONS die (as opposed to "mere" thousands), but the federation is in the process of realizing that it is powerless to stop any such future events (completely UNLIKE WW2 or 9/11). And this, not only in the abstract 'Q can do this in theory' way, but in the most concrete and painful way possible.
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Yes, they are aware of that now. But I really don't see them having been so egotistical before that this would this would come as that big of a shock. After all they've known about the Borg for over 20 (?) years now, and have been dealing with non-corporeal and more advanced races for over 200. You seem convinced that the Federation was convinced it was the most powerful force in the galaxy before the Borg Invasion (either the final event or the whole x months long series of attacks), but I really don't think we ever saw any evidence of this. Sure they were one of the most power and the knew it, but I don't remember them ever behaving like they were superior to the Klingons or the (pre-Nem.) Romulans.
Given that the Federation barely managed to survive the Dominion War just over five years earlier, it makes no sense to suggest they would've considered themselves unbeatable. Any complacency the Federation may have had in the 2360s, say, would've long since evaporated by 2381. The Borg invasion was the culmination of an escalating series of crises over the previous couple of decades. It wasn't an out-of-the blue strike; indeed, it came only a few months after the Borg hypercube attack that left a permanent scar on the Solar System. So it makes absolutely no sense to compare it to Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Wolf 359 was the Federation's Pearl Harbor where the Borg were concerned. They've had 15 years to get used to the idea of not being safe.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
After Pearl Harbour or 9/11, America still beleives it is the greatest power in the world - and with good reasons.
This doesn't change the fact that these events were highly traumatic, that their effects were - and are - felt for years, decades.
Before 'Destiny', the federation believed she could deal with anything out there - as evidenced in 'Q, who' and a lot of other episodes in all series. And with good reasons, too - until then, the federation dealt with anything they encountered successfully - your occasional superbeing, borg, dominion, etc. 'It may be a close call, but in the end, we'll prevail. We always did so.'
After 'Destiny' the federation knows bettter - her optimism, present since Archer's time, has feet of clay. This is a highly traumatic realization - one that has no correspondent in Pearl Harbour or 9/11; the trauma the federation experienced is far deeper.
The events of 'Destiny' should bring major changes in how the federation views the universe, in its society - unless one decides to artificially sweep under the rug 'Destiny' and ignore its consequences.
A
Amaris
Guest
For me, the entirety of "Ghost Ship" was rather bizarre.
This is rather at odds with Losing the Peace, in which prominent political figures cannot even envision the possibility of suffering within the Federation's borders. However, I do think Losing the Peace may have oversold that point. (In passing, let me say that I enjoyed Losing the Peace, but as with Destiny there were some aspects I found less convincing.)
As to the larger question of whether or not this attack would have major ramifications for the Federation beyond the material devastation, I think it probably would. It's not as if 9-11 was the first attack by Islamic terrorists on American soil. They had even attacked the very same building what? Nine years beforehand? The September 11th attack merely dwarfed what had come before. That certainly applies here.
Now, this is a fictional universe, so of course anything goes to a certain degree. Perhaps the average Federation citizen is at once exceedingly pampered and exceedingly stoic, as improbable as that might seem.
In certain respects, I think Thrawn's example of an meteor destroying a third of the US is actually quite apt insofar as the gigantic crater would be, in a sense, the least of the survivors' problems.
Now, in space there perhaps wouldn't be the same kind of environmental fallout, but there would doubtless be all kinds of economic, political and philosophical ramifications. I don't think that's a function of the Federation assuming it was unassailable prior to the attack. It's merely a function of the fact that the worst-case scenario had come to pass, whereas it never had before.
The changelings set off a single bomb on earth and the government was nearly overthrown. DS9 did a better job than other Trek shows of examining what this type of event might actually mean to a society, one of the reasons it has aged much better than other Trek shows of its era (imo, of course).
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The only problem with that is the fact that Q Who was 1 year before Wolf 359, 8 before the Dominion War, 11 before the encounter with the Beings, and The Genesis Wave, 12 before Voyager returned and they found out about races like 8472/The Groundskeepers/Undine, Voth, and Hirogen, 15 before the Supercube crisis, and 16 before the Borg Invasion, and I'm sorry, but I really think all of that stuff would have probably humbled them quite a bit.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
All of which were trifles by comparison - minor incidents. As flemm said: "It's not as if 9-11 was the first attack by Islamic terrorists on American soil. They had even attacked the very same building what? Nine years beforehand? The September 11th attack merely dwarfed what had come before."
Just as importantly, each time, always, the federation prevailed - on her own.
Not so now. If some other 'god' wants to burn the rest of the federation, well, the federation knows it's impotent, knows it won't prevail.
JD, read 'Losing the peace' - suffering within the federation is a complete shock, umheard of. Many can't beleive it's actually happening. The federation citizens - the federation - knew what's out there, but they also 'knew' they're safe from it.
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The Federation is far more enormous than it's possible for us, as the inhabitants of a single planet, to comprehend. It's so huge that it can't be treated as a single entity reacting in a single way. Even a large-scale phenomenon that affects much of the Federation can leave other parts of it more or less untouched. Note that TNG's first couple of seasons showed us a fairly idyllic, peacetime Federation with the luxury of focusing its efforts primarily on exploration -- but then "The Wounded" came along and revealed that the Federation had been at war with the Cardassians during those first two seasons! True, that's essentially a continuity error resulting from the very different sensibilities of the original and later TNG writing staffs, but it's part of the canon now, and it makes sense in light of how immense the Federation would be. Just as an ongoing war on the Cardassian border might make barely a dent in the generally peaceful nature of the Federation because of its sheer vastness, conversely a massive invasion or disaster that affects huge swaths of the Federation could still leave large portions of it untouched. (Think of it like putting a frozen turkey right on the grill. You may burn most of the outside, but it's so large that the inside might still be frozen.)
The specific figures who had trouble grasping the reality of things were from worlds that had been largely untouched by the various wars and disasters, primarily Alpha Centauri. But the same surely can't be said for the people of Earth, since Earth and Sol System been subject to repeated attacks over the years. And certainly Starfleet and the frontier worlds have been very aware of the dangers.
Well, sure. Nobody's saying it would have zero impact. It's just that certain specific claims being offered as to what kind of impact it would have are untenable and irrational. It's wrong to say that the Federation had absolutely no prior inkling of its vulnerability, and it's just plain bizarre to say that the inevitable consequence of this invasion would be to make the Federation start worshipping the Caeliar as gods.
All of this is open to interpretation, obviously, but consider the following:
Sisko to Kira: "Do you know what the trouble is? [...] The trouble is Earth. On earth, there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet headquarters, and you see paradise. Well, it's easy to be a saint in paradise."
It struck me that Losing the Peace was building on some of these ideas, and I thought it was a good beginning in that respect, starting to come to grips with the effect of such a trauma. The longer-term ramifications, though, remain to be explored, to the extent there will be any. However, if Federation citizens are used to living in paradise, it's hard to believe such an event would not be traumatic, if nothing else because many millions of Federation citizens won't be living in paradise for the foreseeable future. Surely the various Federation worlds are interdependant in important ways? There is also psychological trauma to consider. It would be possible for large regions of the Federation to be "untouched" physically, yet traumatized nonetheless, just as the United States as a whole was shaken by September 11th, not just NYC.
It might have been bizarre had this actually been said. In reality, I merely said that there would likely be widespread fascination with the Federation's saviors, and with Captain Hernandez in particular, which there plausibly would be. Consider the public's fascination with prominent political figures, movie stars, etc. in our own time. Surely inquiring minds would want to know? "Fascination" does not mean "worship," though of course the Federation is diverse enough that this possibility is not out of the question.
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That might have something to do with the fact that it was written before TNG aired. "Bill" Riker pinning Data against a wall and telling him he's "not a real person" (or whatever the wording was) was a little strange for me too, reading it after TNG had finished
The first Voyager novel was a little weird too - it had "Doc Zimmerman" in the sickbay.
The first Enterprise novel tried to avoid dodgy characterizations by having half the story (consisting of a tabletop RPG game played in the mess hall...yes, really) star unknown below-decks nobodies.
I personally think the "wrongness" of all these early series books gives them a special charm.
Vulnerability? That's been a recurring theme in the later Trek books. Starting in ENT's third season, it became clear that the universe can be a very, very dangerous place and the writers were making this more of a theme then it had been previously. The ENT relaunch is based on showing us just how dangerous the Alpha/Beta Quadrant was in the 2150's and why five disparate worlds decided to form the Federation in the first place. The heart of the drama is showing WHY five vulnerable worlds decided to set aside their differences and work together, why they followed the better angels of their nature.
OK, fast forward 220 years. Again, the galaxy has been a really, really dangerous place. Losing the Peace was all about showing how the prosperous heart of the Federation wasn't so secure anymore. But Trek wouldn't be Trek if the characters weren't given the choice to rise above their base fears and greed, and shown to do so. That's the theme that makes Trek what it is.
Is it any coincidence that Losing the Peace showsus a referendum reaffirming the Federation? No, not in the slightest.
OK, fast forward 220 years. Again, the galaxy has been a really, really dangerous place. Losing the Peace was all about showing how the prosperous heart of the Federation wasn't so secure anymore. But Trek wouldn't be Trek if the characters weren't given the choice to rise above their base fears and greed, and shown to do so. That's the theme that makes Trek what it is.
Is it any coincidence that Losing the Peace showsus a referendum reaffirming the Federation? No, not in the slightest.
It worked for Seneca.
The turn in the discussion is interesting. Destiny has kind of screwed up the "American but in space" metaphor forever, hasn't it?
^Not necessarily, because America won't be the dominant power on Earth forever.
Why is the metaphor screwed? Unless you're one of the Typhon Pact authors who currently won't talk about their unreleased books, nobody knows how that will work out.
Plus the Federation is supposed to be a moneyless economy with no poverty, etc, etc. It never was a perfect mirror to the US.
Plus the Federation is supposed to be a moneyless economy with no poverty, etc, etc. It never was a perfect mirror to the US.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
About for the possible effects of the 'destiny' events:
Worshipping the superbeings will most likely be a minority current.
I can picture a strong isolationist movement emerging - why go out, encounter such supremely powerful horrors? Better wait until we're better prepared before we tempt fate.
I can also see genetic engineering and transhumanism gaining support, becoming embraced by a large part of the population.
As for transcedental beings - the most probable reaction to them will be fear. Chances are, Q will find his next encounter with humanity quite boring.
Edit - As international politics go, too, the borg invasion is bound to leave a deep impression on everyone in the alpha/beta quadrants.
Arguably, some effects are already being felt - instead of bickering with each other, many previously xenophobic civilizations bound together in the Typhon Pact and the Khitomer Accords. The trend will most likely continue - everyone will be keenly aware of how vulnerable they are on their own, that in unity one can find at least some measure of strength against what's out there, in the unknown depths of space.
Military planning and research, too, will experience a significant doctrinary change.
Yes, there will be efforts made to prepare for what appears to be a coming cold war between the Typhon Pact and the Khitomer Accords.
But what will really preoccupy strategists and tacticians, analists and soldiers alike is how to survive in a war with someone so much more powerful than you. What could have been done differently during the 'Destiny' invasion? What weapons, what tactics and strategies could have minimised the losses? Could have given the alphans/betans a chance to prevail?
Evacuations procedures for inhabited planets were awfully inefficient - perhaps storing the pattern of billions of persons in industrial pattern buffers would have enabled many billions to survive?
The fleet as organized in 'Destiny' was clearly inefficient.
Maybe, instead of large capital ships, one should focus on building small, easier to replace ships that operate in wolf packs.
Perhaps one should forgo building manned ships altogether and focus instead on building the interstellar equivalent of ICBMs - deliver a heavy punch with one hit, before the enemy adapts?
Further, it's almost certain that anyone who has the capacity will try to reverse engineer borg tech, which proved - again - to be far better than anything the alphans/betans had. The borg's abilities to adapt and regenerate with truly magical speed are especially interesting. As is its nanotech.
Worshipping the superbeings will most likely be a minority current.
I can picture a strong isolationist movement emerging - why go out, encounter such supremely powerful horrors? Better wait until we're better prepared before we tempt fate.
I can also see genetic engineering and transhumanism gaining support, becoming embraced by a large part of the population.
As for transcedental beings - the most probable reaction to them will be fear. Chances are, Q will find his next encounter with humanity quite boring.
Edit - As international politics go, too, the borg invasion is bound to leave a deep impression on everyone in the alpha/beta quadrants.
Arguably, some effects are already being felt - instead of bickering with each other, many previously xenophobic civilizations bound together in the Typhon Pact and the Khitomer Accords. The trend will most likely continue - everyone will be keenly aware of how vulnerable they are on their own, that in unity one can find at least some measure of strength against what's out there, in the unknown depths of space.
Military planning and research, too, will experience a significant doctrinary change.
Yes, there will be efforts made to prepare for what appears to be a coming cold war between the Typhon Pact and the Khitomer Accords.
But what will really preoccupy strategists and tacticians, analists and soldiers alike is how to survive in a war with someone so much more powerful than you. What could have been done differently during the 'Destiny' invasion? What weapons, what tactics and strategies could have minimised the losses? Could have given the alphans/betans a chance to prevail?
Evacuations procedures for inhabited planets were awfully inefficient - perhaps storing the pattern of billions of persons in industrial pattern buffers would have enabled many billions to survive?
The fleet as organized in 'Destiny' was clearly inefficient.
Maybe, instead of large capital ships, one should focus on building small, easier to replace ships that operate in wolf packs.
Perhaps one should forgo building manned ships altogether and focus instead on building the interstellar equivalent of ICBMs - deliver a heavy punch with one hit, before the enemy adapts?
Further, it's almost certain that anyone who has the capacity will try to reverse engineer borg tech, which proved - again - to be far better than anything the alphans/betans had. The borg's abilities to adapt and regenerate with truly magical speed are especially interesting. As is its nanotech.
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Quite evidently, by preventing the mass genocide that took place in the trilogy--not having countless billions slaughtered, scores of planets scored of life, their ecosystems annihilated or ravaged beyond recovery, species brought to the edge of extinction, cultures extinguished, nearly half of Starfleet wiped out, the Federation materially crippled and psychically permanently traumatized; and, of course, by having the nominal heroes actually be relevant to the denouement.
Of course not. Who ever said it was? But it's sheer lunacy to pretend that this is anything other than an incalculable tragedy. Try going up to any of the billions made refugee, the numbers beyond counting who have lost friends and family, and tell them about the benefits of such a catastrophe.
That's a rather disengenous argument, don't you think? Some kind of "Book of Job" balance of lives? Whatever may have been happening elsewhere in the galaxy, Trek has always been focalized through Starfleet and the Federation; that is the immediate setting. And now that setting has been transformed from a good one to a terrible one. And since we continue to be focalized through those same characters, that is the outcome of Destiny that will be experienced for we the readers. The "rank devastation".
Relevance? 'Higher being' is about intrinsic power, not ethics. Human culture abounds with deities who act like complete assholes. In "Paradise Lost", the work this trilogy seems most akin to, the Miltonic deity (the equivalent of the Caeliar, in this case) is a complete asshat, but he's still the higher--indeed, highest--power in the narrative. For an in-universe example, just look at Q. He acts like a jerk nine times out of ten, but would you say he isn't a higher being?
I just read one in SNWX. It was better not only because it didn't revel in destruction and despair, but also because the solution ultimately arose out of ingenuity, rather than mere application of power.
I don't understand why you and Christopher seem to think those of us dissatisfied with the solution must, then, have wanted it to end in a bloodbath. Isn't that precisely what I'm arguing against--the bloodbath inflicted on the Federation? The Collective was freed--great; though I would have prefered that they not, subsequently, up and vanish (and if the Caeliar had truly discovered good intentions, you'd think they would have stayed to help fix the problems their wayward cousins had caused--but then we wouldn't have been able to spend the next several years languishing in genodice-chic, which was, after all, the entire point of this exercise). That's not the problem. The problem is that, by now, the destruction and negativity has been so relentless that I was essentially numbed to what was happening, incapable of looking on this liberation with anything but a jaundiced, skeptical eye--the narrative wanted this to be a moment of hope, but you can't resurrect hope after you've spent three books torturing it to death, mutilating the corpse and tossing the chopped up remnants into a landfill. The problem is, that because the characters who ought to be mediating the story for me are not involved, I'm not involved; all of this is occuring at a distance, at a remove. In brief, the problem was not the solution, but what preceeded it, and how it came about.
This is why I said in the opening days of the invasion--pre-Azure Nebula, most of all. Because, with the deus in machina solution we have, it would have made no difference to the Caeliar or the Borg if Hernandez had convinced them to intervene in the early days--or even after the invasion was complete and the quadrant overrun. The only people affected by the timing were the Federation and the other local powers, and if they were to play so little role in their own deliverance, then at least it could have come earlier and spared us all this relentless darkness and devastation.
And that's assuming there's any 24th century involvement at all. Their role is so mininal that the narrative could easily be tweaked to reach those same ends through other means. Heck, the Borg themselves could have stumbled onto the Caeliar and tried to assimilate them; Hernandez' human heritage spurring a desire to fight the invaders vs. the Caeliar's extreme pacifism; in doing so she recognizes the Borg for what they are, makes her speech, and the two forces pass out of the galaxy together (or whatever it was they did).
Is this even a serious question? Are any of those things even remotely comparable in scale and permanency?
If you weren't joking: then it is obvious different because of the scale and permancency. I'm afraid I can't provide you with a graph illustrating where casualty figures cause me to lose interesting, but I don't need a set goal to know when that happens--and it happened here, not just crossing the line, but exceeding it by several orders of magnitude. Heck, looking back at my reviews, I was uncomfortable with the number of losses in the first book, Lost Souls, which I had otherwise quite enjoyed. Even with those deaths being essentially unknown actors, at the fringes of the Federation and as such not impactful on the society as a whole, it felt borderline too much; in part, because it meant that the Federation and its heroes had already lost by failing to prevent so many fatalieis, that victory was impossible and the best that could be managed was to mitigate their defeat.
The Dominion War is probably as dark as I'd tolerate mainstay Trek to get. This is supposed to be a universe of light. Nothing wrong with exploring the shadows in the places that light doesn't reach, but Destiny's fundamental revolution in the tone of the franchise was to make the Trek universe one of shadows. In terms of scope, the Genesis Wave affair is probably the closest that comes to Destiny--although even that is utterly outstripped by the armageddon wreaked by this trilogy. And at least Genesis Wave, for the most part, had the decency to go away after the story was done, instead of lingering on and on, sinking the line to the depths of genocide-chic for years to come.
I remember being so happy when, after John Ordover left for other pastures, Marco had said that we'd finally find the universe recovered from the Dominion War and shift back to narratives of exploration and discovery instead of having crisis after crisis. A sentiment meant to be encapsulated in Bacco's graduation address in Articles, the first generation of cadets to graduate without the shadow of war hanging overhead, following directly on the A Time To... series, itself largely concerned with the aftereffects of the Dominion War. That lasted, what?--all of five years out-universe, a year or a year-and-a-half in universe? It didn't take long for destruction to reassert itself, more stronger than ever, as the narrative mover par excellance. But I, for one, see absolutely no need, none whatsoever, to catastrophize the setting all over again; and no interest in spending the next X number of years wallowing in the subsequent misery.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
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