Dumb and Bizarre Trek Novel Moments...

[ProtoAvatar]

The other problem with the thalaron weapon is that it only destroys organic matter. The technology of the cubes would be completely intact. And we already saw in Before Dishonor what happens when a Borg cube survives the death of all living drones within it: it mutates into a nanotech Grey Goo juggernaut that swallows every bit of matter thrown at it. True, BD didn't present that as something that happened automatically, and we've seen cases where it didn't ("Collective" on VGR, more or less), but if even one of those depopulated cubes made the same breakthrough, it would've made things far worse. So on every level, it would've been a Bad Idea.

"nanotech Grey Goo" - The chance of this happening was EXTREMELY SLIM - otherwise, it would have happened more than once in the borg's history - millions of cubes, god knows how many wars, etc.
We already had this discusiion.

As for "So on every level, it would've been a Bad Idea." - the borg were already exterminating EVERYONE in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants! This is the ultimate WORST CASE SCENARIO!
Everything that can help postpone/stop this genocide is a very good ideea!
The thalaron weapon has a GOOD CHANCE of doing exactly that - as established by Seven. It could have saved BILLIONS of lives in the end! This makes it a VERY GOOD IDEEA.

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

The other problem with the thalaron weapon is that it only destroys organic matter. The technology of the cubes would be completely intact. And we already saw in Before Dishonor what happens when a Borg cube survives the death of all living drones within it: it mutates into a nanotech Grey Goo juggernaut that swallows every bit of matter thrown at it. True, BD didn't present that as something that happened automatically, and we've seen cases where it didn't ("Collective" on VGR, more or less), but if even one of those depopulated cubes made the same breakthrough, it would've made things far worse. So on every level, it would've been a Bad Idea.

Using super-high-tech weapons against the Borg has always been a bad idea. What happens when the Borg start using it against you?

Back to the topic of the thread, I didn't like the ending of Preserver...we go from a Mirror Kirk vs Real Kirk to omnipotent aliens that wanted to tell Kirk something, and find out that Mirror Kirk really had nothing to do with it. Then Mirror Kirk goes from the invincible hellspawn evil incarnate demigod of destruction to a nice guy who wants to fix his mistakes in about two paragraphs.
Oh, and Klingon and Romulan DNA mix fine, but add Human DNA and you get a disfigured hermaphrodite with an extra joint on each finger. Huh? I don't get it.

 

[captcalhoun]

It's immoral to 'kill' in self defence enemy soldiers;

The point made of course was that the drones were less soliders as they were slaves, forced to do things against their will, and in the end the heroes decided that it would be immoral to try and mass murder them using the thalaron weapon.

didn't stop them mass-murdering hundreds of drones every other time they blew up a Borg cube...

 

[Hartzilla2007]

MNM

The thalaron weapon "would have saved BILLIONS OF LIVES, it would have gained time for Starfleet to come up with a new plan.
Not using it condemned, in the end, BILLIONS of federation - and not only - citizens to death. The borg would not have managed to kill them until the Caelliar took pity on the Federation."
MMM, destroying a hundred of borg cubes would have saved their future victims - BILLIONS.

Um one problem you see Starfleet would need to hit all of those cubes at the same time because a thalaron weapon isn't designed around the Borg being able to adapt because you can modulate the frequency of radiation so it will only work ONCE before they adapt. Seeing as the Borg fleet was scattered and they had way more ships then Starfleet hiting them all at once wasn't likely until they all gathered at the nebula you know AFTER the killed billions. Also unless Laforge could build the cascading pulse thingy Shinzon had it probably wouldn't have been able to hit the whole fleet and if they did the Borgt fleet would have to be together in a zone at least the size of a planet and if any ships are out of the kill zone that's it. Also the Borg in the Delta Quandrant would become a factor in a century or two and thats if they didn't find another short cut in the mean time so it would be temporary. But I'm sure if you keep repeating how billions would POSSIBLY be saved over and over again your hyperbole will some how defeat logic.

 

[Myasishchev]

The other problem with the thalaron weapon is that it only destroys organic matter. The technology of the cubes would be completely intact. And we already saw in Before Dishonor what happens when a Borg cube survives the death of all living drones within it: it mutates into a nanotech Grey Goo juggernaut that swallows every bit of matter thrown at it. True, BD didn't present that as something that happened automatically, and we've seen cases where it didn't ("Collective" on VGR, more or less), but if even one of those depopulated cubes made the same breakthrough, it would've made things far worse. So on every level, it would've been a Bad Idea.

Using super-high-tech weapons against the Borg has always been a bad idea. What happens when the Borg start using it against you?

See, the point I was trying to make that appears to have gotten lost: people keep trying to make the thalaron device out to be something horrible, when in the context of Trek, it's completely normal. "The Romulans have developed a weapon that can kill everyone Earth!" "Well, no shit, they've had that for two centuries. And so have we."

There can't even be an argument that the thalaron device is analogous to a neutron bomb--because a neutron leaves the infrastructure relatively intact, thereby very arguably rendering the decision to use such a weapon easier (I would argue it doesn't, as there is a whole, very important field of nuclear strategy involving the destruction of economic recovery resources, but that's neither here nor there). Even by its own egregiously bad technobabbly terms, thalaron radiation would not leave the "infrastructure" intact, because it kills all organic life. That includes trees, and plankton, and bacteria, and any strike capable of killing all the humans on Earth (or Cardassians on Cardassia, etc.) would kill virtually all the life period. The result is an inert mush of graphite (apparently) and oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen compounds, that would have to be freaking near-terraformed to be useful again, even if you so much as wanted to breathe on the targeted planet after a few years.

In other words, it's a complete dead-end. It is not any more useful than judicious use of photon torpedoes or phasers, nor would it (or, I might say, should it, since for unexamined reasons involving mere body horror it does) evoke any more terror than weapons portrayed as capable of stripping the crust off the mantle. It's like the Osprey of weapons of mass destruction.

Interestingly, Starfleet and no doubt the other powers do have access to chemical weapons that can poison a planet completely to specific sapient life forms, as shown in "For the Uniform," which apparently leave the exoteric ecosystem intact, and of course any physical infrastructure worth taking. Where's the outrage there?

Edit: so I guess my complaint is that the thalaron device was mentioned at all, really. Remus is probably mandatory to mention after Nemesis, but at least they're a concept that could be saved; throw the thalaron device in the same scrap pile as antiproton healing rays and omega particles (oh, right... )

 

[Trent Roman]

Someone's signing my song.

I'm the only person ever who didn't like Destiny. GttS I've never read.

Oh, I think there's about five or six of us.

Edit: so I guess my complaint is that the thalaron device was mentioned at all, really.

Yep. Just another blind alley and dead end to puff up the story and give the apperance that these characters are actually doing something while we wait for the unrelated ending to catch them by surprise. The arguments were ridiculous. I think it was Riker who went on about what would happen to the galactic political landscape if they used thalaron weaponry--hey, numbnuts, if the Borg wipe out the Alpha Quadrant, there won't be a galactic political landscape left. Or that it would criminal to employ it against drones since they're essentially hostages of the Collective, when starships have spent the entire trilogy trying to come up with new ways to destroy cubes which--gasp--means killing all the drone/hostages aboard. Either that's justified or it isn't, but it makes no sense for characters to suddenly flip their ethics in the middle of the conflict. Awful lot of convenient morality swirling about, to say nothing of mopey-bitch LaForge convincing the otherwise psychotically obdurate Picard of this trilogy with his pathetic, one-crying-jab-away-from-a-tantrum, "I don't wanna work on this weapon because it reminds me of Data and that makes me sad." And then Worf agreeing with him, but not wanting to say anything about it. Poor Worf, always so reticent and passive. Guess he should have asked the Caeliar for some courage.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[JD]

I hear alot of people complaining about the characters not really doing alot to fight the Borg, and maybe I was mistaken, but I thought that was kinda the whole point of the story. It's not really about the characters fighting the Borg, it's about the effect the invasion has on the characters. And for me at least that was part of what made it so special, it gave us a really good look at how the characters handle a potentially hopeless situation that they had been dreading for years. It almost more of a disaster story than it was a battle/war story. For years the Borg had been referred to as a force of nature and IMO Destiny really showed us how true that was.

 

[DimesDan]

If Mr Mack wanted the Thalaron weapon to work, he would have written it so it would work, as he didn't want it to work, then that, ultimately is why it failed.

 

[Myasishchev]

Someone's signing my song.

I'm the only person ever who didn't like Destiny. GttS I've never read.

Oh, I think there's about five or six of us.

I remember your excellent review--although we dislike the trilogy for largely different reasons, particularly its apocalyptic tone, which was one of its good points for me, whereas iirc it was a major sticking point for you.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

If Mr Mack wanted the Thalaron weapon to work, he would have written it so it would work, as he didn't want it to work, then that, ultimately is why it failed.

That and that a Thalaron weapon is really impractical for fighting the Borg (or anybody who's ship ISN'T crippled) from what we know about it.

1) To be able to use an energy weapon against the Borg more than once it has be capable of being remodualted and through several frequencies or the Borg adapt to it and it's then useless. See the BFG the Enterprise-D turned it's deflector into and how well the it worked against the Borg after they adapted to it.

2) Failing that it needs the Borg to gather in one place in an area the size of a planet and they have to stay that way for the several minutes it takes the thing to charge up i.e. Data jumped from the Enterprise to the Scimitar then walked from the airlock to the bridge and it STILL hadn't charged all the way up. While the Enterprise may have been damaged enough to where they couldn't escape to blast zone, fully functional Borg Cubes could just warp out of the kill zone and just leave one behind so they could adapt to the weapon.

I still have no idea why Picard and Seven forgot these facts especially since Picard actually faced one of these things.

But anyway this thing only seems useful for frying planets and not ships.

 

[Trent Roman]

I suppose it would depend on whether it is a weapon the Borg had encountered before. The Borg are not particularly alert to new threats, since they're purely experientional and have no creativity; a building up of thalaron radiation would mean nothing to them until it is actually deployed as a weapon against them. If they had encountered the weapon before, then they wouldn't even need to abandon their pursuit of the omega molecule, merely deploy whatever counter-measures they adapted last time they ran into thalaron weaponry. On the other hand, Seven of Nine never would have suggested thalaron as a weapon if she was aware the Borg already had counter-measures to it, so unless it was encountered and adapted to in the interim (since she was liberated from the Collective, that is), Picard could have gotten off one good shot.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[ProwlAlpha]

I agree about the characters doing 180s in the middle of war of annihilation against their kind. It really doesn't make no sense. If I was at the edge of a void with no other place to go except for the person blocking my way, would I take the honorable route and punch that person in the stomach or the face because they are considered not dirty places to fight or rather I would gouge out some eyes, knee some crotches, and kick a kneecap or two so that I will not die.

 

[Christopher]

^That's a false analogy. As has been pointed out over and over, the thalaron weapon wouldn't have worked anyway. Even "one good shot" would've been a temporary respite at best, not an actual solution. So it would've been throwing away their principles for no reason.

Why is it so hard for Star Trek fans to accept the notion that violence is not automatically the best solution to a problem? That's pretty much inherent to the whole philosophy of the franchise. If Destiny had been structured in such a way that the right answer to the whole crisis was to build a bigger gun, then it wouldn't have been a Star Trek story.

 

[DimesDan]

^That's a false analogy. As has been pointed out over and over, the thalaron weapon wouldn't have worked anyway. Even "one good shot" would've been a temporary respite at best, not an actual solution. So it would've been throwing away their principles for no reason.

Christopher, you of all people should know that if a writer wants something to happen, then said writer would make said thing work regardless of all the "real world" bollocks that would be discussed and may or may not happen.

Why is it so hard for Star Trek fans to accept the notion that violence is not automatically the best solution to a problem? That's pretty much inherent to the whole philosophy of the franchise. If Destiny had been structured in such a way that the right answer to the whole crisis was to build a bigger gun, then it wouldn't have been a Star Trek story

Yeah because it's just Trek fans who prescribe to that isn't

 

[flemm]

Why is it so hard for Star Trek fans to accept the notion that violence is not automatically the best solution to a problem? That's pretty much inherent to the whole philosophy of the franchise. If Destiny had been structured in such a way that the right answer to the whole crisis was to build a bigger gun, then it wouldn't have been a Star Trek story.

I don't think the criticism that is being made is that violence should have been used exclusively to solve the problem, but rather that characters such as Picard and Worf should have had a more active role in solving the problem than waiting around for the Caeliar to do their thing, coupled with the fact that their role seemed to be reduced to having rather nonsensical debates about the morality of using a specific weapon to kill the borg when they had been using every other weapon at their disposal to kill the borg.

In other words, a Trek story is usually about the crew/humanity/the Federation solving its own problems rather than waiting around for the "Gods of Night" to solve their problems. The point is not "violence would have been better," but rather that active involvement in defeating the threat would have been better than marking time with some irrelevant and rather unconvincing moral posturing.

This was not my reaction to those sequences, but I can see why some fans might react that way. It's a valid criticism of Destiny as a whole: it's about the Caeliar and Captain Hernandez, everyone else is basically along for the ride. "Mere Mortals" do not have much of a role in shaping their own destiny in Destiny whereas, generally speaking, Trek is about mere mortals doing that very thing.

 

[Sci]

In other words, a Trek story is usually about the crew/humanity/the Federation solving its own problems rather than waiting around for the "Gods of Night" to solve their problems.

But, of course, part of the point of the Destiny trilogy is that sometimes in life, we're helpless. Sometimes, there really is nothing you can do -- all you can do is do your best and accept that a situation will unfold as it will, and that you cannot control it. The moral of Destiny is that the Federation's decision to live by its principles, its even having higher moral principles than mere survival, was the thing that inspired the Caeliar to save them.

Because sometimes, that's life. All you can do is be the best person you know how to be, and accept that events are beyond your control. And if you're lucky, your decision to be a good person will turn out to help you, after all.

 

[flemm]

But, of course, part of the point of the Destiny trilogy is that sometimes in life, we're helpless. Sometimes, there really is nothing you can do -- all you can do is do your best and accept that a situation will unfold as it will, and that you cannot control it. The moral of Destiny is that the Federation's decision to live by its principles, its even having higher moral principles than mere survival, was the thing that inspired the Caeliar to save them.

Because sometimes, that's life. All you can do is be the best person you know how to be, and accept that events are beyond your control. And if you're lucky, your decision to be a good person will turn out to help you, after all.

I hear what you're saying, and I agree that Destiny can be interpreted as you are suggesting: in the end it was the Federation's ideals that saved them by inspiring the "Gods" to intervene. I wouldn't want Trek stories to make a habit of resolving problems that way, but it didn't ruin the novels for me by any means.

My point above was not that Destiny is irredeemable as a Trek story, but that the criticisms being made cannot be reduced to the idea that "violence would have been better."

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Throughout Star Trek, our heroes were not always successful; at times, they failed. BUT THEY NEVER GAVE UP - they always had the 'NEVER SAY NEVER' attitude. That's the essential humanistic value portrayed in Star Trek.

ALL THIS UNTIL 'Destiny'.
We have the federation leadership refusing to use thalaron weapons - a weapon that had a good chance of slowing down the borg - because they're too busy blabbering some arguments that make no sense and then seemingly forgetting they even have it.
We have Picard refusing to help Ezri infiltrate a borg ship because he's too busy pitying himself in a holodeck and spouting defeatist arguments - ~it will never work.
We have Picard&co refusing to even prepare to use the thalaron weapon against the borg due to some "moral" argument that makes no sense - as even a superficial analysis reveals.

The entire federation - especially Picard&co - has a defeatist, fatalistic attitude, waiting for death and crying itself to sleep, not trying to find ways to survive, not even bothering to use alternatives already available - because it 'won't work' or because of some nonsensical excuses that pretend to be 'moral' arguments.
The only exception was Ezri - and her 'will never work' plan halved the borg presence in the Alpha Quadrant.

The borg had already defeated Picard and the rest.
That cardassian gul failed to break Picard's spirit? The borg only had to show up to accomplish this very thing.
Picard's crowning achievement in the book was to cry while the Caeliar got inside his mind and dealt with his emotional problems for him. Picard had no say in the matter, didn't contribute anything, not even here. Pathetic - a defeated man.
Picard&co gave up, they were just...waiting for death.
That was their contribution in the 'Destiny' trilogy.

 

[Christopher]

I hear what you're saying, and I agree that Destiny can be interpreted as you are suggesting: in the end it was the Federation's ideals that saved them by inspiring the "Gods" to intervene.

That's definitely it. The protagonists did take positive action that made a difference, because it was their values that motivated the more powerful beings to act. That's part and parcel of what I'm saying. ST isn't about solving problems through power. There have been multiple cases of Trek episodes where the decisive act has been something a human being said or did to motivate a far more powerful alien to take a certain action. You can go all the way to Pike and Number One convincing the Talosians to let them go, though they had a rather, err, suicidal way of making their point. But you've also got Kirk convincing the Providers to reform Triskelion's society; Sisko convincing the Prophets to stop the Dominion fleet from passing through the wormhole; Janeway convincing the Q to end their civil war and try a more constructive path; and so on. Destiny was in the same spirit.

My point above was not that Destiny is irredeemable as a Trek story, but that the criticisms being made cannot be reduced to the idea that "violence would have been better."

Maybe it depends on the critic. One particular poster here seems to be focusing specifically on the thalaron weapon itself and insisting that it should've been the correct solution, even though doing so requires ignoring and misrepresenting several clear facts about the trilogy's content, not to mention its theme.

 

[Stevil2001]

I don't think anyone is insisting that the characters should have won with the thalaron weapon, but that the moral arguments the characters use against the thalaron weapon don't really hold up.