Thats becuase Watters wasn't a main character. If Sisko had done it the dreadnought would have exploded and the crew would have gotten a parade.
"Emissary" - The Borg and the Saratoga
- Thread starter DS9forever
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Thats becuase Watters wasn't a main character. If Sisko had done it the dreadnought would have exploded and the crew would have gotten a parade.
I don't know. In the early appearances it seemed like they were much more interested in technology then people. Sure they scooped up cities but I doubt many, if any, of the inhabitants of those cities were alive when they reached the Borg Ship. And in Wolf 359 they didn't stop to grab survivors they just knocked the fleet out and moved on. What Q said might mean they would recycle the corpses rather then turn the survivors into drones as well.
I actually read that as a fairly well-written point that Watters made a poor judgement call through lack of experience. The episode makes it pretty clear, Jake was right, his Dad wouldn't have risked an attack at those long odds even with his very experienced crew.
Although it could have hit harder, Into Darkness does address Kirk's lack of experience. He could easily be held responsible for the deaths on his ship after he assumed he could out-run the Vengeance. That said, Admiral Asshole gave him a get out of jail free card by saying he'd have murdered his crew whatever happened.
I don't think we need to worry about Borg inconsistencies. In the early appearances, the heroes simply didn't know all the facts yet...
1) The Borg are not interested in people? Well, they never are, except in the case of specific interesting individuals like Picard and Seven (not young Annika Hansen, who was assimilated as collateral, but Seven of Nine the apostate specifically). And all that Q in "Q Who?" said was that the Borg weren't interested in the TNG heroes!
2) Assimilation techniques changed? I don't think so - Picard was assimilated like any other, by stabbing him with a needle that injected something that immediately made his skin grey, and by adding further stuff both surgically and, presumably, through the efforts of the nanomachinery now within his blood. This just seemed "slow" to us because Picard was captured first, gloated at, and then assimilated. (Plus the VFX and makeup art changed, but that always happens.)
3) The Borg went from giving birth to assimilating babies? I don't think so. We only have Riker's baseless speculation that the babies he finds in the drawers have been birthed by already assimilated individuals or whatever - and in the very same episode, Q already says the Borg are neither male nor female.
Etc. etc. The later writers didn't exactly find themselves written in a corner by the earlier ones.
Timo Saloniemi
1) The Borg are not interested in people? Well, they never are, except in the case of specific interesting individuals like Picard and Seven (not young Annika Hansen, who was assimilated as collateral, but Seven of Nine the apostate specifically). And all that Q in "Q Who?" said was that the Borg weren't interested in the TNG heroes!
2) Assimilation techniques changed? I don't think so - Picard was assimilated like any other, by stabbing him with a needle that injected something that immediately made his skin grey, and by adding further stuff both surgically and, presumably, through the efforts of the nanomachinery now within his blood. This just seemed "slow" to us because Picard was captured first, gloated at, and then assimilated. (Plus the VFX and makeup art changed, but that always happens.)
3) The Borg went from giving birth to assimilating babies? I don't think so. We only have Riker's baseless speculation that the babies he finds in the drawers have been birthed by already assimilated individuals or whatever - and in the very same episode, Q already says the Borg are neither male nor female.
Etc. etc. The later writers didn't exactly find themselves written in a corner by the earlier ones.
Timo Saloniemi
If Sisko had done it, he would have made sure the officers who said the plan would work were basing that opinion on science instead of wishful thinking.
And Kirk was not a member of the neo-fascist group of narcissists that was Red Squad.
Kirk, even at his most reckless, was 1000x the captain that Watters ever was.
Prime Kirk at least. Abrams Kirk is a little better then Watters but not nearly that much.
I think it could go either way, myself. I tend to interpret Q's remarks as inferring that the Collective didn't see Picard and other members of the crew as individuals, therefore they had no value except as raw material to be assimilated. Not unlike how the Agents were depicted in the Matrix series, with the ability to possess anyone connected to the Matrix and not caring about those individuals. Their sole purpose was to maintain the system for the machines. "Collective" did have at least one former drone who was assimilated at W359, though the writing is rather wonky on that part.
Actually, I think there's quite a bit of reason to believe the Borg did perform a thorough mop-up of the Wolf 359 battle site.
1) There were no lifeboats to be found there when the E-D arrived. The Siskos might have been extremely lucky (or blessed by the Prophets) to avoid assimilation while virtually everybody else got assimilated.
2) The only known survivors of the battle are the Siskos. One would think Picard would have run into such people many times in his career before DS9 "Emissary", but it seems he hasn't developed a stock response to Ben Sisko's hatred yet. We know how many ships and people were lost in the battle, from TNG "Drumhead", but we never get any idea of the number of survivors. For all we know, there were sixty-two of those, to the eleven thousand lost.
3) People fighting at Wolf 359 were in VOY revealed to have been whisked to the Delta Quadrant somehow. These people were explicit assimilation victims; their ships could be counted as implicit assimilation victims, being turned into further Borg vessels in the style of ENT "Regeneration". After all, the Borg did go to the trouble of locking a tractor beam on the old Saratoga, and did leave behind lots of nearly intact wreckage rather than mere clouds of dust and gas - they could have been aiming specifically at capturing as many intact starships as they possibly could.
4) Finally, the E-D caught up with the Borg Cube. How come? The Cube was as fast as the E-D, and the battle supposedly was over before the E-D even sorted out her problems from the last engagement and got underway. Indeed, Admiral Hanson's message about the battle going down south adjoins a scene where LaForge says it will still be "a couple of hours" before they can go to warp. Apparently, the Cube spent a lot of time doing somewhere at the battle site. And it probably wasn't repairs, as we saw little damage in DS9, and much worse-looking damage was repaired en route, at warp, in "Q Who?"...
Timo Saloniemi
1) There were no lifeboats to be found there when the E-D arrived. The Siskos might have been extremely lucky (or blessed by the Prophets) to avoid assimilation while virtually everybody else got assimilated.
2) The only known survivors of the battle are the Siskos. One would think Picard would have run into such people many times in his career before DS9 "Emissary", but it seems he hasn't developed a stock response to Ben Sisko's hatred yet. We know how many ships and people were lost in the battle, from TNG "Drumhead", but we never get any idea of the number of survivors. For all we know, there were sixty-two of those, to the eleven thousand lost.
3) People fighting at Wolf 359 were in VOY revealed to have been whisked to the Delta Quadrant somehow. These people were explicit assimilation victims; their ships could be counted as implicit assimilation victims, being turned into further Borg vessels in the style of ENT "Regeneration". After all, the Borg did go to the trouble of locking a tractor beam on the old Saratoga, and did leave behind lots of nearly intact wreckage rather than mere clouds of dust and gas - they could have been aiming specifically at capturing as many intact starships as they possibly could.
4) Finally, the E-D caught up with the Borg Cube. How come? The Cube was as fast as the E-D, and the battle supposedly was over before the E-D even sorted out her problems from the last engagement and got underway. Indeed, Admiral Hanson's message about the battle going down south adjoins a scene where LaForge says it will still be "a couple of hours" before they can go to warp. Apparently, the Cube spent a lot of time doing somewhere at the battle site. And it probably wasn't repairs, as we saw little damage in DS9, and much worse-looking damage was repaired en route, at warp, in "Q Who?"...
Timo Saloniemi
2: That comes up in the Emissary novel actually which has an expanded form of the first meeting between Picard and Sisko as well as showing a little of what Picard does after Sisko leaves. There definitely were more survivors just not very many and Sisko was the first Picard met. Many of the ships destroyed there were lost with all hands and even the ones that had survivors took heavy causalities.
