explain the defeat of the Borg in BOBW to me?

[sonak]

OK, so maybe I'm slow and my brain is beginning to degrade. But I understand the defeat of the Borg up to a point. Data figures out through Locutus' "sleep" hint that he can trick the Borg into regenerating and powering down. Clever, and easy to understand. So the Cube undergoes regeneration all at one time, causing shields and weapons and major systems to go offline.


It's at this point that the episode loses me. The Borg ship, in its powered-down state, undergoes some kind of "power feedback loop" in its power net or something equally technobabblish or technobabble-esque. Um... why would regeneration, which is a normal part of Borg function, even if it's not designed to happen to the whole ship at once, cause a random power feedback?


More to the point, why did they go with this convoluted technical explanation? They already had the Borg ship almost totally powerless. A few photon torpedoes and some phaser blasts in that situation would have finished off the Borg cube.

Why wasn't it just "yes, commander Riker, the Borg are indeed "asleep," the ship is basically powerless, all systems including shields are down."

Riker: "excellent. Fire all weapons."

"the Borg ship has been destroyed."


what's with the convoluted feedback in the power net stuff?

 

[BillJ]

I imagine the first torpedo would've woken them right back up.

 

[brian577]

OK, so maybe I'm slow and my brain is beginning to degrade. But I understand the defeat of the Borg up to a point. Data figures out through Locutus' "sleep" hint that he can trick the Borg into regenerating and powering down. Clever, and easy to understand. So the Cube undergoes regeneration all at one time, causing shields and weapons and major systems to go offline.


It's at this point that the episode loses me. The Borg ship, in its powered-down state, undergoes some kind of "power feedback loop" in its power net or something equally technobabblish or technobabble-esque. Um... why would regeneration, which is a normal part of Borg function, even if it's not designed to happen to the whole ship at once, cause a random power feedback?


More to the point, why did they go with this convoluted technical explanation? They already had the Borg ship almost totally powerless. A few photon torpedoes and some phaser blasts in that situation would have finished off the Borg cube.

Why wasn't it just "yes, commander Riker, the Borg are indeed "asleep," the ship is basically powerless, all systems including shields are down."

Riker: "excellent. Fire all weapons."

"the Borg ship has been destroyed."


what's with the convoluted feedback in the power net stuff?

I would say the power feedback loop was the ship's self destruct system. Which activated when the ship's computer detected that the Borg network had been compromised.

 

[Mr Silver]

From what I understand. The Borg realised that their collective network had been breached. I mean it would be a clue that something is wrong when the entire compliment of drones on a ship go into regeneration mode simultaneously.

So it seems pretty likely that as soon as this happened, the Borg collective elsewhere investigated, found their security compromised and destroyed the ship in order to sever the link and prevent them from being further compromised. It was Data who was connected after all, in that small amount of time he could have downloaded thousands of pieces of important data, locations of Borg planet's, strategies, defences and even the origin of the race. We don't know that he didn't, but it stands to reason that whatever Data did come away with, wasn't very useful (unless Starfleet analysed it and used the information to design the Defiant, etc).

 

[Anwar]

The regeneration command is what they did in "Q Who?", the drones all put their collective power into repairing the damaged ship. In BOBW the ship wasn't damaged and yet they still put all their power into the systems of the ship. Putting all that power into undamaged systems would like sending a huge power surge into a totally charged car battery: It caused an overload in all core systems that destroyed the ship.

OR

The Drones themselves absorbed too much power from the regeneration alcoves into their bodies and exploded. Since there are thousands upon thousands of drones on a Huge Cube, the multiple explosions happening at once blew up the ship from within.

 

[Unicron]

^ IIRC, it was basically the first option that the writers were going for. I could be wrong.

 

[sonak]

The regeneration command is what they did in "Q Who?", the drones all put their collective power into repairing the damaged ship. In BOBW the ship wasn't damaged and yet they still put all their power into the systems of the ship. Putting all that power into undamaged systems would like sending a huge power surge into a totally charged car battery: It caused an overload in all core systems that destroyed the ship.

OR

The Drones themselves absorbed too much power from the regeneration alcoves into their bodies and exploded. Since there are thousands upon thousands of drones on a Huge Cube, the multiple explosions happening at once blew up the ship from within.

I know they were actively repairing stuff in "Q Who," but were they doing that here?
I may be remembering the episode wrong, but I thought they were just dormant, not actively repairing anything.

And to go with your charged car battery analogy, the ship wouldn't have been fully charged at that point, it had actually been de-powered. I know you said "undamaged" as well as de-powered, which the systems were, but still...


so is the Borg Cube just poorly designed, lacking failsafes? I don't see why essentially just pushing a giant "off switch" which is what Data did would trigger a self-destruct. Seems to me it should have just sat there regenerating until the cycle was over and then snapped out of it.


but let's say you're right, isn't this convoluted? We've had several competing explanations as to what happened here. Why couldn't they have just fired a spread of torpedoes at once to take out what was basically a de-powered ship? A lot easier from a dramatic perspective than a convoluted technical scenario.

 

[indolover]

luck, nothing more. If Data hadn't figured out what Picard's suggestion, Earth would have been assimilated.

 

[sonak]

incidentally, I'm not alone on this. Checking memory alpha's summary of this, they give TWO options: the self-destruct sequence was a defense against Data gaining more access to the Borg collective or a power feedback triggered by regeneration when it was unnecessary.


To the first possibility, if that was the intention, it should have been made more clear. To the second, it still makes no sense to me. They should have a failsafe against such a thing.

 

[Avon]

space pixie magic!

 

[Nick M]

I imagine the first torpedo would've woken them right back up.

You would think, but my Borg girlfriend NEVER hears the alarm, I always have to....uh, never mind. I was not supposed to discuss this.

 

[Gary7]

I'd be more inclined to believe that it was an intentional self-destruction. Data had penetrated the Borg command pathways. True, he didn't have authority to do much, but having gotten this far, there's very good reason to worry that he might eventually break into their more powerful command systems. An "overload" seems a bit uncharacteristic, as the Borg are very sophisticated and you'd expect they have many redundant systems to safeguard against such a catastrophe. Except... well, there's one other consideration, where Data is sending the "sleep" command on an infinite loop. Because the Borg can't break out of it, due to the sleep command resuming every time it is canceled, there ends up being an overload and the cube self-destructs.

Now, why not use this tactic later on? They never try it again, right? I would have at least liked to see them try, then find that the Borg have rewritten their command pathway structure which blocks an "unauthorized sleep command".

 

[Anwar]

They'd need a drone to hack into in order to do that. A drone with an active connection to the Collective. That's why VOY never tried using the EMH to connect to Seven in such a way: she wasn't actively connected like Locutus was.

 

[BillJ]

I imagine the first torpedo would've woken them right back up.

You would think, but my Borg girlfriend NEVER hears the alarm, I always have to....uh, never mind. I was not supposed to discuss this.

 

[Gary7]

They'd need a drone to hack into in order to do that. A drone with an active connection to the Collective. That's why VOY never tried using the EMH to connect to Seven in such a way: she wasn't actively connected like Locutus was.

Ah, I think you're right. Data was able to connect up to the Borg via Locutus/Picard. I guess Seven could have come up with some kind of communication module that would interface with the collective, as she did possess the foundation for the technology. But apparently that just never occurred to them.

 

[BriGuy]

All this theorizing and extending and guessing is fine, but there was something explicitly said in the episode. I'd have to see it again to remember what it was. But it was laid out what was happening.

Outside of that... this is Trek, where it's always better to have the "bad guy" blow themselves up then to have our noble heroes kill them.

And it meant they only had to blow up a model, and not spend the money on the effects for the Enterprise firing weapons - which to be realistic they'd have to show the D firing a lot to destroy a cube that size; if they went cheap and showed the cube blowing up from one or a few hits, then the fans would cry foul too.

 

[Holdfast]

Outside of that... this is Trek, where it's always better to have the "bad guy" blow themselves up then to have our noble heroes kill them.

Yeah, pretty much this.

In story, and without popping in a DVD to check, a quick google suggests that Shelby says: "... their entire power net's about to feed back on itself. I'd say we're looking at a self-destruct sequence activated by the Borg's malfunction..."

If consistent with what ended up on screen in the final version (I can't remember if it's exactly the same) I'd interpret that to being a fail safe if the ship undergoes a serious and irretrievable malfunction.

 

[scotthm]

In BOBW the ship wasn't damaged and yet they still put all their power into the systems of the ship. Putting all that power into undamaged systems would like sending a huge power surge into a totally charged car battery: It caused an overload in all core systems that destroyed the ship.

Hmmm. I'd have thought the Borg would know about circuit breakers.

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[Start Wreck]

I quite like the idea of the all-powerful Borg not having a failsafe for something so fundamental, simply because they would never expect it to happen. That was kind of the point of the resolution: that their interconnectivity was a vulnerability.

That said, after this incident, they probably "adapted" so it couldn't happen again.

 

[BillJ]

Hmmm. I'd have thought the Borg would know about circuit breakers.

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They were planning on assimilating some on Tuesday.