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Fan work: "We Have Engaged the Borg: The Oral History of the Battle of Wolf 359"

My review of it (copied from another thread):

I rather enjoyed it. It was an interesting take on the events before, during and after. Gave interesting explanations over why Starfleet didn't appear familiar with the Borg prior despite the El-Aurians and the Hansen family seemingly knowing about it. And it gave us an idea of why losing 39 vessels was a disaster for Starfleet (having less than 400 starships to defend the 8,000 light year expanse of the UFP, an unreasonable President and Council, forced to rely on 80-year-old Excelsiors, Mirandas, Oberths and Constellations with limited numbers of newer classes including the Galaxy class, pushing the Klingons to do something, trying to end the Cardassian border war etc. etc.). Though I did prefer the 40 ships JTVFX selected to fill the gaps over some decisions made in the book but each to their own.

I was also fascinated by President Amitra since I don't have the source material she came from and only know her from the excellent Articles of the Federation novel. So glad for that detail.

I've been reading some of this. I've written a few Wolf 359 stories so I find this to be quite interesting.

I came with developing ideas around Wolf 359 and even linked it to a few of my fanfic storylines on time.

Loved the recorded Admirals meetings. And the chapter on the battle itself was intense.

Made sense about the confusions between the various branches of Starfleet that weren't communicating all the time and even bringing in new blood into the admiralty tended to do little good at times. I liked how there was an attempt to reconcile why in TNG no-one ever heard of the Borg prior but in Generations we see the El-Aurians evacuating to UFP space while in VOY we have the Hansens going off -- with their young daughter Annika. This also led to other problems. And their fights with the President and her office to keep Starfleet functioning on less than 400 ships to protect such a large area of space with 80-100 year old designs we see on-screen made quite a bit of sense.

Its to bad that Paramount reared their ugly head and send a DCMA strike to the project, which has forced them to pull the book offline. if anyone has the complete book and would upload it to a dropbox or google drive for people to get a copy, that would be awesome

Some people at Paramount tend to get nasty to fan projects. I mean look at Axanar. Essentially the only reason they sued was because it did look good, way too good for any old fan project. And looked more original Star Trek than Discovery did when released.
 
I've been doing a little 'On This Day' Project if folk want to follow along (afraid you've missed the Battle now ;) ) but ill be continuing up to the destruction of the Cube
 
Hi Andy... Was wondering if you'd be willing to comment on the redacted portion of the meeting where the admiralty first briefed the president. I'm assuming that the "consultant" referenced was a section 31 agent? If not would you care to share more? No worries if not! I can appreciate wanting to keep it a mystery for the stories sake.
Gripping story telling overall and I hope you and your collaborators continue to visit other major star trek events in this manner in the future! Thanks!
 
Hi Andy... Was wondering if you'd be willing to comment on the redacted portion of the meeting where the admiralty first briefed the president. I'm assuming that the "consultant" referenced was a section 31 agent? If not would you care to share more? No worries if not! I can appreciate wanting to keep it a mystery for the stories sake.
Gripping story telling overall and I hope you and your collaborators continue to visit other major star trek events in this manner in the future! Thanks!
I am not the author; however they have been doing Q&A over on X, and that question was asked. It was implied that yes, the redacted agent was section 31, and that the discussion was involving the Borg remains that reanimated during the events depicted in the Enterprise episode "Regeneration"
 
Sorry, didn't see this at first, Yeh basically the Redacted sections are meant to be Section 31 (we even cite Article 14 section 31 as the reason for the redaction lol) We did this because there was stuff we needed characters to know which the readers would know from subsequent shows like Voyager and Enterprise, but where not known at the time of TNG, if that makes sense
 
Yeh, Annie our proofreader was really mad at me for that one, everytime she read it she would always hope they would survive, even i was a little shocked when id finished writing it at how much of a gut punch that was heh
 
Yeh, STO Approached us last year if they could adapt some aspects of our interpretation of Wolf 359, it couldn't be exactly the same due to some mechanical issues, but its a fairly authentic adaptation, and they have also added their own take on the Memorial Station
 
There's something I'm wondering that I keep forgetting to ask about. The Republic being the designated Starfleet Academy training ship for more than 50 years is mentioned in the present-tense in DS9, and I don't remember anything accounting for that in the book where it's part of the fleet and thoroughly smashed, as the only candidate to be the headless Constitution seen in BoBW (and it certainly doesn't look like it was salvaged and returned to service based on its state in STO, unless it was restored to its authentically wrecked appearance from the battle, which quite a choice for someone operating a memorial museum).
 
Ahhh the Republic, we do mention it a couple of times in the Book, Commander Murakami see's it destroyed on screen when the Hood jumps into the Battle, and Buenamigo finds the DOT's on Republic that he is able to re-activate to help with the salvage efforts. To be perfectly frank i had forgotten about the reference to Republic in Valiant when we were writing, but it does still work for the purposes of our story if we follow the RN Tradition that Training ships are often named for the establishment rather than the ships original name. So to my mind there were numerous ships at the Training School Republic, and Jake who was not exactly all that interest in Starfleet at that point just mis-remembered the difference between the school and the ship (at least thats how im going to square that circle lol)
 
I didn't think that there would be any Parliament-class starships by that time period.
Given that they aren't normally front-line vessels, and appeared to be contemporaries of the Galaxy and Nebula classes, it wouldn't surprise me if some were still in service.

I'm loving this so far. I'm afraid I won't be very productive today...lol...
 
Given that they aren't normally front-line vessels, and appeared to be contemporaries of the Galaxy and Nebula classes, it wouldn't surprise me if some were still in service.

I'm loving this so far. I'm afraid I won't be very productive today...lol...

Hope you spot the Rihannsu nods and easter eggs ;)
 
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