First Contact: Sphere's weapons = pathetic.

[The Borg Queen]

When the Borg Sphere was firing on the missle base on Montana, the blasts were no more powerful than your average 20th Century bomb.

WTF?

I mean, seriously.

Even Federation weapons, a standard Photon Torpedo, should have been enough to destroy the entire settlement in one hit, and the Borg are supposed to be more powerful with more powerful weapons than the Federation...

Another example of why the Star Trek people took a good idea (the Borg,) realised they wrote themselves into a hole with it, and had to disregard their own concept to make a plothole to let the heroes win.

 

[Computer]

I noticed the same thing. You could have acheived the same level of damage by launching rocks the size of those torpedos.

If i punch my wall i create a hole, unless my fist has explosive properties i have no reason to assume the entire wall would come down, and that is why we build explosive devices... to cause more damage than the actual size and mass an object can provide. Borg torpedos appear not to work on that principle.

UNLESS they were bunker buster torpedos and exploded deep underground........ yes........ thats it......Borg Bunker Buster Bombs (Say that 10 times fast)

 

[Charles Trip Tucker III]

I just figured the Borg wanted to destroy the complex without killing potential new drones.

 

[Chess Piece Face]

That was really bad...I mean Kirk's NCC-1701 could destroy a planet.

 

[Charles Trip Tucker III]

They didn't want to destroy Humanity, they wanted to assimilate Humanity.

 

[PowderedToastMan]

it is one of those things that makes no sense but helps the story. Of course they could have wiped out the whole sate of Montana in one shot just to be sure....leaving plenty of humans to assimilate.

but of course if they did that it would ruin the fun of the story

 

[Charles Trip Tucker III]

Maybe they wanted to assimilate Zephram Cochrane?

 

[Computer]

Wait, why would they want to prevent the Federation when 21st century humans were/are as bright as blackhole? wouldnt they gain more by assimilating the Humans/Federation as it existed?

 

[Charles Trip Tucker III]

If the Borg wanted to put an end to the Federation so badly that they were willing to whipe it from history... why not just send a fleet of 10 Cubes? I guess when the movie was concieved, they hadn't thought out the Borg Collective being as large as it was presented on VOY.

 

[Computer]

Charles Trip Tucker III said:
If the Borg wanted to put an end to the Federation so badly that they were willing to whipe it from history... why not just send a fleet of 10 Cubes? I guess when the movie was concieved, they hadn't thought out the Borg Collective being as large as it was presented on VOY.

Less is more in this case.

Seeing an entire fleet including the Mellenium Falcon take on 1 cube and getting their asses handed to them demonstrates the power of the Borg, 10 cubes and wed expect nothing less than the fleet receiving their asses on a silver platter.

 

[Charles Trip Tucker III]

I was speaking from the Borg's perspective, not that of the audience. You would think if one ship wasn't enough, you'd just send more... not go back in time and screw with history.

 

[Computer]

Charles Trip Tucker III said:
I was speaking from the Borg's perspective, not that of the audience. You would think if one ship wasn't enough, you'd just send more... not go back in time and screw with history.

Like Rumsfeld says "You go to war with what you have, not what youd like to have"

To this day im not sure if the Cube was the primary threat or if it was just acting as a carrier and the sphere was the primary threat.

 

[Good Will Riker]

This is what you end up with when you have Brannon Braga co-write your scripts.

 

[Charles Trip Tucker III]

Computer said:

Charles Trip Tucker III said:
I was speaking from the Borg's perspective, not that of the audience. You would think if one ship wasn't enough, you'd just send more... not go back in time and screw with history.

Like Rumsfeld says "You go to war with what you have, not what youd like to have"

To this day im not sure if the Cube was the primary threat or if it was just acting as a carrier and the sphere was the primary threat.

The thing is, VOY revealed that the Borg have hundreds if not thousands of ships. Surely the Collective could spare more than one?

 

[Computer]

Charles Trip Tucker III said:

Computer said:

Charles Trip Tucker III said:
I was speaking from the Borg's perspective, not that of the audience. You would think if one ship wasn't enough, you'd just send more... not go back in time and screw with history.

Like Rumsfeld says "You go to war with what you have, not what youd like to have"

To this day im not sure if the Cube was the primary threat or if it was just acting as a carrier and the sphere was the primary threat.

The thing is, VOY revealed that the Borg have hundreds if not thousands of ships. Surely the Collective could spare more than one?

Not only that but they have transwarp corridors that can bring the entire collective to Earths door step within 3 minutes.

 

[Charles Trip Tucker III]

Is it possible that was newly constructed?

 

[nx1701g]

In the novel and the script the Borg Sphere is explained to be an Escape Pod.

 

[Charles Trip Tucker III]

The movie also made this pretty clear given the Sphere did not launch until the Cube began to explode, and then the Sphere was destroyed pretty easilly by the Ent-E later on.

 

[WalkinMan]

First Contact works provided that you accept certain contrivances. One of those is that the sphere is rather weak. You could say perhaps that the power required to generate the chronoton vortex + the battle weakened the sphere's reserves.

(I can't believe I just came up with another Treknology justification )

Another thing that follows is:

"Sphere's shields/defenses = pathetic." A torpedo spread from the E-E destroyed it cleanly. Very different from the spheres encountered in VOY. That said, maybe the Queen deliberately allowed the sphere to be destroyed.

And to go off the weird conspiracy angle, perhaps she wanted the assimilation of both Earth and the E-E to get the best of both technologies.

However, the other contrivance is the whole idea of time travel...if this were so great a gambit, a cube could have time traveled in the Beta Quadrant and come over to Earth or something.

Oh well, it's still cool. Kinda like how James Bond dodges all those bullets, it so happened that the sphere stank when it was supposed to. But the Borg were still quite formidable in the film.

 

[Computer]

I can forgive the weakened state of the Sphere, Worf had said shields were down on the E-E so its possible this happened to the Sphere, without shields to stop the Q-Torps there was no way to adapt until it was too late.

I always assumed Borg shields acted as a scanner when they were hit by a P-Torp or Phaser to find the frequency/modulation of the weapon so it could adjust.

It would be similar to if I were fighting Mike Tyson and I had personal shields, the first few punches/bites would allow me to get a good idea where he plans to strike and adjust my game plan.
If my personal shields were down then id be sleeping after the first punch...

... I have no idea where that analogy came from.