First Contact - Where was the crew?

[Sketcher]

I'm not sure what the crew compliment is for the Enterprise E, but I'm guessing its at least 800 people. Now, obviously an engineering team beamed down to the surface, and personnel on Deck 16 were assimilated, but where was everybody else during the Borg invasion? All we ever saw were the Borg encountering security teams. There had to be at least a couple hundred crew members running about. Were they all huddled in a barricaded saucer section? Couldn't the Enterprise crew beat the Borg just by sheer numbers and good strategy?

 

[Timo]

Numbers might not be particularly significant in a fight in tight corridors - especially as the corridors would be controlled by the Borg not only in terms of manpower, but also by them accessing the systems that operate the emergency bulkheads, forcefields and intruder control systems.

When the evacuation order is given, plenty enough pods launch from the upper decks of the ship to imply that hundreds of people are leaving...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dr. Crusher]

The Enterprise in this film certainly did have a creepily deserted feel to it, long before anyone left the ship in escape pods. A good effect given the plot, but a valid question nonetheless.

 

[Pavonis]

The crew must've been barricaded in their quarters, to deny them as drones to the Borg.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The crew must've been barricaded in their quarters, to deny them as drones to the Borg.

But as we saw in sickbay, the Borg are perfectly capable of busting through any such barricades.

 

[Timo]

...Indeed, I'd rather argue that everybody fled to the saucer when the Borg began advancing, then stopped panicking when the Borg stopped their advance at Deck 11.

It's just that all the action takes place somewhere else. Picard mostly wanders the corridors in areas that are under complete Borg control, or then stays at the bridge; there isn't any reason to expect any crew (or civilians, which the ship might be hosting in large numbers as appears standard for the TNG era) at such locations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anticitizen]

I would like to hope that the Enterprise would have been able to unload non-essential personnel off to a starbase or in shuttles, given that they knew they were going into combat. I know the movie made it appear that Enterprise charged into battle immediately after finding out the Borg were coming, but they were at the edge of the Romulan neutral zone and it likely may have taken days to get back to Earth. Maybe a quick stop wasn't out of order.

 

[tighr]

I know the movie made it appear that Enterprise charged into battle immediately after finding out the Borg were coming, but they were at the edge of the Romulan neutral zone and it likely may have taken days to get back to Earth. Maybe a quick stop wasn't out of order.

This.

It wasn't adequately explained for my tastes. In one scene, we're hearing that the fleet has engaged the Borg. In the next scene, the Enterprise is showing up. I would have expected that battle to be long over by that time. At least a scene or two of the Enterprise crew as they are flying towards Earth.

However, it is likely that with the amount of time they had on the way back to Earth, they would have stopped and dropped off non-essential personnel.

 

[Anticitizen]

I know the movie made it appear that Enterprise charged into battle immediately after finding out the Borg were coming, but they were at the edge of the Romulan neutral zone and it likely may have taken days to get back to Earth. Maybe a quick stop wasn't out of order.

This.

It wasn't adequately explained for my tastes. In one scene, we're hearing that the fleet has engaged the Borg. In the next scene, the Enterprise is showing up. I would have expected that battle to be long over by that time. At least a scene or two of the Enterprise crew as they are flying towards Earth.

However, it is likely that with the amount of time they had on the way back to Earth, they would have stopped and dropped off non-essential personnel.

I like to think the Starfleet encountered the Borg at some distance from Earth and were able to slow them down by engaging them at the perimeter. The battle could have raged on from the edge of Federation space to Earth over days/weeks, with Enterprise arriving during the showdown.

 

[Kelthaz]

Given the severity of the situation, I'd imagine every able-bodied person was drafted into security detachments to fight the Borg. As for dropping off the excess crew on their way to the battle, I seriously doubt they would waste time for that. The survival of Earth itself is at stake; you don't waste time to drop the old folks off at Risa. Even a few seconds delay would cost lives and ships.

 

[Timo]

The situation in ST:FC seems to correspond well to the situation in "Best of Both Worlds": the Borg are engaged at the fringes of the UFP, and despite a disastrous first clash, Starfleet gives chase all the way from said fringes to the doorstep of Earth. In "BoBW", that chase took a week, and the E-D had no opportunity to offload anybody.

On the other hand, the E-D had to stop for repairs in the middle of nowhere. In ST:FC, we were given no indication on how long the chase from Typhon to Earth took, but we didn't learn of a reason for the E-E to stop for repairs, so even with all other things being equal, Picard might have made a stop of a different sort and offloaded the cute puppies and cuddly babies and foul-mouthed grannies. Especially if the E-E was a faster vessel than the E-D and thus could outrun the Borg and arrive at Earth at the same time the Borg did.

And the latter does seem to happen: the Borg have only just arrived when Picard does, and are still approaching Earth at a crawling speed. It would have made little sense for Picard to arrive any earlier... Perhaps he felt that defending Earth was a better tactic for his vessel * than attempting to join the running battle from Typhon to Earth - especially if doing the latter would have meant a detour?

All said, I'd still interpret the lack of puppies, babies and grannies as an artifact of the camera angles. The camera simply chose to ignore the fleeing masses of civilians and concentrated on the valiantly fighting Starfleet crew on those extremely rare occasions it showed the internal fight at all.

Timo Saloniemi

* The E-E is armed with quantum torpedoes and chooses to use these as the primary weapon against the Borg; interestingly enough, we have never seen quantum torpedoes fired at warp, and Picard may have known they would be unsuited for the warp chase fight from Typhon to Earth!

 

[The_Baroness]

Despite all that, the Borg have a Transwarp conduit that opens up right on Earths doorstep...why the fuck do they go the long way round?

 

[Timo]

Two rationalizations present themselves. First, establishing such a conduit may require work done at both ends, so the "conduit excavator" has to crawl to Earth first at conventional warp to create the far terminal. The Cube of "BoBW" may not have had time to complete the job, but some later Borg invader (possibly the one in ST:FC) finally got the job done, enabling the events of "Endgame".

Second, the Borg may have been far more interested in fighting Starfleet than reaching Earth. Both times they only sent a single Cube - and from VOY we know that the assimilation of an advanced world is conducted with dozens or hundreds of Cubes. So the missions in "BoBW" and ST:FC were unlikely to have been assimilation runs, and may instead have aimed at information gathering only. The best way to gather information about Federation defenses would be to engage Starfleet in a fight, and that can't be done from within a transwarp conduit...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deckerd]

This would be a good explanation if they hadn't gone balls out, without any advance guard, into fluidic space to assimilate species [insert number here]. That doesn't tally with any standard cautious approach.

 

[Timo]

I don't think the piecemeal approach of "BoBW" or ST:FC is "caution" per se. It's just that the Borg have more use for intelligence than they have for assimilated bodies, planets and industries. Assimilating a world right away would mean wasting its most precious resource, its innovative ways of resisting. Hence, a succession of "weak" missions at first - just like was explicitly done in VOY "Child's Play".

As for the plunge into the fluidic realm, we know little about what happened there. But hundreds, thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of Cubes were involved when we did reach the scene.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

* The E-E is armed with quantum torpedoes and chooses to use these as the primary weapon against the Borg; interestingly enough, we have never seen quantum torpedoes fired at warp, and Picard may have known they would be unsuited for the warp chase fight from Typhon to Earth!

It could be similarly argued that Picard's Ressikan flute can not be played at warp, since he has only performed while the ship was on impulse power.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Despite all that, the Borg have a Transwarp conduit that opens up right on Earths doorstep...why the fuck do they go the long way round?

"This conduit closed for repairs. Please allow additional traveling time."

 

[MikeS]

You are all assuming that the Neutral Zone is a long distance from Earth. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that it is pretty close by. Federation space isn't necessarily equidistant in volume from Earth to its boundaries.

 

[Timo]

It could be similarly argued that Picard's Ressikan flute can not be played at warp, since he has only performed while the ship was on impulse power.

Possibly so. But of the two ships carrying quantum torps (and in special launchers dedicated to the projectile type at that), the Defiant has fought at warp, or more exactly engaged in chase battles but failed to fire her decisive q-weapons there, for unknown reasons. The E-E hasn't fought at warp, so we don't know one way or another.

Regular torps and phasers work fine at warp, and are used in warp fights. Quantums are an important hero ship weapon. So I still feel there's something fishy about us not seeing q-fights at warp.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SeerSGB]

Despite all that, the Borg have a Transwarp conduit that opens up right on Earths doorstep...why the fuck do they go the long way round?

That conduit didn't exist till some time post FC? So they use the closest conduit at the time to make the bulk of the jump, then roll in on standard warp to Earth. Sometime between FC and Endgame they managed to get a conduit to Earth up and running.

Just a theory.