First Contact - Where was the crew?

[Timo]

And not a bad one. We just need to know more about how these conduits are made...

A few times, the Borg (or our VOY heroes, with stolen equipment) appeared to demonstrate the ability to go to transwarp without opening a preexisting corridor. "Scorpion" and "Dark Frontier" at least seem to describe the ability to move much faster than warp with just the help of an onboard "transwarp coil" or somesuch. Even if conduits are much faster still, one has to explain why transwarp coils weren't used in "BoBW" and ST:FC to leave Starfleet coughing stardust...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SeerSGB]

And not a bad one. We just need to know more about how these conduits are made...

A few times, the Borg (or our VOY heroes, with stolen equipment) appeared to demonstrate the ability to go to transwarp without opening a preexisting corridor. "Scorpion" and "Dark Frontier" at least seem to describe the ability to move much faster than warp with just the help of an onboard "transwarp coil" or somesuch. Even if conduits are much faster still, one has to explain why transwarp coils weren't used in "BoBW" and ST:FC to leave Starfleet coughing stardust...

Timo Saloniemi

Working-life dependent upon load, perhaps? Tooling around their home quadrant, no biggie. Make the jump across the galaxy, the thing burns out. Might explain why we don't see more than one at a time: Conduits allow for big coordinated fleet movements: the fleet goes in, the fleet comes out as a unit; with coils distance introduces chances for errors or ships getting lost on the trip.

And if coils can burn out, why not repair them? Either there is a component that can't be replicated without certain materials only found in the Delta Quadrant. Or, typical Borg thinking, once cut off from they figure on making a new hive and expanding from there, so return is not a big issue.

 

[Nighthawk]

Or the single cube was first sent to open the Transwarp conduit which then would have enabled mulitple cubes to appear over Earth the inner colonies. ( sounds too much like BSG - classic)

The Enterprise E shows up and bam puts a stop to that idea and or the true intention was to distract Starfleet while the Borg sphare headed back in time to assimalte Earth in the past.

It was Picards understanding of the Borg that he was able to follow the sphare into the past.

Not sure if the other Starships where able to decispher what was going on.

As for dropping unnneded crewmen off there was no time and I assume just like the U.S. Marines. All marines are trained as rifleman first even though they may be cooks or in the motor pool.

So all Starfleet personal know how to handle weapons and has a basic understanding of defense tactics to repale boarders as in the Borg.

If I remember the the Ent -E did not have families on board.

 

[Timo]

If I remember the the Ent -E did not have families on board.

As already discussed, there's no good way to tell. Many TNG era starships had families or assorted groupies aboard, but even the E-D managed through entire episodes without actually showing any of the civilians that we knew were aboard.

We might argue that the E-E wouldn't embark families during the shakedown year yet, perhaps. But the E-D had families during the first season, which Picard repeatedly indicated was a shakedown period of some sort.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[matthunter]

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.

Doubtful - Picard was ordered NOT to take part in the fight. If he suddenly shows up at a starbase requesting to drop off non-essential personnel, it's going to look bloody suspicious.

 

[Captaindemotion]

If I remember the the Ent -E did not have families on board.

As already discussed, there's no good way to tell. Many TNG era starships had families or assorted groupies aboard,
Timo Saloniemi

Groupies? I never knew Starfleet was so rock and roll. I just had images of Led Zeppelin riding motorbikes down the corridors of the ENT-E and scantily-clad rock chicks making plaster casts of Worf's, er, batleth...