Going Through Borg Space

[hux]

In truth, wasn't this utter madness?

"Let's take out little ship through the Borg's home space and potentially face thousands of Borg vessels and hope for the best. I'm sure everything will be fine"

Surely, they would have looked at it and said, nope, let's take the long route. Isn't Janeway putting the crew at a ridiculous risk here? One that surely contradicts or even outright breaks some Starfleet policy or law or something.

There was no vital imperative to take the ship into such a dangerous situation. Getting home is gonna take a ridiculously long time anyway. The decision to shave a few months off it by heading into an area of space that is massively infested by probably the most dangerous enemy Starfleet has ever had, is frankly insane.

Had the events of 8472 not occurred, they're basically dead.

Perhaps one of those questionable decisions the doctor was keeping a record of?

 

[Disco]

I don't disagree with you but how big is Borg space? How long would it take to go around it?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Kes jumped them ahead 10,000 light years, which is 10 years travel at moderate cruising speed.

Obviously Borg space was not a flat circular plane, and Janeway was not planning on cutting through Unimatrix 001, but lets just use the math we learnt as 8 year olds.

C = πd.

31415.9265 = pi x diameter.

only have to go half way around the circumference.

1/2C = 15707.9633

So it was 6 more years to go around Borg Space if it was a flat circular plane, which it probably wasn't.



The real question is why were the Borg not Towing Voyager at transwarp speeds to earth in 2hours, rather than what they did do, relent to escourt Janeway through Borg space for ten years until they were out the other side at regular Warp Speed?

 

[USS Triumphant]

The real question is why were the Borg not Towing Voyager at transwarp speeds to earth in 2hours, rather than what they did do, relent to escourt Janeway through Borg space for ten years until they were out the other side at regular Warp Speed?

They were hoping that the time would give them an opportunity to still assimilate the ship and crew without actually breaking their deal?

I dunno. I don't know why Borg would care about honoring a deal, either. (Or why they have a queen, or.... )

 

[Guy Gardener]

"The Borg assimilate civilizations not individuals"

As long as they didn't do anything stupid, the entire collective should have ignored Voyager for 10 years as it passed through.

 

[Melakon]

I think one of the major premises for the series was to put them in the Delta quadrant because the Borg were already known to be from there. Janeway was merely a pawn to the whims of the gods of the writers room. Sort of like Jason and the Argonauts.

 

[Guy Gardener]

There's an urban legend that some nerd at a convention (circa 1997) during a Q and A told Berman that the Borg were in the Delta Quadrant.

Apparently, he had forgotten.

 

[DonIago]

I resent being called a nerd.

Still regretting that I didn't take a snapshot of Berman's face.

 

[hux]

I'm intrigued by the idea of Borg space. Is it an area expanding outward from where the first assimilated worlds were or is it simply a big area of space they float about in of no real consequence. Why wasn't the hub in that area (it's light years away, isn't it?)

I recall in this episode they knew it was Borg space because they had sent a probe ahead two months earlier. That probe certainly took some impressive readings of a huge portion of space (leading to the northwest passage solution). Did they ever use that technique again?

Im tempted to say head for the Gamma quadrant wormhole instead

 

[DonIago]

Head to a portal that may or may not exist when they get there decades later?

Just in 7 years we saw the wormhole compromised on multiple occasions.

 

[Starborn Dragon]

The Borg were in the middle of the war with Species 8472 that they had initiated.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Borg were in a lot of wars that they had initiated, including one with the federation, you might as well be surprised that the post office delivers mail.

(There were 6 transwarp hubs. They said so in endgame.

JANEWAY: Belay that. I asked you a question. What is it?
ADMIRAL: The road home.
SEVEN: It's more than that. It's a transwarp hub.
JANEWAY: You once told me there were only six of them in the galaxy.
SEVEN: That's correct.
JANEWAY: You knew this was here, but you didn't tell me about it. Why?
ADMIRAL: I'll answer all your questions once we're back in the Alpha Quadrant.

)

The Borg are selective about who they assimilated.

They wouldn't indiscriminately assimilate for convenience just to mark territory in space because they are elite bigots with standards.

1. The Borg have unassimilated starter worlds in Borgspace, just like the Federation has unfederated starter worlds in the Federation. Preindustrial monkeys that might have something to offer in ten thousand years godwilling.

2. The Borg sent out eviction notices, and an achievable time table to fuck off, to species inside the dominion they felt they should stake, but really didn't want to assimilate. Hell, maybe the Borg even kindly and carefully relocated trillions of people from thousand of planets to new worlds well out side Borg space because they are not complete assholes?

3. The irrepressibly unassimiilatably weak, stupid and awful were put out of their misery. The Borg drew a line in the space where new rules applied. Inside Borg Space, it's orderly and neat. Outside Borgspace who gives a damn about the stupids. You're the same with flyspray. You will flood your house with poison until the buzzing sound stops, but you're not going to buy 90 cans a week to holocaust the flies everywhere you go outside. Just imagine showing up to a dinner party with a can of fly spray and you're killing flies while every one else is eating? Or spraying for flies in a movie theatre? Doesn't a cellphone seem benign compared to 12 guys emptying 4 cans of fly spray while you're trying to enjoy Ant-Man?

4. Borg Space was already dead space. Some ghost empire that had fallen a thousand years ago to not the Borg, and no one had had the temerity to move in and loot the place (strip mine) before the Collective planted their Flag. If a plague (that had had nothing to do with the Borg) had killed thirty trillion people, you can bet your best underwear that already no one wanted to live in or near Borg Space before it was Borg Space.

5. This area was already their home before the Borg assimilated themselves. Their genesis point. 80 thousand square light years of real estate they felt entitled to because their ancestors evolved there and pacified the #### out of it for their children and children's children.

 

[Finn]

I think one of the major premises for the series was to put them in the Delta quadrant because the Borg were already known to be from there. Janeway was merely a pawn to the whims of the gods of the writers room. Sort of like Jason and the Argonauts.

When was the first canon reference about Borg being in the Delta Quadrant. I remember it being mentioned in one of the Trek tech manuals or something like that way before Voyager encountered the Borg or even First Contact, but I'm not sure about on screen before Voyager started.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It was established in the episode that it'd be impossible to take the long way around Borg space. It is a suspect decision to try a major gamble to risk full assimilation to avoid giving up getting home, but Janeway was always rather Ahabian in her pursuit of the AQ.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Descent. Last episode of TNG Season 6.

This happened.

The words "Delta Quadrant" however were not said in the episode.

Meanwhile years later on Voyager...

[Engineering]
JANEWAY: What have you got?
CHAKOTAY: Some bad news. The long range probe we sent out two months ago has stopped transmitting.
TORRES: At first I thought it was a problem with the communications grid, then I cleared up the last few seconds of telemetry. Take a look at this.
(The probe was taken inside a Borg cube.)
CHAKOTAY: This could be it, Captain. Borg space.
[Briefing room]
JANEWAY: We don't know exactly how many vessels are out there. but their space appears to be vast. It includes thousands of solar systems, all Borg. We are no doubt entering the heart of their territory. There's no going around it, but there may be a way through it.
CHAKOTAY: Before the probe was disabled, it picked up a narrow corridor of space devoid of Borg activity. We've nicknamed it the Northwest Passage.

Hey? Maybe that's why the Voth let them go?

"Shhh... Nobody tell them that they're 3 months away form being assimilated by the Borg.... Oh? ...Yes, Captain Janeway, you are free to go!"

 

[Lance]

Captain Kathy wanted a limited edition Assimilate Me Barbie™ to add to her collection of dolls, and figured going through Borg space was the best way to find one. And whaddayaknow, she ended up with one too.

 

[publiusr]

Now I seem to remember a lot about the high radiation at the Shapely center in the old handbook--outside the galactic core Black Hole, the Borg had to avoid a certain superbeing of course.

 

[Timo]

The first mention of the Borg being in the Delta Quadrant comes from ST:FC, where Crusher states this as a fact.

In "Descent", that nifty piece of graphics establishes that Delta Quadrant is the one place where the Borg are not, as the rogue non-Collective has chosen this as its hideout from the Collective!

Of course, the Borg are probably everywhere anyway. But what our heroes should believe in, as per "Descent", is the exact opposite of what Crusher actually believes in ST:FC. So apparently something happened that we didn't see. Say, Hugh at the conclusion of "Descent" having a little chat with his Federation friends and telling a thing or two about the Borg.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lance]

^ Interesting. I do seem to recall that contemporary accounts from the production staff suggested the Enterprise first contacted the Borg deep in the Beta Quadrant, but this was never established on screen, and was evidently later retconned to be the DQ for the purposes of lining them up for an appearance in Voyager somewhere down the track.

 

[Timo]

Ah, the encounter in "Q Who?" can't really have been in Delta by the token that it was mere 7,000 ly from where they started, or about 2 years and 7 months from the nearest starbase. That doesn't get you from Earth (about 10,000 - 15,000 ly from the center of the galaxy in both real world and Trek terms, and on the Alpha/Beta border by supposed Trek terms) to anywhere else except Alpha and Beta. And while the E-D may not have been at Earth exactly, by TNG era "rules" she (and that starbase) wasn't tens of thousands of lightyears away from Earth, either.

Whatever happened in "Descent" confused our heroes plenty enough, and we have no real idea where they ultimately ended up. They entered Lore's version of the transwarp conduit several times, after all. One stop may have been in Delta, or then not...

Timo Saloniemi