Well, the night is always darkest just before the dawn.
And I promise you...the dawn is coming!
And I promise you...the dawn is coming!
Have any of the novels ever just made you mad? (
- Thread starter darkwing_duck1
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Chalk me up as another one who was... displeased with the way Picard was written at the end of the Destiny trilogy. Taking one of the only options he had off the table due to Geordi's robosexual crush on Data, then sitting around waiting to die. Really turned me off. My buying habits, in regards to Trek books, declined significantly after that.
No. If it sucks I just quit reading it. Sometimes I'll revisit it years later, in the spirit of second chances, only to find out that my original assessment was correct and that it does indeed suck.
Those starships that wnt hurtling so gleefully to their doom....I wonder did they have "Nearer my God to thee"playing over the speakers?
Look,someone once defined madness as "doing the same thing over and over,yet expecting different results".How exactly did Starflet prepare/adapt for the inevitable showdown with the Borg?Still,as my friend above said,by throwing ship after ship at them?Still sending lightly armed away teams over to tiptoe around inside a cube?
The Borg were allowed to adapt(becoming faster,more vicious).Starfleet were written as frustratingly stupid.
BTW,the Borg upgrade seemed a little wasted as few if any of our heroes faced any up-close peril and the Borg,IMO,remained,by and large,a viewscreen threat.
Look,someone once defined madness as "doing the same thing over and over,yet expecting different results".How exactly did Starflet prepare/adapt for the inevitable showdown with the Borg?Still,as my friend above said,by throwing ship after ship at them?Still sending lightly armed away teams over to tiptoe around inside a cube?
The Borg were allowed to adapt(becoming faster,more vicious).Starfleet were written as frustratingly stupid.
BTW,the Borg upgrade seemed a little wasted as few if any of our heroes faced any up-close peril and the Borg,IMO,remained,by and large,a viewscreen threat.
One tenth of all Federation citizens were killed?
I think that's the problem in some cases. "Oh no, Picard was flawed?! UN-TREK!!!!" Ignoring Dax and Hernandez, among others.
How exactly did Starflet prepare/adapt for the inevitable showdown with the Borg?Still,as my friend above said,by throwing ship after ship at them?Still sending lightly armed away teams over to tiptoe around inside a cube?
The Borg were allowed to adapt(becoming faster,more vicious).Starfleet were written as frustratingly stupid.
Well, the silver bullet torpedos certainly helped for a good amount of time.
Also, did you just miss all the cameos/vegnettes? I mean, Calhoun and co. survived an onslaught, the SCE made an entire planet disappear to save it (and then brought it back), that one Warbird gave its life for a Federation world, among other scenes. Starfleet wasn't written as stupid, just overmatched.
Pardon me, but how goddamn many special tech have the TV shows and novels depicted the Federation as developing since TNG to try to counter the Borg?
The Federation did everything it could. It just wasn't enough.
Sometimes, in life, you try and you lose. And that's just all there is to it. It doesn't mean you didn't try and give it your all; it doesn't mean you were insufficiently creative; it doesn't mean you had any failings whatsoever. Sometimes, you just lose. Sometimes, there's just a bigger fish, and there's nothing to be done about it.
That's life. There's no way around that.
The Federation went up against the Borg, and they lost. Period. There's no way around that. The Borg have always been depicted as being too powerful for the Federation to really have a chance of surviving by itself -- you can't reasonably say that a civilization that's consistently able to destroy dozens of starships and penetrate every single defense and make it to the capital planet is not going to be able to out-match the Federation if it sends fleets and fleets.
And besides, Destiny had the ultimate in humanist endings: It affirmed that the real solution was not violence, and that only by spreading Federation belief in pluralism and egalitarianism to the Caeliar would the Federation, Borg drones, and Caeliar themselves be saved.
Rare is the time I find myself agreeing with Sci...but here, his point is well made.
After all...if it hadn't been for the Colonies' successful appeal to France for an alliance...we almost certainly would have failed the Revolution--regardless of how hard and long we would have fought.
In no ways does this brand Washington and Co. as "suicidal".
Sometimes...the "little guy" has no hope at all--unless another "big guy" steps in, when all seems lost. But even if that has little or no chance of happening...nonetheless, it is better to die on one's feet, than to live on one's knees--
Especially if such "living" means losing one's identity in a mass of circutry and programming.
After all...if it hadn't been for the Colonies' successful appeal to France for an alliance...we almost certainly would have failed the Revolution--regardless of how hard and long we would have fought.
In no ways does this brand Washington and Co. as "suicidal".
Sometimes...the "little guy" has no hope at all--unless another "big guy" steps in, when all seems lost. But even if that has little or no chance of happening...nonetheless, it is better to die on one's feet, than to live on one's knees--
Especially if such "living" means losing one's identity in a mass of circutry and programming.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Yes - around one tenth of ALL federation citizens were kiled by the borg, Kestrel.
As per "Articles of the federation", the federation is comprised of 150 member worlds. On average, let's say ~4 billion inhabit each planet (despite the fact that we know many federation planets have far scarcer population - Deneva, for example), so we obtain 600 billion as the total population of the federation.
The borg killed ~64 billion. Most of them were federation citizens aka ONE TENTH of all federation citizens were killed by the borg.
Picard was only the one whose breakdown was detailed. Most of starfleet, of the government behaved equally defeatist.
Dax was the exception. Hernandez was not even federation.
You want examples of inept decisions made by starfleet throughout 'Destiny'?
The battle at the Azure nebula.
Any computer simulation would have shown that, if the borg sent more than ~100 cubes, it would be a massacre.
The borg never sent 100 cubes in the alpha quadrant? Well, the borg never sent a dozen+ cubes in the alpha quadrant UNTIL the other day.
Whoever made the Azure nebula battle plan is guilty of gross negligence.
The ships there needed, at the least, transphasics; a thalaron weapon would have been even better.
Which brings us to the thalaron weapon.
As per our morals, using the weapon in self-defense against a genocidal army is moral.
But your argument was that the thalaron weapon was immoral by 24th century standards, yes, Sci? This makes no sense:
The thalaron weapon was immoral because it would kill borg drones? Well, starfleet did their defeatist best to do just that throughout the books.
Or was it immoral because it could destroy all life on a planet? Standard foton torpedos can do the same thing equally well - indeed, an atmosphere assures nearly 100% antimatter annihilation (meaning foton torpedoes are quite effective when it comes to planetary destruction).
Or perhaps you want examples of VERY SIMPLE tactics starfleet did not use?
Borg ships are vulnerable against the first shots of a weapon, and then adapt.
Starfleet used their standard phasers for 'the first shots', ensuring they only scratched the borg before adapting.
Instead of using deflector discharges, 100 times more powerful than a mere phaser, ensuring large holes in the borg ship before it adapts.
In 'I, Hugh', LaForge blocked the transmissions that connected a drone with the collective meaning severing the connection via jamming can be done.
In 'Destiny', starfleet didn't try to do the same, cutting communication lines between borg cubes, ensuring the collective will adapt far slower to transphasics - or other weapons.
You may also want to look at TNG, VOY, etc for numerous examples of potentially effective weapons, none of which was used - they were 'immoral', too, much like the thalaron weapon, I guess.
This is supposed to be the federation doing "everything it could"?
During most of TOS, TNG, etc you saw federation ships doing everything they could - trying to find a way to prevail.
In 'Destiny', as a rule, starfleet - the federation - did not try to find such a way. They sought NOT to live, but to die with dignity - using transphasics (in the standard way, nothing original), knowing the collective will soon adapt, using standard phasers (again, in the standard way), knowing they're useless, and then dying.
"And this is why 'Destiny' lacks trek's humanism:
Not so much because our heroes failed to stop the borg, but because, in most cases, they have given up even believing they have a chance to do so."
Dax and the other ones who actuallly were not resigned to dying and thought outside the box WERE THE EXCEPTION. And they, as a rule, succeded in winning their battles - apparently, the borg are not so invincible if they did not already break your spirit and made you into a crying baby who spends his days in the holodeck, regressing to childhood.
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you mean we had it's blackest night, now we get the brightest day?
No, but a day brighter than the night before anyway.
Yes - around one tenth of ALL federation citizens were kiled by the borg, Kestrel.
As per "Articles of the federation", the federation is comprised of 150 member worlds. On average, let's say ~4 billion inhabit each planet (despite the fact that we know many federation planets have far scarcer population - Deneva, for example), so we obtain 600 billion as the total population of the federation.
The borg killed ~64 billion. Most of them were federation citizens aka ONE TENTH of all federation citizens were killed by the borg.
And here I thought you were just misusing the word "decimated" like so many people do. I'm not gonna argue this point about the exact numbers, but I'm not sure I agree.I'm pretty sure there's no evidence that "most of starfleet" was as broken as Picard, so I say he was the exception. None of the "around-the quadrant" vignettes we saw during the battle were of Fleeters throwing their hands up in defeat.
Hernandez may not technically be Federation, but she's Starfleet, and she shared the same values as the Federation.
That wasn't negligence, that was sheer overwhelming force carrying the day. Transphasics would barely have made a difference, and even if the thalaron weapon would have worked, there wasn't time for it.
The morality argument is clearly spelled out in the book, but it's ultimately a moot point, because the thalaron weapon wouldn't have worked anyway. Congratulations, you've just opened Pandora's Box and the massive genocidal apocalyptic fleet is still not stopped. Plus (not that anybody knew this), it would've stopped the real solution of the Caeliar from working.
There's easily-explainable reasons why all of these wouldn't work. For the deflector-blast: it utterly failed once already because of adaptation, and there's no indication that deflector-warp-blast-things can be modified to a different frequency like phasers can. For the "I, Borg" communication jam, that was done in a lab, with one drone, over an extended period of time - not at all the same as battlefield conditions. Perhaps they tried that, and the Borg counter-jamming was more effective.
Any other specific magic bullets?
It wouldn't be a story about people if there weren't some who were overwhelmed. But ultimately the Federation did triumph, and we see a lot more creativity and outside-the-box thinking than you're giving the series credit for. Dax, Calhoun, the SCE, Hernandez, among others.
The whole thing was Kobayashi Meru writ large - and by and large, Starfleet acquitted themselves well. The tone of your last sentence is shocking in its callousness though.
you mean we had it's blackest night, now we get the brightest day?
No, but a day brighter than the night before anyway.
I think you might be missing the pun.
^Right, and they cost the same as a standard mass-market paperback too. And the cover price for Beneath the Raptor's Wing is $16.00, not $10.00. It's the cost of two MMPBs, which seems roughly proportional.
given the Klingon worlds destroyed and the Klingon fleet destroyed, i think your 64 billion dead Federates may be overstating it. and that's without Romulan casualties or neutral worlds in the kill-zone.
Yes - around one tenth of ALL federation citizens were kiled by the borg, Kestrel.
As per "Articles of the federation", the federation is comprised of 150 member worlds.
155, actually.
Actually, Destiny established that Deneva had had a population in the billions, though it didn't specify how many. It's entirely possible it had 4 billion, or 6 billion, or 12 billion.
Except that you're forgetting colony worlds -- Federation colony worlds, and Member State colony worlds.
Let's start with your assumptions, corrected to the 155 Member States number given in AotF. 155 Federation Member States x 4,000,000,000 average population per Member State = 620,000,000,000. 620 billion Federates.
Let's say that each Federation Member State has an average of five colony worlds that fall under their jurisdiction, and that each colony world has an average population the size of the Greater New York City area: Around 18 million. That's a pretty conservative estimate -- we're talking about an entire planet only having 18 million people, no matter how old that colony is, but let's use it.
155 Member States x 5 colonies for each Member State = 775 Member State Colonies. 775 Member State Colonies x 18,000,000 average population per colony = 13,950,000,000. 13.95 billion people living in the Member State colonies.
Now, let's add to that the number of colonies out there that are Federation colonies, administered directly by the Federation government and not considered part of the territory of any Member State. Let's say that there are only about 50 of those. And let's use the same conservative 18 million population figure for each colony. 50 Federation colonies x 18,000,000 average population per colony = 900,000,000 Federates living in Federation colonies.
Now, let's add it all together.
620 billion + 13.95 billion + 900 million = 634,850,000,000. 634.85 billion.
Now, let's remember one more thing:
In Destiny III: Lost Souls, on page 419, President Bacco explicitly states: "According to even our most conservative estimates, more than sixty-three billion citizens of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, and the Imperial Romulan State were slaughtered by the Borg during this invasion."
So, in other words, not all of those 63 billion dead were Federation citizens. Let's assume that the Borg's fixation on the Federation meant that 50% of those casualties went to the Federation rather than its neighboring states, with the others accounting for about 16.67% of the dead each:
50% of 63 billion = 31.5 billion.
So, out of a total population of 634.85 billion, that means that 4.96% of the Federation was killed.
Picard was the only one we saw who had a breakdown, period.
Of course she was. She was a United Earth citizen who was alive when the Federation was founded; she automatically would have received Federation citizenship upon the founding of the Federation on 12 August 2161, just like any other citizen of United Earth, the Confederacy of Vulcan, the Andorian Empire, the United Planets of Tellar, and Alpha Centauri.
A bad decision is not the same thing as a violation of the humanist spirit. Or does humanism hold that people never make poor choices now?
And if you had actually read the text, you would know that the reason they did that was that even in the weeks leading up to that battle, the Borg had never sent more than a few cubes at a time anywhere. Further, the whole point was that this was believed to be the only way to stop any potential invasion that might yet be coming.
Seriously, you come across the magic door the Borg are using to launch hit-and-run attacks -- what else can you do, except try to amass as many ships as possible to stop it?
Let’s talk about transphasics. It’s easy to say, in retrospect, “Oh, they should have used transphasic torpedoes.” Of course, the problem with that is, even if they had anticipated a mass invasion of the Azure Nebula rather than the more limited hit-and-runs they’d been getting, that just means that the Borg would have adapted to the transphasic torpedoes more quickly, and more people would have died in the actual Invasion.
As per your morals, you mean. The more I think about it, the more skeptical I am, on the other hand. A thalaron weapon is literally so powerful that an incredibly small quantity can wipe a planet clean of all organic life – in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Borg themselves were using thalaron technology to exterminate Alpha Quadrant planets. But even presuming that they weren’t?
You’re talking about unleashing a weapon of mass destruction so dangerous it makes thermonuclear technology look like a bow and arrow to a massive collection of ships loyal to states mostly hostile to the Federation.
Even if the thalaron weapon works against the Borg at Azure, then you suddenly find yourself facing a Breen Confederacy, Tzenkethi Coalition, and Romulan Star Empire armed with thalaron technology. Which is to say nothing of such smaller political actors as the Talarian Republic and Gorn Hegemony having them, or of politically unstable states like the Cardassian Union having them.
So, yeah, you stop the Borg’s genocide, but then you’re suddenly facing Armageddon every other week afterwards. It’s a bit like suddenly giving nukes to Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Libya; some of them may not use it against you, but others might, others might use it against someone else, and others aren’t stable enough to ensure they won’t fall into some new government’s hands. And that’s to say nothing of the threat of it being leaked to terrorist organizations or even smaller states run by irrational political actors.
And then there’s THIS fact: Just a few books ago, the Federation had been threatened by a Borg cube denuded of all of its drones. Before Dishonor and Destiny both made it very clear that the Collective can control its ships even if there are no drones to pilot them.
In other words, using thalaron weapons against the Borg would have done nothing. It would have just meant that the Collective would be running the genocide of the Alpha Quadrant via remote control rather than with live drones at the helm.
So, unleash a horrifically dangerous technology that has been banned by treaty on a quadrant full of irrational political actors and unstable governments, all so that you can…. Accomplish nothing.
Bad idea. Sorry, but you’re saying they should violate treaty and create a long-term danger to themselves in return for completely insufficient gains.
Your idea of staying true to humanism is insipid technobabble?
Besides, the Borg had already adapted to deflector discharges in “The Best of Both Worlds.” Again, useless.
Actually, VOY had established that the mechanisms used to connect a drone are not the same as the mechanisms used to connect a ship. Drones are connected to a vinculum (“Infinite Regress”), but the ships themselves are connected to the rest of the Collective via an entirely different machine (“Unimatrix Zero”). So the fact that Geordi was able to cut off the connection between Hugh and his scout ship’s vinculum is irrelevant; there’s no evidence the Federation has ever even had the capacity to cut off a cube.
And, if you’re going to criticize Destiny for that, how come you haven’t criticized Star Trek: First Contact for it?
More likely the authors have better stories to tell than fifty thousand variations on, “We tried to TECH the TECH, but it didn’t work because of TECH.”
It’s a big Federation. If it bugs you that much that you didn’t get enough weapons technobabble, assume it happened somewhere else.
Utter poppycock. Humanism is not about believing that you’re immortal, or that you can always prevail. It is not about denying reality – and the simple reality is, there is no way to militarily defeat the Borg. Period.
Like I said before: Sometimes you cannot win. When you cannot win, the question becomes, how do you choose to live?
Quick exercise,trawl through the various Trek series and catalogue the sheer amount of alien tech/weaponry that the various ships have encountered.Now multiply those discoveries by the number of ships in the fleet out there boldly going.
Now if you are telling me that all Starfleet R&D can furnish our heroes are jazzed up hand phasers and torpedos(to be used very sparingly)then that my friend is a very poor showing.
And since "Q who?" and "Best of both worlds" where exactly have Starfleet adapted and changed?
I trust Sci,that you will forgive me for not adopting your "bend over" tactic.
Now if you are telling me that all Starfleet R&D can furnish our heroes are jazzed up hand phasers and torpedos(to be used very sparingly)then that my friend is a very poor showing.
And since "Q who?" and "Best of both worlds" where exactly have Starfleet adapted and changed?
I trust Sci,that you will forgive me for not adopting your "bend over" tactic.
I'm not. Destiny is full of little vignettes about Starfleet crews working out brilliant plots that foil the Borg. The Excalibur saving Khitomer, the da Vinci saving Troyius, etc. So the idea that all Starfleet used was conventional weapons is utter bullshit.
The problem was: They didn't work!
The Borg simply could not be defeated militarily. Period.
Now you're contradicting yourself. You cite fifty million discoveries a second ago, and now you're saying they've never changed or adapted.
As in "bend over and take it?" Dude, it's a story. I didn't "bend over and take" anything. I agreed with the manner in which the story was told; it's not like David Mack "did" something to me.
And, no, I have no interest in seeing a Destiny trilogy that boils down to page after page of meaningless technobabble like you apparently want to see.
Exactly wrong Sci.A technofest was the last thing I wanted.What I wanted(all I wanted)was for Starfleet to be portrayed as a credible fightintg force,staffed and run by competent,cold-eyed officers who would do anything,use anything to survive.In a story billed as the ultimat showdown with Treks ultimate villain,all I was expecting was for Starfleet to be allowed to bring their "A game"(if you know that expression)to the table.Nothing more.
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