I am taking command of the fleet.

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by Captrek, Apr 7, 2013.

  1. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2001
    Location:
    Great Britain
    Picard doesn't have the rank of Fleet Captain, we've only ever seen one Fleet Captain in Star Trek and we have to go all the way back to S1 of TOS for that.

    Now if the Ent-E is considered the flagship vessel, that might mean other Captain's might consider Picard as the most senior Captain, which is why they allowed him to take command of the fleet.
     
  2. Hartzilla2007

    Hartzilla2007 Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jul 15, 2006
    Location:
    Star Trekkin Across the universe.
    1) Screwing around with the timeline can be risky so they probably don't want to risk making things actually worse.

    2) They don't know exactly when and where the Borg first arose.

    3) Even if they did have the necessary information its somewhere in the Delta Quadrant and it would take them decades to get there.
     
  3. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 22, 2001
    Location:
    Ferguson, Missouri, USA
    Because time travel is a tricky thing and can sometimes be dangerous. It should never be used as an option unless all other weapons and options have been exhausted first. Even so, you might intend on changing one thing, but wind up changing countless other related things. Eliminating the Borg could remove them as a threat, but introduce an even worse adversary to the Federation that the Borg had originally eliminated (and as bad as the Borg are, they did wake the Federation up from a period of complacency that might have left them in a worse condition to face the Dominion, IMO).
     
  4. Edit_XYZ

    Edit_XYZ Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2011
    Location:
    At star's end.
    Time travel is 'risky', 'sometimes dangerous'?

    The borg destroyed thousands of species, killed and assimilated TRILLIONS. It has cubes numbering in the millions, military technology far in advance of the federation.
    It is THE military power in the galaxy - overwhelmingly superior to the federation. The federation has no realistic chance of ending it by any conventional means.

    It makes time travel - and its attendant complications (any hypothetical, hand-waving, if-you-save-this-man-there-is-a-chance-he'll-become-Stalin adversary could not damage the federation more than the borg can - as in, utterly destroy it with ease; the dominion is a third rate bully by comparison; complacency - really?) look like the safest thing in the world.


    Taking only decades - plus however long it takes to find their origin - for a realistic chance to end the borg is a true bargain.
     
  5. Mr. Laser Beam

    Mr. Laser Beam Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 10, 2005
    Location:
    Confederation of Earth
    Like I said, the other captains allowed Picard to take command because they recognized his experience - both with the Borg and with pretty much everything else. Picard's record of service in Starfleet is well known. Everybody knows he's a good captain. So given that Starfleet was getting its ass kicked left and right, they were almost out of options. And then along comes Picard, who has years of experience with the Borg - something none of them have? Of course they're going to let him.
     
  6. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 22, 2001
    Location:
    Ferguson, Missouri, USA
    Works for me.
     
  7. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    Nov 14, 2003
    Location:
    Shinning Waters
    not to mention Picard also had a fully intact starship at his command.
     
  8. wingsabre

    wingsabre Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Apr 22, 2013
    I agree. Additionally, his crew was almost the exact crew that beat the Borg the last time. Not only is his ship more tactically advanced, but his crew had greater experience fighting the Borg. Plus, the fleet was loosing badly. What Picard did could be the equivalent to a Hail Marry Pass.
     
  9. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2003
    Then again, some of the other ships in the fight did not appear all that beaten up. Indeed, most of them, in the long shots, were rendered without damage to their hulls.

    The fight had just moments ago reached the Sol system; it would stand to reason that some ships had only joined the fight at this point, taking over from the bunch that had last been involved in the running battle (which itself was probably conducted in relays, even if the Defiant was present at both the beginning and the end). Such ships would be even "fresher" than the E-E, as they'd be both undamaged and unfatigued from a long RNZ-Earth run...

    Of course, the E-E did appear to be the biggest and baddest ship remaining, even if there were fresher ones out there. Although that's a matter of interpretation, as there was at least one intact-looking Nebula there, and those are bigger at least.

    Also, Earth should be teeming with competent Admirals to send into the fray. Loss of "the Admiral" should be a temporary setback only: Picard must have ended up exploiting a very brief window of opportunity here.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  10. wingsabre

    wingsabre Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Apr 22, 2013
    The problem with that argument is those Admirals are on Earth, not on the battlefront. The data they get will be delayed. Earth has scanners, but they're likely satellite or relayed information from ships on the line. Other than standing orders to targeting weapons systems, they will drastically be at a disadvantage.

    We have NORAD and we have the Pentagon, but they don't deal with coordinating battle plans on the front. Afghanistan has it's own central command to deal with that.

    What's surprising though was the lack of any defensive satellite or the lack of a starbase over Earth to defend it against attacks.
     
  11. Captrek

    Captrek Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 24, 2009
    Location:
    Captrek
    The defensive satellites are cloaked. Or they're small dark objects floating in the blackness of space. Or they're just off camera. Or they've been taken out by the Borg. :shrug:
     
  12. Marsden

    Marsden Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Feb 23, 2013
    Location:
    Marsden is very sad.
    I find it incredible they can find that many ships to fight an invader when usually there is only one ship in range to save Earth.


    Otherwise, Picard should have been promoted to fleet captain or commodore for the movies. Maybe then Riker could have been a captain and still his XO. I don't think Picard would have gone insane from being promoted.
     
  13. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 22, 2001
    Location:
    Ferguson, Missouri, USA
    I think during the TOS era, they were going with the idea that the Starfleet was fairly small and generally thinly stretched out, with starships being deployed more like today's aircraft carriers.
     
  14. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jun 15, 2012
    Location:
    Shangri-La
    Heck, I think it was that way until Wolf 359. Even there they could only scrape together 42 ships. I always just got the impression that most of Starfleet was deployed in unexplored space on mapping/survey missions and what not.

    It wasn't until after Wolf 359 and tensions with they seemed to keep a larger fleet presence inside Federation territory. After the Dominion War I can't see them going back to having so much of the fleet away from the Federation.
     
  15. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2003
    Not in Star Trek. With the technology of the show, the communications lag across ten lightyears is a millisecond!

    In "Best of Both Worlds", Earth got a warning about five-six days in advance, and managed to summon about 40 ships. Also, that was in peacetime.

    In ST:FC, we don't know the length of the advance warning, but once again the Borg fly in from the outer fringes of the UFP - so an advance warning of about a week is quite possible here as well. Also, war with the Dominion is imminent. Earth could have prepared a defensive fleet. Or, perhaps more probably, Earth would be amassing an offensive fleet, to be deployed at Bajor later on.

    The latter idea would also allow us to assume that the ships being gathered were not particularly good at defense. Many (say, the odd-looking and nearly unarmed Steamrunners) might have been dedicated to planetary assault and for that reason would contribute little to the battle but the pretty visuals of their destruction. Hence, the arrival of the E-E would make all the difference, in a way the arrival of the E-D would not have affected the earlier Wolf 359 battle in any way since there were already plenty of Nebula caliber ships there.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  16. xvicente

    xvicente Captain Captain

    Joined:
    Jan 16, 2013
    "Captain's log. Stardate: The Year of the Tiger. The battle has been bravely fought, and the suffering of our troops, beyond measure. But the alien is invulnerable, and our defeat: inevitable. That much is certain, even from my remote command post here at the Times Square Applebee's."
     
  17. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    May 11, 2008
    Location:
    Oregon
    Which was an ass pull ability for the movie, wasn't it? I don't recall him being able to "hear" Borg in "Descent" or "I, Borg", but I could be wrong.
     
  18. USS Firefly

    USS Firefly Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    It was only in the movie that he was hearing the borg
     
  19. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 26, 2003
    And that was probably only because the Borg wanted to be heard.

    Sure, it cost them one Cube, but it did get Picard lured into the past and into tampering the history of the first Earthling warp flight - and apparently the Borg were very satisfied with that result, because they let it stand. With the ability to travel in time and retry and retry again, they would have no reason to stop before they were fully satisfied, after all...

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  20. Belz...

    Belz... Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    May 19, 2013
    Location:
    In a finely-crafted cosmos... of my own making.
    And why pick a date back in time with such a short window of opportunity for success ? And why didn't they just go back in time, tell past Borg about the federation and let that be the end of it ? And why not send 15 cubes to Earth ? And how did Geordi re-create the temporal anomaly ? Can Starfleet go back and forth into time at will ? Why didn't they just slingshot around the sun ?

    This movie makes my head hurt. At least it's entertaining.