I am taking command of the fleet.

[MacLeod]

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.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

The question is: why doesn't the federation use time travel in order to erase the borg from existence by preventing their emergence?

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.

 

[C.E. Evans]

The question is: why doesn't the federation use time travel in order to erase the borg from existence by preventing their emergence?

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).

 

[Edit_XYZ]

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.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

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.

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.

 

[C.E. Evans]

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.

Works for me.

 

[Marc]

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.

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.

not to mention Picard also had a fully intact starship at his command.

 

[wingsabre]

Starfleet Regulation 191 (Article 14): In a combat situation involving more than one ship, command falls to the vessel with tactical superiority, should there not be a higher ranking officer present.

I'd say of all the ships in the fleet engaging the Cube, the E-E has tactical superiority, giving Picard more than enough justification to assume command. Add to that he was the previous CO of the Federation Flagship, I'd think most Captain's would line up behind him, regardless of how he came to be involved.

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.

 

[Timo]

not to mention Picard also had a fully intact starship at his command.

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

 

[wingsabre]

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.

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.

 

[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.

 

[Marsden]

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.

 

[C.E. Evans]

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.

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.

 

[R. Star]

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.

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.

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.

 

[Timo]

The data they get will be delayed.

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

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.

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

 

[xvicente]

The data they get will be delayed.

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

"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."

 

[Gaith]

In any case, he had to get close enough to go from spooky flashback dreams to actual contact. This continued through the rest of the movie as he was able to hear snippets of what the queen was up to in the basement.

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.

 

[USS Firefly]

It was only in the movie that he was hearing the borg

 

[Timo]

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

 

[Belz...]

How come the Borg come to Earth and fight through 24th century Starfleet defenses before going back in time, instead of going back in time first and then going to Earth with nobody but 21st century defenses in their way?

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.