Oh, please. Janeway's destruction of the transwarp conduits was just another volley in a war the Borg started when they decided to attack the Federation in the 2360s.
The Borg were the aggressors, not the Federation.
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Oh, please. Janeway's destruction of the transwarp conduits was just another volley in a war the Borg started when they decided to attack the Federation in the 2360s.
The Borg were the aggressors, not the Federation.
Really? You "can't abide" them after like a 10-page appearance that described almost nothing about them?
I mean the Andorians.
Bull. That's like saying that a rape is the victim's fault for dressing seductively or something. The culpable party is always the aggressor. The Borg were predators out to assimilate or destroy all other life in the galaxy. They had been wiping out countless civilizations throughout the Delta Quadrant and elsewhere for thousands of years. All Janeway's actions did was shift the Borg's attention to the Federation sooner than it otherwise would have happened. If not for that, the Borg would've still invaded the Federation eventually, and would've destroyed countless other civilizations in the interim.
Star Trek has a way of running itself over and dragging sparks for miles. This is an example of it's headlong approach. Nobody deserves to write a Star Trek book any more than any other book. It's hard to see the forest through the trees. What seems right very often isn't.
Huh?
Were you not complaining bitterly, a few weeks ago, that both the Pocket editors and ENT producers had denied you the opportunity to write for ST?
The authors who "deserve" to write ST books are the authors who can prove to the editor that they can deliver a successful tale within strict deadlines.
Could it be, perhaps, that xortex fibbed before?? *shocked face*
I hate when someone trots out rape when their argument clearly falls flat.
What happened in Endgame was essentially this: a smaller nation that had a history of skirmishes with a larger nation decides to drop an A-bomb in a port city that could be used to launch an offensive someday. The future Janeway came from a time (23 years in the future) where the Federation looked to be thriving and there was no indication of an imminent Borg threat.
I know you tried to salvage those elements in Watching the Clock, but this reader just didn't buy it.
Like it or not, the morals of the Federation have made them arrogant when it comes to exploration, thinking they have a divine right to explore and plant colonies wherever they please. We've seen these morals get them in trouble time and again, from Arena to Justice to Q, Who? to their handling of exploration in the Gamma Quadrant.
Morals, like many things in life, are a double-edged sword. People need to realize that those values that led to the salvation from the Borg by the Caeliar also were responsible for countless deaths along the way.
Human morality isn't universal. Nor should it be depicted that way in the Star Trek universe. When the Federation blindly stumbles into someone else's territory and gets back-handed for it doesn't automatically mean the Federation was wronged.
YMMV.
Except that the Borg are not a nation in the traditional sense, they're a single individual. One that has proven itself predatory --not "hostile" in the political sense; they aren't interested in conquest, they just want to eat you. A Borg facility isn't a "city" full of civillians, and destroying it doesn't provide causus belli, it just destroys some drones and hardware. Even killing the Queen isn't "assassination" so much as "a mild concussion."
If Janeway hadn't destroyed the transwarp hub, the Borg would simply have continued as they were doing; assimilating any culture they could find, periodically sending lone cubes to probe the Federation's defenses (and to assimilate data and adapt to their defensive capabilities). Slowly whittling away at every other civilization until there was nothing left. The Borg can afford to be patient; they are playing a game that they expected to last millennia.
Janeway didn't nuke a port-town, she tripped a T-Rex and then ran away while its legs were tangled up.
Did she piss off the Collective? Clearly, but it was already stalking Voyager and the Federation. All she did was move the UFP from "future meal" to "annoying thing that must die."
That port city was actively being used to invade countless other smaller nations, just to continue that example.
Unless you really think the hub was just what the Borg used to visit Risa for suntanning and mimosas.
Even if the Federation was not under imminent threat themselves, destroying that hub probably saved entire civilizations across the entire galaxy from being eaten by techno-zombies.
At the beginning of 'Endgame', the borg had exceptionally little interest in the federation/humans:
The borg actually didn't bother assimilating a starfleet ship full of humans! An easy target, too - a single ship, surrounded by dozens of borg cubes.
By the end of 'Endgame' - we have 'Destiny'.
Janeway's actions caused this massive shift in the borg's priorities.
Irresponsibly, she poked a sleeping giant in the eye. And what came out of that pandora's box?
60+ BILLION dead - federation citizens, but not only.
BTW, it's a deux ex machina that all those other powers that lost BILLIONS of their citizens during 'Destiny' are not extremely pissed off that they paid in blood for the federation's foolishness; they were consistently depicted as reacting violently at FAR smaller offenses.
Was the borg destroying countless civilizations by the time of 'Endgame'? Yes.
But, if you're as pathetically weak as the federation proved to be in 'Destiny', you don't have what it takes to play on their level; your moralising speeches are empty rhetoric and your tactical half measures earn you extinction.
You may not like what happens, but, frankly, you have no choice in the matter; it's like an amazonian primitive tribe attacking nazi Germany, alone, during WW2 - and expecting NOT to be exterminated with barely an effort on Germany's part.
Janeway - much like the rest of the federation (on other occasions) - displayed the sin of hubris, recklessly gambled with the lives of BILLIONS - people whom she was sworn to protect - and lost. Luck never lasts forever - and the federation's luck ran out.
The borg actually didn't bother assimilating a starfleet ship full of humans! An easy target, too - a single ship, surrounded by dozens of borg cubes.
By the end of 'Endgame' - we have 'Destiny'.
Janeway's actions caused this massive shift in the borg's priorities.
Irresponsibly, she poked a sleeping giant in the eye. And what came out of that pandora's box?
60+ BILLION dead - federation citizens, but not only.
BTW, it's a deux ex machina that all those other powers that lost BILLIONS of their citizens during 'Destiny' are not extremely pissed off that they paid in blood for the federation's foolishness; they were consistently depicted as reacting violently at FAR smaller offenses.
Was the borg destroying countless civilizations by the time of 'Endgame'? Yes.
But, if you're as pathetically weak as the federation proved to be in 'Destiny', you don't have what it takes to play on their level; your moralising speeches are empty rhetoric and your tactical half measures earn you extinction.
You may not like what happens, but, frankly, you have no choice in the matter; it's like an amazonian primitive tribe attacking nazi Germany, alone, during WW2 - and expecting NOT to be exterminated with barely an effort on Germany's part.
Janeway - much like the rest of the federation (on other occasions) - displayed the sin of hubris, recklessly gambled with the lives of BILLIONS - people whom she was sworn to protect - and lost. Luck never lasts forever - and the federation's luck ran out.
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To add to this: those sixty billion dead are on Janeway. Starfleet's job is to protect the lives of Federation citizens, Janeway cracked twenty-five years of seemingly peaceful co-existence with the Borg to ensure that one member of her crew would live on.
How anyone can defend her actions is unfathomable.
Well.... the alternative...
According to Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock, if it weren't for the events of "Endgame"/Destiny, the Borg would have assimilated the entire galaxy within a few hundred years (and have done so in all the timelines where those events didn't take place)
"Dark Frontier" established that the Queen deliberately left Voyager unassimilated because she had intended to use Seven of Nine as a sleeper agent to study the humans/Federation and learn how to overcome their unusual ability to resist assimilation. Don't forget that the Borg had already tried to assimilate the Federation twice at that point, first in "The Best of Both Worlds," then in "First Contact." The Borg were quite obviously interested in the Federation long before "Endgame."
But the Federation was just one of the many civilizations galaxy-wide that the Borg was battling. We may not have seen them onscreen, but given the sheer immensity of the galaxy and the substantial percentage of it occupied by the Borg, it's inevitable that the UFP was just one of many priorities the Borg had, and since it was very far away from the core of Borg space -- aside from Voyager, which was just one measly ship -- the Collective could afford to keep it fairly low on its priority list while it dealt with more pressing concerns. But "Endgame" pushed the Federation to the top of their priority list.
"Sleeping?" Not even close. The Borg were waging an active, aggressive campaign of genocide across the entire galaxy. They weren't "sleeping" any more than the Nazis were sleeping in the late 1930s when they swept across Europe. What Janeway did was analogous to what many Americans wanted to do -- take direct action against a global-scale threat rather than just passively sitting by because it hadn't directly focused on them yet. And those people who wanted to intervene turned out to be right. It was irresponsible to sit by and allow the Nazis and the Japanese to build rapacious empires at others' expense. The right thing to do in the long run was to take action to stop them. True, those nations that fought the Nazis and Japanese suffered great losses by choosing to stand against them, but the losses to the whole world would've been far more profound if they hadn't.
Which I don't buy. There had to ave been an original timeline, unmolested by the Borg, for the 29th Century timecops to exist in the first place.
But since time isn't really linear, only our perception of it, cause-and-effect are meaningless.
