The Borg in Assimilation2
- Thread starter Noddy
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Of all the things I had an issue with in that series, the Cybermen pwning the Borg was not among them. 
Although some did complain the Borg shouldn't have been so easily defeated by the Cybermen, I personally thought it made perfect sense.
Continuity. It doesn't make sense for Data to be unaware of the Borg Queen in First Contact if he met her in this storyline set during TNG S5.
^I wouldn't expect a Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover to be in continuity with either series, so I don't see why that would be a consideration.
My working theory around issue #6 was that there was no Borg Queen at this point in Borg history and that the Doctor would unintentionally create the Borg Queen when he rebooted the Borg to save them from the Cybermen and then, for timey-wimey reasons there would always have been a Borg Queen. Of course, it didn't happen that way. Nothing that interesting happened in Assimilation2.
I agree with The Wormhole. It would be a continuity problem for the crew to meet the Borg Queen several years before they actually do in First Contact. (Ironically, though, the characterizations, particularly Picard, are closer to the First Contact characterizations than the fifth season characterizations, so in retrospect maybe IDW should have set this after First Contact.)
I'd like to include this story in my own personal continuity of both franchises, purely for the fun of it. I just love the idea that the Doctor might have met characters from Trek at some point.
Regarding how the crossover could have come about in-universe, I have a theory that the two realities of the Trekverse and the Whoniverse were somehow temporarily merged together to form a hybrid reality; this would explain how Whoniverse species like the Judoon and Slitheen could suddenly exist in the Trek galaxy. But what could have caused such a huge merger? I strongly doubt the Borg or Cybermen had such capabilities, so I suspect some higher power was at work, maybe Q, or Trelane, or the Celestial Toymaker.
But then, I doubt seeing the Doctor, Amy and Rory on the bridge of the Enterprise E in those early publicity drawings would have triggered as much of a fanboy squee as seeing them on the D's bridge did.
The story suggests that the universes are merging early on (issues 3 and 4). However, the story then goes in a different direction and suggests that they're two wholly separate universes; the Cybermen's plan doesn't make sense otherwise.
I take away from Picard's trip in the TARDIS that the Judoon and the Slitheen naturally exist in the Star Trek universe. Which leads me to wonder if there's a Skaro in the Star Trek universe. And, if so, did Skaro avoid the thousand years of war? Could Davros be hailed around the Federation as a scientist and healer?
How so? I admit, it's been a while since I read it, so I may not be up on all the details.
Perhaps they were both separate continuums originally, when the Cybermen crossed over into the Trekverse, but then unseen events resulted in the two realities merging together somewhat. Opinions?
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Because if it ignores basic tenets of the two settings then its a disappointing story for hard core fans.
Lots there that didn't make sense - including the fact that the Borg were completely unaware of time travel. First Contact was quite a while ago now - the average Trekkie is very aware that the Borg can time travel, let alone the Federation ships themselves.
It was a limited arc story. There was some nice characterizations, and a few interesting plot points (Guinan, the 4th Doctor and Kirk's crew), but overall I found it fell flat.
For one, the Cybermen don't rank as a higher threat in my eyes as the Borg. Indeed, they lose the Cyber-Wars against humanity in the Doctor Who continuity. The fact that the Enterprise for some reason couldn't replicate Gold seemed a large plot hole - that's never been a problem before, to the point that gold pressed latinum is considered the only currency of value because anyone with a replicator can make as much gold as they want, as stated in DS9. The human empire in the Doctor Who universe win the Cyberwars because they find a huge gold asteroid.
This appears to have been written by someone that has more knowledge of Dr. Who than Trek, odd considering IDW prints lots of Trek stories.
Well, to be fair, Doctor Who is currently the more active and higher-profile franchise. So I can understand IDW expecting the crossover's audience to be skewed in favor of DW fans and adjusting the emphasis accordingly.
Odd. I thought it was basically a Star Trek: The Next Generation story (specifically, one of those later season talky bottle episodes) that guest starred the Doctor. I don't think it worked as a Doctor Who story at all.
Er... Nobody's noticed, that I can remember, but the Split Infinite in IFM is referred to as being located at Delta Five, Gamma Zeta Alpha - or to put it another way, D5 Gamma Zed Alpha, the Movellan co-ordinates for Skaro in Destiny Of The Daleks, and there is rubble from a destroyed system of at least twelve planets - Skaro is the twelfth planet in its system, according to the Hartnell era....
Gee, is *that* what the Hand of Omega did? No wonder they bloody hid it!
Of course it could all just be one big coincidence..
And yet we know from Nightmare in Silver that the Cybermen grew to be a significant enough threat that an entire galaxy had to be destroyed to stop them.
As for the Borg Queen not existing in this time period, I'm sure she implies in First Contact that she knew Picard when he was Locutus.
The Cybermen's goal is to make themselves stronger, which they think they can do by first allying with, and then subjugating the Borg. How do the two universes being separate or merged affect this?
Because Star Trek exists as fiction in the Doctor's universe? A fair point, I grant, but there are other precedents for this kind of thing in past crossover fiction. For example, DC Comics characters exist as fiction in the Marvel Comics reality, but that hasn't stopped multiple stories where heroes from both universes meet one another. Heck, according to some writers, aspects of Trek exist as fiction in its own universe, via the writings of Benny Russell!
Also because they have fundamentally different laws of nature, histories, alien races and planets, and storytelling sensibilities. As a rule, different science fiction universes don't go together because too many fundamentals of the worldbuilding just aren't compatible. You'd be hard-pressed to find any two SF universes that could genuinely fit in the same reality; usually any crossover attempts require cheating by ignoring a lot of mutual inconsistencies, and thus don't truly fit well into either universe. (We talked about that some in this thread.) That's particularly the case here, since ST has usually tried to be a relatively grounded and naturalistic universe with a strong continuity (although it hasn't always lived up to that) whereas DW has always been pure fantasy without a trace of interest in realism and a casual approach to continuity at best.
But again, you're dealing with a lower standard of realism there. I mean, in '60s and '70s Marvel Comics, Lee and Kirby and the other creators often wrote themselves into the comics as comic-book writers telling stories about the superheroes. The fourth wall barely existed. Star Trek has never been -- and, to me, should absolutely never be -- that fanciful.
And I've never understood why anyone would think Benny Russell actually existed, rather than simply being an illusion created in Sisko's mind. I mean, the characters that surrounded Benny were too close a parallel to the people in Sisko's life, not only playing similar roles but often having similar names.
At most, the episode was metatextual, trying to challenge our assumptions and make us wonder if maybe DS9 was the illusion rather than the reality, Tommy Westphall-style. Like that Buffy episode where she was told she'd been in an asylum and hallucinated all the vampire-slaying, and it was left a little unclear whether that might actually be true. But you can't have it both ways. If you accept the Trek universe as real, then Benny Russell wasn't. If you accept Benny as real, then the Trek universe isn't.
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