What episodes should Janeway have ran away from a few centuries?

[Guy Gardener]

Take Swarm for instance. Assholes in space who they couldn't go around, and who would eat them if they went through, but how effective was their technology and resolve 300 years earlier? How much smaller was their empire?

In Think Tank, the whole notion was that they needed special running away power. A cloak would have done it, but Janeway was looking for maps or a wormhole, when 50 years earlier would have set them right.

In Caretaker, back in time a thousand years to before the rest of the Nacene scarpered, or 75 years so that they might get back to Earth Space about when they left.

and so on...

What adventures should she have time travelled around?

How far back should she have gone?

Adding all the jumps together, what's the furtherest she might have gone back, ie what year would it have been when they arrived back home on Earth?

Is it possible that Voyager might have met greater adversaries before there was even a Federation?

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

If you mean something like Voyager traveling through the Delta Quadrant in 1995-2001 or in centuries previous...

The Vaadwaur had a giant space empire stretching to Talaxia. The Voth were probably still there, though the Vaadwaur would of had to go around them (the Voth seem to be the wall holding back the Borg). The Borg were very minor when the Vaadwaur were at their peak, so the vast Borg empire might not be a problem then. The Krenim Imperium might've been stronger too.

Let's see the major races on their journey.
- The Caretaker, can't go back before 1500 years ago because that's when they arrived at Ocampa. No Caretaker, no means of pulling Voyager there.
- No Kazon. They's all be slaves. Not sure how the Trabe would be at their peak or even if their warp goes back centuries. Kazon just took control decades earlier.
- Vidiians. Gotta go back 2000 years to avoid the Phage versions of them.
- No Tackleberry and the '37s if its back before 1937. If it's around then, there should be a quicker way back if Voyager gets their technology. We know nothing about how Briori got and used humans as slaves (sounds like the plot of Stargate) or where they event went since 1937. Why slaves so far away when they could just raid the Trabe for the Kazon isn't clear.
- The Cravic & Pralor androids seemed to be focused on fighting their builders' war rather than outsiders.
- The Swarm, we don't know how long they were there, if their space grew over the decades/centuries or if it just shifted shape.
- The Voth would still be around there.

- The Borg back around 1500 only controlled a handful of star systems. Looking at species numbers and distances, it seems like their control expanded exponentially in the past century or so. Who knows when or where they got transwarp. Do Borg develop new technology (besides that associated with the collective itself) or just steal it from other races? If so, that means the green transwarp race is out there and was assimilated. Borg conquest likely accelerated when they got transwarp.

- The Krenim had big space (across 5000 parsecs, over 200 star systems) and the fact Annorax's ship never went after the Borg indicates the Borg were never an "enemy" to the Krenim or else they would have erased their existence (maybe the Borg detected the fluctuating timelines and chose to stay far away, unlike nearby areas like the B'omar. I think the Voth are one wall on Borg territory and the Krenim time flux is another wall, which is why early/late Season 4 space are so different vis a vis the Borg). Annorax is from early in their decline (2170s), so anytime before is the Krenim at their peak, and at various points after, they were at their peak.

- The Hirogen... according to the map, their communication array exists across the whole middle swath (from the core) of the Delta Q and is actually more widespread in the deep of the Beta Q. They seem to have been around and advanced longer than any species but the Voth, though haven't changed in at least 1000 years. They've been advanced enough to avoid Borg detection as a unique culture. Seven didn't know of them despite a few Hirogen being in Unimatrix 0, meaning they've only captured stray hunters here or there.

- Species 116 wouldn't have been assimilated. Their low species number (close to the Borg Queens) indicates they are most likely one of the earlier encountered species, indicating closeness (or their slipstream ships traveled to early Borg space). They managed to resist for centuries but for whatever reason, right before the 8472 war, the Borg had almost won. The fact Borg don't use slipstream indicates transwarp is probably easier (but they should understand it with the assimilation of Arturis' species). They might've been friendly and helpful back before the Borg siege.

- Moneans would have been on the waterworld for 300 years and it existed for 100,000 years. Its original builders were likely long gone.

Season 5 space is choppy due to all the different jumps. Some of those jumps wouldn't have been possible in the past.

- The Vaadwaur, their underspace network spanned Talaxia to some distance past the Vaadwaur homeworld. Problem is they were ***holes, so getting use of that network wouldn't be possible for 1 starship.

 

[DonIago]

Just curious, where are you getting your info about the Borg? IIRC Destiny would seem to suggest that by 1500 AD the Borg had already been busy for over 4000 years. It seems likely to me that they'd be well beyond "a handful of star systems".

A very interesting read regardless!

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Vadwaar used the term 'a hand full of systems' to describe their last sight of the Borg homogeneity in Dragon Teeth.

But that's bloody impressive DeepSpaceWine.

Did I bump into some fanfiction/history you've been writing?

Morphogenetic fields and all.

 

[Mr Silver]

Just curious, where are you getting your info about the Borg? IIRC Destiny would seem to suggest that by 1500 AD the Borg had already been busy for over 4000 years. It seems likely to me that they'd be well beyond "a handful of star systems".

I don't consider anything in Destiny to have happened in my own personal continunity.

Was it not in Dragons Teeth that the Vaardwur mentioned that the Borg were only a minor nuisance in the 1500's? We also don't know for sure when the Borg actually decided upon assimilating entire civilizations. It could have been as recent as BOBW because in Q Who? the Borg were characterised as only being interested in technology. Their goals could have changed constantly.

 

[DonIago]

It's entirely possible that the Vaadwaur said something to that effect; I only saw the episode once, and that was quite awhile ago. I'd be curious as to the exact quote.

 

[Guy Gardener]

this

GEDRIN: You're Borg.
SEVEN: How do you know that?
GEDRIN: Don't you recognise my people? The Vaadwaur?
SEVEN: The Collective's memory from nine hundred years ago is fragmentary.
GEDRIN: I've had many encounters with your kind.

and this

GEDRIN: That star cluster in grid fourteen twenty one? Nearly half the planets are inhabitable.
SEVEN: Unfortunately they are already occupied, by the Borg.
GEDRIN: The Borg? In my century they'd only assimilated a handful of systems. It looks like they've spread through the quadrant like a plague. No offence.
SEVEN: None taken.

the complete transcript

http://www.chakoteya.net/Voyager/604.htm

One drawback to this method of running away is that Janeway will keep meeting friends and enemies who hate and love her and she doesn't know why, and more importantly, hundreds of species will be tracking her forward in time towards caretakers array, that there would most likely be a fleet of every bastard she'd ever pissed off for the next 7 years spread over the the last 10 centuries waiting for her in the pilot before she's thought to make a step wrong.

 

[DonIago]

Hm. Well, if we assume that Borg technology improved/was acquired the same way our technology has improved, it's not unreasonable to think their rate of expansion increased exponentially over time.

Granted they had 4000 years, but I'd think they had to start out fairly slow...it probably took them a good while just to tame what became their homeworld, much less get into space. Granted they had knowledge of FTL drives to start with, but there's still the matter of developing the technology base to support it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They may not have had FTL in the beginning?

Bold explorers might have landed on Borg World looking to make friends?

Janeway said something about how the Borg can't "invent" or "deduct" when she was telling her crew how they were too valuable tobe double crossed by the Borg during the 8372 invasion.

The Borg have standards.

There are races will not assimilate substandard cultures (The Kazon) and there are races they will wait to assimilate till they have something of value. I'm put forward the theory once or twice that the borg only pretend to assimilate some worlds, like earth, then pretend to fumble, give them a few years to invent huge swath of antiborg technology and it is then that the borg finally put their shoulder to the wheel.

It's almost like farming or fishing.

 

[DonIago]

Well, based on Destiny the first Borg would have had the knowledge to build a warp drive...resources would have been the initial problem.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well it seems like a race doesn't it?

There has to be so many cultures out in the Star Trek boondocks who fell into the thrall of a Borg like contention (is that a word?) where they accept impossibilities like FTL or Time Travel, and so inturn lush in their own perfection harmoniously.

 

[DonIago]

Destiny posits that the origin of the Borg was a fusion of humans (including the Chief Engineer of a starship) and a highly advanced race. Knowledge of FTL drives would have been part of the initial package. However, given the conditions under which the fusion took place, they would have been building from scratch.

So, good knowledge, bad resources. The question would be how long does it take to build a starship (much less a fleet), when you have limited infrastructure to start with.

 

[Deks]

With the way Borg nanoprobes do their job, limited resources are the least of your problems.
They still had an entire planet for raw materials/resources to work with. And since nanoprobes can do just about anything, converting raw materials into base elements and then readjusting them into something useful such as a tool is hardly a problem.
They would in effect be just as good as nanites (if not better).

That, and the Vaadwaur Gedrin might have simply mentioned the Borg assimilated a 'handful of systems in his century' because his species hasn't traveled EVERYWHERE in the DQ in the first place.
Who knows, the Borg could have had a very big chunk of area assimilated, with Gedrin's knowledge accumulating for one sphere that equated to 'a handful of systems'.
Besides, his 'many encounters with your kind' is a bit of a contradiction with 'a handful of systems' proposal (then again, other shows managed to contradict themselves in the same episode).

So there's room for explanations that can easily accommodate both canon and the Destiny novels.

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

That, and the Vaadwaur Gedrin might have simply mentioned the Borg assimilated a 'handful of systems in his century' because his species hasn't traveled EVERYWHERE in the DQ in the first place.
Who knows, the Borg could have had a very big chunk of area assimilated, with Gedrin's knowledge accumulating for one sphere that equated to 'a handful of systems'.
Besides, his 'many encounters with your kind' is a bit of a contradiction with 'a handful of systems' proposal (then again, other shows managed to contradict themselves in the same episode).

Unlikely. Their underspace network extended all the way back to Talaxia, which was over 40,000ly back from the Vaadwaur homeworld. They mentioned knowing about some corridors even the Turei, who took over the underspace network, don't know about. It covered a broad swath of the quadrant, and if the Borg were such a menace back then, they would have a radius of fear well beyond their actual space (like early Season 4 space). With a network that large, to "miss" a giant empire like the Borg would have to be quite a coincidence of the network geography and their territory not intersecting. It's more likely the Borg were small then than a big empire all contained far away from the network.

And as Seven noted, Borg records back that far are fragmentary, and the fact he recognized her as Borg (few implants) indicated the Borg weren't the pale skinned drones covered in black rubber and hordes of implants. It would seem to indicate the Borg had a rather quiet origin, that this monstrous hive empire didn't just spring out of nowhere. And it seems logical it would take time, centuries, to expand and cover a huge swath of the quadrant.


Your argument comes down to a difference in what is viewed as canon. You are indicating episodes are unreliable because they can contradict themselves ("Equinox 1/2" is one of the bigger examples of that), but are the print books you cite (e.g. Destiny) any less contradictory? Canon arguments can get contentious because while episodes are considered canon except in extrodinary cases (Star Trek V), books and cartoons usually are not (that 1 episode of TAS was deemed canon and some Babylon5 book trilogies were deemed canon by JMS).