Why did the Borg only use one cube to attack Earth?
- Thread starter Swarm Emperor
- Start date
The Borg know they're feared by Earthers and want to maintain that image, so every now and again they throw a Cube our way just to keep us honest. Also, they know each attack will cause us hew-mons to rapidly advance our tech. Eventually, we'll be too tempting of a target at which point they'll finally get serious about our assimilation, and that'll be all she wrote. The whole time travel thing was just for laughs but then the Queen took it too far to spite Picard
The director told them to.....
Borg Collective: "We are the Borg. You--"
LOUDER Studio Executive: "I am the head o Paramount. You will do what ever the fuck I want or I will hire another script writer and director."
Borg Collective: "Sorry, our bad."
Maybe going back in the past further than they did would not allow for them to contact the other collectives that they were sending the message to. I got the impression in the movie that Earth was assimilated not by that sphere in the past but the other Borg cubes that homed in on their signal. But whatever, there's just as many flaws with that as anything.
But that's because their cube was destroyed in the 24th century and only a small contingent escaped to the past, so they needed reinforcements (which was why they assimilated Enterprise crew). So if it was their plan from the start to go back in time, that doesn't explain their choice of destination. Well, unless the time machine would only work on the smaller sphere rather than the whole cube.
We're thinking about this very strategically. Is it possible the Borg think algorithmically, and so a lot of their decisions don't make sense from an individual/human perspective? Maybe that specific Cube assimilated a time-travel device on its way to Earth and instead of, say, considering the ramifications of time-travel, it simply attached it to a Sphere and labelled it: "Only use in case of extreme emergency." Then, in an extreme emergency like the imminent failure of the Cube's mission (assimilate the Earth), it triggered the device as a self-protection mechanism, but didn't really 'think' about the ramifications of that decision beyond the immediate, programmed mission parameters of 'protect the ship'.
Interesting thought, but if that were the case, it makes it an implausibly huge coincidence that their time jump just happened to be to the pivotal moment that brought Earth into the interstellar community.
I also thought the sphere itself was the only time travel capable part, the rest of the cube not able to go. Maybe the cube's mission was to deliver the sphere with no warp engines to the vicinity of Earth so it could travel back before the Humans could be a serious threat but not so far back that Borg assets in that time would be able to get there before they become a threat, the cube being destroyed as it made it's final approach launched the sphere. Hmmph.
I'd say it was more like the Vampire or Zombie virus to be honest!
One plus one is two, two plus two is four, four plus four is eight, eight plus eight is sixteen, sixteen plus sixteen is thirty two, you get the picture? They just hunted down all humans that hadn't been assimilated over time, that's the only way that the whole planet could be Borg!
JB
The first Borg attack on Earth, which included the battle of Wolf 359, was likely a single long range cube on a fact finding mission. It was either responding to the encounter it had with the Enterprise in the episode ‘Q-Who’, or the transmission sent during the ENT episode ‘Regeneration’, or both. It may not have been intended as a full on invasion. It’s worth noting that even though it was just one ship, it nearly succeeded. There is a fan theory that the Borg was OK with defeat on this occasion. From their perspective if they were able to assimilate Earth, that’s great, but in defeat their opponent is driven to develop new technologies to fight against them, which makes them an even more valuable target for assimilation in the future.
The second Borg attack on Earth, seen in First Contact, is a little harder to explain away. Most likely, as others have said, this was for budgetary reasons, but there may be an acceptable in-universe explanation. My theory is that the Borg Queen was fleeing from the war with species 8472. The events of First Contact do coincide with the war against species 8472 in the Delta Quadrant (at least according to memory alpha). The Borg were getting their asses handed to them, so with all other cubes engaged in combat, or destroyed, the Queen travels to a distant part of the galaxy, to the Alpha Quadrant, in a single cube to establish a new front in the war with species 8472. The irony is that if they had been successful in assimilating Earth in the past, there would be no USS Voyager in the Delta Quadrant to help the Borg in ending their fight against species 8472.
The second Borg attack on Earth, seen in First Contact, is a little harder to explain away. Most likely, as others have said, this was for budgetary reasons, but there may be an acceptable in-universe explanation. My theory is that the Borg Queen was fleeing from the war with species 8472. The events of First Contact do coincide with the war against species 8472 in the Delta Quadrant (at least according to memory alpha). The Borg were getting their asses handed to them, so with all other cubes engaged in combat, or destroyed, the Queen travels to a distant part of the galaxy, to the Alpha Quadrant, in a single cube to establish a new front in the war with species 8472. The irony is that if they had been successful in assimilating Earth in the past, there would be no USS Voyager in the Delta Quadrant to help the Borg in ending their fight against species 8472.
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I like this as a retcon explanation except that I've always believed there isn't a unique Borg Queen, but rather that she's just created if and when and where she's needed. This may or may not conflict with what's shown on screen, but it's hard for me to believe that the Borg as a larger collective really would have such a powerful single point of failure.
I think that's self-evident from the number of times the Queen was killed and resurrected in FC and Voyager. The novels elaborated that a Borg Queen is a special class of drone, containing a central control-nexus software called the Royal Protocol. Essentially that software is the Queen, and is downloaded into a new drone body whenever the prior one is destroyed. (Though it's never explained why Queens are always in female drone bodies.)
I've come to believe that Seven of Nine was a potential replacement Queen body. That would explain why she was originally stored deep in a cube in what seemed to be a protected chamber, and why she seemed to have more independence of thought and action than a typical drone even before she was cut off from the Collective.
Interesting thought on Seven there; shame we're unlikely to get any exploration of that going forward (though perhaps in a flashback?), though I guess I'm also not sure it could be made especially relevant. I suppose if one thought Seven was an "aborted" Borg Queen...
I also think it's a shame we never got to see a Borg King. My view was that when a spokesperson was needed the Borg would generate one designed to be as appealing to their audience as possible. A Queen for Picard/Data potentially made sense from that angle, but with regards to Janeway and Seven...well...maybe the Borg knew things that weren't readily apparent to us as viewers.
I also think it's a shame we never got to see a Borg King. My view was that when a spokesperson was needed the Borg would generate one designed to be as appealing to their audience as possible. A Queen for Picard/Data potentially made sense from that angle, but with regards to Janeway and Seven...well...maybe the Borg knew things that weren't readily apparent to us as viewers.
I also think it's a shame we never got to see a Borg King. My view was that when a spokesperson was needed the Borg would generate one designed to be as appealing to their audience as possible. A Queen for Picard/Data potentially made sense from that angle, but with regards to Janeway and Seven...well...maybe the Borg knew things that weren't readily apparent to us as viewers.
Surely Locutus was the Borg King? Also: Seven had massive mother issues so the Borg Queen made total sense from that perspective, particularly as she knew she had to defeat Janeway for Seven's allegiance.
No, he was just the ambassador, the spokesperson for the Collective to reassure the Federation that they'd like being assimilated. The name "Locutus" is Latin for "having spoken." Although First Contact did try to retcon it into something bigger than that, ignoring the name's etymology.
But do we really see anything that different to how the queen acts? They need somebody to recruit Data, so they build her. They need somebody to relate to Seven's new individualism, so they build her. Sure, she occasionally seems to 'control' the Collective by her gestures and words, but that could simply be how the collective expresses itself through her.
It was all predestined. Caught in an endless causality loop, or "Pogo paradox," the Borg had no choice but to do what they did...because they had already done it!
She does have a personality, and a ego, and she does things out of spite
When Data releases the coolint in FC, the Queen act to preserve her own life.
