You're not, though Worf wasn't established as someone who used blades until season four's "Reunion" - after "The Best of Both Worlds" - and between that and First Contact he only encountered the Borg in combat in the "Descent" two parter.
Why did then enterprise crew never use bullets against the Borg?
- Thread starter trekyourself
- Start date
I wonder if they attack The Borg with feathers if they can adapt to that? Give them all a bad asthma attack. Or cooties. There are so many types of weapons besides firearms and blasters of some kind. What about getting a skunk from the zoo and going Pepe Le Pew on them?
Most sorts of chemical attack are probably right out as the Borg seem to do fine in stark vacuum. There simply isn't a mechanism by which the Borg would expose any of their tender parts to offensive chemicals - save for the use of very powerful corroding agents.
Ultimately, finding clever ways to kill Drones in close combat is wasted effort: the Borg are no worse off for losing some, and you're just going to exhaust, if not your strength hauling the multiple weapons, then at least your imagination. Weapons of mass destruction are the way to go if you need slaughter. If you just want to get through an opposing force of Drones for tactical purposes, better use something you have already used (since it still works for the first couple of Drones); no free gifts to the Collective!
Timo Saloniemi
Ultimately, finding clever ways to kill Drones in close combat is wasted effort: the Borg are no worse off for losing some, and you're just going to exhaust, if not your strength hauling the multiple weapons, then at least your imagination. Weapons of mass destruction are the way to go if you need slaughter. If you just want to get through an opposing force of Drones for tactical purposes, better use something you have already used (since it still works for the first couple of Drones); no free gifts to the Collective!
Timo Saloniemi
I wouldn't say completely out -- look what happened to the Borg queen in Engineering in First Contact when Data ruptured a coolant(?) tank. The cybernetic implants weren't enough for her to live.
By the way, I couldn't remember if it was coolant, so I went over to Trekcore and pulled up the film script. The ending of the film was changed heavily.
Yup, Trekcore is a treasure trove for early ideas. The first season of TNG is also revealing: much of the stardate confusion was apparently inserted for the final scripts only, while some of the penultimate plots were quite half-baked. Check out "Angel One"!
And yes, warp coolant seems like a very good trench-clearing weapon! Or was the Queen more sensitive than the average Drone, due to her apparent greater organic content and possible feebler armor? Many of the latter were physically almost intact after the coolant cleared, even if their faces had been melted away - and since they apparently died of some sort of sparky feedback before falling into the coolant, we don't know whether melted faces are a problem for them...
Timo Saloniemi
And yes, warp coolant seems like a very good trench-clearing weapon! Or was the Queen more sensitive than the average Drone, due to her apparent greater organic content and possible feebler armor? Many of the latter were physically almost intact after the coolant cleared, even if their faces had been melted away - and since they apparently died of some sort of sparky feedback before falling into the coolant, we don't know whether melted faces are a problem for them...
Timo Saloniemi
There's not some magic circuit that controls all of the Borg's ability to send data to other drones. It's inherent in their group consciousness.
What one drone knows, they all know, and that happens in real time. Even AS you're shooting bullets (or whatever else you can think of) at one drone, the entire collective knows about it and is already starting to adapt.
Plus, there's always that second Drone watching over the entire affair...
"Killing before they can tell" should stand some chance of succeeding when it's individual Cubes that are being killed, preferably while being heavily jammed. A weapon being used against a horde of Drones, or inside the corridors of a Cube, will be recorded, analyzed and reported on, though.
Timo Saloniemi
"Killing before they can tell" should stand some chance of succeeding when it's individual Cubes that are being killed, preferably while being heavily jammed. A weapon being used against a horde of Drones, or inside the corridors of a Cube, will be recorded, analyzed and reported on, though.
Timo Saloniemi
There was a good thread, somewhere around here, that discussed heavy changes to various episodes of TNG. To think what we could have gotten.
I just watched an official clip from the film where the Borg queen dies:
She was the only Borg I could see on the Engineering room floor; every other drone was on a second of third level catwalk and didn't suffer from the fate of the coolant, which was apparently so heavy it only went so high up. Unfortunately the clip doesn't show the full bit, but I only recall her moving spinal cord with skeletal head and suit being on the floor and not any other drone.
Watching these scenes again, I'm yet again reminded how terrible this film is.
The Borg on the Enterprise-E would probably have adapted to the coolant as well, if the Queen's death hadn't killed them.
The use of different weapons to throw the Borg off, shooting with bullets and beams in combination.
Maybe this
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Fifth_Element,_The#AKS-74U_.28as_the_.22Zorg_ZF-1_Pod_Weapon.22.29
Maybe this
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Fifth_Element,_The#AKS-74U_.28as_the_.22Zorg_ZF-1_Pod_Weapon.22.29
I don't see why they'd be vulnerable to bullets. Force fields stop them like they do phaser beams.
The Borg are vulnerable to everything by default. Apparently, there's some sort of a disadvantage to traveling pre-protected. Either a Drone can't function properly if burdened with defenses against even the most typical threats such as kinetic impact or phase-disrupting death ray, or then the Borg wish for a few Drones to die for the intel-gathering value. Or something.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
They aren't any more vulnerable to bullets, than to anything else. Any force field will deal with that.
Mostly the reason individual drones can be shot, with drones' defences only appearing later, is that the hive mind just doesn't think much about individual drones, or the safety of one at a time. Sometimes they have trouble adapting to a weapon, but not for long. A few seconds?
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You can shoot a few drones down at first, because the hive just isn't thinking on the level of what's going on with the ants in the ant farm, and that includes their own people. The whole has to be hurt in a bigger way to make it sit up and pay attention ... and then bother to "adapt" to a weapon.
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Maybe the idea is supposed to be-- can't they take out hundreds in just seconds, unexpectedly, with automatic weapons? Like Picard in FC? For a few seconds you get somewhere, but once the hive notices you, they stop you. Any standard force field would be tried as a default, I'd think , and that's that. So it c an help one man like Picard get out of a jam fast an d escape, but won't help much o n a larger scale.
Mostly the reason individual drones can be shot, with drones' defences only appearing later, is that the hive mind just doesn't think much about individual drones, or the safety of one at a time. Sometimes they have trouble adapting to a weapon, but not for long. A few seconds?
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You can shoot a few drones down at first, because the hive just isn't thinking on the level of what's going on with the ants in the ant farm, and that includes their own people. The whole has to be hurt in a bigger way to make it sit up and pay attention ... and then bother to "adapt" to a weapon.
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Maybe the idea is supposed to be-- can't they take out hundreds in just seconds, unexpectedly, with automatic weapons? Like Picard in FC? For a few seconds you get somewhere, but once the hive notices you, they stop you. Any standard force field would be tried as a default, I'd think , and that's that. So it c an help one man like Picard get out of a jam fast an d escape, but won't help much o n a larger scale.
