Why do people keep saying Voyager weakened the Borg?

[Gary7]

Anwar, you're overestimating the efforts...

They did start with a real, physical model. And then they transitioned to all CGI in the 4th season. At this point, they could have programmed in signs of repairs to damage and kept it there. EASY. Data stored and maintained. They didn't do this. They kept starting each episode with a fresh model, albeit with occasionally some additions like Borg hardware. I really believe it wouldn't have been much effort to maintain signs of wear on Voyager. For internal sets, it would have been a little more difficult, as they'd swap in new panels periodically. But it could have been done.

Battlestar Galactica maintained damage to ships pretty well. You went off on commenting about issues with the series falling apart, but that didn't accomplish anything regarding their use of CGI. They did a great job. Voyager could have easily done the same, starting with Season 4.


In defense of exodus, remember that the hard core fans who pay attention to all of the details are a minority. A rather prominent minority. The producers needed to make money and cater to the largest audience. They did make efforts to appease the dedicated fans... but this was a lower priority. You can see it. It's only unfortunate in the long run, as people who buy the Blu-ray/DVD's will watch the shows with more attention. They watch episodes at their own pace and don't miss any because they forgot to set the DVR. Inconsistencies become more noticeable. But... the video discs are purchased already, so would it really matter to the creators? Perhaps... more glowing reviews would help motivate more sales.

 

[zar]

they were expensive and saved up for special episodes/two-parters, not enough money to constantly be using them every episode

How many times do I have to explain this: Repeatedly using them hardly costs more, because they don't have to re-build them every time.

and further altering them all the time.

Who says it has to be continuously altered? Damaged Voyager could be like Kirk's Ripped Right Shoulder Shirt.

They still exist, and they can be easily re-animated.

Yes, NOW they can be used more liberally and altered more easily.

No, NOW it just LOOKS better. Animation has never been hard. Especially when we're talking about a solid shape like a starship where animation consists of little more than movement and rotation.

 

[Anwar]

They did start with a real, physical model. And then they transitioned to all CGI in the 4th season. At this point, they could have programmed in signs of repairs to damage and kept it there. EASY. Data stored and maintained. They didn't do this.

...Because they'd have to KEEP changing the model again and again and again. Each change costing them dough.

Battlestar Galactica maintained damage to ships pretty well.

NuBSG came out 8 years after VOY, tech advanced and became a lot cheaper. And they didn't change their internal sets at all, all they did was hope no one would pay attention to that and made them dirty to begin with.

How many times do I have to explain this: Repeatedly using them hardly costs more, because they don't have to re-build them every time.

And they'd have to keep changing it for further damages, or when it's repaired.

Don't say "They could just use the original model" for when it gets repaired, because the reaction would just be "The repaired Voyager model should look like they just put patches over everything instead of actually fixing anything and still look damaged and different."

Who says it has to be continuously altered?

You, and everyone else who says the whole show should've been "Year of Hell" for the entire series Premiere-to-Finale.

This contradicts the "They can find repair stations" argument since being "7 years of Hell" means never finding any help from anyone but VOY criticisms/hatred has never been consistent/rational.

 

[zar]

VOY criticisms/hatred has never been consistent/rational.

Because most of that criticism/"hatred" is a fantasy in your own mind. Nothing I said was inconsistent with itself; it's only inconsistent with the words you put in my mouth.

I try to take you seriously and respond to the parts of your posts that contain some form of rational thought corresponding to what I've actually said and not your fantasies, but these are becoming more and more rare.

 

[Anwar]

In this case, it was Luminus' and Gary7's arguments: Luminus said the whole show, from start to finish, should've been "Year of Hell". In other words, 7 years of Hell. You agree with him on the continuous damage thing and changing the model to keep in line with this.

Gary7 mentioned them going to Repair Stations and being able to survive thanks to those. As in, actually manage to get repairs and resupplies.

So which is it, 7 Years of Hell wherein it's nothing but the ship getting trashed for 7 years straight and no end in sight with no one lifting a finger to help them, or them being able to find repair stations and survive?

And I'm guessing from your lack of response that you DO agree with the "Viewers are Morons and need to be spoonfed every last detail" you convinced me of?

 

[zar]

This is you putting words in people's mouths:

"The repaired Voyager model should look like they just put patches over everything instead of actually fixing anything and still look damaged and different."

Who says it has to be continuously altered?

You

And I'm guessing from your lack of response that you DO agree with the "Viewers are Morons and need to be spoonfed every last detail" you convinced me of?

In this case, it was Luminus' and Gary7's arguments: Luminus said the whole show, from start to finish, should've been "Year of Hell". In other words, 7 years of Hell. You agree with him on the continuous damage thing and changing the model to keep in line with this.

Gary7 mentioned them going to Repair Stations and being able to survive thanks to those. As in, actually manage to get repairs and resupplies.

So which is it, 7 Years of Hell wherein it's nothing but the ship getting trashed for 7 years straight and no end in sight with no one lifting a finger to help them, or them being able to find repair stations and survive?

Your first mistake is in taking different things said by different people and acting as though they were all said by one collective being, and then accusing that being of inconsistency.

Your second mistake is that you exaggerate opinions to an extreme that was never stated. In their original forms, those two opinions actually could have coexisted, but you butchered them by paraphrasing them with straw-mans like "nothing but..." and "no one lifting a finger".

 

[Anwar]

In "Year of Hell" did VOY get any help, find any repair stations, or were they just getting blasted by the Krenim the whole time until they fought the Timeship at the end?

Gary however, mentions them finding repair stations and making deals for ore/resources.

These two cannot co-exist if the entire series was just 7 Years of Hell.

And you're the one who keeps dodging the "spoonfeed" thing. DO you think the audience needs to be spoonfed everything, or not?

 

[zar]

And you're the one who keeps dodging the "spoonfeed" thing. DO you think the audience needs to be spoonfed everything, or not?

No, Anwar, I don't believe that. I also don't believe that rain is caused by the tears of the giant at the top of Jack's beanstalk, or that I must eat the red ones last.

You live in a world where you can attribute any outrageous belief to anyone with the only evidence being that they never explicitly said the exact opposite.

You have used this "tactic" countless times. You go several posts under the assumption that we do believe it, all the while being told to stop putting words in our mouths, then you reach this point where you specifically ask if we do, to which we invariably respond that we don't, and you have nowhere to go from there.

Why haven't you realized that this tactic doesn't work? Why do you keep using it?

 

[cwl]

Voyager weakened the borg due to 'villain decay'
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainDecay

 

[Anwar]

And you're the one who keeps dodging the "spoonfeed" thing. DO you think the audience needs to be spoonfed everything, or not?

No, Anwar, I don't believe that.

Good, too bad you'd need to be in the case of Voyager and the Borg though. This thread proves that.

As for Borg "Villain Decay", that started back in TNG. It just wasn't as noticeable because the audience didn't hate TNG like they did with VOY.

 

[RyuRoots]

I love the refusal to acknowledge the absurdity of these "arguments". You make a valiant effort, zar, but he's just going to ignore being called on it unless it's a launching pad for more "VOYAGER! HATERS! RAAAAAAAAH" craziness.

 

[Anwar]

He admitted to not thinking that the audience needs to be spoonfed every last detail, so that's some progress. He still thinks that they needed to be spoonfed about different types of Borg vessels though, and that's just sad and insulting since we already knew from TNG that there were at least three different types of Borg ships.

I mean, in DS9 did they HAVE to say "The Dominion have small attack ships, bigger cruisers and huge Battleships" or was the audience able to figure it out on their own?

 

[zar]

That was addressed multiple times, beginning several pages ago. You were, and now again are, arguing that VOY's creators deliberately intended and implied that Voyager was up against a weaker version of the Borg, while in reality they did the opposite.

You can't claim that "The Viewers" were too dense to receive an implicit message that was never actually being delivered. You can fanwank and retcon all you want, but don't try to lie about real-world production history.

 

[Anwar]

I suppose the message was delivered better in "Descent", even though they never ONCE outright say "This ship is weaker than a Borg Cube"?

Was it delivered better in "Dark Frontier" even though they never once outright say "The Probe is weaker than a Cube"?

Tell me, what is it you want exactly from the show in regards to them taking on a Tactical Cube that doesn't end with them being spineless cowards? "We found some alien tech that will temporarily make our weapons stronger"? "Q agreed to destroy the Cube for us"? "We have a super-teleport machine that we'll use to teleport the Borg Cube into a black hole"?

 

[zar]

I suppose the message was delivered better in "Descent", even though they never ONCE outright say "This ship is weaker than a Borg Cube"?

Was it delivered better in "Dark Frontier" even though they never once outright say "The Probe is weaker than a Cube"?

The implicit message that the ships were weaker was delivered "better" in those episodes because, in those cases, it existed. Those ships WERE intended from day one TO be lesser than cubes. Not so with the cubes in VOY. When you concoct the "message" where it didn't exist, that falls purely into the realm of fanwank.

Tell me, what is it you want exactly from the show in regards to them taking on a Tactical Cube that doesn't end with them being spineless cowards? "We found some alien tech that will temporarily make our weapons stronger"? "Q agreed to destroy the Cube for us"? "We have a super-teleport machine that we'll use to teleport the Borg Cube into a black hole"?

I've completely lost track of what your point is. What are you asking and why?

 

[Anwar]

There was no implication that the ship from Descent was weaker. Weapons were just as ineffective on it as the Assimilation Cube. The only clue we had that it was different in any way was that it didn't look like a Cube.

Same for the Probe, it had adaptive powers just like the Cube did.

And NO ONE had any problems with either one being destroyed more easily than the Cube.

I've completely lost track of what your point is. What are you asking and why

I'm asking if there was any way you would ever accept VOY taking on a Tactical Cube without them being spineless cowards who sh*t themselves at the sight of a Borg. Seriously, WHAT DOES IT TAKE?! What contrivance would make it acceptable?

OR

What would it take for you to accept that a Tactical Cube is a weaker class of Borg vessel?

 

[zar]

There was no implication that the ship from Descent was weaker. Weapons were just as ineffective on it as the Assimilation Cube. The only clue we had that it was different in any way was that it didn't look like a Cube.

Same for the Probe, it had adaptive powers just like the Cube did.

Yes there was.

I'm sorry, did you need it spoonfed to you?

I'm asking if there was any way you would ever accept VOY taking on a Tactical Cube without them being spineless cowards who sh*t themselves at the sight of a Borg. Seriously, WHAT DOES IT TAKE?! What contrivance would make it acceptable?

Well I'm not going to answer that.

Instead, I'll give you some relevant reading material:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitlecl8xukzuauw1?from=Main.LetsSeeYOUDoBetter

What would it take for you to accept that a Tactical Cube is a weaker class of Borg vessel?

I could accept an in-universe explanation to this effect, after the fact (Trek-lit authors love doing this sort of thing), but it's too late to defend the creators of VOY for making the mistake in the first place.

 

[Anwar]

I can accept both the "Descent" ship and the Probe being destroyed, despite nothing being said outright that they were weaker ships. However, you DO need it spoonfed to you that not all Borg ships in VOY were as powerful as the Assimilation Cube.

Sad.

I suppose you'll say "They destroyed the Descent ship with a solar flare and since we never saw a Borg Cube destroyed by a Solar Flare it HAS to be weaker".

Well I'm not going to answer that.

So you accept that there was no way you could ever see Voyager engage a Tactical Cube without them ending up a bunch of spineless cowards by the end of it.

Instead, I'll give you some relevant reading material

Irrelevant.

I could accept an in-universe explanation to this effect, after the fact

This whole thread suggests otherwise.

 

[zar]

Irrelevant.

And you accuse others of needing everything spelled out for them...

I could accept an in-universe explanation to this effect, after the fact

This whole thread suggests otherwise.

I first explicitly said this over a hundred posts ago.

 

[Anwar]

I happen to disagree with the article, and I do agree that unless you have even a remote idea of how it alternately could have gone you should just stick to "I hate this" instead of "It could be better" and make it clear you're just a hater and always will be.

I first explicitly said this over a hundred posts ago

And yet you needed no such explanation for the Descent ship or the Probe.

If you need them to explicitly say "The Tactical Cube is weaker than an Assimilation Cube" then you also need them to say explicitly say "The Renegade Borg ship is weaker than a Cube" and "The Probe is weaker than a Cube".

Yet despite this you accept the latter WITHOUT anything explicit.