Why do people keep saying Voyager weakened the Borg?
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Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
Actually, he DID suffer the former (see the flashback scene in FC).
VOY didn't do anything to the Borg that wasn't well underway long before. They were just too powerful as initially written, so they had to be pulled back so that the hero ships still had a fighting chance.
Except that saving a CG reality as you so put it was only one of the benefits to the mission.
It ultimately resulted in numerous Unimatrix Zero drones to sever their ships and drones from the rest of the Hive mind and become independent...
That means that the Collective would effectively encounter much larger resistance in future assimilations if the 'rebels' teamed up with regular star-faring races.
The whole plan was based on the premise of creating something akin to a 'civil war' with the Collective.
Imagine this...
TUVOK: Turbulence is increasing.
KIM: I'm reading two Borg vessels. Make that three, four, no, five. Fifteen Borg vessels. Distance two point one light years and closing!
JANEWAY: Shields to maximum! Stand by all weapons!
TUVOK: They're in visual range.
CHAKOTAY: My God. Captain.
KIM: I'm picking up a polaron beam. We're being scanned.
JANEWAY: Scanned? I'll show them being scanned. Tom, get my gun. I'll meet you on the observation deck in 3 minutes for target practice.
TUVOK: Captain, it is unlikely that you will be able to use the weapon for very long before the Q realize that we did not return all their armaments after hostilities were ceased after their civil war.
JANEWAY: I doubt it will take more than a few seconds to blow 15 cubes out of space, after that the Q are welcome to their damn gun back, because I doubt the Borg will dare tangle with us again after... Never mind, I had friends at Wolf 359. This is going to feel damn good. TOM! I said GET MY GUN!
TUVOK: Turbulence is increasing.
KIM: I'm reading two Borg vessels. Make that three, four, no, five. Fifteen Borg vessels. Distance two point one light years and closing!
JANEWAY: Shields to maximum! Stand by all weapons!
TUVOK: They're in visual range.
CHAKOTAY: My God. Captain.
KIM: I'm picking up a polaron beam. We're being scanned.
JANEWAY: Scanned? I'll show them being scanned. Tom, get my gun. I'll meet you on the observation deck in 3 minutes for target practice.
TUVOK: Captain, it is unlikely that you will be able to use the weapon for very long before the Q realize that we did not return all their armaments after hostilities were ceased after their civil war.
JANEWAY: I doubt it will take more than a few seconds to blow 15 cubes out of space, after that the Q are welcome to their damn gun back, because I doubt the Borg will dare tangle with us again after... Never mind, I had friends at Wolf 359. This is going to feel damn good. TOM! I said GET MY GUN!
Agreed 100%
I love Borg episodes but Unimatrix Zero was one Borg story too many too much. Too know the Queen didn't have full control and full knowledge completely destroyed the whole concept of them being of one mind. The Borg Civil Wars idea is stupid. Voyager left those drones to die. Who's going to be there to give them medical care when their bodies start to reject the Borg implants? Plus, as we saw with Seven. If their nanoprobes aren't suppressed, they'll just reassimilate all of them. Nobody in the crew remembers that Seven gets wacko when she gets near anything with a Borg signal?
...and yes, Voyager could barely escape a regular Cube. A Tactical Cube should have torn it to shreds. My issues is, why nobody turned to Seven to ask "If that's a Tactical Cube., then what the Hell is the function of the regular ones???"
One smashes a planets defences and the other assimilates the population?
There are species that the Borg will not assimilate, but the Borg think that the Borg are Benevolent and nice, so would they answer an SOS or render humanitarian aid to some disaster happening to a species that they do not intend to assimilate?
Do the Borg possess pity?
There are species that the Borg will not assimilate, but the Borg think that the Borg are Benevolent and nice, so would they answer an SOS or render humanitarian aid to some disaster happening to a species that they do not intend to assimilate?
Do the Borg possess pity?
This is all the more reason why I gave away my DVD copy of "Star Trek: Fan Collective - Borg" last year to a South Korean friend.
After "I, Borg" I call B.S. to pretty much everything contrived that came afterwards, except for the entertaining Star Trek: First Contact. The whole mythology behind them keeps changing everytime a new episode comes along.
They were mysterious and formidable when you first saw them on screen, but how many more times can you resurrect this unstoppable and relentless juggernaut -- making them incredibly more stronger and appearing invincibly indestructible, only to be defeated so easily by a lone starship?
UPN probably meddled with that to boost ratings; I really don't know what more to say, but they dried the milk out of that one.
After "I, Borg" I call B.S. to pretty much everything contrived that came afterwards, except for the entertaining Star Trek: First Contact. The whole mythology behind them keeps changing everytime a new episode comes along.
They were mysterious and formidable when you first saw them on screen, but how many more times can you resurrect this unstoppable and relentless juggernaut -- making them incredibly more stronger and appearing invincibly indestructible, only to be defeated so easily by a lone starship?
UPN probably meddled with that to boost ratings; I really don't know what more to say, but they dried the milk out of that one.
Except that nothing on screen corroborates that notion.
In fact, the Tactical Cube was seen as VERY large - that thing was a monster compared to Voyager.
Might be a bit smaller than the 'Assimilation Cube', but doesn't mean it's any less powerful - only that their primary functions are different, and even then, if the Assimilation Cube is larger, then that can easily be interpreted in a way that it needs extra space for assimilated drones and possible storage of technology.
Also, Voyager's battle with the Tactical cube came after several key factors:
The Drone 'One' enhanced Voyagers defensive/offensive systems, 7 of 9 was present on board which probably helped in the battle either way, and SF sent Voyager tactical upgrades in the episode 'Lifeline'... plus the ship was already modified by the crew quite a lot by the time the battle with the Tactical Cube happened, so it's really no wonder the ship was able to hold out as long as it did - and their attacks were surgical in the first battle -they were likely protecting the Warp drive from being knocked out.
A Federation colony ship (mentioned in Ensigns of command could carry 200,000 people.) is much larger than a Galaxy Class Starship... I wonder which is faster?
In space weight does not matter, but what does this have to do with the Borg?
Warp geometry and power consumption. Shield battery retention. Phaser coil reserves. Etc etc.
Bigger ships need more power to do just about anything.
Monumentally bigger ships then need monumentally more amounts of power to "do just about anything" as potently as smaller ships.
A tactical ship is a ship that zips form one mission to the next doing odd jobs quickly as need be, and then move onto the next mission. Like we suspect was the idea behind Voyagers design.
The federation at the beginning of TNG can Build warships 20 times the size of the Enterprise but it chose not to, because it wasn't a good idea. They would have been too slow or gas hogs or most likely both, and then you have to wonder how well the shields would work in a firefight trying to cover 20 times the surface area? And really if they had enough surface area for another 40 phaser arrays, they'd be fools not to use it, and if they did have forty more phaser arrays than a galaxy class ship, imagine the resources and staff that that would take to maintain?
The job of an assimilation cube is to process thousands, tens of thousands of cities into raw resources and induct billions of individuals into the collective and then find assignments for all those new drones throughout the collective.
Not to actually strip a planet and move on, but to turn a planet Borg, building new factories and server farms and transwarp radio antenna relays to extend the collective influence...
Tactical cubes are smaller than Assimilation Cubes like the Galaxy Class Starships are smaller than Federation colony ships because they are a more efficient design. Faster engines, stronger shields and more powerful weapons etc for a relative expense of energy.
That's logical right?
Bigger ships need more power to do just about anything.
Monumentally bigger ships then need monumentally more amounts of power to "do just about anything" as potently as smaller ships.
A tactical ship is a ship that zips form one mission to the next doing odd jobs quickly as need be, and then move onto the next mission. Like we suspect was the idea behind Voyagers design.
The federation at the beginning of TNG can Build warships 20 times the size of the Enterprise but it chose not to, because it wasn't a good idea. They would have been too slow or gas hogs or most likely both, and then you have to wonder how well the shields would work in a firefight trying to cover 20 times the surface area? And really if they had enough surface area for another 40 phaser arrays, they'd be fools not to use it, and if they did have forty more phaser arrays than a galaxy class ship, imagine the resources and staff that that would take to maintain?
The job of an assimilation cube is to process thousands, tens of thousands of cities into raw resources and induct billions of individuals into the collective and then find assignments for all those new drones throughout the collective.
Not to actually strip a planet and move on, but to turn a planet Borg, building new factories and server farms and transwarp radio antenna relays to extend the collective influence...
Tactical cubes are smaller than Assimilation Cubes like the Galaxy Class Starships are smaller than Federation colony ships because they are a more efficient design. Faster engines, stronger shields and more powerful weapons etc for a relative expense of energy.
That's logical right?
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Right.
Voyager didnt weaken the Borg, First Contact weakened the Borg. Basically, after that movie the point of the borg became less what they represented, and more what they did. Up until then the main point of the borg was to test Picard and the enterprise crew in kind of a moral situation. Not being able to negotiate (what Picard does best), Riker having to make his decision at the end of BOBW, what to do about Hugh etc. Until that point they were essentially an abstract concept, after this they just became basic run of the mill bad guys. A bunch of aliens under the leadership of one onscreen character who told them what to do, not really any different from other trek enemies.
Making the borg queen weakened the borg as a concept, because it took away the essential element of what they were, and after that they just became something you could tamper with to meet the requirements of the story. This wasnt Voyagers fault, it was First Contacts fault.
Making the borg queen weakened the borg as a concept, because it took away the essential element of what they were, and after that they just became something you could tamper with to meet the requirements of the story. This wasnt Voyagers fault, it was First Contacts fault.
But retroactively the Queen was at First Contact, and if Picard tried harder to figure out that she existed, he could have negotiated with the Queen, but she wouldn't do that until after he was "in love" with her.
They had bad intel.
Guinin lied.
The Elurians told Starfleet about the Borg, and about the Queen 80 years earlier, but she chose to tell Picard otherwise in Q Who for some reaosn other than what Picard might have told her to say in Times Arrow to complet yet another time loop.
They had bad intel.
Guinin lied.
The Elurians told Starfleet about the Borg, and about the Queen 80 years earlier, but she chose to tell Picard otherwise in Q Who for some reaosn other than what Picard might have told her to say in Times Arrow to complet yet another time loop.
We could also say that the queen was invented by the Collective to try and specifically deal with Humanity... or at least use her as a 'test run' (one that would end with 'Endgame' - I kinda like the thought that the Collective decided to never create a 'queen' again because it was essentially one giant failure of an experiment).
When you think about it... what Troi initially stated about the Borg was how they were best described - they don't have a single leader (one that is prone to making mistakes).
The Collective could certainly be used occasionally to present a real threat to the Feds... and I'm not saying the latter shouldn't be able to offer resistance - after all, they can be beaten, but given their very 'nature', they wouldn't stop coming, and they could be used in a way that they are 'toying' with the Federation (and other species) and just are using them for technological advancements - though I kinda find it 'limiting' that the collective is incapable of inventing new technologies - it sort of goes against what they accomplished, because they WERE able to mix and mash a bunch of alien technologies into one.
It could be used for some great story telling.
I don't particularly enjoy how the Destiny novels portrayed the Collective as overly emotional... that sort of perception goes against how they were initially portrayed.
Voyager didn't weaken the BORG... BOBW's did the minute Picard said the word..."Sleep".
That weakness was compounded when the Borg never sent a followup cube with its sleep function disabled to whip the Federation's collective backside.
There's canon and then there's just story development... kind of like how Superman could "Leap tall buildings in a single bound" before his creators realized it was cooler if he could just fly.
Like how TNG's Trill love story with Dr Crusher was "sad" because she couldn't accept her Trill male lover in a female host body, but by DS9 the Trill love story was sad because the Female Dax and the female scientist couldn't get together because associations with former lovers was taboo.
I like to cut our writers a little slack.
That weakness was compounded when the Borg never sent a followup cube with its sleep function disabled to whip the Federation's collective backside.
There's canon and then there's just story development... kind of like how Superman could "Leap tall buildings in a single bound" before his creators realized it was cooler if he could just fly.
Like how TNG's Trill love story with Dr Crusher was "sad" because she couldn't accept her Trill male lover in a female host body, but by DS9 the Trill love story was sad because the Female Dax and the female scientist couldn't get together because associations with former lovers was taboo.
I like to cut our writers a little slack.
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