Why do people keep saying Voyager weakened the Borg?
- Thread starter Civ001
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Can't have been that heavy damage, the ship looked brand new next episode. It looks like they managed to build/replace shuttles/the delta flyer easily . As for the crew that number seemed to fluctuate from one episode to the next. They never really sold the fact the encounter with the Borg caused any serious hardship for the crew. It wasn't as if they could replace those crew members
My theory is that we didn't often view the same Voyager, but instead each week we slid sideways through into slightly different yet almost identical mirror universes, which explains the lack of continuity, the glaring discontinuity and the metaphysical manic hammering of the reset button.
Visually, it is smaller. The Borg Cube in "Q Who?" and BOBW was really massive, always taking up the screen when the Enterprise was next to it. The Cube in FC wasn't super-big compared to the Starfleet ships in the battle. Big, but nowhere near as big as how the BOBW Cube was.
Yes, that stupidly overpowering an enemy that appears more than one is a bad idea.
The Enterprise-D looked brand new after BOBW as well, and didn't show any significant loss to their crew either.
The introduction of the Borg Queen was IMO a development that weakened the Borg as an antagonist. In Q Who and BOBW, the Borg were rather Hitchcockian villains: fear was driven by the characters talking about them as much as confronting them. Even Locutus didn't make them more approachable: he repeated the demands of the Collective without explaining them or seriously dialoguing with the Enterprise crew. Part of the appeal of this approach is that it made up for the lack of special effects to adequately portray the threat visually. I don't think Hugh and Descent changed that, as what we saw were elements that had become autonomous from the Borg as a socio-political entity. The Queen in ST:FC broke that spell. With a voice willing to reply directly to the Enterprise crew, much of the mystery disappeared. Their mentality and objective were laid bare in such a way that they could be objectivized and minimized.
It would have been a start and better than seemingly not addressing it, and we don't even need to see it.
Captains Log stardate xxxxx.x We have departed the Xantos Beta star system were we have spent the last fortnight conducting repairs following our encounter with the Borg. It also gave us time to mourn those we lost in the encounter.
A few seconds of dialouge is all it takes.
That might have made a good episode.
Too bad it would have violated VOY's "No Support" part of the premise. That was something they never should have made part of the series to begin with.
Look, as easy as you make it sound it wouldn't work like that. It's pretty obvious just how harsh and critical VOY's audience was. They would just be angered further by just having a few sentences of dialog, they'd demand a 10 episode arc about VOY being repaired with most of the screentime being dedicated to nothing but the repairs.
Look, as easy as you make it sound it wouldn't work like that. It's pretty obvious just how harsh and critical VOY's audience was. They would just be angered further by just having a few sentences of dialog, they'd demand a 10 episode arc about VOY being repaired with most of the screentime being dedicated to nothing but the repairs.
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The more I think about it, the more I'm certain that Voyager just had some conceptual problems and a premise that basically contradicted itself.
The whole "No Support" thing really should've been tossed out. There's no way they'd survive without finding some alien starbases and negotiating repairs and stuff. Also, the "No Support" thing really limited them because it undercut the possibilities of them making any allies which would've given the show a much needed external plot.
"Lost in Space" just isn't a sustainable premise for more than 2 seasons. After that, they needed something else beyond "Going Home" to give them plots.
The whole "No Support" thing really should've been tossed out. There's no way they'd survive without finding some alien starbases and negotiating repairs and stuff. Also, the "No Support" thing really limited them because it undercut the possibilities of them making any allies which would've given the show a much needed external plot.
"Lost in Space" just isn't a sustainable premise for more than 2 seasons. After that, they needed something else beyond "Going Home" to give them plots.
huh no, that's the opposite of agreeing with me! I was pointing out how viciously powerful the little attack ships seemed at first. Something that was lost later on.
Anyways, re: the borg, the federation fought back in FC with a mix of a lot of ships and again having inside information from Picard. That's still far from an easy victory. And if they had attacked in two places at once then picard can only show up in one to say "ok shoot here and here".
re other threats, we have to consider not all the more Powerful Entities out there, but ones that were cast in a villainous role and inclined to march on earth in the first place. Godlike Beings like Q are really a wholly different kind of storytelling element.
I actually kinda like your idea tho of having the main strength of their forces broken in the first few attacks. (BoBW and let's throw in FC too). Then leave in the Delta Quadrant a remnant of desperate tech scavengers trying to rebuild.
That's a misinterpretation of the Queen. The Queen IS the Borg. The collective is self conscious. It's a giant brain. And the Queen is the result of that brain.
The Queen is not the leader of a Borg hive mind. She is the collective mind.
"The Borg" is/are a single individual represented by a female. And that individual was lonely. And Picard was amazing enough that she wanted him to be a special drone with individuality so she wouldn't be alone anymore.
yep,
how hard is it to just assume that they're making repairs between episodes. It's not like each episode took place the very next day from the one before, there are weeks if not months between episodes, plenty of time to make any repairs.
and in regards to docing with an alien space station right off the top of my head, they docked with a space station in Survival Instinct and Janeway said they mentioned a culture and technology exchange. So obviously in this episode they got any spare parts they would need and fixed any damage they had.
Which would be a contradiction of what Hugh says in I, Borg. He talks about the voices (plural) of his brethren that he hears. They are not centered or centralized. They are collected. Indeed, that is in essence what was observed in previous episodes, that the strength of the borg was in not having any sort of centralization.
It isn't, and I imagine there were more stops at hospitable alien ports than we saw. The problem isn't voyager getting repaired, but rather that it always looks so pristene and standard-issue.
Other trek series had the same issue to varying extents, like DS9 never looking that damaged, but in Voyager it should have been played up a lot more as issues of survival and resources were closer to the show's core premise. (And Enterprise actually got this right, with the ship spending half of season 3 looking totally battered.)
ok, so in the weeks inbetween episodes they had people painting the hull.
I'm sure we are all well aware of the interview RDM gave about VOY a snipit of it :-
The premise has a lot of possibilities.
Before it aired, I was at a convention in Pasadena, and [scenic illustrator,technical consultant Rick] Sternbach and [scenic art supervisor, technical consultant Michael] Okuda were on stage, and they were answering questions fromthe audience about the new ship. It was all verytechnical, and they were talking about the fact that in the premise this ship was going to have problems. It wasn’t going to have unlimited sources of energy. It wasn’t going to have all the doodads of the Enterprise. It was going to be rougher, fending for themselves more, having to trade to get supplies that they want. Thatdidn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at all, and it’s a lie to the audience. Ithink the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. VOYAGER is not true. If it were true, the ship would not lookspick-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How manytimes has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, andanother one just comes out of the oven? That kind of bullshitting the audience I think takes its toll. At some point the audience stops taking it seriously,because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn’t act like this."
And he was right, but of course pople have different levels of tolerance. for some VOY never passed them, for others it did.
The premise has a lot of possibilities.
Before it aired, I was at a convention in Pasadena, and [scenic illustrator,technical consultant Rick] Sternbach and [scenic art supervisor, technical consultant Michael] Okuda were on stage, and they were answering questions fromthe audience about the new ship. It was all verytechnical, and they were talking about the fact that in the premise this ship was going to have problems. It wasn’t going to have unlimited sources of energy. It wasn’t going to have all the doodads of the Enterprise. It was going to be rougher, fending for themselves more, having to trade to get supplies that they want. Thatdidn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at all, and it’s a lie to the audience. Ithink the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. VOYAGER is not true. If it were true, the ship would not lookspick-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How manytimes has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, andanother one just comes out of the oven? That kind of bullshitting the audience I think takes its toll. At some point the audience stops taking it seriously,because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn’t act like this."
And he was right, but of course pople have different levels of tolerance. for some VOY never passed them, for others it did.
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