This is topic The Duration of the Battle of Wolf 359 in forum Starships & Technology at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.


To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://flare.solareclipse.net/ultimatebb.php/topic/6/2302.html

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
"The Best of Both Worlds" -- the episode that never grows old!

I've looked briefly at the forum archives, finding a few old threads but nothing that discusses this directly.

Based on BoBW, I'm starting to believe that the battle took no longer than 15 minutes, total. I'm watching the reruns on TNN... err, that is, SpikeTV.

Anyway, Riker's in Engineering, talking with Shelby. Data comms him from the Bridge, reporting that they got a message that the fleet had engaged the Borg. The scene immediately cuts to the Bridge, with Riker exiting the turbolift in a hurry, and they get Admiral Hanson's message that the battle's gone bad.

That means that the battle could've taken no more than fifteen minutes total. Let's assume that the message wasn't sent out the second the battle started, but maybe five minutes after the beginning we saw in "Emissary." Then another five minutes for Riker to take the turbolift from Engineering (Deck 36) to the Bridge. And maybe another five minutes after the comm is cut off, as the Borg mop up the remnants.

I also dug up this photo from the Star Trek world tour (or whatever they're calling it these days) from early this year. Although the map is of course non-canon and less than reliable in terms of the ship names, upon close examination I think that the vectors themselves, along with the white spots indicating destruction points, are probably acceptable. I've superimposed my own speculation about the sequence and directions. The fleet was probably marshalled in a single formation at point (1), then the advance wing attacked along vector (2). The Borg blew through them so quickly, then, that the remaining ships had no chance to react aside from reversing course and actually trying to catch up to the cube for a last-ditch assault, which of course also failed.



Also, considering the time frame after the battle messages -- in which the E-D crew had time to hold another conference and have Riker promote Shelby to first officer -- I'd say that there were at least two to three hours between the end of the battle and the time the E-D arrived in the vicinity. That would be plenty of time for the few survivors of the battle to be picked up by the one surviving ship, which would then skedaddle in the opposite direction.

Dangit, now I'm gonna have to make up a little map of my own here...
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Woo! We haven't had some 359 discussion in a while. May as well!

A few years back I had some prelim work for my own theories of the battle, in which the attack was broken down into several "waves" as well. An attack force including the Melbourne, Saratoga, Yamaguchi, Gage, and Bonestell as a rescue ship would have been at least the second of these waves, after which the whole battle would have dissolved into one big turkey shoot while the Saratoga was being assimilated/probed.

It's important to note that this was very likely a runnign battle, and no dialogue stated that we joined "Emissary" at the beginning of the battle; it's easily acceptable that the Saratoga and the other ships could be at an engagement after the initial contact, since they would have moved beyond the wreckage from the first wave(s) of ships.

A time frame of fiteen minutes is not unreasonable, though I doubt it'd take five minutes for Riker to take the elevator up to the bridge. Probably less than a minute IMO, judging from various other episodes. After Hanson's ship was destroyed, there would be plenty of ship left to slaughter.

Mark
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Yeah, I know five minutes is a long turbolift ride for such a crisis situation. I wanted to stick to round numbers.

Concerning the start of the battle... don't forget that the episode opens with Locutus giving the usual "you will be assimilated" line. Based on the reactions of the crew, I really think that the Saratoga was part of the first wave.

(This part's not exactly canon, but the suggestion that it's the first wave is even stronger in the novelization of "Emissary," which I read about 8 or 9 years ago...)

I know it's almost certainly a running battle -- I agree there. However, considering the extremely short nature of the engagement, I would find it suicidal if the Saratoga and her sister ships were anything BUT the first wave! Based on what I recall of the dialogue, the ships seen, and the wreckage, there were probably between five and seven cruisers involved, plus the Bonestell. Out of a fleet of forty, that's a rather small percentage to commit for a last-ditch defense. But it WOULD make sense if they were the first group, sent in to "test the waters" (so to speak), see how the Borg react to multiple ships firing on them at once, before they advance the entire fleet.

Finally, the demeanor of the Saratoga crew before they actually open fire, really doesn't strike me as one where people had already witnessed several thousand comrades go up in a blaze of glory. The Vulcan captain (played by J.G. Hertzler!) would be understandable, of course, but not Sisko or any of the other Bridge officers!
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
I disagree - given typical Starfleet bravado, I can interpret that look on Sisko's face as a "yeah, you messed us up but good - now we're gonna kick your asses back!" sorta look. Mind you, that's how he looks a lot of the time. And as for Locutus' line, the Borg open almost EVERY encounter with that line. Par for the course, I'd say.

And if you think about it, assuming the other ships we KNOW were in the battle, the ones we see in "Emissary" were decidedly less advanced. The newest ship was arguably the Nebula-class Bellerophon (sorry, not the Gage). I can see the ships in "Emissary" as part of the last wave, or as a bunch of thips consolidated from the earlier attacks, or something like that.

As an aside, I wonder if we can get in contact with the bloke that put said graphic together... If not to see it ourselvess, then to know what rationalizations he put into it, if any.

Mark
 

---

Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
 
From crew chatter on the Saratoga, it sounded like they hadn't engaged the Borg at that point. They were still experimenting with rotating shield frequencies/shapes.

It's interesting to note now that since the Yamaguchi and Bellerophon also fired deflector weapon blasts at the Borg ship, but since the Borg already felt the Enterprise's blast, the second and third shots didn't seem to do any damage.

The way the end of the 'Emmissary' intro ends, it seems like the entire Wolf 359 battle took place in the span of that intro. While Sisko was below decks, the battle was still raging on...we saw the Bonestell fly past the window...the Borg could've mopped up the fleet in that amount of time.

I always assumed Admiral Hansen was aboard the USS Melbourne given: 1) we see him arrive in an Excelsior Class ship, 2) when he says to Picard it's offered to Riker, he says it so nonchalantly that it sounds like we're to assume he means the ship out the Ready Room window over there, and 3) Shelby seems to pick out the Melbourne from the wreckage with extra emphasis on the word...I assumed not because fate might have delivered Riker there, but rather that the admiral had been aboard.

With those assumptions in mind, it sounds funny that Hansen says: "the fight does not go well" when the Saratoga had only taken a couple of shots and the Melbourne was the first of 39 ships torn into!
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
I see no reason Hanson couldn't've transferred his flag to another ship...

Mark
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Could'a, would'a, should'a....is too late!

The Novelization for Emmisary , places the saratoga as the very first ship to arrive at W359 (they were in the area) and I guess the Borg arrived sooner than predicted by starfleet and the fleet was not assembled.
If 359 was fought in waves (with each wave proving ineffective) starfleet probably jumped the Cube from First Contact with a huge number of ships and fought a running battle to earth.

I'd give the W359 battle something closer to 30 minutes in length.
The cube was leisurely disecting the Saratoga while the Ambassador and Nebula engaged it (and I'd give each ship something close to a full minute of battle time before being destroyed).
Consider how many ships bit it at W359 and then give each one at least 30 seconds (except the poor Bonestell, that is)and you'll get between 25-30 minutes.
Enterprise was pretty far behind the Cube IIRC.
 

---

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
I must agree that the look on Sisko's face at the beginning was one of a person who's seen a lot of comrades die. Why should he feel "emotionally involved" if the battle had not yet started? AFAWK, he had no relatives on the colonies lost to the Borg so far. He was unfamiliar with the horrors of assimilation. His brother wasn't serving on the Lalo. He hadn't just been told that his request for leave next week had been turned down.

I must also agree that the battle didn't start or end with Hanson dying. His words suggest lots of prior fighting, and Locutus would be sure to take him out at a relatively early stage of the battle.

Would this be a running battle, though? The ships were all at impulse. The Cube had chosen to navigate into a star system, and seemed not to be interested in moving. Was this behavior something that Starfleet had expected, as it had assembled the fleet in this system? Or had Starfleet been expecting a running battle, with Wolf 359 merely a convenient base of operations?

I could see the battle (or its low-intensity tail end) dragging on for several hours, really. It would be very difficult for the E-D to catch up with the Cube on the final run otherwise. After the first fifteen minutes to half an hour had deprived the starships of mobility, the Drones would move in and begin assimilating the crews, while the Cube carved up some souvenirs. It would take some time to sweep up every lifepod and extinguish every lifesign, as had obviously happened by the time the E-D reached the scene. And the crews wouldn't give up without a fight, so the endgame would be a "battle" as much as the torpedo-lobbing had been.

Timo Saloniemi
 

---

Posted by Bond, James Bond (Member # 1127) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by SoundEffect:

I always assumed Admiral Hansen was aboard the USS Melbourne given: 1) we see him arrive in an Excelsior Class ship, 2) when he says to Picard it's offered to Riker, he says it so nonchalantly that it sounds like we're to assume he means the ship out the Ready Room window over there, and 3) Shelby seems to pick out the Melbourne from the wreckage with extra emphasis on the word...I assumed not because fate might have delivered Riker there, but rather that the admiral had been aboard.

With those assumptions in mind, it sounds funny that Hansen says: "the fight does not go well" when the Saratoga had only taken a couple of shots and the Melbourne was the first of 39 ships torn into! [/QB]

---

quote:

---

I think the Melbourne and Saratoga (and the other ships) had already been engaging the Cube for a while before that and that's why their shields were depleted. Each group of ships would probably engage the Cube for a minute then back off and the next group would jump in until the Cube slowed down. The Starfleet ships would keep "leapfrogging" into the battle off and on.

---

Sounds like a good tactic for dealing with Borg weapons but you would have to balence it with the need to concentrate as many weapons as possible on the cube to try and destroy it as quickly as possible. After all, this is a Next Gen Borg cube, not a Voyager one . I can see Hanson perhaps launching a mass attack first and then, when that failed to do anything more than force the cube out of warp to switch to the wave tactics as his shields were depleted.
 

---

Posted by Bond, James Bond (Member # 1127) on :
 
I think once they got the Cube out of warp that's what happened. They switched tactics to a mass attack.

But your right in "Emmisary" and "First Contact" the best strategy would have been for all the ships to fire simultaneously on a small area (like what later happened after Picard took control of the fleet in "First Contact").

I guess the Cube just broke the fleet up and forced them to stay in motion or get obliterated.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
I find it hard to believe that the Borg DIDN'T want to engage the fleet at Wolf 359. Considering the scale of interstellar space and the speeds that the cube was capable of, it would've been a simple matter for them to avoid flying right up to meet the defenders. And seeing as how the fleet was made up of a bunch of older, slower ships too, the would never have been able to catch up if the Borg just warped past outside the system.

Therefore, the Borg WANTED to fight the fleet at Wolf 359. They allowed Starfleet to choose the time and place of the battle, because resistance was of course futile. The Borg got the chance to assimilate extra victims, not to mention wiping out the local defense fleet. I'd be willing to bet that the Borg would've been most vulnerable after they started the process of assimilating Earth, when their resources had to be focused on subduing the local population. If the Wolf 359 fleet had been bypassed and then caught up with them in Earth orbit, that might've actually posed a (slightly larger) threat to the Borg.

Anyway, I don't see anything wrong with assuming that the Borg took their time in assimilating victims after the battle was over -- after all, the Enterprise caught up to the cube shortly after passing through the debris field.

One pet peeve of mine... why does everyone INSIST that the Melbourne was that Excelsior-class ship in "Emissary"? Is it simply the listing from the Encyclopedia that that assertion is based on? I've never, ever been able to read the Excelsior's hull lettering that clearly at all. Or is there some other evidence that I've forgotten about?

I suppose I can accept Riker being offered command of the Melbourne if that ship were merely coincidentally commandeered by Admiral Hanson for his emergency jaunt out to Jouret IV, and was not his personal ship. (I wouldn't want to get command of a ship if I was going to get pushed aside every week when the Admiral came aboard!) But then, don't forget that the Melbourne was originally a Nebula-class, too... (One of those old SWDAO's...)

Also, don't forget the context of Shelby and Riker observing the wreckage -- Of course it might've been a bit more distant, but I certainly didn't see anything that resembled a standard Excelsior-class starship among the wreckage there. And with one or two exceptions, none of the ships from BOBW were seen in "Emissary," which strongly implies that we saw the portions of two separate groups of the fleet.

Therefore, since the class of the USS Gage was never established (aside from the uncertain Apollo-class in the Encyclopedia), perhaps the *Gage* was the Excelsior that bought it?

Finally, regarding the issue of the point in which the Saratoga's engagement occurred, I just remembered one MAJOR line from "Emissary"... Captain Storil says, "Load all torpedo bays, ready phasers." That's not something you say in the middle of a battle, it's what you say at the BEGINNING!
 

---

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Something else people seam to have forgotten; in his "the fight does not go well" transmission, Hansen is ordering a retreat just as the transmission is cut. So he couldn't have been aboard that Excelsior if it was destroyed right at the start of the battle.
More likely Hansen's transmission occurred sometime after Sisko abandoned ship since I don't believe a couple minutes (or however long it took Sisko to get from the bridge to his quarters and then to the shuttlebay) is long enough for the other 30 or so ships to be destroyed and for the Borg to start abducing people.
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
Well, we were definitely seeing the beginning of the Saratoga's engagement... but was that the beginning of the battle itself? Who knows. If the Saratoga was one of the first ships on the scene, then probably.

Hansen said that they were assembling a fleet at Wolf 359... so it suggests that all the ships that were going to be there were there when the battle started. But they were probably divvied up into groups.

I have always assumed that the ship Hanson arrived on was the Melbourne. From the very first time I saw the episode. The way Hanson tells Picard about Riker's command offer always seemed to indicate to me that he was talking about the ship he came on.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
I just took a look at the script for "Emissary"... unfortunately, they specifically refer to the first ship destroyed (in the sequence) as the Melbourne. So that basically settles the ship identity issue.

I'm still convinced that the "Emissary" sequence was the opening shots of the battle. Sisko's demeanor is certainly not that of one who's been sitting on the sidelines and watching as a dozen or more starships are destroyed.

I think that Starfleet might not have been sure exactly where the Cube would've entered the system, and so could've scattered a few ships around the likely approach vectors. The Saratoga would've been one of these ships, and as the Cube entered the system, the three other ships -- the Melbourne, the Kyushu, and the Gage (in dialogue) -- were sent in for support and to make a probing engagement, while the main fleet formed up for their attack.

Then, when the initial force was virtually wiped out, the Yamaguchi and the Bellerophon raced in to try to draw their fire and help the Saratoga escape, but that obviously didn't work. (They might've been other vanguard ships, too, but that's not necessarily true.)

So, in my opinion, we're left with one question: was it really the Melbourne that Hanson and Shelby rode in on in BOBW1? Personally, I'm not convinced that it was -- partly because of the "personal command ship" issue, but also because of the fact that if it really WAS the Melbourne in BOBW1, that would mean that Hanson had to have transferred his flag to another ship for the actual battle.

That last option might not be a bad idea necessarily, except for one problem -- in the static-y comm message, you can clearly see an old "Wrath of Khan"-style screen reading "Alert: Condition Red." If Hanson were going to transfer his flag to another ship, he would've moved to one of the newer, more powerful ships in the fleet. (Like the Galaxy-class ship that was suggested to have been at the battle.) Instead, it's got an older-style background that's more appropriate to an Excelsior or a Miranda.

Since we know that Hanson wasn't killed at the beginning of the battle, that tells me that the Melbourne was not the ship at Jouret IV in BOBW1.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
> If Hanson were going to transfer his flag to
>another ship, he would've moved to one of the
>newer, more powerful ships in the fleet.

...Unless he was on a aux control or flag bridge of an older ship, which is certainly possible. Defiant aside, I really wouldn't want to comand a fleet while the ship's captain is busy trying to keep everyone alive.

Mark
 

---

Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
One pet peeve of mine... why does everyone INSIST that the Melbourne was that Excelsior-class ship in "Emissary"? Is it simply the listing from the Encyclopedia that that assertion is based on? I've never, ever been able to read the Excelsior's hull lettering that clearly at all. Or is there some other evidence that I've forgotten about?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
That last option might not be a bad idea necessarily, except for one problem -- in the static-y comm message, you can clearly see an old "Wrath of Khan"-style screen reading "Alert: Condition Red." If Hanson were going to transfer his flag to another ship, he would've moved to one of the newer, more powerful ships in the fleet. (Like the Galaxy-class ship that was suggested to have been at the battle.) Instead, it's got an older-style background that's more appropriate to an Excelsior or a Miranda.

---

Aren't the "Condition Red" displays also present on Ent-D's battle bridge? Besides, I would figure this to be more of a software than a hardware issue.
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
I doubt we're seeing the very beginning of the battle in "Emmisary". But then I also think Hanson was on the Melbourne which we see destroyed. No, Sisko doesn't seem like he's seen a bunch of ships blown away... but perhaps the Saratoga just got there. As was suggested, maybe they were on the other side of the system with a small group of ships and had just gotten to the battlefield. Or maybe they were just getting to the system period.

"Another ship's coming in... it's the Saratoga!"
buh da Da duh doh DAA!!!!
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Okay, then we can ask the question this way: with the verbatim line, "Admiral Hanson has deployed the Melbourne, the Kyushu, and the Gage," why would they say the line like that if Hanson himself were coming to help them?

The idea of the Saratoga coming in late doesn't work, either -- because in BOBW, Hanson said that they had 40 ships gathered, LONG before the battle started. So the Saratoga was definitely there waiting.

Besides, the Borg would have no reason for broadcasting their "resistance is futile" message more than once -- they never do that any other time we meet them, anyway. That's why they make their "We are the Borg" announcement over the comm in "First Contact," too. Therefore, "Emissary" starts at the beginning of the battle.
 

---

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
 
What about Hanson's own state of mind as an indicator for his "fight's not going well" comment?

He might have been expecting the worst about the upcoming battle, but when the fight did begin, it completely blew away his worst case scenario. Afterall, no one has really faught the Borg before, besides the Enterprise.

No one at Wolf 359 had any first hand accounts as to just how powerful the Borg is, only debriefs from our heroes. And the fact that Ent-D survived three unfriendly matches with a Cube would help re-enforce the idea that, "ok, the Borg is nasty, they beat a Galaxy, but a Galaxy is still only one ship. We've got 40, at least one of whom is almost as good as a Galaxy alone."

The fact that Starfleet didn't pump enough resources to crash program ships like the Defiant or new anti-Borg into service before Wolf 359 would seem to support Starfleet's brass's overall attitude towards the Borg problem. "Ok, it's a notable threat, and we're working on countering it, but it's not really enough to get our panties in a bunch." It was afterall, just one ship. The contrast between Hanson's "we've got 40 ships " and "nearest help is 4 days away " can also be an example of that 'worried but not scared enough' state of mind.

Maybe Hanson thought that he could blow through Borg adaption defence with sheer brute force from 40 different ships, and when the initial barrage of phasers and torpedoes impacted against the Cube for no appreciable result, he simply panicked. We don't know his service record, we don't know if he's one of those Fighting Admirals or not. Even if he was, there would still be a certain amount of fear generated from watching the enemy not even itched by your attacks. He might have been used to enemies that actually die from such a barrage.

Add that to the fact that you didn't account for an enemy quite this powerful (for one, he thought he could withdraw and regroup the fleet against the Cube, and had apparently already tried to put that plan into effect, since he was giving Ent-D details on something that seemed already decided), and the fact the damn thing seem to be making a beeline for you ("Locutus says... Kill the command ship!")... I would say the fight isn't going well, if I were in his shoes, even if the fight hasn't been going on for all that long.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
...Unless for some reason they DIDN'T establish comunications beforehand. I'm all for giving non-Hero Starfleet personel some credit!

Besides, if you look strictly at time elapsed, there really isn't time enough between Locutus shutting up and the Melbourne's destruction for hanson to say what he did. The ship was rocking around a couple of times, and after all she was basically gone in one shot. The only real reason Saratoga survived that long, or so we rationalize, was that she was being studied or assimilated or something other than being blown up.

Let's say that a previous theory works, and a bunch of ships were working to bring the cube out of warp (though the theory that the cube WANTED to off the fleet there also holds weight). Anyway, so a bunch of ships are doing that somehow, succeed, and the ship drops out and encounters The Saratoga group. The Borg establish comms, and off we go.

>"Admiral Hanson has deployed the Melbourne, the
>Kyushu, and the Gage,"

Um, I'm 99.99999% certain that this line was never in any actual episode. Can someone tell me where this line was SUPPOSED to be?

Finally, every time we start this discussion (which NEVER gets old, really), I always go and re-read the ol' Wolf 359 Research site of Bernd's. I think we all should.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
The line is only from the script (although a relatively late version of it) and is mainly remembered because it's reproduced in the "Making of DS9" book. Even the original release of "Emissary" (the one with O'Brien on the E-D transporter room) didn't have that line.

Once again, I'd ignore the script in favor of what we saw on screen. And leave open all the possibilities the on-screen scenes leave open. Here are some:

1) The Saratoga could well have been a late arrival in the battle, joining only after the Borg had done an initial round of slaughtering and were rebroadcasting their party line. That would better match Sisko's emotional state. Lack of debris prior to the scene would simply mean the previous volley was fired a few thousand kilometers off camera.

2) Hanson need not have died when his message cut off. I suspect the Borg started jamming all the messages at that point instead. Otherwise, wouldn't the E-D simply have called the next ship to find out what was going on? Not all the ships died simultaneously in a split second, even if "BoBW" might have left us with that impression.

3) The battle need not really have taken place in the Wolf 359 system (or close to Wolf 359 if it doesn't have a system), any more than the Battle of Agincourt took place near Agincourt. If battles were always named after the actual location, we'd have hundreds of engagements called "the Battle of Empty Space"! Much like Agincourt was the closest place *of noble worth* to the famous battle, Wolf 359 could have been named after the staging area instead of the "site" of the running battle.

Not that I'd strongly believe in the latter. It just goes to show we can make this as complicated as we wish.

Timo Saloniemi
 

---

Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
 
"Besides, the Borg would have no reason for broadcasting their "resistance is futile" message more than once..."

Unless they had Locutus doing some extra PR for the collective, like "Hey, uh, guys, just a friendly reminder that it's not too late to change your mind about this whole assimilation deal" or something. B)
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
Well... this was a little different than simply naming the battle. Hanson specifically said that that is where the fleet was going to make its stand. And when the Enterprise arrives at the battlefield, the Boy says "We're approaching the Wolf System." So I'm pretty sure that the battle actually happened near the star.
 

---

Posted by Captain Stark (Member # 70) on :
 
IIRC the original script for BOBW (I don't have the CD version to check to see if it is the same) listed the set design for Admiral Hanson's filming location as "Galaxy Class Bridge".
 

---

Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 
The comments about Hanson's state of mind are interesting; Starfleet did have very limited experience with the Borg at that time. Also, I think we've tended to underestimate the size of the fleet, especially in light of the DS9 fleets. 40 ships is actually quite a lot, bearing in mind that only single ship encounters (Enterprise and Lalo) had occured before. hanson could've basically been thinking the Borg are like big Cardassians- a few early successes but we'll clean their chronometers once we get a fleet in there.
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
As to the Melbourne getting whacked so quickly while the Saratoga is examined:
Loqutus probably did that to demoralize the fleet and cut off it's leadership.
It's also very Borg-like to examine one of each starship and just destroy the rest.
By the time we see the Melbourne eat it, the Borg could have examined a Excelsior already or noted another in the system and didint need two.

Or Picard secretly relished whacking J.P.
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
Of course, we know that the whole thing was actually arranged or influenced by the Prophets because Sisko had to stay alive.

It could be noone else.

I've always been a little shaky on the Prophets. Did they engineer Sisko's birth and life, or were they simply aware of the whole thing already?

But, whoa, doggies... that's way off track.
 

---

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
 
There's an idea... The Prophets saved Earth from the Borg so the humans could save the Bajorans from just about everyone else.
 

---

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
The prophets are in it for themselves then - cause if they let something like the Borg happen to people that will eventually help Bajor - then they are willing to let many die to save a few. Most illogical! (;|
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Captain Stark:
IIRC the original script for BOBW (I don't have the CD version to check to see if it is the same) listed the set design for Admiral Hanson's filming location as "Galaxy Class Bridge".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mark Nguyen:
...Unless for some reason they DIDN'T establish comunications beforehand. I'm all for giving non-Hero Starfleet personel some credit!

---

quote:

---

Besides, if you look strictly at time elapsed, there really isn't time enough between Locutus shutting up and the Melbourne's destruction for hanson to say what he did.

---

Which means that HANSON WASN'T ON THE MELBOURNE.

(Edited to correct UBB formatting error.)
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Hanson pre-recorded his message ande sent it before the battle even started.
He was a closet manic-depressive with self-destructive fantasies.
That's why he was scoping out Shelby.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
>And that's just the set, which was redressed
>many, many times over the years to represent
>everything from the Stargazer to the
>Enterprise-C to the Nebula-class Prometheus.

Except for small bits and pieces, the sets for these three bridges are completely different. The Stargazer was the original TOS movie set; the Enterprise-C was cobbled together from science labs and such; and the Nebbie-Prommie was half new, and half pieces of the second TOS movie set.

Mark
 

---

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
The evidence for that? "First Contact." "Unity." "Scorpion, Part I." "Hope and Fear." "Drone." "Dark Frontier." "Unimatrix Zero." "Endgame." (My apologies to anyone who suffered flashbacks from this list of some of the worst episodes of VGR.)

---

*Whimpering in a corner somewhere*

Just remembered something, the tactical communication in ST:FC went from 'getting ready to fight' to 'abandon ships' in about 10 seconds, and those guys had the Fleet rallied and was prepared to fight a Cube. I don't think Hanson going from 'engaging the Borg' to 'things not going well' in the timespan of a turbolift ride is that much of a stretch.

Question, does the bumps and shakes of the bridge Hanson's on match the tractor and burn of the Excelsior in question? If it does, it's one more support for him being on the Melbourne.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Not really. Hanson bumps around sevweral times in the space of his line, while the Melbourne was gone in two seconds and one shot. I seriously doubt the bridge would have been holding still while the saucer was being torn apart from under it.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
I would just like to note that the Excelsi-bourne's saucer damage stopped significantly short of the bridge. And the ship took no damage to the secondary hull. If that was the ship Hanson was on, he could have been out of the fight and only in a position to comment on it when we saw that transmission...

--Jonah

P.S. Also a firm adherent to the "Nebula-Melbourne school of thought", as I disregard production shortcuts and value the weight of two-to-one appearances.
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Hanson could have been on the (gasp!) fully manned aux bridge!!!!
What a concept: stick your chattery old "visiting admiral" out of the way "in case things go badly".
 

---

Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
 
Yes, the bridge did not take a direct hit, so it is still possible that Hanson survived. If you look at the Melbourne drift and the motion of the cube, the camera cut away before what would be an inevitable impact with the cube. That may be why Hanson's bridge was still shaking!
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
If Hanson as still alive after the Borg ripped away the Melbourne's saucer, his message would have been closer to
"Enterprise! We're FUCKED! Stay awayyyyy!"
(insert image of Hanson disintegrating)
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
"I'm melting! Oh, what a world....."

--Jonah
 

---

Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mark Nguyen:
>And that's just the set, which was redressed
>many, many times over the years to represent
>everything from the Stargazer to the
>Enterprise-C to the Nebula-class Prometheus.

Except for small bits and pieces, the sets for these three bridges are completely different. The Stargazer was the original TOS movie set; the Enterprise-C was cobbled together from science labs and such; and the Nebbie-Prommie was half new, and half pieces of the second TOS movie set.

Mark

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by kmart:
I carved up a LOT of books and mags while mocking up an illustrated book proposal to Pocket in 1992

---

did u ever get anything published, kmart?
 

---

Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
 
I sold about three dozen long articles to Cinefex between 1990 and 2000 and have freelanced for a bunch of other mags (CFQ, Markee, American Cinematographer, International Cinematographers Guild in the US, CGI and Hotdog in the UK) since then, but the Pocket experience (which is probably described in nauseating detail in the TREKLIT archives at trekbbs from 2002) was an utter disaster. I went on staff at Cinefex with the assurance that I'd get a couple of the 'making of' books that fall their way, but the editor there took all of that stuff herself, so my pro credits are still just for web (DailyRadar) and magazines.

As for THE ART OF STAR TREK, I did everything I was supposed to do, getting written letters of interest from Paramount PR, from ST VI producer Steven-Charles Jaffe, and from ILM's Steve Gawley, before calling to and getting a verbal expression of interest from Kevin Ryan at Pocket before submitting (he even said he hadn't heard the idea pitched before, which floored me), but then nothing, not an acknowledgement of receipt beyond the registered delivery slip.

Then a couple years later when I heard they were doing ART OF STAR TREK with different writers, I still couldn't get any response or acknowledgement out of them. Ryan had switched offices, so I could only reach John Ordover when I phoned.

Cinefex told me not to sue over a book that would bomb anyway, and that it would bounce back badly on them if I caused trouble (as if Paramount could ignore small press more than they already did -- our coverage on GEN was nearly cancelled 3/4 of the way through because of lack of coop from them!), so I just said 'fuck it' and bought the book that did come out and amused myself by counting errors and noticing how much better my proposal looked (in content, both pics and text) than their finished volume.

Mine was only focused on TOS TV and features, and was organized in a totally different way, looking at how the bridge evolved from pilots to series through features, then looking at other parts of the ship in the same chronological way, and so on, for Starfleet facilities and the Federation and alien stuff and parts of the galaxy. Visually it was great, cuz you'd go from a shot of the TOS Ent to a matching angle shot of the TMP Ent, but off to one side of the page, you'd see the route not taken, with the McQuarrie Enterprise from mid70s PLANET OF THE TITANS. It also let you see how the designers would rework sets from film to film, and didn't waste space by filling pages with movie poster imagery like the published volume did.

EDIT ADD-ON: the main dif was that I wanted my version to be equally text-heavy, with interviews of the artists and designers explaining their choices, so there would be a single-source reference for the work -- something definitive, and back then, there were more of these folks around than there are today. END NEW RANT.

Very bitter over the whole thing, and I guess my existence is an embarassment to Pocket, because at the end of 96 when John Eaves mentioned me for possibly doing more sketchbooks (this was when Pocket planned to do sketchbooks for the TOS movies, before the GEN/FC book only did moderate biz), Pocket still wouldn't talk to me, even though Ryan was long gone by then.

The mockup I kept of my THE ART OF STAR TREK proposal did help me get some other writing assignments, and I still have a very worn mockup that I may wind up scanning and putting up as a writing sample if I do a website sometime ...
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
gnarly, man...
 

---

Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
 
Hey kmart. I've been reading Cinefex for years...what articles did you write or contribute to?

I've had my own funky experience Trek publishing. Waaaay back when my friend, and then editor of Videogames & Computer Entertaint magazine, told me his company was negotiating with Paramount to pick up the Star Trek magazine rights (Starlog's option was running out). We did a pretty neat proposal (I'll have to see if I have it somewhere), which suggested things like doing tech files on all the ships and equipment seen on the shows, and doing much harder interviews than usually appear in such fan-oriented mags...and a lot of other stuff that isn't coming back to me right off hand. Well, Paramount didn't go for it, but when Star Trek: The Magazine showed up, they did a lot of the same stuff we pitched, but more shallowly. Guess we were ahead of our time.
 

---

Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
 
I really wish somebody else had done that stuff. Yeah, I don't know WHAT the deal was with STAR TREK THE MAG. I corresponded with that Nemecek guy who did (still does?) the TREK COMMUNICATOR and he said ST THE MAG people kept to themselves and did pretty much everything in-house all by themselves, without freelance input, but I think that kind of inbred approach hurt them, because they'd have all sorts of errors in there and nobody around who was objective to point the stuff out.

A guy I know from some bbs stuff did a super detailed interview with Richard Taylor about Abel and TMP and the guy who hosted this interview wound up getting the thing into ST THE MAG, but I don't think anybody even got paid for it!

I've read a couple places that the UK Trek mag (ST FILES maybe?) was a source for a lot of ST THE MAG's stuff as well, but don't know for sure -- I only know that my inquiries there went unanswered, same as ST TheMag.

As for the CINEFEX history ... I wrote about three dozen articles. That includes their retrospective on the original SW that ran in 96, plus their trek coverage for TUC, GEN, FC and INS. As far as other flicks, lemme remember ... ALWAYS, CAST A DEADLY SPELL, DEATH BECOMES HER, CONTACT, EVENT HORIZON, GODZILLA, DEEP IMPACT, WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, VIRUS, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, TRUMAN SHOW, MATRIX, WILD WILD WEST, a huge hunk of the PHANTOM MENACE issue (plus a whole tech-heavy piece about ILM's R&D on that show which only got published a few years later in the Japanese edition of the magazine), MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, X-MEN, FIGHT CLUB, STUART LITTLE, WING COMMANDER, RED PLANET, MISSION TO MARS, END OF DAYS, and I'm sure I'm missing a few others. I did most of the BATTLEFIELD EARTH article interviews before I managed to get off of that to do THE CELL and CHICKEN RUN.

I was working on a huge version of the 2001 article (about 50,000 words), but that got tossed when I left and they put it together themselves, complete with errors (they mention MOTORIZED landing gear on the ARIES when it was a mechanical rig -- I think it was a penny counterbalancing on a stick, and when it got moved, the ship descended and let the gear go -- and they also got the YEAR wrong for when THE DAWN OF MAN sequence was shot!), which is a bummer. They had long intensive interviews from the 70s and 80s with Wally Veevers and Ivor Powell and Zorin Perisic and Les Novros that they didn't even use, interviews with great stuff nobody knows, and I can't figure out why they didn't use this stuff. The people are mostly dead now, so CINEFEX really blew it on how they handled that. The publisher there seemed to like that Piers Bizony guy who wrote the FILMING THE FUTURE book on 2001, so it could be he got Bizony to proofread the article ... that's the only way I can see the goofs in it slipping by.
 

---

Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by kmart:
I really wish somebody else had done that stuff. Yeah, I don't know WHAT the deal was with STAR TREK THE MAG...I think that kind of inbred approach hurt them, because they'd have all sorts of errors in there and nobody around who was objective to point the stuff out.

---

quote:

---

A guy I know from some bbs stuff did a super detailed interview with Richard Taylor about Abel and TMP and the guy who hosted this interview wound up getting the thing into ST THE MAG, but I don't think anybody even got paid for it!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by kmart:
Yeah, I had a phone conversation with Probert right before I moved from Sunnyvale in early 98

---

quote:

---

I guess the STARLOG SFX V5 piece is the only one he said there was that had the captions in order and the info accurate at that time.

---

quote:

---

Yeah, it was the Cinepixel thing. I didn't know it was going away or I'd have printed it, to have a record of the artwork.

---

quote:

---

The guy who did the interview (who is not Cinepixel) has a COMPLETE set of storyboards from the Abel/Taylor era on TMP

---

quote:

---

About 20,000 ...

---

Thanks for the suggestions. The guy I mentioned didn't want to go the FILMFAX route. I believe he'd gone to CFQ, but they weren't intersted at that time.

Sadly, the email address by which we used to correspond is not longer functional. I'll have to try to track him down and see if he ever did anything with the piece.
 

---

Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 
Seeing as this is a Wolf 359 thread...

Does anyone have any pics of the old version of the Challenger class (the Constitution based one), either fan produced or the version from the graphic novels?
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
I'll dig up schematics on that monstrosity when I get home and link them.
I know ASDB has some images in their "dropped designs" section.
Even a pic from a comic.
My saying I HATE that design is pretty strong feelings considering I really like most of the DS9 "Frankenstein Fleet".
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
i actually made a new version of the pic for an article recently (reuse this puppy all you want, but not without linking to the http://galactopedia.captainmike.org )
the first is the fandom version (with a rear torp launcher ) i kinda like the non-dithered version of it myself, as a design. the second one is the Marco Polo [which was referred to as 'Challenger-class'] from the comic "Thin Ice" (Michael Jan Friedman, Matt Haley, Carlos Garzon), which i am pretty fond of (the ship and the story)..

yes, i do think that even though the fandom Connie-bash is obviously not the BoBW Challenger, it could be the unspecified NCC-2032 from TUC.. (since i'd prefer all those ships not be Excelsiors or Connies
 

---

Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 
Thanks!

I'd forgotten that the Marco Polo was quite as different from the fandom version. Personally, I think it's work best with the primary hull of the fandom one and secondary hull of the Marco Polo. But that's probably just me.
 

---

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Getting back on topic, here's an extract from the BOBW script that sheds some (but not much) light on which ship the good Admiral rode to Jouret IV

quote:

---

5 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE (OPTICAL)

In orbit. Another starship, transport class, has
joined them.

PICARD (V.O.)
Captain's log, Stardate 43997.6.
Admiral Hanson and Lieutenant
Commander Shelby of Starfleet
Tactical have arrived to review
the disappearance of New
Providence colony. No sign
remains of the nine hundred
inhabitants.

---

quote:

---

SETS

EXTERIORS

USS ENTERPRISE
BATTLE SECTION
SAUCER SECTION

THE STARFLEET SHIPS
USS CHEKHOV
USS KYUSHU
USS MELBOURNE
ETC.

ENTERPRISE SHUTTLE

THE BORG SHIP

SATURN (FROM SPACE)

MARS (FROM SPACE)
UNMANNED PODS
EARTH (FROM SPACE)


INTERIORS

USS ENTERPRISE
MAIN BRIDGE
BATTLE BRIDGE
CAPTAIN'S READY ROOM
MAIN ENGINEERING
SICKBAY
DATA'S LABRATOR
CORRIDOR
TURBOLIFT
OBSERVATION LOUNGE
TRANSPORTER ROOM

ENTERPRISE SHUTTLE

THE BORG SHIP
INTERIOR CHAMBER
OPERATING ROOM

ADMIRAL HANSON'S SHIP
(GALAXY CLASS STARSHIP)
READY ROOM
BATTLE BRIDGE

---

quote:

---

DATA
Admiral Hanson on subspace,
Captain...

RIKER
On screen.

27 ANGLE (OPTICAL)

Hanson's image on screen... he's on a Battle Bridge at
Red Alert... reception is breaking up... his ship is
clearly in battle... some shaking...

RIKER
Admiral...

HANSON
(calm but worried)
The fight does not go well,
Enterprise... we're attempting
to withdraw and regroup.
Rendezvous with fleet...

Transmission ends suddenly... subspace hiss and snow
fills the screen... on Riker's reaction...

---

 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Ya know what just hit me as bleeding obvious there... the necessities of television production with respect to a really brief scene in an action-packed episode.

Would the stage crew have built a new -- or even altered -- set for a brief, thirty-second conversation? Since the Enterprise-D's battle bridge was already in use in that episode, they just filmed Hanson on it for a little while, too!

Of course it's not absolute proof, but if Hanson's battle bridge can be considered identical to the Enterprise-D's in BOBW, then that would be a strong indication that they're the same class of ship.

I guess that just leaves the question of what practical joker in the ship's Engineering department programmed one of the computer panels to display an old-style alert visual.
 

---

Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
 
Of course, over the following years, we've found out what the other five GCS ships were that supposedly were in commission at this time.

Galaxy is still in service, Yamato was destroyed already, Odyssey would be destroyed later, Venture is still in service, and Trinculo (if it was ever on DS9) is still in service. Even if we include Challenger, she would still be in service (or would be commissioned at a later time). None of these ships would have served as Hanson's command at Wolf 359.

I think Hanson came to Jouret on the Melbourne in command. Picard was kidnapped, Riker given the Enterprise, the Melbourne's XO given CO status with Hanson still aboard in the Aux Command Center coordinating at Wolf 359. The Melbourne's saucer is almost completely blown off. It stops short of the bridge, but the explosion damages it. Hanson takes over, but another hit off screen takes out the ACC as well.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Anyone have, or can get a screen of Hanson's shot from his "Battle bridge"? We should be able to identify the chair he's sitting in at least. If it's the same as the one used on the BB on the E-D...

And regarding any Galaxies at Wolf 359, I'm of the opinion that at least one would have been under construction at the time, to replace the Yamato (as the space shuttle Endeavor was built to replace the Challenger and thus maintain a fleet of four). Hanson could have been aboard that one. On a book I used to be invoved with-- ah, never mind.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
 
Even if there had been a Yamato replacement under construction at the time, I don't think constuction would have advanced far enough that Hanson could take it out to Wolf and engage in battle (even if it was just the stardrive section).
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
I'm not necessarily saying that this ship was the one being constructed from the keel up to replace Yamato - it's possible that the ship was just one of the original six, on the production line closer to being finished (or alternatively just one in the area). At the rate they were launching GCS at the time (six years between Galaxy and Enterprise, which was number three of six), it would be a stretch to say they can build a whole new GCS from existing components in just over eighteen months.

This would make one of Challenger, Odyssey, Venture or Trinculo the *actual* replacement for Yamato.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
I'm with Mark on this one. The 'Unseen Frontier' version of events isn't beyond the realams of possibility.
1) We know that in the Dominion war, battle worthy Galaxys were launched without most of the internal extra crew support and science modules installed.

2) The intention of the author clearly didn't involve the Melborne being seen before the graveyard scene, nor was it supposed to be Hanson's flagship.

3) Hanson was intended to be aboard a Galaxy-Class ship, the battle bridge set supports this.

4) The old red alert graphic is probably there because someone read where the script says; "Hanson's image on screen... he's on a Battle Bridge at Red Alert... " At the time this was the only Red Alert graphic avalible that would fit into the shot since the E-D just used generic red lights. Plus the fact that ST:VI graphic hadn't been made yet.
From a Treknical standpoint, if the ship had indeed been rushed out of dock then a full set of software might not have been available or the relatively complex 'Windows: Galaxy' would take too long to install and configure. So they loaded the old 'DOS: Constitution' instead, which while unable to run all the holodecks, count how many dots make up infinity or make Arthur Dent a good cup of tea, it was perfectly able to run the propulsion and tactical systems efficiently.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Just to throw another complication into this...

One could also argue that since all twelve original frames for the GCS's were constructed at the same time, and it was just that six of them were completed originally, then all twelve hulls were given registry numbers around the same time. I think it would be reasonable to assume that the disassembled space frames would've been given registry numbers for tracking/organization purposes.

Using this line of reasoning, that means that any of the later ships could've been built in any order.

All that really rules out, ultimately, is the assumption that the Challenger or the Trinculo are among the original six ships.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
I've found a few relevant screenshots.

Some Battle Bridge pics:
http://lobotomy.pleh.net/~flareupload/uploads/469/BattleBridge1.jpg
http://lobotomy.pleh.net/~flareupload/uploads/469/BattleBridge2.jpg
http://lobotomy.pleh.net/~flareupload/uploads/469/BattleBridge3.jpg

Hanson on whatever ship he was on when he was reporting the Lalo missing, and then when he said "we'll miss you at the party". Note background.

http://lobotomy.pleh.net/~flareupload/uploads/469/Conference1.jpg
http://lobotomy.pleh.net/~flareupload/uploads/469/Conference2.jpg

Wherever Hanson was was NOT the bridge shot from later. We still need to see it.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
 
Well going by the TNG tech manual, it suggests that Starfleet was pumping out GCS one every year. Galaxy was launched in 2356 and Enterprise in 2358. We can say Yamato was 2357. That would mean the 6th GCS would gave been launched in 2361, 2-3 years before Enterprise was commissioned. It looks like the tech manual suggests 5-6 years physical construction time for the early GCS. Assuming a new one was ordered right after the loss of Yamato, she would only be 25 to 30 percent complete, which places her at the level of frame construction and major hardware installation, initial hull layer attachment, warp core being around 2/3 complete, impluse engine installation complete, computer cores half complete, beginning phaser bank installations, initial habitat module installations, and power and consummables conduits installation. If construction time was halved the level would be at contunued frame and hull construction, fuel tanks and pods integration, impule engine test powerups, RCS thruster assembies installation, computer core installation, phaser power flow conduits and regulators installation, and work on main deflector dish. Still would not be adequate for emergency launch even if construction was halted on the saucer in favor of the stardrive. There just wasn't enough warning time to switch over from that to get the stardrive ready.

Assuming, the new replacement used one of the frames from the other six, the framework still had to be re-assembled. And Starfleet was still on a "peaceful" mindset, so they would not be pumping out ships like that had during wartime... they would be constructing ships to completion before launch, not to the point of initial space-worthiness and operational status.
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
I guess that just leaves the question of what practical joker in the ship's Engineering department programmed one of the computer panels to display an old-style alert visual.

---

that visual could still have been in use on 24th century starships too... (especially if it was the battle bridge of an Excelsior-class ship )

i know the script says a Galaxy, it might take us a while to get used to the idea however

this brings a possibility.. perhaps the saucer of Hansen's GCS escaped destruction, and was orphaned? what would Starfleet do with an orphaned Galaxy saucer? it might shave a few years off the construction time of the next GCS (i also must point out that by 2364 when the GCSs were entering full service rotation, Nebulas should have been prevalent too, leading me to believe that starfleet might not have taken as long to build new series, since the made many many more GCS shaped saucers)
 

---

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
 
I'm of the mindset that the bit in TNGTM about the '6 initial ships followed up by 6 more spaceframes' was:
1. Just 'down payment' for the Galaxy Project, Starfleet has thousands of ships, building only 6 operational ships of a single class whose design purpose is intensive use is just silly and pointless
2. A decision that was changed after the TNGTM was printed, and Starfleet neglicated to issue to new version of the TM, instead only updating the electronic version, available in PADD-friendly formate to save paper
3. Part of Starfleet's ongoing disinformation program intended to confuse Threat Forces, "These are not the Galaxies you are looking for"

In all seriousness, I don't think even Starfleet could have pumped out enough Galaxies in the short period before the official start of the Dominion War to form "Galaxy wings", as a part of a conscious force buildup effort. That would require shipyards to focus on producing too many "too many eggs in one basket".

Thus, Galaxies must have been in a steady rate of production for a while before the conflict to explain their numbers during the war. There really is no reason why Starfleet would stop at so few Galaxies, considering the size and resources of the Fleet, not to mention the amount of time invested to design and research the vessel, plus the great need for a new and superior Explorer-type vessel. It was, IMO, purely a bad call on the part of GR, trying to keep the Galaxy rare and special.

I certainly don't believe anything the DS9TM says about the Galaxies.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Ahh, the famed "Galaxy wings" problem. I happened to see "Sacrifice of Angels" a few weeks ago, and I've got a potential explanation (that's probably been offered before):

The Galaxy wings were groups of ships of various classes that were centered around a GCS as the de facto "battleship" of the fleet.

Also, since Sisko's fleet was made of ships from the Second, Fifth, and Ninth Fleets. Therefore, when Sisko called for "Galaxy wings nine-one and nine-three," he's calling for the first and third wings that are based around GCS's that are in the Ninth Fleet. Therefore, there would've also been, for example, Galaxy wings two-one and two-two, and wings five-one and five-three, or whatever.

According to that line of reasoning, all that actually says is that there were at least three GCS's in Sisko's fleet. And we know from screencaps that there were more than that. So that makes sense, IMO.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Yup. I've been saying that since day one.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Hunter (Member # 611) on :
 

quote:

---

Also, since Sisko's fleet was made of ships from the Second, Fifth, and Ninth Fleets. Therefore, when Sisko called for "Galaxy wings nine-one and nine-three," he's calling for the first and third wings that are based around GCS's that are in the Ninth Fleet. Therefore, there would've also been, for example, Galaxy wings two-one and two-two, and wings five-one and five-three, or whatever.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Reverend:

3) Hanson was intended to be aboard a Galaxy-Class ship, the battle bridge set supports this.

---

Not to go back on my earlier assertion that Hanson arrived on the Melbourne and that the Melbourne was the Excelsior destroyed first in "Emmisary", but why couldn't the Nebula Class have the same Battle (or better yet Auxilary) Bridge as the Galaxy Class does? Just because it doesn't seperate doesn't mean that it wouldn't have an auxilary bridge. The TOS Enterprise did.

And the fact that two classes share so many common features would suggest that the same or similiar auxilary bridges would be used as well. It's not as important as the main bridge and as such wouldn't get traded out very often like the main bridge does.

Don't some Nebula's predate the Galaxy's judging by registry numbers (I know that's unreliable at best)? Maybe that explains the older style "Red Alert" graphic? It was just the style in use until the Galaxy came along.
 

---

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
http://lobotomy.pleh.net/~flareupload/uploads/469/BattleBridge3.jpg

Smuggest grin ever.

I think the logic establishing that Hanson was on a GCS is a bit thin, but neither do I believe that he was on the ECS that had half its saucer blown off. A ship takes that level of damage, you have to assume it's not long for this world, er, universe. The priority is going to be getting the flag officer to safety (cf. Admiral Hayes, his ship was destroyed), never mind letting him sit in his auxiliary CC coordinating the battle and chatting with ships nowhere near the battle area.

As with Hayes, again as soon as Hanson's ship was destroyed someone else would have taken over, and the less instruction Hanson tried to give before then the better. Without constant updates his directives would soon be out of date and would just confuse the course of the battle. He might order the Yamaguchi to flank, expecting her to be supported by the Roosevelt but unaware, sitting as he is in an escape pod, that the latter ship is currently being assimilated. Which leaves the Yamagushi out on a limb.
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
It looks like Hanson is in his ready room or in a conference room in that picture. It definitely doesn't look like a bridge. In reality, it's a chair with a table in front of it and piece of wall behind him. This would make sense, as I doubt he would have this kind of conversation on the bridge.

And yah... if someone get get a screen grabby of the bridge set he's on during the battle that would be great.
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
Nine posts before yours. Mark posted some.

I also have no problem with Hanson being on a Galaxy, one of the first six. Even being destroyed, it could quite painlessly be replaced long before the Dominion War episodes of DS9.

--Jonah
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Well the Galaxy would have been readily destroyed with Locuts in charge.

Not too smart on JP's part.

I still cant fathom what the hell an Oberth was doing at that battle...
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
I saw the pics Mark posted. They are of Riker on the Ent. Battle Bridge and Hanson in a room before the battle... I'm talking about pictures of the Ent. viewscreen showing Hanson *during* the battle.

Heh... in Mark's second picture of Hanson... anyone notice that his com badge appears to be falling off his uniform?
 

---

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
 
They had some extra Nameless Ensigns that they couldn't fit onboard the other ships, perhaps?
 

---

Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
 
Don't forget that Hanson's signal being cut off doesn't necessarily mean he was destroyed at that moment. It just means the signal was cut off. This could have been because his ship's transponder was damaged, interference from all those warp cores going boom, or the Borg just deciding to jam everyone because they're sick of all that noise.
 

---

Posted by Phoenix (Member # 966) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
I still cant fathom what the hell an Oberth was doing at that battle...

---

As Starfleet was confident they would defeat the Borg, it could have been there to analyse the remains of the cube after the battle.

Presumably when he realised things were going pear-shaped, Hanson threw everything he had at the cube, including the Oberth.
 

---

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Why, getting blown up, of course.
 

---

Posted by Prowl Alpha (Member # 1139) on :
 
For the Bonestell, I think that the ship was retrieving escape pods and off loading the crew of the Saratoga before the ship got nailed with a blast to the saucer.

I am going for the Trinculo being the seventh frame and was in the yards under construction as a replacement for the Yamato. I see no problem with having Hanson on an unnamed GCS. That ship could probably be a new build just to begin trials or just finishing trials.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
If I were an admiral commanding a fleet that was attacking a nearly-invincible enemy, I sure as hell would not choose a half-finished collection of bolts and girders as my flagship! With thirty-nine others to choose from, I find that extremely unlikely.

I've always liked the idea of the mostly-empty GCS's serving in the Dominion War, myself. But rushing construction of the ships in time to join a two-year-long war is a hell of a far cry from launching a half-finished hull out of the docks on one day's notice. Consider the problems that Picard had in "Redemption, Part II" -- and that was when he had enough time to plan a little bit ahead. As far as was indicated, all of those ships were fully completed -- the closest there was to an unprepared ship was the Sutherland, which had just been commissioned a few weeks previously, according to the dedication plaque. But that was still a finished ship, not a half-finished spaceframe!

I decided to take a really close look at the TNG:TM construction timeline. It seems to me that a very large part of the long assembly time was because of glitches that cropped up during the construction process, especially with the warp engines and nacelles. According to the timeline, more than half of the Enterprise's habitable modules were already installed by 2352, only two years after the start of construction. And the long period from 2360 to 2363 was all shakedown and testing duties -- something that would not be quite as necessary for later ships, once all the kinks had been worked out with the first few ships. I see no reason why the later ships couldn't be constructed in four or five years, maybe six on the outside. (And that's for the fully-assembled ships, not those DS9:TM rush jobs.)

I gotta disagree with that idea of the Bonestell retrieving escape pods, though. The Borg have very clearly never shown any interest in following "rules of war" or anything like that, and indeed announced their intention to assimilate the entire fleet. With the other ships being diced up so easily, sending in the Bonestell as a rescue ship would be nothing short of suicide. Personally, I figure that it was running as an ECM picket or something like that. Obviously, it wasn't very effective, regardless.
 

---

Posted by Prowl Alpha (Member # 1139) on :
 
The Bonestell was fairly close to the Saratoga when it was hit, it supposedly could have provide covering fire for the Saratoga. The ship could have been an active participant in the battle, itself. We have really do not have all the info on the defensive capablities of an TNG era Oberth type vessel. I am not implying that it was bursting with firepower, but that it did serve a better purpose than just being there or a futuristic radar picket duty.

Even if the GCS was a fresh new build, comparatively to the other ships (except the Bellerophon) It was probably the most powerful Starfleet vessel thrown into the fight. Historically, Fleet COs took the most powerful vessel as the flagship because it was the safest and best imposing image to the enemies.
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Actually a fleet CO would need the ship with the best communications package.
The Bellerophon was more like a lead battleship in that instance (assuming there were not several more Nebula class starships in that fleet).

There were 40 starships at W359 and we've only identified wht? 12?

A GCS certainly coud have been in a second or third wave attacking the Cube.
 

---

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Indeed. Also it wouldn't be very wise for an Admiral to go in with the first wave.
It's more likely that he hung back with the bulk of the fleet in his GCS and didn't engage the Borg until the Cube had already wiped out the first few waves. Hence "The fight dose not go well.." however the order to retreat and regroup indicates that a good number of ships were left at the time of the transmission.
I envisage a scenario where, in the wake of Hanson's flagship being destroyed, the last remaining ships provide covering fire for the Endeavour -- which has spent most of the battle dodging tractor beams and Borg torpedoes, scooping up as many escape pods and survivors as possible (including the Siskos) -- to escape.

As for the Bonestell, I counted at least two Oberths present in the Battle of Typhon/Sol, one of which was firing on the cube so the must have SOME tactical value.
Perhaps the extensive scientific equipment carried aboard allows them to run interference by disrupting tractor locks and running probing scans on the Borg shields, trying to find a weak spot.
 

---

Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
 
As to the Oberths; all this assumes the ones we saw were just like the others we saw...science vessels. Those puppies might've been testbeds for anti-Borg defenses. That big lower pod could've been outfitted with some huge reactor designed to put up a deflector shield like none you ever saw, or the biggest phototorp launchers ever seen. Hell it might've been equipped as a testbed for quantum torpedo launchers and pressed into action when the Borg showed up early. Or even equipped with some really complicated ECM systems as suggested elsewhere. For all we know that ship was way out on the edge of the battlefield trying to fuck with the Borg's sensors, and the Cube just went after it faster than it could get away. Locutus: "That ship is interfering with my 'resistance is futile' public service announcements. Nail its bum to the nearest quasar."
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Well the Obert's survivability in battle is certainly......nothing!
We've only seen an Oberth survive an apearance on one or two occasions.

On the other hand, the Typhon fleet must have gotten the Borg subspace field somehow or else they would have done zero damage before the Enterprise E arrives.


Not that crappy Voyager ever mentioned the field at all anyway.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 

quote:

---

Not that crappy Voyager ever mentioned the field at all anyway.

---

Doesn't it seem reasonable that Starfleet also managed to adapt? By analyzing the sensor logs from the Enterprise, they could've found a way to neutralize/bypass/destroy the subspace field.

And regarding the Oberths... dang, I wish I'd thought of that! Jason's right, the only two Oberths we've seen survive were the ones that were assigned to simple, boring courier/supply/transport duty -- the Cochrane, which took Bashir and Dax to DS9, and the Biko, which took supplies to the Enterprise-D. Every single other ship was destroyed on screen! No wonder the Oberths have a lousy reputation!
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
To recap, so we don't have to scramble for our personal lists...

Confirmed:
Ahwahnee (NCC-7[1/3]620, Cheyenne-class)
Beller[e/o]phon (NCC-62048, Nebula-class)
Bonestell (NCC-31600, Oberth-class)
Buran (NCC-57580, Challenger-class)
Chekov (NCC-57302, Springfield-class)
Firebrand (NCC-68723, Freedom-class)
Kyushu (NCC-65491, New Orleans-class)
Melbourne (NCC-62043, Nebula-class*)
Melbourne (NCC-62043, Excelsior-class*)
Princeton (NCC-59804, Niagara-class)
Saratoga (NCC-31911, Miranda-class)
Yamaguchi (NCC-26510, Ambassador-class)
Liberator (NCC-67016, class unknown**)
[unnamed] (no registry visible, Enterprise-class***)
[unnamed] (Star Trek: Phase II Enterprise study model)
[unnamed] (Star Trek: Phase II Enterprise study model)
[unnamed] (Star Trek III Excelsior study model)
[unnamed] (Star Trek III Excelsior study model)

Present in dialogue or drafts, but no model:
Gage (NCC-11672, Apollo-class�)
Roosevelt (NCC-2573, Excelsior-class�)
Tolstoy (NCC-62095, Rigel-class�)
[unnamed] (no registry, Galaxy-class)

* The Melbourne mess is legendary -- I don't think I need to elaborate here...
** In case it's been forgotten, a shuttle with this name and registry was present in the flotsam...
*** To aid newcomers, I don't subscribe to Okudaic revisionism for the class of the movie Enterprise...
� As no models exist (so far as I know) for these classes, they may be one of the background study models referenced in the 'Confirmed' list...
� To presumably represent this ship in the Voyager episode "Unity", they reused footage of the Excelsior-Melbourne getting hit...

So, between 19 and 21 known ships. We're about halfway there. That about sum it up?

--Jonah
 

---

Posted by Prowl Alpha (Member # 1139) on :
 
Well what happened to the Pegasus could have happened to the Enterprise-D or any other vessel, except for Voyager because the reset button would have kicked in.
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:

quote:

---

Not that crappy Voyager ever mentioned the field at all anyway.

---

Doesn't it seem reasonable that Starfleet also managed to adapt? By analyzing the sensor logs from the Enterprise, they could've found a way to neutralize/bypass/destroy the subspace field.

---

quote:

---

And regarding the Oberths... dang, I wish I'd thought of that! Jason's right, the only two Oberths we've seen survive were the ones that were assigned to simple, boring courier/supply/transport duty -- the Cochrane, which took Bashir and Dax to DS9, and the Biko, which took supplies to the Enterprise-D. Every single other ship was destroyed on screen! No wonder the Oberths have a lousy reputation!

---

Plus the shp from the last 30 seconds of Generations....although that might have had a warp core breech shortly after.
 

---

Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Peregrinus:
*** To aid newcomers, I don't subscribe to Okudaic revisionism for the class of the movie Enterprise...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by kmart:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Peregrinus:
*** To aid newcomers, I don't subscribe to Okudaic revisionism for the class of the movie Enterprise...

---

I say AMEN to that, brother! I'm with you.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:

quote:

---

Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:

quote:

---

Not that crappy Voyager ever mentioned the field at all anyway.

---

Doesn't it seem reasonable that Starfleet also managed to adapt? By analyzing the sensor logs from the Enterprise, they could've found a way to neutralize/bypass/destroy the subspace field.

---

Except that Voyager was lost prior to First Contact, so they should have had no way of either knowing the trick around the Subspace Field or no way of knowing if the technique worked .

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
The Nebula testbed is the USS John Melbourne. Named for the first president of Unified Mars.
The Excelsior class USS Melbourne is named for the city.
The End.

---

Personally I like to think of the proto-Neb as the U.S.S. Liberator, but that's just me.
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
thats an ok theory but the registries still suck
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
btw, hasty screengrabs ive been putting off for days cuz of other fucking things


notice they used one of their video monitors to add the distortion.. the timestamp is visible in several frames but not to the naked eye.. looks like the battle bridge, except with an extra panel/greebly looking thing behind JP
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Re-posting the relevant pic of the E-D BB for better comparison...



It's certainly the same set - something we'd not considered before. The "red alert" graphic was simply displayed on the TV monitor in the upper left from where Riker is, and the lower one was off. The "greeblie" you're talking about is probably just one of the consoles flanking the CO chair, which we've seen. Does anyone have a wider shot of the BB?

Okay, so one more point towards Hanson being on a GCS battle bridge - plus it makes sense to direct the battle from there as the ship's CO was upstairs. Add the intention of the script, and circumstantially speaking it's fair to conclude that there PROBABLY WAS a GCS at Wolf 359. Well done! Granted, given the modularity of bridge designs we've mostly come to accept in Trek, it could REALLY be just about any ship anyway...

BTW, it seems that to create the shot all they did was project the Hanson footage onto a regular screen and reshoot THAT while they were playing with the tracking or h. hold, and then using THAT footage as the transmission.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
my mistake.. the panels i called greebly are actually behind riker too.. i just hadnt remembered the texturing of them from the other cap.

i remember noticing in BOBW it was one of the first uses of the monitors that could be filmed.. prior TNG seasons relied heavily on graphics that were matted in because there were no playback monitors without scanlines a camera would percieve, but the new ones could display computer animation in realtime.. theyd see heavy use in the runabout and DS9 ops sets but BOBW seems one of the earliest uses
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
Well... I'm officially in the "Hanson was on a GCS" camp now.

One question: Is the Ent Battle Bridge set that we see Riker on the same BB set they had in previous uses? It doesn't seem to be. The aft part of the set seems different from the way it was in EaFP
 

---

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
Well, it'd been about the first time they'd used it in two years, they probably put it back together differently.

So, after all the times the whole intercheangeable-bridge-module thing has been trotted out, now everyone is just going to ignore that and say this style of bridge could only ever appear on a GCS? Nope, I don't buy it.
 

---

Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
 
Me neither. There's another possibility. The Battle Bridge was a modified remake of the Star Trek IV Enterprise bridge, and modified yet again for BoBW. So many other class starship bridges have been made out of pieces of that set, instead of it representing another Battle Bridge of a Galaxy Class, it could just as easily be a Main Bridge of any number of other Starfleet ship classes.
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
^^^
this is EXTREMELY true, although the script's GCS supposition does carry some weight with me
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
And plenty with me. Again, it's all circumstantial, but combining the same bridge set with the intent of the script sells it for me. Working against it is the set Hanson was on when talking to the Enterprise crew on the monitor, which was a generic grey background used before for Federation comms. It could be any starship (including a GCS) or starbase as an office, ready room, or anything like that.

The BoBW BB set is COMPLETELY different from the one used in EaF and AoF. The first incaranation was either a partial rebuild of the original TOS movie bridge, or something cobbled together from spare parts that were made for it (something discussed earlier in this thread). The second BB set was new, and had been seen previously as the bridges of the Hathaway and Enterprise-C, and would be again for the Bozeman, Pasteur, the Pirate ship in "Gambit", Data's lab, and a variety of other sets.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
For me it's a case of mutually contradictory hypotheses: the 12 GCS theory does not allow Hanson's ship to be one. I'm not wedded to the 12 GCS theory, based as it is on a throwaway line of GR's, but there's never really been anything solid to dispel it apart from its slight unlikeliness. But the evidence for Hanson's GCS still isn't enough to outweigh it in my opinion.

Now, I know you all want to confirm a previously-unknown GCS. It'd be very exciting if you did - I was, after all, the first person here to look closely at the GCS in the "Tears of the Prophets" preview and identify it as the Galaxy herself - but what could it be? The Trinculo is the only likely candidate.
 

---

Posted by kmart (Member # 1092) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MrNeutron:
Regarding the "skins" of the Phase 2 bridge, I'll try to remember to ask Andy Probert about that. Since he did a lot of conceptual drawings of the battle bridge for "Encounter at Farpoint", I suspect he'll know what elements were actually used and/or were available.

It should be posible to tell if at least some wall segments were TMP bridge or extra Phase II skins, because the walls of the full set were modified a lot for TMP (extra holes cut in for screens, trim added, etc.). Also, extra skins would have to be wired and rigged with with lights and screens, and any budget conscious producer's gonna go with the already rigged stuff if at all possible.

---

UPDATE on the fate of the TOS movie bridge! Went throught the audio and text commentary for TREK V last night and about halfway through, Okuda mentions that at some point after TREK IV wrapped and before TREK V started, the TOS movie bridge (apparently still largely intact)was stored OUTSIDE and the tarp blew off, exposing it to the elements and ruining it completely, necessitating the build-a-new-bridge approach for TREK V. He sez that they saved the entryways from the lifts and some of the structural elements on the upper level as well as the helm/nav console, but that was about all that survived.

So now the question is: (and maybe somebody who has all the TNG box sets w/ their extras has this answer)

At what point did the TOS movie bridge buy it? Was it before TNG geared up, or was it after EAF or TNG's first season wrapped? Maybe then we can figure out if the battle bridge WAS the TOS movie bridge, or based on the extra skins created for and left over from phase II, or, as per Zimmerman's odd claim, a whole new set.
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
One possibility I don't think weve touched on is that Hanson was hopping around alot. I think he arrived on the Excelsior Class Melbourne and left on it. He joined the fleet at Wolf 359 and was probably moving around alot getting things set up eventually ending up on the ship he was on during the battle. So the "ready room" set could be on a different ship than the Battle Bridge set.

He was probably just on the Excelsior that met the Enterprise because the ship happened to be in the area. It needn't have been his flagship or anything. Delivering her to Riker would be another reason if that ship is in fact the Melbourne.
 

---

Posted by Prowl Alpha (Member # 1139) on :
 
I am leaning towards the Hanson on GCS movement as well. Unless there substantial evidence that would say other wise. I keep on the track that the Trinculo was the seventh frame.
 

---

Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 
I don't really buy the Hanson on a GCS theory for most of the reasons outlined above and despite the script. Also, we know that there was at least one Nebula there, and bearing in mind the similarity in external design features it's at least possible some of the internal design features are also replicated.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Responding to kmart:

The first BB set was seen as this set, the bridge of the Stargazer, and thinly disguised as a JAG courtroom in "Measure of a man". In this latter appearance, it was in the second season, which is when ST5 was being filmed. In light of this new evidence, this seems to indicate to me that the set was NOT the original TOS movie set - they would have discovered it in peices by then and decided to construct the new one.

OTOH, "upper level structural elements" may simply BE the aft third of the set that is used in the BB and other incarnations. Tough to say, really.

Back to the original debate:

I'm of the opinion that the Trinculo is as circumstantial as the rest of 'em... As far as we know, the ship is ONLY limited to a re-labeling of the 4' model for exhibition purposes, right? By that right, there ought to be a USS Ronald D. Moore because of that DS9 calendar... Sure, the Trinculo's numbers match as one of the original batch, but only if you disregard the Challenger.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Hanson was on the bridge of the Yamato.
Fucking Captain Varley was just trying to start a war with the borg and...
 

---

Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
 
A GCS's battle bridge is pretty damn bare minimal. A Miranda or even a Nova has a bigger, roomier bridge with more seated consoles. Thus, I really don't see why any ship class that only has a single bridge would choose to have something as crude as a GCS's battle bridge as their single command center.
 

---

Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
 
Can we see any evidence at all of a Galaxy Class ship or even Galaxy Class destroyed components in the garveyard scenes of either BoBW or Emmissary?
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
No, but that means nothing. There are certainly ships that had been COMPELTELY destroyed, damaged beyond beyond recognition, or simply out of the camera shot.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
i wonder what it was named?
 

---

Posted by Akira (Member # 850) on :
 
Well still it could be a Nebula Class battle bridge


Hey what do you know im back
 

---

Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
 
Well sure it *could* be anything, but I thought the point was that the script says he was on a Galaxy, and the episode backs this as much as anything...
 

---

Posted by Akira (Member # 850) on :
 
There are no Oberth silhouettes on the Operation Retrieve chart.

I would just like to agree on this!!!!

btw whats your site again?
 

---

Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
 
http://cdeath.zoomph.net/monkeyofmim/Shiplist/Introduction.htm

Regretfully, I haven't yet gotten around to updating beyond the "A" page since the last server change, so all the link URLs are faulty on the other pages. However, simply replacing "www.cdeath.net" with "cdeath.zoomph.net" will rectify this. The Condensed list is fully updated including the most recent ENT episodes, though.

I hope to work on this very soon. I will also be refining the format somewhat in the (again, hopefully) near future.

-MMoM
 

---

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
I've made a short summary while rewatching all three relevant episodes ('-' is BoBW info, '+' is from "Emissary")
http://fleetyard.host.sk/temp/wolf359.txt

A few things I noticed:

- Hanson returns to Starbase 324 after Jouret IV. There is no evidence that he was aboard any ship at all until he suddenly appears on a GCS battle bridge. When he appeared before the 'standard Federation background' he was most likely still on SB 324.
That would also fit better with him saying "the fleet have mobilised at Wolf 359", instead of something like "we have mobilised".
He probably transferred to a ship after this conversation.

- Emissary most definitely starts right as fleet engages the Borg. The Cube does NOT in fact start with their usual line, but actually command the fleet to escort them to Earth, or be destroyed. That's not something you say halway through as an afterthought. And indeed, the Vulcan captain gives all the standard beginning-of-battle orders. Although, of course, there could have been several seperate groups of ships destroyed before and after the Saratoga group engaged.

- Seemingly only minutes after contacting Enterprise, Hanson says the fight is not going well. Possibly this communication was only made after an initial strike, since there wouldn't be much time to chat during actual fighting.

- He starts ordering a regrouping right before communications black out. This NOT because his ship was destroyed, but 'probably due to Borg interference', as Riker puts it.
This would also explain why we see NONE of the regrouping Hanson ordered was seen in "Emissary": all communications were jammed.

- Hanson was most likely not on an Excelsior class, and most certainly not on the Melbourne. The Melbourne actually engaged the Cube before the Saratoga did. What kind of admiral fights in the front-line!?

- On what ship was Hanson? It couldn't have been the Excelsi-bourne. That ship got destroyed right away, and there would've been no time to make the call to Enterprise. Yet, it must have been one of the early engaged ships, since his ship was hit once during his short talk with Riker.
Possible options:
- He was on the Bellerophon. That would explain the use of the Enterprise battle bridge.
- He was on the Yamaguchi. That would explain the oldfashioned Alert display.
- He was on another ship that attacked shortly after Yamaguchi and Bellerophon. Possibly a Galaxy class.

[ October 17, 2003, 05:35 AM: Message edited by: Harry ]
 

---

Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 

quote:

---

He was on the Yamaguchi. That would explain the oldfashioned Alert display.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Harry:
What kind of admiral fights in the front-line!?

---

The "Viscount Nelson" kind.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Sisko wasn't an admiral, but he commanded his ships from the front. Admiral Ross's ship could likewise be seen sparking and bouncing around from the comm visuals.

Plus, these latest suppositions are assuming that the Saratoga-Melbourne-Yamaguchi-Bellerophon engagement was at the BEGINNING of the fight. Which, as we've established previously, is not necessarily the case.

Mark
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wraith:
Although if a Galaxy was destroyed at Wolf 359 you might expect it to be mentioned at some point.

---

What makes you say that? I somehow doubt that someone on DS9 would just happen to say, "Oh, by the way, since we lost the Galaxy-class USS Continuity NCC-71941 at Wolf 359 exactly five years and fifteen days ago, we're stuck with the lousy Excelsior-class USS Obsolete NCC-42666 for reinforcements instead."

They just don't mention that kind of stuff in most circumstances!
 

---

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
Yes, it would be irresponsible to do so. All those Trekkies having spontaneous orgasms. . .

However, I agree with Harry's analysis - from the Saratoga's POV, it looked like the battle was just starting. . . Unless they arrived late, which would explain the rushed atmosphere on the bridge, their lack of coordination with any other fleet elements, and their total lack of any plans to look after the families on board.
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
Well, the fact that they still had families on board at all shows the rushed nature of the fleet assembly. We saw the Odyssey offload civvies before engaging. Most likely the orders were, "All ships redevous at Wolf 359, NOW! All other missions aborted. Do not pass Starbase, do not offload civilians."

It's not unreasonable to assume that the Saratoga was racing towards the system right up until the battle started.

*must rewatch BoBW and Emmisary tonight*

Actually... I cut the Emissary footage into BoBW right after the break for the commercial... it's kind of cool to watch it that way.
 

---

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
They did not arrive late. In fact, it was not until the Melbourne and Saratoga engaged the Cube, that it started cutting into ships. If it was up to the Borg, the fleet would've just stood down and actually escort it to the Sol Sector.
 

---

Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wraith:
Although if a Galaxy was destroyed at Wolf 359 you might expect it to be mentioned at some point.

---

What makes you say that? I somehow doubt that someone on DS9 would just happen to say, "Oh, by the way, since we lost the Galaxy-class USS Continuity NCC-71941 at Wolf 359 exactly five years and fifteen days ago, we're stuck with the lousy Excelsior-class USS Obsolete NCC-42666 for reinforcements instead."

They just don't mention that kind of stuff in most circumstances!

---

I was thinking along the lines of the big fuss that's been made out of the destruction of the Odyssey (mainly in fandom, admittedly) that the loss of a GCS might have been dropped in somewhere. They seem to've mentioned just about every other ship that's had an encounter with the Borg...

As regards the picking up of the escape pods; is it not possible that either an auxilery ship, outside the range of the Borg, was hanging around ready to help after the battle (like an Olympic/Hope) or that some vessels got there just too late and picked up survivors and took them to the nearest Starbase? I doubt that the Captain of a Miranda or any other starship would want to engage an enemy that's just destroyed 39 ships! Although they may've tried, I suppose, if earth was at risk.
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Trek rarely mentions ships destroyed after the fact. Yamato and Odyssey weren't mentioned by name after their respective episodes...

Mark
 

---

Posted by Phoenix (Member # 966) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Wraith:
I doubt that the Captain of a Miranda or any other starship would want to engage an enemy that's just destroyed 39 ships! Although they may've tried, I suppose, if earth was at risk.

---

It was their duty to attack it. It must have been obvious to everyone from the very first shots that they were all going to die, and yet all 40 ships continued to attack (presumably the Endeavour lost weapons and engines and couldn't do anything, even ram the cube).
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
Need to add the caveat "presuming the Endeavour was there", just to make sure we all know you understand there's no evidence supporting that position.

--Jonah
 

---

Posted by Phoenix (Member # 966) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Peregrinus:
Need to add the caveat "presuming the Endeavour was there", just to make sure we all know you understand there's no evidence supporting that position.

--Jonah

---

Oh, sorry.

For "the Endeavour", read "whichever ship survived and collected the escape pods".
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Yup. All that was even mentioned was that Captai Amisov SAID that the Borg were really not nice. I don't think they even mentioned that the Endeavor ever encountered them, no? For all we know, the Endeavor was looing over the remains of a Borg encounter, or just barely managed to escape one themselves, or Amisov had just finished watching "Kill Borg Vol. 1" on the holodeck.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Phoenix (Member # 966) on :
 
I think that the fact Janeway doesn't mention how the Endeavour encountered the Borg is an important factor here.

If it was the sole surviving ship of Wolf 359, presumably it would be famous, and could just be mentioned without qualification.

However, if it just fought the Borg in some random battle, she would probably have said "the Endeavour, which encountered the Borg 3 years ago" or something.

What were her exact words in that scene?
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
I know Janeway said she'd been going over actual encounters with the Borg looking for insight. Amisov was one of the captains she quoted. It stands to reason that he actually encountered them.

Think too of how the captain of the only ship to survive that battle... most likely barely survived... would feel about the Borg after having watched them slaughter the crews of 39 other ships. I think it would jive pretty well with what his log entry said.
 

---

Posted by Capped in Mic (Member # 709) on :
 
its possible he was the xo of a destroyed ship at wolf 359 who escaped in an escape pod, and then became captain of another ship.. i mean, that's sisko's story

saying 'Captain Sisko of the Defiant says the Borg are, like, totally the worst enemy ever' doesnt necessarily follow that the Defiant was the only ship that escaped 359..

logic, kids
 

---

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
That would be Captain Sisko of that rusty ex-Cardassian starbase that somehow was worth keeping.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Phoenix:
I think that the fact Janeway doesn't mention how the Endeavour encountered the Borg is an important factor here.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Peregrinus:
I can't remember -- has anyone suggested Amasov wasn't the captain of the Endeavour yet at the time of Wolf 359?

--Jonah

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Capped in Mic:
its possible he was the xo of a destroyed ship at wolf 359 who escaped in an escape pod, and then became captain of another ship.. i mean, that's sisko's story

saying 'Captain Sisko of the Defiant says the Borg are, like, totally the worst enemy ever' doesnt necessarily follow that the Defiant was the only ship that escaped 359..

logic, kids

---

 

---

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
Although both threads started out different, they seem to have converged. . . I still say, it's daft to assume the mianstream Federation's only contact with the Borg - in whgich the Starfleet ships weren't totally destroyed - were the Enterprises', and Wolf 359, and Typhon/Sector 001.
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
Whoops. Wrong thread...
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Amen, Lee. As Sternbach himself said, it's a big galaxy - big enough for the adventures of many, many starships.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
*cough*Raven*cough*
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
Eh?
 

---

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
As far as Amisov's expertise on the Borg goes, I'd like to credit him with more than just "I survived Wolf 359". Picard several times was in a position to *study* the Borg, to dictate the terms of their encounter. To rank up with him, Amisov should have been in at least remotely comparable position.

And as said before, Picard in "FC" speaks of the Borg moving forward and the Federation falling back. *We* saw none of this happen in TNG. It would only be natural to assume that somebody like Amisov saw.

Timo Saloniemi
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
It would indeed...

--Jonah
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Ooh - hardly canon, but apparently one of the short stories in the "New Frontier" anthology is about the Amby-class USS Excalibur that details some of the battle at the beginning of "First Contact". Anyone read it?

Mark
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Timo:
As far as Amisov's expertise on the Borg goes, I'd like to credit him with more than just "I survived Wolf 359".

---

Simple -- Asimov not only SURVIVED, but he also commanded the one ship that fought and scratched and clawed away from the battle and got out in one piece, and managed to rescue several hundred survivors in the process.

I'd call that pretty heroic, myself!
 

---

Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
Timo postulates but nicely in saying there's a lot of falling back and assimilation that we simply haven't seen - like i said, it's a big Galaxy. After all, the very reason we're INTO Trek tech is to fill in a universe which is very hero-centric.

It's sorta like the Bothans in the Star Wars novel universe: never seen, nevertheless a bunch of them died to give the rebels information on the second Death Star. And in EVERY SINGLE FRICKING NOVEL I've read, they go on about how important they were for doing THAT, and ONLY that.

Big galaxy.

Mark
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mark Nguyen:
Ooh - hardly canon, but apparently one of the short stories in the "New Frontier" anthology is about the Amby-class USS Excalibur that details some of the battle at the beginning of "First Contact". Anyone read it?

Mark

---

Is it really worth reading or will motherfuckin' Santa Claus save the day?
 

---

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
Well, if you start from the premise of a typical TOS episode, it's almost inevitable that Santa or the Mad Hatter or Jack the Ripper or Sherlock Holmes gets mentioned... That's not PAD's fault!

But not all the NF books are sillinessfests. Plenty of them concentrate on blood and guts and genocide and the evil triumphing over the good. It's the bland middle ground that PAD has definite trouble with.

So far, NF has not dealt with the Borg, except as a recurring nightmare for Shelby. AFAWK, the heroes were conveniently elsewhere during the known Borg incidents. The anthology will apparently reveal a different truth.

Timo Saloniemi
 

---

Posted by Bond, James Bond (Member # 1127) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mark Nguyen:
Timo postulates but nicely in saying there's a lot of falling back and assimilation that we simply haven't seen - like i said, it's a big Galaxy.

---

quote:

---

We only see and hear of the aftermath, we don't know how things went down at the time. I'm sure there are a lot of Humans that were assimilated before Wolf 359.

---

Oh, of course there were! Aside from the Raven itself *sigh* ...ahem... there's also the probability that other Starfleet ships ran into the Borg by random chance, and were promptly assimilated. I believe that Voyager once showed an assimilated individual (or was it a personality, in "Infinite Regress"?) from the USS Tombaugh, that was apparently assimilated back in 2362.

I have no problem with a few random starships getting swallowed up by the Borg because of bad luck. However, I really dislike the idea of any sort of consistent activity over the long run. After all, in his opening Captain's Log for "First Contact," Picard said that the Borg had RETURNED. They can't return if they never left in the first place, which is exactly the scenario that some people here are proposing.

Besides, Picard was clearly overstating his case for Lily, because she couldn't contradict him if he exaggerated. And since both Jouret IV and Ivor Prime were assimilated, that most definitely falls under the category of "worlds," the plural form of "world." Combine that with the statement that Starfleet was originally intercepting the FC cube way out in the Typhon Sector and ended up barely stopping the ship in Earth orbit, I'd call that "falling back." So I don't see any problem with Picard's statements.
 

---

Posted by Bond, James Bond (Member # 1127) on :
 
I wasn't excluding the Raven, just putting forth the New Providence, Lalo, and Romulan Border Outposts is all. Jeez.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Sorry, I wasn't rolling my eyes at you, Bond -- I was thinking of how the Borg were supposed to be completely new in "I, Borg."
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
"Q Who?", MM. And everything since was contrary to their stated m.o. in said episode.

--Jonah
 

---

Posted by Bond, James Bond (Member # 1127) on :
 
Do you mean like the fact that Q said they were relentless and would keep coming no matter what?

Maybe one Cube every few years is relentless to the Borg. They don't nescessarily have to subscribe to our timetable for an invasion.

I think they're just fattening us up for the slaughter.

Send one ship, let the Humans think they won a victory, and give them a few years to further advance their technology.

Send a second ship to assess technological improvement in the intervening time period, if improvement is significant enough to warrant further developement, let that ship be destroyed as well. Send a Sphere back in time to stimulate further tech developement.

Now, you can either launch a full scale assimilation attack (like the one that happened to the aliens from "Dark Frontier") or come up with some kind of nano-weapon like the one from the same episode. Either way the results are the same. Or you can continue on with the status quo, sending one Cube at a time if that is the most efficient way to increase tech developement to the point you want it to be at. If a species hasn't shown great strides in tech developement then just assimilate them right then and there.

I think the Borg are just biding their time, toying with us until they think we have developed to our fullest capabilities. Then they attack in force.
 

---

Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
 
But going back in time to assimilate us before we'd have a chance to develop any of this technology hardly fits in with that plan. . .
 

---

Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
 
No, I mean:

"They're not interested in you, only your ship - its technology. They've identified it as something they can consume."

"When they come, they'll come in force. They don't do anything piecemeal."

Plus, the Borg were one race of (naturally bald?) humanoids who were born biologically, and began receiving implants at birth. The whole notion of "assimilating" other species popped up out of nowhere in "Best of Both Worlds", along with all the other continuity violations.

*sigh*

And with the exception of "I, Borg", every appearance after the first took away from them rather than adding. They went from relentless to brainless and slimy.

--Jonah
 

---

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
 
And even then, they only wanted Picard in BoBW, didn't they? It could have later still that the actually wanted to assimilate everything in their path.
 

---

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
 
Well, the child that Riker saw in the maturation chamber could have been a child from a recently assimilated ship. Perhaps they were studying it or had only semi assimilated it because of its young age. Riker's speculation that it was born as a Borg an then put on implants was just that... speculation. I don't see it as contradictory to what we find out about them later.

Q's statement that they aren't interested in people and that they aren't male or female does get contradicted later, though.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Peregrinus:
No, I mean:

"They're not interested in you, only your ship - its technology. They've identified it as something they can consume."

---

quote:

---

"When they come, they'll come in force. They don't do anything piecemeal."

---

quote:

---

The whole notion of "assimilating" other species popped up out of nowhere in "Best of Both Worlds", along with all the other continuity violations.

---

quote:

---

They went from relentless to brainless and slimy.

---

Oh, agreed. But IMO that was Voyager (and "First Contact" to a lesser extent) that made that change, not TNG. Remember that in TNG, "I, Borg" showed just a SINGLE drone, separated from the Collective. That has absolutely nothing to do with how the Borg operate as a whole. And then "Descent" shows what happens to GROUPS of drones when their collective mind is eliminated.

Neither of these two episodes have anything to do with the Collective itself. It's only when we start having the Queen and Seven of Nine that they start looking a lot more incompetent.
 

---

Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
 
Not just incompetent: organic.
After First Contact, the Borg armor became much more organic looking and their appendages and appearance is not clean and sterile like BOBW.
They fucked up a good thing.

It can, however be fixed.
A simple re-apperance of the Borg with NO QUEEN and the explanation that the queen(s) were a result of assimilating a matriacharical race (like eating bad mexican food).

Or that there are multiple collectives to prevent the kind of system-wide failure/infection that we saw in Endgame.
 

---

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
Or maybe even that the Borg ended up ADAPTING and managed to get rid of the Queen entirely?

I've actually considered these kinds of things long and hard -- because the possibility of bringing back the Borg has been brought up many times in our discussions for "Renaissance." But ultimately, I think that we'd best just leave a dead adversary well enough alone and assume that they've been put out of our misery.
 

---

Posted by Bond, James Bond (Member # 1127) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
Or that there are multiple collectives to prevent the kind of system-wide failure/infection that we saw in Endgame.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lee:
But going back in time to assimilate us before we'd have a chance to develop any of this technology hardly fits in with that plan. . .

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bond, James Bond:
Maybe the tech improvements they made influenced later developement and caused us to develope tech that is better then we would have had if Cochrane had done it all on his own.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jason Abbadon:
Not just incompetent: organic.
After First Contact, the Borg armor became much more organic looking and their appendages and appearance is not clean and sterile like BOBW.
They fucked up a good thing.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Phoenix:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bond, James Bond:
Maybe the tech improvements they made influenced later developement and caused us to develope tech that is better then we would have had if Cochrane had done it all on his own.

---

*cough* Enterprise alternate timeline *cough*

---

Don't lead me down that road now.
 

---