Perhaps the Borg in "Scorpion" were studying the design simply because it was one of the rare glimpses to unconventional thinking that the Collective had ever enjoyed, and unconventional thinking was necessary for saving them from the 8472.There's the plain old Cube, the Descent Borg vessel, the "probe", a new Tactical cube, and at least two sizes of spheres, one small (like the renegade Klingon drone's) and one very big (w/ a crew of 11,000 drones, if i heard the queen correctly), are there any i'm missing?
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"Life sucks, then you die"
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If anyone has a Star wars action fleet E-wing starfighter or Tie defender toy they want to sell, please E-mail me at [email protected]
[This message has been edited by MIB (edited October 07, 2000).]
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Cluck cluck jibber jibber, my old man's a mushroom etc.
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Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. *And*, if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out!
- Commander Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5
But as for Cube sizes, do they vary? Take "Scorpion" for example in the scene where a bunch of Cubes fly past Voyager. They rather small. In TNG a Cube made the Enterprise look tiny, so naturally Voyager should look even smaller.
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Calvin: "Nothing spoils fun like finding out it builds character."
This post sponsered in part by the Federation Starship Datalink
And where did I read that Ricardo Delgado or whoever wanted to make the tactical cube a pyramid to unconsciously echo the UPN logo? I would've liked seeing a pyramidal shape...
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"Deviance is not tailored suits or computer geeks/Pierced tongues or sex freaks/love for hire under dirty sheets/I have lived and breathed you...." --Vanessa Daou, "Deviate"
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Calvin: "Nothing spoils fun like finding out it builds character."
This post sponsered in part by the Federation Starship Datalink
There are, as far as I know, 7 types of Borg vessels, not accounting for size differences between them, or the difference between TNG and First Contact cubes.
The basic cube.
The sphere.
The cubelike scout ship.
The truncated Twinkie scout. (From Dark Frontier.)
The queen's funky diamond.
The new tactical cube.
The renegade Borg vessel. (From Descent, and seen catagorized as a blankity blank mine in Scorpion.)
As far as sizes go, it might be better to ask if any of them are the same size. We know that the cube from Q Who and The Best of Both Worlds was identical in terms of size, but all the others have varied in stated crew compliments and onscreen size. (Admittedly a dicey prospect for accurate sizing.)
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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
--
E. E. Cummings
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.
"Sir! A ship is coming out of transwarp! It's a pyramid!"
"Oh, no! The Borg!"
"Er... No, sir. I think it's the Go'a'uld, actually..."
Ooh, that reminds me... I should change my sig...
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"If the rope is a quarter of a Zeuslength in size, then the Defiant shalt most naturally be seven times the thirty-second part of a Zeuslength?"
-Boris Skrbic, 27-Sep-2000
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Teal'c: "I am a traitor to no-one."
Jaffa woman: "Except your god!"
Teal'c: "False god! Dead false god..."
-Stargate: SG-1, "Into the Fire"
The Cube in "Q Who?" was identical to that of "BoBW" because the same model was used - but perhaps it was the very same Cube? The one used in "Emissary" was of course the same as the one in "BoBW". The one in "First Contact" was a distinct design, and so was the Sphere there.
But which Voyager ships are reuses of these original models? And which are all-new CGI creations? There have been several Spheres in Voyager, and several "regular" Cubes, but have these been reuses or distinct designs? Were the multiple Cubes in "Scorpion" identical or not?
In other words, could all Borg ships be unique designs after all? Given their self-repair capability, commonality would probably not be necessary or even desirable.
Timo Saloniemi
-Cube
-Sphere
-Diamond
-Piramid? (if the CGI folks are imaginative enough)
As for the Cubes being of different "design" (the Borg don't have an R&D department after all); this is probably the result of battle experience & assimilation knowledge gained (or, the First Contact design was a one-time modification, since it was a special mission). But the Borg don't strike me as being extremely selective about how they construct their ships, so it is also likely there are more Cubes flying around with Spheres in their inners.
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"Cry havoc and let's slip the dogs of Evil"
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"Human race in tha house!" KoRn & Kittie, This Town
---
Titan Fleet Yards - Harry Doddema's Star Trek Site
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So why don't we make a little room in my BMW babe
Searching for some peace of mind
Hey I'll help you find it
I do believe that we are practicing the same religion
- from the song "Fastlove"
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Teal'c: "I am a traitor to no-one."
Jaffa woman: "Except your god!"
Teal'c: "False god! Dead false god..."
-Stargate: SG-1, "Into the Fire"
I don't think it's a class of Borg ship, but instead formly the Cube that rescued Hugh. Once Hugh's individuality infected the rest of the drones on that Cube it was chaos. Since a Cube is run completely by the collective mind of the Borg onboard it's shape was distorted reflected the state of mind the Borg were in.
The design of the rouge vessel was transferred to the rest of the collective no doubt which is how it would be on an Okudagram in another Cube.
Well that's just my theory at least.
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Calvin: "Nothing spoils fun like finding out it builds character."
This post sponsered in part by the Federation Starship Datalink
I think the more interesting question is, assuming that the ship was indeed designed by the Borg to fight and, perhaps, to blow things up really nicely, what was it doing in the Alpha Quadrant to begin with? One suspects things might have been very nasty for the UFP if Hugh hadn't spoiled their plans.
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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
--
E. E. Cummings
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.
Maybe the borg that got chopped off from the collective could only remember how to build a specific design... or maybe that this ship was originally a cube - but as per the 'ship self repair' as seen in "Q Who" it wasn't repaired to a cube shape but a whole lot of borg doing different things at once created that monstrosity...
OR maybe the design is another shape used by the collective for different purposes... the Decent Ship was very large, so it might have had a different use to the 'warhead' ship we saw an Okudagram of in "Scorpion"
Andrew
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"I threw bitter tears at the ocean
But all that came back was the tide..." 'I Will Not Forget You' Sarah McLachlan
Given how Borg vessels in general tend to be cluttered on the outside, a smooth exterior would indeed seem like the work of a deranged mind. Perhaps the Borg in "Scorpion" were studying the design simply because it was one of the rare glimpses to unconventional thinking that the Collective had ever enjoyed, and unconventional thinking was necessary for saving them from the 8472.
The recent "Tactical cube" also has a rather smooth exterior. Given its wimpy weaponry (it fared even worse against the Voyager than the usual spheres!), I wonder if "Tactical" is supposed to be interpreted as "weaker than the usual Strategic"?
Timo Saloniemi
I'm not sure that idea holds up after seeing the second half, though. In fact, I'm rather sure it doesn't.
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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
--
E. E. Cummings
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.
Not having scene UM0 1 and 2... this is just pure speculation... but maybe Unimatrix Zero was a result of Hugh's individuality being inflicted on the collective?? Before the 'Descent' Borg were chopped off from the rest of the collective.
Andrew
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"I threw bitter tears at the ocean
But all that came back was the tide..." 'I Will Not Forget You' Sarah McLachlan
The UMZ could instead be something arising from the very structure and history of the Collective itself. The Borg being their own undoing would be much "grander" than them falling because of human influence...
Timo Saloniemi
Andrew
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"I threw bitter tears at the ocean
But all that came back was the tide..." 'I Will Not Forget You' Sarah McLachlan
Voyager: length approximently 310 meters.
Enterprise-D: length 614 meters.
Deep Space 9: no clue. Probably a few kilometers in diameter.
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"Cry havoc and let's slip the dogs of Evil"
[This message has been edited by The_Evil_Lord (edited October 11, 2000).]
These are the official lengths:
Voyager: 344.4m
Ent-D: 641 or 642m, depending on source.
DS9: 1 mile in diameter, I believe.
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Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova's recommendations. Ivanova is God. *And*, if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out!
- Commander Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5
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"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Teal'c: "I am a traitor to no-one."
Jaffa woman: "Except your god!"
Teal'c: "False god! Dead false god..."
-Stargate: SG-1, "Into the Fire"
quote:
Borg Cube: 28 ^ 0.33333333 gives you its L, W, and H in kilometers.
Wuh??
I don't get that measurement...
anyone got the side length for the different borg ships and I guess the diameter of the borg sphere...
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"I threw bitter tears at the ocean
But all that came back was the tide..." 'I Will Not Forget You' Sarah McLachlan
[This message has been edited by AndrewR (edited October 11, 2000).]
1) TNG cube: about 2km on a side (VFX)
2) VOY cube from "Dark Frontier": 28 cubic kilometers in volume (dialogue), which works out to just over 3km on a side.
3) FC cube: 2 miles or 3.2km on a side according to Cinefex magazine.
Furthermore, the latest issue of ST Magazine contains an article on Voyager VFX in which one of the production crew quotes the size of a Voyager cube (specifically the one where the Delta Flyer gets trapped with Kim inside, don't remember the name of the episode) as 5km on a side. This reaffirms an online post by Rick Sternbach in which he described how he gave the writers rough crew sizes for 5,10, and 15 (!) km cubes. So apparently, these are the "official" sizes in use.
I don't believe that we've ever seen 10 or 15km cubes - Rick says he based these numbers on some TNG VFX shots, but such a size would've been clearly impossible for the TNG cube.
Now, my questions are
1) whether or not we should treat the 3 and 5km Voyager cubes as the same one - I'm not sure if the various Voyager cube models are any different (leaving out the armored tactical cube).
2) whether a typical Voyager cube is any different from the FC cube?
[This message has been edited by Boris (edited October 11, 2000).]
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"...I was just up in Canada, Toronto actually. You know, they really hate you guys [Americans] up there? The funny thing is, they think you hate them back, when in fact, you just couldn't be bothered to care. Now in Ireland, it's a different story. At least we had the common decency to wait until the English invaded before we started hating them. I guess the Canadians are hating you in advance..."
-Irish Comic Ed Byrne on Canada-US relations
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Don't forget, I faked all the orgasms.
Anyway, in general, I would say there is no uniformity to Borg ship sizes. Probably every one is different...
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Teal'c: "I am a traitor to no-one."
Jaffa woman: "Except your god!"
Teal'c: "False god! Dead false god..."
-Stargate: SG-1, "Into the Fire"
I'm new here so take this with a grain of salt.
How about another possibility for the ship in Descent.
What if it is a ship from a race recently assimilated by the Borg? This would explain the unusual design of the ship, and why we do not see anything like it in other episodes. When using this approach it would have been the "last assignment" of the cube before Hugh infected it. As to what happened to that cube I suspect it would follow the same pattern seen in other disabled and unrepairable cubes in Star Trek.
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IDIC
BTW, the 28 sq km dimension implies a size of 3.030 km, to be precise.
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"And as we all know, a mesolytic quantumvector resonator is commonly
used to polarize isogravitic plasma-flux manifolds."
Starfleet Academy's Redshirt Guide to the Starfleet, 62nd edition,
2376.
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love's function is to fabricate unknownnness
--
E. E. Cummings
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! And party everyday.