posted
I'll open by answering the prime question - and the answer is no. Everything *can* fit into the established continuity with enough explanation, most of which we've speculated away already. The whole episode is basically an exercise in what could happen if a couple Borg drones, with limited resources and surrounded by inferior technology, would do. I think they did a fair job... The other purpose of the episode is to theorhetically give a little conclusion to the whole Borg story by looping it back on itself, giving a reason for the Borg to be all the way over here in the 24th century in the first place. People will be talking about this one for a LONG time.
-Timestamp: March 1, 2153 at the end of the show.
-The episode starts in the Arctic Circle with a nifty hovercraft / ship floating over the frozen wasteland. This is odd, as the Arctic is typically very flat, due to the fact there's nothing but ice there - ice which should have buried the Borg debris field the scientists find. Anyway, I wish I had one of those little ships. They're cool. At least in the first act.
-The three scientists we see have two very distinct patches on their parka sleeves. Anyone make any of that out? The scientists also use Starfleet-standard communicators and plasma rifles. They apparently belong to the Earth Science Council, which we've heard of before.
-The Borg debris field is kinda obvious, no? There's wreckage and stuff strewn over a fairly large area... I'm somewhat surprised that something like that wasn't visible from space a whole lot earlier than this.
-The scientists apparently liase with Commander Williams back at Starfleet.
-Vulcan prothesis kick ass over human equivalents, but both are trounced by the Borg. Duh. And the Denobulans have tried experimenting with nanotech, which doesn't figure in later. Good thing the scientists didn't have a chance to make an official report, or send much beyond a bunch of pictures back to Starfleet.
-Borg sphere = 600 meters in diameter, according to the curvature of the wreckage. Have at it, size boys!
-The two drones the scientists recover expectedly awaken and assimilate the scientists, their nifty ship, and the (trans?)warp coil one of them found just before the carnage begins. When contact is lost, Admiral Forrest, Commander Williams and a security use a Fleet shuttle (with blue stripes) to get there. Look for another patch on their parkas.
-The nifty ship is capable of Warp 1.4. The Borg reconfigure it to 3.9, later 4.8 and 4.98. Incidentally, this is the first indication of atmospheric, warp-capable Earth ships in this era... Anyway, at that speed it is quickly able to zip out to the vicinity of Enterprise. 29 drones are aboard by the final confrontation. The ship becomes progressively more borgified as the episode prgresses.
-While they certainly don't look it, I'm under the impression that the Borg in this episode are significantly weakened as a result of what little they had to begin with. This is a train of thought reinforced by evidence throughout the show.
-Name-dropping: The Bynars, from the Beta Magellan system! Phlox once saw a newborn get its parietal lobe replaced with a synaptic processor.
-The borgified ship is soon spotted cutting open a Tarkalean transport with a proton beam. Luckily, Enterprise is able to disable the weapons, but the transport warps away. The crew rescues two Tarkaleans, slowly being assimilated via nanoprobes...
-Archer is bugged by the whole thing. And then he remembers an address Cochrane made once at Princeton, where he revealed the "real" story of First Contact as it occured in the movie, and not the original history. It was not really believed, and Cochrane recanted the story several years later. Interesting!
-The assimilation process here is rather different than what we've seen before... It's more gradual and slower, a reasonable reflection of Borg interfacing with primitive technology with limited means. The waking Tarkaleans are still themselves, at least for a few moments, before they go nuts with the typical Borg Attitude. Upon escaping, one of them infects Phlox.
-The Tarkaleans quickly set about assimilating the ship through familiar means - replacing displays with Borg circuitry, bits of Borg nodes, etc.. When Reed and his security team can't stop them (stun doesn't work as usual, but by the time they go to max setting even a phase pistol and two rifles in concert can't stop 'em) they evac the section and blow the drones into space thrugh a dorsal maintenance hatch. Of course, they leave 'em behind to pursue the ship. Duh.
-The rifles really seem to have been upgraded to phase equivalents - one is seen used by the Arctic scientists on Earth, and it uses the familiar pulse fire. Interestingly, of the two rifles in the security team, only one has a sight of some sort.
-Phlox races to cure himself of the nanos that are making him all splotchy and pale, and that make him hear voices in his head. Omicron particles slow them, but he's not confident he'll be able to do anything.
-Reed races to modify their phase weapons to overpower the Borg shields. He thinks he has the answer, doubling the firepower (to ten megajoules) while creating a recharge period. It's surprisingly effective, allowing them to kill numerous drones before they adapt.
-The Borg ship attacks Enterprise with familiar pulse weapons, and trigger the Borg circuitry on our heroes' ship, disabling them. In response, Archer and Reed beam aboard to plant explosives, even as the Borg continue to pound them and even board them. Archer and Reed discover that the inside of the transport has been thoroughly assimilated, giving us a plethora of re-used Borg props to see. In the ensuing combat, they even go hand to hand and manage to defeat a drone by tearing out several hoses (a move obviously borrowed from Picard's riprest in TNG "Descent II").
-The explosives they plant on the EPS manifold manage to disable the transport somewhat, causing the boarders to be recalled. In the meantime, Trip manages to strip enough Borg parts out of the Jeffries tubes to get weapons back, and they destroy the regenerating transport with a salvo of torpedoes form the aft launchers. They can fire four torpedoes in less than a second - a previously unseen rate of fire.
-The wreckage, of course, they leave behind. Duh. And most uncharacteristically, the Borg never once say their classic "We are the Borg". Damned UT.
-Phlox is cured, during which process we see the inside of the medical chamber for the first time. Anyway, while infected he caught a series of numbers which were being transmitted by the local Borg group consciousness - coordinates being sent back to the Delta Quadrant. T'Pol concludes that it'd take 200 years for the message to get there - postponing any response until at least the 24th century, if it even managed to arrive.
-Causal loop complete?
Mark
[ May 06, 2003, 09:09 PM: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
posted
So here we have the beginnings to the 'classic' ... "we're the only ship in the quadrant" scenario ... I'm beginning to wonder where the hell the rest of Star Fleet is ...
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posted
Even if they had sixteen dreadnoughts hovering over the Arctic, how could they give chase to a warp 4 fugitive?
Incidentally, this *was* the Arctic circle explicitly, wasn't it? Not the low-rainfall continental Antarctic which would be a plausible location for such a debris field? Well, there's plenty of land on the Arctic circle, of course - the debris could have melted through 21st century ice onto solid rock, and only surfaced when 22nd century climate removed that ice.
Is the blue-striped shuttle the same design as the NX-01 shuttlepods?
How does Phlox finally de-borgify himself?
How can T'Pol tell where the message was aimed? I mean, distance-wise? Couldn't she have thought it was intended for a star system mere 1500 ly out - or for another galaxy entirely?
posted
Althought I have not viewed this episode...yet...this:
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: The nifty ship is capable of Warp 1.4.
...would seem to answer this:
quote:Originally posted by Timo: Even if they had sixteen dreadnoughts hovering over the Arctic, how could they give chase to a warp 4 fugitive?
...this means, that at least initially, any old - warp 2 - or whatever the norm is at the time - starship could have caught this ship as it was leaving Earth, therefore an easy catch for "sixteen dreadnoughts hovering over the Arctic"...
...So again, I do not understand why Enterprise so happens to be the only ship 'in the neighborhood'.
...One would think that Earth would have one or two capable ships nearby that could have done the job, OR, for that matter, an even far superior Vulcan starship nearby to stop it...
...I realize, for the sake of writing an episode and using the hired work in said episode, it is almost required to have Enterprise be the one that comes to the rescue; it does, however, make one wonder about the effectiveness of Star Fleet or the Vulcan Fleet, when the first Allied ship the Borg engage is also the furthest SF ship from Earth...
...leaving the original question I posed:
quote:Originally posted by ME : I'm beginning to wonder where the hell the rest of Star Fleet is...
...unless this is some indication as to why Earth gets its ass reamed in the upcoming weeks...
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-The ship left the Sol system at Warp 3.9. The Borg had wisely upgraded the engines before they left. The point was that the ship was *supposed* to have a top speed of 1.4. Beats me why a Vulcan ship couldn't be tapped to stop it.
-Phlox's treatment involves a thorough bombardment of omicron particles to kill the nanoprobes. He mentioned nasty side-effects, though by the end Archer logs that Phlox is expected to make a full recovery.
-The Fleet shuttle is of the NX-01 design, with teh aforementioned blue piping. The security team aboard has phase pistols, too.
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -The ship left the Sol system at Warp 3.9. The Borg had wisely upgraded the engines before they left. The point was that the ship was *supposed* to have a top speed of 1.4. Beats me why a Vulcan ship couldn't be tapped to stop it.
Perhaps the Vulcans weren't *interested* in playing interstellar highway patrol for SF.
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: Perhaps the Vulcans weren't *interested* in playing interstellar highway patrol for SF.
Well it involves alien technology on Earth that is apparently quite advanced and powerful, seems the Vulcans would react similarily to the "Broken Bow" scenario, especially considering it was something even they haven't encountered...
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -The ship left the Sol system at Warp 3.9. The Borg had wisely upgraded the engines before they left. The point was that the ship was *supposed* to have a top speed of 1.4. Beats me why a Vulcan ship couldn't be tapped to stop it.
I'm not questioning you, but just the sanity of the writers...but how would the Borg have wisely known that warp 3.9 would have gotten them into the clear? Seems rather convienient...unless they had their Earth history books and chronometers set to the right date to know that they would be fast enough to actually get out of the system unchallenged...either way, it seems rather silly that all of the convienent threads they pull to make it the Enterprise saves the day scenario...
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quote:Originally posted by Futurama Guy: ...either way, it seems rather silly that all of the convienent threads they pull to make it the Enterprise saves the day scenario...
*sigh* Remember Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Or the other countless occasions where the Enterprise was the "only ship in the sector/quadrant/area/budget"?
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quote:Originally posted by David Templar: sigh* Remember Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Or the other countless occasions where the Enterprise was the "only ship in the sector/quadrant/area/budget"?
Note
Actually, I think I said something like that in the beginning of my theory: So here we have the beginnings to the 'classic' ... "we're the only ship in the quadrant" scenario ... I'm beginning to wonder where the hell the rest of Star Fleet is ...
Suggesting that Enterprise is not only prequaling the rest of Star Trek, but that whole *magnetism to danger* ships with that name seem to attract...
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quote:Originally posted by Futurama Guy: Suggesting that Enterprise is not only prequaling the rest of Star Trek, but that whole *magnetism to danger* ships with that name seem to attract...
Boy, I sure do wish the series was subtitled Enterprise: Just Another Ship and every time something interesting came up we'd get forty minutes of Archer reading about some other crew's adventures on a padd.
Seriously, though, Starfleet seems to have been almost exclusively exploratory before "Broken Bow." It's not impossible that they might have as few as twenty or thirty starships total, puttering around at warp 2.
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