posted
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.
-------------------- "You must talk to him; tell him that he is a good cat, and a pretty cat, and..." -- Data "I will feed him" -- Worf (Phantasms)
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"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
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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posted
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
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.
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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."
One could possibly argue that Q was speaking at this point simply concerning the Borg's immediate interests -- specifically, just how much they might be able to resist. After all, since we know that the Borg already have other Humans assimilated into the Collective, grabbing a few more bodies from the Enterprise doesn't have to be a huge priority.
Getting examples of the latest and greatest of the Humans' technology, however, does.
quote:"When they come, they'll come in force. They don't do anything piecemeal."
This from the woman whose entire race was virtually wiped out by the Borg. Perhaps for whatever reason the Collective decided to launch a single, sudden offensive against the El Aurians for whatever reason, just like they did in "Dark Frontier." I somehow doubt that Guinan's one point of reference must absolutely be the only way the Borg operate.
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.
Yes, I can't deny that as the writers' intentions changed, it did represent a continuity violation with respect to their original intentions. However, I don't think that it has to STAY a contradiction -- we can have explanations for various changes. Just like I suggested above.
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.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
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.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
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.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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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.
That's what I think. I think they are like the Hydra. Many independent "heads" branching out on their own but connected to a central "body". Each head is a Collective in it's own right not connected to the others. Cut off a head, and a new one grows in it's place (they gradually rebuild a new Collective from scratch). The individuals from "Descent" were part of one branch of the Borg, the other Collectives were undamaged. Kill one Queen and only that one Collective dies with her, not all of them.
As far as assimilation not being their earliest intent in "Q, Who?", don't you think assimilation is so much better for dramatic purposes though? A race simply interested in your technology is just sort of blah. A race that kidnaps you and forces you to become one of them against your will though is much more interesting in my opinion at least.
-------------------- "You must talk to him; tell him that he is a good cat, and a pretty cat, and..." -- Data "I will feed him" -- Worf (Phantasms)
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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. . .
But they didn't assimililate us in the past, they failed.
I'm saying that they lost on purpose though. They sacrificed one Sphere to give us a "kick in our complacency" to develope tech faster. Really, did they seem to put any more then a half assed effort into destroying Cochrane's complex? Did they damage the Pheonix extensively or just enough that the Enterprise would have to make some futuristic repairs to get it flying again?
Maybe the Pheonix was a lot more primitive before the Enterprise crew arrived and fixed it up. 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.
Maybe I'm trying to make the Braga Collective seem like they had more thought behind they're actions then what First Contact and Voyager would have us believe? I'm just trying to make the later Borg not seem so lame I guess. That they continuosly lost to the Enterprise and Voyager on purpose to just spur Federation tech developement.
-------------------- "You must talk to him; tell him that he is a good cat, and a pretty cat, and..." -- Data "I will feed him" -- Worf (Phantasms)
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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.
posted
I never thought the Queen as presented in First Contact was that bad. In fact, I still think that the Queen is a manifestation of the Borg's Collective consciousness. The small group of Borg on the Enterprise in the past manifested the Queen there. That would explain why the Queen can basically be where she wants to be.
Voyager destroyed that though by giving her her own ship and having her banter with Janeway. That was dumb.
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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.
Thinking that the Body Stocking With Plastic Bits Attached look is better than the post-FC look is up there in crazyness levels with believing that the Daedalus class is an attractive design.
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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.
-------------------- "You must talk to him; tell him that he is a good cat, and a pretty cat, and..." -- Data "I will feed him" -- Worf (Phantasms)
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