posted
I agree with Mim. "Drumhead" took place long enough after the battle that the final tallies would have been in. In the case of the wrecks we saw, at least twenty ships left hulks deemed 'destroyed', in that they were damaged beyond practical repair. We don't know how many more were out of the camera's range. We don't know how many were atomised in warp core breaches. But given that the Ahwahnee was there, largely intact, and showed up again less than a year later on active duty, I have absolutely no problem accepting it as the lone exception in the "thirty-nine starships destroyed" figure given in that episode.
--Jonah
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quote:Originally posted by Dat: What everyone else said and that didn't Admiral Satie say 39 ships were destroyed of the 40 sent in. Since we know that and the same Ahwahnee was mentioned as in "in service" later, she's the one that survived and not Endeavour. I'm of the opinion that Hanson's BB was really the bridge of a non GCS, possibly the Melbourne herself.
Satie didn't say "out of 40" though just that 39 ships were lost. What I was saying is that while the 39 figure is precise, the 40 may not be. (Like "a fleet of 40 starships" could possibly mean 41 or 43 or something.) I'm not saying I necessarily believe this, just that it's a possibility if people want to maintain that the Endeavour was a survivor as well as the Ahwahnee...
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Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Thought I'd go looking to see if this was still around. . .
I prefer to believe the Ahwahnee was the survivor, although I could be persuaded otherwise. But destroyed means destroyed. Crippled with life support failure doesn't mean destroyed. The Enterprise can't be the only ship to encounter Borg and survive apart from at Wolf 359 and Typhon/Sector 001. The Endeavour and the Excalibur could have had run-ins as well; Maybe, for the Borg, everything begins with an 'e' 8)
I don't see why the Trinculo should be ignored just because we've never identified its appearance onscreen. Looking at it form another direction, we used to rubbish ideas we'd ever identify the Nebula in the DS9 credits before we found out it was the Leeds.
posted
While I'm certainly in the "there were more than 40 ships at Wolf 359" camp, as well as in the "the Endeavour and the Excalibur were not at Wolf 359" camp, and in a lot of other camps as well, there's something I should point out. Not a big thing, just a semantic detail. But perhaps significant anyway.
A ship can be "sunk". This does not mean she would be permanently lost - for all we know, somebody might decide to raise the vessel even centuries hence and convert her into a starship...
However, there is no comparable word for a starship. Even if he wanted, a TNG writer could not say "like the battleship row of Pearl Harbor, the sunken starships were later put back to service". The word "destroyed" does carry all the implications of permanence that Lee points out.
*Could* there be a synonym for "sunk" that could be applied to starships? "Voided" would be a nice one - complete loss of onboard atmosphere is rather analogous to sinking, and probably fatal for 99% of the crew, yet easily recoverable in engineering terms. (We can't say "evacuated", since the word already has another meaning - but the other meaning of "to void" might not interfere too badly here.)
posted
Y'know, that's a very good question. After all, the same problem would've applied to ships like the Defiant after the Breen attack on Chin'toka, assuming that the bad guys hadn't gone torpedo-happy at the end.
"Disabled"? "Deactivated"? "Crippled"? (That one implies that it's still active, though.) "Inoperative"? "Inactive"?
I think that we should just call those ships "broken." And keep those Pakled references to yourself, okay
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posted
But there's a lot more to a starship than a watertight hull! Of course, if Hanson was just throwing a round number - forty - in the air, then the whole discussion is moot since 'more than forty' allows more than one ship to survive while losing 39 others. . .
You know, it's just occurred to me, post-DS9 we're all jaded about ship losses. 39 starships, that's a fuck of a lot, really.
But I object to trying to diminish the importance of the 39 ships line. If some of them were salvageable, she'd have said less. the point was, when she said it, those ships were gone. For good. Thanks to Picard, the fleet was out 39 ships.
posted
I agree with Lee about the loss of Starfleet vessels at Wolf 359. Voided sounds good for a Starship that has been knocked out.
The evidence for the Ahwahnee surviving seems much better to me that that for the Excalibur/Endeavour being at Wolf 359.
This was supposed to be a major defeat for Starfleet; in recent years they may have lost a few ships against the Cardassians and others and a few in other circumstances but 39 at one time? How many Starfleet ships were destroyed in the rest of the TNG run?
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Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
...or Klingon ships could've seen action as well making the total number of battling ships over 40. The admiral's line about ships lost being 39 could've included some Klingon ships, which could then mean that of actual Starfleet ships, both the Ahwahnee and the Endeavor could've been survivors and the admiral could still be correct in saying 39 ships were lost at Wolf 359.
Worf: "The Defiant?" Picard: "Adrift but salvagable."
Tough little ship...
While I wouldn't suggest "adrift" as the preferable term, voided sounds a little strange IMHO.
How about simply "out"?
As in "We've sent the second wave...23 of them are already out".
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