I’m watching First Contact again (my favourite Trek movie) and I was thinking. In the two major Borg offensives Wolf 359 (Best of Both Worlds) and Sector 001 (First Contact) the Federation just about stop a single cube. From Voyager it is clear that the Borg aren’t exactly lacking in vessels. I’m pretty sure that if 2 cubes were sent, assimilating Earth would not be a problem.
you could look at the borg like this.
They tend to send and attack of some type, fail, study the previous attack… then send another one.
They sent the one during the series.
They sent the second one and it was probably stronger, but the feds were more prepared for it.
They probably were planning on sending more cubes for another invasion, but they needed to study the federation more to adapt. First off, the cube was destroyed and the queen was destroyed in the past. So they were going to send another cube to study but species 8472 showed up and they had other priorities.
Ok that is my fan version, here is my real version.
First Contact has the dumbest plot ever. I used to love the movie until I thought about this:
If the Borg have time travel, why didn’t they travel back in time in the delta quadrant, then travel to earth and not have to fight a federation fleet.
Why don’t they travel back in time every time a cube is lost and go to that planet twohundred years. Why abandon the plan just because it almost worked and didn’t. Next time it will, that’s what the borg do. So really… your point is pretty correct… the borg are stupid, but not as stupid as the writers.
or better yet maybe assimulate vulcan… a plant that at that time actually had technology. Why Earth? why, why, why.
I had thought of that, but then the Borg ‘evolve’ by adding technology/lifeforms to the collective. I’d imagine there would be more benefit to assimilating a 24th Century Earth than an earlier one. But after the second cube was defeated they may have thought that the Federation was more trouble than it was worth, let’s stop it by going back in time. I think I may be clutching at straws a little bit though.
Yeah, this always bugged me too. My BS excuse is that the plan all along was to travel back in time and assimilate Earth in the past, and the cube was little more than a decoy. So why not send more ships? To continue the BS, the Borg did not want to risk changing the timeline any more than necessary to remove the human threat, so a single ship seemed prudent. If you want Borg Gone Wild, try the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy of books. A little long and uneven, but not terrible.
I have to agree with you here, and have always felt the same thing about ST:FC, why didn’t they just keep going back in time?
However, to me, this is the gaping hole in almost any time travel plot - not only does it predicate the “fact” that any point in time can be accessed or gone back to (meaning they all coexist at the same time forever and ever), but that IF it exists, it means that anyone at any point in time who has the technology/knowledge can go back and frak with it, so why aren’t they? And, why do people stress so much about getting their time travel adventures right when, if they fail, they can just go back and do it again. Even if there is some stated reason, or technology, that exists or doesn’t exist or is a one time opportunity, in the long run, these could be overcome.
I just can’t stop loving this movie, though. And I just can’t hate on the time travel aspects because I really don’t think it’s possible. It’s just too much fun.
How about that if in First Contact the writers had the Borg send more cubes to Earth and assimilated it with their overwhelming force… then there would be no more stories to be written for Star Trek it would become Borg Trek. Federation wouldn’t exist anymore and all the characters would be Borg…
in the Star Trek: Destiny book series, they had a real Borg invasion. Thousands of ships–took about a good chunk of the Federation too. it’s not canon, I know, but THAT was an “invasion”
I kind of wonder also if the goal had to do with assimilating the Earth in “present”, rather than in 2063. I also kind of wonder if the goal really had anything to do with assimilating in Earth as much as it did with getting Data or Picard. It seems like the Queen’s goal is largely getting one or both of them, and the whole assimilation plan is something to keep them busy. Why would the Queen have gone on that mission? Picard was special, as was Data.
I think we should also consider that, even to the Borg, Time travel is risky business. They don’t want to sacrifice their existence on a whim of traveling everywhen to do what they want. So I agree with most points already expressed here. Don’t mess up the timeline more than you have to, you have to learn and adapt before you can strike.
I think once they’re back in time, the plot is great, but it’s too bad there’s a hole in getting there.
we are assumeing that the writers had attributed a plan to the Borg… instead of writeing entertaining scenes and plot be damned!
yep, i bet the borg did about as much planning as the cylons did.
Okay, here’s a warped explanation:
Initial Assumptions:
A: Assume the Borg Transwarp technology hasn’t been developed by the time of “Q Who”
B: Assume Hugh’s virus really did take out the majority of the Borg in the alpha quadrant. (Thus preventing Borg scout ships in the area from attacking in the intervening years)
C: Prior to BoBW, the Borg did not appear to assimilate people, only beneficial technologies. Assume this means the exponential expansion of the “Borg Empire” of assimilated species is relatively recent, around or just after the time of “Best of Both Worlds”
Here’s the skewed timeline I could see feasible due to the Borg time-traveling at Earth:
- Q causes the Enterprise to arrive in the path of a Borg vessel, who is then alerted to the presence of the Federation. The Enterprise appears to fly away at an inconceivable speed (Q’s intervention). The Borg set an intercept course for Earth to investigate this technology. (TNG:“Q Who”)
- The Borg arrive at Earth, but the cube is destroyed by the fleet of Starfleet ships led by Picard on the Enterprise-E (First Contact)(follow me here)
- The Borg sphere travels through time, is destroyed, and later recovered in the Arctic. The reactivated drones are destroyed by the NX-01 Enterprise crew, but not without first getting a message off (ENT:“Regeneration”). This message will take a coule hundred years to arrive in Borg space.
- The message arrives, and the Borg dispatch a ship to the Federation. They are going to asses the strength of the Federation, which, based on the primitive status of the NX-01 defenses and weapons, leads them to believe they need only send one vessel. Luckily, the Enterprise-D and her crew manage to destroy this vessel. (TNG:“Best of Both Worlds”)
This timeline explains three things:
A: why only one ship was sent each time.
B: why the FIRST ship sent to Earth wants Picard specifically (because it was Picard that thwarted their plans during the events of First Contact). Assimilation of Picard would increase the Borg’s chances of success.
C: I really don’t have much to do at work this afternoon.
Unfortunately, this also means that the next invasion will likely be all-out, especially since Janeway managed to annoy the crap out of the queen on multiple occasions. Take that, 25th Century! 
That’s awesome! I love the idea of circular causality, particularly spanning several appearances of the Borg. I only have two issues with this:
[ol]
[li]The Queen speaks dismissively of thinking in three dimensions. This implies that she exists (or at least perceives events) outside of our single linear temporal reality.[/li][li]Are the Borg unfamiliar with the Q? Presumably they’ve never assimilated them, but at least some species that are part of the Collective are aware of them. Surely the Borg must know of their meddling.[/li][/ol]
Fascinating.
I don’t see the Borg being as conflicted about options as humans (or others) and perhaps therefor less interesting to the Q. (I’m guessing the Q think of the Borg as the tide. You can’t challenge it to rise or fall, it just does.)
This is awesome, David (I didn’t quote the whole thing for space considerations. You’re welcome)! I wish I was more awake right now in order to discuss it.
If you’ve ever played Star Trek: Armada, the whole Borg-time-travel-technology gets used pretty freely, but I’ve always wished they had set up in ST:FC that it was a difficult thing to do.
Borg had the second and third cube under construction when the bank raised the interest rate on their ARM construction loan. Unable to service the debt, Borg were forced to cancel the project.
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Seeing that the queen has presumably been ‘killed’ at least twice, I think that we can assume that the queen’s consciousness exists as part of the collective, something that the hive mind created in an attempt to create the perfect individual. This also lends credence to the idea that they then wanted Picard to willingly become Locutus, to merge a superior individual with the ‘perfection’ of Borg cybernetics (as the queen’s failure to relate to individuals might be seen as a failing). As for her physical body, we’ve seen two different models, and it appears that the only organic parts of her are her shoulders and skin (her skull and brain appear to be largely synthetic) - this would make it relatively easy to replicate and clone the necessary components to create replacement bodies (much as Weyoun does in DS9), while her consciousness would be downloaded from the Borg hive mind.
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The Q have definitely encountered the Borg previously, evidenced in Q’s scolding of Q Junior to “{not} provoke the Borg”. However, since the effects of Q don’t seem to be readable by sensors, Troi’s empathic powers, etc. and coupled with the fact that Q’s method of transporting the Enterprise was a high-velocity push (opposed to his ‘blinking’ effect), from the Borg’s perspective the Enterprise would merely appear to be accelerating at an enormous speed without any detectable means of propulsion. This would be of particular interest to the Borg, their primary goal being one of improving their technologies.
In the post-Nemesis Next Gen books, they explain that when a Borg Queen’s physical body is killed, the drones are programmed to create a new queen from a drone through some complex genetic procedures, kind of like bees or ants kind of do with royal jelly and what-not. Also, the Borg Queen threatens Lady Q with assimilation, and her response is, “I’d like to see you try.”