StarDestroyer.Net BBS

In Star Trek First Contact, the Enterprise evacuate the Enterprise-E, set the self destruct, and land on Gravett Island to spend the rest of their lives. They were of course picked up once the Borg were defeated, but what would have happened if the Enterprise had self-destructed, and the crew of the Enterprise were stuck on Gravett Island for the rest of the 21st century?

Do Riker, Geordi, Troi and Barclay follow Picard's advice and just stay in a quiet part of North America?

What consequences, if any, would this have on the timeline?

ideally very few

I suppose they'd create shelters out of local materials then vaprourise / destroy any super advanced stuff.

Then you have something like the ending of BSG.

Hopefully they're not discovered until after they die.

Yes, Riker and co follow orders (why would they not)?


No offense but this is a rather boring what if - ideally, if they did what they said, the answer to what would happen is "nothing". It'd be really boring.

At what point in the movie does the Ent-E get destroyed - before or after the Borg shot Cochranes base?

If it happens before: The crew lands on the island and the engineers macgyver a subspace signal in a time capsule to let starfleet know "when" they are.

If it happens after: The crew lands on the island and the people assisting Cochrane help with the Phoenix, leave a message in a time capsule with Cochrane. Then they leave to get to the island. Meet up with the others and build shelters.

A few days later another Starfleet ship arrives by stellar slingshot and picks them up.

tezunegari wrote:At what point in the movie does the Ent-E get destroyed - before or after the Borg shot Cochranes base?

About an hour after

IIRC Riker's team never received any communications from Picard until after the Borg were defeated. The escape pods were launched before the Pheonix flight but apparently they never made contact because Riker believed the E-E was following the Phoenix to give it a send off. The E-E would have self-destructed during the flight and depending on the range it's possible the explosion could damage/destroy the Phoenix, or simply kill the occupants due to a radiation burst. At the very least Riker and co. would have been in for a hell of a surprise.

What would happen next? While they might simply assume it was some kind of freak accident and decide to stay out of the way, IMO they are likely to start putting two-and-two together and figure out that the Borg had something to do with it. If that's the case they might decide to take some kind of action since they would likely conclude that there's a chance more Borg survived and were present on Earth (which would be correct given the events in ENT "Regeneration"). Better to violate the Temporal Prime Directive than risk Earth's assimilation.

Would they try and convince the Vulcans to help conduct a search? Would they run into the E-E's escape pods? Would they tell everyone about the Borg so that they would be better prepared?

And speaking of the Vulcans, I wonder how they would react to the E-E's destruction. I imagine that the E-E's warp core going off would register on the sensors a lot more than the Phoenix's flight. Would they come to investigate what happened? Would they find any debris? The escape pods? Hawk's body, presuming it's still in orbit? Would they still want to land and make First Contact, or would they presume the E-E's destruction was some kind of weapon and be driven away?

Wait, so are the Borg dead in this scenario? Even if they succeeded in destroying the Enterprise, I get this feeling that at least a few drones would make it to the surface...

biostem wrote:Wait, so are the Borg dead in this scenario? Even if they succeeded in destroying the Enterprise, I get this feeling that at least a few drones would make it to the surface...

Well, they did. The only problem is the remains of the sphere crashed in Antarctica and IIRC they were forced to go into some kind of hibernation. They were later unburied during ENT's "Regeneration".

Or do you think that some of the drones would try boarding remaining escape pods? They never had access to the transporters or shuttlecraft because the computer locked them down. Would the escape pods work for the Borg? Even the doors seemed to have been locked out, as the Borg were usually forced to break through them while the E-E's crew were usually able to use them normally (with the exception of the doors to Engineering, which the Borg apparently modified to prevent entry). If the computer refused the allow the Borg to use the pods, would they have had enough time to modify them? I don't think they'd have enough time to rig the transporters or shuttlecraft for use.

Tribble wrote:

biostem wrote:Wait, so are the Borg dead in this scenario? Even if they succeeded in destroying the Enterprise, I get this feeling that at least a few drones would make it to the surface...

Well, they did. The only problem is the remains of the sphere crashed in Antarctica and IIRC they were forced to go into some kind of hibernation. They were later unburied during ENT's "Regeneration".

Or do you think that some of the drones would try boarding remaining escape pods? They never had access to the transporters or shuttlecraft because the computer locked them down. Would the escape pods work for the Borg? Even the doors seemed to have been locked out, as the Borg were usually forced to break through them while the E-E's crew were usually able to use them normally (with the exception of the doors to Engineering, which the Borg apparently modified to prevent entry). If the computer refused the allow the Borg to use the pods, would they have had enough time to modify them? I don't think they'd have enough time to rig the transporters or shuttlecraft for use.

Well, does the ship self-destructing necessarily negate the possibility of some of the Borg remaining intact enough to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and become functional again? Even still, how long after the events of First Contact did that episode of Enterprise take place? That could make for an interesting twist if some of the Enterprise-E's crew learned that those drones had survived...

IIRC the drones seen in Regeneration are from the crashed wreckage of the Borg sphere the E-E shot down over Montana, not drones that escaped from the ship, so regardless of whether or not some drones survive the ship's destruction several Borg drones will be present on Earth.

As for how long it was, STFC is set in 2063 and Regeneration is somewhere in the 2150-2155 range I think. So about ninety years.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:IIRC the drones seen in Regeneration are from the crashed wreckage of the Borg sphere the E-E shot down over Montana, not drones that escaped from the ship, so regardless of whether or not some drones survive the ship's destruction several Borg drones will be present on Earth.

As for how long it was, STFC is set in 2063 and Regeneration is somewhere in the 2150-2155 range I think. So about ninety years.

Gotcha. Well, McCoy was about 130 or so at the start of Next Generation, so it is possible that a few of the Ent-E's crew may survive to learn about the drones form the sphere, but more than likely it'd be their children. I believe said drones pretty much stole a ship and fled Earth ASAP, so it may never actually impact those survivors all that much.

McCoy lived that long because he had access to 23rd/24th century medical technology, something I doubt the surviving crew will have for long.

So, let's say the crew decide "to hell with it!" and figure that since the Borg had already mucked about with history and they were stuck in an alternate past (remember that time travel in Trek usually leads to alternate timelines) they might as well use their knowledge and expertise to help out as much as possible, and in particular to prepare Earth and the Federation for the eventual Borg invasion. What would be the best way for them to go about doing that? Should they reveal everything they know about Fed history, technology etc and assist in the Feds development, or would it be better for them to remain behind the scenes, maybe even going so far as to forming a group similar to Section 31? Would their knowledge and expertise have a meaningful impact, or would events if they tried exploiting them, or would things more or less remain the same?