Dominion v. Borg

[Eternal_Freedom]

And yet the logs of the Hanson's mission clearly showed they were considered cranks for thinking there was something to the stories of the Borg.

[NecronLord]

Show evidence.

Where is the word 'crank' used? 'Starfleet has some security concerns' does not equal 'crank.'

[Eternal_Freedom]

It's been a while since I saw either "The Raven" or "Dark Frontier." But I do recall one of the father's logs saying something like "now we can prove our theories and the Borg aren't just legends."

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ghetto edit: ok, just watched SFDebris's review of Dark Frontier, and it included the flashback of MAgnus telling Annika about their trip, where he explains that "we don't know exactly what they look like but we think they look like us." He also says something to the effect of "hopefully we can be friends." So, yes, the Federation are at least vaguely aware of the Borg, but despite the accounts of the El Aurian survivors,they have no idea what they look like or how dangerous they are.

[Metahive]

O that's rich, everything I say is speculation and must put up hard evidence for everything while you can draw wild conclusions out of dialog snippets and speculate as much as you will. The Dominion taking the Funky Image from the Federation? Speculation, especially when considering how criminally bad their intelligence is, they didn't even notice the Federation had neutralized their weapon's advantage or started negotiations with the Romulans, but somehow they have acquired this specific bit of technology, yeah right. Hard evidence for this please. The Dominion weapons will work perfectly against the Borg, hard evidence please. The Dominion will prepare to face the Borg, hard evidence please! The Funky Image will work as advertised for the Federation, hard evidence please!

There's no common basis for this debate as long as you keep this egregious double standard up.

[NecronLord]

Ghetto edit: ok, just watched SFDebris's review of Dark Frontier, and it included the flashback of MAgnus telling Annika about their trip, where he explains that "we don't know exactly what they look like but we think they look like us." He also says something to the effect of "hopefully we can be friends." So, yes, the Federation are at least vaguely aware of the Borg, but despite the accounts of the El Aurian survivors,they have no idea what they look like or how dangerous they are.

Keep in mind his audience. "Hopefully we can be friends" is said to his pre-teen daughter, not to his log.

O that's rich, everything I say is speculation and must put up hard evidence for everything while you can draw wild conclusions out of dialog snippets and speculate as much as you will. The Dominion taking the Funky Image from the Federation? Speculation, especially when considering how criminally bad their intelligence is, they didn't even notice the Federation had neutralized their weapon's advantage or started negotiations with the Romulans, but somehow they have acquired this specific bit of technology, yeah right.

Given that the general point was not 'the Dominion might have stolen it' which is something I mentioned once, but that 'silver bullets work on borg regularly' which is the actual point.

Hard evidence for this please. The Dominion weapons will work perfectly against the Borg, hard evidence please. The Dominion will prepare to face the Borg, hard evidence please! The Funky Image will work as advertised for the Federation, hard evidence please!

I have presented evidence, in that everyone in the show who knows of it thinks it will work, if you think it will not work, show me another occasion when the borg were infected by an unsolvable geometric problem and survived. Otherwise the canon statement is 'it will work' 'it will work' 'it would have worked'

There's no common basis for this debate as long as you keep this egregious double standard up.

Except I am not saying these things will happen, or that the Dominion will do them, or even that the Dominion would survive.

The borg have far more ships (as far as we know; millions according to Chakotay in Scorpion) a transwarp network, and thus the ability to deploy their forces as they please and pick engagements sites.

However, the borg have weaknesses, and are repeatedly shown to be vulnerable to infection of various types, to a greater (pictogram invasive program, neurolytic pathogen) or lesser (the brenali pathogen) degree, which opens up the possibility of a species who do not have these advantages destroying either the forces sent against them, or the entire collective.

People keep saying 'silver bullets only blow up a single cube' with the exception of the Brenali pathogen, I'm still waiting on that. Of course, the brenali one works repeatedly which undermines the whole point about damage being limited to a single cube, because if you can keep killing them, then it's still an optimal weapon, just as much as a transphasic torpedo is.

[StarSword]

Getting back to the Borg shields vs. phased polaron beams thing, I'm reminded of an inference Mike makes in his analysis of Insurrection on the main site. AQ shields in particular have a pattern of being bad at defeating weapons they've never seen before (the example was Riker's use of canisters of metreon gas for improvised mines). This may have contributed to their early ineffectiveness against phased polarons. It's only after several years involving many skirmishes with the Jem'Hadar, and one Vorta being an irredeemable moron and letting Sisko take a mostly intact JHAS back to the Federation (DS9: "The Ship"), that Starfleet devises a countermeasure (just in time for Second Deep Space 9 in "Call to Arms").

[Tribble]

I guess it boils down to whether or not the Dominion have a virus that can be used against the Borg. If they have it and they use it, the Borg lose. In a general war, the Borg would win. Well, actually they wouldn't win, seeing as Janeway killed them all off and there is no canon evidence to suggest that they survived, but whatever.

[StarSword]

I guess it boils down to whether or not the Dominion have a virus that can be used against the Borg. If they have it and they use it, the Borg lose. In a general war, the Borg would win. Well, actually they wouldn't win, seeing as Janeway killed them all off and there is no canon evidence to suggest that they survived, but whatever.

There's no direct canon evidence but we do have a slight precedent to work from. In TNG: "Descent" Lore says that when Hugh transmitted the sense of individuality he gained from exposure to the Enterprise crew to his cube, the Collective responded by cutting their losses. They ejected those drones from the Collective.

I'll grant Lore isn't necessarily someone you can consider a reliable source, but it's what we've got.

[seanrobertson]

Well, actually they wouldn't win, seeing as Janeway killed them all off and there is no canon evidence to suggest that they survived, but whatever.

Come again?

There's nothing that indicates Adm. Janeway's neurolytic pathogen exterminated the Collective. I presented evidence to the contrary earlier in the thread ... for one, Sphere 634 could still hear the Queen's thoughts after "she" was infected and literally falling apart.

All we know for sure's that Adm. Janeway's virus nerfed the Queen's interface with the rest of the Collective. Either as a result of that or as a cautionary measure, the primary Unicomplex was destroyed/self-destructed.

Beyond that, there is zero proof the entire Borg Collective was destroyed. Indeed, Cpt. Janeway and Seven of Nine were entirely focused on how destroying part of the Borg's transwarp network would deal a "crippling blow" to the Borg; neither of them ever indicated the whole lot of them were hurt, nevermind outright annihilated.

It is possible we saw the Borg die for good in "Endgame," but I sincerely doubt it. I also think someone making that claim bares the burden of proof.

P.S. -- As advanced as, and superior to the Federation, as the Dominion generally is, the most sophisticated virus we saw them use was the so-called "Blight." The Federation, future and present, manufactured a bug that could destroy Borg's CNSs and could exterminate an entire RACE of changelings -- a disease that, you might note, the Founders and their best Vorta doctors could not cure or even SLOW DOWN as of the events of "What You Leave Behind."

I see no compelling reason to assume their tactical prowess and superior industrial capacity is at all evidence that they could hit the Borg with anything more exotic than the Federation could come up with. If anything, since the UFP's population is nowhere NEAR as dispensable as most of the Dominion's (who gives a damn if a Vorta or Jem'Hadar, or legions thereof, get sick? Just clone new ones! ), sheer necessity dictates that Federation medical science could easily be more advanced than the Dominion's.

[NecronLord]

While that's true, there is also no evidence the Federation can, even holding confrences on it, slow down or otherwise devise a treatment for the Quickening either (AKA the something blight I can't remember its full name, it's called the Quickening in a later episode).

What I have shown however is that bioweapons developed by a barely industrialised agricultural weapon are effective on entire borg ships.

[NecronLord]

As an aside, speaking in a purely out of universe context, this is obviously an issue with the DS9 writers, who originally wrote a far more powerful dominion. Multiple light year transporters ("Covenant"), guns that shoot through shields like they're not even there ("The Jem'hadar"), the ability to blow up stars ("By Inferno's Light"), telekinetic Vorta ("The Jem'Hadar"), beam through Federation shields ("Jem'Hadar" again) the ability to detect cloaked ships ("The Search?") and various other awesome stuff all appeared in the Dominion arsenal. By the end of the series all these things have basically been forgotten in favour of the dominion most people here remember, which is broadly speaking, equivalent to (or less advanced than) the Federation in most respects, and regularly carries idiot balls, not to mention the humilating incidence of the Section 31 virus plot.

This makes it relatively easy to argue that the Dominion could be much more capable than it is, and possibly suggests that the guys they had fighting the war in later seasons of DS9 were not exactly their 'A' side. In reality though, it's merely that the writers at some point realized that they'd written a foe the Federation couldn't sensibly defeat, so some aspects were dropped entirely (dominion super-transporters, telekinetic Vorta), while others were ditched with throwaway lines in what can only be described as laziness (Polaron beams).

It's thus very hard to make a serious analysis of what the Dominion can and cannot do; the Dominion as presented early on was much more impressive than that presented later; they never try again to set off a supernova to wipe out the minefield for instance, when it almost certainly would succeed (the supernova was predicted to destroy shielded ships near the wormhole after all) even after they lost DS9.

[Borgholio]

there is also no evidence the Federation can, even holding confrences on it, slow down or otherwise devise a treatment for the Quickening either

Actually they did. Bashir developed a vaccine that prevents the disease from being passed on to newborns. But yeah they were unable to cure the disease for those already infected.

[Lord MJ]

As an aside, speaking in a purely out of universe context, this is obviously an issue with the DS9 writers, who originally wrote a far more powerful dominion. Multiple light year transporters ("Covenant"), guns that shoot through shields like they're not even there ("The Jem'hadar"), the ability to blow up stars ("By Inferno's Light"), telekinetic Vorta ("The Jem'Hadar"), beam through Federation shields ("Jem'Hadar" again) the ability to detect cloaked ships ("The Search?") and various other awesome stuff all appeared in the Dominion arsenal. By the end of the series all these things have basically been forgotten in favour of the dominion most people here remember, which is broadly speaking, equivalent to (or less advanced than) the Federation in most respects, and regularly carries idiot balls, not to mention the humilating incidence of the Section 31 virus plot.

Almost all of those Dominion capabilities were seen in Trek before, and easily replicated by the Feds. The blow up stars for example was based on compounds already known to the federation and for all we know the Bashir changeling replicated them onboard DS9, and the Defiant crew knew immediately after a few seconds that those compounds could bust a star. Twice on TNG we've seen transporters that could beam through shields including used by a Terrorist group on a planet that while warp capable lacked an interstellar infrastructure, detecting cloaked ships was replicated by the Cardassians. The Ferengi Bok used multi-light year transporters in TNG.

None of the Dominion capabilities show indicate a decisive advantage over the Federation in warfare. Especially the blowing up stars which if used during the war would've resulted in a MAD style war.

[FaxModem1]

They also couldn't blow up the minefield by blowing up the sun for two reasons. One, Deep Space Nine/Terok Nor was their forward base, and was a great place to have their operations based out of. Blowing that up just to remove a minefield would be...problematic for their war front.

Two, they had a treaty with Bajor, hence why there weren't Dominion troops occupying Bajor. The SOP for the Dominion seemed to be keeping treaties with powers while they eliminate their neighbors, then taking out those who have peace with them and inducting them into the fold. Blowing up someone they have a treaty with would only lead to the Tholians, Romulans or whoever to reconsider having peace with them.

[Tribble]

I think that the Feds were able to solve the "beaming through the shields" part fairly quickly. The Borg we're able to do that in "Q-Who" but by the time of BOBW the Federation had been able to counter it (which is why they had to knock down the E-D's shields before kidnapping Picard). My guess is that the transporters were a lot easier to adapt to than the poleram beams, on account of the fact that transporters can break down in a stiff breeze.

As to why the shields were initially ineffective and remained so for some time, my guess would be that whatever particles the federation was using in its shielding simply could not react with the Dominion weapons (for whatever technobabble reason), which is why adjusting the frequency had no effect. If I remember correctly, the Federation were eventually able to solve the problem by analysing the ship that Sisko and crew had captured prior to the war breaking out. This came as a surprise to the Dominion when they attacked DS9:

Damar: Sir, the station's shields are holding!
Weyoun: Impossible! Federation shields have always proven to be useless to our weapons!
Dukat: I found it wise never to underestimate the Federation, or Sisko's resourcefulness.

Perhaps the Federation and Romulans were able to adjust their cloak to make it more effective? Cloaking technology seems to have steadily improved overtime, to the point that by Star Trek Nemesis it was possible to have a more or less "perfect" cloak.

As to the telepathic Vorta... well you got me there. That character was annoying though, I liked Weyoun a lot better lol

EDIT: apparently Ronald Moore did come out with an explanation (for want of a better word) regarding the Vorta. Make of it what you will:

Ronald D. Moore stated: "Our internal rationale has been that Eris was given this ability for a specific purpose by the Founders (and maybe several other Vorta along with her) and that it is not a normal part of the Vorta "recipe" in the Dominion." (AOL chat, 1998)

.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Getting back to the Borg shields vs. phased polaron beams thing, I'm reminded of an inference Mike makes in his analysis of Insurrection on the main site. AQ shields in particular have a pattern of being bad at defeating weapons they've never seen before (the example was Riker's use of canisters of metreon gas for improvised mines). This may have contributed to their early ineffectiveness against phased polarons. It's only after several years involving many skirmishes with the Jem'Hadar, and one Vorta being an irredeemable moron and letting Sisko take a mostly intact JHAS back to the Federation (DS9: "The Ship"), that Starfleet devises a countermeasure (just in time for Second Deep Space 9 in "Call to Arms").

If you're referring to the metreon gas in Insurrection, that wasn't deployed in canisters like mines, they just sucked it up in the nacelles and then blew it out, then set fire to it. More like a flame thrower.

[StarSword]

If you're referring to the metreon gas in Insurrection, that wasn't deployed in canisters like mines, they just sucked it up in the nacelles and then blew it out, then set fire to it. More like a flame thrower.

Whatever; I've never actually watched Insurrection, just read its synopsis on Memory Alpha. The point is, it's an unorthodox form of attack that nobody's tried before, and so they don't have any defense against it. Likewise with the polaron beams, against which shields continued to be completely ineffective until that one Vorta with more boobs than brains had the bright idea to let the Feds take a disabled JHAS home with them.

[Elheru Aran]

A minor note: While I cannot find a picture of it right now other than silly STO stuff, I am fairly certain I saw at one point a picture of an assimilated Jem'hadar. It was a background character in VOY, I think.

Without hard evidence though there's no real proof that the Jemmies can be assimilated... but if they can be, the Borg would have that going in their favor at least. Huge mass of already malleable and powerful soldiers for drone cannon fodder? Bring it on.

[StarSword]

A minor note: While I cannot find a picture of it right now other than silly STO stuff, I am fairly certain I saw at one point a picture of an assimilated Jem'hadar. It was a background character in VOY, I think.

Nope. Dug through two wikis and I'm pretty sure that was STO.

Without hard evidence though there's no real proof that the Jemmies can be assimilated... but if they can be, the Borg would have that going in their favor at least. Huge mass of already malleable and powerful soldiers for drone cannon fodder? Bring it on.

I don't question the Borg being able to assimilate individual Jems; they've assimilated a lot of species if we take their claims at face value. I question how long an assimilated Jem will survive without ketracel-white. In other words, can the implants manufacture it or the assimilation cure the need?

[Elheru Aran]

No, this was definitely a photograph. Like I said though I haven't been able to dig it up. It was probably in something like "Star Trek Insider" or some such. Not a big deal though.

Is white something that the Jems are genetically programmed to need or is it a 'natural' need? Are Jem'hadar even a 'natural' race to start with or were they built from scratch by the Dominion?

(edit) I never watched much DS9 so that's why I'm asking... these questions seem relevant, though. If the white is a built-in requirement for them to live, then the Borg may have issues with that in some fashion; I don't know if their implants could simply replicate it, or if it's a un-replicable substance.

[Borgholio]

The Jems need the stuff to live. Without it, they go into withdrawl and die. They are fully engineered. They may have come from a base species like the Vorta but there are no natural Jem Hadar.

[Elheru Aran]

In that case then the question becomes whether ketracel-white can be replicated. If it can, then no problem for the Borg. If it can't, then they have to go through the bother of establishing production facilities for it if they assimilate any Jem. The alternative is simply killing them and potentially rejecting a fruitful source of drones.

Another somewhat more farfetched possibility is if they ended up growing their own Jem'hadar and re-engineering them to not need ketracel-white... but if they could grow their own drone material, why bother assimilating new species to start with other than for variety. So I don't really see that being a realistic possibility.

[Borgholio]

if they could grow their own drone material, why bother assimilating new species to start with other than for variety

Well actually that's how they used to be. When they were first introduced, they cloned drones as infants and grew them in maturation chambers. They only really assimilated technology. What they did to Picard was supposed to have been a once-in-awhile thing when they need extra tactical information.

Once First Contact came around, the Borg had changed into the bio-zombies we know today.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Even in First Contact it wasn't hugely out of place given the circumstances: just a few drones, no support. Conclusion: require immediate expansion of drone force.