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This is the one where the Borg show up in Enterprise and Phlox and Reed defeat them in a few hours.

Review

Aak! Dangling participle!

Anyway, having spent a hundred years in the arctic, they find the wreckage of the sphere and a Borg drone just inches under ice.

I remember arguing with E fans way back about how the Borg not giving up their name rationalises nothing. Googling albino dominatrixes should reveal all.

To be fair, on them not being scavenged...

I'd think that borg meat is probably poisonous. Or at least seriously unhealthy. Those metal veins do not look like tasty eating. I'd think the local arctic foxes would take a little nibble and think 'oh hell no, this is vile.'

I just got the Enterprise series and the draw of a Borg appearance kinda spurred my on to watch as much as possible. I have watched s1 to the end of s2 in a matter of 3 days and was left rather disappointed. The overall premise was pretty good but the amount of obvious writer acts of plot really irritated me.

The Nanotech stuff I was willing to buy until that scene where the Drones transform entire panels in seconds. I was honestly gobsmacked by how stupid it looked and how retarded the people have to be to pull that shit. Pretty much ruined the rest of the episode for me because it telegraphed the fact this was going to be a one-shot Borg cameo thus requiring the steroid nanotech.The lazyiness of the attempt at continuity by simply having the Borg not state their name equally drew my ire.

The Borg invasion plot was rather weak as well. They storm around the ship (Which is a bit of an improvement from the Zombie shuffle shit but this episode also had drones moving much faster earlier in the episode without explanation) and dont really do anything until the plot whisks them back to the ship so they can all convieniently die rather than have the Drones completely fuck up the Enterprise when they all stick their steroid nanotech into the walls. Instead the Drones adapt while the ones on the home ship are getting put down by the same weapons... wtf ?
Did Reed only modify two weapons and leave the security teams stuck with the completely useless weapons ?
Why the fucking hell does a drone need to waste it's time strangling Reed when it can use it's 'enhanced strength' to mash his head against the wall or... err... use those super fucking nanobots to assimilate him like the Borg claim they will ?
Kinda redundant to say your going to assimilate them and NOT actually assimilate anything.

Isn't also stupid for the Borg to head off into space? The arctic drones were from a mission too assimilate earth in the past, so why not try to do just that? Is makes just as much sense to assimilate an isolated town as it does to try to hide in deep space. By the time anyone noticed anything was wrong, they would be too strong to stop anyways. Also, what is the science team doing with a warp capable transport in the first place?

skies wrote:Also, what is the science team doing with a warp capable transport in the first place?

As pure speculation: Maybe the warp drive is used to increase the transport capacity by using mass-lightening (sp?) and they needed it to transport their equipment. I don't remember any information about the time they spent there but if they arrived with a smaller transport they might have chosen the one with warp drive to transport the bigger debris without having to cut it into smaller pieces.

Or whoever was in charge might have chosen a standardized model for all science teams to decrease maintenance costs of the fleet.

I don't remember any given hints in the episode (beyond it being necessary to reach the NX-01).

Might the Borg not have salvaged a warp drive off the crashed sphere?

Did I detect an Angry Video Game Nerd reference?

Swindle1984 wrote:Did I detect an Angry Video Game Nerd reference?

Yes, he asks "What Would James Rolfe Do?" during the forward to the review. Although next time you could actually tell us what the reference is so that I don't have to go digging through it again for 15 minutes just so I can post it here and then berate you in some comedic fashion. Geez!

Junghalli wrote:Might the Borg not have salvaged a warp drive off the crashed sphere?

They did use parts of the sphere to modify the existing warp drive.

But there is a scene where Tucker is surprised to hear that the ship travels at warp 3.9 and he says that its maximum warp is 1.4.
(see second paragraph in Act 2: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Regener ... e)#Act_Two)

skies wrote:Isn't also stupid for the Borg to head off into space? The arctic drones were from a mission too assimilate earth in the past, so why not try to do just that?

No, the whole "Borg crash on planet and try to assimilate everyone" seems to be a SDN brainbug.

The Borg in this example assimilated a few people and scavenged surrounding parts of their ship and left the area.

There was also that Voyager episode where Seven of Nine and a few of her fellow Borg crashed on a planet. They didn't try assimilating the place either; they assembled a distress becon and awaited pickup.

The only time (IIRC) we've seen the Borg attack a planet was in that episode "Dark Frontier", where the Borg destroyed the opposing enemy fleet and subjugated the planetary population with orbital supremacy.

Hence the whole "har har Borg get pwned in ground tactics!" seems like a very transparent effort to analyse Borg drones in the least favorable light possible. Borg drones aren't actually soldiers, they're more like a immune system response of ships.

It's like analysing a car's effectiveness as a boat. You're not doing it right.

Is makes just as much sense to assimilate an isolated town as it does to try to hide in deep space.

Except they weren't hiding, they had plotted a course back to their own space. It wouldn't be surprising if they had been aiming for one of their transwarp conduits either, assuming they existed nearby in this time.

By the time anyone noticed anything was wrong, they would be too strong to stop anyways.

Everyone seems well aware that Borg drones would be relatively shitty at ground combat tactics, and thus it makes sense that when forced onto a planetary surface without orbital support, drones seek the most immediate means to leave.

No video this week?

Glom wrote:No video this week?

Check YouTube. This week's video is Eye of the Needle.

Ah the torment of Tantulus. The wifi in this hotel isn't up to reliably watching Youtube. I'll have to wait until I'm back on the platform tomorrow.

Hence the whole "har har Borg get pwned in ground tactics!" seems like a very transparent effort to analyse Borg drones in the least favorable light possible. Borg drones aren't actually soldiers, they're more like a immune system response of ships.

Except they DO get fucked in ground tactics. Just like Federation troops do. You can't claim that the Federation has shitty ground tactics by arguing that the troops they land aren't really soldiers, they're ship's crew.

It's like analysing a car's effectiveness as a boat. You're not doing it right.

Just felt like being a dick.

Swindle1984 wrote:

Hence the whole "har har Borg get pwned in ground tactics!" seems like a very transparent effort to analyse Borg drones in the least favorable light possible. Borg drones aren't actually soldiers, they're more like a immune system response of ships.

Except they DO get fucked in ground tactics. Just like Federation troops do.

My point is we've never seen Borg drones deployed as ground troops. On the only two occasions we've seen drones forced onto a planet's surface, they pack up and leave as quickly as possible. On the one occasion we see a full scale assualt on a planetary target, they subjugate it from orbit. None of this "marching army of dumbass zombies" a lot of people like to laughing claim would happen.

The only instance we've seen anything resembling ground combat is when the Borg beamed over to the Enterprise E in "First Contact"; a very close quarters enviroment against a pathetic Starfleet force, which the Borg promptly kicked the shit out of, overrun and forced to flee the ship. They only lost on the account of one very unique individual, an android.

You can't claim that the Federation has shitty ground tactics by arguing that the troops they land aren't really soldiers, they're ship's crew.

Why not? I'd expect better tactics from real soldiers.

That's like saying anyone who tries to be an artist by drawing shitty stickman figures would correctly be labelled an 'artist' as opposed to "failed attempt to be one".

It's like analysing a car's effectiveness as a boat. You're not doing it right.

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Just felt like being a dick.

Up yours.

Dude, we didn't invent that "Borg drones land on planet, assimilate entire world" bullshit. We responded to it. It was Trekkie Borg fanboys who came up with it.

Singular Intellect wrote:
My point is we've never seen Borg drones deployed as ground troops. On the only two occasions we've seen drones forced onto a planet's surface, they pack up and leave as quickly as possible. On the one occasion we see a full scale assualt on a planetary target, they subjugate it from orbit. None of this "marching army of dumbass zombies" a lot of people like to laughing claim would happen.

The only instance we've seen anything resembling ground combat is when the Borg beamed over to the Enterprise E in "First Contact"; a very close quarters enviroment against a pathetic Starfleet force, which the Borg promptly kicked the shit out of, overrun and forced to flee the ship. They only lost on the account of one very unique individual, an android.

As Wong pointed out, we didn't start that bullshit, the Trekkies did. We just pointed out how pathetic an army they'd make.

Why not? I'd expect better tactics from real soldiers.

That's like saying anyone who tries to be an artist by drawing shitty stickman figures would correctly be labelled an 'artist' as opposed to "failed attempt to be one".

If you had brains that wouldn't rattle around inside a gnat's skull, you could have figured out I made a typo, dumbass.

Federation "troops" are shitty ground forces and not real soldiers.

Up yours.

I can post a few more. I can even post a car that's an airplane.

Darth Wong wrote:Dude, we didn't invent that "Borg drones land on planet, assimilate entire world" bullshit. We responded to it. It was Trekkie Borg fanboys who came up with it.

In sofar as we can try to draw consistency from the canon, we can say that the drones picking up and running was consistent with established behaviour. As Guinan said in 'QWho', when they come, they come in force. They don't just assimilate out of instinct, they assimilate as a decision based on their objectives and their situation. The situation in this episode was hardly the time or place for that. They only assimilated the ship because they needed it, just like the drones about E-E in ST:FC assimilated because they needed the ship.

Chuck, I just wanted to write and say I thank you for creating everything you have. I hadn’t really checked on Stardestroyer.net since you finished Unity (although had to come back with the new Star Trek), but I have been keeping up with your site and love everything you have done.

Reading your reviews and watching the videos has been great, particularly while I was student teaching earlier this year. I don’t know what it was about them, but they were just what I wanted to watch after some of the harder days. Thank you.

P.S. Since I doubt it’s where you get the most comments, I just wanted to say I particularly loved the Neverending Story 2 commentary. I watched the movie a lot when I was about 7. While I liked the movie quite a bit at the time, I remember noticing several of the plot holes you pointed out even then.

Star Empire wrote:Chuck, I just wanted to write and say I thank you for creating everything you have. I hadn’t really checked on Stardestroyer.net since you finished Unity (although had to come back with the new Star Trek), but I have been keeping up with your site and love everything you have done.

Reading your reviews and watching the videos has been great, particularly while I was student teaching earlier this year. I don’t know what it was about them, but they were just what I wanted to watch after some of the harder days. Thank you.

P.S. Since I doubt it’s where you get the most comments, I just wanted to say I particularly loved the Neverending Story 2 commentary. I watched the movie a lot when I was about 7. While I liked the movie quite a bit at the time, I remember noticing several of the plot holes you pointed out even then.

Thanks, glad you liked it. Hope you stick around; I don't put in anywhere near as much time as I'd like here, but SD.net is a fun place to be.

Swindle1984 wrote:

Up yours.

I can post a few more. I can even post a car that's an airplane.

Go right ahead. Posting a few examples of highly specialized or modified vehicles doesn't prove anything. Sure you can make a car into a boat but it will never make a very good boat nor will it be, usually, a very good car.