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Major Confusion About Motive of the Borg in First Contact

Doctor Cringelord

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Spoilers ahead



In the film Star Trek: First Contact, the Borg use time travel to go back to the mid 21st century to assimilate a pre-warp Human race, thus preventing the formation of the united federation of planets.

This bothered me because it seemed counter-productive to the entire purpose of the Borg. They were established in previous TNG episodes to be focused on assimilation of technology. What use would highly advanced Borg need for pre-warp technology from the 21st century? Even if they just went to get some new drones, it would be a lot easier to just assimilate new drones from any number of 24th century planets.

The Borg are technology farmers. It's established that they're pretty powerful, to the point just one of their vessels wipes out a fleet of over 40 Starfleet vessels in "The Best of Both Worlds". If they wanted to simply wipe out the federation, they could easily send a fleet of borg cubes and get the job done with ease. Yet they never do this. They usually send one ship towards Earth, likely as a distraction whilst other ships assimilate new drones and federation tech from more distant planets in the federation (meanwhile most of Starfleet would be unable to respond as they'd probably be on their way to fight the Borg at earth). The Borg then get a little bit of new technology, then Starfleet spends a few years developing better tech, and then a few years later the Borg invade and assimilate another planet or ship or two, and get to farm even better tech than the last time. To simply wipe out the federation at once defeats their purpose of farming for better technology. Assimilating a pre-warp earth also holds little reward for them, since it's also established in Trek that the Borg have in fact deemed some less advanced species unworthy of assimilation or not worth the bother. The Kazon in Voyager were referred to as such by Seven of Nine. Surely the Kazon of that show were still a fair bit more advanced than 21st century Earth, so why the mission back in time to assimilate an Earth that would be primitive by 24th century Borg standards?

Their entire plan in First Contact goes against their usual MO, when you think about it.
 

Siúil a Rúin

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This is a pretty nerdy situation, right here.
 

The Cat

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They wanted to break a billion in international box office sales.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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They wanted to break a billion in international box office sales.

They're trying to go back in time, to outdo The Voyage Home in ticket sales. We have to go back, stop them, repair the timeline.
 

Siúil a Rúin

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BTW I like Star Trek nerdiness. I even started the hashtag for Morn. No one else in the whole world did that except for me. I love him. :wubbie:

Anyway, I might have an answer for your question, which is a valid one. You have cracked through the logical inconsistencies of their plot line. It sort of came to me in a dream years ago. I dreamt I was on an alien planet that was all underwater and the aliens all looked kinda like octopi. They were having a theater presentation about alien encounters, and I asked, 'why do the aliens looked almost exactly like the octopi?" The one sitting next to me said, "It's simple. We are under budgetary constraints."
 

The Cat

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The time plot was not their initial plan, but rather the thing they do should their original plan fail. Whcih it did. the cube was getting spanked. So it sent out a contingency plan the time traveling sphere. we dont get what exactly we want, but we get a comparible consolation. Either Way the earth is not a problem. and maybe the federation as we know it, because after earth is asimilated, just spread asimilate the vulcans when they check yourwarm ship, et al. assimilate in the past and get a jump start on your new Alpha Quadrong Borg Stylez
 

Doctor Cringelord

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The time plot was not their initial plan, but rather the thing they do should their original plan fail. Whcih it did. the cube was getting spanked. So it sent out a contingency plan the time traveling sphere. we dont get what exactly we want, but we get a comparible consolation. Either Way the earth is not a problem. and maybe the federation as we know it, because after earth is asimilated, just spread asimilate the vulcans when they check yourwarm ship, et al. assimilate in the past and get a jump start on your new Alpha Quadrong Borg Stylez

It just seemed like they’d be better off waiting and farming even better tech from the federation a few years down the road.
 

The Cat

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It just seemed like they’d be better off waiting and farming even better tech from the federation a few years down the road.

Yeah but I'm pretty sure this was a pretty tempting risk reward scinario.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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It makes sense if they view the federation as a threat. Then it's possible that they would prefer neutralizing them via temporal shenanigans as opposed to assimilating them.

Now, regarding the Borg, I'm super curious as to what caused the cube in Picard to essentially fall apart. It seems to have something to do with that one Romulan ship, but what, exactly? I'm also curious about the other borg ships. Were they affected as well? If not, what are they up to?
 

Doctor Cringelord

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I’m not sure they viewed the federation as a serious threat until after voyager. Otherwise they’d have sent a big fleet of cubes against Earth like they did against species 8472 who they actually did consider a threat

I’m still convinced their main objective in the Alpha Quadrant was farming technology every few years.

I wonder if they viewed the Dominion as a threat. They had trans warp hubs all over so I’m sure they were at least aware of their existence

that is a confrontation I’d want to see

For that matter I wonder if they avoided the krenim because of their ability to alter timelines. Perhaps they didn’t send more attention to the alpha quadrant due to having their hands full with more dangerous delta quadrant civilizations
 

The Cat

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Ive never viewed the Borg as farmers More like a combination of long range researchers and salvagers. I feel like they were never suffiecently developed, as they were supposed to be the Reavers of Star Trek. I rather started to enjoy Voyager as we began to explore the Borg.
 
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