Star Trek Canon Database
Displaying 1 to 10 of 10 records.
Database started: 1999-07-27
Page generated: 2013-05-23
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" HANSON: The truth is... hell, we're not ready. We've known they were coming for over a year... we've thrown every resource we've got into this but still... RIKER: Then, you're convinced it is the Borg... ? ... SHELBY: My priority has been to develop some kind, any kind of defense strategy... RIKER: Obviously nothing we have now can stop them. SHELBY: We've been designing new weapons... but they're still on the drawing board. HANSON: We expected much more lead time. Your encounter with the Borg was over 7000 light years away... PICARD: If this is the Borg, it would indicate they have a source of power far superior to our own. |
Propulsion: they're taken completely by surprise when a Borg cube is able to travel 7000 light years in a little over one year. Picard's astonishment is reflected in his musings that any species capable of such great speed must be far more powerful than the Federation. Note that 7000 light years in one year is roughly 7000c average speed, and that the Millenium Falcon could make that trip in less than an hour easily. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" SHELBY: We know the Borg have no interest in power or political conquest. RIKER: They identify what's useful to them, then consume it. Or try to at least. |
Misc: I fail to see the distinction between a thirst for political conquest and the desire to assimilate neighbouring territories. Conquest is the assimilation of neighbouring territory. The Federation seems to draw some arbitrary distinction where none exists. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" SHELBY: There's one other recommendation I'd like to make, Commander. Separate the saucer section ... assign a skeleton crew to create a diversion. RIKER: We may need power from the saucer impulse engines. SHELBY: But it would give them more than one target to worry about. RIKER: No, it's too great a risk. ... PICARD: Yes, I entirely agree with you. It's not the time. But I am afraid the time may eventually come when greater risks are required. I'd like you to consider her plan as a fall-back position and make the necessary preparations. |
Design: Ted Collins notes that the Enterprise was designed with a detachable saucer section, which was intended to house the civilians. But now we discover that it contains enough of the ship's weapons and/or power sources to weaken the ship's combat posture when it's gone. In other words, they designed the ship in such a manner that the detachable civilian-populated section is actually necessary for maximum combat readiness! |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" SHELBY: There's one other recommendation I'd like to make, Commander. Separate the saucer section ... assign a skeleton crew to create a diversion. RIKER: We may need power from the saucer impulse engines. SHELBY: But it would give them more than one target to worry about. RIKER: No, it's too great a risk. ... PICARD: Yes, I entirely agree with you. It's not the time. But I am afraid the time may eventually come when greater risks are required. I'd like you to consider her plan as a fall-back position and make the necessary preparations. |
Power: Wayne Poe notes that the power output of the saucer section's feeble engines is important enough that the prospect of its loss is enough to give Riker pause. This disproves the common Trekkie claim that the warp core is millions of times more powerful than fusion reactors, since the saucer has nothing but a few fusion reactors for power. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" WESLEY: Approaching the Paulson Nebula, sir... PICARD: Drop to impulse... take us in, Ensign... WESLEY: The field is getting too dense, sir... PICARD: Steady... Mister Data, analysis of the nebula cloud... DATA: 82% dilithium hydroxyls, manganese, chromium. It should provide an effective screen against their sensors, sir... PICARD: Prepare to take us in, Mister Crusher. Now. ... RIKER: Shut down all active sensors, passive scanners only. Deflectors to minimum emissions. |
Sensors: they expect the Borg sensors to be blinded by the presence of certain elements in the Paulson Nebula, even though those elements are very diffuse (as they are in all nebulae). Of course, they have no way of knowing if it will be effective until they try it, but the fact that they expect it to work tells us that it would be effective on their own sensors. We also hear Riker ordering some basic stealth measures, involving the minimization of emissions. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" GEORDI: There's a 2% power drop, just for an instant... but it's system-wide. The phaser frequency spread was in a high narrow band. DATA: Conceivably, the ship's power distribution nodes are vulnerable to those frequencies. GEORDI: If we can generate a concentrated burst of energy with that same frequency distribution... I mean a lot more than anything our phasers or photon torpedos could provide... RIKER: How do we do that? WESLEY: The main deflector dish. GEORDI: It's the only component of the Enterprise designed to channel that much power at controlled frequencies. SHELBY: Unfortunately, there is one slight detail -- in the process, the blast completely destroys the Enterprise as well. RIKER: But if we could get far enough away... increase the deflector range... |
Naval Weapons: according to Geordi Laforge, the combined power of all the Enterprise's weaponry is much lower than the power output of its warp core. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" PICARD VO: Captain's log, supplemental. The Enterprise remains concealed in the dust cloud. And to my surprise, the Borg have maintained their position, waiting for us to come out of hiding. |
Sensors: the Borg sensors are blinded by the nebula, just as Data predicted. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" WORF: These phasers have been retuned. Each has a different frequency spanning the upper EM band. SHELBY: All right... a reminder... we only get to use each of these once, maybe twice before the Borg learn to adapt. Don't fire until you have to... |
Naval Weapons: phasers appear to have a narrow operating frequency band, which Borg shields can quickly adapt to. Lasers have an even narrower frequency, but "primitive" weapons such as slug-throwers, knives, flame-throwers, etc. do not. This is one example of the infamous military syndrome of over-optimization: people tend to design their weaponry and defenses in order to fight opponents who are very much like themselves, sometimes with the paradoxical result that they can be defeated by seemingly inferior or obsolete opponents. The two best examples of military over-optimization are the American military during the Cold War, and the European knights during the medieval era. The American military was designed solely to fight a massive conventional war against Warsaw Pact forces, and the European knights were designed solely to fight other knights. The Americans had great difficulty in the sort of peace-keeping, policing, and guerilla warfare situations in which they became embroiled, and it is widely agreed that the medieval European armies would have been no match for the regimented armies of the classical era, or the swarming Mongol hordes had they continued their march into Europe. |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" RIKER: I strongly recommend redeploying all available defenses to protect sector zero-zero-one, Admiral. HANSON: We're moving to intercept at Wolf 359. We'll make our stand there. How much longer can you maintain pursuit? |
Propulsion: the Federation can bring only 39 ships to Wolf 359 for its big stand, despite having more than four days' warning (based on the stardates; the episode begins on stardate 43994.1 and Picard's last log entry was on stardate 43998.5). Also note that they have no help from the Klingons. We could chalk this up to not having asked (doubtful) or propulsion limitations (more likely). |
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TNG Season 3, Ep# 74: "Best of Both Worlds Part 1" SHELBY: There's one other recommendation I'd like to make, Commander. Separate the saucer section ... assign a skeleton crew to create a diversion. RIKER: We may need power from the saucer impulse engines. SHELBY: But it would give them more than one target to worry about. RIKER: No, it's too great a risk. ... PICARD: Yes, I entirely agree with you. It's not the time. But I am afraid the time may eventually come when greater risks are required. I'd like you to consider her plan as a fall-back position and make the necessary preparations. |
Culture: according to Riker and Picard in this scene, the designers of the Galaxy class starship actually designed it in such a manner that it needed its civilian-inhabited saucer section for maximum combat effectiveness! The fact that the Galaxy-class starship is actually weaker without its saucer section seems to bear out speculation that the Federation deliberately puts its civilians in harm's way, possibly to ensure loyalty (if the crew fails, their families die). Mind you, this also creates certain conflicts of interest (when the ship takes damage, do you worry about your station or do you check on your family), but the Federation may have believed the former would outweigh the latter. Logan Gish points out that when viewed in this light, the Galaxy-class starship class seems more like a ruthless social engineering project than a legitimate military imperative. It is not surprising that its abysmal combat record caused a return to more traditional warships, particularly once the Dominion War started and the Federation had a legitimate external threat upon which to focus its citizens' attention (not to mention a dangerous enemy against which military efficiency became more important than social engineering experiments). Galaxy class ships were heavily deployed in the Dominion War without civilians on board (according to the non-canon DS9 TM, they didn't even have time to finish their accomodations), yet they still built and attached the saucer sections, thus further demonstrating that they are an integral part of the ship's combat role even though they normally house civilians. |
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