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Agreed, esp as often as not if there's no big overall plot to structure it; shows can fall off the rails of repeating themselves or going off the deep end of just totally random

I think the difference with LD compared to other Trek shows is that it didn't need to fill a 25 episode quota so there's very little in that is filler.
TNG, DS9, Enterprise, and even Voyager all had to fill the quota and had a lot of guff that lasted until the end even if in between that guff there were stellar episodes like Lower Decks, any of the Quark episodes, Cogenitor, or *insert Voyager episode here*.
Ok, maybe not Voyager, but the rest count.

 Overread wrote:
The thing is the Federation can't reach the Borg home systems for a very long time. They are a major threat (mostly because they organise and unite at a large level and the Borg clearly thrive when systems are in conflict with each other and they can pick them off one at a time); but they are also a far off major threat to the Borg.

Also if the Federation can kill one cube and have proven that they can do it; then sending them one at a time is just sacrificing cubes. It's basically the same kind of attack I'd expect from an RTS game AI - attack the same heavily defended point with the same volume of units every X period of time. Whilst the defender (human player) adds more defences and repairs each time.

All the AI is doing is wasting resources and not actually gaining any ground.




The single Borg cube attacks at the same, they don't really achieve very much that the Borg then capitalise on. Yes they smash up a fleet very heavily; but the Borg don't then send another Cube right after; instead the Federation is allowed long enough to repair, rearm and improve.

Again we see in Voyager that the Borg have many, many cubes. If the Federation is such a huge threat to them you'd think they'd send three or four or five. Actually destroy the heart of the Federation and even if those cubes are lost they'd have shattered the Federations powerbase and allies for generations.




Plus all that still doesn't explain why you'd also send your Queen. Ants do not attack an enemy swarm with the Queen in the front lines and if they did she'd be with the majority of the Swarm not a single splinter.

As the Borg are, they’re not really shown to advance on their own. By sending one Cube you get to learn what the targets have, and also inspire them to create counters to you that you can learn from the next time. Also, given their Queen has forth dimension escape measures, there’s not really a reason Not to have her go along since she’s not in any real danger.

 AduroT wrote:

 Overread wrote:
The thing is the Federation can't reach the Borg home systems for a very long time. They are a major threat (mostly because they organise and unite at a large level and the Borg clearly thrive when systems are in conflict with each other and they can pick them off one at a time); but they are also a far off major threat to the Borg.

Also if the Federation can kill one cube and have proven that they can do it; then sending them one at a time is just sacrificing cubes. It's basically the same kind of attack I'd expect from an RTS game AI - attack the same heavily defended point with the same volume of units every X period of time. Whilst the defender (human player) adds more defences and repairs each time.

All the AI is doing is wasting resources and not actually gaining any ground.




The single Borg cube attacks at the same, they don't really achieve very much that the Borg then capitalise on. Yes they smash up a fleet very heavily; but the Borg don't then send another Cube right after; instead the Federation is allowed long enough to repair, rearm and improve.

Again we see in Voyager that the Borg have many, many cubes. If the Federation is such a huge threat to them you'd think they'd send three or four or five. Actually destroy the heart of the Federation and even if those cubes are lost they'd have shattered the Federations powerbase and allies for generations.




Plus all that still doesn't explain why you'd also send your Queen. Ants do not attack an enemy swarm with the Queen in the front lines and if they did she'd be with the majority of the Swarm not a single splinter.

As the Borg are, they’re not really shown to advance on their own. By sending one Cube you get to learn what the targets have, and also inspire them to create counters to you that you can learn from the next time. Also, given their Queen has forth dimension escape measures, there’s not really a reason Not to have her go along since she’s not in any real danger.

But they'd already sent (and lost) multiple ships and at least one cube during the TNG series. This wasn't an exploratory Cube it was an invasion. Considering their losses thus far and the potential for Picard to have shared even more information (which he does and it results in the single cube blowing up); the logical thing would have been to send several cubes either in formation or to attack multiple parts of the Federation at once. Considering that the Federation isn't one world and one race but multiple; it would stand to reason that they could lose Earth and still remain quite functional.
I'd have expected cubes hitting Earth, Vulcan and probably few other key worlds all at once with trans-warp trickery.


Again the Borg seem to act really oddly with the Federation. We see them go nuts trying to kill Species 8472, but when the Federation is the next greatest threat they seem like they want to lose.

Yea I love LD but I'm fine with 5 seasons.

What's the scuttlebutt on the other Actual Trek show that doesn't go number one and number two on the source material, SNW, continuing?

Renewed for a fourth apparently.

 Gert wrote:
I think the difference with LD compared to other Trek shows is that it didn't need to fill a 25 episode quota so there's very little in that is filler.
TNG, DS9, Enterprise, and even Voyager all had to fill the quota and had a lot of guff that lasted until the end even if in between that guff there were stellar episodes like Lower Decks, any of the Quark episodes, Cogenitor, or *insert Voyager episode here*.
Ok, maybe not Voyager, but the rest count.

Hey now, there were some pretty good Voyager episodes too. Memorial, Jetrel, Living Witness are ones that come to mind for me (feel free to disagree of course).

 Overread wrote:

Again the Borg seem to act really oddly with the Federation. We see them go nuts trying to kill Species 8472, but when the Federation is the next greatest threat they seem like they want to lose.

for what we have seen, it does not look like the Federation is seen as a threat but rather a source

Voyager has established that the Borg use certain planets as research facilities, 1 cube invasion taking everything but the minimum and let the civilisation develop again until they reach a certain technological point and send a 1 cube invasion again

So the Borg figured out that they can find everything that makes the federation on earth so going there and "harvest" it with 1 cube (much more efficient to only assimilate 1 world were everything is combined than several different worlds for the same result) without ever intended to wipe out the Federation in the first run but sending in another cube years later to see what new stuff the Federation developed and this over and over again to drive their own development

they tried the same with Species 8472 but realised that they are on a different level and usual tactic of almost destroy them on a regular bases to get new technology does not work as they were able to fight back on a large scale
and here the Borg might have gotten the impression for the first time that the Federation is a threat because they could adept to something they could not
yet because they cannot make their own research as they lost the ability to come up with something new on the way, the Federation has become much more interesting as future source for technology (instead of destroying a possible threat)

Last Episode of Voyager than established that the Federation will develop the technology to do the same as 8472 and fight the Borg on a large scale without them being able to adept and in the long run will destroy them
Something the Queen learned the hard way so what does not make much sense here is to send again only one cube in First Contact as a large scale invasion to wipe them out should have been the way to go.
Except if this was already the last ditch effort because the collective was not able to operate any more.

By the time of First Contact, the Unicomplex was destroyed and the Unimatrix Zero rebellion should be still ongoing
so it makes sense assuming this was the plan of an isolated Queen trying to prevent the destruction that happened
just destroying "present" earth or the Federation was not enough as damage was already done, so removing the Federation from the timeline so the destruction and rebellion never happen and in addition add a warning about 8472 and/or the technology to fight them into the collective

Disco S5 E4

Genuinely somewhat impressed. Two crew mystery of time jumps, and clearly a way to integrate the new Commander with the crew, as he experiences some of what they’ve been through together.

Not a response to Disco as I haven't seen it, but in general I wish Trek had never gone for Back to the Future style time travel shenanigans.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Not a response to Disco as I haven't seen it, but in general I wish Trek had never gone for Back to the Future style time travel shenanigans.

Star Wars isn't science-fiction, it's space opera.

Star Trek isn't science-fiction, it's science-fantasy.

That's my take at least. I don't mean to be derogatory with that either, just better descriptive, at least in my own mind.

Meanwhile in Canada, Star Trek migrated from the streaming service that has HBO which I have to Paramount+ which I don't have so I'm going to wait until the whole season is done before picking up a one month subscription.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Not a response to Disco as I haven't seen it, but in general I wish Trek had never gone for Back to the Future style time travel shenanigans.

I'm very much the same. It was never really a thing beyond the odd episode and movie in the past and now its just run of the mill everyone is jumping around in time and it honestly makes for very messy stories in my view unless its built in from the very start and ST was never supposed to be about lots of timetravel. I know why producers like it; they can write whatever they want and use time to mess with it - got a series that isn't popular, just time-write it out; want to follow the metrics/whatever and do something that wouldn't work with the current series but you want to keep the ST name - timetravel it in.