So what exactly is the deal with the borg and transwarp?

[ZeNd]

One thing I never fully understood is the borg relationship to transwarp technology.

First off, was lore the one who gave the collective the same transwarp technology we see in voyager or did that technology not make it back to the collective and the borg assimilated another version of it?

When exactly did the borg get transwarp technology if not from lore? It's safe to assume they did not have it in Q who or Wolf 359. It's unclear if they had it by the time first contact came around. The only time they "for sure" had it and the technology was out of the experimental phase was Voyager.

Now that begs the question, since they have transwarp technology, why haven't they always conquered the entire known universe already? Why is the empire still only in the Delta quadrant? The gamma quadrant and the dominion should of been completely wiped out already. The federation should of been wiped out already since the borg queen has a infactuation with humans for some reason.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

They dont have Transwarp in the traditional sense, they use Transwarp CONDUITS. These conduits dont go everwhere in the galaxy therefore when going somewhere where the conduits dont exist they must utilise traditional warp.
They do have Borg cube sized sphere ships that create the conduits but it seems to be a lengthy process and from what we saw in Voyager in order to keep the conduits open they use some kind of ring devices throughout the conduits run.

It's my understanding that the Transwarp that Lore used was no different. They utilised Transwarp conduits already in existance or had the same technology that the Borg Spheres have to create the conduits.

Creating and stabilising Transwarp conduits seem to be a very lengthy process. In the final episode of Voyager we see that the Borg have been busy building a nexus with hundreds perhaps thousands of conduits being built throughout the Galaxy no doubt a plan to conquer the galaxy in the near future. The plan failed however thanks to Voyager.

 

[Timo]

"Transwarp" is probably just a generic name for all propulsion systems that are better than warp and don't yet have competing native names such as "slipstream" or "coaxial warp" or whatnot. After all, the Borg already have so many varieties of transwarp.

There are the corridors that are apparently generated by a "transwarp coil" aboard the generating vessel. Then there are the corridors that can be used by any vessel once opened by a suitable code. And then there are the fast lanes generated by the transwarp hubs. Perhaps each technology was assimilated from a different culture, or perhaps all stem from the same basic theory and are a hodgepodge of assimilated solutions.

It's safe to assume they did not have it in Q who or Wolf 359.

Why? The speed by which a Cube reached the vicinity of UFP between those two encounters was said to have taken Starfleet by surprise. This could be attributed to the use of transwarp, although we could also say that two completely different Cubes were seen in the two episodes and that the second one was already pretty close to the UFP.

We know that the readymade transwarp conduits have a series of entry/exit points. If none of those was close to Earth, a Cube would have to drop out and go the rest of the way in normal space using a fast form of ordinary warp drive. Probably it takes some effort to establish a new entry/exit point, and perhaps it has to be done from the realspace side of things, necessitating the putter-puttering of a Cube to that location in normal space at ordinary warp.

As for the question of why the Borg haven't conquered the galaxy already, I'd argue they have. They are already everywhere, and probably have been for the past hundred thousand years, much like Q and Guinan claim. They just don't see a reason to assimilate primitive planets or cultures - they much rather wait until those ripen to a state of technological prowess, and then they move in. Until that moment, they prefer stealthy skulking, as evidenced in "Dark Frontier".

As for wiping out the humans or the UFP, this doesn't seem to be a Borg goal. The Queen threatens 7 of 9 with it a couple of times, but that alone should be reason enough to disbelieve in such an objective! Probably the Borg just wait for the UFP to ripen, and they prod the humans along by an occasional attack, just like they "cultivated" the unfortunate planet in "Child's Play".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

As for wiping out the humans or the UFP, this doesn't seem to be a Borg goal. The Queen threatens 7 of 9 with it a couple of times, but that alone should be reason enough to disbelieve in such an objective! Probably the Borg just wait for the UFP to ripen, and they prod the humans along by an occasional attack, just like they "cultivated" the unfortunate planet in "Child's Play".

Timo Saloniemi

I think going back in time to the period of first contact to prevent the formation of the UFP blows that hypothesis out of the water. The fact the Queen herself was on the cube that attacked Earth means her aim was to conquer Earth and the Federation. If she didn't want to destroy Earth she would have took her Sphere and gone home not gone through time.

 

[Deks]

As for wiping out the humans or the UFP, this doesn't seem to be a Borg goal. The Queen threatens 7 of 9 with it a couple of times, but that alone should be reason enough to disbelieve in such an objective! Probably the Borg just wait for the UFP to ripen, and they prod the humans along by an occasional attack, just like they "cultivated" the unfortunate planet in "Child's Play".

Timo Saloniemi

I think going back in time to the period of first contact to prevent the formation of the UFP blows that hypothesis out of the water. The fact the Queen herself was on the cube that attacked Earth means her aim was to conquer Earth and the Federation. If she didn't want to destroy Earth she would have took her Sphere and gone home not gone through time.

Not necessarily.
It could have been another test.
From the queens perspective, the possibility of being successful at assimilating Earth was there ... but also so was the possibility of SF interfering.
She could have instigated these events in order to slightly change history so SF would be more advanced by the time they met them again.

 

[ZeNd]

Hmmm, I must have misunderstood the transwarp technology or at least the version that the Borg has. I thought they could create transwarp corridors at will in the same way the Voth could or that species that tricked voyager into using their slipstream ship. Given that the borg assimlated their species, why didn't they develop the technology slipstream technlogy to create slipstream corridors at will? It seemed from Timless that voyager went from the deltra quadrant to the beta quadrant in a matter of minutues.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

She could have instigated these events in order to slightly change history so SF would be more advanced by the time they met them again.

Yes shooting green bolts of energy down on Zefram Cochrane and his warp ship and the fact that when the Ent-E was in teh Vortex they saw an assimilated Earth backs up that theory.

NOT!

 

[Timo]

I'd say it's the end result that settles the matter. The Borg were capable of time travel - so they could have kept on doing it until they got it right. Since things haven't changed for our heroes after the ST:FC iteration, we must therefore conclude that the Borg got exactly what they wanted.

Which in this case is a technologically advanced and thus delicious UFP. Frankly, it's much easier to believe that Cochrane invented warp technology because the Borg guided a 24th century starship engineer to help him than because he was such a resourceful genius himself...

Really, if the Borg wanted Cochrane dead, they would have had him dead. If they wanted to prevent him from launching, they could have done that with the E-E weaponry before he did launch. I'd say the evident "ineptness" was all for show, to fool our heroes into thinking they weren't doing the Collective's bidding.

As for "the Queen herself being present", I'd not think that a biggie. She's probably present on more or less every ship all the time, as we know that she can incarnate and reincarnate at will (and can choose from at least two bodies to wear, which she alternately does during the course of VOY).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[All Seeing Eye]

I'd say it's the end result that settles the matter. The Borg were capable of time travel - so they could have kept on doing it until they got it right. Since things haven't changed for our heroes after the ST:FC iteration, we must therefore conclude that the Borg got exactly what they wanted.

Seriously Timo, you do make a lot of excellent points but then on occasion you say anything just to try and win a point and that's what makes me cringe. The minute the sphere went back in time the connection to the collective would have been severed in the 24th century, no doubt another Queen activated as a replacement but as far as the collective was concerned the old Queen was gone, entered a vortex never to be seen again or perhaps indeed they wern't aware the Queen had gone through time. So to the collective the attack on Earth failed again so that's when they had to make a new plan, and the new plan was shown in Voyager to 7of9 about firing nanoprobes into Earths atmosphere. The Borg do have time travel capability but that doesn't mean they're going to continue to use it all the time, they're not stupid and they know tampering with time travel all the time could do more damage to the collective than good. To the collective time travel failed so they'd adapt and find a new method to defeat Earth.

Really, if the Borg wanted Cochrane dead, they would have had him dead. If they wanted to prevent him from launching, they could have done that with the E-E weaponry before he did launch.

Did you watch the movie? the Queen didn't have access to weapons on the Ent-E until the end when Data unlocked them and they DID fire on the warp ship.

 

[Timo]

Failure of a time travel attempt would IMHO only be grounds for trying again. What would it cost? Nothing, really - they could even use the same timeship again, as they'd know of the failure before they launched the original mission (in one timeline anyway). They'd certainly keep doing it until the world was to their liking, or until something bad happened. And AFAWK, nothing bad happened to the Borg in the iteration of ST:FC that we saw.

Did you watch the movie? the Queen didn't have access to weapons on the Ent-E until the end when Data unlocked them and they DID fire on the warp ship.

Good point. But if the Borg really wanted Cochrane dead, they could just have rammed Montana. Picard may have locked out navigation, but deorbiting should have been something the Borg could have achieved without fine control over navigation.

More generally, we have seen that the Borg are capable of assimilating Federation-level cultures. They haven't assimilated the UFP, which means they don't want to. This may be either by cunning design, or because they are short of resources and have other fish to fry before they get to the UFP. Whatever the reason, the attacks in "BoBW" and ST:FC simply aren't credible assimilation runs, not when in VOY we know that such runs are normally performed with much more force.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

First Contact would have been a hell of a more interesting movie if written from the perspective Timo's giving here.

 

[Timo]

One wonders... Seven of Nine does acknowledge the events of the movie afterwards, and her (i.e. the writers') take on it is rather curiously positive:

Seven: "The Borg once travelled back in time to stop Zefram Cochrane from breaking the warp barrier. They succeeded, but that in turn led the starship Enterprise to intervene. They assisted Cochrane with the flight the Borg was trying to prevent. Causal loop complete."
Timecop: "So, in a way, the Federation owes its existence to the Borg."
Seven: "You're welcome."

Given that Seven isn't all that prone to sarcasm, we might do well to take her on her word here... Especially concerning the closing comment.

It doesn't logically follow from Seven's story that the UFP would be in debt to the Borg. The story merely paints the Borg as a temporary/temporal nuisance that was erased, leaving things as they were. But timecop Ducane may have read the sort of history books I would prefer to write, and would recognize that the Borg indeed were there to help the UFP, not to hinder it.

Now, I may be reading too much into "Relativity", just like into ST:FC. But there may also be some writer intent there that acknowledges the plot bumps of ST:FC in the same way I prefer to do...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Search4]

We're a bit off topic from Transwarp, but...

From the Borg perspective, the UFP is essentially not a threat. In all probability it won't attack first, and its too far away to be important militarily.

So why keep the UFP around (or more generally why keep other warp-aware, technologically developing species around)? Either because they are not worth bothering with (the Borg seem to seek 'perfection' not expansion), or because its helpful to have a set of alien races perform your R&D for you.

I've always thought it was mighty convenient, from the Borg perspective, how the UFP dealt with V'ger... the giant amoeba... the Whale-song probe... the Kelvins from Andromeda... with little or no Borg-required intervention.

Perhaps that's the UFP's fate - to play "Belgium" in larger conflicts. Hence keep them around would be a long-term bet that the UFP's inquisitiveness, technology and R&D capability would be useful.

After all, i suspect the Organians, Melkotians, etc. are not protecting the Borg!

 

[CTM]

An odd thought comes to mind: The Borg as the Preservers? Or what the Preservers became?

 

[Plecostomus]

No, the Borg are the Anti-Preservers. They are what the Preservers were preserving cultures from.

 

[Search4]

Actually, IIRC, the Preservers only seemed to worry about human (and one Vulcan example in TNG) populations. I don't recall a lot of preserved Gorns running around. In any event, while our heroes interpolated that something was "preserving" humans, its not clear to me that we understood their true motivations or purpose.

Does anyone recall that Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man"?

 

[Praetor]

I've recently developed a pet theory that the Iconians (who might have also been one or more of the many ancient races mentioned on TOS) evolved into the Borg. That would explain the gateway technology they used, only the Borg use ship-sized versions that don't actually need a physical gate. Hell, they might have built the Doomsday Machine to stop the Borg when they realized they'd been overcome.

Regarding transwarp, I'd say they've had it before the Federation encountered them.