You just ruined Hugh!!!!!!
Species 8472 "neutered"
- Thread starter Ghost
- Start date
It's ridiculous for anyone to think the Borg were ever unstoppable, even by lowly "corporeal" species. They'd play hell assimilating Annorax's weapon ship without getting erased, for example.
It wasn't "hastily-concocted", though. Admiral Janeway specifically states that it was a plan she had considered, but dismissed for being too risky. The way it was executed was changed on the spot to account for Captain Janeway's help in the matter, however.
That's actually my least favorite part of Endgame (and ep I quite liked overall)...and not just the part you isolated either.
Fair enough, but it's still depicted essentially as "Step 1, inject yourself with pathogen; Step 2, let the Borg Queen assimilate you; Step 3, watch the entire collective go boom."
Really, my main issue is that the thrust of most of the second half is Admiral Janeway's plan to get Voyager home via the transwarp hub, but then in a roughly 60-second discussion decide "Hey, why stop at that when we can wipe out the Borg in their entirety?" It almost seems like too harsh of an insult, but really it's not all that far removed from what happened in the previous year's Battlefield Earth, when the caveman protagonists decide late in the film that instead of just pushing John Travolta and his evil minions off of the planet, they'll wipe out the alien invaders' homeworld as well.
Species 8472 were supposed to appear in the finale of season five in Equinox as the main baddies that had originally attacked the Starfleet vessel but I believe the writers changed it at the last minute or so...
JB
JB
I would have loved to see more of 8472. In my headcanon "Bothby" was not able to convince the others to make peace and they attack the Alpha Quadrant
Wow, that makes a lot of sense. I used to get the two aliens mixed up a little(8472 and the aliens in Equinox)for some reason. I wonder why they changed it. Maybe because that would ruin the progress Janeway made with the 8472 aliens, and they might have wanted Ransom's crew's dark deeds to be the sole motivation.
Edit: Hello Sophie! We've missed you.
Edit: Hello Sophie! We've missed you.
That's very interesting.
My problem with the Borg doesn't start with Voyager. It starts with the introduction of a Queen in Next Gen. You kill a snake by chopping off its head. But what if it has no head but it can still poison you. There is something terrifing about an enemy that has no weak spot. No matter what damage you do, the rest just fill in the gaps. That's why, for me, the disembodied voice of the collective is so powerful. Add a head and now you have an easy target. It ruins them.
For that reason alone I love Scorpion. I also loved Unity because when the new collective was formed they were a united voice, not just one. Dark Frontier, Unimatrix Zero and Endgame broke that mold and returned the Borg to Next Gen's version which I did not like.
As for species 8472 and the topic at hand I loved them in Scorpion. It turned the tables on the Borg and showed the collective was not only fallible but incapable of truly adapting. Once the threat was neutralized, it was back to business as usual. They couldn't alter their original programming and learn. They made a potentially fatal mistake trying to assimilate species 8472 but didn't learn from their mistakes.
In addition the idea a single molecule could spread and consume you with such efficiency is terrifying. Then they went and had Chakotay lip locking with them. Well that went out the window awfully fast didn't it.
The funny thing is, if you think about it every major Borg story had some kind of Borg Representative.Q and Guinan were basically Borg Spokespeople in Q Who?, Locutus in BOBW, Hugh for I, Borg and Descent...
The idea of the Collective really doesn't work in practice.
It also doesn't make them very sustainable as an enemy that shows up more than once.
Ideally the 8472 should've been introduced in Q Who? engaging the Borg Cube in battle, so we'd know right off the bat that while the Borg are tough even they have their equals. Would've made it easier to believe they could lose later on.
Seven turned her nanoprobes to the light side, like when the ghostbusters turned the evil red slime into happy pink slime by singing to it.
Lol you have me there Prax.
They could have still had Species 8472 in the story and not affected In The Flesh! These could have been 8472 that had not heard the call for friendship with the humans or could have been a renegade bunch!
JB
I think Species 8472 are my favourite non-humanoid alien. I love that they owned the Borg and regret that they have not been further used in the franchise.
I'm not so sure. It means you have to be creative but the idea of pathogens sort of works. I also thought species 8472 was brilliant. Something the Borg can't assimilate. That was pretty creative.
I'd hardly say the idea of a faceless nearly indestructible enemy can't work.....
It doesn't if you have them be the main enemy of the series and have them lose again and again.
Of course, if the Borg hadn't been so stupidly overpowered in the first place it would've been more sustainable.
If I'd created them, I'd have The Borg be actually weaker than the Feds, but their strength is in their regenerative powers and how they keep coming back. So in a straight up battle against a few Borg ships there's not TOO much danger but if you don't do something about the infestation they grow in number to the point their numbers make up for lack of individual power.
Like the swarm ships from Star Trek Beyond. Powerful in number, weak on their own, and if you find a way to disrupt the Swarm synchronization they're no threat at all.
They needed some excuse to depower the Borg for Voyager, if they were going to be their main enemy for 7 years.
Part of what their strength is is in their numbers and that they're all expendible. They can sacrifice ship after ship, thousands and thousands of drones to achieve their goals.
And if every ship wasn't some massive juggernaut immune to weapons, they'd be more reusable.
Before modern medicine influenza was that juggernaut and yet we found a way around it.
