I really like your idea of the better path of the shield creation, and it always bugged me that Voyager would discover something then forget about it the next episode - See Isokonetic Canon. However unless I am mistaken, wasn’t the reason Voyage was able to damage the Tactical Cube was due to the improved torpedo design future Janeway brought back, not just the Ablative Armor? Love your videos!
No, they developed the ability for tactical cubes to join up to deal with the Oberth class. You don't mess around when dealing with the Oberth. It's like the noisy cricket. It's so weak there's got to be something hidden up it's sleeves.
Of course, the tactical cube has one weakness, a small thermal exhaust port which is just wide enough to allow a single photon torpedo. Trouble is, it takes Jedi-like reflexes to get it in there, and no one on Voyager is Force-sensitive... 😆
As a major Voyager fan, one of the things I hate the most is when somebody suggests it should've been different (usually because they want it to be Battlestar Galactica). It's not that I don't see the occasional missed potential, but generally I enjoy the show a lot for what it is, and get frustrated when people are hung up with their vision of what could have been instead of what's there. ...All of that said, DANG is this a major exception; I *really* want to see this version of Voyager now. It's a really solid idea, and I'm disappointed we never got to see it executed.
I have to agree here, awesome plotting, let me know if you ever want to collaborate on some crazy sci Fi, just great thinking. That said hindsight is 20/20 and the problems that lead to lazy writing often starts in the production company pushing for greater speed and more “bad assery” in plots. It has destroyed many an amazing show.
Have to agree. Voyager hat much wasted potential, but it was different then Galactica for the better. DOn't get it wrong, I like both, but they are different settings and have a different tone. The writers could have done more by just giving Voyager stuff and never let them use it in favor of a better, later opportunity (bot in and out of universe) then doing it the otehr way around and suddenly have voyager do stuff they shouldn't
How do you know a tactical cube is superior to a regular cube? To me on screen it looked smaller than a cube. I always assumed a cube was actually a strategic cube. Something you send to assimilate a civilization and a tactical cube is smaller and used for smaller engagements where precision is needed. We seen voyager beat spheres, scout ships and a tactical cube. Did we ever see voyager beat a regular cube in a 'fair fight'? Or is possible the writers don't know what tactical and strategic means and just thought tactical was a cool word.
@RagDollRat I agree, that's why it is sad that Starfleet doesn't seem to do anything with the advancements Voyager brought back...it's like the WW2-USA gets handed a modern Aircraft-Carrier (and people who can tell them how the technology works and can be made!), but decides: Nah, we'd rather lose more people in combat than we have to!
I mean... they literally get deus ex machina super plot armor in the finale... God Voyager was awful.... And yet, like many others, I loved it and still do want to like it, it just really *really* doesn't hold up under scrutiny, and all because the people who made it were too cowardly and unambitious.
I like the idea of the tactical cube for the Borg but I'll agree that it should have been handled better. To me the idea of multiple ships combining together to make bigger and stronger one fits well with the Borg. What if all the Borg ships we had already seen where just self sustaining modules that could combine to do what ever the collective needs.
It's so corny that I like the idea better than armor plated cube. Still, Lore Reloaded is still completely right; Voyager, even when upgrade, still shouldn't be fighting a cube ever for the same reason you don't fight Jason Vorhees ever. It doesn't matter how heavily armed you are, he's INVINCIBLE. That's what makes horror villains so interesting. They're alien and way stronger than you. If they had to write in a Tactical cube in the show, it should have been about luring a Tactical cube towards a specific location with (fake) Omega molecule readings or something like that.
It is really over powered in Armada 2. You basically have warp capable star bases. Just be prepared for a long wait if you ever need to restock on drones as it takes some time even with multiple bases placed around the ship yard beaming crew on.
I love the idea of the Borg seeing a old radio wave transmission of Captain Planet, freaken out thinking it was real and heading to the Federation to assimilate him. "We are the Borg, surrender Captain Planet to us, his powers of ecological rectification will be added to our own culture. Resistance is futile".
That's a great overall solution, and I have to agree that the fact that the real Voyager writers couldn't have come up with SOMETHING to rid the plot holes is something of an embarrassmanet.
I would love to be a fly on the wall at some of the writer/producer meetings, I suspect that there may well have been ideas floated such as the Lore Master's suggestion (well, perhaps none quite as tidy, but something)...but I also suspect that the producers were like "Nah, that will require the viewer to think and remember - I can't remember the last few episodes so sod it". That might also explain the constant, irritating as hell, lazy - here be this tech, we can use it once, woohoo X thousand LY's closer to home - that plagued every god damned season :( Kes's 'final' gift, quantum slipstream, that odd catapult thingy, random wormhole in the void, trans-warp coil - and more that I've no doubt forgotten because they were over used.
"Three of Seventeen...Tertiary Facilitator of Construction Node Twelve...we desire you to build a Tactical Cube. It's dimensions will be 6561.67979002 cubits by 6561.67979002 cubits by 6561.67979002 cubits..."
I'm not sure if this was a fair comparison. The determining factor with Borg combat seems to be information, when they battle Federation ships. * With The ship that won the battle at Wolf 359, Starfleet was decimated. But with some information from Locutus, they were able to take it out remotely. * With the ship that attacked in First Contact, it was basically unstoppable. Entire ships were destroyed in single shots. But with a little information that Picard retained, they were able to destroy it in a minute. * Archer's crew was able to destroy the vessel of Borg separated from the collective by using insider information about the assimilated and modified vessel. Now that's other examples. In every post-7-of-9 encounter with the Borg, with the exception of her rescue in Dark Frontier, Voyager had 7 of 9, and sometimes other former Borg with them, and thus insider information. They scavenged Borg debris a few times, so they had a good idea of what the Borg use for hulls. They encountered the Borg more times than the rest of Starfleet combined, survived and gathered information each time. They also had the Hansen diaries, and thus a lot of information Starfleet wouldn't normally have. This meant that Voyager's crew had a bunch of information on the Borg. If this doesn't seem like enough, remember: Future Janeway literally wrote the book on the Borg and by that time, anti-Borg technology was widespread and effective, so these encounters probably were helpful. The pattern indicates that insider information about the Borg is enough to take an unstoppable force of destruction, and turn it into something you can destroy with a few ships. If we extrapolate that, with the information Voyager had gathered, taking on the Borg with one ship and having a tie would actually be conceivable.
You do have a good point. But the whole big deal about the Borg is that they can’t be stopped... When the writers made Voyager’s crusade against the Borg look ridiculously easy it undermined everything that the Borg were originally created to be.
There is opne thing about using information to do a black ops onboard a cube. It is something different to suddenly destroy a cube alone when your weapons should have near to no effect.
This video brings me back to a theory I have about how the Borg got so screwed up in Voyager. The production for Voyager started around the same time as that of the First Contact movie. The initial screenplays for that movie featured a huge fleet of Borg cubes taking on a Federation fleet and the Federation fleet doing quite well, including the newer "post Wolf-359" ships being able to individually wipe out multiple cubes. The idea was that the Federation's capabilities against the Borg had grown by huge margins such that newer capitol ships are much more than a match for a single cube or even a couple of cubes instead of the more muted advancements indicating that a fleet of 40 ships is now more or less a match for a cube instead of mere cannon fodder. Of course Paramount never wants to give a ST show or movie a good budget so all of that got removed because it would have cost too much to create the CGI. I wonder if one of the key premises with the Voyager series was the assumption that these advancements against the Borg happened and when the final draft of the movie was changed, the show's writers didn't change their ideas to reflect it, possibly judging that it would be too unbelievable that the Voyager could last more than a few months alone in the Delta quadrant if it is filled with tens of thousands of Borg ships that can wipe it out in a matter of minutes, leading to one ST show that appears to be so outside of previous canon when it comes to the Borg. Oh and also, it would have helped the show if the crew of the Voyager could have got the Isokinetic Cannon operational and utilized it as their "Borg-wrecker" for the rest of the duration of the series, since it makes sense that a super powerful kinetic energy weapon would be especially effective against utterly gigantic, slab sided vessels like Borg cubes, since the impact angle against the cube's sides or shields would be at a 90 degree angle or something close to that, while smaller and more angular ships would presumably have more angular shields which which can deflect kinetic projectiles much, much more effectively because the impacts are at oblique angles. To me that was one of the big missed opportunities of the show, they had a weapon that could have equalized things enough that it's not outright silly to see the Voyager constantly evade the Borg and it's a weapon that to be honest, would be quite difficult for the Borg to adapt to given the size and shape of their vessels.
Also, even the Isokinetic cannon can get nerfed like the modified deflector dish beam. It's very powerful, but has all kinds of drawbacks so they can't use it in normal combat situations.
I heard it has 47 variants of queen's body with various attachments and even secret sex chamber where she whips captured starfleet officers with thick electrical cable.
Star Trek Armada Fleet operations runs on Windows 10 and there is a mod that allows to play it like the original except you can group twice as many ships in a fleet.
@RagDollRat A simple future cloaking device could not be added to voyager...Do you really think she was anywhere close to be able to go 1v1 against anything bigger than a sphere..during a good day?
The reason for the Borg cube being so successful in the wolf battle, was not only because of its advantages, but because of Picard being assimilated, since he had extensive knowledge of the fleets classified information, like weaknesses and the frequency of their shields.
I always have a problem with scale when it comes to Borg Cubes. I assumed most cubes we see are actually Fusion Cubes (8 cubes together), and that Tactical Cube was just a single cube.
you could even end the series with an epic fight between a post-dominion war federation fleet and that cube, maybe even add a line or two at the end about how the Borg wont be able to treat the federation so lightly now that they've managed to beat their most powerful warship hell, that would even tie in nicely with the battles of sector 001 and wolf 359, showing the evolution of a federation who's fleet was nothing more than a waste of time to a Cube, to a fleet that could actually stand it's ground against a cube, to a fleet that could go toe to toe with their strongest warship and actually win
Adn the Borg be like" The entity known as Federation has developed into a serious thread. Their motives are mostly non-agressive. We will focus on other parts first. We will get closer to perfection and return" And then they show up 300 years later, upgraded, with control of half the gamma quadrant for a final, all ending showdown in history.
While some of your videos do leave me scratching my head as to where you're coming from, and I am a trekkie, I applaud you on this one sir. The "rewrite" option you offered on the story arc beginning with Scorpion would have made FAR more sense and filled in quite a few plot holes. Kudos
This is a great example of how good writing could be. This is your best yet and a big reason i love your channel. Its a shame CBS wants to put fans down and deny anything they put out. When if they would simply embrace the fans and bring fan development into the franchise. It has the potential of becoming the biggest thing to ever hit the big screens and TV. Not to mention what it could mean financially but no they would have to give up some of their control. God forbid that would ever happen.
That's the exact opposite of what would happen. 'Fan development' would kill the franchise for good, hell corporate fan service is so bad Voyager SHOULD have been cancelled (UPN was a new network owned by Paramount/CBS, and having a Star Trek show on there validated the new channel, by the third season you were getting less views in the US than DS9 had on paid subscription channels in the UK), and Enterprise was cancelled. Fan development would be the worst idea ever, nobody EXCEPT the fans would watch it, and there aren't enough of those to fund a series unless you also appeal to people who don't have four different bridge uniforms to pick from when they go to a convention and can't speak Klingon. Fan development would drive them away quicker than Voyager or Enterprise did by just being shit.
I agree with most of your points about the tactical cube, and if we were dealing with a stock Intrepid, what they did would be unforgivable. What a lot of people forget is how many upgrades the ship has had, and, frankly, that's the writer's fault. They have had things such as shields that can momentarily survive a supernova at close range before, as well as salvaging tech of at least one Borg ship. Then those things are never heard of again. If the writers had used the minimum effort to drop occasional references to the different technologies Voyager had acquired and implemented, scenes like this would go so much smoother. At least Voyager didn't do any real damage, just getting some shield grids fluctuating.
That was off-topic, but your idea is still spot-on. Doesn't get rid of the enormous inconsistencies of the Janeway character, but that would require re-writing the whole series... The thing is, if the writers were given a free hand on Voyager they probably would have done something like this. But Voyager was shaken from the beginning on with producers interfering too much or some writers fighting with each other.
One thing I've noticed across all Star Trek series is that the cubes travel and engage enemies with one face facing forward. I personally think this is a strategic disadvantage as it can increase high damage direct hits, I think a cube would better positioned with a corner facing forward as due to the angles of the sides meeting at said corner would give a higher chance of deflecting attacks and you would have a higher surface area to mount weapon banks able to aim forward.
The Tactical Cube is quite impressive, unfortunately some tactical plot holes got into their construction during the building process. and they have a heavy weakness to plot armor.
Related more to Voyager's writing more than the Tactical Cube, but I've been waiting to put in my two-cents about Caretaker's bad writing, after watching the first 8 or so episodes of Voyager before the site I was viewing on decided to shut down. I agree with what Janeway did, but not the reasoning behind it. The Prime Directive was not even a factor as I interpreted the situation. Dialogue suggested that it would take about 3 hours to activate the self-destruct on the Array only, which would mean that setting the Array to send Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant and timing these two functions would take longer than 3 hours. At the same time, Voyager was in combat against 2 Kazon warships, and dialogue pointed out that while Voyager was arguably the most powerful ship in the sector, there was only one if it. Dialogue in a later episode also suggested that Voyager could not win against 3 Kazon warships, so here in Caretaker, there was potential reinforcements for the Kazon, and Voyager was already in combat for some time, trying to buy Janeway time to do what she needed to. From all of these facts, I conclude that the reasoning was more akin to Worf's "trial" about the destruction of a bogus civilian transport. Janeway made a military decision for the safety of the ship and its crew, at the cost of being forced to remain in the Delta Quadrant. They simply did not have the time guaranteed to accomplish what was necessary to make the plan work, it was running the risk of not having a ship at all to return on. If I were to write this section of the episode, I'd have it so Janeway would vocalize that she's not be willing to take that risk, potentially sacrifice her crew so a few stragglers could get home? That is not Janeway, which LR made painfully clear on multiple occasions, even screwing around with time to try and get EVERYONE home. So yes, destroying the Array did make sense to me, just not the reasoning behind it. That's how I interpreted the episode when I watched it, but maybe I'm just an idiot?
Great idea!!!!! Before we actually see the tactical cube in "Unimatrix One," the Voyager runs across a space colony that the Borg had destroyed. Later, the tac cube is the nearest Borg ship, suggesting it wiped out that colony. In my head canon, said colony was tremendously powerful and heavily armed; when the cube attacked it, the unidentified aliens dealt severe damage to the Borg, cutting deep into its inner hull. The Voyager encountered it as it was regenerating from all that damage. Sounds silly, but if true, for defense purposes, it would be logical to repair the heavy outer plating first. That way, when we do actually see the thing, it looks up to spec but is still badly hurt, vulnerable to even one starship's sting.
Worse is not badly utilizing or writing for the tactical but eat her creating it in general. I feel like the borg would simply increase numbers to counter a threat. The existence of a tac cube itself is kind of unimaginative
My opinion is that you should do more theory crafting. You redeemed an interesting design made into a mook ship with a few bits of choice scene rewriting and the application of afterthou- I mean theoretical forethought. Great lore video, thanks for the upload!
Ah but you forget that Voyager that levelled up since the first series and now it has a borg class character to help with its team, that's why the Tactical Cubes are a minor nuisance, a normal cube would be a speed bump. Joking aside you are right. I do like that Voyager slowly learns how to fight its foes but it does feel unearned.
Great way to establish how Voyager could fight a T-Cube. However, your idea is perfect if they planned out Voyager over several years and not each season. None the less, great idea!
Excellent work, sir. I believe your findings in this video essay to be accurate and impartial. Voyager's writers wheeled out so many cool and menacing plot devices only to squander them on poor writing in later scenes or episodes. Or in some other cases forget about then entirely, the Vaadwaur race come to mind.
Part of the problem is that Star Trek was written episodically, frequently by guest writers, and only gradually adopted the season-arc model. There wasn't foresight for season 7 during season 3, because they had no idea if they would get a season 5. They wrote Scorpion solely as a bridge from season 3 into season 4 to get the audience to come back for 4 so that the ratings would be high enough to keep it going - and the ratings were already declining at that point. It's very easy to write major plot points across a whole story. It's a little harder to write for the next month's ratings and then come back later and figure out what to do with the loose ends. I do feel they could have tied the loose ends off better, though. Even if the last episode was a rushed "Oh (bleep), we didn't get a season 8" (it felt that way, but I don't actually know, nor is it worth me looking up). Any time you need an inferior ship to do something to a superior ship that it shouldn't be capable of, you come up with a one-off BS tactic. The deflector dish beam Enterprise D used against the Borg was a great example of this, and on first viewing I expected it to work because that's the sort of innovation Starfleet heroes win with. (And it failing was a very effective "oh (bleep)" inducing moment.) Ensign Kim: "Wait, captain, their hull plating is made with 32% dolomite! I was watching a holodeck program about the 31st century and it gave me an idea! We could hit it with a reversed polarity bean with a polarity reversal, and then the polarity of the polarity will be reversed!" Captain Janeway: "Are you saying what I think you're saying, Mr. Kim?" Lieutenant Paris: "We can bite their shiny metal-" Captain Janeway: "I get the idea. Do it."
@@LoreReloaded Ha ha Right. I did say what you said was true. But I wasn't being serious really. Yes if they planned it out we could've been much happier with the results. But there's every indication they either didn't get to or for whatever reason didn't plan episodes in advance like that. At least not past the first couple seasons. At the end, I got the feeling they were just wrapping up shit to get it done.
plasma in STO causes burn damage over time. Easy way to say "you've got nanites eating your ship" without having to add more code just for a single weapon
This is a long standing misunderstanding in the fan community. The Tactical cube is not as powerful as a standard cube. Tactical denotes a battlefield weapon of smaller scale than strategic. It should properly fit under the cube in the ship chart, not above it. You send in a tactical cube when you have a target to destroy that you do not desire to assimilate. This ship is smaller and carries less drones, fitted with armor to help compensate for reduced regenerative capabilities. Yet for SOME reason the fanbase think's this thing is the superior model. Not their fault I suppose, games have reinforced that mistake. But the writing in Voyager never said this thing was as powerful or more powerful than a cube. It's already obvious, you send a full cube to conquer a target, why would you send something bigger when you don't want to conquer it? That's why Voyager and a sphere could take the thing. Though honestly they still shouldn't have been able to, but hey it's Voyager. :)
That would work if the title for the Cube is a borg Strategic Cube. As for attempting to size them, A Fusion cube is the size of a planetoid but the Tactical Fusion cube is the size of a planet Though that being said, most sources list both as 3km squared and carrying roughly the same drone count - the lower numbers on some wikis are assumed minimum crew counts
That's true if you're talking about a tactical (battlefield) nuke which is smaller than a strategic nuke. But while a tactical vehicle, say a humvee, may be smaller than a strategic transport (like a truck) it's still larger than a standard or civilian jeep. A tactical team may be smaller than a strategic troop unit like an army, but a tactical team is often larger than a standard platoon. A tactical version of a firearm has extended magazines, larger scopes, laser targeting, maybe even a grenade launcher slapped on there. All that extra gear does not make the rifle smaller.
Good point, tactical vs stategic! And it makes sense for the Borg to have something in size between a sphere and a cube. After all they are about perfection and sending out overkill is not efficient.
@@liljenborg2517 a tactical unit is in no way larger than a platoon. A tactical unit is a small squad (or even a standard squad. It's more in how they're used, not the size). A "tactical nuke" is a strategic nuke. A nuke is a nuke, is a nuke. Again, it's all in how they're deployed and what target it's being used against. Range is also a factor in some cases. Size is of no value, both can be large or small yield. Many use the term "tactical nuke" like it means it's more accurate and meant for a specific target. In reality the closest you get to having a difference is if you went back 50 years to when we still had dumb nukes dropped from planes and the newly developed, targetable ICBM's.
There is a mention in alpha canon that the tac cube is a cruiser weight ship over the normal cubes battleship weight class, this makes more sense as does the armour to make up for its smaller size.
Huh, I admit that I had no idea that this thing was introduced during Voyager. I that's the one ST show I've never seen from start to finish aside from Discovery. My introduction to the Tactical Cube was in the Armada games and I always winced a bit when I saw one. I remember them being a bit of a pain to take down.
Something to think of... Is the armor that Voyager uses in the final episode 'holographic ablative armor'?! Think of it, the projectors are massive and after Admiral Janeway is captured the tech is quickly identified as just a holotech system that they can bypass easily and do so the second time Voyager goes back to the Transwarp Hub. After all, the holodecks in most starships use a combination of light projectors with micro repulsor emitters and replicator tech. The repulsors make-up the majority of items with exception of dead organic items that replicators make for any food made in the holodeck, otherwise anything consumed disappears as soon as it enters the body. Anyway, just something to think about. After all, if the Federation put this armor system onto most of it's ships, Oberth class vessels could possibly take on K'tinga class ships.
I'll tactical YOUR Cube. I love that almost anything becomes an innuendo if you say it like "I'll verb YOUR noun" Yes I know tactical is an adjective but I am using it like a verb here because reasons
A lot of good points made in this video, but to be fair to the show, Voyager never defeated the Tactical Cube, even when assisted by a Borg Sphere. They just lasted long enough to fulfill their objective. The ship was only destroyed when the Borg Queen destroyed it. This wasn't like Wolf 359 or the Battle of Sector 001, where those ships had to stand toe-to-toe with the Borg. They couldn't run or the Borg Cube would have reached Earth. In this instance, Voyager just had to distract it for a minute, and last long enough to escape. With Seven's insider information, and the new technology Voyager had (which the Borg wouldn't have known much about), surviving is possible. It may not completely fill the plot hole, but a point to consider.
The problem with the story you laid out is that during the Scorpion 2-parter, the writers hadn't thought up the Tactical Cube yet, therefore they couldn't have put into the episode. During Drone, they hadn't thought up the Tactical Cube yet, so they wouldn't have thought to have that ending either. When the Tactical Cube finally did show up, they hadn't thought about the show's ending yet, so hadn't thought up the armor yet, so couldn't have put that in. Yeah, in hindsight, this could have been very easily made better, but that's because now that the show is over you have all the pieces. Voyager's writers were WAY too lazy to think ahead any further then the next episode while the show was airing. It wasn't that they were just sometimes lazy, it's that they were almost always lazy.
Several good points, and a very intriguing scenario for use during Scorpion. I do think that one thing was overlooked. The Tactical Cube's alleged badassery not being conveyed on the tube? I get that. But, did it do better in its game appearances? There's Armada II and Online, as you said, as well as the sadly flawed (on the PC, at the very least) Legacy. Showing how the Tactical Cube did there might've rounded this out nicely, especially if you have footage from one of more of the games above to illustrate the point.
I agree that with forethought, the writers could have and arguably should have mapped this out better. However what you’ve done here is taken what was originally created by them and “added/modified/repaired” what was already there by adding pieces to an already written story and connecting (creatively, for sure) some dots and filling in some probable plot holes in retrospect, not creating all of it from the ground up. They may do it differently if they had the chance to, viewing it all in hindsight. Maybe I’m mistaken. Love your channel by the way, keep doing what you’re doing 👍🏻👍🏻 (Sorry for the run on sentence lol)
I've done exactly what they've done in a second or third draft.. saying 'hindsight is 20/20' can be easily dismissed not only with pointing out you can always refine your script and ideas.. but also pointing to babylon 5..
Lore Reloaded True, you can always refine your script and ideas, but you added and connected pieces across a few episodes, including the finale that drew upon ideas you implemented in past episodes, episodes from prior seasons. Again, forethought would have fixed this but you’re seeing the whole picture when they may not even have had a solid idea for a finale when “scorpion” or “drone” was being written and aired. Just my thoughts 😁
I like like your ending better lol. It's about the same idea I remember having when it aired. It's the obvious choice that wasn't so obvious to them lol. Gotts love the inconsistencies and holes in Trek. I wasn't really a fan of the armor generator itself, it is a bit OP. Same as the torpedoes.
Your idea is good except for one detail Voyager needs to attack the cube twice once to let the away team infiltrate the cube to implant the virus. 2nd to rescue the away team. There is are a couple simple fixes for this. 1st when they get the armor say it'll work once maybe twice, this will still make them reluctant to use it. 2nd have someone find a way to use the armor at least partially again. With help from the rebel Borg sphere this should be enough to rescue the away team. As for not being able to use again the fix is simple. They just need to do something similar to what they did with the slipstream drive, which is say that something about the armor is dangerous to Voyager. They only found out after they used it.
if i recall the story correctly wasn't the ship badly damaged and that was why they had any chance at all? also don't forget that this was a setup the queen wanted janway to attack to get her hands on seven of nine. for all you know the ship might of blasted voyager without even noticing it if they hadn't wanted seven.
You said it yourself: “forethought”. But episodes are written by different people, and Voyager rarely had an overall story arc other than “get home”. Now if they had someone like JMS running the show, he’d probably have planned everything out to the episode. Maybe even used your idea. But that’s not how Trek showrunners do things.
Lore Reloaded Agreed, Episodic scripting puts a substantive pressure to "Churn out" the next episode without time for proper consideration for plot holes and/or power creep. In series like TNG where there was no real running plotline, more "issue of the week", it doesn't appear as often as in Voyager where the Borg plotline was kept as a running thread
I really like this idea I felt the whole tactical cube idea was wasted it was never developed and as far as I can remember it was only shown in one episode where is was deeply disappointing. Sadly I often get the feeling the later seasons of Voyager were never part of a story arch and each one was almost a stand alone episode so there wasn't this progression or consistency. Still I love the idea you have for both introducing the ship and have a counter to it hinted at, would have been a lot better
First 4 seconds sound like you are about to drop the hottest rap hit of year 😀 About STOs tac cube, you forgot shrapnel torpedo launchers. I know, I'm nerd
I agree, it is silly for Voyager to survive an encounter with what is supposed to be the Borg's most overpowered and overgunned ship. In fact, it's kinda silly that nearly every single enemy ship Voyager encounters ultimately results in a victory for Voyager, even if it means grabbing Janeway's head and slamming it against the reset button (I'm looking at you, Year of Hell!). Honestly, thinking off the top of my head, probably the only ship that has "defeated" Voyager without them ever being able to get off a single shot would be the Voth City Ship, and that's because they were able to remotely commandeer and shut down their systems. The reason I say "defeated" in quotes is because Voyager obviously wasn't destroyed or even really damaged in this encounter, and were ultimately let go in the end. But, the point is still valid in that they were immediately and overwhelmingly overpowered and unable to fight back the instant the Voth ship arrived, and thus I consider that a technical defeat. Honestly, the Voth ship would probably make a good Lore episode, but I doubt there's enough info about it for such even in Beta Canon.
The issue, as I understand it, is you have Berman not wanting to have a series arc in Star Trek which means your suggestion would have been shot down if the writers suggested it. Anything story that went over a whole season (still not sure how they got away with the Torres/Paris romance) seemed to be out right banned. But both Voyager and DS9 were series that were crying out for season long story arcs. OK you can't just jump in as such, but if done creatively you can have many episodes as a stand alone story that adds to the overall story. Sure you'd have a few which you might not be able to just jump in to but "last time on Star Trek Voyager" recaps can help with that. The Year of Hell two parter should have been at least a partial season in and of itself.
That's a great solution you came up with. As I was watching, I was thinking "yeah and this armor from the drone could've eventually been refined into the armor we saw Admiral Janeway bring back" and boom you said it. I have many issues with the poor writing of this show as well as with trek as a whole. I mean c'mon, the holodeck is malfunctioning and the controls are frozen? Manually. Disengage. The. Power. That said, Voyager is still my favorite series, coming ahead of Battlestar Galactica. It actually made me the sci fi junkie I am today (30+ starship models and counting). Switching gears, Lore Reloaded, would you be interested in doing a "what if" video about Voyager? I never understood why Janeway set a course directly to the Alpha Quandrant (show writers, duh). They knew the Borg lay directly in their path. How could one Intrepid class hope to cross Borg space?! To me it would've made more sense, given the knowledge at the time, to set a course for the Bajoran wormhole. It'd be about the same distance to Federation space going either way so distance doesn't factor in. I don't think the Dominion was the known threat it came to become when Voyager set sail so that shouldn't have prevented them taking that route. This is waaaay out there, but I like to imagine the Equinox took a radically different path and actually made it. Imagine Ransom headed for the Gamma quandrant instead and along the way the ship became dramatically enhanced thanks to new technology acquired, primarily propulsion and weapons. The ship would reach Dominion space only to find out the Federation is at war. The Equinox would then proceed to use their newly advanced tech to commit hit and run attacks on the Dominion, effectively bringing the fight to the Gamma quandrant. Perhaps they foil an imminent attack. Stuff like that. Eventually the Equinox would make it to the wormhole, either during the war or after the war's conclusion. The Nova has a great spaceframe. It'd be a great little fighter (it's actually born out of the Defiant's design phase.)
IT DID NOT DAMAGE IT BEYOND BEING A MOSQUITO. The crew of voyager had inside information on how to penetrate specific aspects of its defences. Voyager (intrepid class was part of the anti borg starfleet) engaged this thing for less than 5 minutes with borg and anti borg enhancements and was nearly crippled in very short order! With almost zero damage done to the cube. You could have had 30 voyagers equipped the same and they would have still lost a pitched battle. Also its worth mentioning that this event is after when starfleet showed the unforgivable weaknesses of their previous subspace field defenses. So that's why it uses conventional yet extremely powerful shields.
The tac cube is designed to get close enough to an Oberth to assimilate it without being caught up in the explosion. During the battle of Wolf 359 the explodium hulls of the Oberth were the only thing to truly damage the standard cube.
I do think voyage should of had a refit/redesign around season 6. maybe have them find an abandoned shipyard that they used to break voyage down and rebuild it as a intrepid mark 2 delta quadrant variant implementing anti Borg system and advanced technology found in the delta quadrant, basically forerunners for the advanced system gifted to them by admiral Janeway. And even story wise have the shipyard orbit the origin planet of the Borg. That way they can explore the Borg origin and improve voyager simultaneously.
How the Tac-cube could have been introduced instead: After Seven had been on the ship for a while. Normal operations on the bridge when all of the sudden the ship jankes, yellow alert goes off and the words "Tactical alert 4" appears on one of the screens. Paris(confused): Captain we have changed course and gone to maximum emergency warp. Seven: I have introduced a subroutine into the ships computer in case the sensors detect a class 4 tactical cube at maximum detection range. Tuvok: Seven, you have been instructed, when it comes to unauthorized changes... Janeway(interrupts): Good thinking Seven. Paris find whatever can mask our signature and won't kill us right away. Today I'm not picky. (Viewscreen now displays cube, flying in a different direction) Tuvok: Captain, the cube does not appear to change course. Janeway: Lieutenant, I don't care. With this thing I'm not going to risk anything. After that it should never come to blows with that kind of ship because whenever it comes up the crew would treat a confrontation with it as "not an option", no matter the circumstances.
Your idea about the armor is a real good one, but there is a simple anwser to you question. You have the option to come up with this AFTER the series is over.
Yeah, the Tactical Cube seems like overkill. It's specialized nature, along with that of the Spheres, seems antithetical to what the Borg are supposed to be.
if I remember right, at that time the Queen was trying to "Charm' 7 of 9, to come over to the Borg side. Could she have not let the Cube be damaged just to make it Look good? Perhaps look into the story about the "Motive" of the Borg at that time.
A lack of forethought does tend to be an issue in episodic storytelling with lots of different writers, the possibility of executive meddling and perhaps the project even changing hands between showrunners. Different writers may introduce different ideas at any given time, you won't know ahead of time how many seasons you have to work with, what new factors will be established before the resolution, etc. Not to say you can't plan ahead and many try to - perhaps the writers of Voyager really were lazier than in other Trek shows, or the production was more chaotic for some reason, I don't know enough about Star Trek to comment on that. But point is, it gets tricky and there ends up being a lot of improvisation. Really solid, consistent writing is generally the result of one single long term plan towards a specific creative vision. See, you weren't using forethought as much as you were using _hindsight._ That makes it much easier to come up with ways for how the story could have been told better, even for a layman.
In general the writers did what you supposed in that vid but obviously not in that detail. You mentioned the episode with the futuristic drone from season 5. In that episode seven asked the drone if it can help to increase voyagers effectiveness against the attacking sphere. The drone than connects itself to Voyager and modifys its weapons and shields. After that seven had almost two years to work on that modifications made by the drone. In my opinion this is a good explanation why the ship could defend itself against the tactical cube for so long.
@@LoreReloaded Voyager was caught by the spheres holding beam. I don't know why the tactical cube didn't use one in the other episode. Another big plot whole aswell as the fact that after emissary the borg tractor beam didn't drain the shields any more. Just stupid writing but your friend anti-trekker made a whole series about that topic so no reason to argue any further.
Voyager never successfully battled the Borg prior to their future tech. They just used what advantages they had to skirmish and retreat during their several encounters.
I think it would be better if the data storage device given to them by 1 could be a weapons prototype concept called the charged ion cascade. It would be capable of temporarily disrupting all functions within a Borg vessel effectively crippling it for a time. It also could've been a holo matrix containing his memories and a faximily of 1. This faximily could work with 7 and Torres to develop the weapons system and the energy requirements for this weapon could be so massive that it would overload EPA conduits through the ship thus after doing what they need to do in Unimatrix 0, they would be forced to dismantle it because continued use would be too dangerous.
The Borg obviously created the Tactical Cube specifically to counter the threat posed by the Oberth class.
HA
Nice one.
Oberth class is the god ship
I really like your idea of the better path of the shield creation, and it always bugged me that Voyager would discover something then forget about it the next episode - See Isokonetic Canon. However unless I am mistaken, wasn’t the reason Voyage was able to damage the Tactical Cube was due to the improved torpedo design future Janeway brought back, not just the Ablative Armor?
Love your videos!
No, they developed the ability for tactical cubes to join up to deal with the Oberth class. You don't mess around when dealing with the Oberth. It's like the noisy cricket. It's so weak there's got to be something hidden up it's sleeves.
“I’m not a writer!”
You sure about that? You just fixed one of MANY plot holes in Voyager... with minimal effort. Kudos!
Of course, the tactical cube has one weakness, a small thermal exhaust port which is just wide enough to allow a single photon torpedo. Trouble is, it takes Jedi-like reflexes to get it in there, and no one on Voyager is Force-sensitive... 😆
Actually, Seven has superhuman hand-eye-coordination, and the Doctor is literally a computer.
Naiomi Wildman had the force on her side
Janeway will be force sensitive because she is female ..... And a Karen.
😂
No Borg can resist Plot based weaponary...
#truth
tuvok prepare to activate the main plot device
it reminds me of a certain ship with an admiral named piett in star wars after he met a certain a wing or how i call it a "Plot-Wing"
Voyager to be fair was the shittiest show, had to beat sisko and DS9 so they just made og star trek and lost in space combined
Nothing can
As a major Voyager fan, one of the things I hate the most is when somebody suggests it should've been different (usually because they want it to be Battlestar Galactica). It's not that I don't see the occasional missed potential, but generally I enjoy the show a lot for what it is, and get frustrated when people are hung up with their vision of what could have been instead of what's there.
...All of that said, DANG is this a major exception; I *really* want to see this version of Voyager now. It's a really solid idea, and I'm disappointed we never got to see it executed.
Andrew Gilbertson You just reminded me I should look into buying Battlestar Galactica so I can watch it again
@@thakard I don't have access to unlimited internet to stream a lot of content where I live. So most all of what I watch is from DVD or blu ray
I have to agree here, awesome plotting, let me know if you ever want to collaborate on some crazy sci Fi, just great thinking. That said hindsight is 20/20 and the problems that lead to lazy writing often starts in the production company pushing for greater speed and more “bad assery” in plots. It has destroyed many an amazing show.
Have to agree. Voyager hat much wasted potential, but it was different then Galactica for the better. DOn't get it wrong, I like both, but they are different settings and have a different tone.
The writers could have done more by just giving Voyager stuff and never let them use it in favor of a better, later opportunity (bot in and out of universe) then doing it the otehr way around and suddenly have voyager do stuff they shouldn't
How do you know a tactical cube is superior to a regular cube? To me on screen it looked smaller than a cube. I always assumed a cube was actually a strategic cube. Something you send to assimilate a civilization and a tactical cube is smaller and used for smaller engagements where precision is needed. We seen voyager beat spheres, scout ships and a tactical cube. Did we ever see voyager beat a regular cube in a 'fair fight'?
Or is possible the writers don't know what tactical and strategic means and just thought tactical was a cool word.
Almost certainly they thought it just sounded cool
@RagDollRat I agree, that's why it is sad that Starfleet doesn't seem to do anything with the advancements Voyager brought back...it's like the WW2-USA gets handed a modern Aircraft-Carrier (and people who can tell them how the technology works and can be made!), but decides: Nah, we'd rather lose more people in combat than we have to!
Brother incubus did you say they never beat a borg cube? Have you watched voyager.
Voyager had superior plot armor.
Specifically, Gold Mk.XV armor that was hella reengineered, and possibly also bought on the Zen store. F@#$ing pay-to-win STO...
I mean... they literally get deus ex machina super plot armor in the finale...
God Voyager was awful.... And yet, like many others, I loved it and still do want to like it, it just really *really* doesn't hold up under scrutiny, and all because the people who made it were too cowardly and unambitious.
Its like the borg cube, but with armor
Wait...
... I see what you did there
yeah and a hole in its shields and armor or would that be a plot hole in its shields and armor
But ......
The Borg Tactical Cube also carries a compliment of 700 Sexy 7 of 9 Clones
That'll learn you Starfleet !
I like the idea of the tactical cube for the Borg but I'll agree that it should have been handled better. To me the idea of multiple ships combining together to make bigger and stronger one fits well with the Borg. What if all the Borg ships we had already seen where just self sustaining modules that could combine to do what ever the collective needs.
It's so corny that I like the idea better than armor plated cube. Still, Lore Reloaded is still completely right; Voyager, even when upgrade, still shouldn't be fighting a cube ever for the same reason you don't fight Jason Vorhees ever. It doesn't matter how heavily armed you are, he's INVINCIBLE. That's what makes horror villains so interesting. They're alien and way stronger than you. If they had to write in a Tactical cube in the show, it should have been about luring a Tactical cube towards a specific location with (fake) Omega molecule readings or something like that.
So Space Lego?
They combine ? What , did they assimilate Voltron ?
Nah, man... They went back in time and assimilated Captain Planet.
They might have gotten a Cybertronian Gestalt.
It is really over powered in Armada 2. You basically have warp capable star bases.
Just be prepared for a long wait if you ever need to restock on drones as it takes some time even with multiple bases placed around the ship yard beaming crew on.
I love the idea of the Borg seeing a old radio wave transmission of Captain Planet, freaken out thinking it was real and heading to the Federation to assimilate him. "We are the Borg, surrender Captain Planet to us, his powers of ecological rectification will be added to our own culture. Resistance is futile".
Louie Patouie Imagine them reacting to Halo or Supreme Commander.
That's a great overall solution, and I have to agree that the fact that the real Voyager writers couldn't have come up with SOMETHING to rid the plot holes is something of an embarrassmanet.
Thanks
It's because money was involved. When you put a paycheck at the end of the goal the writers get lazy.
Usually.
I would love to be a fly on the wall at some of the writer/producer meetings, I suspect that there may well have been ideas floated such as the Lore Master's suggestion (well, perhaps none quite as tidy, but something)...but I also suspect that the producers were like "Nah, that will require the viewer to think and remember - I can't remember the last few episodes so sod it". That might also explain the constant, irritating as hell, lazy - here be this tech, we can use it once, woohoo X thousand LY's closer to home - that plagued every god damned season :( Kes's 'final' gift, quantum slipstream, that odd catapult thingy, random wormhole in the void, trans-warp coil - and more that I've no doubt forgotten because they were over used.
Do you apply the same standard to the rest of Star Trek?
@@JenkoRun right, because all the best shows are produced by people who don't get paid?
"Three of Seventeen...Tertiary Facilitator of Construction Node Twelve...we desire you to build a Tactical Cube.
It's dimensions will be 6561.67979002 cubits by 6561.67979002 cubits by 6561.67979002 cubits..."
I'm not sure if this was a fair comparison. The determining factor with Borg combat seems to be information, when they battle Federation ships.
* With The ship that won the battle at Wolf 359, Starfleet was decimated. But with some information from Locutus, they were able to take it out remotely.
* With the ship that attacked in First Contact, it was basically unstoppable. Entire ships were destroyed in single shots. But with a little information that Picard retained, they were able to destroy it in a minute.
* Archer's crew was able to destroy the vessel of Borg separated from the collective by using insider information about the assimilated and modified vessel.
Now that's other examples.
In every post-7-of-9 encounter with the Borg, with the exception of her rescue in Dark Frontier, Voyager had 7 of 9, and sometimes other former Borg with them, and thus insider information. They scavenged Borg debris a few times, so they had a good idea of what the Borg use for hulls. They encountered the Borg more times than the rest of Starfleet combined, survived and gathered information each time. They also had the Hansen diaries, and thus a lot of information Starfleet wouldn't normally have. This meant that Voyager's crew had a bunch of information on the Borg. If this doesn't seem like enough, remember: Future Janeway literally wrote the book on the Borg and by that time, anti-Borg technology was widespread and effective, so these encounters probably were helpful.
The pattern indicates that insider information about the Borg is enough to take an unstoppable force of destruction, and turn it into something you can destroy with a few ships. If we extrapolate that, with the information Voyager had gathered, taking on the Borg with one ship and having a tie would actually be conceivable.
You do have a good point. But the whole big deal about the Borg is that they can’t be stopped... When the writers made Voyager’s crusade against the Borg look ridiculously easy it undermined everything that the Borg were originally created to be.
@@Draco_Alpha Its almost like the borg played around with the Voyager on purpose.
There is opne thing about using information to do a black ops onboard a cube.
It is something different to suddenly destroy a cube alone when your weapons should have near to no effect.
A box of water True, they were originally created more as a force of nature. You don’t try to stop a hurricane. You get out of the way.
No voyager bad, writers bad, hammer, nail!
This video brings me back to a theory I have about how the Borg got so screwed up in Voyager. The production for Voyager started around the same time as that of the First Contact movie. The initial screenplays for that movie featured a huge fleet of Borg cubes taking on a Federation fleet and the Federation fleet doing quite well, including the newer "post Wolf-359" ships being able to individually wipe out multiple cubes. The idea was that the Federation's capabilities against the Borg had grown by huge margins such that newer capitol ships are much more than a match for a single cube or even a couple of cubes instead of the more muted advancements indicating that a fleet of 40 ships is now more or less a match for a cube instead of mere cannon fodder. Of course Paramount never wants to give a ST show or movie a good budget so all of that got removed because it would have cost too much to create the CGI. I wonder if one of the key premises with the Voyager series was the assumption that these advancements against the Borg happened and when the final draft of the movie was changed, the show's writers didn't change their ideas to reflect it, possibly judging that it would be too unbelievable that the Voyager could last more than a few months alone in the Delta quadrant if it is filled with tens of thousands of Borg ships that can wipe it out in a matter of minutes, leading to one ST show that appears to be so outside of previous canon when it comes to the Borg.
Oh and also, it would have helped the show if the crew of the Voyager could have got the Isokinetic Cannon operational and utilized it as their "Borg-wrecker" for the rest of the duration of the series, since it makes sense that a super powerful kinetic energy weapon would be especially effective against utterly gigantic, slab sided vessels like Borg cubes, since the impact angle against the cube's sides or shields would be at a 90 degree angle or something close to that, while smaller and more angular ships would presumably have more angular shields which which can deflect kinetic projectiles much, much more effectively because the impacts are at oblique angles. To me that was one of the big missed opportunities of the show, they had a weapon that could have equalized things enough that it's not outright silly to see the Voyager constantly evade the Borg and it's a weapon that to be honest, would be quite difficult for the Borg to adapt to given the size and shape of their vessels.
Also, even the Isokinetic cannon can get nerfed like the modified deflector dish beam. It's very powerful, but has all kinds of drawbacks so they can't use it in normal combat situations.
I don't think they got to keep the cannon though. The guy they were trying to buy it from killed himself before the deal was finalized.
I heard it has 47 variants of queen's body with various attachments and even secret sex chamber where she whips captured starfleet officers with thick electrical cable.
Why? It hurts more if its thinner and if its insulated it won't hurt as much
@@alexandercross9081 Well i guess she uses thinner cable on Star wars admirals
Robert Kalinič WooHoo !!!!!!!! 😀
We'll See You Soon Harry...
Resistance to Snu-Snu Futile!
I miss Star Trek Armada :’(
Raul Ramos I played Armada 2 and lol’ed on how the intrepid class could take on a borg sphere (even with its regeneration ability activated) and win.
Then play Star Trek Armada 3. :)
Love me some Armada 3, though it needs more oberths.
Star Trek Armada Fleet operations runs on Windows 10 and there is a mod that allows to play it like the original except you can group twice as many ships in a fleet.
RedshiftOTF 3?
When you throw some extra armor plates into trash compactor
#genious
Of course the Voyager can take on a Tactical Cube. After all, it's covered in plot armour.
@RagDollRat let them hate on voyager, its this channels inside joke. They need it
@RagDollRat A simple future cloaking device could not be added to voyager...Do you really think she was anywhere close to be able to go 1v1 against anything bigger than a sphere..during a good day?
The reason for the Borg cube being so successful in the wolf battle, was not only because of its advantages, but because of Picard being assimilated, since he had extensive knowledge of the fleets classified information, like weaknesses and the frequency of their shields.
I always have a problem with scale when it comes to Borg Cubes. I assumed most cubes we see are actually Fusion Cubes (8 cubes together), and that Tactical Cube was just a single cube.
Those other ships didn’t have janeway.
True
Lucky for them LOL
@WhatThe MTG And she drinks to much coffee , it's a diuretic you now
Janeway sucks
you could even end the series with an epic fight between a post-dominion war federation fleet and that cube, maybe even add a line or two at the end about how the Borg wont be able to treat the federation so lightly now that they've managed to beat their most powerful warship
hell, that would even tie in nicely with the battles of sector 001 and wolf 359, showing the evolution of a federation who's fleet was nothing more than a waste of time to a Cube, to a fleet that could actually stand it's ground against a cube, to a fleet that could go toe to toe with their strongest warship and actually win
Adn the Borg be like" The entity known as Federation has developed into a serious thread. Their motives are mostly non-agressive. We will focus on other parts first. We will get closer to perfection and return"
And then they show up 300 years later, upgraded, with control of half the gamma quadrant for a final, all ending showdown in history.
While some of your videos do leave me scratching my head as to where you're coming from, and I am a trekkie, I applaud you on this one sir. The "rewrite" option you offered on the story arc beginning with Scorpion would have made FAR more sense and filled in quite a few plot holes. Kudos
This is a great example of how good writing could be. This is your best yet and a big reason i love your channel. Its a shame CBS wants to put fans down and deny anything they put out. When if they would simply embrace the fans and bring fan development into the franchise. It has the potential of becoming the biggest thing to ever hit the big screens and TV. Not to mention what it could mean financially but no they would have to give up some of their control. God forbid that would ever happen.
That's the exact opposite of what would happen. 'Fan development' would kill the franchise for good, hell corporate fan service is so bad Voyager SHOULD have been cancelled (UPN was a new network owned by Paramount/CBS, and having a Star Trek show on there validated the new channel, by the third season you were getting less views in the US than DS9 had on paid subscription channels in the UK), and Enterprise was cancelled.
Fan development would be the worst idea ever, nobody EXCEPT the fans would watch it, and there aren't enough of those to fund a series unless you also appeal to people who don't have four different bridge uniforms to pick from when they go to a convention and can't speak Klingon. Fan development would drive them away quicker than Voyager or Enterprise did by just being shit.
I agree with most of your points about the tactical cube, and if we were dealing with a stock Intrepid, what they did would be unforgivable. What a lot of people forget is how many upgrades the ship has had, and, frankly, that's the writer's fault. They have had things such as shields that can momentarily survive a supernova at close range before, as well as salvaging tech of at least one Borg ship. Then those things are never heard of again. If the writers had used the minimum effort to drop occasional references to the different technologies Voyager had acquired and implemented, scenes like this would go so much smoother.
At least Voyager didn't do any real damage, just getting some shield grids fluctuating.
That was off-topic, but your idea is still spot-on. Doesn't get rid of the enormous inconsistencies of the Janeway character, but that would require re-writing the whole series... The thing is, if the writers were given a free hand on Voyager they probably would have done something like this. But Voyager was shaken from the beginning on with producers interfering too much or some writers fighting with each other.
I absolutely love that idea of the armour generator.
Voyager had a Sphere to assist it during the attack on the tactical cube and they were focusing fire on a single shield grid
One thing I've noticed across all Star Trek series is that the cubes travel and engage enemies with one face facing forward. I personally think this is a strategic disadvantage as it can increase high damage direct hits, I think a cube would better positioned with a corner facing forward as due to the angles of the sides meeting at said corner would give a higher chance of deflecting attacks and you would have a higher surface area to mount weapon banks able to aim forward.
The Tactical Cube is quite impressive, unfortunately some tactical plot holes got into their construction during the building process. and they have a heavy weakness to plot armor.
This was one of your best.
I agree with you about the tac cube & the stuff about the drone as I feel it should've been done before scorpion to make what happened more believable
Related more to Voyager's writing more than the Tactical Cube, but I've been waiting to put in my two-cents about Caretaker's bad writing, after watching the first 8 or so episodes of Voyager before the site I was viewing on decided to shut down. I agree with what Janeway did, but not the reasoning behind it. The Prime Directive was not even a factor as I interpreted the situation. Dialogue suggested that it would take about 3 hours to activate the self-destruct on the Array only, which would mean that setting the Array to send Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant and timing these two functions would take longer than 3 hours. At the same time, Voyager was in combat against 2 Kazon warships, and dialogue pointed out that while Voyager was arguably the most powerful ship in the sector, there was only one if it. Dialogue in a later episode also suggested that Voyager could not win against 3 Kazon warships, so here in Caretaker, there was potential reinforcements for the Kazon, and Voyager was already in combat for some time, trying to buy Janeway time to do what she needed to. From all of these facts, I conclude that the reasoning was more akin to Worf's "trial" about the destruction of a bogus civilian transport. Janeway made a military decision for the safety of the ship and its crew, at the cost of being forced to remain in the Delta Quadrant. They simply did not have the time guaranteed to accomplish what was necessary to make the plan work, it was running the risk of not having a ship at all to return on. If I were to write this section of the episode, I'd have it so Janeway would vocalize that she's not be willing to take that risk, potentially sacrifice her crew so a few stragglers could get home? That is not Janeway, which LR made painfully clear on multiple occasions, even screwing around with time to try and get EVERYONE home. So yes, destroying the Array did make sense to me, just not the reasoning behind it. That's how I interpreted the episode when I watched it, but maybe I'm just an idiot?
that BORG CUBE
was freaking huge
and frightening
Great idea!!!!!
Before we actually see the tactical cube in "Unimatrix One," the Voyager runs across a space colony that the Borg had destroyed. Later, the tac cube is the nearest Borg ship, suggesting it wiped out that colony. In my head canon, said colony was tremendously powerful and heavily armed; when the cube attacked it, the unidentified aliens dealt severe damage to the Borg, cutting deep into its inner hull. The Voyager encountered it as it was regenerating from all that damage. Sounds silly, but if true, for defense purposes, it would be logical to repair the heavy outer plating first. That way, when we do actually see the thing, it looks up to spec but is still badly hurt, vulnerable to even one starship's sting.
Worse is not badly utilizing or writing for the tactical but eat her creating it in general. I feel like the borg would simply increase numbers to counter a threat.
The existence of a tac cube itself is kind of unimaginative
I mean it's fun for the audience but may not make much sense
What’s written on paper is dissimilar from what appeared on screen? That doesn’t sound like VGR.
Dude I love foreshadowing, and THAT would have been AWESOME.
agreed
My opinion is that you should do more theory crafting. You redeemed an interesting design made into a mook ship with a few bits of choice scene rewriting and the application of afterthou- I mean theoretical forethought. Great lore video, thanks for the upload!
Ah but you forget that Voyager that levelled up since the first series and now it has a borg class character to help with its team, that's why the Tactical Cubes are a minor nuisance, a normal cube would be a speed bump.
Joking aside you are right. I do like that Voyager slowly learns how to fight its foes but it does feel unearned.
I'd love more videos like this!! I am rewatching Voyager and I agree there are loads of lethargic writing and plot holes. Keep up the good work!!
They were all good ideas good vid man.
Great way to establish how Voyager could fight a T-Cube. However, your idea is perfect if they planned out Voyager over several years and not each season. None the less, great idea!
Excellent work, sir. I believe your findings in this video essay to be accurate and impartial. Voyager's writers wheeled out so many cool and menacing plot devices only to squander them on poor writing in later scenes or episodes. Or in some other cases forget about then entirely, the Vaadwaur race come to mind.
Part of the problem is that Star Trek was written episodically, frequently by guest writers, and only gradually adopted the season-arc model. There wasn't foresight for season 7 during season 3, because they had no idea if they would get a season 5. They wrote Scorpion solely as a bridge from season 3 into season 4 to get the audience to come back for 4 so that the ratings would be high enough to keep it going - and the ratings were already declining at that point.
It's very easy to write major plot points across a whole story. It's a little harder to write for the next month's ratings and then come back later and figure out what to do with the loose ends. I do feel they could have tied the loose ends off better, though. Even if the last episode was a rushed "Oh (bleep), we didn't get a season 8" (it felt that way, but I don't actually know, nor is it worth me looking up). Any time you need an inferior ship to do something to a superior ship that it shouldn't be capable of, you come up with a one-off BS tactic. The deflector dish beam Enterprise D used against the Borg was a great example of this, and on first viewing I expected it to work because that's the sort of innovation Starfleet heroes win with. (And it failing was a very effective "oh (bleep)" inducing moment.)
Ensign Kim: "Wait, captain, their hull plating is made with 32% dolomite! I was watching a holodeck program about the 31st century and it gave me an idea! We could hit it with a reversed polarity bean with a polarity reversal, and then the polarity of the polarity will be reversed!"
Captain Janeway: "Are you saying what I think you're saying, Mr. Kim?"
Lieutenant Paris: "We can bite their shiny metal-"
Captain Janeway: "I get the idea. Do it."
6:57 "this is not hard with forethought." True, but it's definitely ALLOT easier with hindsight, Lore-sama! 😁😎
I disagree...everything i just did could have been just as easily done if you planned it out.. voyager was episodic however which is what impacted it
@@LoreReloaded Ha ha Right. I did say what you said was true. But I wasn't being serious really. Yes if they planned it out we could've been much happier with the results. But there's every indication they either didn't get to or for whatever reason didn't plan episodes in advance like that. At least not past the first couple seasons. At the end, I got the feeling they were just wrapping up shit to get it done.
Standard cube: One-shots 40 Starfleet ships.
Tactical cube: Goes easy on Voyager.
plasma in STO causes burn damage over time. Easy way to say "you've got nanites eating your ship" without having to add more code just for a single weapon
Even though they already have that for ground combat.
Excellent video!
This is a long standing misunderstanding in the fan community. The Tactical cube is not as powerful as a standard cube. Tactical denotes a battlefield weapon of smaller scale than strategic. It should properly fit under the cube in the ship chart, not above it. You send in a tactical cube when you have a target to destroy that you do not desire to assimilate. This ship is smaller and carries less drones, fitted with armor to help compensate for reduced regenerative capabilities. Yet for SOME reason the fanbase think's this thing is the superior model. Not their fault I suppose, games have reinforced that mistake. But the writing in Voyager never said this thing was as powerful or more powerful than a cube. It's already obvious, you send a full cube to conquer a target, why would you send something bigger when you don't want to conquer it? That's why Voyager and a sphere could take the thing. Though honestly they still shouldn't have been able to, but hey it's Voyager. :)
That would work if the title for the Cube is a borg Strategic Cube.
As for attempting to size them, A Fusion cube is the size of a planetoid but the Tactical Fusion cube is the size of a planet
Though that being said, most sources list both as 3km squared and carrying roughly the same drone count - the lower numbers on some wikis are assumed minimum crew counts
That's true if you're talking about a tactical (battlefield) nuke which is smaller than a strategic nuke. But while a tactical vehicle, say a humvee, may be smaller than a strategic transport (like a truck) it's still larger than a standard or civilian jeep. A tactical team may be smaller than a strategic troop unit like an army, but a tactical team is often larger than a standard platoon. A tactical version of a firearm has extended magazines, larger scopes, laser targeting, maybe even a grenade launcher slapped on there. All that extra gear does not make the rifle smaller.
Good point, tactical vs stategic!
And it makes sense for the Borg to have something in size between a sphere and a cube. After all they are about perfection and sending out overkill is not efficient.
@@liljenborg2517 a tactical unit is in no way larger than a platoon. A tactical unit is a small squad (or even a standard squad. It's more in how they're used, not the size).
A "tactical nuke" is a strategic nuke. A nuke is a nuke, is a nuke. Again, it's all in how they're deployed and what target it's being used against. Range is also a factor in some cases. Size is of no value, both can be large or small yield. Many use the term "tactical nuke" like it means it's more accurate and meant for a specific target. In reality the closest you get to having a difference is if you went back 50 years to when we still had dumb nukes dropped from planes and the newly developed, targetable ICBM's.
There is a mention in alpha canon that the tac cube is a cruiser weight ship over the normal cubes battleship weight class, this makes more sense as does the armour to make up for its smaller size.
Huh, I admit that I had no idea that this thing was introduced during Voyager.
I that's the one ST show I've never seen from start to finish aside from Discovery.
My introduction to the Tactical Cube was in the Armada games and I always winced a bit when I saw one. I remember them being a bit of a pain to take down.
Something to think of... Is the armor that Voyager uses in the final episode 'holographic ablative armor'?!
Think of it, the projectors are massive and after Admiral Janeway is captured the tech is quickly identified as just a holotech system that they can bypass easily and do so the second time Voyager goes back to the Transwarp Hub. After all, the holodecks in most starships use a combination of light projectors with micro repulsor emitters and replicator tech. The repulsors make-up the majority of items with exception of dead organic items that replicators make for any food made in the holodeck, otherwise anything consumed disappears as soon as it enters the body.
Anyway, just something to think about. After all, if the Federation put this armor system onto most of it's ships, Oberth class vessels could possibly take on K'tinga class ships.
I'll tactical YOUR Cube.
I love that almost anything becomes an innuendo if you say it like "I'll verb YOUR noun"
Yes I know tactical is an adjective but I am using it like a verb here because reasons
A lot of good points made in this video, but to be fair to the show, Voyager never defeated the Tactical Cube, even when assisted by a Borg Sphere. They just lasted long enough to fulfill their objective. The ship was only destroyed when the Borg Queen destroyed it. This wasn't like Wolf 359 or the Battle of Sector 001, where those ships had to stand toe-to-toe with the Borg. They couldn't run or the Borg Cube would have reached Earth. In this instance, Voyager just had to distract it for a minute, and last long enough to escape. With Seven's insider information, and the new technology Voyager had (which the Borg wouldn't have known much about), surviving is possible. It may not completely fill the plot hole, but a point to consider.
Be careful. CBS may try to sue you for thinking you're trying to make a fan film/story with your "alternate story."
The problem with the story you laid out is that during the Scorpion 2-parter, the writers hadn't thought up the Tactical Cube yet, therefore they couldn't have put into the episode. During Drone, they hadn't thought up the Tactical Cube yet, so they wouldn't have thought to have that ending either. When the Tactical Cube finally did show up, they hadn't thought about the show's ending yet, so hadn't thought up the armor yet, so couldn't have put that in. Yeah, in hindsight, this could have been very easily made better, but that's because now that the show is over you have all the pieces. Voyager's writers were WAY too lazy to think ahead any further then the next episode while the show was airing. It wasn't that they were just sometimes lazy, it's that they were almost always lazy.
The Borg realized the oberth is a dangerous class:D
Voyager’s plot armour was spot on that day.
You just put together a way better story arc then Voyager ever did haha
Several good points, and a very intriguing scenario for use during Scorpion. I do think that one thing was overlooked. The Tactical Cube's alleged badassery not being conveyed on the tube? I get that. But, did it do better in its game appearances? There's Armada II and Online, as you said, as well as the sadly flawed (on the PC, at the very least) Legacy. Showing how the Tactical Cube did there might've rounded this out nicely, especially if you have footage from one of more of the games above to illustrate the point.
I agree that with forethought, the writers could have and arguably should have mapped this out better. However what you’ve done here is taken what was originally created by them and “added/modified/repaired” what was already there by adding pieces to an already written story and connecting (creatively, for sure) some dots and filling in some probable plot holes in retrospect, not creating all of it from the ground up. They may do it differently if they had the chance to, viewing it all in hindsight. Maybe I’m mistaken. Love your channel by the way, keep doing what you’re doing 👍🏻👍🏻
(Sorry for the run on sentence lol)
I've done exactly what they've done in a second or third draft.. saying 'hindsight is 20/20' can be easily dismissed not only with pointing out you can always refine your script and ideas.. but also pointing to babylon 5..
Lore Reloaded True, you can always refine your script and ideas, but you added and connected pieces across a few episodes, including the finale that drew upon ideas you implemented in past episodes, episodes from prior seasons. Again, forethought would have fixed this but you’re seeing the whole picture when they may not even have had a solid idea for a finale when “scorpion” or “drone” was being written and aired. Just my thoughts 😁
I like like your ending better lol. It's about the same idea I remember having when it aired. It's the obvious choice that wasn't so obvious to them lol. Gotts love the inconsistencies and holes in Trek. I wasn't really a fan of the armor generator itself, it is a bit OP. Same as the torpedoes.
Your idea is good except for one detail Voyager needs to attack the cube twice once to let the away team infiltrate the cube to implant the virus. 2nd to rescue the away team. There is are a couple simple fixes for this. 1st when they get the armor say it'll work once maybe twice, this will still make them reluctant to use it. 2nd have someone find a way to use the armor at least partially again. With help from the rebel Borg sphere this should be enough to rescue the away team. As for not being able to use again the fix is simple. They just need to do something similar to what they did with the slipstream drive, which is say that something about the armor is dangerous to Voyager. They only found out after they used it.
if i recall the story correctly wasn't the ship badly damaged and that was why they had any chance at all? also don't forget that this was a setup the queen wanted janway to attack to get her hands on seven of nine. for all you know the ship might of blasted voyager without even noticing it if they hadn't wanted seven.
@Lore Reloaded love these kinds of videos, wish you would start doing Mass Effect lore videos too lots to explore there as well ;)
You said it yourself: “forethought”. But episodes are written by different people, and Voyager rarely had an overall story arc other than “get home”. Now if they had someone like JMS running the show, he’d probably have planned everything out to the episode. Maybe even used your idea. But that’s not how Trek showrunners do things.
Wasn't Voyager augmented with Borg weapons and shielding by then?
where the scripts produced for the series at the start, or where they made ongoing episode to episode?
others have brought this up - it was most likely episodic which is a .. flawed.. way of doing things.
Lore Reloaded Agreed, Episodic scripting puts a substantive pressure to "Churn out" the next episode without time for proper consideration for plot holes and/or power creep.
In series like TNG where there was no real running plotline, more "issue of the week", it doesn't appear as often as in Voyager where the Borg plotline was kept as a running thread
@@bengrogan9710 i reckon that the style of tv writing at the time had something to do with it too. Season long arcs might not sell well either.
I really like this idea I felt the whole tactical cube idea was wasted it was never developed and as far as I can remember it was only shown in one episode where is was deeply disappointing. Sadly I often get the feeling the later seasons of Voyager were never part of a story arch and each one was almost a stand alone episode so there wasn't this progression or consistency. Still I love the idea you have for both introducing the ship and have a counter to it hinted at, would have been a lot better
First 4 seconds sound like you are about to drop the hottest rap hit of year 😀
About STOs tac cube, you forgot shrapnel torpedo launchers. I know, I'm nerd
Holy shit, that would have been so much better. Great plots.
I agree, it is silly for Voyager to survive an encounter with what is supposed to be the Borg's most overpowered and overgunned ship. In fact, it's kinda silly that nearly every single enemy ship Voyager encounters ultimately results in a victory for Voyager, even if it means grabbing Janeway's head and slamming it against the reset button (I'm looking at you, Year of Hell!).
Honestly, thinking off the top of my head, probably the only ship that has "defeated" Voyager without them ever being able to get off a single shot would be the Voth City Ship, and that's because they were able to remotely commandeer and shut down their systems. The reason I say "defeated" in quotes is because Voyager obviously wasn't destroyed or even really damaged in this encounter, and were ultimately let go in the end. But, the point is still valid in that they were immediately and overwhelmingly overpowered and unable to fight back the instant the Voth ship arrived, and thus I consider that a technical defeat. Honestly, the Voth ship would probably make a good Lore episode, but I doubt there's enough info about it for such even in Beta Canon.
The issue, as I understand it, is you have Berman not wanting to have a series arc in Star Trek which means your suggestion would have been shot down if the writers suggested it. Anything story that went over a whole season (still not sure how they got away with the Torres/Paris romance) seemed to be out right banned. But both Voyager and DS9 were series that were crying out for season long story arcs. OK you can't just jump in as such, but if done creatively you can have many episodes as a stand alone story that adds to the overall story. Sure you'd have a few which you might not be able to just jump in to but "last time on Star Trek Voyager" recaps can help with that. The Year of Hell two parter should have been at least a partial season in and of itself.
I always thought of the cubes as ship that varied in size greatly.
Wow, for once i agree with you, your analysis and your proposition. Good video.
Dont worry..I doubt itll happen often
@@LoreReloaded I will still watch it. I like diverging opinions.
That's a great solution you came up with. As I was watching, I was thinking "yeah and this armor from the drone could've eventually been refined into the armor we saw Admiral Janeway bring back" and boom you said it.
I have many issues with the poor writing of this show as well as with trek as a whole. I mean c'mon, the holodeck is malfunctioning and the controls are frozen? Manually. Disengage. The. Power. That said, Voyager is still my favorite series, coming ahead of Battlestar Galactica. It actually made me the sci fi junkie I am today (30+ starship models and counting).
Switching gears, Lore Reloaded, would you be interested in doing a "what if" video about Voyager? I never understood why Janeway set a course directly to the Alpha Quandrant (show writers, duh). They knew the Borg lay directly in their path. How could one Intrepid class hope to cross Borg space?! To me it would've made more sense, given the knowledge at the time, to set a course for the Bajoran wormhole. It'd be about the same distance to Federation space going either way so distance doesn't factor in. I don't think the Dominion was the known threat it came to become when Voyager set sail so that shouldn't have prevented them taking that route.
This is waaaay out there, but I like to imagine the Equinox took a radically different path and actually made it. Imagine Ransom headed for the Gamma quandrant instead and along the way the ship became dramatically enhanced thanks to new technology acquired, primarily propulsion and weapons. The ship would reach Dominion space only to find out the Federation is at war. The Equinox would then proceed to use their newly advanced tech to commit hit and run attacks on the Dominion, effectively bringing the fight to the Gamma quandrant. Perhaps they foil an imminent attack. Stuff like that. Eventually the Equinox would make it to the wormhole, either during the war or after the war's conclusion. The Nova has a great spaceframe. It'd be a great little fighter (it's actually born out of the Defiant's design phase.)
IT DID NOT DAMAGE IT BEYOND BEING A MOSQUITO. The crew of voyager had inside information on how to penetrate specific aspects of its defences. Voyager (intrepid class was part of the anti borg starfleet) engaged this thing for less than 5 minutes with borg and anti borg enhancements and was nearly crippled in very short order! With almost zero damage done to the cube. You could have had 30 voyagers equipped the same and they would have still lost a pitched battle. Also its worth mentioning that this event is after when starfleet showed the unforgivable weaknesses of their previous subspace field defenses. So that's why it uses conventional yet extremely powerful shields.
The tac cube is designed to get close enough to an Oberth to assimilate it without being caught up in the explosion.
During the battle of Wolf 359 the explodium hulls of the Oberth were the only thing to truly damage the standard cube.
I do think voyage should of had a refit/redesign around season 6. maybe have them find an abandoned shipyard that they used to break voyage down and rebuild it as a intrepid mark 2 delta quadrant variant implementing anti Borg system and advanced technology found in the delta quadrant, basically forerunners for the advanced system gifted to them by admiral Janeway. And even story wise have the shipyard orbit the origin planet of the Borg. That way they can explore the Borg origin and improve voyager simultaneously.
So agree. Always hated the nurfed the Borg. For a discussed that's supposed to be eons ahead of the federation there sure where quickly subdued
Can you do B5 or Andromeda ships? How about Homeworld?
Rick Berman: WRITE THAT DOWN! WRITE THAT DOWN!
How the Tac-cube could have been introduced instead:
After Seven had been on the ship for a while.
Normal operations on the bridge when all of the sudden the ship jankes, yellow alert goes off and the words "Tactical alert 4" appears on one of the screens.
Paris(confused): Captain we have changed course and gone to maximum emergency warp.
Seven: I have introduced a subroutine into the ships computer in case the sensors detect a class 4 tactical cube at maximum detection range.
Tuvok: Seven, you have been instructed, when it comes to unauthorized changes...
Janeway(interrupts): Good thinking Seven. Paris find whatever can mask our signature and won't kill us right away. Today I'm not picky.
(Viewscreen now displays cube, flying in a different direction)
Tuvok: Captain, the cube does not appear to change course.
Janeway: Lieutenant, I don't care. With this thing I'm not going to risk anything.
After that it should never come to blows with that kind of ship because whenever it comes up the crew would treat a confrontation with it as "not an option", no matter the circumstances.
You forgot that The Voyager class was built to fight the Borg, and it’s crew is resourceful
well put
Your idea about the armor is a real good one, but there is a simple anwser to you question. You have the option to come up with this AFTER the series is over.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, the Tactical Cube seems like overkill. It's specialized nature, along with that of the Spheres, seems antithetical to what the Borg are supposed to be.
Well said.
Lore reloaded: Insert combined powers joke here.
Spock and Kirk: Fusion HA!
KAMEHAME... PHASERBEAM! 😜
I agree what the writers did to the Borg is just disgusting. You are 100% correct in this video.
if I remember right, at that time the Queen was trying to "Charm' 7 of 9, to come over to the Borg side. Could she have not let the Cube be damaged just to make it Look good? Perhaps look into the story about the "Motive" of the Borg at that time.
armada 2, loved that game. Also voyager would of been so much better if the "year of hell" 2-parter was an entire season long
Janeway. Possibly the most overpowerd captain to date.
She is a woman. Apparently the future is female. By the 24th century a womans power is over 9000.
A lack of forethought does tend to be an issue in episodic storytelling with lots of different writers, the possibility of executive meddling and perhaps the project even changing hands between showrunners. Different writers may introduce different ideas at any given time, you won't know ahead of time how many seasons you have to work with, what new factors will be established before the resolution, etc.
Not to say you can't plan ahead and many try to - perhaps the writers of Voyager really were lazier than in other Trek shows, or the production was more chaotic for some reason, I don't know enough about Star Trek to comment on that. But point is, it gets tricky and there ends up being a lot of improvisation. Really solid, consistent writing is generally the result of one single long term plan towards a specific creative vision.
See, you weren't using forethought as much as you were using _hindsight._ That makes it much easier to come up with ways for how the story could have been told better, even for a layman.
In general the writers did what you supposed in that vid but obviously not in that detail. You mentioned the episode with the futuristic drone from season 5. In that episode seven asked the drone if it can help to increase voyagers effectiveness against the attacking sphere. The drone than connects itself to Voyager and modifys its weapons and shields. After that seven had almost two years to work on that modifications made by the drone. In my opinion this is a good explanation why the ship could defend itself against the tactical cube for so long.
The ship was modified as much as it could be.. the 29th century borg said that himself and it still couldn't take a sphere.
@@LoreReloaded Voyager was caught by the spheres holding beam. I don't know why the tactical cube didn't use one in the other episode. Another big plot whole aswell as the fact that after emissary the borg tractor beam didn't drain the shields any more. Just stupid writing but your friend anti-trekker made a whole series about that topic so no reason to argue any further.
Voyager never successfully battled the Borg prior to their future tech. They just used what advantages they had to skirmish and retreat during their several encounters.
I like how you ignore the Borg where that was with voyager
I think it would be better if the data storage device given to them by 1 could be a weapons prototype concept called the charged ion cascade. It would be capable of temporarily disrupting all functions within a Borg vessel effectively crippling it for a time. It also could've been a holo matrix containing his memories and a faximily of 1. This faximily could work with 7 and Torres to develop the weapons system and the energy requirements for this weapon could be so massive that it would overload EPA conduits through the ship thus after doing what they need to do in Unimatrix 0, they would be forced to dismantle it because continued use would be too dangerous.