I still remember when The Best of Both Worlds I and II aired, it was amazing. And I'll never forget the last scene in part II when Picard sits in his chair with his cup of tea and the immense loss/trauma finally hits him.
@@johnlavery3433 venture is credited as well as the Galaxy were the only original line of Galaxy class ships that remain in active service the rest of the Galaxy classes where finished or completed in response to the dominion threat.
My biggest problem with the borg was that the writers totally nerfed them over the course of the franchise. They start off being Star Trek's equivalent of Terminators from the future.. a race with a technology gap of years, decades, maybe even centuries in the future. ... and then by voyager they're just Ned Flanders... just kinda annoying.
Well things changed between the time of TNG and Voyager. New ships, new weapons, new shield technology to fight those tractor beams... the same was true of the dominion, the federation was losing but gradually improved their ships till they became better than their enemy. So don't just look at it like the writers nerfed the borg, look at it like the federation got better at designing ships and got better weapons designed. They also still did take big losses at the battle of sector 001 but they did at least triumph without a graveyard of ships.
@@Deadeye313 I partly agree with that, but the Borg seemed to have sent chills down the spines of the Klingons and Romulans as well. As we know, they're usually prepared from the military side and--it's assumed--the Borg was just as OP towards them. It's hard to imagine both Klingons and Romulans being just as complacent as the Federation with weapons technology since that's their jam.
@@Deadeye313... The problem is, that Voyager didn't have an arsenal of new ships and weapons. Yes, she was a testbed for advanced technology, but essentially a scout/frigate size ship and nothing that a Borg ship shouldn't have been able to deal with. For example, Voyager gets locked with Borg tractor beams all the time. Nothing she was equipped with or the crew developed really stopped that. You can't really compare the Borg to the Dominion. The Dominion were far closer technologically to the Federation, they just used weapons and sensors that hadn't been encountered previously. I.e. weapons that could penetrate current (at the time) Federation shields and scanners that could detect cloaked ships. For an enemy that's more or less on your technological level, those are engineering problems to be overcome, which the Federation did. You can't have that same level of adaption when you're facing an enemy that is at least hundreds of years ahead of you technologically. Yes, plot armour is a thing, but you don't take an enemy that, after they were created, the writers initially didn't know how to beat, and turn them into a "villain of the week". It essentially neuters them. So the Borg were 100% nerfed in Voyager, because you can't have one Intrepid-class ship and a shuttlecraft taking on Borg ships and not being instantly destroyed. Also, if you're talking about there not being a "graveyard of ships" at Sector 001 (even though when the Enterprise arrives there are lots of remains of other starships floating around) that might be because the Borg were engaged in the Typhon Sector, and what we see in First Contact is the last part of a running battle that's been going on since the Borg first smashed through the Federation lines. The Enterprise listened in on the opening seconds of the battle, with starships being immediately destroyed and crippled, then had to warp all the way to Earth from the Neutral Zone. So there isn't one big graveyard of ships like at Wolf 359, more like a trail of them from Typhon to Earth.
The Battle of Wolf 359 was a very brutal wake up call for the Federation's populace and Starfleet as a whole. Events after The Praxis Incident and the years after the Tomed Incident really made the Federation very complacent and forgot most of it's military readiness. Sure, the Cardassians caused a stir but those were contained birder skirmishes. But the Borg were a different threat entirely. They don't reason, they don't compromise, and they certainly aren't afraid to take anything by force. Their relentless pursuit of perfection and their all-consuming drive to assimilate anything in their path is nothing what Starfleet...hell, what ANYONE in the entire Alpha and Beta Quadrants....have seen before. The is the very definition of an existential threat, seconded only by The Dominion. I like to think the Battle of Wolf 359 as the turning point for Starfleet to take it's job seriously as the military arm of the Federation while the Federation itself has to face the reality the galaxy is a far more dangerous place where it's idealism of "to explore new civilizations and boldly go where no one has gone before" isn't always the best policy. The Federation's High Council and some of the less military-oriented members of Starfleet Command, to my mind, are responsible for weakening the fleet's defenses by not giving them the tools to innovate and modernize their entire line of ships. Had they realized that and implement a slew of changes that would allow a complete modernization and reorganization of Starfleet from being an exploratory body into an efficient military force. That alone would give the Klingons and Romulans a pause and reconsider their options had Starfleet began it's militarization. Now about the Borg. Even if Starfleet did modernize and revamp it's fleet, the truth is Wolf 359 would still be a massacre. But the difference would be Stafleet would take more steps to create more tactical-oriented ships of the line as well create defenses with the purpose of softening (not defeating) the Borg. They would make more contingency plans in the event the Borg managed to break through the defenses and assimilate Earth. That would be the legacy of Wolf 359 had Starfleet took the threat far seriously and made preparations without any political interference from the more peace-minded members of Starfleet Command and from the Federation High Council. So let's say the Borg encounters maintain to be sporadic and then the Dominion comes into the picture, a very militarized and highly formidable Starfleet would be ready to give them a very warm reception full of phasers and torpedoes. That, I think, is what Starfleet should have been.
Agreed we see it all the time in technology and the r&d departments for major companies - once a niche is derived and sales are steady unless there is a competing force to drive focus and consumer demands tech stagnates - funny enough my econ prof always told us to look at the board and major executive offices of a company - be it start up or world renowned company - who makes up those leadership positions will often tell you what the priorities will be (issue with mba positions now making increasingly short term decisions vs PhD and tech experienced individuals)
Exactly, with the Klingons now Allies and the Romulans removing themselves from galactic politics the Federation had no real threats, we hear about "wars" against people like the Tzenkathi (I think that is how it is spelt) but it is clear those were like a half paying attention British Empire against any of its colonial conquests, completely one sided and barely worth the name war the closest thing we hear about to a real war is the war against the Cardassians but even they don't actually count as one of the true Alpha Quadrent powers, their "warships" didn't even stand a chance against a pre-wolf 359 Nebula class starship and they seemed shocked that the Federation could easily read their transponder codes. I always found the remilitarisation of Starfleet after 359 to be a fascinating piece of fiction.
@MrHoppers002 Sure it did, until the Royal Navy got pissed off with them. Then they got handed their heads. War of 1812 was settled by a treaty, not a surrender. Reason that happen, as with The War of Independence, was that Britain had far more pressing concerns elsewhere.
to be fair, the enterprise was referred as a “Ship of Peace”. Star fleet was not considered a military outfit. But from the take on the show, it makes it like earth’s only defense is just that. That’s like giving your entire defensive capabilities to the UN. I just think that might be more of the limitation of the writers in TNG for that episode.
I always thought that the oberth class survived the battle. I imagine that it never actually engaged the Borg, just orbited the battle making detailed scans of their ship and collecting massive amounts of data on its systems and tactics. I'd like to think that those new ship designs owed a lot to the information gleaned from that little ship.
God, I will never forget when I first saw Part 1 of this excellent, high tension, taughtly-paced episode back in early June 1991! 'From this toime fohrward, you will service..Us!' 😧😄
@Zerebrat Eightyseven MACOs were never apart of starfleet. They were THE Earth military. Starfleet was more like NASA. Which doesn't mean it can't defend itself. NASA itself has a highly trained SWAT team. However, Starfleet, already having the infrastructure, took on all roles of defense for the federation. It made sense. The advanced ships are there, with officers trained in their operations. The only problem is Starfleet, while acknowledging their responsibilities to protect the federation, it was so arrogant of itself that it figured they could do it without even fighting. Humanity was too quick to make themselves into something different so species wouldn't judge then on their past wars.
This is an awesome video; I wrote a parallel essay about how "Best of Both Worlds" actually helped shake up TV writing for the time. Some minor remarks! 1) 5:52- I agree with the core MUST be protected; however, as awful as it sounds, while Earth is Sector 001- the core- The Federation is not just Earth. There are 5 other founding planets and more than 150 member planets with thousands of colonies, with each colony having up to million people each. In universe, Starfleet may have no been able to muster more ships up, not because of arrogance per se, to protect the other member planets and colonies. 2) We have to remember what Q said about Human arrogance in Space exploration (and Picard's in particular) and then what Q said about the Borg: They are the ultimate consumers and destroyers. They can't be bargained with, don't care about freedom or self determination or anything that the Federation- and thus Picard- care about. This was something that in that golden age that Picard grew up and trained in was not ready for, and I am so glad you pointed that out. BUT! it was not just ships that had to change, but the mindset. You show that in the clip at the end. Freedom, equality and self determination are things worth fighting to the death for.
Probably the best Trek analysis video I've seen - from anyone. This was just fantastically done. The narrative, your delivery, the music choice, and the extremely accurate analysis are just fantastic. Really, REALLY good work. You should be proud of this one.
Nice video. It's fun to watch Enterprise again on Amazon, you see the same thing - the first earth ship headed out to deep space completely unprepared for conflict. So completely unprepared that we see crews working double shifts to install the very first phase cannon. It's hard to believe how naive humanity was in the beginning. Once Star Fleet came along and we had much more experience in deep space, you'd think the lesson would learned. But no, it has to be learned over and over again. They should have listened and learned from Q - "If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughta go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation "Q Who?"
Yet another great segment! Star Fleet needed a "kick in it's pants" to get it out of it's complacency. The Borg did Star Fleet a favor at Wolf 359. (22 February 2019 0405 hours)
Big agree that the Galaxy class was the ultimate sign of star fleet, and federation, complacency. As Roddenbery requested, it was built as a elegant luxury liner in space. A true sign of arrogent complacency. Especially showing how the Defiant, Sovereign, and Intrepid's were tiny compared to the Galaxy class, yet wildly outgunned it.
I still think they should have changed the intro for that second episode, swap out the Enterprise for a Borg cube, with Locutus reading his Borg speech.
That would have been a really good idea! Instead of Picard saying, "To boldly go where...." we would get Locutus of Borg saying "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
When I was watching tng in the 90s and you hit it what I couldn’t figure out but I know something was wrong the federation had gotten to comfortable and kinda big headed
This is the episode that got me to watch the show. I originally was against the show because it came out at the same time as The New Monkees. But I was bored one afternoon, and watched the season 3 finale. After this episode I couldn’t wait to see the conclusion, and I was hooked on the series.
5:00 See also Star Trek Generations, where the Enterprise B is the only ship in range to go to the aid of the Klingon cargo ships during its maiden voyage. One explanation is that since these are long range exploration ships, they wouldn't do much exploring if they spent a lot of time hovering around sector 001. Also, Earth is only one planet. The Federation would have assets like starbases, shipyards and outposts scattered all around the quadrant which would need some level of protection. Pulling every ship in to defend Earth would just leave everything else open.
Have you ever played a strategy computer game? The more you advance to new areas, the less you can defend your home base. And the galaxy is really huge. But still, is true. Starfleet should have always some ships patrolling the sol system. But that would have prevented many major plots of movies and episodes.
How would Starfleet have managed in the Dominion war if the the events of the Borg in counter had not had happened after the lose of the the USS Odyssey and no Defiant for Sisko to pull out of mothballs, would starfleet pull out of the gamma quadrant or start the fleet update and prepare for war or sell out to keep the peace ?
neil king good question. I think they would of lost to be honest. Star fleet had gone soft pre borg encounter, meeting that first cube and the battle at wolf 359 made them up their game
Great video but as at least a side note the final upgrade of Voyager should have been mentioned here. The new armor and torpedoes was certainly a major game changer. Although i feel the writing of End Game was poor. I dont believe it should have been a future Janeway bring the tech. Because quite simply it was very close to old tech from TNG. The Pegasus experiment with the phased cloak. The transphasic torpedoes utilized this very simular tech and armor had been used since the NX era. They could have simply wrote in the discovery of this tech in some archive logs and developed it into what was shown. The use of time travel was a gimmick poorly used and far too often in the Voyager series. The encounter with the Voth and the City Ship had so much potential yet was wasted.
I've always enjoyed the one ship outlook. The fact that one ship was sent to intercept another would for me signify strength of the starship. The fact that in later years, starfleet had massive fleets all in close combat seemed rather ridiculous for me. The TOS era seemed to have understood this having fleets being composed of only a few ships grouped together and yet being able to easily evade and outflank enemy forces in any direction. Large fleets seem less mobile, while small strike fleets segmented over several parsecs apart and yet still able to support each other.
I know you brought up the Akira Class ship, which has always been my favorite ship. I just don't like how they created this super elegant ship and put it on the back burner. I would like to have a series where there is a focus on the Akira class, I would definitely watch said series. If the NX, Defiant, and Intrepid classes can get a series so to can the Akira.
First off, just wanna say best of both worlds is one of my favorite TNG episodes (probably top of the list). And in the case of TMP I just assumed a fleet wide refit was underway & ENT a constitution closest to completion. Or V'ger was on a course & speed that made Enterprise the closest ship.
I really feel like the post-Praxis Star Fleet was lazy and inept. They sat on their laurels and did nothing to really innovate, which is why they used the same model of ship for a 100 years. It is really crazy how after the first encounter with the Borg and, especially, Wolf 359, we suddenly have Sovereigns, Intrepids, Novas, Sabres, Norwarys, Defiants, Akiras, etc. It was an explosion of purpose built, highly effective ships. It really was the kick in the teeth that Starfleet needed to get out of its slump and get back to being more of a military force.
Here's the crazy part all those ships and The"All Good Things" Enterprise-D better could have been done 50 years sooner atleast had they been serious since the start of the 23 Century! Yeah it's true.!
Nothing like the threat of the utter termination of your civilization to get those Admirals and ship designers off their asses in Risa and back to the drawing boards! And think of the resource demands - as a space nerd it was stunning to see the jumps in costs and material from the Apollo Program to the Space Shuttle. The Earth Alliance and early Starfleet, with a resource base of one solar system and a few colonies, was pressed to produce the Warp 5 NX Enterprise and later the Columbia. Can you imagine the stress on the Federation economy to finance, build and field the massive fleets that took on the Borg and later the Dominion? Considerations which probably contribiuted to the misguided decision to cede the Federation Colonies bordering Cardassinan space, which in the long run did NOT prevent an eventual brusing war.
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios I think that Wolf 359 is inaccurately but appropriately compares to a Pearl Harbor scenario where it shook the Federation out of complacency and they went on a total rearmament they always had the capability but never the will power to do so.
very nice video, one also has to wonder how long those bugs were infiltrating star fleet undermining the federation. they could have been around for quite some time doing less overt acts of sabotage like making weak ships and creating all that red tape, till they were ready for the endgame which drew attention to them. USS Odyssey #NeverForget
To me, you can just encapsulate the entire problem in just one word : Carpeting. Picard confided to Scotty that he was in command aboard the Stargazer, he could know what warp factor they were currently travelling at just from the feel of the vibration through the deck plates, when it deployed near the Cardassian sector during the border wars, which was also where Captain Jellicoe served nearly his entire career. Jellicoe has clearly never served before, let alone commanded any vessels with full wall-to-wall carpeting on every deck, and he clearly does NOT like it - he also has a young son (and presumably, also, a wife), but they do NOT cohabitate together or live aboard ship with him when he assume command of The Enterprise.
Well Janeway read a log from Captain Amisov talking about the Borg. Further, a year after Wolf 359, the Endeavour was in dock when she was tasked with joining the blockade in "Redemption II". Since she was in dock, that would suggest she had taken a beating at some point (yes, a scheduled refit is possible), but no more than my two cents. Nice presentations by the way. I look forward to watching the rest.
Thank you very much, like I said Ive always wondered that too! So great minds... :P I hope we get a LOT more information about that battle in future series :)
In a strange way, it could be said that the Borg *saved* the Federation... can we really imagine a Starfleet that never got it's ass handed to it at Wolf 359 and began to rethink it's ship design as a result standing up to a Dominion invasion? I can't, they would have ended up sending O'berth's into combat against Jem'Hadar battleships, and you can probably guess how well that would have gone
Enterprise D started out as a Yuppie cruise ship until the Borg came along. Then everyone had to get their hands dirty. Oh no! Like Riker said to Worf in that episode "We have to show the Borg that we can adapt too" I believe the surviving ship at Wolf 359 was the USS Righteous.
my theory on why only 40 of 1000's of starships arrived to fight the Borg: It was a time of peaceful expansion for the federation. The Enterprise seemingly was meant to patrol and explore within Federations space, and a lot of episodes revolved around outposts, colonies, supply runs, and building cloakable duck blinds to watch prewarp civilizations. Unlikely, but perhaps the Star Fleet had most of its ships out on supply runs and colonizing planets.
agreed, that is very foolish. Regardless optimistic mismanagement does seem to be the case. One example comes to mind in the episode '2nd chances' when Thomas Riker says hes going on a terraforming mission on the USS Ghandi, and that it would take 4 months just to get there. It seems that both before and after the Borg incursions and the battle of Wolf 359 the Federation prioritizes long distance expansionism over protectionism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Defiant was the only ship meant to engage and destroy Borg, the sovereign class was meant to be basically a battle ship in response to the dominion invasion, however i think they did keep the Borg in mind when they were designed.
Given that Starfleet fights three wars during the 2350s, Starfleet was certainly experienced. None of its adversaries were enough to convince the Federation to fork out for radically different ships. Hence the hybrids and sticking families on ships. The Borg combined with the reemergence of the Romulans changed all that. Because now Starfleet could point to existential threats rather than neighbourhood nuisances.
Nice vid. Two errors. The Sovereign class was prior to the Prometheus and was slower (but not by much). Also, the Odyssey was destroyed by the Dominion, the Venture was the ship that showed up to assist during the Klingon attack on DS9. Nice explanation of the Intrepid (Voyager) class though. But yes, while I loved the Galaxy class, and she makes a lot of since for that time prior to the Borg incursion, she just didn't afterwards, except as a mobile weapons platforms. Also, the one ship in range thing does make since if you think about it, and ironically the Abrams Trek actually states why this is. By the time of the Motion Picture, Starfleet probably only has around a thousand ships at best. Most were deployed to forward areas, or on deep space exploration missions, and space is simply big. These aren't Star Wars ships which can get around the galaxy in a few minutes (unlike how they tend to do IN the JJ-verse) it takes a few days just to get to Vulcan 12 Lightyears away. The Enterprise wasn't the ONLY ship in range, just the only one that cold get to V'ger before it got to Earth. Keep in mind, V'ger was moving at Warp too, so and of the ships in the area (like the Columbia or the ones we see in Trek IV) probably just couldn't catch it as they were at a bad angle to intercept. V'ger was heading to Earth where the Enterprise was coming from, so she would be able to intercept first. As for the problems in the 24th century prior to 359...your right, tactical error, something they clearly corrected for the second invasion, the war and by Voyager: Endgame.
1:00 Like Tywin Lannister. 2:55 And "together" we can face anything that comes our way. 9:03 How long had the battle been going on when the Enterprise arrives from the edge of the Neutral Zone?
Several other sites I have visited have said the Hood was the sole survivor. They could be wrong though. The USS Ahwahnee was salvaged and repaired after the battle. So it could be the surviving ship also.
It’s like during the stand-off and following the first exchange of fire at The Binary Stars, when not just one, two Starfleet Flag Officers get on their Comm channel to the Klingon Ship of The Dead to propose a ceasefire, prior to further negotiations, and make the declaration “We Come in Peace.” - I am not absolutely certain about this, and it’s never explicitly stated in the episodes, but I have a pretty good sense that “Peace” in the Klingon Tongue gets translated to mean “Victory”, because the one part I am absolutely sure of, to Klingon thinking, even the concept of “Peace” as such is so absurd as to be inconceivable. And the closely analogue to “Peace” is “Victory”. So they are actually broadcasting at those Klingon Vessels “We Come in Victory” *•Cue Creepy Smiling•*
competition, and similarly war, is often a catalyst for innovation. a sad truth but we as a species prefer to stagnate once we've overcome our obstacles. The Borg invasion was one example, as well as the dominion war
The Starfleet took a lot of Excelsior class and Miranda Class ships out of mothballs and reconfigured them for the Dominion War, the Starfleet during the Battle of wolf 359 was much smaller hence why they could only get around 40 ships to fight the Borg Cube... but a very good appraisal that after Kirk helped stop the assassination of the Klingon Chancellor a long-term peace Accord between three biggest factions did car Starfleet to be lulled into a false sense of security.
The Steamrunner and Norway Classes were also designed as a result of the Battle of Wolf 359, but due to the lost of their CGI models by ILM, they seemed to have been forgotten about...
You have to have an idea of what the ship may be required to do before you design it. Starfleet ships was designed mainly exploration , secondary was single or small fleet actions, after the Borg threat the ships was designed for war. Still large ships. They assumed the Borg would only send a cube or 2. Now enter the Dominion with the small attack craft against the larger ships of the alpha quadrant. The Dominion fleet was more practical for total war and if you ask me i believe that if the writers wasnt biased towards the human dominated Federation the Dominion qould habe conquered the alpha quadrant with ease.
I wonder if the ship that survived wolf 359 was the Roosevelt. Riley in Voyagers episode Unity said she was assimilated at wolf 359. Perhaps the ship was assimilated and headed for the delta quadrant.
Tactically speaking, sending 40 ships to take on 1 should have been a "no contest". Admiral Hanson did seem to underestimate the power of the Borg, but then again, sending in every available ship at the first sign of them entering Federation space also leaves other planetary systems unguarded. I don't know what Starfleet's total ship complement is, but if you take the U.S. Navy as an example, as of 2015, the U.S. Navy had a complement of approximately 430 ships. One thing to remember is that Starfleet isn't comprised of all of the Federation planets ships, which is why we don't see Vulcan, Andorian, or any other allies ships. So, that being said, while we can estimate the number of Starfleet vessels to be a lot more than the U.S. Navy's, it still should only logically be in the thousands (I'd be generous if I said it had a fleet of 4000 ships). So, using that number, Admiral Hanson decided to dedicate about 1% of the fleet to take out one ship. You would think that would be enough.
an essential part of 90s trek is families on board. There were explanations for families in TNG, DS9, and VOY. I wonder how, given this, we can include families in future trek shows. Some of the best story telling in trek involve families and children.
No explanation actually warrants family's on board a ship in a reality that requires it to launch torpedoes, fire phasers and have energy shielding against weaponry. It's either stupidity or arrogance. Space is dangerous, utopia or not, you can 'never' get rid of danger and struggle. That is life. It doesn't have to be ugly, but not being prepared is worse than paranoia.
05:39 I think the number of vessels that were present at Wolf 359 represented a decent chunk of Starfleet. It would make sense that the Federation had probably been drawing down the number of Starships since the end of the Cardassian war and their latest designs such as the Galaxy and Nebula class were big and probably quite complex to produce which would also haver added to the problem. I suspect that Wolf 359 was the battle that shook Starfleet up and the ships produced after 2366 such as the Akira, Saber, Norway and Defiant classes all appear to be smaller, tougher and pack more of a punch than the vessels that had come before.
to go from 100s of ships to 1000s of ship in 5 years just doesnt make sense to me... Also only 40 ships in the Federation Core to protect it doesnt make sense at all either...
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios Well Starfleet wasn't expecting an attack from the Borg and as the Federation is at peace I would think that it would have been difficult to mobilise due to the speed which the threat developed. Starfleet could have plenty of mothballed vessels that they could reactivate in order to bulk up the fleet during times of war. This combined with concentration and a crash building program could go part way to explain the seeming discrepancy between the time frames but I suspect it's more down to EPIC WAR shots from the DS9 creators
Well canon is canon and it seems that if they were able to mobilize quickly for the dominion war with so many ships that they probably had them all along... I just dont buy only 40 ships in the coree... Given the Romulan threat, the Ferengi theat as portrayed originally... Starbases like the one in 11001001 that had 5 ships in dock... knowing the Borg were out there for a year... The Cardassian Threat... etc etc etc, seems like a very short sighted and stupid mistake to make...
Yeah, i know this sounds cliche but they should have been prepared for anything still... I mean think how much more advanced they would have been given the sudden leaps in tech after they got kicked in the pants!
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios amazing how desperation for survival does that. And its so easy to just say " forget exploration forget democracy & scientific we're going to be completely militaristic." And even though I agree with this guy on a lot of this it also shows you that they have the capacity to stop and say we're going to be explorers not a military. And its so easy to stay one way instead of reliquishing that thought process
I believe the Doctor was at Wolf359 since he also delt with his own 'Bad Wolf'. He could not change a fixed point in time hence why so many died. Would make a interesting crossover episode.
I wouldn't outright call the Federation inept, incompetent or purely arrogant. The Federation and Starfleet should be expected to prepare defensive measures for their territories and expeditions, but that largely relies on sufficient intelligence of known and existing threats. That being said, Starfleet could certainly do with some improvements to how they react. But I would also fully understand a lacking desire to produce pure warships as such activity and posturing could provoke aggression from neighbors. Starfleet's approach toward defense I always assumed, and possibly incorrectly, was to provide a line more for deterrence than actual aggression. 1. The removal of family and civilian populations from vessels during times of war is sensible and prudent, but during peace-time ... that's impractical and downright silly. Multi-year missions weighing in at half of a decade to even a decade or more without personal and familial ambitions are unreasonable at best. Long-term expeditions into frontiers in our own world have ALWAYS carried civilian and family populations. 2. Resources, planning and production lines are always limited by, well, time and available information. There must always be a reasonable amount of time available to react accordingly to presented threats. Ship and weapon production throughout the series has definitely been inferred to consume months if not years. A many light-year spanning institution such as the Federation and its Starfleet cannot be expected to make overnight sweeping overhauls to its fleet based upon a singular encounter with an enemy, The Borg. Might I also remind, was still quite an unknown (full organizational capacity, fleet sizes, operational centers and homes). Likewise, with the Dominion, the intel was painfully limited to no realistic fault of Starfleet. Conjecture and guessing games makes for poor military planning and over-bloated military budgets. Universally real world military organizations, for the record, utilize incremental upgrades. It is impractical, and I would argue inefficient, to perform sweeping changes.
Yes, Starfleet has thousands of ships, but they're spread out across several thousand light years. They couldn't all arrive at a single rendezvous point at a moment's notice. I think people forget that space is...um, really BIG.
No ones forgetting anything, it's simply hard to believe that in the CORE of the Federation they could only scrounge together 40 ships... Sorry dont buy it!
This video got me to thinking about an aspect of Trek fandom, especially in more recent years. Star Trek has always existed in my life as a space faring odyssey that explored the success and flaws of the human condition. And all in the context of a Federation Of Planets based on an Earth that had outgrown many of the pitfalls that make life in reality next to impossible for a good number of people. Have noticed since the 1990's in particular, the writers for Trek just seemed to lose touch with the future fiction utopia of Gene Roddenberry's vision. And seemed to only be able to present story arcs in the context of human conflict as we know it today. That includes militarism and paranoia. Have theorized for awhile that this occurred due to a synergy of real life collapsing under the weight of economic/social hopelessness and cynicism during this time-along with an adherence to the idea that Starfleet's protocols were often very close (if not identical) to contemporary naval ones. Whatever the case, from DS9 onward? Star Trek has become more about violence, action and military intrigue than the possibilities of science, space travel, alien encounters and new sociological ideas. How does that differentiate Star Trek today from the domination of horror and dystopian scifi that is now mainstream? Perhaps the question of WHY aggressive conflicts should exist in the Trek universe as it does today...should come from its writers examining their own limitations/rigidity on how it perceives the future.
Amazing how the Enterprise can get to Wolf 359 in a few hours. At our current level of tech, it would take approximately 164,000,000 years to travel 7.795 lightyears
Great video. I just wondered why there where no ships of federation allies in Wolf 359? Help me remember, doesn't build Vulcans, Andorians, Tellerites and Bajorans own ships anymore? Where are the Klingon allies?
It kinda surprised me in Enterprise to see Vulcan ships but that was a gap which that show successfully filled. It's just logical, Vulcans travelled space long before humanity. We could assume that a consolidation happened after the founding of the federation, but a Vulcan shipyard building Starfleet ships is never mentioned.
If you remember the DS9 "Take me out to the Holosuite" episode Solok happily boasts of his all Vulcan crew aboard a Nebula class ship. I'd surmise that over centuries Starfleet has incorporated technological elements of all the Federation races into it's starship philosophy and that by the 23rd and 24th Century they adopt a one size fits all policy to Federation starship design- it makes more sense if a design is uniform otherwise engineers/ captains and other crew members from different species would need to be trained on every type which is uneconomical. Despite being late to the party, it is also possible that Zefram Cochranes warp designs were better than existing ones which is alluded to in First Contact with some line about "your theories allow for fleets of ships to be built" perhaps Federation design owes a lot to Human warp theory than we credit it for. just my two cents...
I think this was the whole point of the Borg storyline. Q put humanity on trial to see if they could push beyond the boundaries in front of them. The Borg is an entity that lets you know that there is always someone out there bigger and stronger than you are. Pushing beyond those limits to find the weaknesses of your opponents is inevitable.
I love that starfleet got their asses in gear and made their ships still be for expiration aid science and all that but they had teeth Arrogance bit like b5 earth alliance handled the dilgar but looked what happened So getting relaxed and competent is dangerous
I waited decades and hoped it happened, never did. I wanted a civilian uber-rich collector to have an original Constitution-class starship as his home. But, like a classic look (not classic authentic) collector, kept upgrading its design. I wanted him to have a seemingly harmless Constitution starship that, with him and a crew of his gang and their mercs, first crap all over the Enterprise then help them immensely against someone like the Borg... with a subplot of having the Enterprise captain outwitting the civvy's pillage of said technology.
The Wolf 359 battle was more than just the StarFleet ships. The Klingons sent war vessals, hell they even considered opening communications with the Romulans.
Sorry that is incorrect, No Klingon or Romulan Vessels were a part of the battle... You can see in the wreckage scene its all Starfleet... Also behind the scenes there wasnt a single model of Klingon or Rom vessels used... The admiral in the episode was referring to asking for help, not actually receiving it...
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios 1st: With as large a volume of space around Wolf 359 compared to how small the starships are, only a few ships are visiable. Not seeing a Klingon vessal in the wreckage doesn't mean they were not there. 2nd: My commont was damn near a direct quote from Admiral Henson from "The Best of Both Worlds" go watch it again.
I did reference the episode... He says the Klingons are sending warships, but that doesnt mean they got there... Without actual episode confirmation it is merely speculation that they were there... To say we see an entire graveyard of just Fed ships without ANY Klingon ships doesnt make sense... What you think they wouldnt coordinate their efforts? You think Starfleet would just say ok in this area of space only the Klingons fight? That just isnt logical, sorry to buy it... I believe the Klingons did not show up in time...
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios I agree. I think they said they would, but not in time... there's never been any mention or evidence of other ships being there.
In the episode Peak Performance, Picard tells the stragagist Kolrami, that he opposed the war game exercise. The reason he gives, is that Starfleets mission is exploration. In that case, why bother with weapons? Then in the Best of both Worlds, the admiral tells Picard that starfleet has thrown every resource into the Borg threat, really? Its a good job isnt it? There is no telling how bad things might have turned out otherwise. Also, in the Best of both Worlds, as the (small fleet) is gathering, the admiral tells Riker that the Kligons are sending ships, yet there is no mention of this. I am sure that the Klingons would have relished a battle and would have bolstered the fleet considerably.
The Borg have conquered at least 8500 of civilizations. That is a huge amount of variety, research and situational need to find unusual weapons. What I'm getting at is how disappointing it is in how few weapons the borg ever use. I want to see a dazzling variety of lights and beams, some of which don't do more than cause random bits of matter to vaporize.
Could you explain what you meant by “so, it was not only ironic but also fitting that the Enterprise would be of this design?” I’m not sure we have the same meanings for these words, but since we have a comments section, I can just ask you what you meant. :)
I still remember when The Best of Both Worlds I and II aired, it was amazing. And I'll never forget the last scene in part II when Picard sits in his chair with his cup of tea and the immense loss/trauma finally hits him.
Oh me too! It was a long summer between P1 and P2!
"We're terrible as a huge fleet, but send one ship and hey, whatta ya know, we win"!
At 10:04, the Odyssey was the ship that got destroyed, not the Venture.
Great catch :)
@@moejaime2654 wow dude.
Yamato, the venture was the dominion war edition of the Galaxy class
@@johnlavery3433 venture is credited as well as the Galaxy were the only original line of Galaxy class ships that remain in active service the rest of the Galaxy classes where finished or completed in response to the dominion threat.
I caught that too. Just watched that episode yesterday. One of my faves.
Q is a goddam hero for introducing The Enterprise to The Borg when he did. If he hadn’t, The Borg would have annihilated the Federation.
I always wondered what the other powers thought of the battle of Wolf 359. And what steps they took.
Damn, those Sovegein class were a hell of a battleship!
Indeed they were!
The first real battleship
My biggest problem with the borg was that the writers totally nerfed them over the course of the franchise. They start off being Star Trek's equivalent of Terminators from the future.. a race with a technology gap of years, decades, maybe even centuries in the future. ...
and then by voyager they're just Ned Flanders... just kinda annoying.
Yes ive had the same thought...
"We will add your biodiddlylogical and technodoodlylogical distinctivediddlydoodlyness to our own."
Well things changed between the time of TNG and Voyager. New ships, new weapons, new shield technology to fight those tractor beams... the same was true of the dominion, the federation was losing but gradually improved their ships till they became better than their enemy.
So don't just look at it like the writers nerfed the borg, look at it like the federation got better at designing ships and got better weapons designed.
They also still did take big losses at the battle of sector 001 but they did at least triumph without a graveyard of ships.
@@Deadeye313 I partly agree with that, but the Borg seemed to have sent chills down the spines of the Klingons and Romulans as well. As we know, they're usually prepared from the military side and--it's assumed--the Borg was just as OP towards them. It's hard to imagine both Klingons and Romulans being just as complacent as the Federation with weapons technology since that's their jam.
@@Deadeye313... The problem is, that Voyager didn't have an arsenal of new ships and weapons. Yes, she was a testbed for advanced technology, but essentially a scout/frigate size ship and nothing that a Borg ship shouldn't have been able to deal with. For example, Voyager gets locked with Borg tractor beams all the time. Nothing she was equipped with or the crew developed really stopped that.
You can't really compare the Borg to the Dominion. The Dominion were far closer technologically to the Federation, they just used weapons and sensors that hadn't been encountered previously. I.e. weapons that could penetrate current (at the time) Federation shields and scanners that could detect cloaked ships. For an enemy that's more or less on your technological level, those are engineering problems to be overcome, which the Federation did.
You can't have that same level of adaption when you're facing an enemy that is at least hundreds of years ahead of you technologically.
Yes, plot armour is a thing, but you don't take an enemy that, after they were created, the writers initially didn't know how to beat, and turn them into a "villain of the week". It essentially neuters them.
So the Borg were 100% nerfed in Voyager, because you can't have one Intrepid-class ship and a shuttlecraft taking on Borg ships and not being instantly destroyed.
Also, if you're talking about there not being a "graveyard of ships" at Sector 001 (even though when the Enterprise arrives there are lots of remains of other starships floating around) that might be because the Borg were engaged in the Typhon Sector, and what we see in First Contact is the last part of a running battle that's been going on since the Borg first smashed through the Federation lines.
The Enterprise listened in on the opening seconds of the battle, with starships being immediately destroyed and crippled, then had to warp all the way to Earth from the Neutral Zone. So there isn't one big graveyard of ships like at Wolf 359, more like a trail of them from Typhon to Earth.
The Battle of Wolf 359 was a very brutal wake up call for the Federation's populace and Starfleet as a whole. Events after The Praxis Incident and the years after the Tomed Incident really made the Federation very complacent and forgot most of it's military readiness. Sure, the Cardassians caused a stir but those were contained birder skirmishes. But the Borg were a different threat entirely. They don't reason, they don't compromise, and they certainly aren't afraid to take anything by force. Their relentless pursuit of perfection and their all-consuming drive to assimilate anything in their path is nothing what Starfleet...hell, what ANYONE in the entire Alpha and Beta Quadrants....have seen before. The is the very definition of an existential threat, seconded only by The Dominion.
I like to think the Battle of Wolf 359 as the turning point for Starfleet to take it's job seriously as the military arm of the Federation while the Federation itself has to face the reality the galaxy is a far more dangerous place where it's idealism of "to explore new civilizations and boldly go where no one has gone before" isn't always the best policy. The Federation's High Council and some of the less military-oriented members of Starfleet Command, to my mind, are responsible for weakening the fleet's defenses by not giving them the tools to innovate and modernize their entire line of ships. Had they realized that and implement a slew of changes that would allow a complete modernization and reorganization of Starfleet from being an exploratory body into an efficient military force. That alone would give the Klingons and Romulans a pause and reconsider their options had Starfleet began it's militarization. Now about the Borg. Even if Starfleet did modernize and revamp it's fleet, the truth is Wolf 359 would still be a massacre. But the difference would be Stafleet would take more steps to create more tactical-oriented ships of the line as well create defenses with the purpose of softening (not defeating) the Borg. They would make more contingency plans in the event the Borg managed to break through the defenses and assimilate Earth. That would be the legacy of Wolf 359 had Starfleet took the threat far seriously and made preparations without any political interference from the more peace-minded members of Starfleet Command and from the Federation High Council.
So let's say the Borg encounters maintain to be sporadic and then the Dominion comes into the picture, a very militarized and highly formidable Starfleet would be ready to give them a very warm reception full of phasers and torpedoes. That, I think, is what Starfleet should have been.
Agreed we see it all the time in technology and the r&d departments for major companies - once a niche is derived and sales are steady unless there is a competing force to drive focus and consumer demands tech stagnates - funny enough my econ prof always told us to look at the board and major executive offices of a company - be it start up or world renowned company - who makes up those leadership positions will often tell you what the priorities will be (issue with mba positions now making increasingly short term decisions vs PhD and tech experienced individuals)
Exactly, with the Klingons now Allies and the Romulans removing themselves from galactic politics the Federation had no real threats, we hear about "wars" against people like the Tzenkathi (I think that is how it is spelt) but it is clear those were like a half paying attention British Empire against any of its colonial conquests, completely one sided and barely worth the name war the closest thing we hear about to a real war is the war against the Cardassians but even they don't actually count as one of the true Alpha Quadrent powers, their "warships" didn't even stand a chance against a pre-wolf 359 Nebula class starship and they seemed shocked that the Federation could easily read their transponder codes.
I always found the remilitarisation of Starfleet after 359 to be a fascinating piece of fiction.
@MrHoppers002 Just like the Royal Navy in the War of 1812. Sending lower end, 12 frigates against 24 pounder heavier frigates.
@MrHoppers002 Sure it did, until the Royal Navy got pissed off with them. Then they got handed their heads. War of 1812 was settled by a treaty, not a surrender. Reason that happen, as with The War of Independence, was that Britain had far more pressing concerns elsewhere.
to be fair, the enterprise was referred as a “Ship of Peace”. Star fleet was not considered a military outfit. But from the take on the show, it makes it like earth’s only defense is just that. That’s like giving your entire defensive capabilities to the UN. I just think that might be more of the limitation of the writers in TNG for that episode.
Lt Commander Shelby was a great character. Too bad we didn't get to see much of her. Hail David!
The Battle was shot with plastic models, it was a miracle they had more than three.
I always thought that the oberth class survived the battle. I imagine that it never actually engaged the Borg, just orbited the battle making detailed scans of their ship and collecting massive amounts of data on its systems and tactics. I'd like to think that those new ship designs owed a lot to the information gleaned from that little ship.
God, I will never forget when I first saw Part 1 of this excellent, high tension, taughtly-paced episode back in early June 1991! 'From this toime fohrward, you will service..Us!' 😧😄
'after Wolf 359, Starfleet took a step back'... and remembered it was actually a military
@Zerebrat Eightyseven MACOs were never apart of starfleet. They were THE Earth military. Starfleet was more like NASA. Which doesn't mean it can't defend itself. NASA itself has a highly trained SWAT team.
However, Starfleet, already having the infrastructure, took on all roles of defense for the federation. It made sense. The advanced ships are there, with officers trained in their operations. The only problem is Starfleet, while acknowledging their responsibilities to protect the federation, it was so arrogant of itself that it figured they could do it without even fighting. Humanity was too quick to make themselves into something different so species wouldn't judge then on their past wars.
Starfleet is not a military, its NASA with guns.
Stop trying to make Starfleet feel better. They are a Space Navy. A Military Arm.
@@timesthree5757 They can be military if needed.
This is an awesome video; I wrote a parallel essay about how "Best of Both Worlds" actually helped shake up TV writing for the time. Some minor remarks! 1) 5:52- I agree with the core MUST be protected; however, as awful as it sounds, while Earth is Sector 001- the core- The Federation is not just Earth. There are 5 other founding planets and more than 150 member planets with thousands of colonies, with each colony having up to million people each. In universe, Starfleet may have no been able to muster more ships up, not because of arrogance per se, to protect the other member planets and colonies. 2) We have to remember what Q said about Human arrogance in Space exploration (and Picard's in particular) and then what Q said about the Borg: They are the ultimate consumers and destroyers. They can't be bargained with, don't care about freedom or self determination or anything that the Federation- and thus Picard- care about. This was something that in that golden age that Picard grew up and trained in was not ready for, and I am so glad you pointed that out. BUT! it was not just ships that had to change, but the mindset. You show that in the clip at the end. Freedom, equality and self determination are things worth fighting to the death for.
You ended this video with my single favorite line from Picard, ever. Thanks for that.
LOL you're welcome!
Probably the best Trek analysis video I've seen - from anyone. This was just fantastically done. The narrative, your delivery, the music choice, and the extremely accurate analysis are just fantastic. Really, REALLY good work. You should be proud of this one.
That you so much! I appreciate the feedback and the support :)
Nice video. It's fun to watch Enterprise again on Amazon, you see the same thing - the first earth ship headed out to deep space completely unprepared for conflict. So completely unprepared that we see crews working double shifts to install the very first phase cannon. It's hard to believe how naive humanity was in the beginning. Once Star Fleet came along and we had much more experience in deep space, you'd think the lesson would learned. But no, it has to be learned over and over again. They should have listened and learned from Q - "If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you oughta go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation "Q Who?"
Thank you for your support :)
Yet another great segment! Star Fleet needed a "kick in it's pants" to get it out of it's complacency. The Borg did Star Fleet a favor at Wolf 359. (22 February 2019 0405 hours)
"We're assembling every starship we can muster at Wolf 359" - Admiral Hanson
And fail to get even 50 ships there. Talk about inefficient.
@@W4lhalla I get the impression that more arrived, only too late.
Big agree that the Galaxy class was the ultimate sign of star fleet, and federation, complacency. As Roddenbery requested, it was built as a elegant luxury liner in space. A true sign of arrogent complacency. Especially showing how the Defiant, Sovereign, and Intrepid's were tiny compared to the Galaxy class, yet wildly outgunned it.
Great vid, and i agree with you on all fronts but one; i think the Prometheus has a slight edge in combat effectiveness compared to the sovereign.
I still think they should have changed the intro for that second episode, swap out the Enterprise for a Borg cube, with Locutus reading his Borg speech.
That would have been a really good idea! Instead of Picard saying, "To boldly go where...." we would get Locutus of Borg saying "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
When I was watching tng in the 90s and you hit it what I couldn’t figure out but I know something was wrong the federation had gotten to comfortable and kinda big headed
This is the episode that got me to watch the show. I originally was against the show because it came out at the same time as The New Monkees. But I was bored one afternoon, and watched the season 3 finale. After this episode I couldn’t wait to see the conclusion, and I was hooked on the series.
I still have flashbacks to my experience's at wolf 359!
it's a good thing for starfleet that visual effects technology improved enough to allow bigger fleets
The miracles of modern Tech!
Another fine episode. Keep it up!
Thank you so much :)
5:00 See also Star Trek Generations, where the Enterprise B is the only ship in range to go to the aid of the Klingon cargo ships during its maiden voyage. One explanation is that since these are long range exploration ships, they wouldn't do much exploring if they spent a lot of time hovering around sector 001. Also, Earth is only one planet. The Federation would have assets like starbases, shipyards and outposts scattered all around the quadrant which would need some level of protection. Pulling every ship in to defend Earth would just leave everything else open.
But you'd think they'd have ships to protect the head quarters of Starfleet... No Military installation leaves itself undefended....
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios Well yeah, they did have 40, probably thinking that was overkill for a single Borg cube.
40 ships in the core of the Federation, that ridiculous... And that arrogance lead to 39 being destroyed!
Have you ever played a strategy computer game? The more you advance to new areas, the less you can defend your home base. And the galaxy is really huge.
But still, is true. Starfleet should have always some ships patrolling the sol system. But that would have prevented many major plots of movies and episodes.
How would Starfleet have managed in the Dominion war if the the events of the Borg in counter had not had happened after the lose of the the USS Odyssey and no Defiant for Sisko to pull out of mothballs, would starfleet pull out of the gamma quadrant or start the fleet update and prepare for war or sell out to keep the peace ?
neil king good question. I think they would of lost to be honest. Star fleet had gone soft pre borg encounter, meeting that first cube and the battle at wolf 359 made them up their game
Dam dude where have u been wow great job keep it up very nice
Thank you, and im always around... Though now a days I release a video once a week Every Monday :)
Great video but as at least a side note the final upgrade of Voyager should have been mentioned here. The new armor and torpedoes was certainly a major game changer. Although i feel the writing of End Game was poor. I dont believe it should have been a future Janeway bring the tech. Because quite simply it was very close to old tech from TNG. The Pegasus experiment with the phased cloak. The transphasic torpedoes utilized this very simular tech and armor had been used since the NX era. They could have simply wrote in the discovery of this tech in some archive logs and developed it into what was shown. The use of time travel was a gimmick poorly used and far too often in the Voyager series. The encounter with the Voth and the City Ship had so much potential yet was wasted.
I've always enjoyed the one ship outlook. The fact that one ship was sent to intercept another would for me signify strength of the starship. The fact that in later years, starfleet had massive fleets all in close combat seemed rather ridiculous for me. The TOS era seemed to have understood this having fleets being composed of only a few ships grouped together and yet being able to easily evade and outflank enemy forces in any direction.
Large fleets seem less mobile, while small strike fleets segmented over several parsecs apart and yet still able to support each other.
I know you brought up the Akira Class ship, which has always been my favorite ship. I just don't like how they created this super elegant ship and put it on the back burner. I would like to have a series where there is a focus on the Akira class, I would definitely watch said series. If the NX, Defiant, and Intrepid classes can get a series so to can the Akira.
Well the NX as basically an Akira Class :P But seriously I like the Akira design, watch for a video on it in the future :)
Akira is an upside down nx.
Great videos. Glad I found you. Please keep up the great work. And yes, I am subscribing!!
Thank you so Much! Glad you like the channel!
It may sound like a cliche, but this channel really does deserve to be better known,
Thank you so much :) Well the channels only been around for about 6 months, so hopefully the future will hold that! :) Spread the word :)
Man This makes me want to go rewatch all that post Borg upgrading.
First off, just wanna say best of both worlds is one of my favorite TNG episodes (probably top of the list). And in the case of TMP I just assumed a fleet wide refit was underway & ENT a constitution closest to completion. Or V'ger was on a course & speed that made Enterprise the closest ship.
Great job on this video!
Thank you!
I really feel like the post-Praxis Star Fleet was lazy and inept. They sat on their laurels and did nothing to really innovate, which is why they used the same model of ship for a 100 years.
It is really crazy how after the first encounter with the Borg and, especially, Wolf 359, we suddenly have Sovereigns, Intrepids, Novas, Sabres, Norwarys, Defiants, Akiras, etc. It was an explosion of purpose built, highly effective ships. It really was the kick in the teeth that Starfleet needed to get out of its slump and get back to being more of a military force.
I completely agree!
Here's the crazy part all those ships and The"All Good Things" Enterprise-D better could have been done 50 years sooner atleast had they been serious since the start of the 23 Century! Yeah it's true.!
@@nestorguardado600 I know right?
Nothing like the threat of the utter termination of your civilization to get those Admirals and ship designers off their asses in Risa and back to the drawing boards!
And think of the resource demands - as a space nerd it was stunning to see the jumps in costs and material from the Apollo Program to the Space Shuttle. The Earth Alliance and early Starfleet, with a resource base of one solar system and a few colonies, was pressed to produce the Warp 5 NX Enterprise and later the Columbia. Can you imagine the stress on the Federation economy to finance, build and field the massive fleets that took on the Borg and later the Dominion? Considerations which probably contribiuted to the misguided decision to cede the Federation Colonies bordering Cardassinan space, which in the long run did NOT prevent an eventual brusing war.
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios I think that Wolf 359 is inaccurately but appropriately compares to a Pearl Harbor scenario where it shook the Federation out of complacency and they went on a total rearmament they always had the capability but never the will power to do so.
very nice video, one also has to wonder how long those bugs were infiltrating star fleet undermining the federation. they could have been around for quite some time doing less overt acts of sabotage like making weak ships and creating all that red tape, till they were ready for the endgame which drew attention to them.
USS Odyssey #NeverForget
Whew...for a moment there I thought you weren't going to mention the sovereign-class. 😀
early TNG reminds me of "bill and ted" :D
Excellent! :P
The Defiant having the power of 3 Galaxy class starships!!!???? TriAngulum Audio Studios thank you!.
But to add on I think this video was very well done and i very much enjoyed it. And is very much a credit to its creator and to Star Trek.
To me, you can just encapsulate the entire problem in just one word : Carpeting.
Picard confided to Scotty that he was in command aboard the Stargazer, he could know what warp factor they were currently travelling at just from the feel of the vibration through the deck plates, when it deployed near the Cardassian sector during the border wars, which was also where Captain Jellicoe served nearly his entire career.
Jellicoe has clearly never served before, let alone commanded any vessels with full wall-to-wall carpeting on every deck, and he clearly does NOT like it - he also has a young son (and presumably, also, a wife), but they do NOT cohabitate together or live aboard ship with him when he assume command of The Enterprise.
I always liked the comment on DS9 about the Defiant class "It's a warship" "I thought you people didn't build those".
Me too :)
It was alluded that the USS Endeavour survived Wolf 359. (Scorpion part 1)
Ive always wondered that, but it's never been directly stated hence why we cant call it canon :(
Well Janeway read a log from Captain Amisov talking about the Borg. Further, a year after Wolf 359, the Endeavour was in dock when she was tasked with joining the blockade in "Redemption II". Since she was in dock, that would suggest she had taken a beating at some point (yes, a scheduled refit is possible), but no more than my two cents.
Nice presentations by the way. I look forward to watching the rest.
Thank you very much, like I said Ive always wondered that too! So great minds... :P I hope we get a LOT more information about that battle in future series :)
TriAngulum Audio Studios The one that got away? Of course, that Oberth class one! 😉
In a strange way, it could be said that the Borg *saved* the Federation... can we really imagine a Starfleet that never got it's ass handed to it at Wolf 359 and began to rethink it's ship design as a result standing up to a Dominion invasion? I can't, they would have ended up sending O'berth's into combat against Jem'Hadar battleships, and you can probably guess how well that would have gone
You forgot about the Norway, Steamrunner and Prometheus classes.
I havent forgotten them... You'll hear all about them in future videos :)
Enterprise D started out as a Yuppie cruise ship until the Borg came along. Then everyone had to get their hands dirty. Oh no! Like Riker said to Worf in that episode "We have to show the Borg that we can adapt too" I believe the surviving ship at Wolf 359 was the USS Righteous.
my theory on why only 40 of 1000's of starships arrived to fight the Borg: It was a time of peaceful expansion for the federation. The Enterprise seemingly was meant to patrol and explore within Federations space, and a lot of episodes revolved around outposts, colonies, supply runs, and building cloakable duck blinds to watch prewarp civilizations. Unlikely, but perhaps the Star Fleet had most of its ships out on supply runs and colonizing planets.
That seems really stupid of Starfleet to keep itself undefended, considering the history of attacks to and on Earth!
agreed, that is very foolish. Regardless optimistic mismanagement does seem to be the case. One example comes to mind in the episode '2nd chances' when Thomas Riker says hes going on a terraforming mission on the USS Ghandi, and that it would take 4 months just to get there. It seems that both before and after the Borg incursions and the battle of Wolf 359 the Federation prioritizes long distance expansionism over protectionism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Awesome brother
Thank you!
The Defiant was the only ship meant to engage and destroy Borg, the sovereign class was meant to be basically a battle ship in response to the dominion invasion, however i think they did keep the Borg in mind when they were designed.
great job, I think you hit it perfect!
Thank you so much :)
Given that Starfleet fights three wars during the 2350s, Starfleet was certainly experienced. None of its adversaries were enough to convince the Federation to fork out for radically different ships. Hence the hybrids and sticking families on ships. The Borg combined with the reemergence of the Romulans changed all that. Because now Starfleet could point to existential threats rather than neighbourhood nuisances.
All i know is that introducing the borg queen officially killed the borg
Nice vid. Two errors. The Sovereign class was prior to the Prometheus and was slower (but not by much). Also, the Odyssey was destroyed by the Dominion, the Venture was the ship that showed up to assist during the Klingon attack on DS9. Nice explanation of the Intrepid (Voyager) class though.
But yes, while I loved the Galaxy class, and she makes a lot of since for that time prior to the Borg incursion, she just didn't afterwards, except as a mobile weapons platforms.
Also, the one ship in range thing does make since if you think about it, and ironically the Abrams Trek actually states why this is. By the time of the Motion Picture, Starfleet probably only has around a thousand ships at best. Most were deployed to forward areas, or on deep space exploration missions, and space is simply big. These aren't Star Wars ships which can get around the galaxy in a few minutes (unlike how they tend to do IN the JJ-verse) it takes a few days just to get to Vulcan 12 Lightyears away. The Enterprise wasn't the ONLY ship in range, just the only one that cold get to V'ger before it got to Earth. Keep in mind, V'ger was moving at Warp too, so and of the ships in the area (like the Columbia or the ones we see in Trek IV) probably just couldn't catch it as they were at a bad angle to intercept. V'ger was heading to Earth where the Enterprise was coming from, so she would be able to intercept first.
As for the problems in the 24th century prior to 359...your right, tactical error, something they clearly corrected for the second invasion, the war and by Voyager: Endgame.
1:00 Like Tywin Lannister.
2:55 And "together" we can face anything that comes our way.
9:03 How long had the battle been going on when the Enterprise arrives from the edge of the Neutral Zone?
It would be nice if you put ship series in a play list. I also think that marnda class replacement Is Saber class.
Excellent Suggestion!
Excellent analysis
Really enjoyable video
Thank you very much!
If I remember correctly. The USS hood was the surviving ship at Wolf 359.
Im not sure how you could remember that, since it's never been said... Can you please site how u know that? Where did that info come from?
Several other sites I have visited have said the Hood was the sole survivor. They could be wrong though. The USS
Ahwahnee was salvaged and repaired after the battle. So it could be the surviving ship also.
It’s like during the stand-off and following the first exchange of fire at The Binary Stars, when not just one, two Starfleet Flag Officers get on their Comm channel to the Klingon Ship of The Dead to propose a ceasefire, prior to further negotiations, and make the declaration “We Come in Peace.” - I am not absolutely certain about this, and it’s never explicitly stated in the episodes, but I have a pretty good sense that “Peace” in the Klingon Tongue gets translated to mean “Victory”, because the one part I am absolutely sure of, to Klingon thinking, even the concept of “Peace” as such is so absurd as to be inconceivable. And the closely analogue to “Peace” is “Victory”.
So they are actually broadcasting at those Klingon Vessels “We Come in Victory” *•Cue Creepy Smiling•*
What’s the strongest ship star fleet has? And how did it end up there?
Now that’s a video
Inquiry class
Great video
Thank you so much :)
competition, and similarly war, is often a catalyst for innovation. a sad truth but we as a species prefer to stagnate once we've overcome our obstacles. The Borg invasion was one example, as well as the dominion war
The Starfleet took a lot of Excelsior class and Miranda Class ships out of mothballs and reconfigured them for the Dominion War, the Starfleet during the Battle of wolf 359 was much smaller hence why they could only get around 40 ships to fight the Borg Cube... but a very good appraisal that after Kirk helped stop the assassination of the Klingon Chancellor a long-term peace Accord between three biggest factions did car Starfleet to be lulled into a false sense of security.
To be fair Starfleet still placed a large premium on exploration in Kirk's era.
The battle with Prometheus where , were those defiants at the dominion battles
To the left of the screen off camera :P
All excellent points.
Thank you so much!
The Steamrunner and Norway Classes were also designed as a result of the Battle of Wolf 359, but due to the lost of their CGI models by ILM, they seemed to have been forgotten about...
I certainly havent forgotten about them :)
You have to have an idea of what the ship may be required to do before you design it. Starfleet ships was designed mainly exploration , secondary was single or small fleet actions, after the Borg threat the ships was designed for war. Still large ships. They assumed the Borg would only send a cube or 2.
Now enter the Dominion with the small attack craft against the larger ships of the alpha quadrant. The Dominion fleet was more practical for total war and if you ask me i believe that if the writers wasnt biased towards the human dominated Federation the Dominion qould habe conquered the alpha quadrant with ease.
I wonder if the ship that survived wolf 359 was the Roosevelt. Riley in Voyagers episode Unity said she was assimilated at wolf 359. Perhaps the ship was assimilated and headed for the delta quadrant.
Tactically speaking, sending 40 ships to take on 1 should have been a "no contest". Admiral Hanson did seem to underestimate the power of the Borg, but then again, sending in every available ship at the first sign of them entering Federation space also leaves other planetary systems unguarded. I don't know what Starfleet's total ship complement is, but if you take the U.S. Navy as an example, as of 2015, the U.S. Navy had a complement of approximately 430 ships. One thing to remember is that Starfleet isn't comprised of all of the Federation planets ships, which is why we don't see Vulcan, Andorian, or any other allies ships. So, that being said, while we can estimate the number of Starfleet vessels to be a lot more than the U.S. Navy's, it still should only logically be in the thousands (I'd be generous if I said it had a fleet of 4000 ships). So, using that number, Admiral Hanson decided to dedicate about 1% of the fleet to take out one ship. You would think that would be enough.
i love your channel
Thank you :)
awesome video!
Thank you so much :) :)
an essential part of 90s trek is families on board. There were explanations for families in TNG, DS9, and VOY. I wonder how, given this, we can include families in future trek shows. Some of the best story telling in trek involve families and children.
No explanation actually warrants family's on board a ship in a reality that requires it to launch torpedoes, fire phasers and have energy shielding against weaponry.
It's either stupidity or arrogance. Space is dangerous, utopia or not, you can 'never' get rid of danger and struggle. That is life. It doesn't have to be ugly, but not being prepared is worse than paranoia.
05:39 I think the number of vessels that were present at Wolf 359 represented a decent chunk of Starfleet. It would make sense that the Federation had probably been drawing down the number of Starships since the end of the Cardassian war and their latest designs such as the Galaxy and Nebula class were big and probably quite complex to produce which would also haver added to the problem. I suspect that Wolf 359 was the battle that shook Starfleet up and the ships produced after 2366 such as the Akira, Saber, Norway and Defiant classes all appear to be smaller, tougher and pack more of a punch than the vessels that had come before.
to go from 100s of ships to 1000s of ship in 5 years just doesnt make sense to me... Also only 40 ships in the Federation Core to protect it doesnt make sense at all either...
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios Well Starfleet wasn't expecting an attack from the Borg and as the Federation is at peace I would think that it would have been difficult to mobilise due to the speed which the threat developed. Starfleet could have plenty of mothballed vessels that they could reactivate in order to bulk up the fleet during times of war. This combined with concentration and a crash building program could go part way to explain the seeming discrepancy between the time frames but I suspect it's more down to EPIC WAR shots from the DS9 creators
Well canon is canon and it seems that if they were able to mobilize quickly for the dominion war with so many ships that they probably had them all along... I just dont buy only 40 ships in the coree... Given the Romulan threat, the Ferengi theat as portrayed originally... Starbases like the one in 11001001 that had 5 ships in dock... knowing the Borg were out there for a year... The Cardassian Threat... etc etc etc, seems like a very short sighted and stupid mistake to make...
I always understood the reason why starfleet geared away from a military but i agree with you they paid a heavy for arrogance and hubris.
Yeah, i know this sounds cliche but they should have been prepared for anything still... I mean think how much more advanced they would have been given the sudden leaps in tech after they got kicked in the pants!
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios amazing how desperation for survival does that. And its so easy to just say " forget exploration forget democracy & scientific we're going to be completely militaristic." And even though I agree with this guy on a lot of this it also shows you that they have the capacity to stop and say we're going to be explorers not a military. And its so easy to stay one way instead of reliquishing that thought process
And by stopping, instead of being both, they nearly lost everything!
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios true but thats politics for ya. It never truly changes no matter what century ur in
lol Amen!
Odyssey not Venture
Very good catch!
i hope they bring back the galaxy class for the new picard series. I also hope patrick stewart stays alive long enough to do a long series
Oberth class performing it's duties so admirably... Honhonhon explosions on demand the best service this side of the galactic core at your service
I believe the Doctor was at Wolf359 since he also delt with his own 'Bad Wolf'. He could not change a fixed point in time hence why so many died. Would make a interesting crossover episode.
I wouldn't outright call the Federation inept, incompetent or purely arrogant. The Federation and Starfleet should be expected to prepare defensive measures for their territories and expeditions, but that largely relies on sufficient intelligence of known and existing threats. That being said, Starfleet could certainly do with some improvements to how they react. But I would also fully understand a lacking desire to produce pure warships as such activity and posturing could provoke aggression from neighbors. Starfleet's approach toward defense I always assumed, and possibly incorrectly, was to provide a line more for deterrence than actual aggression.
1. The removal of family and civilian populations from vessels during times of war is sensible and prudent, but during peace-time ... that's impractical and downright silly. Multi-year missions weighing in at half of a decade to even a decade or more without personal and familial ambitions are unreasonable at best. Long-term expeditions into frontiers in our own world have ALWAYS carried civilian and family populations.
2. Resources, planning and production lines are always limited by, well, time and available information. There must always be a reasonable amount of time available to react accordingly to presented threats. Ship and weapon production throughout the series has definitely been inferred to consume months if not years. A many light-year spanning institution such as the Federation and its Starfleet cannot be expected to make overnight sweeping overhauls to its fleet based upon a singular encounter with an enemy, The Borg. Might I also remind, was still quite an unknown (full organizational capacity, fleet sizes, operational centers and homes). Likewise, with the Dominion, the intel was painfully limited to no realistic fault of Starfleet. Conjecture and guessing games makes for poor military planning and over-bloated military budgets. Universally real world military organizations, for the record, utilize incremental upgrades. It is impractical, and I would argue inefficient, to perform sweeping changes.
Yes, Starfleet has thousands of ships, but they're spread out across several thousand light years. They couldn't all arrive at a single rendezvous point at a moment's notice. I think people forget that space is...um, really BIG.
No ones forgetting anything, it's simply hard to believe that in the CORE of the Federation they could only scrounge together 40 ships... Sorry dont buy it!
This video got me to thinking about an aspect of Trek fandom, especially in more recent years. Star Trek has always existed in my life as a space faring odyssey that explored the success and flaws of the human condition. And all in the context of a Federation Of Planets based on an Earth that had outgrown many of the pitfalls that make life in reality next to impossible for a good number of people. Have noticed since the 1990's in particular, the writers for Trek just seemed to lose touch with the future fiction utopia of Gene Roddenberry's vision. And seemed to only be able to present story arcs in the context of human conflict as we know it today. That includes militarism and paranoia. Have theorized for awhile that this occurred due to a synergy of real life collapsing under the weight of economic/social hopelessness and cynicism during this time-along with an adherence to the idea that Starfleet's protocols were often very close (if not identical) to contemporary naval ones. Whatever the case, from DS9 onward? Star Trek has become more about violence, action and military intrigue than the possibilities of science, space travel, alien encounters and new sociological ideas. How does that differentiate Star Trek today from the domination of horror and dystopian scifi that is now mainstream? Perhaps the question of WHY aggressive conflicts should exist in the Trek universe as it does today...should come from its writers examining their own limitations/rigidity on how it perceives the future.
Amazing how the Enterprise can get to Wolf 359 in a few hours. At our current level of tech, it would take approximately 164,000,000 years to travel 7.795 lightyears
5:13 They did THAT in the Beggining of Star Trek Generations too As well.
And it's JUST as unbelievable!
Great video. I just wondered why there where no ships of federation allies in Wolf 359?
Help me remember, doesn't build Vulcans, Andorians, Tellerites and Bajorans own ships anymore? Where are the Klingon allies?
That is a VERY good point, and really there is no answer for it...
It kinda surprised me in Enterprise to see Vulcan ships but that was a gap which that show successfully filled. It's just logical, Vulcans travelled space long before humanity. We could assume that a consolidation happened after the founding of the federation, but a Vulcan shipyard building Starfleet ships is never mentioned.
If you remember the DS9 "Take me out to the Holosuite" episode Solok happily boasts of his all Vulcan crew aboard a Nebula class ship. I'd surmise that over centuries Starfleet has incorporated technological elements of all the Federation races into it's starship philosophy and that by the 23rd and 24th Century they adopt a one size fits all policy to Federation starship design- it makes more sense if a design is uniform otherwise engineers/ captains and other crew members from different species would need to be trained on every type which is uneconomical. Despite being late to the party, it is also possible that Zefram Cochranes warp designs were better than existing ones which is alluded to in First Contact with some line about "your theories allow for fleets of ships to be built" perhaps Federation design owes a lot to Human warp theory than we credit it for. just my two cents...
I think this was the whole point of the Borg storyline. Q put humanity on trial to see if they could push beyond the boundaries in front of them. The Borg is an entity that lets you know that there is always someone out there bigger and stronger than you are. Pushing beyond those limits to find the weaknesses of your opponents is inevitable.
I love that starfleet got their asses in gear and made their ships still be for expiration aid science and all that but they had teeth
Arrogance bit like b5 earth alliance handled the dilgar but looked what happened
So getting relaxed and competent is dangerous
I waited decades and hoped it happened, never did. I wanted a civilian uber-rich collector to have an original Constitution-class starship as his home. But, like a classic look (not classic authentic) collector, kept upgrading its design. I wanted him to have a seemingly harmless Constitution starship that, with him and a crew of his gang and their mercs, first crap all over the Enterprise then help them immensely against someone like the Borg... with a subplot of having the Enterprise captain outwitting the civvy's pillage of said technology.
Excellent video, as always. By the way, have you considered making a BETA detailing the Battle of Wolf 359, or the Battle of Sector 001?
The Wolf 359 battle was more than just the StarFleet ships. The Klingons sent war vessals, hell they even considered opening communications with the Romulans.
Sorry that is incorrect, No Klingon or Romulan Vessels were a part of the battle... You can see in the wreckage scene its all Starfleet... Also behind the scenes there wasnt a single model of Klingon or Rom vessels used... The admiral in the episode was referring to asking for help, not actually receiving it...
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios 1st: With as large a volume of space around Wolf 359 compared to how small the starships are, only a few ships are visiable. Not seeing a Klingon vessal in the wreckage doesn't mean they were not there. 2nd: My commont was damn near a direct quote from Admiral Henson from "The Best of Both Worlds" go watch it again.
I did reference the episode... He says the Klingons are sending warships, but that doesnt mean they got there... Without actual episode confirmation it is merely speculation that they were there... To say we see an entire graveyard of just Fed ships without ANY Klingon ships doesnt make sense... What you think they wouldnt coordinate their efforts? You think Starfleet would just say ok in this area of space only the Klingons fight? That just isnt logical, sorry to buy it... I believe the Klingons did not show up in time...
@@TriAngulumAudioStudios I agree. I think they said they would, but not in time... there's never been any mention or evidence of other ships being there.
A volunteer skeleton crew on an Oberth at warp 9.6 ramming the cube would have ended the problem.
In the episode Peak Performance, Picard tells the stragagist Kolrami, that he opposed the war game exercise. The reason he gives, is that Starfleets mission is exploration. In that case, why bother with weapons? Then in the Best of both Worlds, the admiral tells Picard that starfleet has thrown every resource into the Borg threat, really? Its a good job isnt it? There is no telling how bad things might have turned out otherwise. Also, in the Best of both Worlds, as the (small fleet) is gathering, the admiral tells Riker that the Kligons are sending ships, yet there is no mention of this. I am sure that the Klingons would have relished a battle and would have bolstered the fleet considerably.
How would starfleet and federation be if the enterprise plan worked and destroyed the cude
Well Id probably be YouTubing you through my Ocular Implant right now!
This was great
Thank you :)
The Borg have conquered at least 8500 of civilizations. That is a huge amount of variety, research and situational need to find unusual weapons. What I'm getting at is how disappointing it is in how few weapons the borg ever use. I want to see a dazzling variety of lights and beams, some of which don't do more than cause random bits of matter to vaporize.
Could you explain what you meant by “so, it was not only ironic but also fitting that the Enterprise would be of this design?”
I’m not sure we have the same meanings for these words, but since we have a comments section, I can just ask you what you meant. :)