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Aoi posted:The issue is even more fundamental than these valid points. i guess you could make the argument that the people they're assimilating are the ones who would develop that technology (or their descendants), so they could just force them to develop it as borg instead but that's kind of a stupid justification anyway. the borg weren't even interested in assimilating people at all, at first
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Mar 8, 2023 04:48
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Beeftweeter posted:yeah, the borg attack in first contact doesn't make any sense. why wouldn't they just beam down a hundred borg drones and assimilate the whole compound? why even bother with that, anyway, when they could obliterate the place from orbit with one shot? Remember New Providence?  Maybe the borg just forgot how to do this
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Mar 8, 2023 04:50
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Elder Postsman posted:Remember New Providence? lol exactly, there isn't much that is squarely outside of the borg's capabilities. it's just lazy
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Mar 8, 2023 04:56
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It was just a little sphere that made it back in time. If you're willing to accept that for whatever reason they couldn't or didn't want to send a cube, they're somewhat limited in firepower. I would bet there's no torpedoes in a sphere anyways.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:16
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As Janky as they could be, I do miss matt paintings. Not that you can't do that with CG, but I think often just because it is so easy there's not as much care put into them. Also they just seem to have a more stylized fantastical feel to them. I mean they were probably going for looking as real as they could get it, but their always did seem to be a bit more individual style to them.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:18
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They could just ram the sphere into Montana, really
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Mar 8, 2023 05:19
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dr_rat posted:As Janky as they could be, I do miss matt paintings. Not that you can't do that with CG, but I think often just because it is so easy there's not as much care put into them. Also they just seem to have a more stylized fantastical feel to them. I mean they were probably going for looking as real as they could get it, but their always did seem to be a bit more individual style to them. I always preferred joe paintings. Maybe a thomas painting if I was feeling extra spicy.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:20
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dr_rat posted:As Janky as they could be, I do miss matt paintings. Not that you can't do that with CG, but I think often just because it is so easy there's not as much care put into them. Also they just seem to have a more stylized fantastical feel to them. I mean they were probably going for looking as real as they could get it, but their always did seem to be a bit more individual style to them. the remasters have digital mattes, i think
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Mar 8, 2023 05:24
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The episode where Wesley takes the academy exam has some matte paintings of hallways instead of actual hallways, and those are really bad to me, because they're so close to the camera and have such a clear perspective that you can tell they're mattes when there's any camera movement.
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Mar 8, 2023 05:57
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*Watching from the sidelines* "Yes, yes, finally. Accept that First Contact is a bad movie and one of the first steps toward modern Trek. You know it's true." That's not to say there weren't enjoyable moments in First Contact, but on a whole it started the morph of Picard into an "action hero" and contained a ton of characterization that didn't make sense (on top of the plot itself.)
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Mar 8, 2023 06:03
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first contact is an entertaining movie. if you don't really think about it, it's very enjoyable on the same level as any other blockbuster, which is probably what they were aiming for the problem is, that was a pretty successful formula. almost every trek movie that came after it tried to replicate that success and largely failed. the jjtrek movies are pretty blockbustery too, but at least those seem a little more appropriate because the cast is younger
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Mar 8, 2023 06:13
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FISHMANPET posted:The episode where Wesley takes the academy exam has some matte paintings of hallways instead of actual hallways, and those are really bad to me, because they're so close to the camera and have such a clear perspective that you can tell they're mattes when there's any camera movement. Yeah hallway/corridor extensions with matte paintings always seemed incredibly hard to get right. A thing I think happened a bit was just getting the drat angles wrong. So a hallway/corridor goes down a bit, then it suddenly starts going steeply up at angle into the distance. Like if you know all the camera position/lens/set details like you can math it out, but I feel like this usually wasn't the case. Also as the camera moves you can't really fake it unless you somehow get into complex -for a matt painting- stuff like parallax scrolling.
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Mar 8, 2023 06:20
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The Borg didn't go back in time because they wanted to assimilate an early Earth, they went back in time because these little fuckers just stopped them for the second time and that's not meant to happen and they're unexpectedly dangerous so they'd better be destroyed through more extreme methods right the hell now. The decision to go back in time was made in the 0.5 seconds after the cube started to explode. Beeftweeter posted:yeah, the borg attack in first contact doesn't make any sense. why wouldn't they just beam down a hundred borg drones and assimilate the whole compound? why even bother with that, anyway, when they could obliterate the place from orbit with one shot? It was a tiny improvised sphere, it had what weapons were aboard, and they were weapons tuned to smacking down ship shields and not laying planetary bombardment. I'm sure step 2 was going to be 'beam down drones and start assimilating', but the Enterprise-E had just followed it through, shields are down 'cos of the vortex, the tiny sphere isn't designed to survive things like a cube is and they know they're about to be destroyed, so they just fire off what weapons they have at the most critical site on Earth while they beam what they can over to the Enteprise-E. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Mar 8, 2023 07:05
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it's been a few years since i've seen first contact, do they ever explain why there was just one cube attacking earth anyway? if they were gonna attack the federation again, why not send, i don't know... five? ten?
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Mar 8, 2023 07:10
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We are the Borg. Lower your expectations and surrender your criticism. We will add your tropes and plot armor to our own. Your narrative will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
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Mar 8, 2023 07:20
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Beeftweeter posted:it's been a few years since i've seen first contact, do they ever explain why there was just one cube attacking earth anyway? if they were gonna attack the federation again, why not send, i don't know... five? ten? Because they usually only need the one cube. They were winning until Picard used his latent link to find their weak point.
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Mar 8, 2023 07:22
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Beeftweeter posted:it's been a few years since i've seen first contact, do they ever explain why there was just one cube attacking earth anyway? if they were gonna attack the federation again, why not send, i don't know... five? ten? That'd be like the US sending multiple aircraft carriers to take on Fiji. Yeah, the first time we sent one somehow the Fijiians planted a bomb or something and took it out but that was a fluke, we don't need to send five aircraft carriers the second time, their navy is three speedboats, just another one will do. What the gently caress they just blew it up again and we have no idea how what the gently caress what the gently caress NUKE THEM WITH TIME TRAVEL
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Mar 8, 2023 07:32
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MikeJF posted:That'd be like the US sending multiple aircraft carriers to take on Fiji. Yeah, the first time we sent one somehow the Fijiians planted a bomb or something and took it out but that was a fluke, we don't need to send five aircraft carriers the second time, their navy is three speedboats, just another one will do. i mean, i get the analogy but there are apparently tens of thousands of borg cubes (or whatever it was on voyager). maybe send... two? lol it always seemed kinda weird to me that they were like "ok, the federation defeated us once, let's do the exact same thing again without any changes. surely this time will be different"
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Mar 8, 2023 07:46
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ah well the answer is, that voyager writing sucked
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Mar 8, 2023 07:55
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Beeftweeter posted:i mean, i get the analogy but there are apparently tens of thousands of borg cubes (or whatever it was on voyager). maybe send... two? lol I mean, that's how the Borg have always behaved. In Q Who, they send a single drone over to the Enterprise, it gets shot, and rather than send a squad, they send a second single drone, but this one has a shield. Or the whole 'don't attack unless they perceive a threat'. The Borg seem obsessed with efficiency and won't waste resources, even if in the long term it would lead to better results.
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Mar 8, 2023 08:43
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I never understood why the Borg never considered people boarding their ships to be a threat. There are essentially no positive reasons to let someone have free run of your ship and lots of negatives. Edit: Or even just having some pattern recognition. It's like, Starfleet officers keep boarding our ships and loving with them with catastrophic results, but THIS time will be different BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Mar 8, 2023 09:19
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BattleMaster posted:I never understood why the Borg never considered people boarding their ships to be a threat. There are essentially no positive reasons to let someone have free run of your ship and lots of negatives. The borg are just very trusting people okay. If only we all could be as kind and welcoming as them! If the borg were british they'd be offering tea.
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Mar 8, 2023 09:26
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Beeftweeter posted:i mean, i get the analogy but there are apparently tens of thousands of borg cubes (or whatever it was on voyager). maybe send... two? lol 8one6 posted:Because they usually only need the one cube. They were winning until Picard used his latent link to find their weak point.
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Mar 8, 2023 09:51
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You usually don’t notice the ant until it tries to bite your ankle. And even then it only becomes a problem if there’s lots of ants doing it.
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Mar 8, 2023 10:03
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bull3964 posted:*Watching from the sidelines* It's possibly aged worse than any other Trek movie, in the sense that I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I first saw it, but now when I go back to it it's basically a below-average '90s action flick mashed up with an average TNG episode. It is topped off with a wonderful score and a pretty iconic scene at the end, but the rest of it is really middling and dated. The TNG characters simply aren't cool, and it's embarrassing when they try to be.
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Mar 8, 2023 13:27
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Time travel
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Mar 8, 2023 14:04
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Sir Lemming posted:It's possibly aged worse than any other Trek movie, in the sense that I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I first saw it, but now when I go back to it it's basically a below-average '90s action flick mashed up with an average TNG episode. It is topped off with a wonderful score and a pretty iconic scene at the end, but the rest of it is really middling and dated. The only parts of First Contact I really enjoy are the ones on 2063 Earth.
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Mar 8, 2023 14:46
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"I'm not detecting any leaks".
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Mar 8, 2023 14:50
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I remember “don’t you guys pee in the 24th century” getting a big laugh in the theater.
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Mar 8, 2023 14:54
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Good Borg Eps: TNG -Q-who -BOBW 1 & 2 -I, Borg DS9: -None VOY -Unity -Scorpion ENT -none As soon as the Borg were defeatable they were just another bad guy but they couldn't be undefeatable because well, then they would assimilate the entire galaxy. So the stories that work are the ones that don't make you go "wait, why didn't the Borg just..." and maintain that next-level threat. Scorpion and Seven are cool and all but that was the beginning of the end of the Borg as an Ultimate Threat. zoux fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Mar 8, 2023 |
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Mar 8, 2023 15:33
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BattleMaster posted:I never understood why the Borg never considered people boarding their ships to be a threat. There are essentially no positive reasons to let someone have free run of your ship and lots of negatives. I haven't really watched a lot of the later Voyager stuff so I'm just basing this on the TNG version of the Borg, but I always imagined that while the battles between the Federation and the Borg felt significant to us, to the Borg they would just be one of possibly thousands of battles or assimilation attempts happening all over the galaxy at that moment. The hive mind would have some kind of bandwidth cap and would prioritise based on cost-benefit, so if they lose a cube or two, or would have to divert too much attention, they just sort of let the AI go on autopilot and see what happens, adapting a bit next time. I think of it more like when you are playing an RTS and there's just too much poo poo happening at once to micromanage every little thing so you just keep an eye on the overall trends and intervene when something reallty starts to go south. A few troops getting killed on a scouting mission, or whatever, isn't worth following up on.
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Mar 8, 2023 15:35
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zoux posted:Good Borg Eps: An important edit.
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Mar 8, 2023 15:37
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Timby posted:The only parts of First Contact I really enjoy are the ones on 2063 Earth. James Cromwell as Cochrane is perfection. And the end scene with him and the Vulcans never fails to make me tear up just a little.
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Mar 8, 2023 15:42
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Does DS9 Emissary count as a Borg episode? They only show up for the first couple minutes but its a pretty impactful couple minutesFighting Trousers posted:James Cromwell as Cochrane is perfection. And the end scene with him and the Vulcans never fails to make me tear up just a little. Yeah regardless of how much you like First Contact everything about Cochrane is solid gold, as he is a riff on Roddenberry himself.
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Mar 8, 2023 15:45
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MrL_JaKiri posted:An important edit. Agreed. Honestly the Borg peaked with that first shot of the cube in Q-Who. I know it was the 80s and budgets are a thing, but as soon as we saw they were just humanoid zombies with metal glued to their faces, it was a bit deflating. And any subsequent appearance just humanized them more, which made them less interesting.
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Mar 8, 2023 15:46
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MrL_JaKiri posted:An important edit. Yeah I was going off the top of my head, it's possible I forgot about a voyager one, or there's one in season six or seven that's good. Descent is loving awful though, I hated it even when I was a kid (except Data trying to figure out why the Borg attack gave him emotions) Special shout out to how much the design of the borg ship sucked in that one. Feldegast42 posted:Does DS9 Emissary count as a Borg episode? I went back and forth on this one but I say no
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Mar 8, 2023 15:53
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The little comedy vignette at the start where the new ensign SPILLS COFFEE ON PICARD!! was something I used to think was a ludicrous start to the episode, but thinking about it more, that start and Q appearing are a wonderful bit of misdirection/tonal setup that make the Borg seem even more alien and dangerous. Like you're settling down for a little romp and then they're stealing a section out of the Enterprise and our heroes have no option but to run away and poo poo poo poo poo poo
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Mar 8, 2023 16:01
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I have to dissent about First Contact in the sense that despite all the complaining about "action movie Picard", I think his behavior was completely understandable given the context (Best of Both Worlds). I know we've discussed this before so I won't rehash. That said, Picard's strength was always in the court room kicking rear end; not necessarily as a '90s action hero. It's weird that Stewart has never realized that, but I guess he got tired of sitting in his Ready Room and drinking tea.
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Mar 8, 2023 16:03
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Yeah it's the whole Ahab thing, it works because it's an aberration, it's Picard as we've not seen him before. But you can't pull that trick too many times. The NOOOO scene rules, not just for the outburst thing, but you can see part of Picard fully agrees with Alfre Woodard. The "what did you say" delivery after she uses a literature-based argument is so perfect.
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Mar 8, 2023 16:09
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MrL_JaKiri posted:then they're stealing a section out of the Enterprise Stealing a section of the Enterprise THAT HAD PEOPLE IN IT. That's the thing that gives all of this a darker undertone. Q did what he did to teach what he saw as a lesson, but it wasn't just snap fingers to undo, there were real consequences and he doesn't give the slightest gently caress about human deaths. quote:Picard : I understand what you've done here, Q. But I think the lesson could have been learned without the loss of 18 members of my crew.
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Mar 8, 2023 16:09
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