TNG: Peak Performance

[McAvoy]

I think the economic oil crisis of the 70's was the basis for Wolf 359

Really? I haven't heard about that.

I just figured it was a story progression once Picard became Locutus.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yes I think it's a matter of Cold War subtext.

[Beastro]

It presumes a conscious effort to make a shift. I wonder if it was an unconscious one and a reaction to both Roddenberry and the changing times.

One can see Wolf 359 and see it herald 9/11, I can also look at the first two games of the Command and Conquer series and see a prelude to the War on Terror.

[MaxWylde]

I think the economic oil crisis of the 70's was the basis for Wolf 359

I think you'd have to explain that for us.

I saw the arrival of the Borg more or less to be something akin to the arrival mainly of the British to the New World, and then the subsequent formation of the United States. Prior, the British were, more or less, content with allowing the Native Americans to remain where they were and keep their lands. The Spanish were more than willing to do that, even offering Natives complete autonomy under the aegis of the Spanish Empire (the King/Holy Roman Emperor even granted fiefdoms to several tribes, which is why Monctezuma's head-dress is residing in a museum in Vienna.

Various Native leaders, notably Tecumseh, Pontiac, and Cochise recognized the threat the Europeans posed. Cochise especially, but Tecumseh was the first to create a quasi-unified opposition to the British and French, but internal conflicts between tribes was their undoing. Cochise, and Sitting Bull, understood that they could not hope to defeat the Americans, because it came down to technology and logistics.

Consider the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer's Last Stand. While this was a victory for the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne (and other tribes), there was a major problem: There was no way for these tribes to really capitalize on it. In a year, or less, the US Army could replenish their losses. The combined tribes could not. Because these tribes were basically Neo-Lithic Nomadic tribes with no real agricultural base, not compared to the Americans and other European powers, not to mention zero manufacturing and industrial capacity, it would take years, if not decades, for them to replace the losses incurred at Little Big Horn.

Similarly, with the Apache, Cochise understood that unless the Apache could keep their land and build in such a way as to become a modern (for the 19th Century) nation, there was little stopping the Americans. Treaties weren't worth the paper they're printed on if the Apache could not adequately defend themselves against a threat that would only outnumber and outgun them over time.

Similarly, this was what the South faced when fighting the North in the Civil War. Robert E. Lee understood that in order for the South to win decisively, they had to destroy the Army of the Potomac quickly and then besiege Washington. But his generals just never got that memo. He was furious at the victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, because his generals did not pursue and destroy the Army of the Potomac. For Lee, these were hollow victories, great for the press, but useless to him for the cause of Southern Independence. When he lost Stonewall Jackson, a man who sort of did get the memo, Lee was apoplectic and he threw everything into one last shot, culminating at the Battle of Gettysburg, which that, and Vicksburg, sealed the fate of the South. This was because Lee knew that the South could not hope to match the industrial might of the North; they could readily replace their losses with even more men than the South could ever hope to recruit in the numbers necessary to sustain a prolonged war. Once the North really got going, by the time of Gettysburg, it was almost too late. The only option then was to force the North to the bargaining table by besieging and possibly destroying Washington, D.C., thereby costing Lincoln re-election (getting, perhaps, George McClellan to be the new President, who might be very amiable to Southern terms).

So, what I think you have here with the Borg is something utterly asymmetrical. However, there's one thing that they, nor Starfleet, ever counted on that was the Borg's true Achilles' Heel: Their massive and deliberate stupidity.

As for a comparison to 9/11, yes, and no. Here, we have a threat that was previously unknown to the Federation (and other powers in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants). It was a wake-up call, you can say, for the Federation, and this did somewhat change some policies that Starfleet seemed to have prior. We would get the development of the Defiant, the first "warship," which, to me, seems a bit specious, but okay, I'll go with it. Not to mention other new developments in other starships (Akira, Sovereign, Sabre, etc.). But, we really don't know how much they've responded to the Borg threat fully. The Borg, unlike the Taliban and al Qaeda, were untouchable prior to Janeway getting to them. The only thing Starfleet could do would be to adopt a completely defensive posture toward the Borg, hoping that they continue doing the same stupid stuff.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I think the economic oil crisis of the 70's was the basis for Wolf 359

I think you'd have to explain that for us.

I saw the arrival of the Borg more or less to be something akin to the arrival mainly of the British to the New World, and then the subsequent formation of the United States. Prior, the British were, more or less, content with allowing the Native Americans to remain where they were and keep their lands. The Spanish were more than willing to do that, even offering Natives complete autonomy under the aegis of the Spanish Empire (the King/Holy Roman Emperor even granted fiefdoms to several tribes, which is why Monctezuma's head-dress is residing in a museum in Vienna.

That's an interesting dynamic overlaying the Federation during the ordeal, but I'm not seeing anything too specific when you finish your surmise on various American Indian contingents.

The oil crisis had to do with OPEC raising prices

Independently, the OPEC members agreed to use their leverage over the world price-setting mechanism for oil to stabilize their real incomes by raising world oil prices. This action followed several years of steep income declines after the recent failure of negotiations with the major Western oil companies earlier in the month.

For the most part, industrialized economies relied on crude oil,[citation needed] and OPEC was their major supplier.[citation needed] Because of the dramatic inflation experienced during this period, a popular economic theory has been that these price increases were to blame, as being suppressive of economic activity. However, the causality stated by this theory is often questioned.[15] The targeted countries responded with a wide variety of new, and mostly permanent, initiatives to contain their further dependency. The 1973 "oil price shock", along with the 1973–1974 stock market crash, have been regarded as the first event since the Great Depression to have a persistent economic effect.[16]

[MaxWylde]

Well, okay, but I'm still not clear as to how the Borg invasion was akin to anything regarding the Oil Crisis of the 70s. You might say that the West had overwhelming military and technological superiority over OPEC nations, but we didn't, at that point, go to war over them.

The Indian nations, on the other hand, had their own resources, insofar as what they were used to fighting between each other. They were not capable of really fighting a real existential war against the Americans, who had an Army.

Let's take the Lakota Sioux. They were a Neo-Lithic Nomadic Tribe who hunted for buffalo up and down the plains. Whatever modern firearms they could get, they often had to either trade with White settlers or had to steal it from them (and murdering them, often, in the process). They could not replicate the weapons themselves or replenish the ammunition without help from Whites who would either give them to them or give them the means of making new bullets.

The Lakota Sioux really didn't have much in the way of agriculture, or even much in the way of a written cohesive language. Not to say they didn't have a language, but it wasn't uniform among their own tribes not to mention any other. They couldn't quite readily translate each other much less what the Americans could do among not only among European nations but even among the Native Americans. All of this meant that the Sioux were small, and would remain small, by comparison to the technologically, industrially, and agriculturally superior Americans.

To replace one of their braves from the Battle of the Little Big Horn, they would need at least a few years before younger boys would become able to be warriors. At the most, they needed 15 years, give or take a year. By comparison, all the US Army would have to do to replace the losses incurred at Little Big Horn by, at the most, a year, not only in manpower, but in supplies. The United States was producing weapons and munitions, and food, in rates that would make Sitting Bull scared to death of fighting the Americans because he knew that, at the end, they would be overwhelmed by what the Americans could bring.

What you have here is the technological disparity between both sides. It's a purely asymmetrical situation. The Borg, by rights, had supreme technological superiority in so many ways than the Federation. With one ship, they were able to destroy an entire Federation fleet, and keep going. If they weren't so stupid, they should've deployed two, or four, or more cubes. Surely not all of them would've succumbed to Data's "Sleep" Command, especially when we consider the Borg Queen involved in any way.

If Starfleet were at all smart, they would've simply tried to deploy a few thermonuclear weapons aboard the one cube along with a bunch of decoys, and have them detonate in moments of materialization (Voyager would do this with one scout ship, and have it detonate in minutes after materialization).

I don't see a material discrepancy akin to the 70's Oil Crisis here. If it's the Borg who were at all suffering from a shortage in some way, I don't see it depicted. If it was the Federation, again, I don't see this.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That seems pretty long winded description for what amounts to technological development differences between pretty much any colonizing force and an indigenous one. I read through the last long winded one and this one seems to follow suit to basically describe what everybody already knows from 1950's stereotypes of Cowboys and Indians.

[McAvoy]

I think 9/11 works the best as far as waking up a complacent power and taking measures to prevent it from happening again. There isn't much to go on when it comes to on screen evidence that Starfleet did this. The Defiant is the only one and she was shelved due to her having problems and politics (the threat of the Borg waning always sounded like a political thing than Starfleet actually thinking thd Borg threat was gone).

The whole waking up of Starfleet was the fans talking about it using background information like certain starship classes like the Akira or the Sovereign were designed to fight the Borg.

Combined with how TNG presented itself for most of its run too.

[clearspira]

I think 9/11 works the best as far as waking up a complacent power and taking measures to prevent it from happening again. There isn't much to go on when it comes to on screen evidence that Starfleet did this. The Defiant is the only one and she was shelved due to her having problems and politics (the threat of the Borg waning always sounded like a political thing than Starfleet actually thinking thd Borg threat was gone).

The whole waking up of Starfleet was the fans talking about it using background information like certain starship classes like the Akira or the Sovereign were designed to fight the Borg.

Combined with how TNG presented itself for most of its run too.

You raise a good point though as to why the Federation decided the Borg threat was over given how the Borg would send a second cube soon after.

[MaxWylde]

That seems pretty long winded description for what amounts to technological development differences between pretty much any colonizing force and an indigenous one. I read through the last long winded one and this one seems to follow suit to basically describe what everybody already knows from 1950's stereotypes of Cowboys and Indians.

Well, it seems as if you didn't get it the first time around. I thought maybe I had to explain a little better. I could just as well talk about the Africans vs. Europeans or the Indians vs. British, or the Americans vs. Japanese.

You can call this description a stereotype from the 1950s, but their interpretation was pretty much true in various regards. There are a lot of myths about the American Indians since then, borne by morons who have political axes to grind.