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I always liked these guys as villains. The Vaadwaur are one of the Voyager enemies that actually worked. The Borg were always too powerful, the Hirogen were too much a rip off of the Predators, the Kayzon were jokes, and so on. It's a shame the Vaadwaur were never used again because they were really good in Star Trek: Online.

A bit overpowered but it led to some genuinely good moral ambiguity like whether to let the Necromancer aliens steal their dead.

Ehh, they were okay, but I hated, like seriously hated, the "Genocide is for the best" message that this episode seemed to have. Like that moment that Chuck describes as jaw-dropping where the "friendly" Vaadwaur gives the toothpaste aliens the coordinates to blow up the pods with their children in it. Like seriously, what the fuck.

Stargate SG-1 actually did this same concept in a way less skeezy fashion, in "The Other Side", with Rene Auberjonois in it. That one had the bad guys under siege basically be Hitler's bunker rather than an entire population with civilians and children and everything. Plus, the guys in SG-1 actually started the fight, rather than here where the toothpaste aliens have a grudge because the Vaadwaur were warlike like 1000 years ago. Name me one human civilization that wouldn't qualify for extermination under that criteria. Go ahead, I'll wait.

I can buy that the Borg might not have been much of a threat to the Vaadwaur a millennium ago. If the Borg had truly been as we know them now for hundreds of centuries then they honestly should've long since conquered the galaxy. I'm guessing they had their set backs, their lulls, their dark ages. The Vaadwaur were probably lucky enough to encounter them during one of those periods.

Durandal_1707 wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 4:09 am Stargate SG-1 actually did this same concept in a way less skeezy fashion, in "The Other Side", with Rene Auberjonois in it. That one had the bad guys under siege basically be Hitler's bunker rather than an entire population with civilians and children and everything. Plus, the guys in SG-1 actually started the fight, rather than here where the toothpaste aliens have a grudge because the Vaadwaur were warlike like 1000 years ago. Name me one human civilization that wouldn't qualify for extermination under that criteria. Go ahead, I'll wait.

I do remember that episode but I should note that the 1000 years ago fighting aliens are these same guys. This is basically the SS officers put into stasis that you'd get with a Hydra plot from Marvel comics. I actually like the kind of "war is hell" element here that is also here that often gets overlooked in Star Trek.

"The aliens were subject to countless Vaadwaur atrocities so they banded together to bomb them back to the stone age because being victims of violence doesn't make you merciful."

BlackoutCreature2 wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 1:01 pm I can buy that the Borg might not have been much of a threat to the Vaadwaur a millennium ago. If the Borg had truly been as we know them now for hundreds of centuries then they honestly should've long since conquered the galaxy. I'm guessing they had their set backs, their lulls, their dark ages. The Vaadwaur were probably lucky enough to encounter them during one of those periods.

An easy fix that works with Picard is the Borg might be 100,000 years old but 1000 years ago got knocked back to a smaller number by people resisting them.

CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 1:02 am "The aliens were subject to countless Vaadwaur atrocities so they banded together to bomb them back to the stone age because being victims of violence doesn't make you merciful."

This wasn't even just "bombing to the stone age", though. This was straight-up extermination.

It's as if WWII had ended with the Allies killing every last German and Japanese man, woman, and child. It's ghoulish.

Durandal_1707 wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 3:49 pm

CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 1:02 am "The aliens were subject to countless Vaadwaur atrocities so they banded together to bomb them back to the stone age because being victims of violence doesn't make you merciful."

This wasn't even just "bombing to the stone age", though. This was straight-up extermination.

It's as if WWII had ended with the Allies killing every last German and Japanese man, woman, and child. It's ghoulish.

Like dropping nuclear bombs on cities in order to preserve the lives of your own soldiers... Oh wait...

CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 1:02 am

BlackoutCreature2 wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 1:01 pm I can buy that the Borg might not have been much of a threat to the Vaadwaur a millennium ago. If the Borg had truly been as we know them now for hundreds of centuries then they honestly should've long since conquered the galaxy. I'm guessing they had their set backs, their lulls, their dark ages. The Vaadwaur were probably lucky enough to encounter them during one of those periods.

An easy fix that works with Picard is the Borg might be 100,000 years old but 1000 years ago got knocked back to a smaller number by people resisting them.

That was always my interpretation. Humans are 250,000 years old. That makes us thousands of millennia old too and yet we haven't even visited our closest planet. Just because you can claim to be an old civilisation doesn't mean that you were impressive.

Really it comes down to whatever ''Species 01'' was doing back in the day. Were the Borg an accident or did they have a Davros style leader? Were they confined to their own planet for as long as we have been or did space travel come naturally? Was ''Species 02'' worth the assimilation or did it take until ''Species 0XX'' for them to become a true powerhouse? Its also very interesting that the Ferengi carry the designation ''Species 180'' whereas humans are ''Species 5618''. That's lower than the Talaxians at ''218'' and the Kazon at ''329''. Why? Are the Borg actually a Delta Quadrant race to begin with?

All i'm saying is, that's a prequel I would like to watch. It could be like ''Caprica'' only good.

Madner Kami wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 5:47 pm

Durandal_1707 wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 3:49 pm

CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 1:02 am "The aliens were subject to countless Vaadwaur atrocities so they banded together to bomb them back to the stone age because being victims of violence doesn't make you merciful."

This wasn't even just "bombing to the stone age", though. This was straight-up extermination.

It's as if WWII had ended with the Allies killing every last German and Japanese man, woman, and child. It's ghoulish.

Like dropping nuclear bombs on cities in order to preserve the lives of your own soldiers... Oh wait...

And preserve the lives of the Japanese.

What a lot of people forget about the Japanese is that they were only a few years removed from ''Bushido'' during WW2. That code may not have been a real code by 1945, but it was still a powerful ideology to draw upon/exploit. They fought, and fought, and fought until they died. It was that simple. There was a Japanese soldier called Shoichi Yokoi still fighting in 1972 because he never got the all-clear. That's 27 years. Wouldn't you say that most Americans and Europeans would have given up after about the 15 year mark after no communication, no resupplies, and no contact at all from anyone else whatsoever?

The American occupation of Japan was as much about deprogramming as it was about dearming them. Why do you think the Americans never gave Germany or Italy the same treatment?

The Japanese would not have surrendered through normal warfare alone. This is true values dissonance at work here. Those two atom bombs saved more lives then they ended. Yep, that's a controversial opinion, but you first have to convince me that Mr Shoichi is an isolated case to change that opinion.

clearspira wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 8:19 pm The Japanese would not have surrendered through normal warfare alone. This is true values dissonance at work here. Those two atom bombs saved more lives then they ended. Yep, that's a controversial opinion, but you first have to convince me that Mr Shoichi is an isolated case to change that opinion.

He quite literally isolated himself with two other soldiers from human contact. And he himself said, that he knew the war was definitly over by 1952.

Overall, about 50,000 japanese army(!) soldiers surrendered to the western allies during the war. The japanese army(!) fielded around 1.7 million soldiers overall, so about 3% surrendered. Germany fielded 13.7 million men. 1.3m of which surrendered before the armistice, so about 9%.

Durandal_1707 wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 3:49 pm=
This wasn't even just "bombing to the stone age", though. This was straight-up extermination.

It's as if WWII had ended with the Allies killing every last German and Japanese man, woman, and child. It's ghoulish.

It turns out that victims of genocide aren't suddenly inclined to be nicer because they're the good guys.

clearspira wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 8:19 pm And preserve the lives of the Japanese.

What a lot of people forget about the Japanese is that they were only a few years removed from ''Bushido'' during WW2. That code may not have been a real code by 1945, but it was still a powerful ideology to draw upon/exploit. They fought, and fought, and fought until they died. It was that simple. There was a Japanese soldier called Shoichi Yokoi still fighting in 1972 because he never got the all-clear. That's 27 years. Wouldn't you say that most Americans and Europeans would have given up after about the 15 year mark after no communication, no resupplies, and no contact at all from anyone else whatsoever?

The American occupation of Japan was as much about deprogramming as it was about dearming them. Why do you think the Americans never gave Germany or Italy the same treatment?

The Japanese would not have surrendered through normal warfare alone. This is true values dissonance at work here. Those two atom bombs saved more lives then they ended. Yep, that's a controversial opinion, but you first have to convince me that Mr Shoichi is an isolated case to change that opinion.

Uh....

1. They were already trying to surrender.

2. The Japanese were trying to surrender to STALIN

3. Stalin had no interest in the Japanese surrender because he realized he could keep much larger swaths of territory by keeping the war going for as long as possible.

4. America had already invaded Okinawa.

5. The Imperial Japanese found the citizens horrified by the discovery America WASNT engaged in mass extermination of them as the propaganda had been told and were furious when they were told to commit suicide.

6. Bushido was actually not a part of the Imperial Japanese because the Democratic Japanese had killed more or less every last samurai alive. The Imperial Japanese had made their own McDonalds version of it and were indoctrinating their soldiers but not the public.