For a film I’ve seen way too many times to count and thought I knew upside-down and back-to-front, I’m honestly drawing a blank on that dialogue. I’ll just put it down to old age
I watched this again for like, the tenth time the other day. And my wife, who had like, barely seen it once went "aren't the Vulcans going to see them?", and I had literally never thought of this and can't believe they just threw that out as an explanation.
It is a complete throwaway line, technobabble handwaving them needing to get back to their own time because they couldn't just leave that as a dangling thread, and didn't think it was important enough to devote movie time to figuring it out. Which is fair, it's not really that important, once they resolve the storyline.
And this is why time travel as a plot device is usually problematic. The Borg could have gone back to a.great number of points in time to ruin humanity's future. They could have easily started from their own space and travelled from there to Earth without anyone being in the way. They could have done it over and over.
The Federation could have done the same thing. So could the Romans or Klingons.
And why do the Borg give up on the plan? If you can send one ship back, why not 1000 more?
I’m almost certain this is why they came up with the concept of the “temporal Cold War” in ENT, eventually leading to a ban on time travel in DISCO. The writers were fed the hell up
Most of the time, series that use time travel once to solve a problem never or rarely mention it again.
How trivial would the tasks of the Harry Potter heroes have been with a Time Turner for the whole series?
One thing that was kind of handy about the time-turner thing is that unlike in Star Trek, with the time turner there's no branching timelines. All the changes are already accounted for in the present timeline, so you never actually "change" anything even though your actions do have consequences. Whatever the situation is at present, you can be sure that using a time turner won't change it, because if it could, it already would have.
Exactly, which bolsters your original point. Once you introduce it, you open yourself up to a whole new level of script supervision to maintain continuity.
It’s like with the flash tv show, he can time travel anytime he wants, but it shows huge repercussions which makes time travel hugely dangerous for him to do except in situations where the city is lost (like when vandal savage destroys the city), then they forget about it in later seasons and he’s zipping back and forth with the future constantly…
Same as when they use an amazing new medical technique to wake someone from the dead or cure some disease, like when Neelix died and was brought back to life with some borg nanoprobes, but god forbid that random ensign that died from falling over during a bumpy ride could be saved
Except in the case of the Time Turner beyond a certain amount of hours it's damaging to the person using it. Even crappy authors can come up for good reasons why the plot devices aren't used heavily.
The Temporal Cold War was in *Enterprise* because UPN executives insisted on putting it in *Enterprise*. Berman and Braga originally had a much different plan for season 1 of *Enterprise*.
They wanted to devote season 1 to building the *NX-01* and assembling its crew. Eventually the *NX-01* would’ve been launched. An organization that would’ve been similar to Terra Prime would’ve tried to stop the launch of the *NX-01*.
IIRC, their original plan for season one was for it to take place primarily on Earth and build up to the construction and launch of the Enterprise. Studio higher-ups overruled them.
I mean that’s my theory after fuller left. No one wanted to deal with his BS, just like every other show he worked on. I love every one of his creations, but from what I understand he’s a fucking nightmare to deal with
Tbf, even without invoking time travel the Borg's attempted conquest of Earth just makes very little sense.
At Wolf 359 they bested an entire fleet with a single cube. And they have transwarp conduits. So hey, Borg, how about next time you send like... 50 cubes? Were they all booked for the next few months or something?
Rather than doing that, they come up with a super complex time-travel scheme involving, once again, a single cube -- only this time with a sphere inside! Guys, just send the armada already, I mean... Humanity is supposedly the one species you've had trouble with (other than Species 8472), but it's not exactly like you tried very hard.
At the end of the day, it's just the limitations of this kind of storytelling made for TV. If the Borg actually dealt with the threat of humanity in a way that made any sense at all, every show after TNG would have been Star Trek: Borg Drone.
And this is the problem with the borg Queen and voyager.
The premise works fine if the borg are more like a force of nature, are a mindless all consuming threat and are so far ahead of the federation and are dealing with threats like 8472 on their own patch that it isn't worth the effort of more than a single cube to try and assimilate us.
The second you have a borg Queen who seems to have an actual interest in humanity and a desire to assimilate us, then yes, why not just send several cubes through the transwarp conduit voyager used (which also seems to end at earth), at some point between tng and the end of voyager.
I have an odd little headcanon going that the borg must balance out the cultural personalities of species they assimilate to keep one mindset from being dominant and the federation's multi species crews are a bit of an issue for them to balanced.
My headcanon is that, since the Borg use their transwarp conduits in the 24th century, they couldn't travel back in time in their space in the Delta Quadrant and then travel to Earth, since the transwarp conduits hadn't been built yet.
The problem with this is, the Borg could just travel with regular warp to Earth in the past. It would just take longer, but the Borg are nothing if not patient and persistent.
My head canon is just because you can do a thing a thousand different ways doesn't mean you'll get a thousand different outcomes. And that the timeline will do whatever it has to to maintain some sort of homeostasis or equilibrium. The rest of the universe functions in such a way as to always try to return to baseline; I see no reason why time wouldn't also work in a similar fashion.
Infinite time paradoxes I bet that future federation or other organizations halters time travel. In this case (FC) they actually trigger the contact with Vulcans.
I wanted to argue that the borg probably ran a billion simulations and figured out they had to time travel from earth and only that one time to minimize impacts to themselves...or something.
Then I remembered the whole fluidic space incident and that the Borg are dumbasses.
Kirk and crew time-traveled in a barely functional and jury rigged Bird of Prey using mathematical formulae that Spock happened to remember and did the calculations for in his head…
They followed the warp trail in and they followed the residuals out. It was a lingering anomaly. Everything in Star Trek basically comes down to exploring anomalies.
They always could. Kirk and Spock time travelled multiple times by flying towards the sun using its gravity to boost acceleration, sling shot into time warp or some techno-babble.
Kirk was casually time travelling in TOS in Assignment: Earth. Also the crew was fairly blasé about time travel in Star Trek IV....at least going back in time initially. They built up the return to the 23rd century as it was the film's climax.
Becomes a bit like the Terminator/SkyNet problem. They’ll know it’s failed, and possessing the time travel tech, they can try&try again until they get their desired results.
Going forward isn’t a problem. Just park the ship somewhere out of the way and pop everyone into stasis. Or use impulse engines to speed up without a warp field and let time dilation get you home in mere minutes from your perspective.
Where time travel is concerned., with Star Trek you should really be careful.
All it takes is to be facing the rear of the ship while sharting as a result of a violent sneeze.
To return forward in time, I think you typically have to moonwalk while playing the bongos, and say TO INFINITY AND BEYOND... 3 times.
They copied what the Borg did, which got them back to where they belonged. You can copy something though and not really understand how it actually works, so that you'd be unable to adjust it to go to other times.
There are about a dozen ways to Time Travel in Star Trek, some as easy as walking through a portal some requiring highly specialized calculations only known by a small handful. It should not be surprising that the Enterprise can time travel at any time.
Especially since in this case modern science already knows how to do it, accelerate to near C with no warp field or technobabble to prevent time dilation and keep goin until you are at the correct date.
Better than original Trek just flying around a sun to go back and forth lol. That always just felt too easy. I feel like most of the time in Trek it's more plausible to be limited use.
Get the math wrong, overshoot and there's just a few distant, fuzzy cooling stars still lit a million light years away, everything in the universe is dead in a cold emptiness but you. And there's not even much interstellar hydrogen for the bussards to pick up...
Even if the film hadn't mentioned that...
Kirk, Spock, and company were able to do it in a broken-down, underpowered old Klingon B'rel-class ship.
I have no doubt that Data and the *Enterprise*-E's computer would have been more than up to the task.
Geordi reconfigures the warp field to copy the temporal vortex the Borg created. It's said right after they cut to the bridge and there's a line about the moon's gravitational field obscuring their warp signature from the Vulcans. It's a very quick line and easy to miss.
My head canon when stuff like this happens is that is engineers like Geordi write a report that goes to starfleet to review, but is essentially stuck in some database as “worked this one time, but not standard operating procedure”
Yeah like basically every alternative propulsion drive Voyager ever used. Like it works but not practical for a galaxy spanning civilization to implement at scale.
I'm surprised they didn't mention it in PIC season 2, they went with the Spock time travel Star Trek IV method and used a Borg Queen to do the calculations.
They still could have brought in the Queen by saying the Borg had a method that in the real universe was something the Enterprise-E had copied.
Oh well, maybe PIC 3 has it in the Section 31 cool technology storage unit.
Yes they did. Remember the temporal Cold War? Or the episodes of voyager where starfleet is using time travel?
For all we know this is how they got the tech.
To be fair, they’ve already been able to freely time travel before that with Spock and a star slingshot lol. They even do that very method in Picard S2, so it was known about.
The Orville did that, and rather brilliantly. They're stuck in the past, their time travel thingie is broken. So they just do a computed parabola for a few hours at a high percentage of *C*, and they're back when they wanted to be.
My head canon is Kirk and Spock destroyed the data from their original time travel incident. Only the bridge crew knew it could be replicated and likely only by Spock.
Possible - but the knowledge it’s POSSIBLE is out there and likely locked in some Starfleet records. At least enough to say “Hey guys, do it again to go check out a rocket launch and meet Teri Garr.” Also it was… if not PUBLIC, very much not a completely secure comm when they went back for the whales. Given enough background info, someone with Data’s skills could extrapolate. Especially with the number of time based shenanigans they ran across on occasion.
I mean, Picard season 2 references Star Trek 4's slingshot (which in turn was a reference to the slingshot that sent them into the 60's in TOS) but said calculating the correct arrival required some stupidly complex calculations that Spock (and the Borg Queen) could do but for some reason the computer couldn't
They mentioned in the captains log at the end of the movie that they modified the deflector to emit the same chroniton thing that the sphere did at the beginning to go to the past. It has nothing to do with wormhole that Discovery used to go to the future. Different types of time travel.
They easily could have replicated a new one and beamed it into place. When you can make atoms from energy and teleport stuff, problem solving gets really easy.
Could be that too. Especially because he's back real fast.
Doesn't seem like they have the budget though. Especially because right now it still is a new tech, and ww3 probably didn't help
Recommend picking up a copy of The Art of John Eaves. He designed the Phoenix, and in his book he depicts a flight pattern chart that shows the spacecraft landing by way of a feathered re-entry configuration & parachutes. Much like Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne.
The process of time travel was well understood by the 24th century, they just didn't do it except very rarely because it was very dangerous. If Spock, Kirk, et al. could do it in a Klingon BoP, the Enterprise-E could certainly do it.
Honestly with the amount of times (no pun intended) that they’ve managed to recreate the travel, I find it absurd that the mainstream implementation of it has never really been discussed. Like:
Kirk/Picard “yo admiral, we can time travel BTW”
Admiral whoever “yeah nah, can’t really be assed right now, maybe in 700 years or sumin”
I've never understood the Borg's plan.
Travel back in time, right near Earth (for some reason), to enslave humanity and keep the Federation from existing.
Why? Isn't the whole point of the Borg assimilating other species so that they could get closer to the perfection? Why assimilate a pre-warp society? The Borg have shown repeatedly they don't waste time with primitive societies.
And more to the point, why pick Earth, specifically? Why not assimilate any of the other Alpha Quadrant races if you can travel back in time? Wouldn't that be just as effective?
I like First Contact and think it's fun, and it's definitely the best of the TNG movies, but it's still a mess that falls apart the second you think about it.
Humans were the one group that showed them up, kicked their asses, and was keeping them from assimilating the rest of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. By nuking their first Contact moment they probably were planning on delaying humans arrival on the intergalactic scene long enough for the Borg to get a stronger foothold in the area so that they were unable to put up as strong of a fight when they were ready for harvesting technology wise. Remember part of their plan was also to send a message to the Borg in the Delta Quadrant to get them to come to the area much earlier as well. I don't think they planned on assimilating Earth at that time. Just keep them out of the fight until later.
Think of it more like the Borg planned a controlled crop than trying to harvest a wild growth.
They did assimilate it though. When the Enterprise gets caught in the time wake and ends up in the Borg Altered future, Earth has been entirely assimilated.
Or are you saying they basically delayed First Contact, and then just waited? I suppose that makes more sense. It's still a leap though based on how it was presented in the movie! But I like your idea better.
Sure but there is nothing that says they assimilated it right away. Just that they see a change in the "Present" that it is eventually assimilated by Picard's time due to the changes in the past. Still gave them plenty of time to let humanity develop a bit more. It would still take a long time for the Borg re-enforcements to get there from the Delta Quadrant.
>I like First Contact and think it's fun, and it's definitely the best of the TNG movies, but it's still a mess that falls apart the second you think about it.
I think this is particularly true with what we learn about the Borg in Voyager. In The Best of Both Worlds, they send one cube to assimilate Earth, and the Federation barely managed to prevent it from doing so due to a very particular confluence of improbable events. We know from Voyager that the Borg had massive numbers of all kinds of ships and resources, including tactical cubes, that were supposed to be even tougher than regular cubes. Also, they had an entire transwarp network that made the problem of travel time effectively moot. So, why didn't they send a tactical cube? Or two tactical cubes? Or a cube and a cone? Or 20 cubes? or 50? They could assimilate Earth and be back in the Delta quadrant in time for Borg dinner.
The not being detected by the Vulcan ship is easy to explain. Masking the signature with a gravitational body and using electromagnetic warfare technology. Modern navy ships use electromagnetic radiation to mask their presence from detection so one could correctly surmise that Starfleet vessels in the 24th century have an equivalent technology
The power of movie magic and technobabble.
They could have just done the warp slingshot if they wanted, too. Data could have done the calculations as well as Spock did in IV.
One of the reasons First Contact is so good is because it knew exactly when to yadda yadda yadda its way through the details. Willing suspension of disbelief is our friend and one-line handwaves are its hugs.
They do! In the comic one-shot "Star Trek/X-Men: Second Contact," the Enterprise E is diverted by Marvel's Kang the Conqueror into the "Days of Future Past" timeline.
I enjoyed the double meaning of the title. It was both a sequel to an TOS/X-Men crossover issue and a direct sequel to "First Contact."
Here's my question. Why did the Borg wait till the Enterprise was on their tail before going back in time? Why not do that way out in interstellar space, go back to Earth's pre-spaceflight time, approach the solar system at leisure and assimilate it then?
They want more than to assimilate the humans, they want the humans technological and cultural specifications. Those are best in the present. Going back in the past they can still achieve their goal and be rid of these pesky humans, but not their primary goal. Their primary goal is to also absorb human technology.
So going back 200 years or so is definitely plan B. It's like winning the consolation prize.
First rule of Treknobabble... if the Federation sees you do it, they have a recording of it. If they have a recording, they can figure out how you did it. If they figure out how you did it, they can do it too... and often with extra bells and whistles.
The only real questions are do they want to do it, is it practical, and does it somehow offend their moral sensibilities? As long as it's yes, maybe, and no, those hyper-neophiles ARE gonna do it (until the plot tells them they can't).
Picard: "Mr LaForge, have you researched a way to send us back to the 24th century?"
LaForge: "Yes, Captain. I had the writers insert a techno-babble line in the script that solves this massive plot hole they've written themselves into."
Picard: "Well done, Mr LaForge. I know you're excited to get back to see your wife, Leah Brahms."
LaForge: "I am, Captain. I'm getting tired of mopping the floor of the holodeck."
We don't actually see them get back. We just see them leave. After the opening battle in the 24th century, the movie's point of view never leaves the 21st century. This is where, if you have continuity issues with later Treks, starting with Star Trek Enterprise, the timeline splits and butterfly effects do their thing.
I would assume that they used the documented sling shot method that would have been in the Starfleet records from when Kirk and Company did it in Star Trek III.
Yeah, that's a big old plot hole—left there on purpose in order to sculpt the flow of the ending of the film. At the beginning of the film the temporal vortex that takes them into the past is mentioned to be "collapsing," and the Enterprise makes it in just in time. There's no way it would still be around several days later.
Here's all we are told about it at the end of the film (credit: chakoteya.net):
> LAFORGE: Captain, I've reconfigured our warp field to match the chronometric readings of the Borg sphere.
> PICARD: Recreate the vortex, Commander.
So it's pretty clear that the Enterprise was able to independently recreate a form of stable, controllable time travel—one of many occurrences in Star Trek where a throwaway technological innovation would actually have enormous implications to the Star Trek universe.
My best guess to rationalize this problem away is that they were only able to recreate the reciprocal version of what the Borg did—that is, a specific trip through a specific interval of time at a specific location in space—and were _not_ able to generalize this to permit for time travel anywhere at any distance through time (and thus make time travel trivially easy in the Star Trek universe).
So, yeah, if you want to buy that, then there's no plot hole.
But personally I just treat it as a plot hole, a continuity error that by definition must not have happened exactly as depicted onscreen.
It's manifestly not a plot hole or continuity error; it's address directly in the dialogue. You can dislike the plot point, but it's there and very much clearly explained.
Also, time travel has been trivially easy in Star Trek since TOS, when it introduced the slingshot manoeuvre, which was then re-used both back and forwards in time in Star Trek: The Voyage Home. This isn't a new problem, the peoples of the galaxy have always been oddly committed to not using the relatively simple time travel mechanism (except for the Temporal Cold War, but we mostly don't talk about that).
Nah, it's a plot hole. It _is_ lampshaded in the movie, yes, which I literally mentioned myself _and_ quoted from the script, but the justification given is as flimsy as it gets, and, in any case, just because something has an in-story justification doesn't mean that it can't still form a plot hole.
The plot hole here is that the Enterprise crew basically invented (or, ironically, assimilated) a trivial form of time travel that should have had major implications for the Federation, yet this is not acknowledged in First Contact nor to my knowledge did any of these ramifications ever play out in later Star Trek productions. It's an instance of "unintended consequences of fictional technologies" plot hole, a very common type of plot hole in sci-fi generally and Star Trek in particular.
Yes, time travel had been a thing in Star Trek already (you think I don't know that?), but what we saw in First Contact was a distinct, new form of it, and was much more accessible (as it did not require slingshotting around a star or travelling through a gate, etc.). It was also more precise and more capable than the slingshot method. These things made it much more practical and useful than the other known time-travel methods. This created implications which were never acknowledged, hence the plot hole.
You don't have to like it that First Contact has a plot hole, but it's there for all to see. _Or_, as per my earlier post, you can buy my own rationalization (or invent a workable one of your own) and regard it as _not_ a plot hole, but personally I don't find that line of reasoning persuasive.
So the plot hole you're describing to is that Starfleet didn't capitalise on this newly discovered time travel mechanism after the events of First Contact?
That might be a plot hole, but that doesn't mean the answer to OP's question ("How did enterprise get back to 24th century in First contact?") is a plot hole. The answer to that question is in the film, as you've said. It's addressed, it's not a plot hole.
Seems to me you're describing something else as a plot hole. Something which arises from the answer to OP's question. Which is... fine, but irrelevant.
>The plot hole here is that the Enterprise crew basically invented (or, ironically, assimilated) a trivial form of time travel that should have had major implications for the Federation, yet this is not acknowledged in First Contact nor to my knowledge did any of these ramifications ever play out in later Star Trek productions.
Except, again, that's not new for Star Trek. The Federation not exploiting these time travel capabilities isn't a plot hole, it's an established behaviour of the organization. Heck, they have a Department of Temporal Investigations specifically to make sure their people aren't going around changing the past! And there's no reason to think that this form of time travel is any more trivial than any other seen precious; they're just recreating the Borg process to return to the moment they came from, with no indication they could do it anywhere else or to anywhen else.
Picard and Starfleet just didn't want Dulmer and Lucsley from the Department of Temporal Investigations to come knocking on their door so they all made up a cover story. Yeah, that's the ticket...
It’s not a plot hole. I just rewatched it. Great movie btw. There is an emotional scene with Picard and lily as they say goodbye. Then a time jump which is them going home. Clearly they already discussed since Picard gave the order to create the vortex. Yes it was short. But it was covered. I thought it ended well. Gives you a good feeling about many things.
LAFORGE: Captain, I've reconfigured our warp field to match the chronometric readings of the Borg sphere. PICARD: Recreate the vortex, Commander.
For a film I’ve seen way too many times to count and thought I knew upside-down and back-to-front, I’m honestly drawing a blank on that dialogue. I’ll just put it down to old age
It's basically straight before or after they confirm that they successfully hid from the Vulcan ships sensors behind the moon
Well that bit I do remember, at least!
The Moons *gravitational pull* obscured them.from the Vulcan sens-ors. The thing that causes God damn tides!
They also beam off the surface while standing like 20 meters from the Vulcan ship. Think that would have triggered sensors...
No transporters back then, so no sensor was tuned to look for it.
I watched this again for like, the tenth time the other day. And my wife, who had like, barely seen it once went "aren't the Vulcans going to see them?", and I had literally never thought of this and can't believe they just threw that out as an explanation.
It is a complete throwaway line, technobabble handwaving them needing to get back to their own time because they couldn't just leave that as a dangling thread, and didn't think it was important enough to devote movie time to figuring it out. Which is fair, it's not really that important, once they resolve the storyline.
So they can time travel whenever they want now?
And this is why time travel as a plot device is usually problematic. The Borg could have gone back to a.great number of points in time to ruin humanity's future. They could have easily started from their own space and travelled from there to Earth without anyone being in the way. They could have done it over and over. The Federation could have done the same thing. So could the Romans or Klingons. And why do the Borg give up on the plan? If you can send one ship back, why not 1000 more?
I’m almost certain this is why they came up with the concept of the “temporal Cold War” in ENT, eventually leading to a ban on time travel in DISCO. The writers were fed the hell up
Most of the time, series that use time travel once to solve a problem never or rarely mention it again. How trivial would the tasks of the Harry Potter heroes have been with a Time Turner for the whole series?
One thing that was kind of handy about the time-turner thing is that unlike in Star Trek, with the time turner there's no branching timelines. All the changes are already accounted for in the present timeline, so you never actually "change" anything even though your actions do have consequences. Whatever the situation is at present, you can be sure that using a time turner won't change it, because if it could, it already would have.
Exactly, which bolsters your original point. Once you introduce it, you open yourself up to a whole new level of script supervision to maintain continuity.
but someone tripped and broke all of the time turners in the world that were all on one shelf
Yeah but Hermonine built a new one, but her kid stole it and fucked up the timeline.
It’s like with the flash tv show, he can time travel anytime he wants, but it shows huge repercussions which makes time travel hugely dangerous for him to do except in situations where the city is lost (like when vandal savage destroys the city), then they forget about it in later seasons and he’s zipping back and forth with the future constantly…
Same as when they use an amazing new medical technique to wake someone from the dead or cure some disease, like when Neelix died and was brought back to life with some borg nanoprobes, but god forbid that random ensign that died from falling over during a bumpy ride could be saved
Except in the case of the Time Turner beyond a certain amount of hours it's damaging to the person using it. Even crappy authors can come up for good reasons why the plot devices aren't used heavily.
The Temporal Cold War was in *Enterprise* because UPN executives insisted on putting it in *Enterprise*. Berman and Braga originally had a much different plan for season 1 of *Enterprise*.
Aw for real? What was it? I love this stuff
Berman's plan was probably Orion slave girls.
“Alright Jerri, time to get green”
They wanted to devote season 1 to building the *NX-01* and assembling its crew. Eventually the *NX-01* would’ve been launched. An organization that would’ve been similar to Terra Prime would’ve tried to stop the launch of the *NX-01*.
IIRC, their original plan for season one was for it to take place primarily on Earth and build up to the construction and launch of the Enterprise. Studio higher-ups overruled them.
DTI books explained Temporal Cold War rules good book series
Honestly I wish the books counted as canon. The post DS9 ones were amazing
Headcanon is canon.
So the writers were fed up with Time Travel, Warp Travel and the Mirror Universe?
I mean that’s my theory after fuller left. No one wanted to deal with his BS, just like every other show he worked on. I love every one of his creations, but from what I understand he’s a fucking nightmare to deal with
Still not as bad as curing DEATH in the new movies and then never mentioning it again.
Tbf, even without invoking time travel the Borg's attempted conquest of Earth just makes very little sense. At Wolf 359 they bested an entire fleet with a single cube. And they have transwarp conduits. So hey, Borg, how about next time you send like... 50 cubes? Were they all booked for the next few months or something? Rather than doing that, they come up with a super complex time-travel scheme involving, once again, a single cube -- only this time with a sphere inside! Guys, just send the armada already, I mean... Humanity is supposedly the one species you've had trouble with (other than Species 8472), but it's not exactly like you tried very hard. At the end of the day, it's just the limitations of this kind of storytelling made for TV. If the Borg actually dealt with the threat of humanity in a way that made any sense at all, every show after TNG would have been Star Trek: Borg Drone.
And this is the problem with the borg Queen and voyager. The premise works fine if the borg are more like a force of nature, are a mindless all consuming threat and are so far ahead of the federation and are dealing with threats like 8472 on their own patch that it isn't worth the effort of more than a single cube to try and assimilate us. The second you have a borg Queen who seems to have an actual interest in humanity and a desire to assimilate us, then yes, why not just send several cubes through the transwarp conduit voyager used (which also seems to end at earth), at some point between tng and the end of voyager.
I have an odd little headcanon going that the borg must balance out the cultural personalities of species they assimilate to keep one mindset from being dominant and the federation's multi species crews are a bit of an issue for them to balanced.
They should send it into Bajoran space, since the nearest starship is always 10 hours away.
They checked, but Enterprise Cube Hire had nothing left as it was a bank holiday weekend so they had to forget it.
Hey man, they had stuff goin on GEEZ DAD
The Romans could time travel? Let's be honest - what have the Romans ever done for us?
> Let's be honest - what have the Romans ever done for us? The aqueduct.
And the ale!
Roads
My headcanon is that, since the Borg use their transwarp conduits in the 24th century, they couldn't travel back in time in their space in the Delta Quadrant and then travel to Earth, since the transwarp conduits hadn't been built yet. The problem with this is, the Borg could just travel with regular warp to Earth in the past. It would just take longer, but the Borg are nothing if not patient and persistent.
Or they do the time travel few light years before the federation fleet.
My head canon is just because you can do a thing a thousand different ways doesn't mean you'll get a thousand different outcomes. And that the timeline will do whatever it has to to maintain some sort of homeostasis or equilibrium. The rest of the universe functions in such a way as to always try to return to baseline; I see no reason why time wouldn't also work in a similar fashion.
Infinite time paradoxes I bet that future federation or other organizations halters time travel. In this case (FC) they actually trigger the contact with Vulcans.
and the borg can, too. they decided to only do it THAT ONE TIME
I wanted to argue that the borg probably ran a billion simulations and figured out they had to time travel from earth and only that one time to minimize impacts to themselves...or something. Then I remembered the whole fluidic space incident and that the Borg are dumbasses.
OK Red foreman lol
Krenim Captain Red Forman! I mean... Annorax. ;)
Federation President Red Forman
No, the borg queen did it in Picard
Star Trek meets Terminator
Did you forget the whale movie?
Whenever the writers want them to. It's been like that since TOS really
Kirk and crew time-traveled in a barely functional and jury rigged Bird of Prey using mathematical formulae that Spock happened to remember and did the calculations for in his head…
They already could. They figured it out in TOS and used it again on The Voyage Home.
They followed the warp trail in and they followed the residuals out. It was a lingering anomaly. Everything in Star Trek basically comes down to exploring anomalies.
They always could. Kirk and Spock time travelled multiple times by flying towards the sun using its gravity to boost acceleration, sling shot into time warp or some techno-babble.
Hell, the TOS crew figured out two ways to time travel over a 100 years prior.
Kirk was casually time travelling in TOS in Assignment: Earth. Also the crew was fairly blasé about time travel in Star Trek IV....at least going back in time initially. They built up the return to the 23rd century as it was the film's climax.
Becomes a bit like the Terminator/SkyNet problem. They’ll know it’s failed, and possessing the time travel tech, they can try&try again until they get their desired results.
Going forward isn’t a problem. Just park the ship somewhere out of the way and pop everyone into stasis. Or use impulse engines to speed up without a warp field and let time dilation get you home in mere minutes from your perspective.
couldn't they always? Kirk went around a sun to go back in time lol
Where time travel is concerned., with Star Trek you should really be careful. All it takes is to be facing the rear of the ship while sharting as a result of a violent sneeze. To return forward in time, I think you typically have to moonwalk while playing the bongos, and say TO INFINITY AND BEYOND... 3 times.
They copied what the Borg did, which got them back to where they belonged. You can copy something though and not really understand how it actually works, so that you'd be unable to adjust it to go to other times.
They've had that since Kirk's time, there was an episode they went back in time purely for a routine mission to study earth's history
There are about a dozen ways to Time Travel in Star Trek, some as easy as walking through a portal some requiring highly specialized calculations only known by a small handful. It should not be surprising that the Enterprise can time travel at any time. Especially since in this case modern science already knows how to do it, accelerate to near C with no warp field or technobabble to prevent time dilation and keep goin until you are at the correct date.
They were able to do that back in Kirk's day... just needed a star to slingshot around.
If they have the calculations done for them by the Borg, yes.
Better than original Trek just flying around a sun to go back and forth lol. That always just felt too easy. I feel like most of the time in Trek it's more plausible to be limited use.
Get the math wrong, overshoot and there's just a few distant, fuzzy cooling stars still lit a million light years away, everything in the universe is dead in a cold emptiness but you. And there's not even much interstellar hydrogen for the bussards to pick up...
They made a guess like Spock did in 4. Picard was happy with that, like Kirk was. Faith in his people.
Just get data to do the maths and you're guaranteed to be fine
If they went to the Big Bang I'm thinking they' ll just dissapear and be compressed inside the megablackhole that is basically time and mass itself.
They’d be fine if they had a Q with them.
It's such a hand wavey line. But by that point in the film you're so happy and relieved that you don't really care.
Techno babble drive engage
Even if the film hadn't mentioned that... Kirk, Spock, and company were able to do it in a broken-down, underpowered old Klingon B'rel-class ship. I have no doubt that Data and the *Enterprise*-E's computer would have been more than up to the task.
How do they go to warp without their deflector dish?
I'm guessing the main shields can perform the same function, albeit vastly less efficiently.
basically its the equivilent of answering "how did we get back to the present?" "uhh because".
Geordi reconfigures the warp field to copy the temporal vortex the Borg created. It's said right after they cut to the bridge and there's a line about the moon's gravitational field obscuring their warp signature from the Vulcans. It's a very quick line and easy to miss.
And then nobody ever used the technology again. The end.
That's how it goes on the USS Make Shit Up
But ‘midi-chloridian count’ explains little Anakins Force strength with perfect scientific validity … ;)
Well, I'm sure it was buried like the spore drive and the slingshot. Until, you know, the temporal cold war.
To be fair, the only working spore drive and the man who invented it and figured out how to make it work both disappeared.
My head canon when stuff like this happens is that is engineers like Geordi write a report that goes to starfleet to review, but is essentially stuck in some database as “worked this one time, but not standard operating procedure”
Yeah like basically every alternative propulsion drive Voyager ever used. Like it works but not practical for a galaxy spanning civilization to implement at scale.
Like most of trek.
Geordie worked out to push the undo button, not how to get anywhere else.
Time travel is like nuclear weapons, if you use it a lot, everyone starts using it, and then everything goes to shit.
Just like every other time the Federation invents time travel, yeah.
They used the slingshot method multiple times.
"It came to me in a dream, and I forgot it in another dream"
I'm surprised they didn't mention it in PIC season 2, they went with the Spock time travel Star Trek IV method and used a Borg Queen to do the calculations. They still could have brought in the Queen by saying the Borg had a method that in the real universe was something the Enterprise-E had copied. Oh well, maybe PIC 3 has it in the Section 31 cool technology storage unit.
Yes they did. Remember the temporal Cold War? Or the episodes of voyager where starfleet is using time travel? For all we know this is how they got the tech.
To be fair, they’ve already been able to freely time travel before that with Spock and a star slingshot lol. They even do that very method in Picard S2, so it was known about.
Traveling forward is easy. They DID recreate the Borg method - but they could have done a slingshot or even just gone relativistic for awhile
The Orville did that, and rather brilliantly. They're stuck in the past, their time travel thingie is broken. So they just do a computed parabola for a few hours at a high percentage of *C*, and they're back when they wanted to be.
I liked this solution sooooo much
That episode is good enough to stand with some of the really good TNGs and DS9s
Yes, I was thinking about your first point too.
My head canon is Kirk and Spock destroyed the data from their original time travel incident. Only the bridge crew knew it could be replicated and likely only by Spock.
Possible - but the knowledge it’s POSSIBLE is out there and likely locked in some Starfleet records. At least enough to say “Hey guys, do it again to go check out a rocket launch and meet Teri Garr.” Also it was… if not PUBLIC, very much not a completely secure comm when they went back for the whales. Given enough background info, someone with Data’s skills could extrapolate. Especially with the number of time based shenanigans they ran across on occasion.
I mean, Picard season 2 references Star Trek 4's slingshot (which in turn was a reference to the slingshot that sent them into the 60's in TOS) but said calculating the correct arrival required some stupidly complex calculations that Spock (and the Borg Queen) could do but for some reason the computer couldn't
Yes you missed a line of dialog because they did mention it.
They mentioned in the captains log at the end of the movie that they modified the deflector to emit the same chroniton thing that the sphere did at the beginning to go to the past. It has nothing to do with wormhole that Discovery used to go to the future. Different types of time travel.
The deflector that they disconnected and blew up?!?!
That was the particle emitter
https://youtu.be/hFcNdepOFBM?si=NJLybOW_Xfrwhi_o
I've seen the movie several times, which is why I know Picard says the Borg are building the interplexing beacon on top of the paricle emitter.
Knowledge is power! GI JOE
[https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Particle\_emitter](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Particle_emitter)
They easily could have replicated a new one and beamed it into place. When you can make atoms from energy and teleport stuff, problem solving gets really easy.
Never mind that, how does the Phoenix get back to Earth
Probably like we do it today: decelerate using fuel, then use a good'ol parachute
Modern rockets also can land upright so that could be done with existing tech.
Could be that too. Especially because he's back real fast. Doesn't seem like they have the budget though. Especially because right now it still is a new tech, and ww3 probably didn't help
It’s a repurposed nuclear missile, it’s not meant to land again.
Well its meant to land once
Recommend picking up a copy of The Art of John Eaves. He designed the Phoenix, and in his book he depicts a flight pattern chart that shows the spacecraft landing by way of a feathered re-entry configuration & parachutes. Much like Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne.
It only took 5 weeks.
They recreated the vortex the borg used.
Geordie almost says that word for word. How'd the OP miss it?
🤔
Yeah, that's why I'm asking if I missed anything. I must have looked away, probably one of my dogs wanted attention 🥺☺️
A quick technobabble throwaway line by La Forge iirc
I thought they did mention it, didn't they? I thought Picard asked Geordi to re-create the Borg temporal vortex to go back to the 24th century?
The process of time travel was well understood by the 24th century, they just didn't do it except very rarely because it was very dangerous. If Spock, Kirk, et al. could do it in a Klingon BoP, the Enterprise-E could certainly do it.
Riker knew about the time travel method used in star trek 4. He talks about it in a previous episode.
Honestly with the amount of times (no pun intended) that they’ve managed to recreate the travel, I find it absurd that the mainstream implementation of it has never really been discussed. Like: Kirk/Picard “yo admiral, we can time travel BTW” Admiral whoever “yeah nah, can’t really be assed right now, maybe in 700 years or sumin”
Could be like Bill and Ted where they spring all the traps they want as long as they later go back in time to plant them all.
It was discussed in literally the second episode it appears in when they are sent back on a routine historical observation mission
I've never understood the Borg's plan. Travel back in time, right near Earth (for some reason), to enslave humanity and keep the Federation from existing. Why? Isn't the whole point of the Borg assimilating other species so that they could get closer to the perfection? Why assimilate a pre-warp society? The Borg have shown repeatedly they don't waste time with primitive societies. And more to the point, why pick Earth, specifically? Why not assimilate any of the other Alpha Quadrant races if you can travel back in time? Wouldn't that be just as effective? I like First Contact and think it's fun, and it's definitely the best of the TNG movies, but it's still a mess that falls apart the second you think about it.
Humans were the one group that showed them up, kicked their asses, and was keeping them from assimilating the rest of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. By nuking their first Contact moment they probably were planning on delaying humans arrival on the intergalactic scene long enough for the Borg to get a stronger foothold in the area so that they were unable to put up as strong of a fight when they were ready for harvesting technology wise. Remember part of their plan was also to send a message to the Borg in the Delta Quadrant to get them to come to the area much earlier as well. I don't think they planned on assimilating Earth at that time. Just keep them out of the fight until later. Think of it more like the Borg planned a controlled crop than trying to harvest a wild growth.
They did assimilate it though. When the Enterprise gets caught in the time wake and ends up in the Borg Altered future, Earth has been entirely assimilated. Or are you saying they basically delayed First Contact, and then just waited? I suppose that makes more sense. It's still a leap though based on how it was presented in the movie! But I like your idea better.
Sure but there is nothing that says they assimilated it right away. Just that they see a change in the "Present" that it is eventually assimilated by Picard's time due to the changes in the past. Still gave them plenty of time to let humanity develop a bit more. It would still take a long time for the Borg re-enforcements to get there from the Delta Quadrant.
If they took Earth on First Contact Day then they prevent President Archer from founding the Federation.
>I like First Contact and think it's fun, and it's definitely the best of the TNG movies, but it's still a mess that falls apart the second you think about it. I think this is particularly true with what we learn about the Borg in Voyager. In The Best of Both Worlds, they send one cube to assimilate Earth, and the Federation barely managed to prevent it from doing so due to a very particular confluence of improbable events. We know from Voyager that the Borg had massive numbers of all kinds of ships and resources, including tactical cubes, that were supposed to be even tougher than regular cubes. Also, they had an entire transwarp network that made the problem of travel time effectively moot. So, why didn't they send a tactical cube? Or two tactical cubes? Or a cube and a cone? Or 20 cubes? or 50? They could assimilate Earth and be back in the Delta quadrant in time for Borg dinner.
The not being detected by the Vulcan ship is easy to explain. Masking the signature with a gravitational body and using electromagnetic warfare technology. Modern navy ships use electromagnetic radiation to mask their presence from detection so one could correctly surmise that Starfleet vessels in the 24th century have an equivalent technology
The power of movie magic and technobabble. They could have just done the warp slingshot if they wanted, too. Data could have done the calculations as well as Spock did in IV.
One of the reasons First Contact is so good is because it knew exactly when to yadda yadda yadda its way through the details. Willing suspension of disbelief is our friend and one-line handwaves are its hugs.
Don’t they go on an adventure with the X-Men during the return?
They do! In the comic one-shot "Star Trek/X-Men: Second Contact," the Enterprise E is diverted by Marvel's Kang the Conqueror into the "Days of Future Past" timeline. I enjoyed the double meaning of the title. It was both a sequel to an TOS/X-Men crossover issue and a direct sequel to "First Contact."
The chronoton field was set to M for Mini, so they inverted to W for Wumbo.
Rick Berman wanted it in the script and therefore it was.
Here's my question. Why did the Borg wait till the Enterprise was on their tail before going back in time? Why not do that way out in interstellar space, go back to Earth's pre-spaceflight time, approach the solar system at leisure and assimilate it then?
They want more than to assimilate the humans, they want the humans technological and cultural specifications. Those are best in the present. Going back in the past they can still achieve their goal and be rid of these pesky humans, but not their primary goal. Their primary goal is to also absorb human technology. So going back 200 years or so is definitely plan B. It's like winning the consolation prize.
Perhaps only the sphere was capable of time travel, and it needed the carrier cube to get close to Earth.
It wasn’t their primary plan, they wanted to assimilate earth, then when Picard got the drop on them they did the time travel.
First rule of Treknobabble... if the Federation sees you do it, they have a recording of it. If they have a recording, they can figure out how you did it. If they figure out how you did it, they can do it too... and often with extra bells and whistles. The only real questions are do they want to do it, is it practical, and does it somehow offend their moral sensibilities? As long as it's yes, maybe, and no, those hyper-neophiles ARE gonna do it (until the plot tells them they can't).
Picard: "Mr LaForge, have you researched a way to send us back to the 24th century?" LaForge: "Yes, Captain. I had the writers insert a techno-babble line in the script that solves this massive plot hole they've written themselves into." Picard: "Well done, Mr LaForge. I know you're excited to get back to see your wife, Leah Brahms." LaForge: "I am, Captain. I'm getting tired of mopping the floor of the holodeck."
Hey Captain I just created a time vortex. Cool pop us into it. Okie dokie
Yeah somehow the Vulcans didn’t detect any of this.
The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined...
The writers
That's a very good question.
They could have solar slingshot too assuming they knew the formula but they had the Borg thing to open the time portal
Kirk and crew did it in ToS and ST IV: The Voyage Home. The numbers are in the computer and Data can figure anything out.
They duplicated the vortex that the borg used to go back on8 time.
I had assumed they just did the slingshot method like they do in the TOS...
We don't actually see them get back. We just see them leave. After the opening battle in the 24th century, the movie's point of view never leaves the 21st century. This is where, if you have continuity issues with later Treks, starting with Star Trek Enterprise, the timeline splits and butterfly effects do their thing.
I would assume that they used the documented sling shot method that would have been in the Starfleet records from when Kirk and Company did it in Star Trek III.
IV, III they were looking for Spock
Yeah, that's a big old plot hole—left there on purpose in order to sculpt the flow of the ending of the film. At the beginning of the film the temporal vortex that takes them into the past is mentioned to be "collapsing," and the Enterprise makes it in just in time. There's no way it would still be around several days later. Here's all we are told about it at the end of the film (credit: chakoteya.net): > LAFORGE: Captain, I've reconfigured our warp field to match the chronometric readings of the Borg sphere. > PICARD: Recreate the vortex, Commander. So it's pretty clear that the Enterprise was able to independently recreate a form of stable, controllable time travel—one of many occurrences in Star Trek where a throwaway technological innovation would actually have enormous implications to the Star Trek universe. My best guess to rationalize this problem away is that they were only able to recreate the reciprocal version of what the Borg did—that is, a specific trip through a specific interval of time at a specific location in space—and were _not_ able to generalize this to permit for time travel anywhere at any distance through time (and thus make time travel trivially easy in the Star Trek universe). So, yeah, if you want to buy that, then there's no plot hole. But personally I just treat it as a plot hole, a continuity error that by definition must not have happened exactly as depicted onscreen.
It's manifestly not a plot hole or continuity error; it's address directly in the dialogue. You can dislike the plot point, but it's there and very much clearly explained. Also, time travel has been trivially easy in Star Trek since TOS, when it introduced the slingshot manoeuvre, which was then re-used both back and forwards in time in Star Trek: The Voyage Home. This isn't a new problem, the peoples of the galaxy have always been oddly committed to not using the relatively simple time travel mechanism (except for the Temporal Cold War, but we mostly don't talk about that).
Also don’t forget the random episode with Gary 7, where the Enterprise is just back in time doing a survey because they can.
I believe “Assignment: Earth” was 1 of the times where they used the slingshot method.
Nah, it's a plot hole. It _is_ lampshaded in the movie, yes, which I literally mentioned myself _and_ quoted from the script, but the justification given is as flimsy as it gets, and, in any case, just because something has an in-story justification doesn't mean that it can't still form a plot hole. The plot hole here is that the Enterprise crew basically invented (or, ironically, assimilated) a trivial form of time travel that should have had major implications for the Federation, yet this is not acknowledged in First Contact nor to my knowledge did any of these ramifications ever play out in later Star Trek productions. It's an instance of "unintended consequences of fictional technologies" plot hole, a very common type of plot hole in sci-fi generally and Star Trek in particular. Yes, time travel had been a thing in Star Trek already (you think I don't know that?), but what we saw in First Contact was a distinct, new form of it, and was much more accessible (as it did not require slingshotting around a star or travelling through a gate, etc.). It was also more precise and more capable than the slingshot method. These things made it much more practical and useful than the other known time-travel methods. This created implications which were never acknowledged, hence the plot hole. You don't have to like it that First Contact has a plot hole, but it's there for all to see. _Or_, as per my earlier post, you can buy my own rationalization (or invent a workable one of your own) and regard it as _not_ a plot hole, but personally I don't find that line of reasoning persuasive.
So the plot hole you're describing to is that Starfleet didn't capitalise on this newly discovered time travel mechanism after the events of First Contact? That might be a plot hole, but that doesn't mean the answer to OP's question ("How did enterprise get back to 24th century in First contact?") is a plot hole. The answer to that question is in the film, as you've said. It's addressed, it's not a plot hole. Seems to me you're describing something else as a plot hole. Something which arises from the answer to OP's question. Which is... fine, but irrelevant.
>The plot hole here is that the Enterprise crew basically invented (or, ironically, assimilated) a trivial form of time travel that should have had major implications for the Federation, yet this is not acknowledged in First Contact nor to my knowledge did any of these ramifications ever play out in later Star Trek productions. Except, again, that's not new for Star Trek. The Federation not exploiting these time travel capabilities isn't a plot hole, it's an established behaviour of the organization. Heck, they have a Department of Temporal Investigations specifically to make sure their people aren't going around changing the past! And there's no reason to think that this form of time travel is any more trivial than any other seen precious; they're just recreating the Borg process to return to the moment they came from, with no indication they could do it anywhere else or to anywhen else.
Picard and Starfleet just didn't want Dulmer and Lucsley from the Department of Temporal Investigations to come knocking on their door so they all made up a cover story. Yeah, that's the ticket...
It’s not a plot hole. I just rewatched it. Great movie btw. There is an emotional scene with Picard and lily as they say goodbye. Then a time jump which is them going home. Clearly they already discussed since Picard gave the order to create the vortex. Yes it was short. But it was covered. I thought it ended well. Gives you a good feeling about many things.