Has it ever been explained why only 40 ships showed up to defend Earth in BOBW, but in DS9 we see Fleets of hundreds of ships with the implication that Starfleet has thousands of vessels?

I believe it was simply because that was as many ships, in good working order, that could make it to Wolf 359 by the time the cube passed through. There weren't very many ships in Reunification either, but it is unwise to put all your resources into one event anyway.

LUIGI NOVI Admiral Hanson’s refusal to believe Picard would "assist" the Borg in the beginning of Act 1 is based on overt emotionalism and lack of professional objectivity. The crew knows what assimilation means, and what has been done to Picard. Why doesn’t someone chime up and explain this to Hanson? He’s not being realistic or reasonable. Picard is not assisting the Borg, but they do have access to all of his memories and knowledge of Starfleet.

I understand what you are saying but I think that he wasn't talking about what happens when someone is assimilated. He didn't like Shelby saying "with Picard's assistance" and figuring that no matter what happens Picard is gone forever wants to make sure that it's officially recorded that Picard is a casualty of war not a Starfleet officer who joined to the other side or a POW who betrayed his people.

Those kind of word game are exactly how the military often works. I’ve heard that the US Marines pride themselves on never retreating from a battle, however they apparently may “fall WAAAAAAAAYYYYYY back to a better firing position.

Has it ever been explained why only 40 ships showed up to defend Earth in BOBW, but in DS9 we see Fleets of hundreds of ships with the implication that Starfleet has thousands of vessels?

That war come on slower before those big battles took place. Plenty of time to pull older ships out of mothballs (like the US Millitary has done several times with WWII battleships, Vietnam and in the 80s to name a few) and plenty of time to recall ships that are weeks or months out. This Borg attack seems to happen within a few days.

Those forty ships were also probably the closest to the Borg ship's flight path within the time alloted.

Shelby's "fleet back up in a year" comment might mean that the particular fleet those forty ships belonged to would be back up in a year, not the entire Starfleet(like in DS9- second fleet, seventh fleet, etc.)

Actually, Brian, since I first wrote that nit, I've come to understand that as well. Thanks, though.

I never got that sense from Shelby's statement Aaron. But to each his own.

Just trying to make it fit with the fleet sizes in DS9(although then there is still the admiral's comment in The Wounded about the Fed not being ready for another sustained conflict)

Thanks for your support, even if you don't agree. This place would be pretty boring if we all agreed. :-)

Yeah, I didn't think she meant all of Starfleet. Like we've said, they only had a matter of days. I doubt that one can cross the entire Federation in that time.

Well, at the time the Feds were still at war with the Cardassians, right?

I know this happened years later but according to the Star Trek Star CHarts book Jouret IV and the othr places "BOBW" took place in were on the opposite side of the Federation than the Cardassian Union, so if most of the fleet was still fighting them then it'd make sense why only 40 ships showed up at Wolf 359.

While the truce doesn't officially happen until after the Borg attack, I think the active fighting is over by the time TNG begins. The Federation would still have many of their forces committed until the treaty is signed, though, and even afterward.

I never understood why Riker became a Commander again. I mean, in the last 2 TOS movies, Kirk, Spock, and Scotty were all captains, but there was a clear chain of command. Considering the E-D is the flagship, I'm suprised Picard isn't an admiral (maybe he didn't want to wear the dorky costume?).

Hanson says Starfleet has a fleet of 40 starships waiting for the Borg, and that the Klingons are sending help too.
The caption in DS9 Emissary reads 39 ships, and later mentions of the battle all back the figure of 39 ships up.
No Klingon ships are ever seen or mentioned as taking part in the battle after Hanson claims they are on their way.

Or we to infer from this episode that Earth's entire defence network consists of 3 shuttlecraft stationed on Mars?

The Klingons probably did send ships that got there after the Enterprise had destroyed the Borg cube.

Why didn't Mars use the Verteron array and wipe the cube out... all of them...

Would that be the device that was aimed at Earth 200 years before and, one assumes, dismantled before anyone could fire it?

True, after terraforming of mars was done, they probably did dismantle it. Maybe they gave it to the Sith.

good 1215402189465

"So was the Defiant still under construction at this point?"


Couldn't have been, because Sisko was one the designers of the Defiant. He was stationed at the shipyards after the destruction of the Saratoga.

The whole story of the Defiant is another possible answer to the question of 40 ships consisting of the Star Fleet. After the Borg kicked their tales I think the Federation started to take a whole new look at defense, one obvious change was the Defiant class warship, remember when Sisco called it a warship everyone around him was shocked because Starfleet had never built a warship before. I think the other change to Starfleet defense policy was fleet size. The federation may have had far more then 40 ships in it's possession during BoBw but maybe only 40 of them were battle worthy, lets face it, a science ship or a colony ship would have done no good at that battle. By the time the Dominion war rolled around the federation had years to retool the size and shape of it's fleet and by the end of DS9 they had many more ships fit for long sustained conflicts.

No where in TBBW or afterwards was it said or implied that 40 ships was the entirety of Starfleet.

Admiral Hanson states that they'd got A fleet of 40 ships, DS9's episode 'Emissary' starts with caption that reads 'A fleet of 39 starships...'. Clearly the ships at Wolf 359 were not the entirety of Starfleets strength, they were just the only ships in the local area that could get to the battle-sight in time. This can be assumed since one of the ships that is clearly seen destroyed in Emissary was an Oberth-class ship. That is (and has been) a science ship, not a warship by any definition.

I discussed the size of starfleet elsewhere, and basically pointed out that prior to the battle of wolf 359 the Federation had little practical reason for maintaining a large fleet - or at least a fleet(s) as large as those seen in the later seasons of DS9. However, after Wolf 359 the Federation had countless reasons for seeing a need for a larger fleet. First the Borg, then the Romulans, then the Cardassians, Dominion and even the Klingons all presented very clear and very major threats that required larger fleets to combat.

I'd also note that any surprise over the Defiant was more to do with her role than the amount of firepower she had. It is clear from the rest of the DS9 era shows that the Defiant was clearly outgunned by the far older Excelsior-class ships, let alone by newer and larger ships. The surprise, therefore, seems to have been that Starfleet had designed a ship that was only designed for combat - rather than designing ships that were capable of for-filling both combat and non-combat roles as it seems was the case before this.

It is clear from the rest of the DS9 era shows that the Defiant was clearly outgunned by the far older Excelsior-class ships, let alone by newer and larger ships.

The Excelsior was not outgunned by an Excelsior. First of all The Lakota had just been refit, remember O'Brien's line "that's a lot of firepower for an Excelsior." Second the Defiant still outgunned her but Worf refuses to destroy another Federation ship with hundreds of Star Fleet crew members onboard.

You can watch the whole thing here

Cyber said: "Admiral Hanson states that they'd got A fleet of 40 ships, DS9's episode 'Emissary' starts with caption that reads 'A fleet of 39 starships...'. Clearly the ships at Wolf 359 were not the entirety of Starfleets strength, they were just the only ships in the local area that could get to the battle-sight in time. "

At the end of BoBw Shelby is talking to Captains Picard and Riker about her reassignment to overseeing the construction of new starships and she is quoting as saying "we will have the fleet back up within the year" I think it is that dialog that leads most to think that 40 ships was the lion's share of The Federation fleet, true they could have had a great many more ships but talking about having the fleet back up sounds odd if you still have hundreds of ships.

'Fleet' can be used either to describe the Navy as a whole, or more usually as a sub-division of ships assigned to a particular area. From Hanson's use of 'a fleet' it is clear that he is talking about the latter. Just as DS9 later has numbered fleets, most of which have been assigned to cover sectors/areas within the Federation.

The 'Strength' of a fleet can, likewise, either be used to indicate the total number of ships in service or it can be used to indicate the minimum number of ships required to fore-fill those duties assigned to it. Hence an understrength fleet is one that has fewer ships than it needs.

In these contexts it, to me, is clear that 'having the fleet back up in a year' means that Starfleet had, after BOBW, less ships than it felt it needed. This would be logical, if you assume that the ships lost at Wolf 359 comprised the sector 001 fleet then Starfleet would have to redeploy ships from other sectors to replace them. This in turn most likely resulted in its fleets elsewhere being understrength. Shelby is, therefore, most likely talking about being able to rebuild the sector 001 fleet.

This is a reasonable conclusion, if you assume that Starfleet had what it felt was the minimum number of ships in service at the time of BOBW. After this it would appear (and be logical to assume) they raised their estimations as to what their minimum fleet strength needed to be. Post BOBW showed increasingly larger threats to the Federation - all of which would dictate a larger over all fleet strength.

The use of "fleet" as a subdivision of ships was used in the teaser of A Time to Stand(DS9), when the 7th fleet was said to have numbered 112 ships (before it was decimated).

That makes sense, although someone should take Shelby to Grammar school then because she should have said " we will have that fleet" or " we will have this fleet"

but thanks for the info. its good to know. never know when those Navel Admiral positions will open up, better not to sound like I know nothing of naval tactics or terminology :D

While confusing, Shelby's use of 'fleet' rather than 'this fleet' is perfectly acceptable in context. The number of ships in an individual fleet will, of course, be limited by how many ships the Navy as a whole has in service. So loosing a large number of ships overall would also result in a reduction in local (sector) forces.

Thus, the use of 'fleet' in the singular here is correct. By replacing the ships lost at Wolf 359 not only is the sector 001 fleet being brought back to strength, but by definition so is the 'Fleet' as a whole.

As I said, its confusing but correct.

Apparently most of the fleet as supposed to be along the Cardassian and Romulan borders or off on long term exploration missions. Also whilst only this one battle is mentioned the Borg cube could easily have blown through several lone ships after the battle, stragglers or ships like the Enterprise rushing to help.

Also after this Starfleet was supposed to finally embrace the fact threat they could no longer afford to insist that they weren't military or go round he galaxy on pleasure cruise type ships, they were all the federation had and it was time to act like it. They could no longer afford to be complacent and think that we can defend against what enemies we face now without considering what else might be out there. Of course the mothballing of the defiant program was them becoming complacent again but the Dominion ended that complacency forever.

Moving away from anti nits I've just realised a massive nit about the Borg. The original Borg did not assimilate, they were all one species who had linked their minds, which is why Picard couldn't resist them, the mind of one against billions, no chance of resisting, however future Borg were composed of numerous assimilated species and few if any original Borg, the assimilation of millions of trillions of uncooperative minds would destroy the collective. One mind could never hope to resist but there would be more unwilling Borg than willing Borg so they would be able to resist the power of the collective.

I supose it depends how rapidly they assimilate races. If they take in a few million new members and there are still trillions of Borg that think as a collective. those new additions would eventually be beat down and brainwashed over time. when they submitted and thought as the collective did, the Borg could move on to take over another planet.

"The Best of Both Worlds" kicked off the Star Trek trend of ending seasons with cliffhangers where even the writers wouldn't have much of a clue how they were going to resolve the cliffhanger. A the time Patrick Stewart had not renewed his contract and there were legitimate doubts that he would be returning for season 4. That's why they wrote the episode with an such an ending that they could pick up season 4 with the Borg ship being destroyed and Picard being dead.

If Stewart had not returned & they had gone with the "destroy the Borg ship in the first 20 seconds" option I wonder what the rest of Part 2 would have been about. Perhaps they would have discovered that the cube that captured Picard was only a scout & there were 3 (or 12) more cubes coming right behind it, and they now knew how to adapt to the main deflector blast.

I also wonder how much the ending of part 1 help Stewart suddenly decide to sign for the rest of the series run. Perhaps he was holding out for more money & realized that they were serious about killing off Picard if he didn't play ball.

Finally I did see a good video review of this episode where the blogger talked about how these two episodes did in a way save Star Trek, by cementing TNG as a major force, rather than a flash in the pan that would be forgotten in a few years. But he argues that they also doomed it. Since coming up with a shocking cliffhanger, that even the writers didn't know how they would resolve, worked so well this first time they did it again and again.

With Redemption & Time's Arrow they mostly focused on a single main character; since it's easier to believe that Worf or Data might not be coming back next season. By the time of Voyager they went the other way.
*****SPOILERS***************
As Phil pointed out on this site when Voyager did that cliffhanger where the Kazon steal Voyager & strand the crew on some random planet; nobody thinks that you will follow through on that one. We know that our heroes will recapture their ship. Could Picard die in an assault on the Borg, or Worf die in the Klingon civil war (or chose to stay in the Klingon military?) They could; but will the Kazon get to keep Voyager & the crew live out the rest of their days in some random planet in the Delta Quadrant??.?.?

The blogger pointed out that this nonsense version of introducing cliffhangers that are intended to shock & the writers haven't thought of how to resolve finally culminated in the end of Enterprise season 3, where the Xindi story arc seemed to be wrapped up only to introduce time traveling space Nazis.

Here's that review I was talking about