Battle of Sector 001

Battle of Sector 001
Date:	2373
Location:	Sector 001
Result:	Federation victory
Belligerents
United Federation of Planets
Borg Collective
Notable commanders
Vice Admiral Hayes Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Borg Queen
Strength
Unknown; at least 30 ships
One Borg cube
Casualties and losses
At least 20 ships destroyed
Borg cube destroyed

The Battle of Sector 001 was a confrontation between the United Federation of Planets and the Borg Collective in 2373, when a Borg cube attempted to assimilate Earth. The battle resulted in significant casualties for the Starfleet forces, as they were outgunned. The fleet ultimately managed to successfully destroy the cube, though, partially due to Captain Jean-Luc Picard having intimate tactical knowledge of the Borg. (Star Trek: First Contact)

Prelude

The Battle of Sector 001 was preceded by the Battle of Wolf 359, which took place six years before. In this infamous engagement, Starfleet proved to be less prepared to fight the Borg than in the future conflict, opposed by a single Borg cube in both incidents. The earlier battle represented a devastating defeat for Starfleet, orchestrated by Locutus of Borg, a personality forced upon Captain Jean-Luc Picard while he endured assimilation into the Borg Collective. (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II"; DS9: "Emissary") The cube he was aboard was able to gain extremely close proximity to Earth but was eventually thwarted due to efforts by the crew of Picard's command at the time, the USS Enterprise-D. (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II")

The writers of Star Trek: First Contact assumed that, just prior to the Borg's arrival in Federation space preceding the Battle of Sector 001, the Borg used (in the words of one of the film's co-writers, Ronald D. Moore), "some version of the transwarp conduits established in "Descent"," imagining also that the Borg had used the same technology before the Battle of Wolf 359. (AOL chat, 1997)

The second major Borg incursion into Federation space began shortly before stardate 50893.5, when the colony on Ivor Prime was destroyed. Nearby Deep Space 5 detected the attack, and long-range sensors detected a single Borg vessel. Vice Admiral Hayes was immediately informed when it was determined the cube was on a direct course for Earth.

Hayes contacted Captain Picard aboard the USS Enterprise-E, who was already instinctively aware of the Borg presence in Federation space and felt he should be part of the response force. However, Hayes believed that Picard's previous experience with the Borg, in particular his time as Locutus, would add an "unstable element to a critical situation." Despite Picard's protests to Starfleet Command, the Enterprise was ordered to patrol the Romulan Neutral Zone, while a Federation fleet mobilized in the Typhon sector to intercept the Borg cube before it reached Earth. (Star Trek: First Contact)

The battle

The Borg cube approaches Earth

The cube engaged the fleet soon after. The conflict was broadcast on Starfleet frequency 1486, and was monitored by the Enterprise-E. Approaching at speeds exceeding warp nine, the cube broadcast its familiar litany:

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." ^file info

File:USS Defiant, First Contact.jpg

The Defiant fights the Borg

The fleet opened fire, but to minimal effect. The defense perimeter was quickly shattered, with numerous ships being lost, as the cube unrelentingly continued towards Earth. The surviving ships, including the USS Defiant and the USS Bozeman, assaulted the cube all the way to the Sol system. Realizing that the battle was not progressing well, Picard ordered the Enterprise-E back to Earth in violation of his orders. It has been noted that, from the point of the initial Borg attack to a distress call being sent, the attack lasted just over forty seconds.

By the time the Enterprise arrived in Earth orbit, a large portion of the fleet had already been lost, including Hayes' flagship. However, by this point in the battle, the fleet had succeeded in dealing heavy damage to the cube's outer hull, causing fluctuations in the cube's power grid. The Defiant, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Worf, had been heavily damaged and was preparing to ram the cube when the Enterprise-E arrived, distracting the Borg long enough to transport the Defiant crew off their stricken ship as its life support failed.

Enterprise targets the weak spot

A Borg sphere emerges from the Borg cube, as the latter vessel explodes

File:Akira escapes exploding cube.jpg

The immediate aftermath of the cube's destruction

Picard, taking advantage of his residual link to the Collective, took command of the fleet and ordered all weapons to be targeted on a seemingly non-critical point on the cube. As a last resort, the cube launched a small spherical craft from its interior – a type of Borg vessel not seen before. The barrage from the fleet's weaponry destroyed the cube, though the explosion also claimed several nearby Starfleet ships. (Star Trek: First Contact)

Ronald D. Moore once jokingly claimed that the vulnerable area which Starfleet targeted to win the battle was actually waste extraction. (AOL chat, 1998)

Aftermath

After heading straight for Earth with the Enterprise in hot pursuit, the sphere launched from the Borg cube began generating chronometric particles, forming a temporal vortex. The sphere disappeared inside the vortex near the boundary of Earth's atmosphere, traveling back in time to 2063 and disrupting First Contact. As the Enterprise was caught in the temporal wake of the vortex, its crew saw an assimilated Earth with a drone population of approximately nine billion. The Enterprise followed the sphere into the past, and was able to restore the normal version of history before safely returning to the 24th century. (Star Trek: First Contact) This time travel event was described by Seven of Nine as an example of the pogo paradox. (VOY: "Relativity")

Starfleet's losses in the battle were comparable to the earlier fleet action at Wolf 359, despite the fact that the organization was much more thoroughly prepared since its last encounter with the Borg – the duration of the battle being a testament to this fact. The destruction of so many ships left the remaining fleet stretched thin across the quadrant, as was later rued by Captain Benjamin Sisko shortly before Dominion forces passed through the Bajoran wormhole into Cardassia, and went on to prove of even greater significance following a later outbreak of hostilities with the Dominion. (DS9: "In Purgatory's Shadow")

In addition to the losses inflicted by the Dominion, the casualties due to the Borg also caused a policy change within the Federation Council and the admission of new members was accelerated, as with the Evora, whose homeworld was declared a protectorate in 2375, one year after they achieved warp drive. First and foremost, however, the Council tended to act more questionably ethically, even compromising – during the Ba'ku incident – the principles upon which the Federation had been founded. (Star Trek: Insurrection)

Starships at the Battle of Sector 001

The following is a partial list of Federation starships that fought in the battle.

Ship Name	Registry	Class
USS Appalachia	NCC-52136	Steamrunner-class
USS Bozeman	NCC-1941	Soyuz-class
USS Budapest	NCC-64923	Norway-class
USS Defiant	NX-74205	Defiant-class
USS Endeavour	NCC-71805	Nebula-class
USS Enterprise	NCC-1701-E	Sovereign-class
USS Lexington	NCC-61832	Nebula-class
USS Madison	Unknown	Unknown
USS Thunderchild	NCC-63549	Akira-class
USS Yeager	NCC-61947	Saber-class

And at least:

• 3 unnamed Oberth-class starships
• 2 unnamed Miranda-class starships
• 4 additional unnamed Saber-class starships
• 2 additional unnamed Akira-class starships
• 2 additional unnamed Norway-class starships
• 5 additional unnamed Steamrunner-class starships
• 1 unnamed Nebula-class starship
• 1 other unnamed starship

Appendices

Background information

Conception

The Battle of Sector 001 was inspired by the makers of Star Trek: First Contact being interested in presenting elements in the movie that Star Trek fans always enjoyed seeing in a Star Trek film; fans had increasingly approved of battle sequences similar to those found in Star Wars. The likelihood that audiences would enjoy the battle sequence not only provided its genesis but was also why it was positioned near the start of the film. (Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission, p. 237)

The battle was originally envisioned as being massive, much larger than how it wound up appearing on screen. Ronald D. Moore described the final version of the battle as "like, a quarter of the size of what we envisioned when we were writing the sequence and what we were hoping to get on the budget that we had." (audio commentary, Star Trek: First Contact (Special Edition) DVD/Blu-ray)

According to the official reference book Star Trek: The Next Generation Sketchbook: The Movies (pp. 203 & 208), the battle was originally to have incorporated the USS Endeavour "being gloriously destroyed" and the film's script originally presented the attacking Borg vessel not as a cube but as a tetragon, an odd-shaped rectangle. However, as written in the first draft script for First Contact, the Endeavor survives the engagement and no mention of the Borg tetragon is made. [1] Variations on that shape of Borg vessel were nevertheless definitely considered at some point, being planned as the mothership for a Borg sphere. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Sketchbook: The Movies, pp. 208-211)

A version of the confrontation involving a tetrahedral Borg ship

The type of polygon initially submitted for the Borg ship was at one point a tetrahedron, though this idea was eventually scrapped after it was discovered that the shape had an inherent lack of visual impact and excitement, particularly when shown from low angles. An alternative notion involved a squadron of Borg ships able to amass into a single vessel. "It was like a Borg latticework that worked as one and moved as one," recalled ILM Associate Visual Effects Supervisor George Murphy. "It would have made for a really nice visual – but it diminished the Borg villains to suggest they needed this many ships to beat Starfleet." Hence, the writing staff finally decided to revive the concept of the Borg cube. (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 106) Illustrator John Eaves concluded, "As time went on, Rick Berman, Ron Moore and Brannon Braga rewrote the scenes, returning to the original cube style of the Borg ship." (Star Trek: The Next Generation Sketchbook: The Movies, p. 208)

The Borg crafts in the first draft script for First Contact are comprised of multiple cubes as well as the single sphere. In the same document, the conflict is described as "involving dozens of Starfleet and Borg vessels, engaged in a fierce firefight as far as the eye can see. Ships turning, twisting, firing, exploding. Lots of movement. It's a spectacular sight." The named Starfleet ships in this version of the conflict are not only the Endeavor and Enterprise-E but also the USS Intrepid. [2]

The first script draft of First Contact begins during the battle, on board a Borg sphere in which Human history was being studied. The sphere was locked in combat with a Federation ship that it quickly destroyed, all the while progressing away from the fracas. A Borg cube attacking a smaller Federation vessel, the Endeavor, was defeated by phaser fire from the Enterprise, which thereby successfully defended the Endeavor. After another cube was seen to have adapted to the Enterprise's phasers, the Enterprise brought about its obliteration via deployment of a single quantum torpedo. The same weapons were helping Starfleet win the battle, a situation which Admiral Hayes reported to the Enterprise from the Intrepid. In fact, the battle had so far resulted in the destruction of forty-seven Borg ships but merely fifteen Federation vessels. The Enterprise then pursued the Borg sphere out of the battle, on a heading to Earth. [3]

In common with many of the other elements in First Contact, the depiction of the battle had to be scaled down. (audio commentary, Star Trek: First Contact (Special Edition) DVD/Blu-ray) Ron Moore later characterized himself as having supported this plan, noting, "I wasn't willing to make significant cuts elsewhere in the film for the extra bang-bang at the beginning." (AOL chat, 1997)

The numerous Borg cubes became one ship of that form. "We [...] decided that a single cube was more in keeping with the way the Borg had been established before," recalled Ron Moore. (AOL chat, 1997)

The script writers opted to replace the Endeavor with the USS Defiant, so that they could have Worf join the Enterprise crew amid the battle. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Sketchbook: The Movies, p. 203) Ron Moore felt the writers needed such incentive before adding a Defiant-class of any sort. "I doubt that we would've put a Defiant-class ship in the b.g. solely as eye-candy," he speculated. (AOL chat, 1998) Dialog referring to the Endeavor can still be heard during the incident.

The decision that the conflict would culminate in the Earth-bound Borg sphere emerging from the single attacking Borg cube was made late in the writing process. ("Industrial Light & Magic – The Next Generation", Star Trek: First Contact (Blu-ray))

Despite the onslaught undergoing multiple conceptual alterations, Director Jonathan Frakes once commented that the resulting sequence still bears a "sort of Star Wars vibe, [...] with the shuttles [sic] against the size and scope of the Borg ship." (audio commentary, Star Trek: First Contact (Special Edition) DVD/Blu-ray)

Visualization

File:Akira and Millennium Falcon.jpg

The in-joke addition of Star Wars' Millennium Falcon

Visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic, which has done much work on the Star Wars films, was appointed to help depict the Battle of Sector 001. In fact, Jonathan Frakes suggested that the sequence's resemblance to Star Wars might be additionally due to the involvement of ILM. (audio commentary, Star Trek: First Contact (Special Edition) DVD/Blu-ray) As an in-joke, ILM Visual Effects Supervisor John Knoll even inserted a small digital model of Star Wars' Millennium Falcon into the battle, which can be seen fleetingly flying near the Borg cube.

John Knoll considered the creation of this extensive battle sequence as being "kind of a fun challenge." ("Industrial Light & Magic – The Next Generation", Star Trek: First Contact (Blu-ray)) To initiate the design process, Knoll had ILM Art Director Alex Jaeger start work on a series of animatics showing the confrontation. (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 101) Jaeger also created a concept illustration of the battle. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Sketchbook: The Movies, pp. 124-125)

The relatively high quantity of starships involved in the battle meant that CGI had to be used for the sequence. In most cases, ships in the background were consequently computer-generated whereas ships appearing in closeup footage were rendered with studio models. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 28, No. 6, p. 23) ILM was responsible for all these visual effects. John Knoll commented, "We used miniatures for the Borg cube and the Enterprise, but everything else was computer generated." ("Industrial Light & Magic – The Next Generation", Star Trek: First Contact (Blu-ray)) On the other hand, depicting the exterior of the USS Defiant involved using both a practical model as well as computer graphics, and a digital version of the Enterprise was shown in close-up during the battle. John Eaves remarked, "I think one of the first big shots [wherein] you see the CG model [of the Enterprise] is when you have the Defiant being attacked, and the Enterprise flies over. I think that was one of their [ILM's] very first CG shots [in the film]." ("The Art of First Contact", Star Trek: First Contact (Special Edition) DVD/Blu-ray)

The ships shown with CGI were mostly new designs, as an instruction from Paramount sparked their creation. "Paramount wanted us to expand on the Star Trek universe," remembered Alex Jaeger, "presenting kinds of starships no one had seen before." (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 101) John Knoll concurred with Paramount, wanting to avoid reusing ship designs that had already been featured many times on Star Trek. "I didn't look forward to trying to do the space battle with these same four ships we've already seen a hundred times," said Knoll. "I thought it would be nice to expand the Starfleet universe a little bit, to see some ships that we haven't seen before." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 28, No. 6, p. 23) The fact that the battle necessitated the building of some ships exclusively in CGI also impacted on the decision to invent some new vessel designs. Explained Knoll, "Since we intended for all the background action to be done with computer graphics anyway, and we needed to build them, why not build new stuff rather than old ones?"

Alex Jaeger was assigned to design all of the new ship classes. (The Making of Star Trek: First Contact, p. 116) "Initially, [Paramount] wanted a dozen new starships, so I did about eighteen designs," he said. "But once they realized what it would cost to build and texture all of these different CG models, they whittled it down to four ships really fast." (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 101) John Knoll noted that, when he set Jaeger the task of designing the new vessels, it was important that they "kind of obey the aesthetic of Star Trek." In essence, most of the vessels included in the battle were at first designed to have a saucer-type primary section and a pair of long, outboard warp engines. However, the team at ILM then began to veer away from this concept, instead trying to create crafts that would each have a distinctive silhouette that wouldn't be mistaken for the outline of the Enterprise. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 28, No. 6, p. 23) Making the new ships fairly easy to distinguish from that vessel was largely because First Contact was to be the first film to feature the Sovereign-class Enterprise, so the creative team didn't want the new "hero" ship to become lost among the others. ("Industrial Light & Magic – The Next Generation", Star Trek: First Contact (Blu-ray)) Noted Jaeger, "They had to look quite distinct, which meant that I was allowed to vary the designs quite a bit." (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 101)

During the process of devising the ships to be used in the battle, some designs were intentionally left out. For instance, John Eaves created a few concept sketches of the Endeavor before it was established that it would not actually appear. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Sketchbook: The Movies, p. 203) A pencil sketch of a similar starship was illustrated by ILM Digital Model Artist John Goodson and given the registry number "NCC-7105". (Star Trek: The Next Generation Sketchbook: The Movies, p. 118) Another ship that was proposed but did not appear in First Contact was named USS Criterion and had two massive nacelles. ("The Art of First Contact", Star Trek: First Contact (Special Edition) DVD/Blu-ray) Yet another eliminated starship design had four nacelles and was christened USS Zandura. [4] According to some reports, Alex Jaeger has said that he meant for this type of ship to be named "the Zandura-class" and be "a prototype science ship (like the Grissom) with separation capabilities for atmospheric flight conditions." [5] The name Zandura was inspired by the band Fold Zandura. [6] As a similar homage to historic pilot Chuck Yeager, Alex Jaeger was highly interested in christening one of the ships with the name "USS Yeager" and did so with another unsuccessful ship design, though the name was kept for a Saber-class vessel. [7] (A selection of concept artwork showing ships designed for the battle but eventually excised can be found here.)

The specific new Starfleet ship designs eventually selected for the battle were comprised of not only the Saber-class but also the Akira-, Norway-, and Steamrunner-classes, all of which were ultimately given the go-ahead by Producer Rick Berman. (The Making of Star Trek: First Contact, p. 116) Alex Jaeger deemed the approved designs as having "very radical layouts" while "still keeping true to the basics of starship design, such as [the requirement that] the deflector dish and Nacelle Bussard collectors must have a clear view to open space in the front view, etc." [8] Extremely low resolution CGI was used to depict the four classes. [9] Jaeger noted, "Actually ILM was using Electric Image for animation and Form Z for the models of these ships back then." [10] Additionally, at least two of the four vessel configurations (the Akira- and Saber-classes) were each also sculpted into a small study model, both of which were to scale with one another. ("Industrial Light & Magic – The Next Generation", Star Trek: First Contact (Blu-ray))

The complex, simultaneous maneuvers of so many ships contained within the sequence were devised by Stu Maschwitz, an animator at ILM who had found it fairly easy to tackle aerial maneuvering in helicopter sequences for the film Mission: Impossible. "Those same kinds of dynamics and motions were needed for this scene," George Murphy observed, "so we relied on Stu to tackle the battle choreography. He also came up with some nicely finessed bits of business for the background ships. The dogfight turned out to be a little bit Star Wars, a little bit Top Gun; and it was much faster than the battles in the earlier Star Trek features." (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 109)

Explosions shown to occur amid the battle were simulated via the laying of miniature pyrotechnic elements, work achieved by ILM's pyrotechnics crew. "They blew up several black cubes packed with debris," stated Alex Jaeger, "and we were able to match up those blast elements to our model photography." As part of the compositing, explosions on the Borg cube's hull were colored green, to match the ship's interior and exterior color motif. (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 109)

Damage to the Borg cube was portrayed with the removal of particular model sections, then the addition of a burn which was airbrushed around the supposedly damaged area. The look of battle damage on the CG Starfleet vessels was a concern to John Knoll, who explained, "I had Alex Jaeger start with practical materials in order to create those elements. He took sheet metal and blasted it with a torch; then he tried all kinds of other materials to get a variety of detailed and realistic burn marks that we could use as textures on the CG models." (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 109)

To shoot footage of the Borg sphere exiting the erupting cube, the miniature used for the sphere and its equivalent for the cube (which were built at two different scales) were filmed separately. After the model of the sphere was shot on a motion control stage, that motion control photography was composited into footage of the cube, made to seem as if the sphere was rising out of a passageway that was actually constructed into the cube model. (Cinefex, No. 69, p. 109)

Trivia

Although some fans claim to hear Captain Morgan Bateson and Uhura in the comm chatter during the battle, Ronald D. Moore has stated, "As far as I know there are NO 'voice cameos' in this sequence." (AOL chat, 1997)

File:Voyager in First Contact trailer.jpg

USS Voyager attacking the Borg cube in the teaser trailer

The first teaser trailer that was released to promote First Contact includes shots from the Battle of Wolf 359, the Enterprise-D (destroyed in the previous film, Star Trek Generations) and a single view of the USS Voyager (stranded in the Delta Quadrant at the time). The shot of Voyager shows the vessel firing multiple phaser beams at a Borg cube. [11]

Brannon Braga, who co-wrote First Contact with Ron Moore and (to a lesser extent) Rick Berman, was highly satisfied with the final version of the battle. He not only gleefully described the sequence as containing "great" and "spectacular" battle material but also cited the view of the Borg sphere ejecting from the Borg cube as a highlight of the sequence, referring to it as "a great shot." (audio commentary, Star Trek: First Contact (Special Edition) DVD/Blu-ray) However, Ron Moore has criticized the battle sequence, commenting, "I [...] wish we could've had a longer and more spectacular space battle up front." (AOL chat, 1997)

Remarks made by Captain Sisko in "In Purgatory's Shadow" place a continuity error on the dating of this event. "By Inferno's Light", the following episode, takes place on stardate 50564.2, supposedly several months before the 24th century events depicted in Star Trek: First Contact, which are set on stardate 50893.5.

Apocrypha

The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Mission Gamma novel Lesser Evil details events aboard the USS Budapest during the battle. According to the book, Borg drones began beaming onto the ship and started adapting to the phaser frequencies used by the crew. Many of the officers were assimilated, including the vessel's commanding officer, Captain sh'Rzaan. The Borg were eliminated from the craft thanks to the Budapest being one of five test-based starships for TR-116 rifles, which the Starfleet officers used to finally gain victory.

A story in the Star Trek: New Frontier anthology No Limits featuring the Ambassador-class USS Excalibur stated that ship was also at the battle.