Moved to here as this is discussion with a huge heaping helping of justifying edits.. not the trope in question... Trekkies, gotta love em.
, though admittedly they had the benefit of up-to-date knowledge of Federation technology and tactics. The second time likely would have gone the same way if Picard weren't around to figure out the cube's weak point. Then came Voyager...
The entire Federation put years of effort into producing Voyager (it was the top of the line ship of the moment, thus had all the Borg info). Then Voyager gains access to all sorts of Borg secrets and alien technology; including a Borg of their own.
At least in regards to newest and greatest Fed tech, so was the Defiant. Even more explicitly in fact, being designed from the ground up to be a warship and more specifically to fight the Borg. She had access to NEWER tech given when Voyager left. And while she acquitted herself well, the Defiant along with an entire fleet of ships fighting long enough for the Ent-E to travel from the Neutral Zone still couldn't beat a single cube. Alien tech might be a more compelling argument if we weren't talking about a peacefully united government composed of 150 separate worlds with an untold number of allied/neutral species to also gather tech from.
Just when did these easy defeats of the Borg happen? There were a few Enemy Mine situations, and episodes that were two-parters where the heroes eventually won via Technobabble as opposed to fighting... this being exactly like TNG. It was Voyager's overuse of the Borg that made them lose clout over time... but Voyager never had an easy time with them, certainly not when it comes to ship-to-ship combat (something they went out of their way to avoid because a cube is a match for a fleet. The small ship at the beginning of Dark Frontier was the only time that comes to mind, and it was tiny enough for the remains to fit in a cargo bay with plenty of room to spare, so comparing that to defeating a cube is like comparing blowing up a shuttlecraft to defeating the Enterprise-E... only infinitely more so. As for simply beaming bombs aboard... one must wonder just why nobody ever thought of doing that before.)
A complete reversal of curbstomp status is certainly not supported by the media, but in all of the rest of Trek we saw 5 destroyed Borg vessels, only two of which were the dreaded cubes, and they proceeded with the curbstomping prior to their own destruction. In all non Voyager encounters, what was needed for survival was literal divine intervention, two whole fleets along with their OWN Seven of Nine-like plot device, and Borg separation from the Collective. It's a matter of degree where the flagship of the Federation is rapidly neutralized in seconds (and not being the focus of interest, Sector 001 is) in contrast to Voyager (or the Delta Flyer or One's sphere) repeatedly exchanging weapons fire and somehow living to fight another day often with damaged or destroyed Borg vessels.
As a note, though, Enterprise-E managed to completely shrug off a Borg Cube's tractor beams and weapons fire for several seconds, and Voyager was built with the same tech.
Except...the Enterprise-E is a Sovereign-class battlecruiser/battleship/advanced deterrent explorer. Voyagers class? Intrepid-class, its not even an cruiser and carries a limited number of Photon Torpedoes...it doesn't even have the advanced Quantum Torpedo technology. It surviving even a minute of fighting against Borg Cube, or worse a Borg Tactical Cube (the thing that the Borg bust out when they get serious) is laughable.
As for the battle of Wolf 359 ("The Best of Both Worlds"), don't forget that they had just assimilated Picard, and therefore knew all about Federation technology and tactics. You know the "you only get a couple of shots before they adapt" thing? In that battle, the 40 or so starships were fighting a pre-adapted cube, and couldn't do a thing to hurt it.
Moved to here as this is discussion with a huge heaping helping of justifying edits.. not the trope in question... Trekkies, gotta love em.
, though admittedly they had the benefit of up-to-date knowledge of Federation technology and tactics. The second time likely would have gone the same way if Picard weren't around to figure out the cube's weak point. Then came Voyager...