Did we know about the Borg sooner?

[Pawleygirl]

You know, I was watching Voyager Flashback and something occurred to me. In Generations, the Enterprise B took in refugee El-Aurians from their home-world after they were attacked by THE BORG. So wouldn't we know about the Borg much earlier than it says that we do in Q who??? Am I missing something or am I wrong about that? Help me...please. ♥

[Nerys Myk]

Pawleygirl wrote:

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You know, I was watching Voyager Flashback and something occurred to me. In Generations, the Enterprise B took in refugee El-Aurians from their home-world after they were attacked by THE BORG. So wouldn't we know about the Borg much earlier than it says that we do in Q who??? Am I missing something or am I wrong about that? Help me...please. ♥

I don't think the Borg are mentioned in Generations. All that is said is that the El-Aurians are refugees. From what we don't know. While they may be a race of listeners, they might not be a race of talkers.

[The Borg Queen]

If we assume Archer was carrying on that long-held Starfleet tradition of command incompetence and not bothering to keep any records about bionic zombies or radiation-vulnerable medical nanomachines, and the Hansens were psychic...

I just met you, and this is crazy, but you're the Borg, right? Assimilate me, maybe?

[AllStarEntprise]

Picard brought the Borg up when he was foolishly trying talk Soran out of blowing up the Veridan systems sun (Whoever thought of that for GEN needs to be retroactively horsewhipped).

Also in TNG the 'Neutral Zone' the Borg had been taking Federation and Romulan settlements. With the admission of the El-Aurians being refugees of the Borg, and in the first act of GEN during Kirk's days. We can confirm that the Borg were very much in Federation space long before the their attack on earth in TNG BOBW. If anything that attack on Earth was perpetrated because of the encounter the TNG crew had with the Borg in the Delta Quad in 'Q Who' and not because of some transmission that may or may not have reached the Borg in the Delta Quad that was sent during ENT 'Regeneration' with Archer and company. Given canon at the time of 'Q Who' airing, 'Regeneration' may have occurred in an alternate timeline as a result of the events of FC with the pollution of the timeline, deaths caused by the Borg and by the TNG crew interference with Cochram and giving him knowledge of the future.

[Locutus of Bored]

Pawleygirl wrote:

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You know, I was watching Voyager Flashback and something occurred to me. In Generations, the Enterprise B took in refugee El-Aurians from their home-world after they were attacked by THE BORG. So wouldn't we know about the Borg much earlier than it says that we do in Q who??? Am I missing something or am I wrong about that? Help me...please. ♥

In VOY - Scorpion, Captain Janeway accessed the classified Starfleet Borg Database. Note the stardate of the database entry (9521.6):


http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Starfleet_database

In ST6 - The Undiscovered Country, set in 2293, Captain Sulu is giving his log entry aboard the Excelsior right before it is hit by the energy wave from Praxis. Note the stardate again (9521.6):

Stardate 9521.6. Captain's Log, U.S.S. Excelsior. Hikaru Sulu commanding. After three years, I've concluded my first assignment as master of this vessel, cataloging gaseous planetary anomalies in Beta Quadrant. We are heading home under full impulse power. I am pleased to report that ship and crew have functioned well.

Sound Clip

Now, they do play fast and loose with the stardates and graphics on the various series and movies sometimes, so you might choose not to take this as evidence of anything.

But if you are inclined to take it as evidence, you could easily conclude that Starfleet had interviewed inbound El Aurian refugees fleeing the Borg assault on their homeworld in 2293 --either an earlier group from the ones we see in Generations (set months later in 2293) or Guinan's group itself prior to or during their journey to Earth-- and started compiling an official database from that.

The Hansen family certainly had some fragmentary information about the Borg before the official first encounter, such as their cube-shaped vessels (which couldn't have come from the NX-01 encounter), and other information that possibly came from the El Aurians and/or eyewitnesses to other Borg incidents.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Pawleygirl wrote:

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You know, I was watching Voyager Flashback and something occurred to me. In Generations, the Enterprise B took in refugee El-Aurians from their home-world after they were attacked by THE BORG. So wouldn't we know about the Borg much earlier than it says that we do in Q who??? Am I missing something or am I wrong about that? Help me...please. ♥

I take it you haven't seen the Enterprise episode "Regeneration", where Captain Archer fights the Borg 200 years before "Q Who"?

[FKnight]

The signal the Borg sent at the end of Regeneration and Archer's comment about when they receive it was just stupid. I was okay with there being Borg there as the result of the First Contact incursion, but they should have just left that stupid line out of the end of the episode. The only reason that line was there was to say "HEY LOOK! We're a prequel to TNG!! SEE? GET IT??? HE HE HE"

[Tosk]

FKnight wrote:

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[...]they should have just left that stupid line out of the end of the episode. The only reason that line was there was to say "HEY LOOK! We're a prequel to TNG!! SEE? GET IT??? HE HE HE"

Yeah, they often seemed to push a little hard with stuff like that. Just like Arik Soong going on about cybernetics and how it would take a generation or two to get it right. Ugh.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Yeah, the Enterprisrle writing team could definitely have been taught a thing or two about subtlety.

[T'Girl]

KingDaniel wrote:

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I take it you haven't seen the Enterprise episode "Regeneration", where Captain Archer fights the Borg 200 years before "Q Who"?

But at the time of Q-who, Picard and the Enterprise E hadn't yet traveled back in time.

And Borg wreckage hadn't been dumped in Antarctic.

And historically Lily was probably aboard the phoenix warp flight.

And historically the NX-01 wasn't named "Enterprise."

And the NX-01 never encountered the Borg during it's voyages.

When Picard and crew were in the 21st century (FC) their actions and those of the Borg changed history. But there was a original unaltered history prior to those changes.

At the time of Q-who, the original history was still in place.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

^The 29th century time cops in "Relativity" called First Contact a "pogo paradox", where interference to prevent an event is what causes that event to happen.

Therefore, there was only the one version of Cochrane's flight and Enterprise was "always" the past of TOS and TNG. It's a (big) out-of-universe retcon, not an in-universe altered timeline.

[Surak of Vulcan]

If we're not going by what T'Girl said (Which makes a whole lot of sense, thinking about it) then the next plausible explanation is:

As they said in 'Regeneration,' Cochrane told people of the Borg, but no one took him seriously, and brushed it off to being a drunken ramble. Then, when the El-Aurians are found in the Nexus ribbon by the Enterprise-B, they are apparently fleeing from the Borg (Why Guinan is on board those ships when they were apparently fleeing the Borg is beyond me, considering she was on Earth in 1893.) Any number of reasons could be thought of on why Starfleet didn't exactly take notice of the fact that they'd probably tell them that the Borg destroyed their homeworld. Maybe some admirals thought that it wasn't important enough, and it quietly fell away.

But then the Hansens are introduced, which sort of complicates matters. If some (quite possibly insane) scientist could dig up facts about the Borg, why couldn't the Enterprise-D do the same when they encountered them in the events of Q-Who?

As I said in the beginning of this post, I'm inclined to believe that T'Girl's explanation is the most plausible.

[T'Girl]

Thank you.

[Finn]

Tosk wrote:

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Yeah, they often seemed to push a little hard with stuff like that. Just like Arik Soong going on about cybernetics and how it would take a generation or two to get it right. Ugh.

At least, they didn't do what some of us feared (I was a lurker when Enterprise was on the air)- show a drawing of Data on that desk of Arik's right after that line....

[Locutus of Bored]

Surak of Vulcan wrote:

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(Why Guinan is on board those ships when they were apparently fleeing the Borg is beyond me, considering she was on Earth in 1893.)

Why is it so hard to accept that she returned to the vicinity of her homeworld (but she wasn't on the planet itself when the Borg attacked according to Q-Who?) sometime in the 400 years between 1893 and 2293? She had 23 marriages, "a lot" of children, an ongoing friendship with her uncle, and encounters with Q and other members of the Continuum in the 22nd century, so clearly she was traveling around a lot in those centuries.

Any number of reasons could be thought of on why Starfleet didn't exactly take notice of the fact that they'd probably tell them that the Borg destroyed their homeworld. Maybe some admirals thought that it wasn't important enough, and it quietly fell away.

They probably thought the Borg were far enough away to not be a clear and present threat worthy of creating a panic over by publicizing the information. So they started a classified database instead.

If the El-Aurian homeworld was at or near System J-25, it was over 7,000 LY from Earth somewhere beyond the Romulan Star Empire toward the Delta Quadrant. So it would seem to 2293 Starfleet like something they had plenty of lead time to deal with first, since the distance, the Romulans, and the Neutral Zone outposts would act as a buffer zone to give them early warning.

From Q-Who?:

PICARD Guinan, have your people been in this part of the galaxy?

GUINAN Yes.

...

WORF Captain, the sixth planet in the system is Class M.

DATA There is a system of roads on the planet which indicate a highly industrialized civilization. But where there should be cities there are only great rips in the surface.

WORF It is as though some great force just scooped all machine elements off the face of the planet.

DATA It is identical to what happened to the outposts along the Neutral Zone.

...

PICARD You are acquainted with this life form?

GUINAN Yes. My people encountered them a century ago. Our cities were destroyed -- our people scattered across the galaxy. They are called the Borg -- protect yourself or they will destroy you.

But then the Hansens are introduced, which sort of complicates matters. If some (quite possibly insane) scientist could dig up facts about the Borg, why couldn't the Enterprise-D do the same when they encountered them in the events of Q-Who?

There's no reason to conclude that the Hansen's just randomly happened upon the information about the Borg. It's more likely that the Hansen's were exobiology consultants Starfleet allowed to have access to the classified database, possibly in response to rumors of cube-shaped ships and disappearing Romulan and other ships and outposts well beyond the Romulan Neutral Zone in 2253. The Hansen's then disobeyed orders to turn back at the Neutral Zone and traveled for almost a year beyond the Neutral Zone until they encountered a cube themselves.