Petition for a return of the "Q Who" - Borg in the Novels!
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
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Unless I am mistaken, Offenhouse was first established to have become Federation Commerce Secretary in Destiny: Mere Mortals. Memory Beta backs me up on this.
It does appear I may be mistaken about him never actually appearing in a novel as Secretary, though -- according to Memory Beta's article on him (which I probably wrote, come to think of it), Offenhouse has a brief scene in A Singular Destiny in which he contacts Esperanza with "bad news" about the Iotans. I don't remember if he actually appears or if this is another character paraphrasing his actions, though.
So far as I know, those are the only two references to Commerce Secretary Offenhouse. For all we know, he could have resigned after the establishment of the Typhon Pact to become the chairman of the Bank of Bolarus or the CEO of Disney Planet.
Of course, any writer who wants to bring the Borg back could do so. It's been established that there are universes where the "Borg are everywhere". What if they decided to proliferate their collective cross-dimensionally?
Such Borg could take any attribute desired. Or am I treading into the "story idea" area here?
Such Borg could take any attribute desired. Or am I treading into the "story idea" area here?
Skirting the line, I'd say. Anyway, I, for one, think that bringing the Borg back in the novels would be rather pointless after Destiny. That was meant to be the final word on them, and I'm content to leave it that way. Let the comics and the games have them.
Exactly. That's my idea! I like the parallel dimensions idea.
Another Thing that came to my mind was that maybe the star trek universe was changed between TNG Season 2 and 3 by timetravel (Temporal Cold War) behind the scenes. Would explain the continuity errors and changes between the early TNG Seasons and later Trek...
Every long-running franchise has continuity errors. If you jump to time travel as your explanation for every one, you'd end up with hundreds of different timelines. I mean, seriously, did someone travel through time after the first few episodes of TOS to change "Vulcanian" to "Vulcan" and "lithium" to "dilithium?"
Sometimes you just have to remember that what you're seeing is an invented story, not a documentary, and that the writers just change their minds about certain things. In which case it's usually best to pretend, as the writers do, that it was always the way it is now.
Sometimes you just have to remember that what you're seeing is an invented story, not a documentary, and that the writers just change their minds about certain things. In which case it's usually best to pretend, as the writers do, that it was always the way it is now.
I think it would be a great in universe explanation for things like that because of the philosophical implications that you can never know or be sure that you or the universe around you is still the same as one second before...
I actually came to this idea by reading "Watching the clock"!
Edit: By the way there are so many species in the galaxy, that it is only a matter of time for things like this to happen...
Edit: By the way there are so many species in the galaxy, that it is only a matter of time for things like this to happen...
Yeah, but you're forgetting that, also by "Watching the Clock", there needs to be significant interaction in order to spread a change like that. Like the situation with the Carnelian Empire; their history was changed, but with essentially no impact on the Federation despite the fairly significant scope of the change. If someone from a civilization on the far side of the galaxy, or even from somewhat deep in the Alpha Quadrant, completely rewrote their history, or even erased themselves from existence, it would probably have no impact at all on the Federation.
It's like how, for all the Krenim's efforts throughout the various timeline changes in Year of Hell, however massive they were for the state of Krenim local space, not once did it ever actually change the history of anyone on Voyager pre-DQ, because they were simply too far removed from the Federation.
Edit: By the way there are so many species in the galaxy, that it is only a matter of time for things like this to happen...
Yeah, but you're forgetting that, also by "Watching the Clock", there needs to be significant interaction in order to spread a change like that. Like the situation with the Carnelian Empire; their history was changed, but with essentially no impact on the Federation despite the fairly significant scope of the change. If someone from a civilization on the far side of the galaxy, or even from somewhat deep in the Alpha Quadrant, completely rewrote their history, or even erased themselves from existence, it would probably have no impact at all on the Federation.
It's like how, for all the Krenim's efforts throughout the various timeline changes in Year of Hell, however massive they were for the state of Krenim local space, not once did it ever actually change the history of anyone on Voyager pre-DQ, because they were simply too far removed from the Federation.
I was thinking about Teresa Garcia's fears regarding time travel.
It would also turn something bad like continuity errors into food for interesting philosophical questions...
Did they ever explain on how the Borg changed their appearance in Star Trek First Contact?
Presumably, the change isn't one that happened in continuity, we're just supposed to pretend they always looked like that. This is supported by Locutus and other Borg having the FC look in Picard's dream in the movie and the Borg having the FC look in Voyager episodes featuring flashbacks set prior to FC, like Dark Frontier (set over twenty years earlier) and Survival Instinct (set during TNG's 5th season).
Yup. They were on a bigger screen, so they needed more detail. It's as simple as that. It's the same reason the ships in ST:TMP had more surface detail than the ones in TOS.
Heck, lots of Trek aliens have changed design without in-story explanations. There are multiple distinct versions of the Klingon makeup -- the original "Errand of Mercy" version, the simpler "Friday's Child"/"Trouble With Tribbles" version, the TMP version with the single central ridge, the TSFS version with the bony plates, the Michael Westmore version with the TSFS-style plates and the TMP-style ridged nose, the later movie version with the subtler plates, and the new STID version. Yet the only one of those differences that's ever been explained is the one between the TOS Klingons and all the others. Meanwhile, there's also the TOS-style Romulans with smooth brows and the TNG-style Romulans with ridged brows; the TOS-style Andorians with rear-mounted antennae and the TMP and ENT versions with front-mounted antennae; the first-season TNG Ferengi with normal cheekbones and the later Ferengi with more protruding cheekbones; the original Bajoran nose ridges with the sort of U shape on top and the later version without it; and so on. Heck, Worf himself had a totally different forehead in the first season than he had in the rest of the series (and his old forehead showed up on a guest Klingon in season 2!). Makeups get redesigned. It's not something that usually gets an in-story explanation.
I know in DS9 Trials and Tribble-ations one of the main characters asked why The Klingons didn't have any ridges. Worf said it's complicated to explain how it happened.
He said "We do not speak of it to outsiders." And then Enterprise gave the explanation for it in "Affliction" and "Divergence."
But up until "Trials," the shows and films never mentioned the smooth-headed Klingons at all. The implicit assumption from TMP onward was that the Klingons had always had ridges and TOS just hadn't portrayed them accurately. The DC comics from the '80s brought back Kor and Koloth and gave them ridges without comment. Sure, there were plenty of fan theories about Klingon-human fusions and whatnot, and various tie-in books and comics that did acknowledge the two different types of Klingon, but the shows and films just disregarded the smooth-headed Klingons altogether. The only reason their existence was reaffirmed in "Trials" was because they had to use the existing TOS footage.
Don't forget about the Trill, who went from having ridges and being basically controlled by the symbiont, to having spots and having more of a combined personality. Although I think I do remember the ridges being explained in Forged in Fire.
^Oh, yes, and the Trill also couldn't go through transporters, and nobody in the Federation knew their secret. And the symbiont puppet was larger and different-looking too. DS9 pretty much ignored everything "The Host" established about the Trill aside from the basic idea of symbiosis.
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