They were probably extinct by then, leaving all those brilliant discoveries lost while medical experts from the future with superior medical knowledge could never figure out.
The point is, the only "amazing discovery" is that Denobulans take longer to be assimilated than most other races. There's no evidence that they're immune - just that they can hold out longer than others can. So it's not a magic cure-all or anything like that.
Except she completely flunked it - Picard still had a subspace transceiver in his brain in ST:FC... Timo Saloniemi
Yeah, so there's no need for top medical experts to study this; since it maybe a problem for another 200 years.
As the Borg problems aren't created in Enterprise (First Contact is the culprit) then I always chock any inconstancies up to the fact Section 31 probably squashed everything borg. It makes sense.
Whose gripe? What gripe? It does seem that Federation medicine can't deal with nanoprobes, even if there were early misconceptions about what the doctors could achieve. Which is only consistent: there'd be stuff in the brains of the victims, and our most skilled specialist in the field, Dr Julian "I Can Replace Half Your Brain" Bashir, is unable to get a simple macroscopic wire out of Garak's noggin because it's too deep and too deeply integrated. Was Phlox able to deal with nanoprobes? Again, he claims he was. Again, as with Crusher, we have no real reason to believe him. He hasn't recovered by the end of the episode yet - but even though he clearly has by the next episode, this proves nothing, as Picard was physiologically "recovered" in TNG "Family", too. Timo Saloniemi
Hypothetically, why would a secret agency do this? Unethical as an agency, why would they want to cover up something which could save trillions of lives, in particular human lives? It would benefit them to at least study Phlox' physiology even after he's dead to find some prevention of being a Borg. LOL!!! Come on, the 22nd Century Star Fleet knew about the Borg, had a Doctor, on 1 of their ships, who can cure himself from being a Borg; and 200 years later no one has a clue about the Borg??? Wow. The story probably could've worked if Berman's secret agency were part of the plot of "Regeneration." It should've been about them eliminating the Borg threat and then returning to the shadows; as if it never happened. Problem solved. But that's not what happened. What's there after the episode was a giant turd of a mess.
I can think of at least two reasons why Section 31 might have covered this up: - To avoid starting a panic (if word gets out that there's some unstoppable collective consciousness that can assimilate anyone and anything at their will, people would probably start freaking out) - To keep unscrupulous third parties from becoming interested in acquiring Borg technology @Yanks, ST:FC isn't even the culprit. There are no problems it "created" that can't be easily explained away.
Me? My first post in this thread was about Crusher not being any good at de-Borgifying Picard (or at anything else medical, but that's a different issue, and no gripe, either). I have no complaint - indeed, Phlox thinking he has saved himself and being dead wrong is excellent continuity here, as we later learn nanoprobes indeed go dormant on occasion. Did Phlox eventually get assimilated by his little inner devils? Die of the complications? Get strange voices inside his head whenever a Borg ship did its shady business nearby? We don't know. But we don't have to. For all we care, Phlox lived a full and happy life in the false belief that he was free of the cyborg menace, and it will be centuries before his body gets awakened by some hapless surveyor or grave-robber... The Borg saga is one of the most (pseudo-)realistic elements of modern Trek storytelling. The heroes get it all wrong at first, as they realistically should when dealing with such an alien way of existence. The audience later learns better. It also turns out our heroes aren't the only parties involved, and nothing is clear-cut about their "first contact", again as realism calls for. That it takes at least 200 years to uncover the mystery of this superbly secretive species is quite a bit more plausible and enjoyable than it all ostensibly happening between the opening and closing credits of "Q Who?". Timo Saloniemi
Agree. Two good examples. Agree about FC. But it DID change and complicate the Borg timeline. Most folks blame that on Enterprise.
ST:FC did not change the timeline. It was part of what always happened. You can't prove it wasn't, anyway. Besides, you'll notice that Picard and crew returned to the same future they left...
They returned to a future in which Starfleet wants to drive a people from what appears to be their native planet so that the more advanced peoples of the galaxy can use up the special resources available there. Kor
``Oh no! There's these cyborg aliens that maybe might hear about us in two hundred years and maybe invade our great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren's world and Dr Phlox already figured out how to defeat them by microwaving their implants! PANIC!''
The real reason for a S31-style organization (or the government in general) to suppress knowledge of basically everything Starfleet ever discovers about outer space is to keep it away from the hands of UFP enemies. This harks back to the early part of this thread. The fantastic encounters our heroes have with the wonders of space are rare things: they seldom happened before to anybody the heroes would know of (and who would live to tell the story), and often are unlikely to happen again any time soon. Supposedly, Klingons and Cardassians would be equally unlikely to meet the wonders or survive the ordeal. So if the heroes make their encounter public, they have done the work of their enemies for them. Naturally, by collating the data in vulnerable UFP secret archives, the heroes increase the risk of the enemy gaining access. The alternative would be to let the wonders in deep space where nobody is likely to find them. Here Starfleet is likely to do the best of both worlds thing, leaving the threat in space in case an enemy stumbles on it and suffers the consequences, but carrying some bits of useful information back to the secret government archives. No doubt the government subsequently cross-compares the archived material with new findings and formulates scenarios. But 90% of such work is likely to lead to false conclusions, and the government must realize this. It should be no surprise that the Borg have not been exposed even after 200 further years of exploration in deep space and speculation in the X-files vaults. Nor should it be a surprise that the threat would be considered one of the least concerns for the UFP, compared to the other things our heroes have come up with! Timo Saloniemi
Do you not remember how many People got turned back from Borg? I wouldn't rule out S31 doing a bit of clandestine work.
Umm, two? And only about halfway at that. If anything, they got less cured than they at first thought, so secretly preserved knowledge of ancient cures is a pretty unlikely scenario here. Timo Saloniemi