Why was the Federation retconned into having Knowledge of the Borg before Q Who?

[Unimatrix Q]

I always hated this retcon as Sevens parents contact with them and their assimilation could have easily been explained without breaking canon.

Why not letting them end up in the Delta Quadrant through an unstable wormhole or having an surprise encounter with a Borg cube?

 

[F. King Daniel]

I never paid much attention to the precise timing of Next Gen and Voyager, so it wasn't until I came here that I knew there was a discontinuity.

But hey, I remember "Q Who" when the Borg weren't interested in humans, only their technology. Then post-"Best of Both Worlds" It was changed so the Borg were always about assimilating people.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

I never paid much attention to the precise timing of Next Gen and Voyager, so it wasn't until I came here that I knew there was a discontinuity.

But hey, I remember "Q Who" when the Borg weren't interested in humans, only their technology. Then post-"Best of Both Worlds" It was changed so the Borg were always about assimilating people.

They could have simply let the changes in appearance and behavior be something that happened because of their defeat at Wolf 359 and what has happened with Hugh instead of retconning the Borg into having always been this way.

I don't understand why they didn't went this way!

 

[Prax]

It's just a matter of putting the pieces together. Assuming there are civilian scientists who study the unknown reaches of space, where the Feds have been sending out probes for 200 years. Add to that, the incident with Archer, the incident with Guinan's people shown in "Generations," etc, these scientists would want to know more about the Borg.

The Hansen's didn't know about the incident in "The Neutral Zone," or "Q-Who" as they left on their journey a few years earlier.

I think the Borg always assimilated people. In Q-Who, they took a chunk out of the Enterprise that included I think 22 people, and in The Neutral Zone, they were taking Federation and Romulan outposts, people n all.

Q did Starfleet a big favor. The Borg were already interested in Humanity. Q gave Starfleet a chance to prevail.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Couldn't afford a fact checker?

But I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a case that it suited the story being told at the time and screw continuity if it got in the way of that story. Let the fans figure out how it fits on their own time.

 

[Finn]

I always hated this retcon as Sevens parents contact with them and their assimilation could have easily been explained without breaking canon.

Why not letting them end up in the Delta Quadrant through an unstable wormhole or having an surprise encounter with a Borg cube?

Picard along with Data and Enterprise's entire database doesn't have all of Humanity 's knowledge. It's possible someone learned of them years prior to Q who and Starfleet Command kept it under wraps.

 

[danellis]

I always figured it was a case of they knew there was *something* and it was the events of Q-Who that put it all together, a bit like Columbus with the Americas.


dJE

 

[Sophie74656]

Because of the events of the movie First Contact.

In the Enterprise episode Regeneration the remains of that Sphere were found in the Arctic with some drones aboard that "come back to life". Archer talks about stories that Zephram Cochrane told about Borg. So there have been stories and rumors about Borg going back to before the Federation was founded. The Hansens traveled to the DQ in search of Borg based on these stories.

It's a fairly simple canon consistent explination.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Knowledge of the Borg could've been highly classified, with only some of the top officials in Starfleet and the Federation knowing about them. Dispatching a pair of scientists in a civilian research vessel won't attract as much attention as a fully-fledged Starfleet explorer.

That's how I explain in anyways. Though kinda gave up trying to think of excuses after ENT.

 

[Sophie74656]

Knowledge of the Borg could've been highly classified, with only some of the top officials in Starfleet and the Federation knowing about them. Dispatching a pair of scientists in a civilian research vessel won't attract as much attention as a fully-fledged Starfleet explorer.

That's how I explain in anyways. Though kinda gave up trying to think of excuses after ENT.

But in Enterprise it did make sense since in First Contact, which took place before ENT, there were Borg.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I'm thinking more the fact the Denobulans just happen to be tricky to assimilate and that 24th century Borg are defeated by Archer of all people! Plus the fact that it was kept quiet for 200 or so years seems a little far-fetched.

 

[Sophie74656]

I'm thinking more the fact the Denobulans just happen to be tricky to assimilate and that 24th century Borg are defeated by Archer of all people! Plus the fact that it was kept quiet for 200 or so years seems a little far-fetched.

But it wasn't entirely kept quiet. The Hansons heard enough of the stories to uproot their lives to go search for them.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Knowledge of the Borg could've been highly classified, with only some of the top officials in Starfleet and the Federation knowing about them. Dispatching a pair of scientists in a civilian research vessel won't attract as much attention as a fully-fledged Starfleet explorer.

That's how I explain in anyways. Though kinda gave up trying to think of excuses after ENT.

I was thinking more about real world reasons as it was an unneccesary canon change imo.

If starfleet was at least shown to only have more rudimentary knowledge about the Borg than we have been shown and the changes in behavior and appearance were explained as an evolution happening between TNG and First Contact it would also had a better potential for a few great Borg stories that we didn't had a chance to see with these changes.

 

[Sophie74656]

I was thinking more about real world reasons as it was an unneccesary canon change imo.

If starfleet was at least shown to only have more rudimentary knowledge about the Borg than we have been shown and the changes in behavior and appearance were explained as an evolution happening between TNG and First Contact it would also had a better potential for a few great Borg stories that we didn't had a chance to see with these changes.

I'm confused by this sentence.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I'd need to brush up on my VOY trivia but weren't they assigned to investigate the mysterious new species, it's not like the Hansen's just stumbled across the Borg.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

I'm confused by this sentence.

I was thinking about Annika having a model of the Borg Cube in Dark Frontier and the change that biological assimilation was standard Borg behavior before BOBW. It was presented as something happening rarely and only in extraordinary cases.

And what about the Borg not disintegrating their dead and using nanoprobes for assimilation?

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I was thinking more about real world reasons as it was an unneccesary canon change imo.

The writers completely forgot about the Borg backstory and had to shoehorn Seven in wherever they could--especially if it gave her some tragedy in her past.

 

[Sophie74656]

They didn't forget about the Borg backstory, it changed after the movie First Contact since the timeline was messed with.

 

[Prax]

The Borg assimilated 22 crewmembers in Q Who, a bunch of Starfleet personnel and Romulans in TNG's first season episode "The Neutral Zone," and Guinan's people, the El Aurians in the 23rd century.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Thanks to the "foreboding" last line in the ENT episode it set up that the events of First Contact were a pre-destination paradox, that the Borg and the E-E crew had always gone back in time to the flight of the Phoenix so that the Borg would learn of humans and understand the importance they seemingly are to the Collective.