Best Borg stories ever!!

[sonak]

Why is it fanwanking to say that the reason Picard didn't know about the Borg despite the Federation having had contact with them before is simply because Starfleet isn't in the habit of telling their captains everything?

I figured Starfleet buried it's original encounter with the Borg deep. No reason to tell the populace that their is a race of space-faring cybernetic zombies out there.

It could deep six your exploration program PDQ.

except other members of Starfleet hadn't heard of it. Picard, Admiral Hanson, Shelby, people like that aren't civilians.


why hide an encounter with a dangerous, mysterious foe from your own high-ranking officers?

there's nothing in "Q Who" or "BOBW" to indicate anyone in the upper echelons of Starfleet had ever heard of the Borg before.


a "cover-up" is fanwank at its best.

 

[Anwar]

It's no different than how there were aliens from TOS that were never mentioned or seen again in TNG+. One random encounter, nothing happens for years and they just dump it in all the other random alien encounters that happen.

 

[sonak]

It's no different than how there were aliens from TOS that were never mentioned or seen again in TNG+. One random encounter, nothing happens for years and they just dump it in all the other random alien encounters that happen.

how is that the same? it'd be the same if aliens from TOS WERE seen again on TNG yet strangely no one had ever heard of them.

 

[Tiberius]

Why is it fanwanking to say that the reason Picard didn't know about the Borg despite the Federation having had contact with them before is simply because Starfleet isn't in the habit of telling their captains everything?

I figured Starfleet buried it's original encounter with the Borg deep. No reason to tell the populace that their is a race of space-faring cybernetic zombies out there.

It could deep six your exploration program PDQ.

except other members of Starfleet hadn't heard of it. Picard, Admiral Hanson, Shelby, people like that aren't civilians.

So what? You really think all members of starfleet would know about it?

why hide an encounter with a dangerous, mysterious foe from your own high-ranking officers?

Who says they did? You think Hanson was the highest rank of admiral? Picard and shelby are well down the ladder of command.

there's nothing in "Q Who" or "BOBW" to indicate anyone in the upper echelons of Starfleet had ever heard of the Borg before.

And neither of those episodes really had the highest levels of Starfleet involved, did they? Oh sure, Hanson was an admiral, but you really think that admiral is the highest rank there is?

a "cover-up" is fanwank at its best.

But it does fit with what we know.

 

[BillJ]

I figured Starfleet buried it's original encounter with the Borg deep. No reason to tell the populace that their is a race of space-faring cybernetic zombies out there.

It could deep six your exploration program PDQ.

except other members of Starfleet hadn't heard of it. Picard, Admiral Hanson, Shelby, people like that aren't civilians.


why hide an encounter with a dangerous, mysterious foe from your own high-ranking officers?

there's nothing in "Q Who" or "BOBW" to indicate anyone in the upper echelons of Starfleet had ever heard of the Borg before.


a "cover-up" is fanwank at its best.

No one at Starfleet had ever heard of a "lightening storm in space" evidently or else they wouldn't have sent seven boatloads of cadets to be slaughtered. In that scenario, it was only twenty five years between two unique interstellar events and they even had the reports freely available for cadets to read.

Now in Q, Who?/The Best of Both Worlds, it's been 213 years (2152/2365) since the original encounter and those two encounters happened seven thousand light-years years apart.

If you require your leadership to stay on top of 213 year old reports, do you also require them to read classified reports of UFO encounters/abductions from the 20th century as well? Your people would be doing nothing but simply reading old reports all day long, for pretty much their entire careers on the off chance that someday, some obscure one time encounter might come back to bite you in the ass.

Admiral Smith: Schultz! The Cardies ran the border this morning and took over four Federation colonies! Why didn't you realign our defenses last week like I ordered?

Rear Admiral Schultz: Sorry sir. I was caught up in classified reports about American mid-west farmers who claimed to have been anally probed by aliens four hundred years ago. No one is getting anally probed right now, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Admiral Smith: Oh. Well then, carry on!

It seems to me that Starfleet already had their hands full with current threats like the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, Tzenkethi, Ferengi and the Q Continuum among others.

Now apparently, someone in the Federation was aware of the legend of the Borg. As the Raven was a civilian science vessel trying to find them from the episode The Raven:

It's a Federation vessel partially assimilated by the Borg. There are no lifesigns. Tritanium decay suggests it has been here for nearly twenty years.

But their source of information could've been nothing more than Archer's from Regeneration, the ramblings of a drunk celebrity.

So I think that it being a classified report, lost to time is pretty solid. You have to remember that every person involved in the 2152 encounter would be long dead by the time of Q, Who?/The Best of Both Worlds.

 

[sonak]

I figured Starfleet buried it's original encounter with the Borg deep. No reason to tell the populace that their is a race of space-faring cybernetic zombies out there.

It could deep six your exploration program PDQ.

except other members of Starfleet hadn't heard of it. Picard, Admiral Hanson, Shelby, people like that aren't civilians.

So what? You really think all members of starfleet would know about it?



Who says they did? You think Hanson was the highest rank of admiral? Picard and shelby are well down the ladder of command.

there's nothing in "Q Who" or "BOBW" to indicate anyone in the upper echelons of Starfleet had ever heard of the Borg before.

And neither of those episodes really had the highest levels of Starfleet involved, did they? Oh sure, Hanson was an admiral, but you really think that admiral is the highest rank there is?

a "cover-up" is fanwank at its best.

But it does fit with what we know.

er, actually YES Admiral IS the highest Starfleet rank-if it's corresponding to military ranks, full admiral, of a certain number of stars is the highest rank.

what exactly were you thinking is higher?

Chief of Starfleet Operations, which is one person?



fine guys, go with the cover-up theory if it works for you. It's fiction, and it's not something you can disprove, so if it works for you, then I'm happy for you.

 

[Anwar]

It's no different than how there were aliens from TOS that were never mentioned or seen again in TNG+. One random encounter, nothing happens for years and they just dump it in all the other random alien encounters that happen.

how is that the same? it'd be the same if aliens from TOS WERE seen again on TNG yet strangely no one had ever heard of them.

In TOS, they meet the Horta (a silicon based lifeform) but in TNG when they run into other silicon based life they act like they've never met silicon based life before.

It's the same with the Borg: They meet up with this massive ship of cyborgs who can rip cities off of planets, travel faster than their fastest ships and have powerful weapons.

They just never made a full connection between them and these random cyborgs that one starship fought 200 years ago.

 

[sonak]

It's no different than how there were aliens from TOS that were never mentioned or seen again in TNG+. One random encounter, nothing happens for years and they just dump it in all the other random alien encounters that happen.

how is that the same? it'd be the same if aliens from TOS WERE seen again on TNG yet strangely no one had ever heard of them.

In TOS, they meet the Horta (a silicon based lifeform) but in TNG when they run into other silicon based life they act like they've never met silicon based life before.

It's the same with the Borg: They meet up with this massive ship of cyborgs who can rip cities off of planets, travel faster than their fastest ships and have powerful weapons.

They just never made a full connection between them and these random cyborgs that one starship fought 200 years ago.

I was actually thinking "dark frontier" is the bigger canon violation than "regeneration," so you might have a point there.

"dark frontier" would have us believe that scientists in Starfleet had already heard of the Borg years before the J25 incident, and knew of them by name and knew info about them, whereas "regeneration" just deals with a random, forgotten encounter 200 years prior.


both are violations, but "Dark Frontier" is the bigger one.

 

[BillJ]

Regeneration is not a canon violation.

 

[sonak]

Regeneration is not a canon violation.

fair enough. It's more like "acquisition."

 

[Tiberius]

except other members of Starfleet hadn't heard of it. Picard, Admiral Hanson, Shelby, people like that aren't civilians.

So what? You really think all members of starfleet would know about it?



Who says they did? You think Hanson was the highest rank of admiral? Picard and shelby are well down the ladder of command.

And neither of those episodes really had the highest levels of Starfleet involved, did they? Oh sure, Hanson was an admiral, but you really think that admiral is the highest rank there is?

a "cover-up" is fanwank at its best.

But it does fit with what we know.

er, actually YES Admiral IS the highest Starfleet rank-if it's corresponding to military ranks, full admiral, of a certain number of stars is the highest rank.

what exactly were you thinking is higher?

Chief of Starfleet Operations, which is one person?

Well, looking at the episode, Hanson is a three-star admiral. There's a four star admiral rank insignia show on the Memory Alpha site, and mention of a fleet admiral, such as Admiral Cartwright.

fine guys, go with the cover-up theory if it works for you. It's fiction, and it's not something you can disprove, so if it works for you, then I'm happy for you.

And it works too. It fits in with all the evidence that has been provided on screen.

 

[Anwar]

"dark frontier" would have us believe that scientists in Starfleet had already heard of the Borg years before the J25 incident, and knew of them by name and knew info about them, whereas "regeneration" just deals with a random, forgotten encounter 200 years prior.

The Hansons didn't know all that stuff about the Borg before they left, they gained that information by observing them.

 

[sonak]

"dark frontier" would have us believe that scientists in Starfleet had already heard of the Borg years before the J25 incident, and knew of them by name and knew info about them, whereas "regeneration" just deals with a random, forgotten encounter 200 years prior.

The Hansons didn't know all that stuff about the Borg before they left, they gained that information by observing them.

didn't they mention the specific name and didn't they already have a model of what the cube looked like?

 

[sonak]

So what? You really think all members of starfleet would know about it?



Who says they did? You think Hanson was the highest rank of admiral? Picard and shelby are well down the ladder of command.

And neither of those episodes really had the highest levels of Starfleet involved, did they? Oh sure, Hanson was an admiral, but you really think that admiral is the highest rank there is?

But it does fit with what we know.

er, actually YES Admiral IS the highest Starfleet rank-if it's corresponding to military ranks, full admiral, of a certain number of stars is the highest rank.

what exactly were you thinking is higher?

Chief of Starfleet Operations, which is one person?

Well, looking at the episode, Hanson is a three-star admiral. There's a four star admiral rank insignia show on the Memory Alpha site, and mention of a fleet admiral, such as Admiral Cartwright.

fine guys, go with the cover-up theory if it works for you. It's fiction, and it's not something you can disprove, so if it works for you, then I'm happy for you.

And it works too. It fits in with all the evidence that has been provided on screen.

ok, I guess if you want to go with the one-star made all the difference thing.


but I have to ask: fits with WHAT evidence? give me a line of dialogue or scene that hints at a Starfleet cover-up. There isn't one, you're not extrapolating this from evidence, you're just making up rationalizations.

 

[Tiberius]

My goodness. You think that we were told everything that was going on?

Lemme guess - the only battles you thought were fought in the Dominion War were the ones that were mentioned, yeah?

 

[sonak]

My goodness. You think that we were told everything that was going on?

Lemme guess - the only battles you thought were fought in the Dominion War were the ones that were mentioned, yeah?

that's not even close to the same thing. We were explicitly TOLD there WAS a Dominion War, so it's assumed there were parts of it we didn't see.


you're literally pulling a "cover-up" out of nowhere to make up for on-screen contradictions-which is your choice, but you said it fits the EVIDENCE- which you didn't provide because there is none.


adding on from stuff we're told is totally different from making up explanations yourself.

 

[Tiberius]

My goodness. You think that we were told everything that was going on?

Lemme guess - the only battles you thought were fought in the Dominion War were the ones that were mentioned, yeah?

that's not even close to the same thing. We were explicitly TOLD there WAS a Dominion War, so it's assumed there were parts of it we didn't see.

And we are expressly told that the Federation had encounters and information about the Borg before Q Who as well.

As evidence, I present Regeneration, the El-Aurian refugees rescued by the Enterprise B and the line in Voyager when they mention the USS Tombaugh.

you're literally pulling a "cover-up" out of nowhere to make up for on-screen contradictions-which is your choice, but you said it fits the EVIDENCE- which you didn't provide because there is none.

Well, I gave you your evidence just above.

And since we know for a fact that the Federation knew about the Borg, and since we know for a fact that Picard didn't know about the Borg until Q Who, doesn't that indicate something there?

adding on from stuff we're told is totally different from making up explanations yourself.

In both cases, aren't we looking at what we are told on screen and extending that information in the most logical direction?

 

[Anwar]

"dark frontier" would have us believe that scientists in Starfleet had already heard of the Borg years before the J25 incident, and knew of them by name and knew info about them, whereas "regeneration" just deals with a random, forgotten encounter 200 years prior.

The Hansons didn't know all that stuff about the Borg before they left, they gained that information by observing them.

didn't they mention the specific name and didn't they already have a model of what the cube looked like?

They made that model from observing a Borg Cube they saw, and the name could've easily come from intercepting or overhearing any communications from any Borg vessels they observed.

 

[sonak]

My goodness. You think that we were told everything that was going on?

Lemme guess - the only battles you thought were fought in the Dominion War were the ones that were mentioned, yeah?

that's not even close to the same thing. We were explicitly TOLD there WAS a Dominion War, so it's assumed there were parts of it we didn't see.

And we are expressly told that the Federation had encounters and information about the Borg before Q Who as well.

As evidence, I present Regeneration, the El-Aurian refugees rescued by the Enterprise B and the line in Voyager when they mention the USS Tombaugh.

you're literally pulling a "cover-up" out of nowhere to make up for on-screen contradictions-which is your choice, but you said it fits the EVIDENCE- which you didn't provide because there is none.

Well, I gave you your evidence just above.

And since we know for a fact that the Federation knew about the Borg, and since we know for a fact that Picard didn't know about the Borg until Q Who, doesn't that indicate something there?

adding on from stuff we're told is totally different from making up explanations yourself.

In both cases, aren't we looking at what we are told on screen and extending that information in the most logical direction?

but your "evidence" basically comes down to the continuity violations themselves.

your argument is basically:

1.we have stories that contradict "Q Who," showing the UFP had knowledge of the Borg
2. Since Picard and company didn't know about the Borg before "Q Who," there must be a cover-up

it's an argument in reverse: "Q Who" came first, but was later contradicted, so you're using the later contradictions as evidence for a cover-up

 

[Anwar]

They had encounters with the Borg before, they just didn't know who or what the Borg were and didn't get enough information from those encounters.

It's just like the Ferengi in TNG: The Ferengi had encountered the Feds before but it wasn't until later that they had enough contact to identify them.

"The Battle", remember?