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. ♥
Did we know about the Borg sooner?
- Thread starter Pawleygirl
- Start date
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.
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?
I just met you, and this is crazy, but you're the Borg, right? Assimilate me, maybe?
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.
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.
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):
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.
I take it you haven't seen the Enterprise episode "Regeneration", where Captain Archer fights the Borg 200 years before "Q Who"?
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"
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.
Yeah, the Enterprisrle writing team could definitely have been taught a thing or two about subtlety.
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.
^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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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?:
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.
But remember the ENT-E crew saw the 24th Century Borg Earth while they were in the temporal wake following the Borg Sphere. That means in one timeline the Borg succeeded in assimilating Earth. The ENT-E prevented this timeline by destroying the Borg and restoring enough of their recorded history to what it should resemble. No doubt their presence made this timeline of 2063 different moving forward. With VOY 'Relativity' 7 of 9 has recollection of both timeline of events. The future where the Borg succeeded in assimilating Earth and the future where the ENT-E prevented the assimilation. It's impossible for her to know about both of these, and it can't be a paradox if it was destined that the Borg would both succeed and fail in the same time travel endeavor. Chock that up to another Voyager writing staff goof. Just press the reset button and it'll all seem alright.
Seven knows about it because of the signal sent at the end of "Relativity" - that's the whole reason that bit was included, to fix the continuity error of her knowing about the Borg being present at First Contact. Otherwise there is no way she could have had that knowledge.
And as I said, the Pogo Paradox is attempted interference to prevent an event being the catalyst of the event they were trying to stop. The Borg caused the change in Earth's past, making the Enterprise follow and undo it. That sequence of events is what "always" happened (in-universe) in Treks timeline. A loop involvong a change and an undo.
Don't get me wrong, it makes very little sense as does all sci-fi time travel. But I take the in-universe explanation from the guys in the future (+ENT's out-of-universe retcons) over the idea Enterprise is an altered history, which renders it moot as a prequel and ruins it's tie-ins to the later series' and movies.
And as I said, the Pogo Paradox is attempted interference to prevent an event being the catalyst of the event they were trying to stop. The Borg caused the change in Earth's past, making the Enterprise follow and undo it. That sequence of events is what "always" happened (in-universe) in Treks timeline. A loop involvong a change and an undo.
Don't get me wrong, it makes very little sense as does all sci-fi time travel. But I take the in-universe explanation from the guys in the future (+ENT's out-of-universe retcons) over the idea Enterprise is an altered history, which renders it moot as a prequel and ruins it's tie-ins to the later series' and movies.
Why not? Are we ruling out the credibility or indeed possibility of Sasquatch hunting in the 24th century? That sounds like an awfully arbitrary limitation on the Star Trek universe.
We the audience know that the Borg are kind of important and very real. The citizens of the 24th century Federation should not have knowledge of either sort. They should retain the right to treat the Borg as a hobby project or a myth of limited interest. And so, really, should Starfleet.
Timo Saloniemi
Yet the Borg in 2063 were out of contact with the collective, hence them trying (and failing) to convert the Enterprise's deflector into a transmitter. So there's no way Seven or the other Borg of the 24th century would know how First Contact played out. But they did - because the FC survoivors sent their dignal in "Regeneration"
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