This is easily explained by the Annorax Incursions, since the known Krenim boundaries changed during temporal alterations.
But how much did they really know? Did they even understand that the Borg were created by predatory means? Did they understand how widespread they were and that assimilation was the entire point of their existence? Maybe they thought there was a Borg home world somewhere where they all sat around listening to classical music and chatting. You follow a cube, you pluck one of its being from the cube during a sleep cycle, study it's anatomy full of tubes and mech.. and try and piece it together. Also there are so many species out there, Starfleet was hardly going to go off all alarmist every time one pops up that preys on another, especially if they aren't doing it anywhere near them.
That seems kind of a stretch. Ten thousands light years is ten years of travel as far as Voyager is concerned and probably even more for the Krenim who didn't seem ot have fast ships (otherwise Voyager wouldn't have escaped from them). Who could maintain an empire where it takes ten years to get from one end to the other? (if there was a revolt at one end of the empire, it would take ten years for you to get to the field of battle, it's like the crusades multiplied by TEN!!!) NO WAY!
My attempt at in-universe explanations... Perhaps putting the transwarp coil in did some pretty bad damage to Voyager's systems and they weren't able to use it as a long term propulsion method. In this case, they had a great need that required only limited use of the coil, so they could justify it, but as something to get them home it wouldn't work. I agree, that's just stupid. Perhaps the Borg knew the technique the Voyager crew was using, but there was an unknown variable that the Borg had to use a brute force method to figure out. For example, let's say I want to write something in code. I can write down my message and then shift each letter ahead 5 places in the alphabet. This will work fine, but then let's say you realise I am using a simple shift cipher and you also figure out I am just shifting by five letters. So, I change it to 13 letters. Now, your 5 letter shift won't work, and it will be a moment before you figure out it is 13 letters now. The same sort of thing could have happened with the Borg. They were thrown off track for just a few minutes, just enough time to let the VOyager crew do what they needed to do. We have no idea what the multiphasic shielding does to Borg sensors.
In this case I don't think it's really a cop out. It's just the most logical assumption. The Hansens were stuck in the Delta Quadrant. Starfleet may have had access to the Hansen's research from before they followed the cube into the Delta Quadrant, but there's no way that Starfleet could have gotten a hold of anything after that. Therefore, Voyager must have somehow gotten them from the Raven.
The Borg were not known intimately in TNG before "Q Who", but clearly they had already made incursions into Federation and Romulan space (cf. "The Neutral Zone"), so they might already have gained some kind of mythological noteriety even before Starfleet had a face to put to them. The Hansens going looking for the Borg was analogous to the Hansens going looking for Bigfoot.
The model cube on their coffee table (or whatever that piece of furniture was) seemed pretty accurate for a ... "Bigfoot"... It looks like they already knew a lot before they even begun their journey.
I dunno, it was a cube. All you needed was to know that their ships looked like cubes to make one. Doesn't exactly fill in all the Borg details. I think Starfleet had actual in your face threats to deal with, potential threads far away in the DQ that there had been some contact with were not going to get the resources thrown at them. But they would be fascinating to science folk who see themselves as explorers, off to find out secrets that the admin haven't bothered with.
Exactly, teacake. If the Borg had made incursions into Federation space before (and ENT obviously shows explicitly that they did, though TNG: "The Neutral Zone" virtually confirms it also), but the sightings were rare and sporadic, then it's possible the Hansens had some broad conception of these mysterious cube ships and whatnot, pieced together from random pieces of information gained over a long period of time by various different sources, without them actually having a handle on the specifics of who or what the Borg actually are. The Hansens, being inquisitive scientists, got caught up in the romance of it all and set out off to investigate the rumors, myths and urban legends about these cyborg creatures for themselves (Starfleet probably had much more important things to be getting on with). Obviously, when the Enterprise-D first meets the Borg in "Q Who", they're able to correlate that these beings are connected with all those stories about strange cube ships and cyborg aliens of legend, and fill out a shit load more detail that was previously missing (hence Riker and co's expedition over to the cube). So, in practice, them having some vague idea of the Borg before actually meeting them in "Q Who" doesn't lessen the impact or importance of the Enterprise's very first contact with them. In fact, it arguably makes the events in "Q Who" even *more* important to history, because that's the moment of revelation where they suddenly realize that this 'Bigfoot' is real.
Don't you mean the Hendersons? It does bug me that they are shown going after the Borg, but the way you rationalise it does make good sense. The species designation for humans was too high, which was probably laziness or retcon from the low number for Ferengi. This sums the episode up for me - they made a double length special which would pull in the viewers. They didn't care about continuity, or common sense even, as long as it was exciting for the viewer. And it kind of was, mostly, so they can have a pass. But only because it's Voyager and I'm braced for illogic and low expectations.
Yeah, necessarily the first incursion that Annorax makes following Kes's warning to janeway erases that event. Obviously the future that Kes's consciousness had travelled through had already changed but the continuity of her going back and warning Janeway was still in place. Then Annorax makes his incursion which changes both past and furure. Janeway and the others' experience of Kes warning them must be erased because that future no longer exists -therefore that past which was subsequently created as a result of it must also have been eradicated. In theory the specific one of Annorax's subsequent changes to the timeline which Kes had travelled through will still occur. However, Kes will now never travel through that future because her personal future has already changed. As a result Janeway and the others can never be warned by Kes.
Why didn't the entire Year of Hell storyline cancel itself out when Annorax erased the time-changing ship from time? Did the paradox just undo itself?
Yeah, it's a pure retcon on my part. But I tend to think it makes sense of the continuity snarl. I mean, the introduction of the Borg was already pretty messed up to begin with (linking them to the disappearing outposts in "The Neutral Zone" meant having to somehow explain why the Borg had already incurred on Federation and Romulan space when they were supposed to be in the Delta Quadrant, not to mention the Borg having destroyed Guinan's world, which we presume is close to Federation space if it's that event that they are fleeing from at the beginning of "Star Trek: Generations"). So, it makes sense to me that the Borg were already a kind of 'myth', a menace that hadn't been encountered yet but about which there had been much speculation and rumors, and all this talk of cyborg people and cube shaped ships had gotten people like the Hansens intrigued enough to jack in their regular jobs and go hunting for them in the name of science. When the Enterprise-D encounters the Borg for the 'first' time in "Q Who", it becomes more about them filling in the gaps in their knowledge, now that they've got a real live cube to sit down and study.
Yeah, it's another one of those "It never happened" episodes. We've had quite a few of these on Voyager.
...However, compare this to TNG "Second Chances" or "Hero Worship", where a specialized, Jerry can -sized device is required for downloading the database of an installation or a ship; needs to be physically plugged in; and takes quite a bit of time to accomplish its task. The Borg are supposedly "hundreds of millennia" old (TNG "Q Who?"), and/or into assimilation for at least a millennium ("Dragon's Teeth"). Surely they ought to be into six-digit species numbers by now anyway... Yet note that the Kazon get a number despite not actually being assimilated. Supposedly, the Borg survey various species, evaluating them for assimilation potential; perform regular scouting runs every ten thousand years or so; pick up the pace when the species starts to develop interesting tech; provoke the species into further effort by making piecemeal "attacks"; and finally, after all the potential for learning new skills has been drained of the species, assimilate every last member of the species, thus improving their quality of life as they promise. Humans could have been surveyed at any point in their prehistory and assigned this species number - quite possibly, the Borg studied Earth long before Stonehenge or Göpekli Tepe was built, and decided to revisit a few thousand years later. Timo Saloniemi
The Borg are stupid. Once they've beamed Janeway on their ship, they should have made a hologram of her, a sophisticated one, like the guy's from the think tank that could taste coffee and then made it tell her crew whatever they wanted. They would have gotten the ship in no time, without the need for threats, just a little ruse (hehe) and putting some of that ten-thousand species technology to good use. Seriously,how hard could it be? In truth I tell thee, the Borg are incompetent clods.
I don't have a big problem with the Hansons' background story. I can imagine that the Hansons were chasing a myth that everybody else dismissed. The only thing I don't like is the cube-toy Annika plays with. It is a little bit too detailed for my taste and I can only guess it was an open advertisement for Star Trek toys. Like RoJoHen mentioned in #11, who had a toy like that. Of course it would have better if the whole thing had taken place after Wolf 359. Annika could still be an adult if the Borg would have put here in a chamber for accelerated growth. Maybe they didn't start with "species 1" but "species 10.000" or something. That way the numbers are more impressive. Of course you may say that the Borg might not care about such things but maybe the first Borg Queen was a little peculiar about such things. Later they filled the lower numbers to get rid of those gaps.