I just read back through that part, and I do remember reading it, but I think I just went through it so fast I didn't realize what it was actually saying.
Just saw on my Twitter feed that CBR.com has preview pages from the first issue of Orphan Black deviations and figured you might be interested: http://www.cbr.com/exclusive-previe...al-Distribution&utm_campaign=CBR-TW&view=list
I'm thought Data's head was the one from 19th century San Francisco. Btw, in TNG: Headlong Flight, the Romulans win "Balance of Terror". Coupled with the (near-)defeat of the Federation in timelines without Kirk and Spock (The Q Gambit, Myriad Universes), its plausible that the Federation might fall at a critical juncture.
Oh, that is a good possibility for the origin of Data's head, although I still wonder about the first contact style skin on the side of his face.
I thought that about Data's head at first too but that wouldn't make sense since this reality never had the Enterprise-D and they never had that adventure.
Finally got this today. Like others have mentioned, I found this story a bit confusing. The marketing information for this had mentioned that the Romulans made first contact with Earth instead of the Vulcans, and the "What Really Happened" blurb seemed to support the idea that the divergence was around this time. But then a lot of things in the story didn't make sense with that as the context. So then I started to think that perhaps Earth fell shortly after the Federation was formed, or during the Earth-Romulan War, and the Federation formed without Earth's involvement. But then the reveal at the end seemed to imply that the fall of Earth had to happen no earlier than 2245. So did the entire Federation fall (aside from that one base they mentioned)? If the entire Federation didn't fall, how did they let their capital be conquered? I could certainly see post-WWIII Earth being captured and kept in a primitive state... but how would TOS-era Earth devolve that badly? Is at most 140 years long enough for the entire population of the planet to not be aware of their history as the capital of an interstellar alliance?
I don't think "Time's Arrow" or First Contact happened in this timeline; it's probably just another one of those situations where the author unnecessarily does a parallel to the main timeline despite no reason it has to happen in a remotely similar way.