Beverly PLAGIARIZED the Borg!!!

[Guy Gardener]

TNG Ethics.

(a woman about the same age as Beverly beams in. Think Hillary Clinton)
CRUSHER: Welcome to the Enterprise, Doctor Russell. I'm Beverly Crusher.
RUSSELL: A pleasure. I have some equipment aboard the Potemkin. Would you please have it sent to one of your medical labs.
CRUSHER: Of course. Send it to medlab four.
CREWMAN: Yes, Doctor.
RUSSELL: Before we get down to business, I just wanted to say that I had the pleasure of reading your paper on cybernetic regeneration recently.
CRUSHER: Really? You're the first person to mention it.
RUSSELL: I thought it was brilliant.

We don't know what her paper said.

Did she give the Borg credit, or is she a delusional liar, or just a liar?

Either way if she is irresponsibly introducing Borg Tech into the Federation, it could lead to the creation of a second collective.

Although she did not know what a nanoprobe was in the Best of Both Worlds.

DATA: Doctor Crusher and I have been working on an interesting premise.
CRUSHER: With our recent experience in nanotechnology, we might be able to introduce a destructive breed of nanites into the Borg.
SHELBY: Nanites?
DATA: Robots small enough to enter living cells.
RIKER: How long would it take to execute that?
CRUSHER: That's the problem. Two to three weeks.
TROI: In two or three weeks, nanites may be all that's left of the Federation.

Bev thought that they could outwit the Borg by using a super advanced technology that the Borg had never heard of before.

Although...

It is possible that the Borg before the movie First Contact (when the timeline changed) never used nanoprobes.

"Hillary Clinton"

Huh.

That's funny.

 

[Ragitsu]

"Hillary Clinton"

What?

 

[Elias Vaughn]

Fun fact: The Memory Alpha article on nanoprobes has maybe my favorite line in a wiki:

In the same year, Seven of Nine used modified nanoprobes to revive Neelix 18 hours after his death. (VOY: "Mortal Coil") The technique wasn't used for other dead crew members, however.

 

[Guy Gardener]

What?

The transcription from CHAKOTEYA, a board member here, describes the visiting unethical Doctor as a dead ringer for Hillary Clinton.

 

[Qonundrum]

The YouTube channel "Reverse Angle" skewers Beverly at every opportunity. Can't blame them...

But Bev was all foamy-mouth to Riker in a season 1 episode about Dr Terrance D. Epstein and spouting superficial technobabble about cybernetics and regeneration, as if the writer just got done binge-watching some Doctor Who and wanted to feel as hip as the one who put in that goofy family tree in "The Neutral Zone" (a shame the original display wasn't kept as an easter egg on the blu-ray...). Am certain it was from "11001001" -- quick looksiepoo -- cool, it was that ep.

RIKER: You look like you're packing to leave forever.
CRUSHER: Oh, Commander Riker. No, I'm just gathering my notes. Professor Terence Epstein is at this starbase.
RIKER: Is that someone I should know of?
CRUSHER: He's the leading mind in cybernetics. He lectured at my medical school. You know the disaster at Micromius?
...
CRUSHER: Well, since then I've been working on an approach that combines cybernetics and regeneration. It sounds impossible, I know, but I have found an approach which will work. I mean, what an opportunity. To have a chance to talk with Doctor Epstein. Sorry, Will, I'd love to chat, but I have to go!

Dr Epstein's middle initial wasn't in the script, but if you look up Doctor Who's most famous Terrance, his surname makes a perfect middle name as a clever in-joke that's been the norm for decades...

But, now having re-read the post, it's sad to say but I don't think Bev plagiarized the Borg , and it's more the scriptwriters flinging treknobabble in a hurry as she recalled how Wonderboy Wes created a bunch in "Evolution" and having TBOBW use the same word would be a cute bookend... That or how everyone forgot about "transwarp" between the decades too, so when TNG or DS9 or whoever brought up the term and some fans get whiplash and go "Wait, what now?". That said, Reverse Angle has pointed out plenty of times that Bev hacks more than a concert hall full of asthmatics with bronchitis flare-ups... time for a binge listen again...

...like this one that's Bev-centric:

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I'd bet real money they get at least one good quip in there too... (I think they have a field day with Arsenal of Freedom and Ethics, among others too... )

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

I assumed that Beverly's paper on this subject referred to her saving Captain Picard from the Borg. It never occurred to me that it could be taken any other way.

As far as the first season example goes, and maybe I am giving the writers too much credit, but I supposed that they already were considering the Borg as villains after they were famously unsatisfied with how things went with the Ferengi, and they were beginning to set up the idea that Beverly knew about this stuff so that, one day, they could use that as a plot point when the characters were in a pinch.

I admit that part of this opinion is influenced by lines in a novel from William Shatner that suggests only 3 doctors: Beverly, Voyager's EMH, and one other person, apparently McCoy, are the fully qualified to remove nanoprobes from a person to free them from assimilation.

I have recognized points from Season 1 and Season 2 which COULD point to Starfleet suspecting the Borg, or something like them, may be coming even before "Q Who". One of which is these references Beverly makes about this kind of tech in Season 1.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

I wouldn't take anything that William Shatner asserts about any part of Star Trek canon too seriously (maybe the TOS era...).

However, IIRC the "mysterious destroyed outposts" in The Neutral Zone where originally going to part of a triology of episodes that introduced the Borg according to Maurice Hurley. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Neutral_Zone_(episode)#Production_history

I'm not entirely clear why this was dropped but if I was guessing, it was probably either to give them more time to redesign the Borg from their origin insectiod concept to the cyborgs that they became in Q, Who? or purely down to the writers strike which also impacted S2.

 

[Oddish]

Considering that Beverly came up with the concept a year before the Borg were even known to the Federation, plagiarism seems pretty much off the table.

The whole Neelix thing could have been fixed with a small snippet of dialogue. Just make it so Talaxians have a physiological peculiarity that allows them to be revived after a longer period than would work for other races.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Besides the timing issue, how do you plagiarize a culture whose entire existence consists of "plagiarizing" the biological and technological distinctiveness of other unique cultures and assimilating it into their Collective?

I would think the Borg would be flattered by being borrowed from, if they could feel such a thing. Right before they shoved a nanotube into your carotid.

Regardless, by nature the Borg don't innovate, they assimilate, so the nanoprobe tech came from someone else and the Borg just borrowed it themselves.

 

[Mojochi]

Bev's paper, mentioned by Dr. Russell, could either be in reference to her research mentioned in 11001001, (Before any Borg encounter) or to her experience in regeneration of patients with cybernetic implants, like Picard had after BoBW. Either way, it's clearly not research done by anyone else, that she is plagiarizing.

 

[HGN2001]

"Think Hillary Clinton"

I'd rather not.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Fun fact: The Memory Alpha article on nanoprobes has maybe my favorite line in a wiki:

If it was Harry and not Neelix who died in "Mortal Coil", Kathy may not have allowed Seven to use her nanoprobes

She may have used her friendship with Q to get him to take away these abilities from Seven and the entire Borg Collective to prevent such a situation

 

[Oddish]

If it was Harry and not Neelix who died in "Mortal Coil", Kathy may not have allowed Seven to use her nanoprobes

She may have used her friendship with Q to get him to take away these abilities from Seven and the entire Borg Collective to prevent such a situation

Alas, someone edited it. And in any case, certainly Janeway would have brought Harry back. Death is far more merciful a fate than the one she has in mind for him!

 

[at Quark's]

I don't believe she did, but even if she did, so what? It's not as if the Borg are the types to file a lawsuit for patent violation or infringement on intellectual property.

 

[Vger23]

Gawdamnit, Beverly.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I don't believe she did, but even if she did, so what? It's not as if the Borg are the types to file a lawsuit for patent violation or infringement on intellectual property.

Inventing new tech is evidence of genius.

Appropriating new tech is evidence of nothing really, maybe sound businessness. Did Marco Polo invent spaghetti, or did he just bring back a few pounds of pasta from China, and then threw a really great dinner party?

Appropriating new tech, and pretending that you invented it, is evidence of malicious deviousness. Fuck you Thomas Edison, you had a factory of science slaves inventing things for you to patent.

But as the thread already proved.

Bev wrote a paper of cybernetic regeneration, in season one, then met the borg, and then published her paper, and then was congratulated for being brilliant by a colleague.

It's possible fooling around inside Jean-Luc removing Borg Tech with an ice cream scoop, might have connected a few dots and finalized her own theories on cybernetic regeneration, or it just confirmed what she already knew, but I got another timey whimey idea...

Beverly is the Borg Queen.

Her tech creates a collective, they're sent back in time, then she waits a thousand years to bang and marry Jean-Luc at the Battle of Wolf 359.

New body, same consciousness, duh.

 

[Oddish]

Maybe that's why Wes is so brilliant... he has a head full of hidden Borg tech.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Maybe that's why Wes is so brilliant... he has a head full of hidden Borg tech.

Borg Queens can see parallel timelines, so that tracks.

 

[johnnybear]

I've always wondered why Borg queens can not look alike then resemble an older version whom had been destroyed and then later on be totally different from both of the previous ones, again!
JB

 

[Kor]

If Dr. Crusher's research depended on Borg tech, no doubt she would describe it observationally, not unlike a cultural anthropologist doing fieldwork. I doubt that the Borg have published any papers that could be cited as sources.

...
I admit that part of this opinion is influenced by lines in a novel from William Shatner that suggests only 3 doctors: Beverly, Voyager's EMH, and one other person, apparently McCoy, are the fully qualified to remove nanoprobes from a person to free them from assimilation.
...

I wouldn't take anything that William Shatner asserts about any part of Star Trek canon too seriously (maybe the TOS era...).
...

Those kinds of references probably came from his co-authors Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who I assume are much more familiar with Trek franchise-spanning details than Shatner himself is.

Kor