How formidable of a foe would Lore have been to the Federation if…

[Qonundrum]

^ Still makes me wonder why the Borg (by mouth of Locutus) referred to Data as a 'primitive artificial organism that would be obsolete in the new order' . Up until that point, the Borg had shown many nasty qualities, but lying wasn't one of them, so I'm bound to assume they really thought so at that point. What made their drones superior (or closer to perfection) in their eyes?

The Queen was retroactively fitted into TBOBW in FC. She was blahbetyblabbing about thinking in limited terms with the ol' standby dialogue worthy of Wesley. FC also shows the Queen doing experiments that would make Dr Frankenstein voluntarily sign up to be assimilated in awe of her apparent creativity. Noting the Borg otherwise exist to augment organic life, Data truly would be utterly obsolete. The Queen is supposed to be an extension and to provide individual ideas when the rest of the collective is locked in a logic loop, probably, but grafting on skin wouldn't last very long either - without more Borg technology to keep all the epidermal cells living. Talk about reinventing the wheel...

 

[at Quark's]

May be the Borg, good at bio-tech, just didn't know how to assimilate and use him, fully mechanical. Only one Data, without ability to be replicated, is almost useless. A positronic brain may be too complicated even for the Borg, because they never assimilated beings able to create it.

That's an interesting idea.

Then again, we also don't know how they deal with races with unique capabilities. They do say 'your biological distinctiveness will be added to our own' but it doesn't seem as if genetic advantages of a certain assimilated species (e.g. super strength) are propagated to all drones in the future. So when the drones of that original race are gone (worn out), the advantage would be gone too. If that is true, I wouldn't see any objection for them 'using' Data as long as he lasts, too.

 

[Oddish]

Lore telling Fido what to go do next:

Beverly had a phaser, and Lore was obviously threatening the whole ship... she should have just set the thing to maximum power and obliterated him then and there. For that matter, Wes should have simply dispersed his pattern into space. No great loss.