Was Enterprise's final mission fictionalised, then?
I am saying that the holodeck adventure Riker had in TatV was NOT actually a recording of what happened and we can't say that such and such a thing really did happen to Archer just because we saw it on TatV. I imagine that the holonovel would have had a disclaimer: "While this holonovel is based on actual events, some scenes have been dramatised and may not reflect the factuality of what actually occured."
When you watch Ron Howard's "Apollo 13", you understand that things didn't happen exactly the way you saw them. They never said, "Houston, we have a problem." The actual dialogue was slightly different. They changed it to sound better. Same thing with Riker's holonovel.
I can almost get on board with classifying the Enterprise-era Borg encounter from the general public as far as the whole 'protecting the fledgeling space program' goes, but classifying it within Starfleet itself?
What's wrong with Starfleet not wanting anyone below the rank of admiral to know? What is it with this attitude that Starfleet captains always know everything?
But classifying it so that further down the line Starfleet officers don't have access to the information? Let's face it, Data wasn't shy about accessing the information in the Enterprise's computers - "In 2234 a Starfleet ship encountered just such an anomaly blah blah blah" - so if the information was available he would be on it like Neelix on a jailbait Ocampa.
So in the 2250s Starfleet encounters these horrific cybernetic creatures that assimilate people and turn them into their own, and decide to classify this so that when another Starfleet ship encounters them, they have no foreknowledge or information on how they were dealt with the first time round?
Again, what useful purpose would this serve from Starfleet's perspective?
Efficiency.
Or do you really think that as soon as someone gets promoted to captain that Starfleet sits them down and says, "Right, here's everything that was ever classified in the last two hundred years."
Likewise Xindi probes would likely not appear in Earth orbit and cause carnage particularly regularly, but one would still imagine that if an identical one popped up in the 2360s Starfleet would know what it was and have access to a record of it.
I don't think any of this is a particularly unreasonable expectation of an organisation such as Starfleet.
That's a little different.
First of all, we have an attack on earth, killing millions of people and was witnessed by millions more civilians. I imagine people were talking about it on twitter and youtube in seconds.
On the other hand, we have a single isolated research team consisting of maybe half a dozen people who disappeared somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and who were then stopped by a single vessel.
Hardly the same amount of exposure there. I don't see how you can claim that if Data can find information about the Xindi attack then he should thus be able to find infoprmation about the Borg encounter.
...but is it really that ridiculous to assume that an android operations officer who has countless times demonstrated instant recall of the most minor details from throughout Federation history should have at least a passing familiarity of such an encounter via Starfleet records?
I don't think so.
You are assuming Data was ever cleared to read it in the first place. If he didn't have clearance high enough he never would have read it and thus wouldn't be able to mention it, would he?
Evidence such as? You do know this is a fictional program being discussed here don't you?
Then why are you arguing so fervently that Data should have known?
Anyway, nothing you refer to is anything like as big an event as what happened in Regeneration to the forthcoming Federation President and most famous ship in Starfleet history.
You think if George Washington had fought off a bunch of zombies in the years before his presidency we wouldn't know about it now? And that's without the use of the unimaginably-powerful computers depicted in Star Trek?
Of course we would. You're onto a loser here.
Of course, if George Washington travelled through time, fought shapeshifters, helped establish peace with several alien races, then maybe fighting zombies would seem like a pretty quiet day and everyone would remember his more exciting exploits...
In short, the only way that anyone on the Ent D in Q WHo would know what the Borg were was if they either had clearance to read the files (unlikely) or if they had seen them before (which was Guinan, and she did).
Your argument, Sandoval, seems to be that every single thing that ever happened on the NX 01 has been made public knowledge and every starfleet officer has access to it. That is simply ridiculous.
