Regeneration

[F. King Daniel]

It woud be dangerous and stupid to send crews into deep space while witholding information about a dangerous threat. Those 18 people lost/killed/assimilated in "Q Who" may have lived if Picard was properly informed (i.e. with a Starfleet report, not Guinan's vague spooky talk) of the threat they faced.

 

[Sandoval]

It would be dangerous and stupid to send crews into deep space while withholding information about a dangerous threat.

Exactly.

I can't for the life of me understand why people wish to argue so vehemently that Starfleet Command withholding such information is a sensible course of action.

 

[Tom]

Because you seem to think that Captains are the ones making the decisions. The admirals are the ones deciding, "Let's send the Enterprise over here, and Potemkin over there."

The captains are the ones making the decisions once the ship arrives, often beyond the range of timely communication with the admiralty.

If and when a Starfleet ship out in the unknown does encounter this cybernetic race again, where is the advantage in the captain now knowing about it or having access to the information without waiting for an admiral to get back to them?

It might make sense that -in certain cases- only an individual of the rank to command of a vessel or higher would be told of (or have clearance to access) certain such information. As an example, in the Voyager episode "The Omega Directive", it seems that no one below rank of captain is ever briefed on the existence of Omega Molecules- but captains ARE informed on the subject.

Also I would site that in 'The Pegasus' high ranking Starfleet officials new about the phasing cloak and tryed to cover it up, so ya there are cover ups in TNG era Starfleet. Maybe Starfleet at some point, tryed to run an experments on Nano probes left behind from the Artic Borg encounter and that expermient went horribly wrong so they covered up not just the expermient but all mention of the borg incident as well..its possible.

 

[Robert D. Robot]

In my earlier past I meant to state that I thought that Certain high ranking individuals in Starfleet might have thought that it would make sense to not share certain information, not that all officials (or I! or others posting in this thread!) would agree that such a decision made sense.

I only meant to point out that we had seen evidence of this "logic" in some other episodes of Trek.

While I have trouble believing that all records of the events of "Regeneration" could somehow be lost, or that the Federation (or Earth authorities or Starfleet) would wish to hide the facts from the crews defending themselves in space, I have to accept that somehow a complete set of records were ultimately not available to Picard and his crew. (I apologize for stating the obvious!)

 

[Tiberius]

If starfleet knew about some force that could possibly do a lot of damage to them and then made that knowledge freely available, how long would it be before the Romulans, or the Breen or the Cardassians got a hold of it? And then those races would try to use it to their advantage, giving the Federation even more problems.

but it wouldn't BE freely available. It would be available to officers with the required clearance.

Which is exactly what i've been saying.

There would be little point in classifying it from captains, as they would always face the chance of running into the Borg.

I doubt it.

Remember, until Q Who, Starfleet had not had any direct contact with the Borg for about 200 years. They had rumour, that's it. And everything that Strfleet knew indicated that the Borg were way over the other saide of the galaxy.

I think they figured that running into the Borg was a pretty slim chance.

After Q Who, I bet they started giving briefings about the Borg to every captain out there.

And as 200 years pass without incident, chances are it would be declassified

More likely it would just be forgotten about. Like I said, after 200 years, they aren't going to be very worried about it.

Or do you really think Starfleet would encounter a force that could assimilate people, had personal force fields, could adapt easily to weapons fire, could upgrade the systems of any ship they get a hold of and are pretty much unstoppable and then decide, "Oh, I don't see any problem in making this information freely available!"

Give me an example of a problem it would cause having Starfleet officers knowing about it.

Something a bit concrete if you can rather than a general 'they would panic' or something equally general.

Double agents for a start. We've seen that Starfleet Command has been infiltrated several times. It's very plausible that it's happened other times. And if a double agent in Starfleet was able to get a hold of information about the Borg, what could they do with it? They could try to get some Borg Technology. They could try to establish relations with the Borg. Now, you and I might know that such efforts would be futile, but Starfleet Command didn't know that. So they would see that knowledge about the Borg could open up ways for the Federation's enemies to gain a tactical advantage.

I know that if I wanted to wipe out the Federation, I'd want as much information as I could get about anyone else who's come close to achieving it.

Because you seem to think that Captains are the ones making the decisions. The admirals are the ones deciding, "Let's send the Enterprise over here, and Potemkin over there."

The captains are the ones making the decisions once the ship arrives, often beyond the range of timely communication with the admiralty.

If and when a Starfleet ship out in the unknown does encounter this cybernetic race again, where is the advantage in the captain now knowing about it or having access to the information without waiting for an admiral to get back to them?

But they never send a starship out of communications range if they expect that starship to encounter hostile forces, do they?

If starfleet knew about some force that could possibly do a lot of damage to them and then made that knowledge freely available, how long would it be before the Romulans, or the Breen or the Cardassians got a hold of it? And then those races would try to use it to their advantage, giving the Federation even more problems.

How would the Romulans knowing that there was a powerful unknown alien race with superior technology that could damage Starfleet, and by its very nature also damage the Romulan Empire, be of use to the Romulans?

How does Romulus also knowing about this powerful race give them an advantage over Starfleet exactly?

Yeah, because the Romulans would have absolutely no interest in the scans and all that that the research team got from those frozen drones before they were assimialted.

"Crazy new weapons systems that can punch through just about anything? Almost destroyed a Federation starship? Nah, thanks, but we aren't interested."

 

[BillJ]

It woud be dangerous and stupid to send crews into deep space while witholding information about a dangerous threat. Those 18 people lost/killed/assimilated in "Q Who" may have lived if Picard was properly informed (i.e. with a Starfleet report, not Guinan's vague spooky talk) of the threat they faced.

What makes you think Picard would've given those reports any more credence? He was obviously already ignoring the advice he was being given and evidence he was seeing with his own eyes...

 

[The_Baroness]

"ooo, lets send the crew back to present day earth! never done that before....except for in Tomorrow is Yesterday...and oh yeah...Assignment Earth...oh..and...the Voyage Home...oh..and then there was futures end!"

You're confusing episodes involving a similar theme - crew goes back to 20th century Earth - with two episodes where the degree of similarity is go great as to make them virtually the same episode with different casts and small changes.

Region of space fatal to most of the crew.
Check.
One crewmember is immune.
Check.
Crew goes to sleep while the ship traverses that region.
Check.
Immune crewmember is left alone to take care of the ship.
Check.
Immune crewmember is used to large groups and is uncomfortable being alone.
Check.
Immune crewmember begins to hallucinate another person.
Check.

And so on.

Sighting Tomorrow is Yesterday as being virtually identical to The Voyage Home just because they involve the crew going back to the twentieth century seems a bit silly to say the least.

Retreading ideas is retreading ideas. I get what your saying, and yes, the episode you cited is probably the worst offender, but the present day episode had already been done to death by the time ENT did it, and for me it was the episode that really highlighted the fact they'd run out of ideas simply because we'd seen it so many times before.

At least we'd only seen 'Doctors Orders' once...

 

[tighr]

At least we'd only seen 'Doctors Orders' once...

Sounds like One from Voyager. After the rest of the crew is placed in suspended animation to protect them from dangerous radiation, Seven, with only The Doctor for company, is placed in control of the ship.

 

[Oso Blanco]

I think you are all missing an important point in this discussion. When the Enterprise encountered the Borg in Q Who, the events shown in Regeneration hadn't happened yet!

Regeneration (or the whole Enterprise series for that matter) was a direct result of the Borg and the Enterprise-E travelling back in time in First Contact. That changed the timeline, which probably evolved quite differently than the one we've been watching. Maybe in this newly created timeline Data actually did access the files about the Regeneration encouter?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Except there's ample proof in both Voyager (which mentions FC, and crosses over with TNG and DS9) and Enterprise (which builds on FC, and crosses over with TOS and TNG) that it's all meant to be the same timeline.

The past is the past. It always existed, even before the events that "create" it. It's because time isn't really linear (at least in the Trekverse), only our human perception of it. DS9's wormhole aliens see it as it "really" is, all happening at once. Thus cause and effect are meaningless.

 

[Oso Blanco]

Except there's ample proof in both Voyager (which mentions FC, and crosses over with TNG and DS9) and Enterprise (which builds on FC, and crosses over with TOS and TNG) that it's all meant to be the same timeline.

I still think the past has been changed in First Contact. Maybe the "present" (TNG/DS9/VOY) wasn't that greatly affected by it because the effects had watered down more or less ... but the Enterprise era was definitely created by those timeline changes.

 

[F. King Daniel]

There were definitely changes made to the timeline during Enterprise. Daniels' version of the future never had the Xindi attack or colony from "Shockwave" destroyed. But with episodes like "In a Mirror, Darkly", where the NX-01 crew biographes are in the USS Defiant (from "The Tholian Web") computers, and "These Are the Voyages" taking place during TNG's "The Pegasus", it can only mean that those changes led the TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY future and not veered away from it. In spite of Enterprise's myriad retcons and continuity errors.

We're supposed to believe all that 22nd century stuff was simply never mentioned in any of the previous series and movies (with a few exceptions, like "Archer IV" metioned in "Yeterday's Enterprise", one of the planets that would eventually be named after him as per the Defiant's database in "In a Mirror, Darkly" and some of the species Archer met in early episodes, which were mentioned but never seen in prior Treks)

 

[Oso Blanco]

The TNG part of TATV and The Pegasus MUST be different timelines ... apart from Deannas different hairdo, the events as they are pictured in those two episodes just don't add up!

And In A Mirror Darkly was a mirror universe episode that crossed into a parallel universe, which may or my not have been the one we saw in TOS.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The TNG part of TATV and The Pegasus MUST be different timelines ... apart from Deannas different hairdo, the events as they are pictured in those two episodes just don't add up!

Nah, just a combination of visits to the hairdresser and shitty writing.

And In A Mirror Darkly was a mirror universe episode that crossed into a parallel universe, which may or my not have been the one we saw in TOS.

Right down to the poses of the captain and first officer, with the captain's neck broken, exactly as seen in "The Tholian Web"?

 

[jpch]

Well for me that episode is really good,i enjoyed it. tho i try to enjoy every series without mixing continuity with the others,nonetheless i still found the more advanced borg kinda weak vs the old enterprise...anyway who cares it was a cool episode and very entertaining.

 

[Broccoli]

I liked the episode a lot.

As for whether or not it was classified...yep, governments never cover-up or classify things they feel the public shouldn't know about.

Example: Area 51. Completely open to the public and daily news reports are written of what goes down there. No secrets whatsoever. Also, SEAL Team 6. I hung out with those guys last night since they are public celebrities on the covers off all the magazines. Amiright?

Seriously though, it makes sense that it could have been covered up or kept classified at a high level. If anything, it corrects an error Voyager introduced with Seven's parents following the Borg some ten years before the events of "Q Who?".

Thing I don't quite understand is why some are so adamant that it couldn't have been classified.

 

[BillJ]

Thing I don't quite understand is why some are so adamant that it couldn't have been classified.

Because the Federation *gasp* would never do anything like that!

 

[RAMA]

One of the best Borg episodes without a doubt, I don't think it made huge changes in the timeline, a lot of probs can be explained away. Fantastic FX and production overall.

RAMA