The Borg were already known to Starfleet for 100 years

[Tiberius]

Why does Regeneration negate the events of Q Who? After all, they even stated in Regeneration that it would be about two hundred years before the Borg sent another ship.

-Q says Borg are neither male or female.
-Q says they are unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced.

I take that to mean that gender plays no part in Borg existence.

And Q said FEDERATION. Archer wasn't a Federation citizen. it didn't exist back then.

Anyway, this is Q we're talking about.

ENT establishes a method of defeating the Borg.
With that knowledge the Enterprise D could have formed an effective defense. NX-01 had sensor records of it's abilities to regenerate, modify and alter technology as well as the ability to defeat their personal shields.

And what was that method? Hope like hell they are in a weak ship? How is Archer blowing up a partially assimilated scoutship going to help two hundred years later when someone needs to blow up a fully functional Cube?

If all this information was simply classifed somewhere (which is unlikely) then Picard or Data would have had access to it. That's why the assertion that Star Fleet classified the information against their own Officers is rather absurd. In tantamount to simply erasing the data because if a Captain exploring the Federation frontier can't pull up the information on similar encounters then they are neutralizing their Starships ability for threat assessment and first response.

Why is it unlikely that Picard and Data wouldn't have been able to pull the records of Archer's encounter? Do you think a captain in the navy today has easy access to records of classified events two centuries ago?

That was the context of the Omega Particle. Sensor detected a classifed and dangerous threat and the Captain is informed directly. That didn't occur with the Borg so it wasn't simply classified or forgotten...it's a continuity error. They happen a lot in Trek and especially ENTERPRISE.

And how much about omega do you think captains actually know? probably "If you detect this, call the specialists and don't ask questions." The only reason janeway probably knew is because she had to go digging around because there were no specialists available.

I try not lean toward interpretations.
But Troi specifically says that they are hearing the collective minds of THEM ALL. A Hive Mind perhaps but definitely not a single individual who states "I AM THE BORG" So this isn't a collective consciousness, she orders the borg, they don't have free will. Once the Queen is introduced it isn't a collective of minds it's ALL MIND CONTROL SYSTEM.

In "I, Borg", Picard clearly states that the Borg Collective is one single organism. And he would know better than Deanna, yes?

At least with the Former concept of the Collective introduced in BoBW these Collective Minds could exert force on individuals to conform BUT as we saw, Picard was able to resist it which means that Control wasn't absolute.

Huh? Where was this?

I think he meant the Prime Directive was to prevent the less advanced race from commiting suicide when they find out about the Federation.

Why would a race of people commit mass suicide?
Where is this shown in the Prime Directive?
Where is this shown in Homefront

I was just explaining. I never said I agreed with it. A pre warp civilisation became aware of aliens in "Who Watches the Watchers" and there was no mass suicide...

Malcolms efforts could have helped Worf
Phlox's efforts could have helped Crusher...but then that' another continuity error. Crusher didn't have to deal with "NANOPROBES"

Yeah, give Worf the ability to make weapons the Borg had adapted to two hundred years eariler.

And how do you know that the radiation levels that cured Phlox wouldn't have killed a Human?

Here is my theory:

<<snip for brevity>>

I wrote a fanfiction along those very lines!

I like how everyone in this argument forgets Data and Guinan. Data would know, he could connect the dots easily. And Starfleet databanks know that Guinan fled from Borg and was rescued by the Enterprise B. It's the mission on which James T. Kirk died, for crying out loud!

Data can only cross reference data that he has access to. If it is all classified, then how can he cross reference it?

And How do you know that the El-Aurians blabbed about the Borg? And even if they did, Starfleet probably hushed it up, made them all sign non disclosure forms or whatever. Guinan might have only mentioned them because they were looking at the business end of a Cube in Q Who.

 

[JarodRussell]

Yeah, if you postulate that Starfleet covered it up and made people who knew about the Borg sign non disclosure agreements, then yeah, nobody could have known about it.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Yeah, if you postulate that Starfleet covered it up and made people who knew about the Borg sign non disclosure agreements, then yeah, nobody could have known about it.

And what part of this is even mildly difficult?

Classiffy the data. Maybe even conduct a classified research project.
The only ones who knew about it were military - not civilians - sworn to secrecy. Order them to keep this this data secret - much like any other classified piece of information they're aware of.

 

[JarodRussell]

And why would anyone want to do that?

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Why do the secret services classify everything they can?
Partly, due to national security. Partly, because that's what they do, ~it's procedure.

In the case of a federation which believes that any weaker/inferior civilization learning about the existence of a stronger/superior culture will result in mass-suicide/etc/extinction for the weaker civilization (see TNG: Homeward) - starfleet intelligence will actually have a reason, resultant from their ideology, for classifying the existence of a far superior and highly aggressive power - near-unstoppable space vampires/the borg.

That's far more than today's intelligence agencies can claim as a reason for their own classifying fetish.

This isn't even the first instance of the Federation classifying something it deems dangerous: Talos, Genesis planet, TNG:Skin of evil planet, etc.

 

[JarodRussell]

Haha, mass suicide because of the Borg!

And yeah, classifying the Borg threat in order to ensure national security makes sense.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Haha, mass suicide because of the Borg!

Watch TNG:'Homeward'.
Picard - also called Federation ideology&co - would defend this notion to his dying breath.

And yeah, classifying the Borg threat in order to ensure national security makes sense.

In the discussed case, this notion makes a lot more sense than in some cases when today's security services actually classified stuff.

 

[JarodRussell]

Watch TNG:'Homeward'.

A religious pre-warp civilization that doesn't even know about aliens. Totally comparable to, let's say, Federation citizens.

 

[USS Excelsior]

There was also that Starfleet vessel that was assimilated in 2362, where one the assimilated manifested herself in Seven's head.

 

[Saquist]

I take that to mean that gender plays no part in Borg existence.

I take it to mean there was no male or females.

And Q said FEDERATION. Archer wasn't a Federation citizen. it didn't exist back then.

I personally refuse to believe that Q in all his arrogance was attempting to spin around government titles for the sake of a technicality. Especially in how he says "YOUR FEDERATION". He doesn't have respect for what they've put together, to a god like being what is the difference between one government to the next. I know this reasoning will fall on deaf ears but really. We're talking Star Fleet records.

Why is it unlikely that Picard and Data wouldn't have been able to pull the records of Archer's encounter? Do you think a captain in the navy today has easy access to records of classified events two centuries ago?

Todays Navy is irrelevant.
They proved they could pull records instantly whether classified or not in the 24 century going back at least 400 years.

And how much about omega do you think captains actually know? probably "If you detect this, call the specialists and don't ask questions." The only reason janeway probably knew is because she had to go digging around because there were no specialists available.

I don't have to speculate on this.
The example serves as the contradiction I presented it as.
No bit of speculation is equal to direct counter examples.

In "I, Borg", Picard clearly states that the Borg Collective is one single organism. And he would know better than Deanna, yes?

She's a EMPATH....hello. If she can hear all their minds that is as good as Picard's experience. Even Crusher agree with Picard's statement by saying they couldn't sever contact with Picard because it would be like severing an arm or a leg. Both are statements of their Unity...

Huh? Where was this?

Best of Both Worlds part two
Crusher says. "It's Picard himself that's made contact" Nothing they did got through to Picard. He did it himself.
Remeber with all the other Borg encountters like Hugh and Seven, the Borg had to be severed from the collective. With Picard that was not the case. They needed that connection to stop the cube. He out willed the Borg.

I was just explaining. I never said I agreed with it. A pre warp civilisation became aware of aliens in "Who Watches the Watchers" and there was no mass suicide...

Indeed.

Yeah, give Worf the ability to make weapons the Borg had adapted to two hundred years eariler.

These were 24th century borg...later than those Picard first encountered. Indeed their readings would have given Worf or Data a baseline for defeating the Borg Magnetic field...just Shelby figured out from their previous encounter.

And how do you know that the radiation levels that cured Phlox wouldn't have killed a Human?

It's not about the treatment it's about the data.
Nanoprobes didn't even exist for the BoBW Borg. Crusher didn't have to defeat Nanoprobes to bring Picard back.

And the idea of introducing Nanites in I Borg would be senseless if you didn't account for the Nanoprobe defense.



I

 

[Timo]

They proved they could pull records instantly whether classified or not in the 24 century going back at least 400 years.

Where? What records? And mind you, only classified ones would be relevant here. I can pull out a 400 year old novel just as easily as Picard can get the text for Hotel Royale, but I can't easily access military records even from the Napoleonic Wars, let alone from newer (more classified) or older (more distant and obscure) events.

As for knowing technical details about the Borg, that has never been of any aid to any of our heroes, and by definition cannot be. With the Borg, technical details are in constant flux. What one needs is an insider with realtime access to Borg dealings; without that, the only thing "Borg data" will achieve is crude replicating of their achievements, such as transwarp drive.

Of course, if 22nd century folks archived Borg data with the intent of helping out their future counterparts against the adversary, they wouldn't yet realize that their work was meaningless, so they wouldn't hesitate from doing it. But real-world precedent is almost uniform in that military secrets would be inaccessible even within said military, except in specific circumstances where one knows what one is looking for and has the authority to get it. Trek precedent is almost uniform, too: our heroes are always encountering exotic phenomena "for the first time" after their counterparts from the other spinoffs duly filed their reports on similar phenomena. There really isn't any pressing reason to think that the Borg would be handled differently from all the rest.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

This might, might, go a little ways towards explaining Kirk's and Spock's surprise at discovering that Romulans had cloaking technology.

Doesn't change the fact that the writing was sloppy as all hell, but at least there's a tiny sliver of hope for salvaging an almost hopeless continuity issue.

 

[Hound of UIster]

The dominion were also aware of the Federation.

Not surprising that the only people out of the loop were the Federation.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I would almost say the hell with it, Section 31 removed the data from the records...

 

[Captain Robert April]

There ya go...

 

[Saquist]

Section 31 can't be behind every discrepancy in the time line. This is just a screw up. Plain and simple.

 

[Kaziarl]

So they knew about a cybernetic race long before they officially listed the term "Borg" in the Federation Database. Big deal, they've met other cybernetic races too. For all Archer knew, they could have been Bynars. I know that's a stretch since the Bynar are not aggressive, or don't seem to be anyway. But on their first meeting, seeing a piece of technology in the side of each of their heads, the question could have easily come up.

And there really was no reason for Picard and Co to look through 200 year old records. I don't look up someone's genealogy every time I meet someone new, and I certainly don't look up records for them in my home town if I meet them in another part of the world. It's pointless.

 

[Magellan]

There really wasn't that much information collected in this episode. An aggressive cybernetic race. I find it hard to believe that the Federation never encountered a cyborg race until the borg.In fact there may be other races that look pretty much just like the borg. The hive mind is the really distinguishing feature and Ent didn't really dive into that. There biology is pretty basic humanoid. It's entirely possible that these records were around and available, but nobody on the Enterprise D said "hey this reminds me of some 200 year old mission file I was reading." After all, I might dismiss them as being the same race without a lot of research into it. The borg were scary in ENT but this wasn't a cube. The NX-01 was pretty successful in taking out arctic one so the cyborgs of the 2150s were probably listed as hostile and dangerous but then just sorta fell off the radar as the never reappeared fro 200 years.

Alternatively Enterprise is an alternate timeline and the Zefram Cochrane of the OT never gave any speeches about cyborgs, and they were never encountered until the 2360s. Either way works for me.

 

[Gil T.Azell]

So I've just been watching Enterprise for the first time. It seems to me a massive continuity error that Enterprise encountered the Borg over 100 years before the supposed first contact by Picard's crew in TNG. Why didn't Starfleet know all about the Borg from Archer's encounter with them? Don't tell me if it's revealed later in the series, but it seems like a big continuity error to me. It also seems to go against the spirit of what was shown in TNG, since it was portrayed as first contact.

They never identified them selfs As the BORG during Archer's encounter with them, but that encounter was probably what Admiral JP Hanson was referring to when he said " The truth is, hell, we are not ready. We've known they were coming for over a year."

 

[Nerys Myk]

Section 31 can't be behind every discrepancy in the time line. This is just a screw up. Plain and simple.

Nah, it just mean the writers changed the backstory to tell the story they wanted to tell.

To "screw up" they'd have to unaware of the previous episodes rather than just deliberately ignore them. Which seems unlikely. They just aren't as OCD and A/R as many fans are. Story means more than continuity.