Why was the Federation retconned into having Knowledge of the Borg before Q Who?

Q is deeply narcissitic, nostalgic and emotionally clingy so...yeah.

 

The Hansen's having knowledge of the Borg, what they looked like and what their ships looked like (remember young Seven had a borg cube toy), does bring up all kinds of questions of what Starfleet knew and why they didn't adequately prepare for contact with them.

Remember, the Sovereign, Defiant, Prometheus and Intrepid class ships were all designed after Q Who. While the literal "mall in space" Galaxy class were shipped out 2 years prior to humanity's first contact with the Borg. With 1200 crew and family members. All the while, we are supposed to believe the Feddies had knowledge of Borg in Alpha and Beta Quadrants from the tail end of Kirk's era; due to El Aurian refugees.

Just like that unseen Feddie vs Cardassian war (mentioned in TNG season 4), that was said to occur before Encounter At Farpoint We also have season 1 and 2 Picard saying that Starfleet is not a military. The retroactive additions and changes to the Borg into the Trek timeline prior to their debut in Q Who don't fit.

TPTB also dropped the ball with the El Aurians in Star Trek GEN. Braga and Moore never did quite nail down what Guinan's powers were and how she planned to fight Q back in Q Who. During the show it was ok to be ambiguous and vague about her and the nature of her people. But when it was time to commit to a single idea, they waifed.

And people wonder why NuBSG and Enterprise's Temporal Cold War fell apart in the execution.

 

It is okay for the Borg to know about humans, it fits perfectly with the idea that the Borg were coming no matter what, and that Q made an early introduction. So, no matter what, Wolf 359 was going to happen, but thanks to Q, Starfleet had a chance to come up with adaptive phaser frequency switching, and turning the deflector into a graviton gun.

By TNG, Starfleet seems so dead set on the idea that the universe is peaceful, and war is obsolete, that they have thoroughly deluded themselves. So, like with the Cardassians, they probably see it more as a mental exercise they can handle with little loss to themselves, and little application of force. They don't even call the war with the Cardassians a war, but a border conflict. The Borg, despite there being some knowledge about them, are also a vaguely defined species by the time the Hansens leave Federation space. They follow after them with enthusiasm, rather than fear.

It is not until Wolf 359 that reality sinks in, but some people were already on top of things thanks to "Q Who" as shown by some of the ideas used in "The Best of Both Worlds."

 

So the Borg "retconned" when the 1994 movie, "Star Trek Generations" revealed that Kirk and the Enterprise crew had rescued two the El Aurian ships (which included Guinan) that had just fled from the Borg. I forgot about that. Which meant that the Federation and Starfleet had first learned about the Borg from the El Aurians in the 2290s. Hmmm . . .

 

It's been a while since I've seen generations but did they specifically say Borg? I know that it was borg but did they tell people at the time that it was borg?

It could be that they told a few people and it became more of a legend that many people didn't believe...except for some people like the Hansons

 

Crusher said it was the Borg, the flashback portions at the start only refer to them as refugees, IIRC.

 

I reckon they only went into space in the first place to prove the earth was flat.

 

Right on.

Makes you wonder if all those crooked Admirals in TNG and DS9 had been red pilled to the truth about the real situation about the Galaxy.

Also make you wonder, what pacified Starfleet from the end of Kirk's days, to the early days of the Next Generation. Starfleet was all but set to wage full scale war on the Klingon empire in TUC.

 

Extended periods of peace and prosperity will usually do the trick.

 

Hehehe

So Starfleet/Feddies drank their own Kool-Aid and believed their own hype about how mankind had evolved beyond the negative aspects of humanity.
Just like their creator, Gene.

Makes about as much sense as anything else.

 

I don't remember the details of the Hansens very well, but it felt to me more like the Vinland Sagas, in which something of the Western Hemisphere was known to Europeans, but not its enormity. There was something out there, but its importance was either unclear or not established.

When it comes to the introduction of new species, I tend to give the writers some slack. They want the audience to feel surprised by what the new species is like and what it can do, thus those emotions should be mirrored in the crew.

 

I believe...or just assumed...that the Hansons were going off of rumors of cybernetic beings. There were stories and rumors about Borg going back as far as Zefram Chocrane...and I know inspelled his name wrong

 

It is a bit different than that, Picard and Riker are actually the the outliers, since all the admirals seem to be more militarily focused. Remember, the combat training was something ordered by the admiralty, which Picard and Riker were forced into. That can be taken a few ways, but it means combat capability has not been forgotten even in that peaceful state, and shows Riker as an extreme since, I believes, he objects to the exercise while Picard is willing to go along. That is with 50 solid years of utter peace, broken only by the Cardassian conflict which they committed to just enough to stalemate the Cardassians.

Imagine after the fall of the Berlin Wall the US avoids every conflict we actually got into. No Gulf War, no Balkans, no Gulf the Sequel, only cruise missiles and special ops for Afghanistan, and the rest is all humanitarian hurricane relief. Training for the Asiatic Navy would likely be in a worse state, and the budget smaller. Starfleet gets around some of that by always having had a science focus first, which is sensible given the mad physics of their universe.

The handling of the Cardassian war actually speaks well for Starfleet military strength considering they barely commited themselves to fight, while the Cardassians had to commit absolutely everything and pretty much broke themselves to get what they got. So, despite Picard and Riker thinking combat obsolete, and a curious mental exercise, there had to be at least somewhat decent training, and military minded flag officers, engineers, and scientists, keeping things competent. We frequently see in Picard's period the admirals all tend to be more militarily focused than Picard, making him the outlier.

 

Lazy writing.

 

Section 31 knew about the Borg. They got hold of all of the information in Crewman Daniels' quarters on the NX-01. Starfleet (except key personnel that were also in Section 31) were kept in the dark because Section 31 already knew that things would work out and didn't want to risk screwing things up by interfering. But for all we know, they're the ones that sent the Hansens - either to gather additional intel on the Borg, or, because S31 knew their daughter had to be there for events on Voyager to unfold as needed.

More like the Columbia being the Borg.