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.
The Borg were already known to Starfleet for 100 years
- Thread starter jimoinj
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Voyager's "Dark Frontier" makes it clear that the Borg were known about before "Q Who?"; the Hansens went on their mission to study the Borg before Q sent the Enterprise-D to system J-25.
With the evidence of "Regeneration" in the 22nd-century and Star Trek: Generations (the El-Aurian refugees fleeing the Borg in 2293), it's clear that some people knew of the Borg. We also know ("The Neutral Zone") that the Romulans were dealing with the Borg during their time off the galactic stage. Starfleet Intelligence as early as Captain Sulu's time may well have had threat assessments prepared on the Borg. The question becomes, why didn't the knowledge of the Borg filter down to the frontline captains?
Would that knowledge even have made a difference? I tend to doubt it.
I don't see "Regeneration" as being impossible to reconcile against "Q Who?" The events in System J-25 are clearly the first "official" first contact with the Borg. It's the one that couldn't be covered up or swept under the rug. Just as Columbus makes the first official contact between Old World and New, when Europeans had been traveling to North America semi-regularly for at least half a millennium.
With the evidence of "Regeneration" in the 22nd-century and Star Trek: Generations (the El-Aurian refugees fleeing the Borg in 2293), it's clear that some people knew of the Borg. We also know ("The Neutral Zone") that the Romulans were dealing with the Borg during their time off the galactic stage. Starfleet Intelligence as early as Captain Sulu's time may well have had threat assessments prepared on the Borg. The question becomes, why didn't the knowledge of the Borg filter down to the frontline captains?
Would that knowledge even have made a difference? I tend to doubt it.
I don't see "Regeneration" as being impossible to reconcile against "Q Who?" The events in System J-25 are clearly the first "official" first contact with the Borg. It's the one that couldn't be covered up or swept under the rug. Just as Columbus makes the first official contact between Old World and New, when Europeans had been traveling to North America semi-regularly for at least half a millennium.
The problem with that is, the Hansens were generally considered off the deep end, so to speak, by their fellow scientists and had to pursue the Borg on their own. I'd agree that "Dark Frontier"'s portrayal of them having some advanced knowledge actually isn't too bad, but did slip in some areas (i.e. having a rather perfect model of a Borg cube Annika plays with, long before they actually encounter the Collective).
I do however think it was a mistake to put the Borg in ENT, and it was poorly handled at that. YMMV.
I tend to think they should have probably avoided the Klingons too. 
I do however think it was a mistake to put the Borg in ENT, and it was poorly handled at that. YMMV.
I tend to think they should have probably avoided the Klingons too. I like how the writers made it into one big temporal loop. Picard started it all by blowing up the sphere lol.
My take on it is this:
- Picard blows up the sphere, and the debris falls from orbit into the Arctic.
- 100 years later, this debris is found, and the events in Regeneration take place. Archer suspects it could be the Borg that Cochrane mentioned, but obviously doesn't know for sure.
- A few years before TNG/DS9/Voyager era, Starfleet has rumours of the Borg, perhaps from intelligence, or the first hand knowledge of other species. Perhaps not enough to send a general warning through Starfleet. Maybe only a few top brass at Starfleet Command or top politicians like the President know of it. The Hansens are sent out to investigate, but obviously are never heard of again.
- In QWho, this is the official first contact, when the Federation has full knowledge of the Borg.
- The Best of Both Worlds, First Contact and Voyager play out, leading to Picard destroying the sphere in the 21st century
My take on it is this:
- Picard blows up the sphere, and the debris falls from orbit into the Arctic.
- 100 years later, this debris is found, and the events in Regeneration take place. Archer suspects it could be the Borg that Cochrane mentioned, but obviously doesn't know for sure.
- A few years before TNG/DS9/Voyager era, Starfleet has rumours of the Borg, perhaps from intelligence, or the first hand knowledge of other species. Perhaps not enough to send a general warning through Starfleet. Maybe only a few top brass at Starfleet Command or top politicians like the President know of it. The Hansens are sent out to investigate, but obviously are never heard of again.
- In QWho, this is the official first contact, when the Federation has full knowledge of the Borg.
- The Best of Both Worlds, First Contact and Voyager play out, leading to Picard destroying the sphere in the 21st century
You've got the right idea, here's my version:
Picard blows up the sphere
Archer encounters the Borg and the Borg send a message to the delta quadrant before they are destroyed
The Borg send a few scouting missions in the direction of the alpha quadrant
The El Aurian homeword is destroyed by the borg, El aurian refugees inform Starfleet of what happened. Starfleet keeps this information classified.
After a few decades enough information has leaked out that the Hansens decide to investigate
The Borg reach Romulan space
The Enterprise D is thrown by Q and has official first contact with the Borg
The Borg go back in time to the 21st century.
Picard blows up the sphere
Archer encounters the Borg and the Borg send a message to the delta quadrant before they are destroyed
The Borg send a few scouting missions in the direction of the alpha quadrant
The El Aurian homeword is destroyed by the borg, El aurian refugees inform Starfleet of what happened. Starfleet keeps this information classified.
After a few decades enough information has leaked out that the Hansens decide to investigate
The Borg reach Romulan space
The Enterprise D is thrown by Q and has official first contact with the Borg
The Borg go back in time to the 21st century.
Saquist
Commodore
It is a continuity error...This all should have been an episode that undid itself because it suggest that the events in Q-who now never happened.
The point of Q showing them the Borg was to introduce them to forces beyond their knowledge. Q may no know everything but I'm sure he would have known if Star Fleet had encountered the Borg Before...
Otherwise it's just a flop of a revelation.
It's not a continuity error.
Having bits of knowledge about a potential enemy is a wholly different animal than having them on your doorstep and dealing with them on an ongoing basis.
I tend to think Starfleet swept the events of Regeneration under the rug. The last thing a fledgling space exploration program needs is the knowledge of cybernetic vampires becoming public.
And don't forget that the events of First Contact/Regeneration/Dark Frontier are a direct result of Q introducing the Borg in Q, Who?. Sometimes 'cause and effect' can seem like 'effect and cause' in the Trek universe.
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At least The Borg were scary as hell in "Regeneration" once again, not the bumbling clowns of "Voyager." Best of all, no Queen!
As stated in the Voyager forum, I'd have been fine with no Borg ever in "Voyager" and their ending with TBOBW. However, the Borg of "Regeneration" were much closer in attitude to the Borg of "Q Who" and "TBOBW," when they were at their most terrifying.
As stated in the Voyager forum, I'd have been fine with no Borg ever in "Voyager" and their ending with TBOBW. However, the Borg of "Regeneration" were much closer in attitude to the Borg of "Q Who" and "TBOBW," when they were at their most terrifying.
Agreed.
But what most likely happened is that SF actually had limited data on who the cybermen were... at least in the days of Zefram Cochrane an Archer.
This limited info wouldn't really give SF much to go on.
At least, not until the late 23rd century when the Al-Urians fled to the Federation.
SF started piecing together a THEORY on what the Borg could be, but since the only 'real' encounter they had was the one from 'Regeneration' and of what Cochrane said (remember that they never took him seriously due to excessive drinking), it was limited.
The Hansens were able to piece more data together before leaving due to their unconventional approach, and while it might have been a SF mission at first, they broke away from their ties pretty fast.
Even in the 22nd century, boomers were aware of species that SF captains and their respective crews weren't.
I would surmise that since limited info on the cybermen was gathered, the data in question and the 'Borg' were officially a theory, it was either not publicly available, limited to selected personnel, or just plain available to everybody with no one bothering to look it up or was able to piece it together.
So it's not really surprising that no one on the Enterprise-D (apart from Guinan) knew of the Borg.
Besides, the very nature of the collective and just how powerful they were would still remain a mystery to SF by the events of Q Who.
So Q's introduction of the Borg wars not really diminished because no one on the Enterprise-D was able to piece those together.
Besides, they would probably start piecing info together after the initial introduction, or until events of FC happened/passed.
Also, it's possible that Picard or someone on the
Enterprise-E during FC events studied data that SF had available, pieced it all together and figured it would be best to leave pieces of the destroyed Sphere on Earth.
The Borg never identified themselves in "Regeneration," and we don't know what might have happened to the United Earth Starfleet's or the NX-01's computer databases during the Earth-Romulan War. It's entirely possible that there was no effort made to cover up the whole incident up, but that all data on it was lost as a result of damage/sabotage/whatever to the UESF's computers during the war.
Wouldn't be the first time files have disappeared.
Wouldn't be the first time files have disappeared.
Saquist
Commodore
I liked "Regeneration" and personally view it as creating no continuity problems with the rest of Trek. As Sci points out, the Borg never identified themselves (I almost recall that they actually did identify themselves, but the beginning of their message was garbled when it was received by Enterprise). The evidence of their presence in the Arctic and escape was fragmentary at best. Not sure how anyone would connect the dots before TNG incidents.
I thought it was a clever concept and agree with others here that it was great to see scary Borg again.
I also appreciated the set-up of the episode as a homage to the events of "The Thing from Outer Space".
I thought it was a clever concept and agree with others here that it was great to see scary Borg again.
I also appreciated the set-up of the episode as a homage to the events of "The Thing from Outer Space".
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
"Regeneration" is an certainly an above average episode.
About starfleet 'forgetting' about the cybernetic zombies - I find this absurd, especially considering the amount of evidence gathered during the episode: from the remnants of the sphere to detailed scans of borg drones to 2 drones floating in space.
Then there was the information the el'aurians brought with them.
Starfleet intelligence most likely classified all this information, considering it won't be relevant for some time to come.
Such an action is consistent with Federation philosophy - a Federation that believs showing itself to less technologically advanced species will lead to the mass suicide of this species should have no problem believing that making known the existence of a more powerful force (the borg/near-unstoppable cybernetic zombies) to its own people will lead to mass suicide and extinction in its midst.
That does not mean there were no investigations into this potential threat - the Hansens had military grade tech; I doubt civilians could normally get their hands on that runabout, considering runabouts only entered general starfleet use by the time of DS9, season 1.
The 'first contact' in 'Q, who' came earlier than expected, taking starfleet intelligence by surprise.
About starfleet 'forgetting' about the cybernetic zombies - I find this absurd, especially considering the amount of evidence gathered during the episode: from the remnants of the sphere to detailed scans of borg drones to 2 drones floating in space.
Then there was the information the el'aurians brought with them.
Starfleet intelligence most likely classified all this information, considering it won't be relevant for some time to come.
Such an action is consistent with Federation philosophy - a Federation that believs showing itself to less technologically advanced species will lead to the mass suicide of this species should have no problem believing that making known the existence of a more powerful force (the borg/near-unstoppable cybernetic zombies) to its own people will lead to mass suicide and extinction in its midst.
That does not mean there were no investigations into this potential threat - the Hansens had military grade tech; I doubt civilians could normally get their hands on that runabout, considering runabouts only entered general starfleet use by the time of DS9, season 1.
The 'first contact' in 'Q, who' came earlier than expected, taking starfleet intelligence by surprise.
They do when two hundred years pass between encounters and there's nobody left alive who encountered them the first time. And that's assuming that any records of the Borg encounter of 2153 survived to the 24th Century.
You'd be the cop that holds up Michael Jordan because he doesn't have his license at the air port wouldn't you?
If he doesn't have his license, he's broken the rules. Why should he get special treatment?
But that's really not the issue. The issue is how information gets stored, retrieved, and recalled centuries after the fact.
Frankly, to me, that just makes it all the more plausible. If the UE Starfleet, and then the Federation Starfleet, have both been gathering similar amounts of data during all of their missions for over two hundred years -- plus similar amounts of data from the Federation Starfleet's Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite predecessors -- that means that it's eminently plausible that an incident like the one in "Regeneration" could get lost or forgotten simply by virtue of there being so much information that gets processed and filed all the time.
Anyone who's ever worked in an office that records every damn thing on paper should recognize that phenomenon: Important information getting lost because too much information gets recorded. And that's a problem that an organization can experience in the short term. It becomes all the more plausible when you had two hundred years, the deaths of all living participants, and the possibility that not all computer systems and files survived a catastrophic war.
I think it's far more likely that the Hansens were acting on stories brought to the Federation by the El Aurian refugees in the 2290s than that they were acting on two-hundred-year-old United Earth Starfleet records.
Since there's time travel involved, there's no contradiction.
In Q Who? the Enterprise-D was the first Federation vessel to encounter the Borg and live to tell (the Hansens and Neutral Zone outposts had previous contact, but didn't get to report).
Then in First Contact, the Borg left wreckage on 21st Century Earth, which created a new timeline in which Starfleet encountered the Borg even before the formation of the Federation. Presumably in this timeline the events of Q Who? happened differently, but we never see it.
I find it hard to believe that Starfleet doesn't store its' data in a de-centralized manner. It improves the chances that the data survives in the case of a catastrophic equipment malfunction or destruction. Its' not like computing is new to them. Humanity will have been dealing with hard drive failures and corrupted data for nearly two hundred years in 2156.
Its' just easier to believe that Starfleet Intelligence/Section 31 buried the data.
Saquist
Commodore
No, sir. That is extremely unlikely especially in the modern age. You sorely underestimate society and it's persistent standard for record keeping that goes back for many millennium and whose standards have risen exponentially with the rise of technology. Information now is fantastically redundant. Your beliefs are you own of course but I find it markedly insensible.
The answer to your question and the answer in the situation is the answer to the purpose of asking for identification. And it's a common sense answer.
It's also the answer that anyone in customer service could easily answer but that one stubborn in his own authority could not.
But if you actually knew that, then most assuredly you would not be making these assertions.
ProtoAvatar
Fleet Captain
Have you ever tried database management?
Or google, Sci?
Starfleet intelligence is not a person looking through computer files, it's a lot of intelligent people assessing potential threats - and the federation encountered very few species as advanced and agressive as the borg - that alone would keep open an ongoing investigation regarding these cyborg vampires.
Paper?
We're talking about computer storage, highly redundant aka many copies on multiple worlds, ships, etc.
Do you know how redundant information is stored even today?
Actually, the likeliest explanation is that the Hansens had access to both starfleet intelligence information and el'aurian stories, given how detailed their information on the borg was.
And a decidedly state of the art runabout is not just given to 2 lunatic scientists, unless someone - like starfleet intelligence - supports them from the shadows.
To be sure, it would be impossible to do a computer search on military records today - least of all military records from two centuries ago. Regardless of whether those records were digitized or not.
One of the primary purposes of record-keeping is to prevent information from reaching those not entitled to it. This goes double for military records. So I'd still think odds are that only a careful analysis by a dedicated historian who had exceptional access and serendipity on his or her side would allow tidbit X from UESF records of the 2150s to see the light of day in the 2350s.
It may have happened to the Hansens. Or then they had less than that, possibly much less. The idea that they would operate a "state of the art vessel" is unsupported, because the concept of spacecraft available to the layman has been part and parcel of Star Trek from the very first aired season on.
Oh, and on the Hansens having a detailed scale model of a Borg cube... I actually find it more likely that they would have this than that they would know the Borg are a collective intelligence. Any fool could take a visual snapshot of a mysterious ship they see at a survivable distance. Only very few would find out who fly those ships and what their culture is like, and survive to tell the tale.
Timo Saloniemi
One of the primary purposes of record-keeping is to prevent information from reaching those not entitled to it. This goes double for military records. So I'd still think odds are that only a careful analysis by a dedicated historian who had exceptional access and serendipity on his or her side would allow tidbit X from UESF records of the 2150s to see the light of day in the 2350s.
It may have happened to the Hansens. Or then they had less than that, possibly much less. The idea that they would operate a "state of the art vessel" is unsupported, because the concept of spacecraft available to the layman has been part and parcel of Star Trek from the very first aired season on.
Oh, and on the Hansens having a detailed scale model of a Borg cube... I actually find it more likely that they would have this than that they would know the Borg are a collective intelligence. Any fool could take a visual snapshot of a mysterious ship they see at a survivable distance. Only very few would find out who fly those ships and what their culture is like, and survive to tell the tale.
Timo Saloniemi
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