The Problem With Commander Shelby. Maybe Ask Section 31?

By Owen Quinn author

I love The Best Of Both Worlds, Star Trek The Next Generation’s season three finale. It is simply stunning with a cliffhanger that still thrills to this day.

Quick refresh: the cybernetic species from the Delta Quadrant, The Borg, we met in the episode Q Who? are back to assimilate The Federation. They kidnap Picard to speak for them to prepare the human race for their upcoming assimilation. They convert him into Locutus of Borg, a bridge between species. The first episode ends on a dazzling cliffhanger where Riker must kill Picard to save everyone.

“Mister Worf. Fire!” are words that have gone down in television history before the screen goes black and we have to wait for the new series to see what happens next.

The second half is weaker due to several things, the least of which is the mysterious disappearing of Locutus’ personal forcefield that prevented Word from rescuing his captain in the first episode.

But all these years, every time I watch it I have a problem with it. it doesn’t take away my enjoyment of it but when a certain character goes into Riker’s face, I feel like shouting out “Who the hell are you strolling in here and slabbering?”

How the hell is Commander Shelby an expert on the Borg?

Commander Shelby played by Elizabeth Dennehy is brought in to assist the crew of the Enterprise as an expert in the Borg. But she is determined to take Riker’s place as the first officer of the Enterprise and will do whatever it takes to ensure Riker is removed. So how exactly is she decreed a Borg expert by Admiral Hansen and Starfleet itself?

It makes no sense at all. The Enterprise crew are the only ones who have fought and survived the Borg; albeit with Q’s help. Riker, Word and Data were up close and personal with the Borg on the cube. Guinan’s people fled the Borg, being scattered all over the galaxy. So are we, as an audience, expected to believe that Shelby, just by studying the Enterprise logs was able to unravel the secrets of the Federation’s newest and most deadly enemies? Yeah it makes no sense whatsoever of course unless…Shelby is in fact part of Section 31.

Here’s a theory on how to plug this massive plothole.

In Enterprise, Captain Archer and crew are sent after a revived set of Borg from the wreckage of the Borg sphere that went back in First Contact to stop Zephram Cochrane’s warp test flight which attracts the Vulcans setting in motion the Federation. At the end of that movie, the Borg sphere was destroyed in a massive explosion but as we now find wreckage fell to Earth in the Artic.

Now the Borg leave behind a lot of evidence of their existence which given the Federation has 200 years before The Best of Both Worlds Happens, gives them plenty of time to study and understand Borg technology. Malcolm Reid gives Doctor Phlox a Borg arm to study to discover the yield of the weapon. Dr Phlox studies the nano-probes that these cyborgs use to transform other species to be like them. Such is his results, he comes up with a way to destroy them with large doses of omicron radiation. He is aware of the hive mind and knows that a signal was sent to the Delta Quadrant telling others of its kind where Earth was. Archer believes they have delayed the invasion until the 24th century which is true.

Add to that we have the information the crew gathered on the adaptive shields, the fact they have a phaser frequency that did stop the invaders all be it momentarily. The Doctor also has the scans of the altered Tarkaleans they rescued.

Add to that Archer reveals to T’Pol that Zephram Cochrane told of the real story behind First Contact that a race of cyborgs from the future came back to stop his historic flight and how a band of human, also from the future, defeated them. He was not believed and he later retracted the story. As a side note, perhaps the Vulcans were right about humanity after all. If they can openly ridicule their greatest hero then they don’t deserve to be out among new species.

The appearance of this strange race clearly confirms that Cochrane was telling the truth so you’d think that Starfleet would recognise the threat and go over the wreckage in the Arctic with a fine toothcomb. They have two hundred years to prepare so they have all they need to do that for the next encounter. Among the wreckage would be a Borg black box with full future knowledge of what lies ahead.

So what happened that all of this was seemingly forgotten until Picard and co face the cube in the Delta Quadrant?

Section 31.

They were created to deal with threats to Starfleet and later the Federation and remove them quietly. So maybe they did indeed find the black box and accessed it seeing what happens in the future. Could it be that they would have to silence their own in order to protect the timeline?

It is reasonable to assume Section 31 worked quietly and efficiently to remove all traces of Borg from not only the Arctic but from the Enterprise logs. We know it was done with the Discovery so why not the Borg?

Archer and his crew would be long dead by the time the first Borg encounter happens. And we know that the organisation has the silent backing of Starfleet admirals and above in order to do their job.

It may be they had no idea how to reverse engineer the Borg’s technology and Doctor Phlox’s omicron treatment would kill more people than save them. The good doctor almost died and took a long time to recover. This would also explain how Borg survivors like Icheb, Seven of Nine and Hugh were hunted down for their Borg components. Since Borg technology was so impossible to replicate then it would make sense to simply steal it.

Remember that it was Seven’s ocular implant that allowed a future Harry Kim to send coordinates back in time to prevent Voyager crashing into an icy tomb in Timeless. The holographic Doctor could not save Seven due to one of her implants that was beyond him. It took Kes’ massively boosted telepathic abilities to save her life by dissolving the element. Borg tech is highly unpredictable as seen when the holographic Doctor’s mobile emitter emerges with Borg nano probes and create a Borg with 29th century technology. Not even Section 31 are that dumb. if anything Borg tech is something that really should be left alone. So what if the only option was to wait and keep the secret until Q got involved? Then Shelby was recruited and shown the secret.

She had her own ambitions anyway and perhaps saw this as the way to gain that first officer’s chair. Her only contributions were drawing attention to the power drop in the Borg cube when the Enterprise destroyed their tractor beam emitters. The other was when attacked getting data to rotate the phase settings so the Borg couldn’t get a grip on the ship. Outside of that, her expertise is sadly lacking. The only thing she does is ignore Riker’s orders and go to Picard to tell him her plan for the saucer section. But did she do that to ensure the timeline stayed intact? Does her heartless and over the top rudeness come from the fact she has seen what is at stake and is simply carrying out orders to save the day while taking care of her own ambitions?

It would certainly explain why the Federation was ignorant of the Borg threat when it should have been more than ready. Section 31 may have met their match in the cyborgs so could only manipulate Shelby to ensure things stayed the same as they saw in the black box. Remember that any and all defences that Admiral Janeway had came from the Delta Quadrant itself and from multiple encounters with the Borg Queen and her minions.

Just a thought…