By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Photo copyright Owen Quinn and Paramount Pictures
In Picard season three we saw the restored Enterprise D charge to the rescue against the Borg, just as it did back in the Best of Both Worlds, Descent, I, Borg and Q Who, Geordi La Forge discovered that the shell of the saucer section had been retrieved from Veridian 3 as seen in the Generations movie.
He had restored her by cannibalizing parts of other ships as a secret project which he had to reveal when the Borg assimilated almost all of the Starfleet. In flashback we get to see the saucer being taken from the surface of Veridian 3 to avoid contamination of any pre-warp species. It would make sense so enemies like the Romulans or Breen did not pick Starfleet tech clean. But that got me thinking.
Did they bother to move Kirk’s body which still has his badge set upon the grave? The alloy and his clothing would be potential contaminants to a primitive culture also but there is no mention of it. Add to that it isn’t the first time Starfleet has been lacking in cleaning up after themselves. Strangely enough both instances I am going to point out are by the crew of the D.
How to handle cultural contamination well is seen in the third season story Who Watches The Watchers when a group pf proto Vulcans think a Starfleet observation team are powerful beings from above under the rule of the god Picard. It’s a great episode. Similarly in the Star Trek Enterprise episode The Communicator, Malcolm Reed loses his communicator on a pre-warp world. He and Archer must go back to retrieve it but end up in even bigger trouble.
But in the Next Generation first season story Lore, we meet Data’s android brother, his evil counterpart, Lore. After his unsuccessful attempt to sacrifice the Enterprise and her crew to the crystalline entity, Lore and Data fight. It’s an exciting sequence which ends with Data tossing his brother into a cargo bay transporter and Wesley Crusher beams him into space. Now here’s the problem. Instead of a twee ending with Picard telling Data to get rid of his tick, we should have gotten we need to retrieve the body ending and imprison it.
So not one person, not even Data, raises a concern that there is a fully functional psychotic android afloat in space and intact for anyone to come across? They know Data can live in the vacuum of space and function normally. Not only that, Lore is a sophisticated piece of technology the likes of which scientists are drooling to get hold of. As we saw in Measure of a Man, Data almost ended up a lab rat for Bruce Maddox who wanted to recreate Doctor Soong’s work.
We learn that Lore floated in space until he was picked up by a Pakled ship. If Picard and crew had any sense about them the events of Brothers and Descent would never have happened. It’s a plot hole that really cannot be explained given Picard season 3 how what was left of Data was used as a security system. Given the transporter is limited in distance, it isn’t hard to imagine Lore spitting venom as he watches the Enterprise fly off. The Romulans are far from sloppy like this as in the Defector, Admiral Jarok destroys his scout ship rather than let the Enterprise get their hands on it. As he says humans are a short sighted people and when you see androids and Borg floating free you can understand the Romulan viewpoint.
Now look at the chaos one badly behaved android caused so can you imagine what would happen if it were a Borg? Well, you don’t have to as we saw in First Contact, Picard and some of his crew went out on to the deflector dish to stop the Borg sending a signal to the Delta Quadrant. Their efforts cause several Borg to float off into space allowing Worf to destroy the transmitter yet he doesn’t destroy the Borg bodies. Isn’t that a risky thing to do given where they are in time and the threat the Borg pose?
Now as Voyager discovered, Borg can survive in the vacuum of space especially their mechanical parts. Now Chakotay blew several Borg off Voyager in Scorpion part two. The difference is that they were already in Borg space so there was no need to do anything with the bodies.
But First Contact is the prime example of sloppy work from a Federation that heralds the Prime Directive as the first rule. As we see several Borg are floating into space but when the Borg sphere is destroyed we discover that Picard and co were so enamoured by witnessing First Contact that they forget to clean up their mess. It is in Star Trek Enterprise that we see the repercussions of not clearing up especially with an enemy as lethal as the Borg. They don’t just die; as they told Picard, death is irrelevant. The only good Borg is a vaporised Borg, Seven of Nine and Hugh excluding of course.
In the second season episode Regeneration, the remnants of the Borg sphere are discovered in the snows of the Arctic Circle along with a couple of bodies. They have been there for over a century since the events of First Contact. The human scientists inadvertently reactivate the Borg and they are assimilated. Stealing and upgrading the shuttle they attack a Tarkalean ship partially assimilating the crew. They are taken to sick bay where they infect Phlox and complete their transformation. To stop them sabotaging the Enterprise Archer has to blow them into space.
Again there is no mention of retrieving or destroying the bodies which we can only assume are still out there. This time the Borg are totally destroyed but manage to send a signal to the Delta Qyadrant. They will arrive sometime in the 24th century contradicting the events of Q Who. See what happens when you don’t get rid of the evidence? History itself changes. Still by the time Picard has that fateful encounter there is no mention of Archer’s battle or the remnants in the Arctic Circle. Indeed the good doctor’s cure has been buried.
If the Borg had gotten to Earth earlier then all of history would be changed. That opens the question as to where the Temporal Agency that we saw in Trials and Tribbleations and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow were in all this? But given they missed the reintroduction of the Tribble species to the galaxy decades after they were hunted to extinction, I can only guess they are as much to blame as the Enterprise crew. And when you think of it, the wreckage of the Borg ship is still there for study by Starfleet.
Add to this that in the interests of establishing new allies, Starfleet would have to share with the Tarkaleans and Vulcans what they have fought. So aside from them Phlox’s research into killing the nanites would also be shared with his people. So that’s four species at least that know of the Borg incident yet Picard is ignorant of them. Could it be that this fell under the same law as the disappearance of the Discovery? That to speak of it would be to be charged with treason? It could be and at the same time explain how Shelby suddenly became the Federation’s top expert on the Borg.
Yet Voyager is marked for death because of an insane Braxton when future Starfleet made the wrong conclusions.
In Distant Origin in Voyager, a Starfleet uniform and badge are discovered but in this instance there was no way for Janeway to retrieve it given poor crewman Hogan was dragged into the cave network by the lizard monster. It allowed the Voth scientist to prove his species were descendants from Earth dinosaurs.
Archer reveals Cochrane told the story of cybernetic creatures trying to stop First Contact then recanted it because no one believed him. So was Archer’s encounter wiped or simply lost? We will never know but one thing is for sure, when it comes to robotic and cybernetic foes, Starfleet just falls to pieces.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 