Summary[]
Seven of Nine slowly gets accustomed to her new life, yet she is plagued by nightmares about the Borg and about a big black bird. Captain Janeway tries to find an arrangement with the B'omar to pass though their territory, but they would only allow it on an indirect and strictly monitored course. Suddenly Seven receives a Borg signal and her dormant nanoprobes are reactivated. She reestablishes her Borg shields, steals a shuttle and heads straight into the forbidden B'omar territory. Paris and Tuvok follow her with another shuttle.
Tuvok manages to beam over but is incapacitated by Seven. When the two arrive at a moon, he can convince her to let him accompany her to the surface. The two find an abandoned and partially assimilated Federation ship, the Raven, once owned by Annika Hansen's parents before the whole family was assimilated. A small fleet of B'omar vessels too arrives and attacks the wreck, with reinforcements on the way. Janeway launches a rescue mission and fends off the B'omar, at the expense of losing a possible shortcut on the voyage to the Alpha Quadrant. Later, Janeway mentions the existence of records on Seven's parents, and Seven decides that one day she will read them.
Errors and Explanations[]
Nit Central[]
- Cableface on Sunday, December 20, 1998 - 6:54 am: I still don't see how The Raven could get that far out into the Delta Quadrant while Seven was still a girl. She talks about having her sixth birthday on the ship, as if it was the only one she had there, so she definitely didn't grow up on the ship. So how? Chris Thomas on Sunday, December 20, 1998 - 10:23 pm: A wormhole? A Q? Same sort of accident that flew Voyager there? Disruption in the space-time continuum? It could have been anything, just a bit of technobabble is needed to explain it. DonnaL on Saturday, June 10, 2000 - 8:01 pm: Cableface - In Dark Frontier, it says that they were sucked into a transwarp conduit along with a cube they were studying/following.
- Murray Leeder on Sunday, December 20, 1998 - 10:39 pm: The problem is that the crew of Voyager DO NOT SEEM IN THE SLIGHTEST INTERESTED IN HOW IT (The Raven) GOT THERE! Chris Thomas on Sunday, December 20, 1998 - 10:48 pm: Arrogance, perhaps? Routine getting to them? But i understand your point - it could lead to a way of them getting back. Seniram 16:02, February 6, 2018 (UTC) Maybe they realised it would be unlikely to help them get home.
- BrianB on Saturday, July 10, 1999 - 11:36 pm:Did the Bomar not have their perimeter grid online 18 years ago? Either way, how do the Bomar know of da Borg & yet they're not assimilated? Unworthy? BINGO, IMHO.Uncle Dick on Saturday, July 21, 2001 - 1:32 am: It's possible that they have just expanded in 18 years. The Raven's resting place seemed to be pretty close to their borders, and it was uninhabited.
- Mark Swinton on Saturday, October 23, 1999 - 2:01 pm: In this episode, Seven stands on the half-destroyed bridge of the Raven and gives an emotional account of her assimilation to Tuvok. How curious that she ends it by saying "...and then the men came... Papa tried to fight them, but they were too strong..." Note she says "men", not "drones"- a blatant contradiction to the flashbacks in Dark Frontier in which we see the young Annika being exposed to Borg drones and learning what they are...Uncle Dick on Saturday, July 21, 2001 - 1:32 am: She was a child. She was scared. It's entirely possible that she only identified them as men because she was too afraid to recall their exact designation. [N 2]
- Gary C. on Saturday, April 08, 2000 - 1:36 am: I watched Death Wish for the first time, and by Janeway's own admission Q1 introduced the Federation to the Borg with the Enterprise, refering to the incident in 2365. This totally contradicts the Hansen story about studying the Borg in the 2350's, as seen in Dark Frontier. They had the Borg continuity right and then threw it out! Why? Why? Whyyyyyyyyyyyy????? Jwb52z on Saturday, April 08, 2000 - 11:51 am: If you read the Continuity thread in the Kitchen Sink area, you'll discover that the writers and creators care more about stories than they do the continuity. If a story will be better, ignoring continuity, they will do it. Bullet on Thursday, June 08, 2000 - 9:28 pm: There's a difference between continuity between plotlines and between different actors. The original actors may not have been deemed suitable enough or there may have been other choices. I wouldn't blame them for that. However, the other more obvious discrepancies in Dark Frontier were much more severe and inexcusable (such as the Borg being known as "rumours" 10 years before Q Who) Also, Generations mentioned the Borg, as Farrand quoted in the Nitpickers TNG Guide 2, how come the Federation didn't know about it when Guinan and Soran were running away from them. DonnaL on Saturday, June 10, 2000 - 8:01 pm: I think the Federation is a big place where there is tons of information and rumors floating about, some of which are taken more seriously than others. Some of which Janeway would have known about, such as the Enterprise, Q, and the Borg, whereas the Generations reference or the Hansens' expedition might be looked on as is alien abduction today. Chris Thomas on Saturday, June 24, 2000 - 10:08 am:Is it possible timelines have been changed? So what we previously thought was true has now been altered by various forms of temporal corruption? ScottN on Saturday, June 24, 2000 - 2:23 pm:Chris, you may have it!
Original Timeline (Timeline A):
* El Aurians are attacked by Borg, rescued by Ent-B. For some reason they don't tell anyone.
* The Hansens ask for permission to investigate Borg rumors. Starfleet says no.
* The Neutral Zone. The Borg are messing around the Neutral Zone.
* Q Who? Ent-D encounters the Borg at system J27.
* BOBW et al. Wolf 359 and other misc encounters.
* First Contact. Borg attack Earth. Borg Sphere goes back in time creating timeline B.
Timeline B.
* Borg attack earth immediatly prior to flight of the Phoenix. Borg Destroyed.
* Generations. El Aurians are attacked by Borg.
* The Hansens ask for permission to investigate the borg. This time, Starfleet says yes, because of rumors of the Borg attack at FC time.
* The remainder of timeline A occurs
Chris, you may have solved the problem - Keith Alan Morgan (Kmorgan) on Monday, July 16, 2001 - 5:07 am: Seven Of Nine says that Borg are not used to sitting. Well I can't speak for all races, but standing for long periods of time can be quite painful for humans. I suppose the Borg Collective can heal injuries sustained by non-stop standing, but wouldn't that be a waste of energy? Jwb52z on Monday, July 16, 2001 - 4:32 pm: What is more likely is that by simply being a Borg drone, you don't experience those problems.LUIGI NOVI on Monday, July 16, 2001 - 11:56 pm: My assumption has been that fatigue poisons don't build in their bodies as they do ours.
- Seven Of Nine has all these different Borg memories of events that she was not even a part of, but she doesn't remember how to eat? At first I thought maybe those memories of being human had been erased and replaced with all the Borg information. but later she remembers when she was assimilated and if she can remember that then she can remember how to eat. Actually the whole concept of Borg memory could be a nit. It seems unlikely that all of Borg knowledge exists in the memory of every Borg drone. (I suppose they could have a computer memory amongst all the implants, but then if someone captures a Borg what is to stop them downloading this?) As I understand organic memory, the memory section of the brain constantly reconfigures itself as we learn new things. The older we get the harder it is to remember things from when we were younger and sometimes those memories change through time, which seems to indicate that maybe there are space limitations to organic memory. Since all Borg brains are interconnected and involved in the decision making process, wouldn't every brain be making its own copy of the information. If there are space limitations in organic memory, wouldn't it reach critical mass in a very short time? Unfortunately, my knowledge of how memory works, and exactly how a group mind like the Borg would function, is not good enough to determine if this is or is not a nit.LUIGI NOVI on Monday, July 16, 2001 - 11:56 pm: Ah, but you're forgetting that even we humans living today that HAVEN'T been assimilated for 20 years have trouble remembering events from our first several years. Annika was only 6 when she was assimilated, so it's perfectly normal for her to have fragmented memories of childhood, much as we all do. The trauma of encountering the Borg and seeing her parents assimilated, along with being assimilated herself, would only add to this.
- Seven of Nine's memories indicate that the ship crashed while she and her parents were being captured by the Borg. If the Borg did come aboard shortly before The Raven crashed, how did they have time to modify the ship and add a homing beacon? LUIGI NOVI on Monday, July 16, 2001 - 11:56 pm: Did they? I thought they drones could've beamed aboard after the Raven crashed.
- Also, why did they leave the beacon on? Its only purpose is to attract lost Borg drones. How does a Borg get lost anyhow? Aren't they all mentally connected? Jwb52z on Monday, July 16, 2001 - 4:32 pm:The link can be severed by technology damage. Some of these questions you have been asking lately make it sound like you don't know anything about Star Trek in the first place.
- The Doctor will deactivate Seven Of Nine's implant that detects the Borg homing beacon. I wonder if they added the Borg homing beacon frequency to their sensors so they could be warned whenever a Borg ship was too close. LUIGI NOVI on Monday, July 16, 2001 - 11:56 pm: Doubtful, given the teaser of Collective. Seniram 16:02, February 6, 2018 (UTC) It may not have been workable.
- By John A. Lang on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - 6:57 pm: Why is the ship called "The Raven"? Why isn't it called "U.S.S. Raven"? It's a Federation ship, ain't it? LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - 9:55 pm: First, the U.S.S. may refer only to Starfleet vessels. Second, the Hansons wanted nothing to do with the Federation.
- Charles on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 8:57 am: I am curious, did the Hansen's of the U.S.S. Raven transmit their information on the Borg to Starfleet, or were they unable to? Remember the Raven encountered the Borg in the 2350's before Q led the Enterprise-D to encounter the Borg in 2365. So shouldn't Picard and the Enterprise-D have already known about the Borg, by the TNG episode Q Who, in which Q flings the Enterprise-D into the J-25 system LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 7:51 pm: They should've known something about the Borg from what the El Aurian refugees told them after being rescued by the Enterprise-B in ST Generations. For all we know, the Hansens' info on the Borg came from the El Aurians.inblackestnight on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 8:30 am: Did the Hansons go out and seek the Borg or did they make up some expedition, getting SF permission, and sought the Borg anyway? LUIGI NOVI (Lnovi) on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 3:13 pm: There was no mention that they got permission from Starfleet, or anyone. Why would they need permission? Space is open and free. inblackestnight on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 5:34 pm: Because they're using a Federation ship, or it at least had SF technology, and they were UFP exobiologists so I would imagine they talked to somebody. That doesn't mean they had to get permission but I doubt they built their ship themselves. I reread the Dark Frontier boards and several posts discuss this topic. I was trying offer an explanation for the inconsistancies that surround the Hansons, but it seems I was beaten to the punch, by many people. Josh M on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 8:17 pm: I've been reading up on it and it turns out that the Hansens petitioned the Federation Council on Exobiology to loan them the Raven, since it was a Federation vessel, to conduct independent research. At some point they deviated from their flight plan and disobeyed direct orders to return. So, apparently they did make up a mission but the Federation found out that they had lied anyway. LUIGI NOVI (Lnovi) on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 8:34 pm: There is no clear indication that the Raven is a Federation ship or Starfleet technology. It's presumably a civilian ship. Josh M on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 11:54 am: Tuvok does identify it as a Federation ship in this episode. dotter31 on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 6:11 pm: 'Federation ship' in Tuvok's context might just mean a Federation-registered ship.[N 3]
Notes[]
- ↑ According to the startrek.com episode list, the provisional stardate for this episode is 51203.
- ↑ (Then again, I really think the creators threw continuity out of the window altogether when working on Dark Frontier!) cableface on Friday, February 18, 2000 - 5:02 pm: True. For another example, see how the entire Hansen family seem to have had face transplants by the time we see them in Dark Frontier. Mama and Papa Hansen seem a lot younger, and Annika is chubbier in D.F. then they are here. Further proof, if any were needed, that sometimes the creators couldn't give a feck about continuity. DonnaL on Saturday, June 10, 2000 - 8:01 pm: Sometimes producers have to recast characters because the original actors are not available too.
- ↑ LUIGI NOVI (Lnovi) on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 8:34 pm: The most you could do is make the argument that it looks like SF, but that's probably lack of imagination/though on the part of the show's designers, and I noted that as a nit in my Nitpick Document, much in the same way that the shuttle Quark buys in Little Green Men looks identical to the shuttles used by the Ferengi government. Perhaps the Raven, while appearing to be SF, is kinda like those old tanks purchased by military veterans/afficionados from a depot, and restored/souped up, etc.? Where was it established that the Raven was loaned to them or that they were under orders by anyone to return? I don't recall this from the episode. Josh M on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 - 11:14 pm: I looked it up, and it's all in Dark Frontier, not this episode.inblackestnight on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 7:50 am: I agree with you Luigi, that the Raven may just look like it has SF technology, but the nacelle designs were too modern for a ship of it's time to be obtained as an old/discarded craft. Seniram 16:02, February 6, 2018 (UTC) Perhaps they just look ahead of their time? LUIGI NOVI (Lnovi) on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 10:56 am: Info on the Hansens is in that episode, but I'm like, 95% certain that any mention of the ship being loaned to them or of orders to return home was not. We know that startrek.com sometimes has info not in the episodes, like the names of certain characters not named in the episodes (which is something more prevalent in Voyager and Enterprise), so it's possible that whoever's in charge of that site and/or others made that part up. Josh M on Thursday, February 01, 2007 - 11:46 am:I actually looked up a transcript for Dark Frontier. The approval from the Federation Council is mentioned as is their course deviation and the disobeying of their orders. Nothing on whether the Raven is there's or not, but we do know that they needed approval from the Federation to go on the mission.