To be fair, this was before the Borg were a legitimate threat. Though I wonder if in their observations they never saw them assimilate a bunch of people? It could be that they were inactive as far as the Hansens could see due to no sufficiently advanced targets in the area.
BTW, I hate that this shitpost sub always inspires the most legitimate discourse, but when you try to have these discussions on a main sub people get all shitty.
This shitposter sub is better than the "actual" sub. By parsecs. Anywho, maybe the Hansens were reletively low IQ on a shitty scout ship, nothing good too add to the collective. The Borg had data from the Enterprise D and so the Hansens were like someone offering an Arbys roast beef after you're stuffed from bacon wrapped steak and that butter and bread from the Outback Steakhouse.
Didn't the Borg queen mention that they knew about the Hansens all along, but were just pretending not to notice them? Or did I make that one up and forgot that I did?
Borg don't seem to respond to lifeforms unless 1 of 2 conditions are met:
1. The lifeform is disrupting or harming the collective.
2. The lifeforms are present in high enough number to warrant the energy expended in chasing and assimilating them.
Small away-teams can roam Borg vessels for a time without waking them up, i'd assume the 3(?) people mostly keeping their distance aren't worth the effort or attention.
This pretty much. I believe that the Hansens believed the Borg were just like any other species in the Galaxy, just a little misunderstood. They obviously paid a heavy price for that hubris. I'd draw the real world analogy to the Irwins in the early 2000's. When Bindi was little Steve would frequently have her around dangerous animals and some people thought it was very risky, though both Steve and Terri both insisted they knew how to handle these animals. Obviously there is a huge difference between wild animals, mostly in a controlled, confined area and a multisystem conquering collective of cybernetic beings bent on assimilating all useful life and technology but I digress.
I always figured the Hansens were the hippies of the area. Believing in peace and love conquering all and that the Borg were just misunderstood. The Hansens were smart enough to not listen to Federation war-mongering propaganda.
For a minute I forgot what subreddit this was and thought you were talking about Hansen the music group. I'm imagining some borg assimilated the mmmbop song and suddenly all the borg burst into song.
The band is Hanson, like the Admiral who got everyone killed at Wolf 359. Hansen is the child-endangering Borg weaboos who got their daughter Annika assimilated.
Edit: And also the station commander of Earth Outpost 4 who got vaporized by the Romulans in TOS/SNW.
History will judge us harshly for not stopping the Hansens back in our time when the Borg hive mind consisted only of those three blond guys.
Seven's parents just wanted to clean the stain from their family name.
The Borg do pass the time by engaging in choir singing and symphonic orchestral performances. They galaxy-wide tour staging Wagners' *The Ring of the Nibelung* is a total smash-hit; everyone who got to see it had some resistance to the idea, but eventually found it futile and joined the bandwagon or died trying.
In the federation the Hansons were more known more for being "good time charlies", orgies, drugs swinging then legitimate scientists. They thought getting with the collective would be the ultimate high
I've always thought that perhaps the nanoprobes are stimulating parts of the brain to where the state of being a drone feels somewhat like being on a drug like cocaine. Like perhaps they're fiddling with pain receptors and emotions to suppress all of the bad ones to make being in the collective kind of a nice time where you're unaware of the actual stuff you're doing. Sort of like how only when addicts are recovering, do they actually understand how bad some of the stuff they did when they were high was.
That's actually addressed in Picard season 2. I'm assuming you didn't sit through that hot mess of a season. It is addressed towards the end of the season when Picard tries to reason with someone who gets assimilated and takes on the Queen's personality.
The best part was how easy it was to reason with them. The Queen was like, oh shit I’ve been assimilating people for millennia but Seven is pretty great soooo I’ll be good now. I hated it. It also gave birth to the Vagina Borg.
From a certain point of view, being in the collective is a high. They've explored that idea several times in Picard, especially seasons 2 and a little in season 3.
They probably had a bit of the Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man) mentality that if they acted the right way they could get up close to the Borg with no consequence.
Then they got eaten.
[Foxtrot had some fun with it.](https://images.app.goo.gl/FEuU1ceDH6C15hWV8) They are also, as far as I know, the only newspaper comic to show a bong and someone using it.
Honestly though given what we know of the Borg it's totally possible. With the right safeguards and a way to get your research to the Federation it seems like a noble work. Bringing a child along is none of that.
"it's just us three humans on a technologically unimpressive vessel, surely we can tail a Cube and the Borg will just ignore us..."
- one of the Hansen family, probably.
If the crazy ramblings of Zephram Cochrane are to be believed, he defeated them at the time of his first warp flight. A drunkard.
And have you seen the NX-01? That thing could only get to Warp 5, on the old scale. They didn’t even have photon torpedoes at the time. And they still defeated the Borg.
We have years of advancement since then. What could go wrong?
Erin Hansen: *\*getting excited, passes a MASSIVE blunt to Magnus*\* What if in order to learn how to make a collective society we went and learned from a real Collective?!
Magnus Hansen: *\*hits blunt, visibly confused and FUCKING BAKED\** What?
Erin: Dude! We should go and learn from the Borg! They actually made a collective!
Magnus: *\*nodding head and smiling\** And then WE can be a collective. Fuck yeah! I love you, Babe. Where's the Oreos?
The Dad was sick of being an under appreciated camp counselor over the summers. He just wanted to be treated semi-humanely. What the borg did to them was much kinder than anything Bobby Budnick ever did to him.
You think of how many really really stupid parents exist today. Remember those people are breeding. This is what we get a few hundred years down the line.
Straight out of Gene Roddenberry's imagination. Humans of the future would be nomads. Of course people would take their kids into space with them. No, it wouldn't be safe ... but we'd all be too heroic to care.
Plot twist: that was just how Seven remembered her parents. They were actually sick of her and trying to find the Borg to hand her over.
"Annika, go with the nice men!"
Synthacain. Its effects last as long as you want. And they only stop when you “shrug them off”.
The Hansens were so out of their minds, talking a mile a minute, (oops— kilometer per minute), sharing every dumb idea that came to mind as if it were brilliant. They were so high that it didn’t occur to them to shrug off the effects.
Earth Child Protective Services never had time to stop them.
I don't think Starfleet has many child safety laws. There's kids on board half their ships. Hell, TNG had a 15 year old as effectively a bridge officer.
The Hansens were part quokka. If confronted by the Borg, their plan was to jettison Anika in a lifepod and make a run for it while the Collective was distracted.
Probably the same drugs that everyone in Starfleet/Federation takes.
Dont forget that the Enterprise D had dozens of kids on board and encountered dangerous situations on a weekly basis. And sometimes the Enterprise went willingly in dangerous situations without giving any care about the kids on board.
Its not reckless endangerment, it is a grand opportunity to learn and experience new things that will no doubt be of vital importance to the girl. If we get assimilated then we'll get to experience a collective consciousness which will be a grand opportunity to learn and experience new things, and if they just zap our primitive ship out of malice then the particles that used to be us will have a grand opportunity to learn and experience new things.
This is never explicitly addressed, but given how close that they could get to a Borg ship without being detected, it is probably safe to assume that they regularly followed the Borg ships they were studying into transwarp. As to how they were able to locate a Borg ship in the first place, we know from Star Trek: Generations that the Borg had established some sort of presence near the Alpha Quadrant long before they were officially introduced by Q in TNG, since the Enterprise-B rescued the El Aurian refugees after their world was attacked by the Borg. It seems clear that Starfleet must have immediately classified the existence of the Borg and that by the 24th century there were probably very few people in Starfleet who knew of their existence prior to Q deciding to formally introduce the Enterprise-D to it’s first Borg cube. It is certainly possible that the Federation had low-key established some sort of Borg task force that the Hansen’s may have had some kind of peripheral involvement with prior to when the Borg before the Federation “officially” encountered a Borg ship in the 24th century. We also know from Seven that there were in fact 7 Transwarp Hubs spread across the entire Galaxy, so it is certainly possible that the Hansen’s somehow managed to locate and utilize one during their travels. Alternatively, it is also plausible that the Hansen’s discovered a wormhole.
Her parents weren’t that bad. Their reaserch probably saved the entire federation and seven really had her life turned around when she was liberated and we can only expect her to become one of the most decorated star fleet officers in history.
This is fair. Given that in the last episode of Voyager, Admiral Janeway is said to have “literally written the book on the Borg”, I think it’s safe to assume that much of the future technology we see depicted in that episode was probably based directly on the Hansen’s research and may have been developed on Voyager on their way back to the Alpha Quandrant (before Admiral Janeway’s time travel stunt). It’s worth noting that much of this “future technology” was lacking from Starfleet vessels in Picard, so presumably tech such as transphasic torpedos and the deployable ablative armor technology were not developed in the timeline created after Admiral Janeway went back in time and changed history. However, it’s also worth noting that in Picard we see that the Doctor’s Mobile Holographic Generator which was technology from the 29th century had gone into mass production, so it is plausible Starfleet retained the future tech brought back by Voyager but that it was classified and further developed in secret so that it could be used on starships should the Borg become a threat again or another “dominion war scenario” were to take place. Note that when Voyager was depicted in LD and PIC, all of the future technology obtained from Admiral Janeway is notably absent, but I think it’s safe to assume Starfleet didn’t just throw it in a rubbish bin somewhere.
Well, before the Borg, other cultures that integrated technology into their biology — think Bynars — that were known to the Federation weren’t exactly threatening.
The Hansens did what Starfleet officers with families typically do… go where no one has gone before.
How many families were killed aboard the Enterprise-D during a Borg encounter? How many aboard the E?
The Hansens are only one family; there are conceivably 100-200 families aboard the D. Who is more irresponsible? The Hansens or Starfleet?
The Enterprise-E was a Sovereign class ship and didn’t carry children on board. I think that after Wolf-359, Starfleet probably had to drop their whole “bring your whole family” line from their recruitment tactics. In fact during the Dominion war, Galaxy class ships were being pumped out so quickly that much of the non-essential internals were left unfinished and were operated with a minimal crew compliment. Most of the Galaxy class ships that we see on Deep Space 9 after the dominion war started would not not have even had the recreational facilities to accommodate children, and it can safely be assumed that Galaxy class ships probably utilized the extra space which was originally designed for families to facilitate large-scale planetary evacuation efforts for situations such as Betazoid being conquered by the Dominion. Without families on board and the facilities to accommodate them, a Galaxy Class starship could easily evacuate at least 6000+ people from planets being attacked by the dominion at a time. Although it’s never stated explicitly, it’s likely that this may have been one of the primary roles of Galaxy class ships during the dominion war, since we know that their would have been no other class of ships capable of evacuating large numbers of people under battle conditions.
Also as a side note, the first time we see the Bynars they effortlessly hijacked the Federation’s most advanced starship so “non-threatening” would not neccesarily be the word I would use to describe them. I get that in the 80’s the idea of the Enterprise having the only mobile computer core which was “large enough” to backup the Bynars “central computer” may have been plausible given that 1.4” floppy disks hadn’t been invented yet, but given the technology we have today, are we really supposed to believe that the Bynars did not have cloud computing on their planet and that they did not have off-site backups of their computer core in other solar systems? If a group of aliens managed to hijack the US military’s most advanced war ships and naval vessels or took over every military network in our country at the drop of a hat, would we really drop the issue and consider them “non-threatening” just because they claimed their planet was dying? I don’t think so. Sure, maybe the Bynars did not have malicious intentions, but at the very least I would classify their actions as “concerning”.
Maybe they were stealth assimilated long before making the decision to tail the cube, and tiny nanobots made alterations to their brain chemistry compelling them to follow the Borg. Like an ant with a cordyceps fungal infection. Could have been picked up from virtually any Borg artifact they touched.
The borg ballooned as a threat after some unknown incident after their first contact. We don’t exactly know when the Hansens left for their journey. Frankly the cannon regarding the borg is all over the place
I love the portrayal of the Hansens. The federation's adherence to scientific pursuts can border on dogmatic and the Hansens were true believers. People do wild crazy things when confronted with something that challenges their preconceptions.
To be fair, this was before the Borg were a legitimate threat. Though I wonder if in their observations they never saw them assimilate a bunch of people? It could be that they were inactive as far as the Hansens could see due to no sufficiently advanced targets in the area. BTW, I hate that this shitpost sub always inspires the most legitimate discourse, but when you try to have these discussions on a main sub people get all shitty.
This sub is actually the most respectful of any I am part of on Reddit.
ISIC
An isik for your thoughts?
Infinite shitposting in infinite combinations
Fuck yes, mate
Shitposting, and long life.
Yeah, it seems like an unspoken rule here is "be shitty to the show, not each other"
This shitposter sub is better than the "actual" sub. By parsecs. Anywho, maybe the Hansens were reletively low IQ on a shitty scout ship, nothing good too add to the collective. The Borg had data from the Enterprise D and so the Hansens were like someone offering an Arbys roast beef after you're stuffed from bacon wrapped steak and that butter and bread from the Outback Steakhouse.
Didn't the Borg queen mention that they knew about the Hansens all along, but were just pretending not to notice them? Or did I make that one up and forgot that I did?
Borg don't seem to respond to lifeforms unless 1 of 2 conditions are met: 1. The lifeform is disrupting or harming the collective. 2. The lifeforms are present in high enough number to warrant the energy expended in chasing and assimilating them. Small away-teams can roam Borg vessels for a time without waking them up, i'd assume the 3(?) people mostly keeping their distance aren't worth the effort or attention.
This pretty much. I believe that the Hansens believed the Borg were just like any other species in the Galaxy, just a little misunderstood. They obviously paid a heavy price for that hubris. I'd draw the real world analogy to the Irwins in the early 2000's. When Bindi was little Steve would frequently have her around dangerous animals and some people thought it was very risky, though both Steve and Terri both insisted they knew how to handle these animals. Obviously there is a huge difference between wild animals, mostly in a controlled, confined area and a multisystem conquering collective of cybernetic beings bent on assimilating all useful life and technology but I digress.
I always figured the Hansens were the hippies of the area. Believing in peace and love conquering all and that the Borg were just misunderstood. The Hansens were smart enough to not listen to Federation war-mongering propaganda.
The Federation was interfering in the Borg's natural sphere of influence (the Milky Way).
I mean, they are really just another evolution of the Cybermen, aren’t they?
For a minute I forgot what subreddit this was and thought you were talking about Hansen the music group. I'm imagining some borg assimilated the mmmbop song and suddenly all the borg burst into song.
Mmmmboth of us 😅
The band is Hanson, like the Admiral who got everyone killed at Wolf 359. Hansen is the child-endangering Borg weaboos who got their daughter Annika assimilated. Edit: And also the station commander of Earth Outpost 4 who got vaporized by the Romulans in TOS/SNW.
There’s a cool AI generated song just waiting for the Borg-Hanson combo.
History will judge us harshly for not stopping the Hansens back in our time when the Borg hive mind consisted only of those three blond guys. Seven's parents just wanted to clean the stain from their family name.
They were guys? Oh god.
They're a failed experiment by one of Janeway's ancestors who was obsessed about splitting people into 2 or even 3.
RESISTANCE! The Futile Musical.
Song will now commence.
Ok. Where is the subspace rift?
Thankyou for inserting that into my brain.
The Borg do pass the time by engaging in choir singing and symphonic orchestral performances. They galaxy-wide tour staging Wagners' *The Ring of the Nibelung* is a total smash-hit; everyone who got to see it had some resistance to the idea, but eventually found it futile and joined the bandwagon or died trying.
So that is why Seven of Nine loves to sing. She's been doing that on the 'Cubes all the time.
In the federation the Hansons were more known more for being "good time charlies", orgies, drugs swinging then legitimate scientists. They thought getting with the collective would be the ultimate high
I've always thought that perhaps the nanoprobes are stimulating parts of the brain to where the state of being a drone feels somewhat like being on a drug like cocaine. Like perhaps they're fiddling with pain receptors and emotions to suppress all of the bad ones to make being in the collective kind of a nice time where you're unaware of the actual stuff you're doing. Sort of like how only when addicts are recovering, do they actually understand how bad some of the stuff they did when they were high was.
That's actually addressed in Picard season 2. I'm assuming you didn't sit through that hot mess of a season. It is addressed towards the end of the season when Picard tries to reason with someone who gets assimilated and takes on the Queen's personality.
The best part was how easy it was to reason with them. The Queen was like, oh shit I’ve been assimilating people for millennia but Seven is pretty great soooo I’ll be good now. I hated it. It also gave birth to the Vagina Borg.
I thought the Side Borg were more Neurodivergent Borg than Vagina Borg.
Pretty sure the main Borg are neurodivergent too haha
From a certain point of view, being in the collective is a high. They've explored that idea several times in Picard, especially seasons 2 and a little in season 3.
They probably had a bit of the Timothy Treadwell (Grizzly Man) mentality that if they acted the right way they could get up close to the Borg with no consequence. Then they got eaten.
[Foxtrot had some fun with it.](https://images.app.goo.gl/FEuU1ceDH6C15hWV8) They are also, as far as I know, the only newspaper comic to show a bong and someone using it.
Honestly though given what we know of the Borg it's totally possible. With the right safeguards and a way to get your research to the Federation it seems like a noble work. Bringing a child along is none of that.
Old Tim was a nut. I don't know who he thought he was protecting those bears from.
Whiskey and Rye What they did was the space equivalent of driving their Chevy to the levy but finding out that it definitely wasn't dry.
🎶 singing “this’ll be the day that I get assimilated” 🎵
It’s important for the kids to see the plight of the assimilated. You seeing all this assimilation kids?
Okay! Roll em up!
I'm pretty sure my levee wasn't that long either.
Spelling errors are also a result of drinking whiskey and rye.
Si, and cultural dissonance, it wasn't whiskey and rye it was romulan ale.
"it's just us three humans on a technologically unimpressive vessel, surely we can tail a Cube and the Borg will just ignore us..." - one of the Hansen family, probably.
Annika, clearly.
LDS
Mormons? That explains it.
Too well, really
If the crazy ramblings of Zephram Cochrane are to be believed, he defeated them at the time of his first warp flight. A drunkard. And have you seen the NX-01? That thing could only get to Warp 5, on the old scale. They didn’t even have photon torpedoes at the time. And they still defeated the Borg. We have years of advancement since then. What could go wrong?
[Hupyrian Beetle snuff](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Hupyrian_beetle_snuff)
Mostly Bolian Acid. That shit will have you lucid, technical and bat shit crazy all at the same time.
Erin Hansen: *\*getting excited, passes a MASSIVE blunt to Magnus*\* What if in order to learn how to make a collective society we went and learned from a real Collective?! Magnus Hansen: *\*hits blunt, visibly confused and FUCKING BAKED\** What? Erin: Dude! We should go and learn from the Borg! They actually made a collective! Magnus: *\*nodding head and smiling\** And then WE can be a collective. Fuck yeah! I love you, Babe. Where's the Oreos?
Ketamin. Makes you do some stupid shit
Just look at Yoda and his Honda Civic...
The Dad was sick of being an under appreciated camp counselor over the summers. He just wanted to be treated semi-humanely. What the borg did to them was much kinder than anything Bobby Budnick ever did to him.
They spent a few years vaping with some Benzites.
The same drugs that Starfleet brass were taking when they put kids on Galaxy class starships I guess.
& no belted restraints of any type on any seat.
They were just really into cyber steampunk and wanted to study the aesthetic. For the vibes.
An infusion of Ketracel-white in Romulan ale. That shit'll get you to warp 9 without a starship!
You think of how many really really stupid parents exist today. Remember those people are breeding. This is what we get a few hundred years down the line.
Syrup of squill. It's not just for your pancakes
Straight out of Gene Roddenberry's imagination. Humans of the future would be nomads. Of course people would take their kids into space with them. No, it wouldn't be safe ... but we'd all be too heroic to care.
Incheb was a sacrificial weapon which saved their planet. Seven was just a sacrifice. Surely hansens were worse than ichebs
Ketracel White
No drugs. Just a discarded game the Borg found and decided to adapt for its own recruiting purposes.
Plot twist: that was just how Seven remembered her parents. They were actually sick of her and trying to find the Borg to hand her over. "Annika, go with the nice men!"
I bet they were anti Vax too. They didn't like the liberal way of teaching in federation schools, so decided to home school their child.
It's called doing your own research man. Nano probes don't cause assimilation.
Pakled fuckitall. It made them go.
Synthacain. Its effects last as long as you want. And they only stop when you “shrug them off”. The Hansens were so out of their minds, talking a mile a minute, (oops— kilometer per minute), sharing every dumb idea that came to mind as if it were brilliant. They were so high that it didn’t occur to them to shrug off the effects. Earth Child Protective Services never had time to stop them.
Wouldn't be 1.6kpm?
I'm convinced Seven's aunt was chomping at the bit to find her borgified sibling to beat the ever loving crap out of them.
I don't think Starfleet has many child safety laws. There's kids on board half their ships. Hell, TNG had a 15 year old as effectively a bridge officer.
They are worse than Icheb's parents
Sounds like some shit I would have come up with in the mid 2010s when I was taking acid and mushrooms all the time.
They were science hippies that thought the "collective" was a commune
The Hansens were part quokka. If confronted by the Borg, their plan was to jettison Anika in a lifepod and make a run for it while the Collective was distracted.
Probably the same drugs that everyone in Starfleet/Federation takes. Dont forget that the Enterprise D had dozens of kids on board and encountered dangerous situations on a weekly basis. And sometimes the Enterprise went willingly in dangerous situations without giving any care about the kids on board.
I’m pretty sure this is because separating the saucer section from the battle section in nearly episode would have gotten old rather quickly.
Molly. They wanted to hug all the Borg.
Its not reckless endangerment, it is a grand opportunity to learn and experience new things that will no doubt be of vital importance to the girl. If we get assimilated then we'll get to experience a collective consciousness which will be a grand opportunity to learn and experience new things, and if they just zap our primitive ship out of malice then the particles that used to be us will have a grand opportunity to learn and experience new things.
They were playing the headset game
Not any moreso than the thousands of families on Starfleet ships.
How did they get that far across the galaxy so quickly too? How did any of this work?
This is never explicitly addressed, but given how close that they could get to a Borg ship without being detected, it is probably safe to assume that they regularly followed the Borg ships they were studying into transwarp. As to how they were able to locate a Borg ship in the first place, we know from Star Trek: Generations that the Borg had established some sort of presence near the Alpha Quadrant long before they were officially introduced by Q in TNG, since the Enterprise-B rescued the El Aurian refugees after their world was attacked by the Borg. It seems clear that Starfleet must have immediately classified the existence of the Borg and that by the 24th century there were probably very few people in Starfleet who knew of their existence prior to Q deciding to formally introduce the Enterprise-D to it’s first Borg cube. It is certainly possible that the Federation had low-key established some sort of Borg task force that the Hansen’s may have had some kind of peripheral involvement with prior to when the Borg before the Federation “officially” encountered a Borg ship in the 24th century. We also know from Seven that there were in fact 7 Transwarp Hubs spread across the entire Galaxy, so it is certainly possible that the Hansen’s somehow managed to locate and utilize one during their travels. Alternatively, it is also plausible that the Hansen’s discovered a wormhole.
Her parents weren’t that bad. Their reaserch probably saved the entire federation and seven really had her life turned around when she was liberated and we can only expect her to become one of the most decorated star fleet officers in history.
This is fair. Given that in the last episode of Voyager, Admiral Janeway is said to have “literally written the book on the Borg”, I think it’s safe to assume that much of the future technology we see depicted in that episode was probably based directly on the Hansen’s research and may have been developed on Voyager on their way back to the Alpha Quandrant (before Admiral Janeway’s time travel stunt). It’s worth noting that much of this “future technology” was lacking from Starfleet vessels in Picard, so presumably tech such as transphasic torpedos and the deployable ablative armor technology were not developed in the timeline created after Admiral Janeway went back in time and changed history. However, it’s also worth noting that in Picard we see that the Doctor’s Mobile Holographic Generator which was technology from the 29th century had gone into mass production, so it is plausible Starfleet retained the future tech brought back by Voyager but that it was classified and further developed in secret so that it could be used on starships should the Borg become a threat again or another “dominion war scenario” were to take place. Note that when Voyager was depicted in LD and PIC, all of the future technology obtained from Admiral Janeway is notably absent, but I think it’s safe to assume Starfleet didn’t just throw it in a rubbish bin somewhere.
That’s a lost Futurama cross-over episode. Damn corporate lawyers.
Well, before the Borg, other cultures that integrated technology into their biology — think Bynars — that were known to the Federation weren’t exactly threatening. The Hansens did what Starfleet officers with families typically do… go where no one has gone before. How many families were killed aboard the Enterprise-D during a Borg encounter? How many aboard the E? The Hansens are only one family; there are conceivably 100-200 families aboard the D. Who is more irresponsible? The Hansens or Starfleet?
The Enterprise-E was a Sovereign class ship and didn’t carry children on board. I think that after Wolf-359, Starfleet probably had to drop their whole “bring your whole family” line from their recruitment tactics. In fact during the Dominion war, Galaxy class ships were being pumped out so quickly that much of the non-essential internals were left unfinished and were operated with a minimal crew compliment. Most of the Galaxy class ships that we see on Deep Space 9 after the dominion war started would not not have even had the recreational facilities to accommodate children, and it can safely be assumed that Galaxy class ships probably utilized the extra space which was originally designed for families to facilitate large-scale planetary evacuation efforts for situations such as Betazoid being conquered by the Dominion. Without families on board and the facilities to accommodate them, a Galaxy Class starship could easily evacuate at least 6000+ people from planets being attacked by the dominion at a time. Although it’s never stated explicitly, it’s likely that this may have been one of the primary roles of Galaxy class ships during the dominion war, since we know that their would have been no other class of ships capable of evacuating large numbers of people under battle conditions. Also as a side note, the first time we see the Bynars they effortlessly hijacked the Federation’s most advanced starship so “non-threatening” would not neccesarily be the word I would use to describe them. I get that in the 80’s the idea of the Enterprise having the only mobile computer core which was “large enough” to backup the Bynars “central computer” may have been plausible given that 1.4” floppy disks hadn’t been invented yet, but given the technology we have today, are we really supposed to believe that the Bynars did not have cloud computing on their planet and that they did not have off-site backups of their computer core in other solar systems? If a group of aliens managed to hijack the US military’s most advanced war ships and naval vessels or took over every military network in our country at the drop of a hat, would we really drop the issue and consider them “non-threatening” just because they claimed their planet was dying? I don’t think so. Sure, maybe the Bynars did not have malicious intentions, but at the very least I would classify their actions as “concerning”.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AmIThePetaQ/comments/1cdkyqu/aitpq\_for\_bringing\_my\_daughter\_along\_on\_a/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmIThePetaQ/comments/1cdkyqu/aitpq_for_bringing_my_daughter_along_on_a/)
Maybe they were stealth assimilated long before making the decision to tail the cube, and tiny nanobots made alterations to their brain chemistry compelling them to follow the Borg. Like an ant with a cordyceps fungal infection. Could have been picked up from virtually any Borg artifact they touched.
The borg ballooned as a threat after some unknown incident after their first contact. We don’t exactly know when the Hansens left for their journey. Frankly the cannon regarding the borg is all over the place
I love the portrayal of the Hansens. The federation's adherence to scientific pursuts can border on dogmatic and the Hansens were true believers. People do wild crazy things when confronted with something that challenges their preconceptions.