Topic: The Enterprise alternate timeline.

[Nemesis]

I tend to view the new movie and Enterprise as being in an alternate timeline compared to the prior shows and movies. 

When would this timeline have begun?  First Contact.  Consider when the Enterprise returned to their own time after First Contact they had records of two different pasts.  One past where Cochrane and 2 others of that time launched the Phoenix and the site was not attacked by the Borg and the other as shown in the movie.  Yet the recorded history that they returned to did not show the revised past with Cochrane, Riker and laForge aboard the Phoenix after an alien attack.  The Borg method of time travel MUST have been either into an alternate timeline or have created one. 

The events of the movie did not restore everything that the Borg had done and therefore either history had to change or they were in an alternate time - history did not change therefore it was an alternate timeline.

The TV show Enterprise has clear divergences post First Contact from the older shows.  Cochrane talked about the attack by cyborgs from the future.  The Borg (and debris) that were found in the Antarctic are another example of the change.  Other changes occur such as contacting the Klingons decades too soon and Romulans with cloaking devices far too early.  Also the knowledge that time travel was possible was ahead of its time.

The various ways in which the new movie diverges from the known past of Star Trek and the history of the Enterprise NCC 1701 in ways that make it clearly not part of the original timeline.  Simplicity leads me to place it in the new timeline established by First Contact.

[Lieutenant_Q]

Indeed.  I've speculated that the reason Decker doesn't show Ilia the NX class on the wall when he says, that all those ships were named Enterprise, is because Troi opened her big mouth by saying "that's our ship, the Enterprise."  Cochrane must have had SOME influence on the Warp Five project and insisted that the first ship be named Enterprise, in honor of those brave "astronauts" that saved his launch.

[Nemesis]

When Troi was "blended" she might have said anything.  laForge also might well have said way too much.  Then again it could as easily have been Picard to Lilly while she was aboard the ship.

[Sirgod]

Proof that you will never need to water board the brave explorers of the Enterprise-E to get them to talk.   (ok bad joke.)

Stephen

[Lieutenant_Q]

It's just easier to blame Troi... after all, she was at the helm when the D and the E crashed.

[Soreyes]

It's just easier to blame Troi... after all, she was at the helm when the D and the E crashed.

Damn Women Drivers!!!!!   

[TheJudge]

I like this timeline explanation.  (I also like this new timeline.)  No Simon Pegg was not my favorite of the new actors (Anton Yelchin was...he's soooo cute.) 

One thing I haven't see a lot of discussion on, and that the First Contact timeline would explain, is the size of the ships.  Captain Pike told young Kirk his father saved over 800 crew members on the Kelvin.  The Enterprise is bigger than the Enterprise-E, and it's engineering sections are HUGE.  So is its shuttle bay (has anyone counted the # of shuttles it holds yet?). 

Knowing the galaxy is such a big, bad awful place (as McCoy tells us), it would make sense that starfleet would build ships a LOT bigger and much more capable.  I mean, sure, the Rom torps really did a number on their ships, but damn, the Kelvin lasted long enough to not only evac everyone in shuttles but long enough for George Kirk to ram their attacker. 

[Dash Jones]

Perhaps also the futuristic ships that were dealt with, not just in the original movie, but also in the Enterprise series also gave Star Fleet updated techs and science to create ships that were a little more advanced than they would have been originally. 

[Corbomite]

I tend to view the new movie and Enterprise as being in an alternate timeline compared to the prior shows and movies. 

When would this timeline have begun?  First Contact.  Consider when the Enterprise returned to their own time after First Contact they had records of two different pasts.  One past where Cochrane and 2 others of that time launched the Phoenix and the site was not attacked by the Borg and the other as shown in the movie.  Yet the recorded history that they returned to did not show the revised past with Cochrane, Riker and laForge aboard the Phoenix after an alien attack.  The Borg method of time travel MUST have been either into an alternate timeline or have created one. 

The events of the movie did not restore everything that the Borg had done and therefore either history had to change or they were in an alternate time - history did not change therefore it was an alternate timeline.

The TV show Enterprise has clear divergences post First Contact from the older shows.  Cochrane talked about the attack by cyborgs from the future.  The Borg (and debris) that were found in the Antarctic are another example of the change.  Other changes occur such as contacting the Klingons decades too soon and Romulans with cloaking devices far too early.  Also the knowledge that time travel was possible was ahead of its time.

The various ways in which the new movie diverges from the known past of Star Trek and the history of the Enterprise NCC 1701 in ways that make it clearly not part of the original timeline.  Simplicity leads me to place it in the new timeline established by First Contact.

I like this explanation. It also explains why every movie after First Contact sucked eggs. As the new universe grew it latched on to and began to drain the life right out of the universe we know and it won't let up until ours is a cold dry husk.

Perhaps also the futuristic ships that were dealt with, not just in the original movie, but also in the Enterprise series also gave Star Fleet updated techs and science to create ships that were a little more advanced than they would have been originally.

Is that why they were flying around without shields?

[Nemesis]

Perhaps also the futuristic ships that were dealt with, not just in the original movie, but also in the Enterprise series also gave Star Fleet updated techs and science to create ships that were a little more advanced than they would have been originally.

As an example of this consider when they consulted Cochrane on repairs and he just agreed, clearly without thinking about it.  The engineers were doing repairs based on their memories of studying his engine design at the academy years before.  They might well have indavertantly put in advances from several generations of engine design in the future without knowing it.

Also laForge (and likely other) told him things about the future trying to get his cooperation.  They might well have given him hints about a variety of other techs (Lilly too).  Just knowing about transporters might have resulted in him backing transporter tech and with his prestige they might have gotten funding decades sooner and made the breakthrough correspondingly quickly.  The same with phaser design leading to phase cannons and phase pistols ahead of schedule (Pike of the NCC1701 had hand lasers yet Archer on the NX01 had phase pistols).

[Dash Jones]

I didnt't realize they were flying without shields.  I was only able to watch the movie once thus far, though Iam hoping on watching it again.  It did appear as if it shot phasers more like the TNG ships rather than TOS ships however, and of course the updated bridge and changed hull shape with changed Nacelle shape...etc.

Of course we could all just call it a reboot and so fundamental things like that changed, but one could view it as they had glimpses of tech that was superior and hence incorporated those things into their own designs.

[Czar Mohab]

This hurt my brain, so I hope I can explain my point without sounding like an r-tard, or stepping on toes. I hate time travel... If I go back in time to kill my father before I was born I would never be born to go back in time to kill my father, so, would I be here now? And, for the record, quantum physics and many theories support time travel in a round about way. Which, of course, sucks because then the questions like the ones above become serious ponderances and thus, more brains will be hurt! But enough of my ramblings.

So far, we have the ever-wonderous crew of the Ent-E that got sucked back in time; stirred the pot, so to speak, and pooped out a new (and thus, feasable as not-quite-Daddy's-Trek-but-close-enough) series based in the stirred pot (NX-01) timeline.

So, assuming no other changes to the timeline (yet - this means no change due to Nemo or Nimrod or whatever his name was), why doesn't the last episode (These Are the Voyages...) end with shots of a more advanced Ent-D? Think about it - if everything you've all mentioned is true, and the Feds, et al, are just a bit more well off early, wouldn't you at least expect to see the Ent-D from All Good Things..., if not something even more advanced? I'm not debunking your theories, but stating that the alternate timeline "ball" was dropped by B&B.

But here is where I have to change the theory and back the new movie nay-sayers and say that it simply could not have happened (science, quantum physiscs, string theory, et al. aside!) the way that it was depicted. I'll buy that TOS era ships would be more powerful in the NX-01 timeline, and even go as far as saying that all future generations of ships from NX-01 on would be bigger and better than in the original timeline (where, perhaps, the NX-01 was named something more fitting like "Earth One" or "Cochrane") simply because of the Defiant in In a Mirror, Darkly. This ship single handedly supports the NX-01 timeline bring more advanced in the near future, with all of those curved handrails and aft firing weapons - you could argue that the ship was just a bit different than 1701, and you'd be right for the wrong reasons. She's different because the timeline is different.

But, you do have to factor in the Nimrod change - Kelvin was destroyed BEFORE the Defiant in IaMD was even comissioned. And since even in the NX-01 timeline we have to assume Defiant and 1701 are of the same breed, we are forced into only two conclusions: JJ messed up his designs for the ships (and thus the movie is wrong) or the Nimrod timeline DOES NOT intersect the established timelines of NX-01 or TOS/TOSR.

Within the Nimrod timeline, so many things simply can not happen due to the changes involved. Starfleet had encountered a future ship that simply decimated one of its most advanced ships in the fleet, without so much as batting an eye. In response, due mostly to paranoia, they accelerated ship designs and fleet production numbers, simply beacuse the best was no longer good enough. Now, play this accelerated growth out all the way to post-Nemisis time. Do you think that the Klingons, Romulans, or even the Borg are a threat to the bigger, badder Starfleet? In the Nimrod timeline, chances are the Federation has assimilated the Borg! First Contact would never have been a movie, and the NX-01 + Nimrod timelines would never have happened. Do you think that even if the Big Bad Ent-E crew had gone back in time to prevent the prevention of First Contact by the Borg they would have left Cochrane without mentioning, "oh, by the way, some super ship from our future is going to obliterate Vulcan, you might want to do something about it."? Prime Directive, Temporal or otherwise, be dammed, Picard would take "billions of lives saved" over "sit back and do nothing" in any timeline. So again, assuming the FC events happened, it would lead to an even more bad a$$ starfleet by the time Nemo shows up. Kelvin may still go down in flames, but the fleet would be in a position to find, track, and eventually destroy the future ship before it gets Vulcan. Which puts us back to the Federation being in a position to totally prevent Wolf 359 from day one, which would prevent the events of the movie FC, which would re-loop to the Nimrod timeline, and a weaker Starfleet, which could allow for the movie FC........... And I hadn't gotten into ST3 and 4, or any other episode, movie, book or anything else that so much as suggests the planet Vulcan.

I have to support the fact that in a pre-Nimrod NX-01 timeline, the Feds are in a much better place technology-wise than they were in TOS. I can even support the "advanced" fleet in the Nimrod timeline. But I have to stay solid in the fact that at first opportunity, someone would take advantage of going back to a pre-Nimrod time and dropping a few hints about the future. The ST11 (Nimrod) timeline has to stand as a seperate entity apart from TOS/R and NX-01 timelines simply because its occurance completely and utterly obliterates anything that could possibly have happened before, durring, or after.

Now, I will leave you with this brain teaser: Why aren't Kirk and Picard close friends?

Assuming that Warp drive, in all of its forms, protects the individual ships from time dialation due to traveling up to and faster than the speed of light, what proects the ships when they are sans-warp traveling at impulse? Even at 1/4c (side note, at ~500 mph the effects are noticeable and recordable, though negligable) the 1701 would age slower. Impulse itself isn't clearly stated as a speed other than increments of Impulse, with a few exceptions, but you can deduce that, due to time dialation, Kirk (well, lets go with Chekov, you know, someone who didn't "die" or go missing or anything else that we know of from canon Trek). It would explain why McCoy was fortunate enough to see the big E-D off in Encounter at Farpoint, but would he have been so old and frail?

Czar "I look forward to this discussion continuing, brain hurt be dammed!" Mohab

[EmeraldEdge]

Well, isn't Warp speed actually the warping of space, so you aren't actually traveling that fast, but instead you aren't actually traveling that far?  So does age become a factor when you are traveling down the block instead of to the outer reaches of the galaxy?  Sure, there may be some time issues due to traveling at high impulse, but with the warp speed how much of a difference would that make?   Another thought... Yeah, Kirk and Picard should have known eachother, because rather than trying to stop the problem of time being different for those on Earth and on a Starship, they should be trying to harness it.  I mean, how much better would it be to have highly trained Captains and crew outlive their counterparts living their lives on planets.  Sure, the tech would advance beyond the crew at an incredible rate, but the decision making of a successful command staff could be invaluable, but you'd need that Decker style character to keep the Captain in line with the tech advances.  Hmmm.  So would it be a situation of trading out the crew when you come into port every so often so the new kids and their tech can take over?  So to sum it up, what would be the point of working to prematurely age a Captain in order to keep him in line with his Earthbound coutnerparts?  This actually makes a greater argument for the Ent-D taking family along for the ride thing, if the aging made it impossible to have loved ones you're with.  I mean total "Vampire Syndrome".  How long would you be loyal to an empire where you're loved ones are long gone and all you have is ancestors you don't know, born of a woman you knew once upon a time.  Seems to me, they could potentially have a high rate of 'mutiny' with captains taking their ships and going freelance (actually could make some great stories).

On the McCoy aging thing... well maybe it was all that time he spent in other "timelines" that aged him beyond what he was in the "real" timeline.  So to the people of the current timeline he was 100 (and with the time factor who knows, maybe the the body of a much younger man) but considering he spent a while in other dimensions (and perhaps more than we saw on the series) he aged there but may have come back (assuming he really came back and didn't emerge in an alternate timeline) a much older man.

As for the timeline thing, I think it could be argued that you aren't actually traveling in time as much as to a different mostly similar dimension, couldn't it?  So, killing your father isn't really killing your father, as much as it's killing a guy who looks and acts like your father who gave life to a man who looks and acts like you, but not actually your father or you.  Multiple dimensions could effect each other just by people coming to it from different dimensions.  So, in Trek what we are now faced with is merely glimpses into multiple disjointed dimensions.  Who can say how any of them are actually connected, and which was the real one?  (the real one is actually whichever one you want, as they exist and are therefor all "real" unto themselves)  If you returned to a timeline where you changed the outcome, you never actually made it home, but are rather in another dimension where the outcome was different than the one you knew and the person you are in said universe left (or maybe didn't and there are two of you in the same universe).    Sure it's better for you as you made it out, but your family and all the people aren't actually 'yours'.  They're just close facsimiles, and maybe close enough that it'll make you happy until the day you die.

As to why the EntE isn't more advanced, I supposed that in this alternate dimension (or whatever you may choose to call it) that they had a universal depression which caused stagnant development and they ended up in a similar situation.  Perhaps a workers revolt (because it's only the Federation elite who get the high life.  I doubt the dilithium miners are doing it because they really like digging, but because they need to provide for families and they are certainly doing with less than the cushy politicians and admirals who dole out their wonder technology to the loyal party members they deem 'advanced' enough to partake of their glory).

That said, yeah. It's totally screwed up, especially with the horrible character motivations that they give some of these villains.  Apparently in many dimensions aliens must have skulls too small for their brains which causes irrational rage and limited problem solving skills.

[Czar Mohab]

Well, isn't Warp speed actually the warping of space, so you aren't actually traveling that fast, but instead you aren't actually traveling that far?  So does age become a factor when you are traveling down the block instead of to the outer reaches of the galaxy?  Sure, there may be some time issues due to traveling at high impulse, but with the warp speed how much of a difference would that make?   Another thought... Yeah, Kirk and Picard should have known eachother, because rather than trying to stop the problem of time being different for those on Earth and on a Starship, they should be trying to harness it.  I mean, how much better would it be to have highly trained Captains and crew outlive their counterparts living their lives on planets.  Sure, the tech would advance beyond the crew at an incredible rate, but the decision making of a successful command staff could be invaluable, but you'd need that Decker style character to keep the Captain in line with the tech advances.  Hmmm.  So would it be a situation of trading out the crew when you come into port every so often so the new kids and their tech can take over?  So to sum it up, what would be the point of working to prematurely age a Captain in order to keep him in line with his Earthbound coutnerparts?  This actually makes a greater argument for the Ent-D taking family along for the ride thing, if the aging made it impossible to have loved ones you're with.  I mean total "Vampire Syndrome".  How long would you be loyal to an empire where you're loved ones are long gone and all you have is ancestors you don't know, born of a woman you knew once upon a time.  Seems to me, they could potentially have a high rate of 'mutiny' with captains taking their ships and going freelance (actually could make some great stories).

I was actually trying to point out that Gene had created warp drive as a means to counteract the time dialation rules and still travel faster than light - warp drive inherently protects the ship and the crew from the effects of time dialation. This is something that can be stated as an understood fact (and something that we, as non-Trek humans will have to create on our own to travel the stars). However, nothing is ever stated about running at impulse. So what keeps them safe from time dialation at impulse?

[EmeraldEdge]

perhaps it's the very small amount of time they actually spend traveling at said speed?  Warping up until they are really close to their destinations, fighting at warp speed, etc. (didn't they do that in TOS?)  Here's another thought.  If you're moving at warp speed and another ship fires at you, assuming their weapon can travel that fast as well (or faster actually), they would have to then be in synch with your warping from one place to another, wouldn't they? If they weren't, isn't there a possibility that the weapon would miss the space you were in at that exact moment and pass on by?  Although, are you opening up a hole from one space to another, like bending a rubber band to go from one section of the band to another, or are you distorting the distance, making it smaller, and actually traveling the whole distance but the distance has been made smaller.  In the latter you would probably score a hit, in the previous a miss is possible, is it not?  Still you see the Enterprise sometimes doing things like moving at impulse to the outside of the solar system, don't you?  Could it be that Starfleet has an order to counteract the lack of time passing during down times, such as traveling at subwarp speeds, but not to excess, so that the "shelf life" of their crews are extended a bit?  I'm starting to think we need to have a whole new sci-fi franchise that would take such things into account.  Unless they can start to explain how it works, or at least make you forget to ask the question in the first place.  Perhaps it's like learning to fly by being distracted and forgetting to fall (missing the ground).

[Corbomite]

I didnt't realize they were flying without shields.  I was only able to watch the movie once thus far, though Iam hoping on watching it again.  It did appear as if it shot phasers more like the TNG ships rather than TOS ships however, and of course the updated bridge and changed hull shape with changed Nacelle shape...etc.

Of course we could all just call it a reboot and so fundamental things like that changed, but one could view it as they had glimpses of tech that was superior and hence incorporated those things into their own designs.

I was speaking to your Enterprise reference. They had no shields in Enterprise (the Vulcans apparently were being stingy with certain technologies) and, as Nemesis said, they met the Klingons too early and that shoved the NX-01 out of space dock early. IIRC they didn't get their weapons upgrade until near the end of the first season. The only thing really advanced (looking) was the ships design from a detail standpoint (the producers obviously couldn't go back to TOS's flat cardboard look). Their (missile) torpedoes were a joke and they were practically afraid of the Transporter. An alien doctor was their chief xenobiologist and the Vulcans were almost stifling in their prejudice. It didn't look like Starfleet had their s**t together to me.

In a way, it does give a new dimension to Section 31 as they would have been aware of any knowledge of the future passed down in FC. They would have kept it under wraps and tried to manipulate events to Earth's favor. Having initially failed, they were attempting to retroactively "fix" things by sending agents back from the 29th century. The events portrayed in Enterprise did  accelerate Starfleet's knowledge of the galaxy as well as their technological grab bag and could have precipitated the advanced growth shown in the new movie as compared to the same "time period" in TOS. This would also mean that the Spock that went back in time in the movie was not the original Spock, but a product of the new timeline established in FC or if it was "our" Spock that would mean the black hole actually sent him to another universe as well as back in time.



Czar does bring up a good point with the Defiant though. It is definitely a TOS design and not part of the new universe as such. If we accept Enterprise and the new movie as a new timeline built off of FC then that means there are two mirror universes as well and that would mean the Defiant crossed not only through dimensions, but through universes and  time! That gives "The Tholian Web" the award for most screwball space anomaly ever created! 

[Nemesis]

Well, isn't Warp speed actually the warping of space,

The only time they say what is being warped is in the original pilot.  Then they say "Time Warp Factor".

Roddenberry might have been taking a FTL idea from John W. Campbell.  In one of his books an alien race warps time for the ship so that from the outside perspective it is travelling faster than light.  They then warp time within the ship so that the crew experiences time at the normal rate.  The ship could travel at .01C while experiencing time 10000 times faster which would mean that to the outside world they would be travelling at 100 times C.  Then warp time for the crew to 10000 times slower and from their perspective the ship would also be travelling at 100 times C.  Whether this is what Roddenberry was originally thinking I can't really say.

The same series of novells by Campbell has the Earth starship warping space for FTL.  Effectively creating its own bubble of space time within which the ship does not move while the bubble moves at FTL speeds. It is the oldest use of space warping for FTL travel that I know of.  (The series starts with The Black Star Passes collection of short stories)

[candle_86]

I like this timeline explanation.  (I also like this new timeline.)  No Simon Pegg was not my favorite of the new actors (Anton Yelchin was...he's soooo cute.) 

One thing I haven't see a lot of discussion on, and that the First Contact timeline would explain, is the size of the ships.  Captain Pike told young Kirk his father saved over 800 crew members on the Kelvin.  The Enterprise is bigger than the Enterprise-E, and it's engineering sections are HUGE.  So is its shuttle bay (has anyone counted the # of shuttles it holds yet?). 

Knowing the galaxy is such a big, bad awful place (as McCoy tells us), it would make sense that starfleet would build ships a LOT bigger and much more capable.  I mean, sure, the Rom torps really did a number on their ships, but damn, the Kelvin lasted long enough to not only evac everyone in shuttles but long enough for George Kirk to ram their attacker.

I actully checked this out the new enterprise is between the Exelscior and Admiral classes in size.

AS for the alternate timeline, it could be assumed that because the temporal cold war ended the timeline was restored to the original timeline that was supposed to happen. Also romunlan cloaking technology, this was an experimental ship to begin with, and most likly starfleet would have ordered Archer and crew to shutup and star fleet inteligence only knew of this fact after acher and crew died.

Borg same thing, the Hansens knew of the borg and where starfleet reseachers, most likly the existance of the borg was kept top secret and not given out as general knowlege, and also kept with starfleet inteligence. This can be seen to make sense because before picard made first contact, the hansens where already following a cube and had been assimilated by said cube. So some people in starfleet already knew of the existance of the borg, but its clearance level for both cloaks and the borg was probably higher than kirks or picards clearance, most likly for top brass and reserachers assigned to research the project.

Much how the US military does today, does every General even know whats going on, they can be suprised by stuff the other half of the generals knew about for 50 years

[Corbomite]

AS for the alternate timeline, it could be assumed that because the temporal cold war ended the timeline was restored to the original timeline that was supposed to happen. Also romunlan cloaking technology, this was an experimental ship to begin with, and most likly starfleet would have ordered Archer and crew to shutup and star fleet inteligence only knew of this fact after acher and crew died.

The Romulans had full cloaking technology in Enterprise as well as cloaked mines. The Suliban and other races were shown to posses it as well. In the TOS episode Balance of Terror, Spock is amazed that they have a cloak. Two years later, Kirk risked all to capture one in The Enterprise Incident so they could find a way to beat it and/or reproduce it. This lead to the Treaty of Algeron which forbade the Federation from developing cloaking tech and prevented a second Earth/Romulan war. So on one hand you have cloaks all over the place in the earliest years of human space travel and on the other you have Spock's reaction and Kirk's subsequent actions indicating that it was new technology in that time period, but not 100 years earlier. In other words, total BS.

Borg same thing, the Hansens knew of the borg and where starfleet reseachers, most likly the existance of the borg was kept top secret and not given out as general knowlege, and also kept with starfleet inteligence. This can be seen to make sense because before picard made first contact, the hansens where already following a cube and had been assimilated by said cube. So some people in starfleet already knew of the existance of the borg, but its clearance level for both cloaks and the borg was probably higher than kirks or picards clearance, most likly for top brass and reserachers assigned to research the project.

Much how the US military does today, does every General even know whats going on, they can be suprised by stuff the other half of the generals knew about for 50 years

The Hansens weren't part of Starfleet and they deviated from their registered flight plan and ignored orders from their superiors to return. No one knew what happened to them until Voyager came upon their wrecked ship in the Delta Quadrant. If Starfleet had knowledge of the Borg 200 years before TNG, why were they caught so flat footed when the cube appeared on their doorstep and they claimed new weapons were at lest two years away?

[candle_86]

AS for the alternate timeline, it could be assumed that because the temporal cold war ended the timeline was restored to the original timeline that was supposed to happen. Also romunlan cloaking technology, this was an experimental ship to begin with, and most likly starfleet would have ordered Archer and crew to shutup and star fleet inteligence only knew of this fact after acher and crew died.

The Romulans had full cloaking technology in Enterprise as well as cloaked mines. The Suliban and other races were shown to posses it as well. In the TOS episode Balance of Terror, Spock is amazed that they have a cloak. Two years later, Kirk risked all to capture one in The Enterprise Incident so they could find a way to beat it and/or reproduce it. This lead to the Treaty of Algeron which forbade the Federation from developing cloaking tech and prevented a second Earth/Romulan war. So on one hand you have cloaks all over the place in the earliest years of human space travel and on the other you have Spock's reaction and Kirk's subsequent actions indicating that it was new technology in that time period, but not 100 years earlier. In other words, total BS.

Borg same thing, the Hansens knew of the borg and where starfleet reseachers, most likly the existance of the borg was kept top secret and not given out as general knowlege, and also kept with starfleet inteligence. This can be seen to make sense because before picard made first contact, the hansens where already following a cube and had been assimilated by said cube. So some people in starfleet already knew of the existance of the borg, but its clearance level for both cloaks and the borg was probably higher than kirks or picards clearance, most likly for top brass and reserachers assigned to research the project.

Much how the US military does today, does every General even know whats going on, they can be suprised by stuff the other half of the generals knew about for 50 years

The Hansens weren't part of Starfleet and they deviated from their registered flight plan and ignored orders from their superiors to return. No one knew what happened to them until Voyager came upon their wrecked ship in the Delta Quadrant. If Starfleet had knowledge of the Borg 200 years before TNG, why were they caught so flat footed when the cube appeared on their doorstep and they claimed new weapons were at lest two years away?

Well for the suliban ect, it can be argued that tech is because of the temporal cold war as a matter of fact I think daniele states that much, so when the war ended and the timeline reset itself the suliban may not have had cloaks anymore, also only Archer and crew encounted the romulans and there cloak, starfleet likly kept this at the highest levels, spock was only a commander at the time, he wouldn't have full clarence nor would kirk at the time, so it is possible the fleet was not informed of the cloak. Starfleet most likly wanted to capture a cloak because they hadn;t yet accquired one, Archer never stole a cloak from the romulans, and Starfleet intel wanted one.

As for the borg, the Hansens where looking for the borg, they stated as much when we saw the backstory, star fleet ordered them to turn back, but the hansens where already looking for them before the encounted them. And the Raven was a Civilian ship yes, but also has the starfleet delta and a starfleet civilian registry for reseach vessels. They where a Civilizan reseach vessel operating with starfleet the hansens where likly the best we had at experts. Also why wern't weapons ready, well for one, no one at the time knew the full extent of the collective, also the borg in Enterprise where using the 22nd centry tech, simply stronger, they adapted it, but this is all the intel starfleet had, and a Galaxy Class, hell a consitition original could have blown that ship up, so Starfleet had no real idea the extent of the threat or there level of technology based on that encounter, remember Enterprise was able to destroy them, so starfleet most likly considered them a minimal threat based on what they had to go on.