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Marika Wilkarah was a female Bajoran Starfleet engineering officer who served aboard the USS Excalibur during the late 24th century, during which time she was assimilated by the Borg.<- when she was aboard voyager, it seemed to me a little strange that noone wondered why a bajoran was in the delta quadrant, as noone seemed to realise (barring her two colleagues) that she was a former drone.
Appreciate that this ''hey why is a bajoran here?' could have occured offscreen, although it wasn't implied, but is another explanation that so many aliens look so similar that persons assumed she was of a race which originates in the delta quadrant?
Just seems strange to me

Simple answer.........crappy writing.

Slightly longer answer: there are only so many combinations of bumps your typical bumpy-headed alien can have. It was probably assumed that her species resembled the Bajorans due to convergent evolution, rather than realising she was a Bajoran.

"Funny - you like just like a Bajoran."

"..."

Was any on-screen explanation EVER offered as to how people assimilated from the Alpha Quadrant and/or directly by the cube during the events of Wolf 359 were in the Delta Quadrant?

What explanation is needed, aside from the Borg's canon usage of transwarp?

It covers the assorted Alpha Quadrant assimilations, but not so much the Wolf 359 casualties showing up later. If I recall, the closest we ever got to an explanation for that was the Borg Queen chastising Data for either three-dimensional or linear thinking - I can never quite remember which. At any rate, however the Queen's handled, the rest can be covered through the simple expedient of having the Wolf 359 cube detach a sphere or other support ship for whatever reason that then returned to the Delta Quadrant. It would cover it, but I don't remember any such thing ever being mentioned.

True, it wasn't mentioned. However, there was plenty of time after the battle and before the endgame of "BoBW" for the cube to have sent some sort of auxiliary craft back to the DQ.

Absolutely, which is what I'm saying. I'm just also pointing out that it's just my own speculation and that at any moment an actual Paramount writer could look at such an explanation and decide that it could be a little more quantum.

Well said.

Here's a scenario.

We know that the E-D didn't find any escape pods at Wolf 359. Now at least some of them got away, because Sisko did, which means at least some of thoem had warp drive... though I rather thought he ejected in a shuttle - it certainly seemed big enough to be a shuttle when we saw it.

Anyway, point being I would normally have expected to find escape pods there... and we didn't.

So I figure the Borg cube picked up any escape pods that couldn't warp away and assimilated the occupants. And then, I figure that that cube was carrying a sphere, which it dispatched off back towards the DQ with some (most? all?) of the assimilated folks on board.

Don't see any problems with any of that, myself. It's entirely in line with what we know of the Borg.

And sending back newly assimilated and completely unknown aliens to some sort of dedicated reserach centre in the DQ would make sense.

Does this mean it had to have been Excalibur, NOT Endevour that was the lone survivor of Wolf 359?

There was a survivor???? Who was the captain and please tell me we didn't let him retire!?

Deepcrush wrote:There was a survivor???? Who was the captain and please tell me we didn't let him retire!?

Dunno. In BoBW Hansen stated that a fleet of forty ships was being assembled at Wolf. In "The Drumhead", Satie stated that 39 ships were lost during the incursion, although this could also include ships like the Lalo, which were intercepted by the Borg en route to Wolf.