Which Borg incarnation is freakier? Series or First Contact?

There's only really one way to redeem the Borg Queen...that is, if it had been stated that she was an experiment to see why humans (with usually single leaders) were able to beat their ass at Wolf 359.

Maybe it was just something they considered, tried out and then dropped.

That would have worked for me.

But yes, THE SERIES BORG rocked. Especially with how well Q built them up.

 

Ummm..Not sure what you mean. Starfleet got its but kicked at WOLF 359. So, if anything, going with her was a mistake.

Rob

 

Nope. First Contact implied the Queen(s) had always existed and that a near eternity of being surrounded by only the Collective as its only partially individual life form left her lonely enough to try and create an "equal" to herself, a King to co-rule the Borg.

Really, really stupid idea that did not need to be introduced except to have one specific "bad guy" for the audience to identify with. Personally I would have preferred "the voice" or singular mind of the Collective to have grown tired of slowing down its communication with Data to a verbal level and created a new type of Drone to act through.

Which would have been all the more chilling since it would have been made out of one of his former ship mates and speaking with an ungodly sounding voice and no compassion at all for them. Once they retook the ship the drone would have been killed leaving only the Collective at large again.

 

The way I saw the Queen in First Contact (though not later in Voyager, which undermined this idea) was this: to me, the Queen was not necessarily the control mechanism of the Collective, but more like a release valve. All of the mental/emotional toxicity that builds up due to the suppression of the drones was vented through this one drone built along a different model than the others, as a processor/buffer. To destroy the Queen is to remove this escape valve and cause the Collective she represents to implode.

I was able to accept First Contact by accepting an explanation along those lines...but Voyager really DID dumb down the Borg, and that I never did accept.

 

The Borg were at their freakiest in the episodes "Q-Who?" and "Best of Both Worlds I & II". After that they -- for me -- they lost their mystique.

Then they kind of reclaimed it for First Contact, but they were still not as scary as they were in those first three episodes.

I think Hugh really did a lot to kill them for me.

 

Agreed. But what made them especially scary was the music in "Q Who?" and especially "BOBW"; it made your skin crawl!

 

I actually liked the Borg queen. She gives them some background, perhaps offering a bit of an explanation for how the Borg got started and what drives them all to continue assimilating. You all do make some good points about the Borg queen though.

I voted for series and First Contact equally in terms of scariness for the Borg. The Borg weren't ruined for me at all until Voyager came along.

 

Actually, I'm going to disagree with most people here and say that the Queen is actually not only plausible, but logical and maybe even inevitable when it comes to the Borg. I won't explain in this thread why I think that (it would be off topic), but I'd be happy to start a thread about it.

 

Your damned right! You can thank the awesome talents of Mr. Ron Jones for those. And what did he get as a reward for his outstanding efforts?

Firing. Fired by Rick Berman.

 

Why doens't that surprise me? After all, it's same man who gave "a Valentine Massacre Day" to the fans.

 

I'd be interested in hearing that argument. I dunno whether a new thread is necessary - it doesn't seem particularly OT to me. But either way, have at it if you like.

 

"a Valentine Massacre Day"

That's the truth! I guess Dennis will pop up any minute now to defend him (Berman) though...

 

Yeah I'd like to hear that too.

Initially I was against the Borg Queen...but Alice Krige's portrayal was so well done that it was irresistable.

Still, I prefer the Borg from the first three Borg-isodes.

 

I'll start a new thread, as the structure of the Borg Collective is a different topic to whether Series Borg or Neo Borg are the freakier.... I'll post a link when I have the thread up....

HERE is the thread where I explain my views on the Borg Queen, and why she is a perfectly logical part of the Collective. I look foreards to seeing what you guys think about my idea.

 

They are albino dominatrixes, there is nothing freakier than that.

 

I waffled between picking "Both" and "First Contact." In the end, I picked both, because I do really like the concept of the Borg as shown in Q Who and (especially) BoBW. However, the series Borg also suffer from two things: One, going back and watching those eps now, they DO look kinda doofy. First Contact was much better in this regard (which is, of course, in large part due to movie budget vs. TV show budget). The Borg in FC actually look and act creepy. Two, while I thought that Hugh was an interesting concept, and that the initial Hugh ep (I, Borg) was, on it's own, pretty good, what they did later totally fell flat. Descent was really pretty bad, and sapped a lot of the coolness and creep factor from the Borg.

I have mixed feelings on the Queen in FC. Overall, while I think that the concept was a bit out of left field (and at first, I had the same reaction many others here did: that it took away from that initial creepiness the Borg had by giving them an emotional, clealry identifiable "bad guy" leader), it grew on me during the actual movie. I can see the logic behind having the queen from a plot perspective, too; I like the idea that it's a holdover from when they were a more conventional, biological species (however long ago THAT was), and they have never been able to completely get rid of the collectives need for this single governing force. So in the end, it worked for me. FC also introduced us to random, instant assimilation: the first time seeing that one security officer get grabbed and "tubule-d" sent a shiver down my spine. Talk about creep factor! Also, seeing the "partially assimilated" officers later (Hawk, but also just randoms in Borgified engineering) was very effective as well. So I picked both, but I really don't think the queen in FC did as much to damage the Borgs creepiness as I thought she might.

Some of the Voyager Borg stuff, on the other hand...

 

^ Concur with much of what you said. As I stated in another thread most people's gripe with the Queen rests just in how the Borg appeared more scary when faceless - Picard in BoBW talking to a huge empty cavern within the cube. Lines and lines of drones, voices speaking as one. Whoah ... chilling.

Queen? Reduces them to almost a villian of the week status - which is what they became in many people's eyes in Voyager.

Obviously with the movie budget they looked uber cool and scary. But even the lack of budget details in those first appearances actually adds somewhat to the character of the Borg. yes the production values were so much less but as a jolt to the senses when they first showed up.

Amoutated limbs replaceed with cybernetic tools, cybernetic eye pieces, the zombified walk, all helped to cement the feel, character and scare factor of the Borg when we first saw them. Obviously with repeated exposure they inevitably lost their edge. Sad

 

This is exactly why I can't make up my mind about this poll. When I rewatch TNG, I just skip those "Descent" episodes/pretend they don't exist. They did a disservice both to the Borg and the character of Lore (although the teaser sequence before the opening credits was intriguing). I liked First Contact from start to finish and have nothing but praise for how the Borg were portrayed in it, but at the same time, I think they were much cooler in "Q Who" and "Best of Both Worlds" (despite the budget constraits) due to how effective those episodes were in making them look unstoppable (until the almost too easy rescue of Picard).

I also found Hugh in "I, Borg" to be a more interesting character than The Queen in First Contact, so I think judging the quality between the episodes and the movie, they balance out pretty evenly. The Borg in the movie don't match the intimidation factor of those in the first three Borg episodes or come across as emotionally stimulating as Hugh in "I, Borg", but then again, the movie never cheapens the characters the way those "Descent" episodes did.

 

The movie probably took the idea of violating the body to new heights and therefore wins the poll in my view.

RAMA