The words "really believe" and "seriously" are too strong to describe how I feel, but the theory is that the Borg were something else then and were changed by the experience with V'Ger. In other words they too evolved to what they are "now" (meaning the 24th century). Less belieaveble is that the borg were exactly the same since the beginning of time, specially considering they change very much in the time between Q Who and the last we saw then (VOY or FC?).
I had imagined that episode where Kirk challenged those three disembodied brains into building a better society, would be the origin of the Borg. After Kirk had "left", each of the three entities had striven for perfecting their submissals in beating out the other two entities in their discourse on how to build this better society, but having failed to reach a consensus, the entity that had come up with the idea of assimulation, ended the "impasse" by making the other two entities subjected to her. This, in turn, became the necessary evil in making all subjects of this new society in compliance to the "Queen's" wishes. The initial striving for perfection in this "Kirk-inspired" competition in submitting ideas for building this better society among the other two entities, became the sole purpose of this new society as they would always be assimulating better ideas and better subjects from other worlds in this pursuit in becoming a "better society". And thus the Borg was born.
At first, I was intrigued by the idea of a connection between V'Ger and the Borg, but not so much anymore. Transformers aside, I think there are quite a few life-forms somewhere out there in the Star Trek Universe that can be classified as machines rather than organic. We can even use the Cylon approach from Battlestar Galactica that some of them started off as machines created by organic beings that eventually developed the ability to continue without them. "Machines creating machines..." --C-3PO, Star Wars Episode II
No no, I misspelled it, you're 100% right! (that's what I get for posting from my phone) What happens is... Spoiler: Borg origins A lone, insane and starving member of a very highly advanced species winds up straded in the distant past with 2 Canadian MACOs from the Columbia NX-02. They may be able to survive if she merges conciousness with them, but they refuse. She forces herself upon them, making them her drones. They spread out and assimilate the planet, then out into space. Read the Destiny trilogy of novels. They're utterly fantastic.
V'Ger had it's origins as an earth launched voyager probe. In the trek literature continuity, V'Ger was modified by The Body Electric, an AI civilisation and one of the major players in the local cluster of galaxies. Plus, it views organics as not even properly alive.
That and the whole "What are carbon units?" thing is why I don't buy the connection for a second. Face it, there are lots of other things that are at least as similar to the Borg in classic Trek and yet aren't considered. We have the Archons. The inhabitants are part of the Body (Collective), and anyone who is not of the Body is absorbed (assimilated). Whatever is seen by one can be seen by all, and they are all controlled by Landru (The Queen). Or what about the Denevan neural parasites? They were physically separate, but all functioned together to make up one single brain, in much the same way as the drones in the Collective are all separate but all function together to make up the single individual that we know as the Borg Collective. In "I, Borg," Picard says, "Think of them as a single collective being." Now, I'm not seriously proposing that either of these are the origin of the Borg. But since Trek had previously played around with collective consciousnesses before without being related to the Borg, why can't they also have cyberneetic beings without them being related to the Borg as well?
V'ger is not the precursor to The Borg. Roddenberry didn't create The Borg. Now The Cybermen as the precursor to the Borg. Yeah. As a matter of fact I'm not sure how Star Trek was never sued by the BBC for the copyright infringement. The Borg and the Cybermen are too close!
The idea of cybernetic beings did not originate with Doctor Who. You can actually trace their earliest (known) appearances in science-fiction stories as far back as the late 19th-Century.
The earliest known appearance I can think of was in "The Jameson Satellite," which appeared in a 1931 issue of Amazing Stories. The story featured a race of cybernetic beings called the Zoromes, comprised of members assimilated from many different worlds. Unlike the Cybermen and the Borg, the Zoromes were benevolent explorers, but they believed in cybernetic assimilation as a means of improving and expanding their species across the universe. You could say that Doctor Who took the concept of the Zoromes and created an evil version of them in the form of the Cybermen.
And the Borg need not be the only cyborgs. The Vegan tyranny, whoever built the drydock that captured the Archer Enterprise crew,others from Novels, Bynars, etc.
I do recall him saying something about this (though I don't remember in what publication as there was no internet as we know it then). Even at that time, it was clear he was speaking somewhat in jest, and it was not a serious thought.
I think the Star Trek Encyclopedia or Chronology mention it, though they note he wasn't entirely serious when he said it.
I always thought the Borg just sort of happened. With the V'Ger route or the Columbia route, us humans had a hand in its creation. Mind, I quite liked Destiny and found the Caeliar rather nifty, but I think the Borg should be terribly mysterious. It seems to me that they themselves don't even know how they started. IIRC, Seven mentions in an episode of VOY that a lot of the Borg's older collective memories are sort of swiss cheese.