The Borg: Wondering....

[Takeru]

King Daniel Into Darkness wrote:

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If you're a fan of the Borg, you need to read the fantastic Destiny trilogy of books by David Mack.

Fantastic?! Not in my opinion, I really don't like this trilogy. It's silly, it involves humans of all people directly in both the creation and the end of the collective (and not just any humans, humans directly tied to trek shows we saw on tv).
It completely demystifies the Borg, Later TNG episodes and Voyager weakened the Borg, they turned from an unbeatable force of nature into another punching bag for the federation heroes.
Destiny takes them and completely destroys them. Sure, the writer has billions of people die to make the Borg look like the unbeatable force of nature they once were, but then the collective is dissolved, the end, game over, all Borg gone. The tornado was bitchslapped and became a nice summer brease, the tsunami was told to piss off ... force of nature? Yeah, right.

[sonak]

Tiberius wrote:

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Thank you, I believe I shall.

Oh well, nobody's perfect. Did you read my novelization of it?

And the Collective on board the Enterprise was just two dozen drones or so at best. Easily killed, and let's not forget that Engineering was flooding with that gas that disolves organic tissue. As the drones died, the surviving drones were being forced to take a greater percentage of the Collective. It's be like trying to run Windows 8 on a computer from 1987. Just can't be done.

the book's a little long to be read quickly. Give me time and I'll get to it.

[Tiberius]

sonak wrote:

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the book's a little long to be read quickly. Give me time and I'll get to it.

Hope you enjoy it.

[A'Tun-Te]

I've read the three volumes... and disliked it.
Not only are there things that are not quite correct, the author turned the Borg into a heap of failures.
I think I'll stick to the first explanations of their origins...

Thank you though, despite I disliked the story, it was not written in a bad way.
Good amusement, but IMHO complete non-canonical....

[Star Wolf]

King Daniel Into Darkness wrote:

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If you're a fan of the Borg, you need to read the fantastic Destiny trilogy of books by David Mack. It deals with the beginnings and end of the Borg, all told during an apocalyptic full-scale invasion of the Federation.

It has some very different ideas about how the Borg came to be than what you postulate, though.

King Daniel Into Darkness wrote:

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The books aren't considered canon, but I'm not sure that matters since that version of Trek finished and so they're not going to be contradicted. You can either say prime-universe Trek is over, or read the books and find out what happened next.

This reminds me of my thoughts on the Klingons and The Final Reflection back in 1984.

Time to go see the grandkids

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

A'Tun-Te wrote:

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I've read the three volumes... and disliked it.
Not only are there things that are not quite correct, the author turned the Borg into a heap of failures.
I think I'll stick to the first explanations of their origins...

Thank you though, despite I disliked the story, it was not written in a bad way.
Good amusement, but IMHO complete non-canonical....

Each to their own, I guess.

How are the Borg "a heap of failures" though? They destroyed almost half of Starfleet, hundreds of planets, killed 64 billion people... it was only a miracle that saved Earth.

[A'Tun-Te]

The Borg should have been 100 times the threat they posed during the entire series.
From "thousands of planets" they assimilated, at least ten would've been evolved beyond our imagination, giving the Borg knowledge and technologies beyond our ability to divert.
1 standard Cube (not even a tactical) took the near entire fleet down at Wolf 359, granted it was Jean-Luc Picard/Locutus on the Bridge with tactical insights, but even then: more than 10K lives gone, 39 STARSHIPS... eradicated in mere minutes...
Imagine what a fleet of standard cubes could do.

Someone, long time ago, made a digital replication of the cube's assault, spinning around at high velocity, becoming an all-sides-covering laser beam.
Considering the wreckage Enterprise NCC-1701-D flew through, this could be amazingly accurate.
Especially, since a few ships seemed to be cut in parts, rather than exploded.
Then again, the Borg have a 'surgical cutting beam', used especially for taking ships apart, they could have used this beam as assault weapon on Picard's command.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

But the Destiny books take place almost 20 years after "Best of Both Worlds" - the Federation has upgraded it's defences significantly as a result of prior Borg attacks including technology from the future which Captain Janeway brought back at the end of Voyager which was designed to fight the Borg.

And besides, the combined Federation/Klingon/Romulan/Gorn/Tholian/Ferengi/Cardassian fleet was utterly annihilated at the Battle of the Azure Nebula in no time at all. The Borg weren't even slowed.

[A'Tun-Te]

My point precisely.
Whatever they scavenged, could not ever be enough to slow them down, let not mention stop them.
If the Borg were truly interested in us, a swarm of thousands of Cubes would visit earth, no?
Heck, if not millions.

Since the introduction of the Borg, there could have been only one ending...
And not a good one for us.

But then they decided to tone the Borg down, by like 300% (reminds me of Diablo 2, the Barbarian, who was toned down by 300% in the first patch :P)
It's funny why we simply cannot lose, ever, in movies... XD

[Takeru]

Well, there's the theory that the Borg lost on purpose during TNG, slap the federation around a little bit, incite them to develop new technologies, come back a few years later, look what they managed to do, rinse and repeat, then send 10.000 cubes and finish the job. That could be the borg way of doing R&D, why assimilate a civilization early? Just poke them a little bit at the start so the eventual assimilation brings even more more technology and ideas into the collective.

[Merlanthe]

I was watching ST:Motion Picture for the first time and when they started saying that V'ger encountered a world of living machines who altered it so that it could complete its programmed mission my first thought was 'cool V'ger encountered the Borg homeworld before the Borg became assimilation junkies!'

Then Ilyia (sp?) got assimilated and her conciousness became a part V'ger

Timo wrote:

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Not sure if there really are many Queens, or merely many bodies for one Queen. Or whether this Queen is a high leader or the lowest of slaves. Or whether she's an original feature (perhaps even the incarnation of the originator herself?) or a later addition, possibly an outside intruder who lives in the virtual body of the Collective like a parasite.

I always liked that last idea about her being a seperate being that lives within the collective like a parasite. I once had a theory on the Borg Queens origins. Basically the TNG two parter Descent showed that the crews plan to infect the Borg with individuality via Huw worked, but when the collective sensed what was happening they disconnected Huw's cube before the infection could spread.

My theory was what if, before they were disconnected a female drone was able to transmitt her conciousness to another cube, or maybe a female drone on another cube had already been infected. But rather than infect other drones with her individuality she instead used her individuality as a way to dominate and take control of the collective thereby becoming an individual conciousness cotrolling the Borg but also remaining seperate from the hive mind. This would explain her fetish for inhabiting female drones that share a similar physical appearance because they look like she once did prior to being assimilated, why when one queen dies another pops up due to her consiousness body hopping.

More importantly it would account for the Borg villain decay as they were unable to function at optimum efficiency because of the Queen controlling them. In Voyager when the Borg Queen encounters problems that could easily be solved by merging minds she never does also she always seems to give verbal commands to the surrounding drones to get them to do stuff rather than the drones instantly and silently reacting to her thoughts and desires as they would do if she was part of the hive mind. This is because as an individual she is reluctant, even fearful, of merging with the collective hive mind because it might mean the loss of her individuality and/or control over the collective.

It has pointed out to me previously in First Contact the Borg Queen claims to have been present during Best of Both Worlds which took place before Descent. But we never see her in Best of Both Worlds we just have her claim to have been there. Its entirely possible that she was just a fellow drone in the same adjunct as the assimilated Picard and given his tendancy to reppress his memories of being a drone its entirely possible that his memories of her being the Queen rather than just a fellow drone are false memories triggered by her own insistence that she has always been Queen. After all he doesnt remember her at all until she 'reminds' him.

Of course thats all just a theory i had.

[R. Star]

On the reverse side Voyager can routinely engage the Borg and come out unscathed... without even mentioning the proverbial god mode they turned on in Endgame. This happens a lot... establish a powerful, threatening bad guy... then water them down to the point where the good guys can beat them and they become a parody.

[Tiberius]

But Voyager never really beat the Borg. They merely escaped and blew up a ship or two. They never really did any real damage to the Borg until Unimatrix Zero and Endgame.

[Tiberius]

Merlanthe wrote:

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I was watching ST:Motion Picture for the first time and when they started saying that V'ger encountered a world of living machines who altered it so that it could complete its programmed mission my first thought was 'cool V'ger encountered the Borg homeworld before the Borg became assimilation junkies!'

Then Ilyia (sp?) got assimilated and her conciousness became a part V'ger

Ah, but the Ilia probe was unfamiliar with Carbon units - the same carbon units that have always formed the basis of a Borg drone. If V'Ger was from the Borg, why would it be so unfamiliar with a core part of Borg physiology?

Besides, do you really see the Borg finding an ancient space probe with laughable technology and then they decide to be nice and help it out?

It has pointed out to me previously in First Contact the Borg Queen claims to have been present during Best of Both Worlds which took place before Descent. But we never see her in Best of Both Worlds we just have her claim to have been there. Its entirely possible that she was just a fellow drone in the same adjunct as the assimilated Picard and given his tendancy to reppress his memories of being a drone its entirely possible that his memories of her being the Queen rather than just a fellow drone are false memories triggered by her own insistence that she has always been Queen. After all he doesnt remember her at all until she 'reminds' him.

Of course thats all just a theory i had.

My ebook version of the Best of Both Worlds actually has the Queen in it. Check the link in my signature!

[JirinPanthosa]

Man I really, really wish Voyager had done a Borg origin story.

I imagine the Borg started as sort of Communism taken to an extreme. The original Borg probably formed a Collective for reasons similar to the formation of the Federation. To acquire knowledge, to set aside our differences. Then, like Futurama's Santa, it became something nobody intended it to be, and it calculated the best course of action was to absorb everything else in the universe.

I don't think the Queen ruined the Borg, at least not in First Contact. I think the ruination of the Borg is...well, Dark Frontier. It's the first episode that really weakened the Borg just to make it possible for them to stay part of the show.