'Dark Frontier' Where the Borg went wrong?

[R. Star]

teacake wrote:

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And with the tribbles it's a Watership Down effect.

Which can also be called Drowning. Whether it's a physical drowning or a metaphorical drowning at the sheer facepalmness of it is of course open to interpretation.

[teacake]

Actually it was a joke about breeding. Yes, yes get some new material teacake.

[Praetorian]

Voyager overpowering a small Borg probe never bothered me. Neither did the Hansen's adventures. Now, the Queen caving in to Janeway's threat? That did! As if the Queen would have a fear of death! She should have just said "Go ahead, blow yourself up, I'll just reincarnate..."

[Guy Gardener]

We don't see that sort of enlightenment until Battlestar Galactica.

[Brit]

Praetorian wrote:

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Voyager overpowering a small Borg probe never bothered me. Neither did the Hansen's adventures. Now, the Queen caving in to Janeway's threat? That did! As if the Queen would have a fear of death! She should have just said "Go ahead, blow yourself up, I'll just reincarnate..."

Which goes to show you that she wasn't just reincarnated. Each Queen was a seperate individual, the only individual in the collective, so yes she may have put on a front, but she was afraid, one only has to look at her clutching at Picards ankle in First Contact.

[Praetorian]

That is indeed true! I guess that's another reason that shows why the Queen was a bad idea. The Borg succumbing to fear (or any other emotion, I guess) really defanged them... They were supposed to be relentless, like a force of nature, feeling neither fear nor sympathy, interested only in expanding the Collective.

I can accept (former) Borg drones, having been separated from the Collective, regaining such emotions. In fact this premise contributed to some of the most interesting episodes and characters in the series.

But the Queen is supposed to embody the Collective. Having her react based on her emotions (or her having emotions at all!) is something I would rather not see! It makes the Borg just another bad guy.

The Borg being invincible is not, in my oppinion, their defining characteristic (so them being defeated is understandable). It's the total dehumanization they represent. Their thought processes being completely different from ours. They operate on a totally diferent plane from ours.

Take that away and they lose their interest.

[Melakon]

This is why I think their deterioration as a threat began with "I, Borg". You couldn't reason with or appeal to them. I suppose it really began with Locutus, who was basically just a plot device. It was easier for the writers to soften the Borg.

[Brit]

Praetorian wrote:

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But the Queen is supposed to embody the Collective. Having her react based on her emotions (or her having emotions at all!) is something I would rather not see! It makes the Borg just another bad guy.

The only way you can get a Queen that embodies the collective is to take her young, before her personality is completely formed. In Dark Frontier the Queen tells a young boy that she was just about his age when she was assimilated. So you take a child, you break the ties between parents and child and you give that child a special indoctrination that molds their ego to fit a specific roll. The child has to be old enough to have formed some kind of self-identity, but young enough to be malleable. At least in the world I built to explain how the Borg got to be what they were.


Christie Golden had it partially right when she wrote about the Borg Queen protocol, but I think both she and Peter David got it wrong when they tried to tell us adult women could assume the role of Queen. It wouldn’t work so well with someone who already had a pretty healthy ego that had not been compromised.

[R. Star]

Praetorian wrote:

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Voyager overpowering a small Borg probe never bothered me. Neither did the Hansen's adventures. Now, the Queen caving in to Janeway's threat? That did! As if the Queen would have a fear of death! She should have just said "Go ahead, blow yourself up, I'll just reincarnate..."

Yeah, the Queen is just stupid. It stops making the Collective a scary force without fear that cannot be reasoned with to just another disgruntled villain of the week.

[Brit]

R. Star wrote:

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Yeah, the Queen is just stupid. It stops making the Collective a scary force without fear that cannot be reasoned with to just another disgruntled villain of the week.

And a villain that cannot be defeated is useless as an antagonist. The hero has to prevail so the villain has to be vulnerable to something or you can't use him, it's either that or you don't use him at all. I've heard your argument over and over and frankly it doesn't make any sense, everything is less scary the more you know about it. That's true in real life and in fiction. Villains are only useful to provide tension and then be defeated otherwise you don't need them at all. Then when you use them up you think up a new one.

[Praetorian]

Brit wrote:

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And a villain that cannot be defeated is useless as an antagonist. The hero has to prevail so the villain has to be vulnerable to something or you can't use him, it's either that or you don't use him at all. I've heard your argument over and over and frankly it doesn't make any sense, everything is less scary the more you know about it. That's true in real life and in fiction. Villains are only useful to provide tension and then be defeated otherwise you don't need them at all. Then when you use them up you think up a new one.

R. Star didn't say the Borg shouldn't be unbeatable, only that they shouldn't be something you can reason with! I agree with everything you said!

The thing is, the Borg were defeated in BOBW, not because someone reasoned with them, and certanly not because they were afraid, but because of one of their weaknesses. The same way they find strenght in working as collective, and obtain massive knowledge through assimilation, having access to a former drone, with deep knowledge of the Collective (since they share everything), should be crippling to the Borg. And it was!

Through Picard, the Enterprise crew learned how to deal with the Borg. Through Seven, the Voyager crew learned how to deal with the Borg. There's no need for the Queen letting Janeway leave because she fears for her life, that particular situation should have been solved through Seven's intimate knowledge of the Borg. In part, it was! They just needed to go all the way.

As I said before, my problem with this particular episode is not Voyager blowing up some lowly probe, or escaping from them, it's the Queen having fear!

[Anwar]

What about the Borg losing to the 8472 aliens, was that "wrong" as well?

[Brit]

Anwar wrote:

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What about the Borg losing to the 8472 aliens, was that "wrong" as well?

8472 has to be a part of the big picture. Using the reported stardates I come up with this time line and in this chronological order, all happening within a three to four week period.


The Borg under Queen 1 encountered Species 8472.

Queen 1 decides to attack the Federation (First Contact) fails and dies.

Queen 2 is chosen or coroneted or whatever, but the key here is we are dealing with a Queen who is new to individuality and suddenly confronting a Species that they couldn't assimilate.

Queen 2 sends Seven of Nine to Voyager to get the "weapon" to defeat 8472. I don't believe that the Borg entertained the idea of really letting Voyager go for even a second, and I believe Janeway knew this.

Voyager escaped and in that escape separated Seven of Nine from the collective. I don't think it was an exaggeration when the Queen identifies Seven of Nine as her favorite. So we have much more than fear at work, we have jealousy and anger at work too.


Now skip ahead 18 months and you get to Dark Frontier. Now the Queen has had some time to think about what has happened. The mechanical or technological parts of the Collective can't do this, it's why they need the Queen.

So what has she got to think about? Well, Species 8472 is still at large and still unassimilateable, and what is worse they have opened some kind of dialogue with Janeway. She has had access to the memories of Enterprise's crew from First Contact and now she has to know now (if not before) that there is a species named Q that interacts with members of the Federation. They also know by now that the Alpha and Beta quadrant harbor the Organians, the Wormhole aliens and they probably know that something called "The Dominion" is claiming a lot of space in the Gamma Quadrant. All species that exhibit great power, but who are in all likelihood unassimilateable.

If she isn't scared she should be. She has to produce perfection and if she doesn't she can be replaced as she was after her failure at Unimatrix Zero.

There has to be some emotional factor to explain why they do what they do, if not then you have blown Star Trek's concept away, and completely reversed everything in David Mack's Destiny books.

[Guy Gardener]

It was the same Queen played by different actresses.

[Brit]

Guy Gardener wrote:

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It was the same Queen played by different actresses.

Susanna Thompson was aware that she was playing a different queen from the one in Star Trek: First Contact. Shortly after appearing in this installment, the actress commented, "I'm not the same Borg Queen. She's the new Queen of the hive. There are similarities, but we are different." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 32)

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Dark_Frontier_(episode)