Are the Borg the perfect enemy?

[Bry_Sinclair]

They were a better enemy when we didn't know much about them, when they were just an army of drones looking to assimilate races and technology. They lost much of what made them an interesting and engaging species when VOY brought in Seven and had them defeating the Collective several times a year.

[RAMA]

Takeru wrote:

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The Borg are hardly perfect, they are too obviously evil looking, a perfect enemy is one you don't even see coming, not one in a scary cube ship that tells you upfront what theor plans are.

The Borg's biggest problem is that they're not pretty. Even if beauty doesn't matter to the collective, shouldn't they realize that getting rid of the tubes, having drones look sexy and changing your slogan from "resistance is futile" to "assimilation is bliss" would attract many people?
Imagine a sleak looking borg ship with 500 silver wearing male and female Seven of Nines that possess fake individuality (it can't be that hard for the collective to have the words "I'm soandso and being a borg is awesome" coming out of a drones mouth) showed up in orbit and declared that you are invited to join them, don't you think many people would line up for assimilation willingly? Of course some wouldn't trust them, but you always find doofuses who'll join the collective. Make a collective within the collective, that allows the new drones to keep their individuality at the start, let them experience all the good parts of being part of a hive mind and let them convince others, let them use their own words, don't force them to do anything. If someone wants to leave the collective because they realize it's not what they want after all just let them go, remove all traces of nanoprobes etc., it will make you look more trustworthy and three others will join instead. Once a sufficient part of the populatio is drones switch off their individuality and finish the job.
It would take longer but you don't have to blow up half of the population to get the other half.

Wow you're all about aesthetics aren't you? I don't think a species with such a monolithic, single-minded purpose and power would really care about such things. I did prefer when they were more interested in tech than assimilation, but to most people that's not visceral enough, it's only when they took Picard that people really took notice. Same with Hugh, and then 7 of 9.

[sonak]

the Borg are a great enemy to use once or twice. They're scary and very powerful. The problem is repeated uses of them negates both of those qualities.

By late Voyager seasons, the Borg are just a cool looking but run of the mill villain.

[RAMA]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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I would say the Borg are the worst kind of enemy from a storytelling perspective. If you make a bad guy too powerful, then you constantly have to find a way to weaken them for our heroes to win. After Wolf 359, the Borg should have swarmed the Federation with cube ships and pretty much taken it out, essentially ending Trek. Instead, the Borg continued to send in just one ship at a time to be beaten back each time.

Sure, we can try to justify the Borg's refusal to go full-out on the Federation on an idea that they don't think the Federation warrants more than a single Borg ship, but that's really just an excuse to keep the Borg beatable.

Yes you could say that, they always have to be taken down a notch...after Q Who, they were a metaphor for "things we shouldn't know", that there are just some things too powerful for us at a certain state of development and we should keep quiet and lay low...this has since been popularized by Stephen Hawking, who also postulated species that were resource hogs and would have no other use for us. I tend to disagree with this, but so be it.

Then they were too good not to use, Best of Both Worlds basically tricked them with some hacking using inside info (Picard). Ever since then the Borg have only been beaten in battle by two organizations, the humans including Voyager have used unconventional methods in virtual reality, time travel, alliances and so on to defeat the Borg, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling it's not enough, and the Borg could arise for a sequel at any time.

Enterprise used them particularly well in the excellent episode "Regeneration", possibly the best Borg TV episode since "Scorpion". They didn't have to make any excuses, they had 2 Borg, captured a small ship and assimilated it as fast as they could, and maybe if they had a little more time or a bigger ship they may have succeeded. No Federation trickery involved, no taking them down a notch.

RAMA

[Anwar]

BillJ wrote:

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Yet kept getting their asses handed to them by a tiny Federation starship...

Same as what Kirk did to various super-threats, then?

[Mott the barber]

Bry_Sinclair wrote:

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They were a better enemy when we didn't know much about them, when they were just an army of drones looking to assimilate races and technology. They lost much of what made them an interesting and engaging species when VOY brought in Seven and had them defeating the Collective several times a year.

Totally agree. Nothing more creepy than seeing the drone materialize for the first time in engineering in "Q Who?"

[Saul]

'Q-Who', 'The Best of Both Worlds' and 'First Contact' were the Borg at their best. The episodes because they were an unstoppable force without a face.
I think it's impossible to continue to have them as a threat when the episode and future appearances require a conclusion and victory over them. Same with the Daleks and Cylons.

[sonak]

Anwar wrote:

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Same as what Kirk did to various super-threats, then?

refresh my memory-how many repeating super-threats did Kirk face? My recollection is none. He faced several ONE-SHOT super-enemies, and several recurring non-super-threat enemies, but not recurring super-threats that he kept defeating.

[RAMA]

sonak wrote:

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refresh my memory-how many repeating super-threats did Kirk face? My recollection is none. He faced several ONE-SHOT super-enemies, and several recurring non-super-threat enemies, but not recurring super-threats that he kept defeating.

Well he faced down what...5 or 6 god-like aliens if not more. A repeated type of enemy anyway. He didn't always win, as with Picard and the Borg.

RAMA

[Anwar]

sonak wrote:

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refresh my memory-how many repeating super-threats did Kirk face? My recollection is none. He faced several ONE-SHOT super-enemies, and several recurring non-super-threat enemies, but not recurring super-threats that he kept defeating.

It doesn't matter if they were one-shots or not, fact is he defeated super-enemies at all. If he can do that without complaint, there's nothing stopping Janeway from doing the same to the Borg (which didn't even happen anyways, it's mostly just Anti-VOY hyperbole).

Then again, the fact that audiences were upset that there was even a single alien species out there that could fight the Borg (the 8472 aliens) is more or less proof that there wasn't anything acceptable the show could've done with the Borg that anyone would've liked.

[sonak]

Anwar wrote:

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It doesn't matter if they were one-shots or not, fact is he defeated super-enemies at all. If he can do that without complaint, there's nothing stopping Janeway from doing the same to the Borg (which didn't even happen anyways, it's mostly just Anti-VOY hyperbole).

Then again, the fact that audiences were upset that there was even a single alien species out there that could fight the Borg (the 8472 aliens) is more or less proof that there wasn't anything acceptable the show could've done with the Borg that anyone would've liked.

but it does matter-it changes the argument. The argument is about weakening an otherwise powerful enemy through over-use when they're defeated every time they are faced. You can't weaken an enemy through over-use if they're only used once.

[Anwar]

sonak wrote:

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but it does matter-it changes the argument. The argument is about weakening an otherwise powerful enemy through over-use when they're defeated every time they are faced. You can't weaken an enemy through over-use if they're only used once.

Of course it weakens the enemy even if they're only used once, defeating them even once weakens them and shows they weren't so tough and the main characters shouldn't have been so scared of them in the first place.

Q showed up repeatedly, no one ever says he lost his menace.

[sonak]

Anwar wrote:

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Of course it weakens the enemy even if they're only used once, defeating them even once weakens them and shows they weren't so tough and the main characters shouldn't have been so scared of them in the first place.

Q showed up repeatedly, no one ever says he lost his menace.

but it doesn't matter if you weaken a one-shot adversary by the end of the episode, because you're not bringing them back as supposedly intimidating adversaries for another episode later.


Q was never really "defeated" in his appearances, so that doesn't really apply. Also, he became more of a comedy character than a villain.

[Anwar]

sonak wrote:

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but it doesn't matter if you weaken a one-shot adversary by the end of the episode, because you're not bringing them back as supposedly intimidating adversaries for another episode later.

Q was never really "defeated" in his appearances, so that doesn't really apply. Also, he became more of a comedy character than a villain.

Yeah, it does matter. Because by defeating/destroying them you still weaken them. It doesn't matter if they show up again.

Q made repeated appearances, and no one ever claimed he was "decayed" as a villain.

Hell, Voyager does the reasonable thing and shows that the Borg were not the ultimate species of this Galaxy (which we already knew) by showing other aliens more powerful than them.

What reaction does the show get? That by showing that there was someone more powerful than the Borg (despite ALREADY KNOWING THAT) the Borg have been weakened.

It's moronic, it truly is.

The worst part is, if TNG had introduced the 8472 aliens NO ONE would complain that there were other aliens more powerful than the Borg.

[BillJ]

Anwar wrote:

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Q made repeated appearances, and no one ever claimed he was "decayed" as a villain.

Yes, people make the argument all the time. Minus All Good Things... the concept of him being a serious villain was over with Deja Q. Like the Borg, Q was played out by the time Modern Trek came to a close.