'Dark Frontier' Where the Borg went wrong?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by M.A.C.O., Jan 21, 2013.

  1. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Oooh, and now I'm a fleet captain. Next stop-- prolonged exposure to delta rays.
     
  2. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    Please correct if I am wrong (thats not sarcasm that's a genuine request for reproach) but doesn't Mary Sue and Gary Stu define a wish fulfillment character, tropes of themes? All too often Voyager and her 150 member crew are written as the "little engine" that could.

    Get their ship commandeered and abandoned on a remote world by the Kazon. Pssh whatever we'll get it back no problem. Great thing Tom Paris was flying in one of those oh so durable shuttlecrafts and it was still warp capable after getting blasted by Kazon Raiders.

    Those street gang thugs didn't know who they were messing with. YO!

    The Borg needed a weapon to combat Specied 8472. Despite the Borg's ability to adapt to what it enocunters it was the VOY crew who created the nanoprobe weapon. Not the Borg who had millions of casualties and hadn't thought to create such a weapon.

    But the VOY crew has got you playa!

    Meet Species 8472 again and talk them into submission before they can carry out their attack on Earth. This known dimensional hopping race that can slaughter Borg cubes with a minimal efforts is talked out of attack Earth while in humanoid form. When once again they could've launched an attack and destroyed VOY. It's not like VOY has infinite amount of torpedos. What did they have, about 3 dozen photon only?

    See not even the "we make art with Borg bodies", Species 8472 can overcome the VOY crew dawg. Holla back

    And finally Dark Frontier and how the VOY crew tactically overpowers, outsmart and outrun the most powerful force in the universe.

    Am I the only one who remembers when people spoke about the Borg like this?
    [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUDVY6ULs-o[/yt]
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2013
  3. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    The first Mary Sues were fanfic characters introduced into the world of the main characters, who were gradually revealed to be smarter, prettier/handsomer, braver, more competent, sexier, and basically all around better than any of the main characters, and wound up saving the day/ship/planet/universe. The regular characters became mere pawns in a story all about her, who was generally perceived by readers as a surrogate for the author (usually female). The Mary Sues were often a teenage girl in a world of adults. Wesley Crusher is sometimes described as the first canon Mary Sue regular cast member.

    If you haven't yet taken King Daniel's advice, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
     
  4. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    I read it but I was hoping for a better source for explanation than a Wikipedia page.
     
  5. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    I don't think you'll find it listed in Encyclopedia Britannica.
     
  6. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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  7. Seven of Five

    Seven of Five Stupid Sexy Flanders! Premium Member

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    I loved that episode. Making Picard look Hugh in the eye and decide if he could still kill him made for gripping viewing.

    Now if you want to argue about Descent, then I'm with you. They just shouldn't have bothered turning up for work that day. It was subsequently ignored by FC and VOY, which was definitely the right decision.

    VOY went to the well too many times as well. Scorpion was excellent, but making a main character a Borg meant they would use them as a crutch a bit too often. Dark Frontier had good parts to it, and was produced very well, but ultimately made the Borg weak. Unimatrix Zero was the pinnacle of this mess with easily reversible assimilation.
     
  8. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I call it the Water Down effect. A villain is introduced and is powerful, bad and unstoppable. It takes a minor miracle for the heroes to survive the first encounter or two. But as they're seen more and more, they become weaker and weaker to give our heroes the ability to beat them more readily. Voyager pretty much embodied this with the Borg.
     
  9. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Every time they used those Borg costumes and sfx they inherited from the movie... They didn't have to invent a new species. Mock up new props and sew up an entire new wardrobe for that species leads and their extras.

    The more Borg episodes they did, the more money they saved on production costs.
     
  10. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    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.
     
  12. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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

    Praetorian Captain Captain

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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..."
     
  14. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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

    Brit Captain Captain

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    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.
     
  16. Praetorian

    Praetorian Captain Captain

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    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.
     
  17. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    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.
     
  18. Brit

    Brit Captain Captain

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    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.
     
  19. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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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.
     
  20. Brit

    Brit Captain Captain

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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.