Borg Origin

[Brit]

No you prove your theory. Which is what I've been saying all along. Take what is canon (viewed) knowledge and do some world building, then make it into a story and post it. I am just as right as anyone else.

Brit

[JB2005]

I can't prove my theory. I can present evidence in favour of it, but I cannot prove it. However I can also present evidence debunking your theory...

Neither of us is right

[Kestrel]

Brit wrote:

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No you prove your theory. Which is what I've been saying all along.

They don't need to, as that's not how arguments work. You can't just say "I think you're wrong, prove to me you're right." You're the one that's accusing Mack and the TrekLit Verse of violating canon, you're the one who has to bring specific accusations. You did, they responded with answers for how your accusations are incorrect and prove that Mack & Co. didn't violate canon. Ball's in your court to try again to defend your statement "I don't think his version fits with canon."

Brit wrote:

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Take what is canon (viewed) knowledge and do some world building, then make it into a story and post it. I am just as right as anyone else.

Brit

Nobody's claiming you're not entitled to your own stories, but you're the one who accused Destiny of violating canon - and you're doing so based on your own world building, not what we see on screen. World building, as you say, is good and important, but it doesn't impinge on the story Mack told.

In your own mind, and that of anyone who agrees, you're as right as anyone else - but it's not binding. In my opinion, you're not, because of the one advantage Destiny has. Which is that it's officially licensed by CBS, and thus is more "official" than unpublished fanfiction. Until something onscreen declares it void or invalid, Destiny will always be, for me, the true story of the Borg origin in the Star Trek universe I've been watching.

[rahullak]

Brit wrote:

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No you prove your theory. Which is what I've been saying all along. Take what is canon (viewed) knowledge and do some world building, then make it into a story and post it. I am just as right as anyone else.

Brit

What Kestrel said. You're neither right nor wrong with your fanfiction. But you are wrong to say that Mack's version of the origins of the Borg as depicted in Destiny violates onscreen canon. Because it doesn't violate onscreen canon, and if you think it does then you've got to prove it.

And I consider books that have been licensed by CBS/Paramount and published by Pocket Books to be official. Everyone who reads Trek can come up with fanfiction and we'd have as many different Borg origin stories as there are fanfiction writers. The only version that we can all accept as being official is the one licensed by CBS. You may not like it, you just have to live with it.

[kimc]

rahullak wrote:

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And I consider books that have been licensed by CBS/Paramount and published by Pocket Books to be official. Everyone who reads Trek can come up with fanfiction and we'd have as many different Borg origin stories as there are fanfiction writers. The only version that we can all accept as being official is the one licensed by CBS. You may not like it, you just have to live with it.

Many people write fanfiction based on books. Heck, there's a whole section at fanfiction.net for fanfic based on books. However, the books put out by Pocket are not canon.

I can say that in here because this isn't Trek Lit.

[Kestrel]

kimc wrote:

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Many people write fanfiction based on books. Heck, there's a whole section at fanfiction.net for fanfic based on books. However, the books put out by Pocket are not canon.

I can say that in here because this isn't Trek Lit.

Of course they're not canon. But they are official, and officially endorsed by CBS/Paramount. People are free to disregard them as much as they like and go their own way, but for many of us that official stamp gives them, by default, greater weight. (It helps tremendously, of course, that the licensed books in recent year, and especially the ones that are significantly intertwined, are better than a large percentage of actual canon Trek)

[rahullak]

kimc wrote:

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Many people write fanfiction based on books. Heck, there's a whole section at fanfiction.net for fanfic based on books. However, the books put out by Pocket are not canon.

I can say that in here because this isn't Trek Lit.

I'm not saying the Treklit books are canon at all. But they are official in that they're licensed by CBS. All the stakeholders work to make sure there are no canon violations. And they're written by authors who are well-established with other publications. As far as fanfiction goes, like I said there can be many different stories exploring the same issue (such as the origins of the Borg) in myriad different ways. All of them are valid works, but none are official.

[Allyn Gibson]

rahullak wrote:

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And I consider books that have been licensed by CBS/Paramount and published by Pocket Books to be official. Everyone who reads Trek can come up with fanfiction and we'd have as many different Borg origin stories as there are fanfiction writers. The only version that we can all accept as being official is the one licensed by CBS. You may not like it, you just have to live with it.

There are a few different "official" Borg origin stories. It was a frequent topic in the Strange New Worlds anthologies, there was a story in the first volume of Tokyopop's Star Trek manga, and now there's Destiny.

For Star Trek Magazine, I wrote an article in the latest issue that deals with Borg history. It doesn't deal with the Strange New Worlds stories, as I was told specifically not to reference them. (Or William Shatner's The Return, though that one would have been very easy to fit in.)

I treated everything on screen and in print as equally valid. Destiny, for example, didn't supercede the manga story. But neither did it supercede Probe, which reveals that the Borg were active hundreds of thousands of years ago, while Destiny places the Borg origin at (roughly) six thousand years ago. What results, at first glance, is something that's contradictory.

Except that it's not. There can easily be multiple origins of the Borg. The reason? What if the Borg, a mixture of man and machine, are an evolutionary endpoint? Humanity is already experimenting with cyborg technology. In a generation, we'll be able to rebuild bodies with technology. Star Trek shows us that some races "transcend" to another plane of consciousness. What if the Borg are an interim stage -- or a failed stage of trascendence? The Borg, in many respects, are the worst case scenario of the Vingean singularity; they're on the cusp, but they can't take the next step.

Imagine, then, multiple Borg-like species. One Borg-like species could absorb and assimilate another into their collective. The Borg Queen came from a later assimilation (because the Queen is designated as part of Species 112, if memory serves), for instance. The Caeliar don't necessary have to created the Borg, but what happened with Sedin's consciousness could have been assimilated into an already existing Borg collective. The Caeliar might not have been able to tell the difference, or perhaps they saw that the addition of Sedin to the Collective made the Borg far more dangerous than they had any right to be.

And yes, I have my own theory for how and why the Borg were created, billions of years in the past.

[rahullak]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

---

There are a few different "official" Borg origin stories. It was a frequent topic in the Strange New Worlds anthologies, there was a story in the first volume of Tokyopop's Star Trek manga, and now there's Destiny.

For Star Trek Magazine, I wrote an article in the latest issue that deals with Borg history. It doesn't deal with the Strange New Worlds stories, as I was told specifically not to reference them. (Or William Shatner's The Return, though that one would have been very easy to fit in.)

I treated everything on screen and in print as equally valid. Destiny, for example, didn't supercede the manga story. But neither did it supercede Probe, which reveals that the Borg were active hundreds of thousands of years ago, while Destiny places the Borg origin at (roughly) six thousand years ago. What results, at first glance, is something that's contradictory.

Except that it's not. There can easily be multiple origins of the Borg. The reason? What if the Borg, a mixture of man and machine, are an evolutionary endpoint? Humanity is already experimenting with cyborg technology. In a generation, we'll be able to rebuild bodies with technology. Star Trek shows us that some races "transcend" to another plane of consciousness. What if the Borg are an interim stage -- or a failed stage of trascendence? The Borg, in many respects, are the worst case scenario of the Vingean singularity; they're on the cusp, but they can't take the next step.

Imagine, then, multiple Borg-like species. One Borg-like species could absorb and assimilate another into their collective. The Borg Queen came from a later assimilation (because the Queen is designated as part of Species 112, if memory serves), for instance. The Caeliar don't necessary have to created the Borg, but what happened with Sedin's consciousness could have been assimilated into an already existing Borg collective. The Caeliar might not have been able to tell the difference, or perhaps they saw that the addition of Sedin to the Collective made the Borg far more dangerous than they had any right to be.

And yes, I have my own theory for how and why the Borg were created, billions of years in the past.

Yes, these are very good points.
There can be many different Borg origin stories, as you've said, and even many different official Borg origin stories. But I think the only ones that can be considered "official" are the ones sanctioned by CBS in comic,book, onscreen, or other forms. The rest are fanfiction or part of people's "personal canon".