How Would You Have Handled The Borg Threat?

[M.A.C.O.]

Doing a rewatch of the Borg episodes, I and noticed a similar parallel regarding the Borg and the Viidians.

I made a thread last year asking how you (as a starship captain) would've handled the threat posed by the Viidians. https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/how-would-you-have-handled-contact-with-the-vidiians.288557/

Rewatching I,Borg, Picard's plan to introduce an infectious program into Hugh, use him as a carrier and send him back to the Collective; as a means to destroy them. Before he changed his mind. However, this exact scenario was utilized by future Admiral Janeway in Endgame as a way to destroy the Collective. Now, the genocide scenario was batted around among the TNG crew throughout I,Borg. But Capt and Adm Janeway both up and decide that killing the entire collective using a carrier and pathogen was totally acceptable. In TNG, the issue was about ending the potential war with the Borg. In VOY, it done to get Voygaer home quickly and stomp the Borg one last time.

To be Borg is to be both victim and victimizer. Like the Viidians, the Borg have been doing their thing for thousands of years.

When dealing with an enemy such is this, what steps are appropriate?

Pleas leave your thoughts below.

 

[Pondwater]

Introduce some kind of retro virus and *KaBOOM*.

 

[Herbert]

I have always had a problem with Picard not using the program on Hugh but you have to take into account the tone of Next Gen. There was no way in hell the producers of that show would ever make an episode where that happens.

However, if you really take a hard look at the Borg threat, it is the action they should have taken. The Borg represented the greatest threat to the Federation at that time. It's not like the Romulans or the Cardassians, who you could reason with and/or establish diplomatic ties with. 100% of the collective is, in effect, their military. There are no Borg civilians to worry about. They should have taken whatever means necessary to end that threat forever and if that means introducing a virus to wipe them out, or at the very least cripple them, then you do it.

 

[johnnybear]

You're probably right! The Borg are emotionless creatures similar to the zombies or Walkers in The Walking Dead but with machine implants to guide them in their actions and no one is saying no to a way to wipe out the living dead in that show are they!
JB

 

[DonIago]

I applaud Picard for having the moral fortitude to not deploy the virus, though it's obviously debatable how moral it is to not potentially destroy the Borg when you have a chance.

However, I agree with the OP that the Borg, on an individual level, are also victims, even if for the most part they're not aware of that fact. It miffs me a bit when people seem to fail to recognize this.

The "most TNG" option would probably have been to come up with a virus that would liberate all of the individuals from the Collective, though who knows how many people might have died in the process? Fewer than if the "kill them all" virus was deployed, most likely.

If anything, the situation reminds me of the decision S31 made to commit genocide upon the Founders.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

In I Borg it’s implied all the hosts would die whereas in Endgame it’s implied it just broke the collective.

Also it’s not clear at all in Endgame whether it was just locally or globally disrupted. Icheb’s virus was local, and even if you disrupt the central node, no way Borg control center isn’t distributed.

In the case of the Vidiians, it’s not helpless slaves you’re killing, it’s people with free will choosing evil and putting you in a clear us vs them situation. A more interesting question with the Vidiians is what happened to them after the phage was cured. If they tried to move on and forget the past, if they tried to make some kind of reparations.

 

[Herbert]

However, I agree with the OP that the Borg, on an individual level, are also victims, even if for the most part they're not aware of that fact. It miffs me a bit when people seem to fail to recognize this.

Well, not all of them. It's shown in Q Who that Borg can be born and then implants are introduced. However, I don't think it's that people may fail to recognize that Borg can be victims, it's just that there is no way to liberate them by the hundreds or thousands. Destruction is really the only viable option. Let's not forget that the Borg are the aggressors here. it's not unlike an alien race invading Earth. Are we going to use whatever measures necessary to drive off the invaders? You're damn right we are.

The "most TNG" option would probably have been to come up with a virus that would liberate all of the individuals from the Collective, though who knows how many people might have died in the process? Fewer than if the "kill them all" virus was deployed, most likely.

That's probably the ideal solution. However, there's no guarantee of success with that. We kind of see something like that happening on VOY with Unimatrix Zero.

 

[Sophie74656]

I don't think they showed borg being born in that episode. They just showed an infant in a maturation chamber. 7 of 9 later says they do not reproduce, only assimilate.

 

[Herbert]

In the case of the Vidiians, it’s not helpless slaves you’re killing, it’s people with free will choosing evil and putting you in a clear us vs them situation. A more interesting question with the Vidiians is what happened to them after the phage was cured. If they tried to move on and forget the past, if they tried to make some kind of reparations.

Yeah, to me, the Vidiians are a different matter. Unlike the Borg, you could technically deal with them through conventional means. Let's face it, the main reason they were a threat to Voyager was because Voyager was all alone out there. it would be a different matter if the Vidiians were in the Alpha Quadrant and had to deal with the entire Federation, not to mention all the other space faring species.

 

[Herbert]

I don't think they showed borg being born in that episode. They just showed an infant in a maturation chamber. 7 of 9 later says they do not reproduce, only assimilate.

So where does that infant come from?

 

[Sophie74656]

So where does that infant come from?

It was assimilated. Presumably the borg assimilated the crew of a ship and someone on that ship had a baby with them.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

So where does that infant come from?

It was assimilated. Presumably the borg assimilated the crew of a ship and someone on that ship had a baby with them.

I took that instance from Q Who, as a little of column A and a little of column B. Column A: Q Who Borg (as stated by Q himself) aren't interested in organic life, but instead wanted the tech of the ENT-D. Column B: retroactively making the Borg about assimilation from BOBW and beyond. Leading to Seven info dumping that children the Collective acquires are placed in maturation chambers and aged to adulthood, so they can be of service.

Likely, both can be true at the same time though.

 

[Sophie74656]

I took that instance from Q Who, as a little of column A and a little of column B. Column A: Q Who Borg (as stated by Q himself) aren't interested in organic life, but instead wanted the tech of the ENT-D. Column B: retroactively making the Borg about assimilation from BOBW and beyond. Leading to Seven info dumping that children the Collective acquires are placed in maturation chambers and aged to adulthood, so they can be of service.

Likely, both can be true at the same time though.

I think it makes sense that they don't reproduce in a traditional sense. It's faster amd more efficient to assimilate a ship full of people than to grow a persom from scratch.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Yeah, but genetic algorithms are really inefficient. They’d probably use a different genome optimization algorithm when possible.

 

[Marynator]

I always felt in I, Borg that Hugh was going to spread his individuality to all the Borg collective, and you don't really see any refute of this until First Contact when the writers just wanted to bring the Borg back because it'd be fun? I always thought all Borg everywhere were all connected always, which is why Geordi's virus would work, and Hugh's individuality would work the same way?

I feel Picard couldn't use Hugh as a weapon, because he showed how Borg can be caring people when freed. Hugh refused to help Locutus assimilate the Enterprise! He wasn't willing to let harm come to his friends. I feel Picard wouldn've had to be a monster to use him as a weapon?

 

[Herbert]

It was assimilated. Presumably the borg assimilated the crew of a ship and someone on that ship had a baby with them.

I don't accept that personally but I guess it's as plausible as anything else. In that first episode, there is no mention of assimilation. In fact, even Q says to the Enterprise crew, "you mean nothing to them. They are only interested in your technology." I think the later comments by Seven that they didn't reproduce is just a retcon. We know that the Borg concept changed a lot since they were first introduced in Q Who.

 

[Sophie74656]

I don't accept that personally but I guess it's as plausible as anything else. I think the later comments by Seven that they didn't reproduce is just a retcon. We know that the Borg concept change a lot since they were first introduced in Q Who.

It could go either way. When we see the baby in question there's just Rikers specilation about what is happening. They have no facts about what really goes on

 

[Marynator]

I agree with @Herbert they changed their story, in Q Who I totally felt those Borg babies were born naturally and implanted with their computer parts from birth.

 

[Sophie74656]

They didn't change the story, they just elabotated on it later. It's never said they reproduce, riker was just assuming

 

[Herbert]

If by "elaborated" you mean they changed the Borg later (ie retconned), then I agree.