The BORG, and the Lost potential

[Lynx]

I was never reallty that fond of the Borg.

I must admit that they were really scary and dangerous in the first episodes, "Q Who" and "Best of Both Worlds" where they were mysterious, technically superior and invincible.

However, the problem when such a dangerous enemy is created in a series, the point comes where the good guys must defeat them or they kill humanity, conquer the Earth or whatsoever.

To defeat them and stop them from achieving their goal, the good guys must come up with some super-weapon which break their superiority.

And that's it!

From that moment, the invincible, scary bad guys lose most of what made them so scary and interesting and that can never be redone. That what's happened to The Borg. After "Best Of Both Worlds" they were just another bunch of bad guys. Stil scary but not as much as before that episode.

To add more damage to The Borg, they came up with Hugh.

AsI see it, one of the worst thing to do with a former scary, invincible super-enemy is to sugar-coat them by humanizing them. Now they were suddenly reduced to the same level as any other dangerous species. Adding the Borg Queen was another nail in the coffin. In "First Contact" she was more like a lovesick schoolgirl out for Picard than a dangerous alien leader for an empire.

Some people claim that Voyager ruined The Borg but that's noy true. Thet were already ruined by the events in TNG which I already have mentioned. What happened in Voyager just made it worse where The Borg were over-done and became downright boring. And no, I won't go into Seven Of Nine here.

As I see it, the best Trek villains were actually the Cardassians!

They weren't as scary, mysterious and superior than the Borg but they were cunning, calculating, manipulating, cruel and ruthless. They could be your best friends one day and stab you in the back the next. OK, they fought together with the Fedration at the end of DS9 but that was not because they were humanized or domesticated in any way, more because they and the Federation had a common enemy.

Not to mention all the bad guys or at least unreliable characters they came up with: Dukat, Enabran Tain, Lemec, Evek, Seska, Madred, Garak, Marritza, Damar.

I also consider the Dominion as a better villain than the Borg. They were downright evil and genocidial, maybe with a touch of that super-villain thing that the Borg was from the beginning but at leas they were never invincible from the start.

 

[Noname Given]

Yep - the "Borg Queen" in ST: FC is what COMPLETELY took away any true menace they had from TNG - "Q-Who" and "Best of Both Worlds".

As Q said in "Q-Who" :

Q: The Borg is the ultimate user. They're unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced. They're not interested in political conquest, wealth or power as you know it. They're simply interested in your ship, its technology. They've identified it as something they can consume.

^^^
The Borg at that time were akin to locusts. They were simply a force of nature. They didn't negotiate or play politics...they analyzed you and your technology and if they found aspects they could use from either your biological makeup, or technological level - they assimilated you and your tech and moved on to the next target.

Then ST:FC comes along and "Humanizes" the Borg with a Borg Queen who has all the flaws of a Human character: IE She has an agenda, desires, etc. and because of that she can now be directly negotiated with, manipulated, etc. The Borg went from a Force of Nature to another 'Villain of the Week' and as shown in the ST:FC opening battle with the Borg, as long as Picard is there he can tune in and find an exploitable weakness in a Borg Cube and (with sufficient standard Starfleet firepower) blow it up like they can Klingons...Romulans, etc.

<Yawn>

 

[Ghost]

To defeat them and stop them from achieving their goal, the good guys must come up with some super-weapon which break their superiority.

Yep, that is why I did not like resorting to such a plot device in my ideas as I rather prefer the main characters out thinking their opponent than relying on guns.
Unfortunate I do not have any better idea at the moment.

 

[JesterFace]

I have my own "fanfic" version of the Borg.
I think I have posted this before but this might be a good place to post it again.

I like to think that the plan Picard had in 'I Borg' worked.

After Hugh went back to the collective, the Borg wasn't a collective anymore, they all became individuals, just like Hugh.
That fits nicely with the "trial of humanity", Enterprise's crew frees the entire collective by orders from Picard who was turned into a Borg at one point.

Why was Picard so sure this plan would work?
He had been a Borg and had knowledge about them that perhaps no one else had.
If someone else had this information, that person must have been a member of the collective at some point and saved, like Picard was.

 

[STEPhon IT]

JesterFace, I thought a missed opportunity for TNG to see Hugh's Borg take on the Borg; I liked the complexities done in Descent part 1 where the Borg cared for their brethren and fought differently. Hugh's Borg is still the Borg in some form, when they've found themselves then what form of assimilation will they seek out? They could be a potential larger threat or the missing link in making common ground and peace?

 

[suarezguy]

Does anyone know how the Borg were defeated in the FC scripts without a Borg Queen?

 

[STEPhon IT]

The First Contact script didn't have a Borg Queen? Was this in the first draft of the script? I didn't know this, suarezguy, how were the Borg defeated?

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Question, how do you explain the differences in the Borg during the television episodes of TNG and the more cadaver like zombies of the First Contact movie and later VOY? You could say that the drones were being converted during the acquisition of new technology from conquered planets but in the VOY episode The Raven and even the ENT episode we see the Borg in their later look rather than historically the earlier black and grey suits!
JB

Warning , there are spoilers for Discovery Season 2 in this thread:

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/the...to-this-particular-borg-cube-in-q-who.299056/

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Yep - the "Borg Queen" in ST: FC is what COMPLETELY took away any true menace they had from TNG - "Q-Who" and "Best of Both Worlds".

As Q said in "Q-Who" :


^^^
The Borg at that time were akin to locusts. They were simply a force of nature. They didn't negotiate or play politics...they analyzed you and your technology and if they found aspects they could use from either your biological makeup, or technological level - they assimilated you and your tech and moved on to the next target.

Then ST:FC comes along and "Humanizes" the Borg with a Borg Queen who has all the flaws of a Human character: IE She has an agenda, desires, etc. and because of that she can now be directly negotiated with, manipulated, etc. The Borg went from a Force of Nature to another 'Villain of the Week' and as shown in the ST:FC opening battle with the Borg, as long as Picard is there he can tune in and find an exploitable weakness in a Borg Cube and (with sufficient standard Starfleet firepower) blow it up like they can Klingons...Romulans, etc.

<Yawn>

Wish i could like this post a thousand times. You took the words right out of my mouth!

 

[JesterFace]

The Borg at that time were akin to locusts. They were simply a force of nature. They didn't negotiate or play politics...they analyzed you and your technology and if they found aspects they could use from either your biological makeup, or technological level - they assimilated you and your tech and moved on to the next target..

This, very much this.

Although played magnificently by Alice Krige, the idea of a Borg Queen completely ruined the Borg.
Like she said, "I am the Borg".
No more ruthless "force of nature" that takes what it wants, now the Borg had a face and personality. No, just no.
The Borg was originally a faceless enemy and you couldn't negotiate with it. It was something that besically acted on instinct, like a hive of insects. It should've been kept that way.

 

[Discofan]

It's funny that they started out that way even on Voyager!! When Janeway negotiates in Scorpion, there's no borg queen in sight. Then when the queen shows up much later, she keeps coming back and every story is about her...

 

[Arpy]

The Borg were fine being super-powerful. Stories could have been written keeping that. Not many, but enough. The only real issue with them being that powerful is that they couldn't be frequent villains like the Romulans or the Cardassians, and I don't care about that.

I think FC could have actually been a TNG two-parter (preferably without a queen). The sets would have been smaller, but they could have pulled it off.

(A problem with FC for me is that the Borg only sent one ship to assimilate Earth. They did that in BoBW and it failed, so why do the same? My rationalization is that given how close they got with the last ship, this new one, without the problem of Locutus feeding the enemy intel and with a firewall up to prevent them ordered to sleep again, would have been successful, if not for the unpredictably advanced new weapons developed since and because of their last attack. Still, the ship is wily, and at the last moment decided to go back in time to complete its mission. Time travel wasn't always the plan, or they could have traveled back in time while still in the DQ and no one would have been the wiser on Earth to stop them. They only decided to go back when they realized assimilating the Federation with its juicy 24th Century technology wasn't happening. I'd want this in the two-parter so that the adapted-FC story makes sense, and so that with the inclusion of time travel, the Borg remain menacing.)

The TNG movies are where you'd want to go fully epic. At the time, Trek movies didn't have the budgets they do now, but the Big TNG Borg Movie is where you'd send a full-sized fleet to assimilate the Federation. The only way to stop it would have been either a BoBW-like work-around or an alliance of the entire Alpha-Beta Quadrants to defeat the mutual enemy (isn't that where Game of Thrones is heading now?). In the end, you're still left with the terror of knowing that the Borg will be back, and next time with enough forces to overrun even their combined forces.

 

[Arpy]

IMHO, VOY is where the Borg were ultimately defanged. FC ruined their alienness via the Queen, but it was decent enough a movie to keep them interesting a little longer. Still, another VOY-trip-to-the-Borg-well story could have been a two-parter about the Borg waging assimilation efforts in other galaxies. We discover the Borg building a “transwarp hub.” At first, the crew is afraid that it’s being constructed to assimilate the Federation on the other side of the galaxy, and they decide to destroy it even if it means their own destruction. As they try to destroy it, they see a window of opportunity to both do so and to use it to get home themselves, and they go through it…only to find themselves in another galaxy…and with the hub rebuilding itself…forcing them to do the only thing they can, and they make a run for it — that’s the end of Part I. In Part II, they meet the Caretakers — the Borg’s target all along. There’s drama and arrogance in Caretaker Land, and the Caretakers send VOY back to the DQ as their civilization is being overrun by Borg all around them.

Initially, my thought here was to lose a main cast member to the Borg to really sell the idea that messing with the Borg has consequences. But I think the fact that they fail to stop the hub in Part I and if we focus on the destruction of Atlantis/assimilation of the Caretakers in Part II, we may not need to lose main cast. Plus the Borg succeed at assimilating the extremely powerful Caretakers, open a new foothold into another galaxy, and maybe we lose a familiar face background character to assimilation…maybe Chell?

Or we lose Chell in the failed attack on the hub toward the end of Part I, and we lose a main cast member as the sky is falling toward the end of Part II. The lesson being that messing with the Borg is bad news, and not something you can do frequently, if you want to keep your show together. In the final moments of the two-parter, we see the main cast member fully-assimilated and lost in the vastness of the cube, and unreachable in another galaxy. ...The fan bulletin boards blow up with the tragedy of the loss, the differentness of it, and the possibility of the cast member showing up in a future VOY episode as a baddie.

 

[Discofan]

I am not sure but I think that there is a borg among the revolting holograms on Voyager's "Flesh And Blood" and a Jemadar (I can never remember how to spell it). Next thing you know you have children trick or treating in Borg, Jem or Hirogen suits...

 

[gakelly]

Or you have Borg children saying
"Hail, hail, fire and snow
Call the Queen we will go
Far away, for to see
Borg Queen, come to me."

And she shows up.

 

[Discofan]

Or you have Borg children saying
"Hail, hail, fire and snow
Call the Queen we will go
Far away, for to see
Borg Queen, come to me."

And she shows up.

Seems like the translation of Kai Winn's invocation in the Fire Caves.

 

[STEPhon IT]

This, very much this.

Although played magnificently by Alice Krige, the idea of a Borg Queen completely ruined the Borg.
Like she said, "I am the Borg".
No more ruthless "force of nature" that takes what it wants, now the Borg had a face and personality. No, just no.
The Borg was originally a faceless enemy and you couldn't negotiate with it. It was something that besically acted on instinct, like a hive of insects. It should've been kept that way.

It's that "force of nature" which I missed about the Borg so much. It wasn't a race where making deals (I'm looking at YOU, Captain Janeway) or negotiations were an option. When they're heading our way, we move away from their radar because fighting them would be fatal to our lives and identity. This whole Queen retcon; I'm convinced Braga and Moore ran out of ideas for TNG feature and found something in James Cameron's Aliens. A Queen operating a sophisticated unit like the Borg doesn't make any sense.

 

[Discofan]

Hugh really made a splash when he said "I" for the first time. The Queen was a day late and a dollar short in that area.

 

[SolarisOne]

It's that "force of nature" which I missed about the Borg so much. It wasn't a race where making deals (I'm looking at YOU, Captain Janeway) or negotiations were an option.

Force of nature, my ass. Even the TNG version of the Borg was vulnerable, just not to the primitive Federation. A "force of nature" is invulnerable to the machinations of ALL mortals. Q is a force of nature. He could easily snap his fingers and erase any trace of their existence from the universe. The Borg is just a schlocky ripoff of the Cybermen from Doctor Who.

Also, it's lucky for them they made a deal with Janeway, or Species 8472 would have wiped them out. They were completely outclassed, couldn't assimilate, couldn't adapt, and they've never been innovative. Use enough of the right kind of force, and you can wipe them out without even being a Q.

(I never realized how much I absolutely loathe the Borg in all its incarnations until just now.)

/rant

 

[STEPhon IT]

IMHO, VOY is where the Borg were ultimately defanged. FC ruined their alienness via the Queen, but it was decent enough a movie to keep them interesting a little longer. Still, another VOY-trip-to-the-Borg-well story could have been a two-parter about the Borg waging assimilation efforts in other galaxies. We discover the Borg building a “transwarp hub.” At first, the crew is afraid that it’s being constructed to assimilate the Federation on the other side of the galaxy, and they decide to destroy it even if it means their own destruction. As they try to destroy it, they see a window of opportunity to both do so and to use it to get home themselves, and they go through it…only to find themselves in another galaxy…and with the hub rebuilding itself…forcing them to do the only thing they can, and they make a run for it — that’s the end of Part I. In Part II, they meet the Caretakers — the Borg’s target all along. There’s drama and arrogance in Caretaker Land, and the Caretakers send VOY back to the DQ as their civilization is being overrun by Borg all around them.

Initially, my thought here was to lose a main cast member to the Borg to really sell the idea that messing with the Borg has consequences. But I think the fact that they fail to stop the hub in Part I and if we focus on the destruction of Atlantis/assimilation of the Caretakers in Part II, we may not need to lose main cast. Plus the Borg succeed at assimilating the extremely powerful Caretakers, open a new foothold into another galaxy, and maybe we lose a familiar face background character to assimilation…maybe Chell?

Or we lose Chell in the failed attack on the hub toward the end of Part I, and we lose a main cast member as the sky is falling toward the end of Part II. The lesson being that messing with the Borg is bad news, and not something you can do frequently, if you want to keep your show together. In the final moments of the two-parter, we see the main cast member fully-assimilated and lost in the vastness of the cube, and unreachable in another galaxy. ...The fan bulletin boards blow up with the tragedy of the loss, the differentness of it, and the possibility of the cast member showing up in a future VOY episode as a baddie.

Voyager had a predominance on the Borg because they had more stories with them, but as much as they had more episodes than TNG I believe they're still TNG main nemesis and Berman should've kept them part of the plot for their movies. Your idea would've been a far thrilling series finale than the Voyager finale I saw. Please find time to write this story. I found the female caretaker the scariest potential character on Voyager, and it was a taste of how valuable a character Kes was as well. The Voyager producers really blew it; they had something there but instead wasted it trying desperately to be TNG.