Star Trek: Picard Has a Very Different Borg Story From The Next Generation

I'm rather charmed by the notion that following the dismantling of the Collective, all of the people the Borg assimilated are now the refugees of the universe, trying to find their place. I can imagine Picard wanting to help them, understanding what they're going through in a way that only a select few (Seven of Nine, Hugh and his fellow drones) have experienced before. He expresses some disappointment in Starfleet not being the Starfleet he thinks they should be. Picard as shown on TV was a very moralistic character, someone who argued passionately even for the Crystaline Entities right to existence despite it's apparent danger, wishing to explore options of communication before resorting to blowing it apart, and so he could have been very much at odds with a Starfleet who looked at these refugees, basically lost children, and decided either to ignore their plight, or too actively persecute them, simply because they are (or have been) Borg....

 

Only a portion of The Collective has been dismantled (Do you honestly think the Borg would have had only ONE transwarp conduit leading to the Alpha Quadrant? I wouldn't.)

There may well be a civil war within the Borg. There may well be a faction within the Borg who is angry at Seven for being what they perceive as one of the causes of their predicament (she was on board Voyager assisting Janeway in the destruction of the Hive). Given that they're disconnected from the Hive, the Hive's hold over them psychologically may well be weakened somewhat.

They may well see Seven as a traitor.

 

That is similar to the theory I am still going by, but without Section 31, Janeway destroyed the Borg Collective in the Voyager finale, that is done, they are gone. But Romulan extremists, who want to rebuild their empire, find an abandoned Borg cube and are trying to weaponize Borg tech.

Really the Borg are a one-trick pony, they very powerful, but have very little use for schemes and subterfuge relying almost exclusively on brute force, while the Romulans were good at scheming, but often came off as a paper tiger in the TNG, they do something sneaky, get foiled, slink away and return in a couple of weeks to do the same thing.

Both the Borg and Romulans seemed like played out villains who the writers ran out of ideas for (though with the Romulans it never seemed like the TNG era writers had a solid plan for them). So giving the Borg's toys to the Romulans gives both of them some new blood. A ruthless Romulan admiral who fancies himself the new Praetor could create all sorts of horrific weapons with Borg tech, turning his troops into attack drones armed with disruptors and able to assimilate anyone they meet, instantly enslaving them and adding to the attack drone force. Or take Borg nanoprobes and reprogram them to be lethal, let them loose on a planet and have them devour all the life on the planet or secret implant nanoprobes into a victim so that person can be an agent without them even knowing it.

Take the Borg's tech, weaponize it and give it some militaristic psychopath who will do anything to return to the ''glorious past'' and you have a supremely scary villain. There was a short story in the Star Trek: 7 Deadly Sins anthology, where a human mercenary was hired to steal Borg tech and intentionally infected the crew of an illegal salvage ship, turning them into Borg drones, just she could sell them to her employer, that is a good horror story and someone who uses Borg tech for their own petty purposes is pretty scary.

I also think Picard, 7 of 9 and Hugh would find someone who is willing to weaponize Borg tech for their own purposes as a particularly morally repulsive individual. This also fits with the trailers, where we see a Borg Cube with blue force fields, Romulan ships, run like a prison camp, with Romulan guards and Romulan writing inside. The Tal Shiar or other Romulan Extremists likely have no problem experimenting on people in order to make better attack drones and not care if people die during these experiments.

 

Whatever you are smoking, I would like some.

 

Seven poured twenty years of her life into the Collective.

SHE'S not going to take it sitting down.

 

A wait and see approach is best, but just to dig up an old script and redo it... that sounds somewhat familiar given the annals of modern movies (and some TV) and the last I recall, a lot of moviegoers were grumbling over the cut'n'paste approach...

 

TPTB are probably sitting in the writers' room and laughing at how much we're getting it wrong.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing the Borg again, which is such a strange thing to say after how they were flogged to death on TNG and VOY.

I like the idea of it being a damaged collective we will be seeing, as they will be less powerful, but more unpredictable.

The common thread of regaining identity through Picard, Hugh and Seven will be fascinating.

 

The Borg aren't invincible and can't ignore the laws of thermodynamics. Plus, what Janeway did to them in Endgame was hugely damaging. We might not have Borg stories as we know them, but rather, a bunch of ex-drones, trying to find new, lives? Or maybe a set of splintered, smaller Collectives? Or ex-Borg that desperately want to be Borg again, for it was the only life they knew?

 

Not only did it do enormous damage, it would also helped the drones from Unimatrix Zero, wouldn't it?

 

Well in the trailer we see 7 of 9 mourning a fallen comrade, we also see a Borg cube that seems like a prison camp, with people in prison jumpsuits and even get one shot of what looks to be a lab, but also seems like a house of horrors, with Borg body part covered in blood. We also see that girl in the trailer being chased what looks like black-ops agents, not Borg drones. Perhaps the Romulan extremists are kidnapping former Borg drones for their experiments. Perhaps this young woman is being experimented on to create a new Borg Queen, but one that would be under the command of the Tal Shiar/Romulan extremists. Someone is trying to kill her, calling her a destroyer, maybe they know her background and fear her.

The Borg are inhumanly indifferent to others, they are callous, but usually not actively sadistic. With the Cardassian occupation of Bajor and the Romulan subjection of Remus, these powers are quite adept at cruelty without a Borg mindset.

The Borg are powerful and can adapt to technology, but they lack sublie and tactics, which the Romulans have. The Romulans also are driven by emotions, unlike the Borg, they can be motivated by greed or hatred. The Romulan extremists may hate the Federation, blame them for the loss of their homeworld and the loss of their power, a blow to people as prideful as the Romulans, now the Federation has to face Borg tech in the hands of people who are not callous or indifferent, but actively driven by malice, with militaristic tactics to back up their ambitions.

 

With the corporate merger, I'm glad no one is making claims about the Borg being 25% different.

(Especially since that was never a thing anyway.)

 

All that nonsense seems to have gone away since the merger was announced, thankfully.

(aside from us making the odd joke!)

 

I wonder if the Borg cube in Picard is the one Hugh was sent back to, which was "infected" with individuality.

The ship in "Decent" just didn't look Borg, more like something they built or commandeered.

 

I also think the Romulans weaponizing Borg tech, rather then the Collective itself being the villains, would make for a story filled with intrigue and twists. The Borg are so direct, that its easy to find them and they announce their intentions right away. But finding a cabal of Romulan extremists made up of Tal Shiar agents who hide in the shadows after the destruction of the Romulan Empire was destroyed and scattered to the winds, that would take some actual detective work. Picard and his allies would have to go Romulan refugee camps, sleazy bars and travel the underbelly of the Alpha Quadrant to find them.

That does make a different story than the typical Borg invasion story.

 

Also the fact this show started production before the merger was announced, let alone finalized (which was only this week)

 

One wonders if it's necessarily a good thing Stewart has as much creative control over the direction of Picard as the interviews are making out. Makes me a tad nervous. All will be revealed soon enough, I guess...

 

And people were complaining Deep Space Nine was dark.

Or some combination of the above?