Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy?

[indolover]

I liked Voyager. I thought it had some good characters, quite a few well-written episodes (as not just Scorpion and the Killing Game, but Jetrel, Author, Author, Prey, and Tuvix were all good episodes I feel).

But one common criticism of the show is that the Borg were less intimidating than in TNG. Do you accept this criticism of the show?

 

[Itachi]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

They we're quite less intimidating. But remember in TNG the borg was rarely ever seen or at least hardly anyone saw them and went home to tell about it. So the crew of Voyager had much more knowledge of the borg than the Enterprise did. It may not have been a "how to kill the borg" manual but at least the knew thier characteristics.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Yes, I think the Borg are less intimidating.

No, I don't blame Voyager.

I blame TNG movies for that. The moment the Borg had a queen and gained a 'face', it was the beginning of the end for them as super powered, amoral force of destruction.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I don't agree with that, but then again I've never liked the Borg.

I think after Q Who and Best of Both Worlds, the Borg couldn't/shouldn't have been used again. You had I, Borg and Descent which, to me, started things off on making the Borg less scary.

While it is true that Voyager featured the Borg in the most episodes, for much of those appearances they weren't the main villain or antagonist of the episode (which may tie in to the whole "less intimidating, Voyager killed the Borg" criticism).

Does that mean that Deep Space 9 killed the Dominion as an enemy?

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Yes, I think the Borg are less intimidating.

No, I don't blame Voyager.

I blame TNG movies for that. The moment the Borg had a queen and gained a 'face', it was the beginning of the end for them as super powered, amoral force of destruction.

To quote from Five Minute TNG:

Picard: These operations are really painful. Can I talk to your boss about maybe getting some Aspirin?
Borg: Boss? We have no "boss"! We're a collective consciousness -- do we have to spell it for you?
Picard: Well, I just thought that, what with the whole hive metaphor, you might have a queen or something....
Borg: My God, you just keep digging the hole deeper!
Picard: All right, I'm sorry. Let's just drop it.
Borg: "Queen." I can't believe you humans.

 

[indolover]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I don't agree with that, but then again I've never liked the Borg.

I think after Q Who and Best of Both Worlds, the Borg couldn't/shouldn't have been used again. You had I, Borg and Descent which, to me, started things off on making the Borg less scary.

While it is true that Voyager featured the Borg in the most episodes, for much of those appearances they weren't the main villain or antagonist of the episode (which may tie in to the whole "less intimidating, Voyager killed the Borg" criticism).

Does that mean that Deep Space 9 killed the Dominion as an enemy?

The Dominion was exclusive to DS9, and the appeal of the Dominion was that it was a kind of anti-Federation, which was built on force and coercion. This never really changed since their introduction in Season Two. and could be seen up until the last episode when they attempted genocide of the Cardassians.

But the Borg were introduced in TNG as a near invincible force, and this was their appeal in that series.

 

[SRFX]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Both late TNG, the films and Voyager all share the blame for neutering the Borg - but I feel the biggest threat to the Borg did come from Voyager; the introduction of Species 8472.

Which probably would've been okay - except they got neutered in less than three episodes.

But all of this would have been palatable, the Borg would've still gone on being an ongoing threatening force, except Endgame changed all that - and the less said about Voy's finale, the better.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I find it hard to swallow that Voyager's actions in "Endgame" destroyed the Borg.

I think of their hive mind like the internet. Sure, you can introduce a virus to the net, but it won't find all the computer terminals out there and destroy them. Eventually, a fix for the problem will be found.

I think all Kathryn did was create a giant annoyance for the Borg.

 

[SRFX]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Well, it was inferred that the Borg hive had been destroyed.

Of course, the Borg exist outside of linear time, so I guess they'll always be there - making the inference in Endgame that they were destroyed all the more foolhardy.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I never received that inference. I was always under the impression that Voyager's action had made a dent in the collective, but that was all.

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

No, I don't find the Borg less intimidating.

I find the sheer number of Borg can still overwhelm & out number many of our defences. So even though we can destroy a few, they will still keep coming. They still out number us & that still makes them dangerous.

It's like Bee's.
Just because we have bug spray, million of folks world wide are still in fear of them.
Knowing how a bee hive functions & what bees do never changes that.
I view the Borg in the same way.

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I never received that inference. I was always under the impression that Voyager's action had made a dent in the collective, but that was all.

Exactly.

Just like a hive, not every "bee" was in it.
They already implied in "Unimatrix Zero", the Borg have vessels patrolling every quaderent. So if those Borg remain, the hive can be rebuild and the collective continues.

The Borg's primary goal is survival, that's partly why they assimilate.
To insure that there are enough of them to carry on.

 

[flemm]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

No, I don't think this can be blamed on Voyager. It is more a problem inherent to the Borg as originally conceived.

Of course, to a certain degree, any antagonist in any kind of heroic adventure-style storytelling runs the risk of being neutered due to the fact that he/she/it is bound to be defeated, so this problem is not unique to the Borg.

There are strategies to prevent the enemy from being entirely neutered, one of the central ones being to keep the main or real adversary in the background as long as possible, allowing your heros to defeat only servants or emissaries. If your heroes have difficulty with these, then the true enemy can begin to seem more intimidating over time, not less. Right away there is a bit a of a problem with the Borg because they are non-differentiated to begin with, so it is hard to create that layered effect.

Another problem is that the Borg start out so unstoppable and single-minded that there is nowhere to go but down unless they are allowed to assimilate the Federation, which of course cannot happen.

Also the totally undifferentiated, totally faceless concept is very hard to sustain, dramatically speaking. Arguably it only lasted for two episodes, since Locutus already provides a face for the Borg at the end of the BOBW (Part I).

All of these difficulties are in evidence right away in TNG and of course in FC, so I don't think Voyager can be identified as the culprit, the show just runs into the same problem that the TNG writers run into almost right away.

(For an example of effective "layering," I would cite the LotR, which is a classic heroic adventure partially because it does this so well. Sauron is always in the background, and the basic premise is that he can never be defeated by force alone. Meanwhile the Nazgul and especially their leader, the Witchking, are built up to be extremely intimidating in their own right. Then we find out that Sauron himself is but a servant or emissary of the Great Enemy of the Elder Days.)

The Dominion is an interesting example as well. I don't think they were introduced as effectively as the Borg by a wide margin, but the idea is much easier to sustain. Sisko closing the wormhole with the aid of the Prophets creates a sort of layered effect in that the rest of the war is only being waged against a small and increasingly beleaguered contingent of the Dominion's forces trapped in the alpha quadrant.

 

[AuntKate]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I don't think they destroyed the Borg totally in "Endgame," but they had a good record for studying how the Borg operate and finding ways to undermine them. However, you can't really blame Voyager for that, since that is what what done to bring Picard back to humanity in "Best of Both Worlds."

From what I've heard, Janeway might have destroyed the Borg completely in the novels, but I haven't read them.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Let's not bring the novels into this. They are whole other kettle of fish that destroy so much more than the concept of the Borg.

 

[maneth]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I'm with Flemm here. Voyager didn't destroy the menace of the Borg by itself, but Seven of Nine did put a huge dent in the threat, since she showed that it's possible for a Borg drone to regain individuality even after several years of life as a drone.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I think the concept that an drone cannot come back to being an individual is more-or-less fandom bringing in ideas of certainty that were never actually cohesive fundamentals on the show.

We were always told that they "weren't sure" it could be done, but never that it couldn't be done. In fact, Hugh proves that it can be done. That was on TNG. We have no way of knowing how long he was in the collective. But, we do know he became an individual. So, it was already set in stone that it could happen way before Seven came along.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I wouldn't want to miss "Scorpion" or "Dark Frontier", but episodes like "Unimatrix Zero" and "Endgame" were just too much.

They should have dropped the Borg after "Dark Frontier" IMHO. There even would have been a good explanation for it: At the end of "Dark Frontier", Voyager had traveled another 20,000 light-years with the help of a Borg transwarp conduit. This jump would have been a good opportunity to say that Voyager has left Borg space behind once and for all. And then a new enemy could have been created for Seasons 6 and 7. But they couldn't just let go...

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I wouldn't want to miss "Scorpion" or "Dark Frontier", but episodes like "Unimatrix Zero" and "Endgame" were just too much.

They should have dropped the Borg after "Dark Frontier" IMHO. There would have been a good explanation for it: At the end of "Dark Frontier", Voyager had traveled another 20,000 light-years with the help of a Borg transwarp conduit. This would have been a good opportunity to say that Voyager had left Borg space behind once and for all with that jump. And then a new enemy could have been created for Seasons 6 and 7.

The Borg like the Romans are conquers.
Even leaving behind Borg space, they'd still be Borg ships scouting for new conquests. They couldn't expand their empire or be a threat to anybody if they weren't out exploring, just like the Federation. It's like saying no Starfleet ship can leave Earth's orbit. So how do you recuit? How would the Romans know what would be the next civilaztion to conquer if they didn't send out scouts?

 

[flemm]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I wouldn't want to miss "Scorpion" or "Dark Frontier", but episodes like "Unimatrix Zero" and "Endgame" were just too much.

Well, I do agree with you that at some point the writing staff should have said, "Ok, enough with the Borg already," so in that sense, yeah, Voyager contributed to the downfall of the Borg as an effective villain. On the other hand, I would say that the Borg concept just doesn't lend itself to prolonged exposure. After all, there are certainly villains out there that have been used more often than the Borg without losing all of their luster.

This might partly be creative choices, but also partly the simple fact that the original idea is rather monolithic and inflexible. What makes it cool also makes it hard to work with.