When did the Borg begin assimilating, onscreen?

[jimbotron]

Pre-BOBW, I would guess that the Borg 'scooped' up civilizations en masse, cannibalized the technology, and then disposed of the people much like we'd throw away a candy wrapper.

Guinan tells that the Borg invaded her world and scattered her people across the galaxy. I would take that to mean that their world was destroyed, and everyone who escaped went their separate ways.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't terribly mind the changing of pre-established canon, but the problem is when they change it from something interesting to something cheesy and boring. The addition of assimilation is the former case, and the introduction of the Borg Queen is the latter case. The Borg Queen is like a B movie villain, hatching schemes that don't track logically and happen to intersect with the heroes' flight path. She has the mannerisms more or less identical to Malificent. This is incredibly stupid and boring compared to the faceless hive they started out as.

B movie scifi villains to the Borg: Originality is irrelevant. Your stylistic distinctiveness will be added to our own.

 

[Christopher]

Well, both the introduction of assimilation and the creation of the Queen were dictated by the considerations of drama. Stories are about interaction between people. There are only so many stories you can tell about fighting a faceless force of nature. Bring the threat back a second time, or a third time, and you need to find something new to do with it, some way to give it personal stakes and emotional impact. So personifying the threat, making it more of a character rather than just an obstacle, allows a wider range of dramatic possibilities.

And this isn't unique to the Borg by any means. I mentioned how Stargate eventually humanized its Replicators, though they waited a lot longer than TNG did. Before then, in the '70s, Doctor Who added a more personal element to the well-established Daleks by introducing their creator Davros, who became a regular presence in every Dalek story from then to the end of the original series. Heck, even Godzilla was basically a relentless force of nature, a living natural disaster, in the first movie, with the focus more on the human characters dealing with the consequences of his rampage, while in the sequels, Godzilla became more of a distinct character, eventually even a protagonist.

 

[Tiberius]

Actually, if the Queen is some kind of mind that stretches across the whole Collective as you say, then the idea of there being more than one isn't needed. More than one body, yes, but only ever one mind...

That's essentially what I said.

And the mind we're talking about is the Collective. That's what "Collective" means -- a single consciousness formed out of all the drones linked together. The Queen, as I see it, is simply its coordinating node, the part of the mind that gives it a sense of self-awareness and purpose, like the frontal lobes of the human brain.

Sorry - I misunderstood when you said there was more than one Queen. More than one body, yes, but only one Queen who controls them like a puppet.

 

[Tiberius]

Actually, if the Queen is some kind of mind that stretches across the whole Collective as you say, then the idea of there being more than one isn't needed. More than one body, yes, but only ever one mind...

That's essentially what I said.

And the mind we're talking about is the Collective. That's what "Collective" means -- a single consciousness formed out of all the drones linked together. The Queen, as I see it, is simply its coordinating node, the part of the mind that gives it a sense of self-awareness and purpose, like the frontal lobes of the human brain.

That's all well and good, and that's how I prefer to see it, too.

However, there is a scene in VOY's "Endgame" where the Queen and the Collective are clearly operating as separate entities. I didn't even notice it until the most recent time I watched the episode.

I don't remember the exact dialogue, but it basically goes something like this:

Collective: "Starship Voyager detected. Prepare to intercept."
Queen: "No. Leave them alone."

I see that as more like a conscious mind overriding an instinctive reaction.

 

[Timo]

TROI: We're not dealing with an individual mind. They don't have a single leader. It's the collective minds of all of them.

Note change of emphasis. What our heroes are dealing with is a single Cube. It's consistent to have leaderless Cubes even in a strictly hierarchical society or collective lifeform...

I see that as more like a conscious mind overriding an instinctive reaction.

Even Drones that are in general agreement about a course of action still sometimes talk to each other, for example pointing out that an attempted course of action is blocked by damage or a clever Janeway ploy. I agree that all this can easily be read as mere inner dialogue for a single mind..

..And the very act of thinking out aloud is an indication of the problem at hand being a difficult and frustrating one, specifically because there are conflicting viewpoints and options. Again as with a single human mind processing a problem.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Sorry - I misunderstood when you said there was more than one Queen. More than one body, yes, but only one Queen who controls them like a puppet.

Or rather, one coordinator program that's installed in specialized "Queen" bodies as needed. Ultimately it's the entire Collective doing the thinking, but the Queen is the part of that mass brain that organizes all the different thought processes and gives them focus and volition.

Although the Borg origin given in the Destiny trilogy in the novels posits that there was a single original Queen and that the Collective is an extension of her mind and will. Other prose and comics tie-ins have offered a few alternative Borg origins and they usually go the same route. Still, either way, what needs to be remembered is that the Queen is not a separate consciousness from the rest of the Collective; as she said in First Contact, she literally is the Borg, the single mind that governs and inhabits every drone, every ship, every nanoprobe.

 

[SoM]

Well, both the introduction of assimilation and the creation of the Queen were dictated by the considerations of drama....Before then, in the '70s, Doctor Who added a more personal element to the well-established Daleks by introducing their creator Davros, who became a regular presence in every Dalek story from then to the end of the original series.

Ah, but "adding a personal stake" isn't quite why that happened. Davros was intended as a one-shot, more as a subsitute for the Daleks in their origin story than an addition - when the Daleks "proper" appeared fairly late in "Genesis of...", they promptly killed him off!

The reason he kept coming back? Simple, and nothing at all to do with any on-screen drama - Terry Nation had (and his Estate still has) a veto over any use of the Daleks. And as Davros was a seperate creation, he got more royalty money for a Dalek story which featured Davros than a story which didn't. So he refused to *let* them do a Dalek story without Davros!

 

[Christopher]

^Even so, part of the reason Davros was introduced in the first place was to bring a fresh element to the Daleks. As I recall from the commentary on "Death to the Daleks," the producer pointed out to Terry Nation that he was mostly repeating tropes from earlier Dalek serials, something he hadn't realized he'd been doing. So for the next Dalek story, they tried to come up with something new, something that would make it less repetitive. And Davros was the result. So I think it still illustrates the basic principle that a faceless foe can be limiting to work with on a recurring basis.

 

[Start Wreck]

In my opinion, if an adversary is becoming stale and repetitive, the solution is to stop using them and come up with something new, rather than change the old adversary into something that undermines its premise.

 

[Christopher]

Well, I don't agree with blanket statements that a given category of story should never be done. Categories don't determine quality; in every category of story, there are both good and bad examples. Anything can be made to work if it's approached the right way. Sometimes it's good to change the premise, to take a character or a society in an unexpected direction. No, it won't always work, but that doesn't mean it never can.