Are the Borg the perfect enemy?

[RAMA]

http://io9.com/5985124/is-it-possib...dium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation

Well, you judge.

I once postulated a "hive mind" that took a different tack...it enriched civilizations, allowed for individualism yet instant networking...differences of race, color, etc would be meaningless. I also proposeed they should be white instead of black or earth colors so as to touch upon our psychological interpretation of such colors. I foresaw that the UFP even with quantum torpedoes and the like could not hold their own and would eventually succumb to the Borg, but this new cyborg race would assist us, and at least force a stalemate. Would have made a FANTASTIC movie.

 

[Mojochi]

I wouldn't say they're the perfect enemy, like Moriarty to Sherlock Holmes. The Romulans are that for Star Trek, an empire of equal might & reverse ideologies. However, The Borg are the perfect horror for our Star Trek heroes. There would be no battle fronts, neutral zones, espionage or enemy tactics with the Borg. They are simply a horror to repel, the worst they've ever known, from their prespective

 

[heavy lids]

The Borg are the perfect horror for our Star Trek heroes.

Exactly. I think the Borg are the most unique and interesting sci-fi "bad guys", but I wouldn't say they're the perfect enemy. Just an incredibly frightening enemy.

 

[Anji]

As far as them being the perfect "horror", I give more credit to the directors of the Borg episodes for doing a good job in presenting them that way. In and of themselves, sorry, they're just Cybermen to me.

 

[Tiberius]

The Borg Collective is a spoiled brat.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

They were. In TNG.

 

[jimbotron]

They were. In TNG.

Right. Then First Contact happened. Then Voyager happened.

The Borg lost their luster after BOBW.

 

[MickJo1701]

They were. In TNG.

Right. Then First Contact happened. Then Voyager happened.

The Borg lost their luster after BOBW.

This!

Aside from the Queen, the 2 biggest mistakes with the Borg in my opinion where giving them the ability to travel through time (for obvious reasons) and Transwarp.

Part of what made them threatening in early TNG was that 'they will be coming', but because the initial encounter was thousands of light years away, they could only speculate as to when a Cube would eventually turn up on the doorstep.

Little did they know the Borg had an exit aperture from a Transwarp hub less than a lightyear from Earth and the only reason they haven't sent a fleet of ships to assimilate us is because they don't work Wednesday's...

 

[CorporalClegg]

No.

They're glorified space zombies.

 

[Jeyl]

Aside from the Queen,

I'm sorry, but the Borg should not be sexy.

 

[BillJ]

The Borg are the perfect horror for our Star Trek heroes.

Agreed.

Aside from the Queen, the 2 biggest mistakes with the Borg in my opinion where giving them the ability to travel through time (for obvious reasons) and Transwarp.

They had to have some kind of faster-than-warp propulsion or else they'd have never made it all the way to the Romulan Neutral Zone or Jouret IV.

Agreed on time travel though. Terrible idea.

 

[RAMA]

To an extent, the Borg are another offshoot of Star Trek's distaste for human modification in any way. Eugenics: bad, Cloning: Bad, Balanced societies in perfect equilibrium and reaching homeostatis: Bad...and of course cybernetics, mind networking/uploading: bad. In this sense a cyborg race controlled through subspace is non-individualistic, a horror. Such distaste for general modifications is far more likely to lead to our destruction than the other way around.

I do plan on revisiting the Voyager Borg episodes soon, I forget some details, but I always felt that the Voyager episodes made the Borg seem even more powerful...the sheer numbers of assimilations, the size of the uni-complex and Borg Territory. They were defeated only by drastic, unconventional means, including time travel. They survived the loss of possibly tens of thousands of gigantic cubes to a rare superior race (Species 8472) and proliferated afterwards.

RAMA

 

[BillJ]

Yet kept getting their asses handed to them by a tiny Federation starship...

 

[Takeru]

The Borg are hardly perfect, they are too obviously evil looking, a perfect enemy is one you don't even see coming, not one in a scary cube ship that tells you upfront what theor plans are.

The Borg's biggest problem is that they're not pretty. Even if beauty doesn't matter to the collective, shouldn't they realize that getting rid of the tubes, having drones look sexy and changing your slogan from "resistance is futile" to "assimilation is bliss" would attract many people?
Imagine a sleak looking borg ship with 500 silver wearing male and female Seven of Nines that possess fake individuality (it can't be that hard for the collective to have the words "I'm soandso and being a borg is awesome" coming out of a drones mouth) showed up in orbit and declared that you are invited to join them, don't you think many people would line up for assimilation willingly? Of course some wouldn't trust them, but you always find doofuses who'll join the collective. Make a collective within the collective, that allows the new drones to keep their individuality at the start, let them experience all the good parts of being part of a hive mind and let them convince others, let them use their own words, don't force them to do anything. If someone wants to leave the collective because they realize it's not what they want after all just let them go, remove all traces of nanoprobes etc., it will make you look more trustworthy and three others will join instead. Once a sufficient part of the populatio is drones switch off their individuality and finish the job.
It would take longer but you don't have to blow up half of the population to get the other half.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I would say the Borg are the worst kind of enemy from a storytelling perspective. If you make a bad guy too powerful, then you constantly have to find a way to weaken them for our heroes to win. After Wolf 359, the Borg should have swarmed the Federation with cube ships and pretty much taken it out, essentially ending Trek. Instead, the Borg continued to send in just one ship at a time to be beaten back each time.

Sure, we can try to justify the Borg's refusal to go full-out on the Federation on an idea that they don't think the Federation warrants more than a single Borg ship, but that's really just an excuse to keep the Borg beatable.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

They were a better enemy when we didn't know much about them, when they were just an army of drones looking to assimilate races and technology. They lost much of what made them an interesting and engaging species when VOY brought in Seven and had them defeating the Collective several times a year.

 

[RAMA]

The Borg are hardly perfect, they are too obviously evil looking, a perfect enemy is one you don't even see coming, not one in a scary cube ship that tells you upfront what theor plans are.

The Borg's biggest problem is that they're not pretty. Even if beauty doesn't matter to the collective, shouldn't they realize that getting rid of the tubes, having drones look sexy and changing your slogan from "resistance is futile" to "assimilation is bliss" would attract many people?
Imagine a sleak looking borg ship with 500 silver wearing male and female Seven of Nines that possess fake individuality (it can't be that hard for the collective to have the words "I'm soandso and being a borg is awesome" coming out of a drones mouth) showed up in orbit and declared that you are invited to join them, don't you think many people would line up for assimilation willingly? Of course some wouldn't trust them, but you always find doofuses who'll join the collective. Make a collective within the collective, that allows the new drones to keep their individuality at the start, let them experience all the good parts of being part of a hive mind and let them convince others, let them use their own words, don't force them to do anything. If someone wants to leave the collective because they realize it's not what they want after all just let them go, remove all traces of nanoprobes etc., it will make you look more trustworthy and three others will join instead. Once a sufficient part of the populatio is drones switch off their individuality and finish the job.
It would take longer but you don't have to blow up half of the population to get the other half.

Wow you're all about aesthetics aren't you? I don't think a species with such a monolithic, single-minded purpose and power would really care about such things. I did prefer when they were more interested in tech than assimilation, but to most people that's not visceral enough, it's only when they took Picard that people really took notice. Same with Hugh, and then 7 of 9.

 

[sonak]

the Borg are a great enemy to use once or twice. They're scary and very powerful. The problem is repeated uses of them negates both of those qualities.

By late Voyager seasons, the Borg are just a cool looking but run of the mill villain.

 

[RAMA]

I would say the Borg are the worst kind of enemy from a storytelling perspective. If you make a bad guy too powerful, then you constantly have to find a way to weaken them for our heroes to win. After Wolf 359, the Borg should have swarmed the Federation with cube ships and pretty much taken it out, essentially ending Trek. Instead, the Borg continued to send in just one ship at a time to be beaten back each time.

Sure, we can try to justify the Borg's refusal to go full-out on the Federation on an idea that they don't think the Federation warrants more than a single Borg ship, but that's really just an excuse to keep the Borg beatable.

Yes you could say that, they always have to be taken down a notch...after Q Who, they were a metaphor for "things we shouldn't know", that there are just some things too powerful for us at a certain state of development and we should keep quiet and lay low...this has since been popularized by Stephen Hawking, who also postulated species that were resource hogs and would have no other use for us. I tend to disagree with this, but so be it.

Then they were too good not to use, Best of Both Worlds basically tricked them with some hacking using inside info (Picard). Ever since then the Borg have only been beaten in battle by two organizations, the humans including Voyager have used unconventional methods in virtual reality, time travel, alliances and so on to defeat the Borg, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling it's not enough, and the Borg could arise for a sequel at any time.

Enterprise used them particularly well in the excellent episode "Regeneration", possibly the best Borg TV episode since "Scorpion". They didn't have to make any excuses, they had 2 Borg, captured a small ship and assimilated it as fast as they could, and maybe if they had a little more time or a bigger ship they may have succeeded. No Federation trickery involved, no taking them down a notch.

RAMA

 

[Anwar]

Yet kept getting their asses handed to them by a tiny Federation starship...

Same as what Kirk did to various super-threats, then?