Best Borg stories ever!!
- Thread starter RAMA
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I just liked the idea of mindless drones who tried to assimilate the galaxy in that unstoppable way they did. Not as some sub-servient beings who bowed down to an authority figure.
The idea of Locutus being the overseer of the assimilation of Earth is a bit different, in my opinion, than having him be their ruler.
It's pretty telling that TNG only had one story with the Borg as a faceless force: "Q Who?" and that story needed Guinan and Q to properly work while the Borg were almost a background threat they were narrating.
Every other Borg story in TNG had a Borg representative one way or another (Locutus, Hugh, Lore).
Every other Borg story in TNG had a Borg representative one way or another (Locutus, Hugh, Lore).
Precisely. Borg ideology is not linked to a leader and that's precisely why it is so horrible.
There is no power structure, there can be no dissidents, Borg ideology lives on even if merely two drones survives.
"Regenerations" showed the snowball effect, two drones suffice to start from scratch and "I, Borg" showed that if a drone is alone she stops being a drone and becomes free.
Back to Borg ideology, I think that the portrayal of drones as zombies in FC was a good idea. The Borg are undead, they do not care about their own life, merely about the higher goal of the collective and mortify everything around them.
Hugh did not represent the Borg collective, that was the main point of the story.
I agree that it might be dramatically comfortable to have a character like the Borg Queen but it comes at the cost of the actual horror of the Borg, their facelessness. Giving them representatives humanizes them too much. talking about humanization, just take a look at what happened in VOY: ex-Borg (Picard in BobW and "Family" was so much more to the point). Borg kids, regularly appearing Borg queens with whom you can negotiate, it was a travesty. Not coincidentally "Regeneration" featured no representative.
We already knew from TNG that you could be "de-Borged" so VOY did nothing wrong in that regard.
Hell, if anything Voyager's "Unity" was a better example of ex-Borg than "Descent" was and actually bothered to entertain the idea of the Collective being a good thing.
Borg kids? We saw Borg BABIES in TNG so VOY did nothing wrong there either.
Hell, if anything Voyager's "Unity" was a better example of ex-Borg than "Descent" was and actually bothered to entertain the idea of the Collective being a good thing.
Borg kids? We saw Borg BABIES in TNG so VOY did nothing wrong there either.
In my idea of how the Borg work, the drones are not subservient to the Queen. The Drones are part of the queen!
What was the point of the Borg in TNG until "I, Borg"? They were collectivist, insect-like cyborgs who did not conquer like the Klingons or Romulans but convert everybody and everything into them. They are antithetical to everything the Federation cherishes: individuality, diversity, sanctity of life and above all the right to decide your own fate. "I, Borg" worked out this difference in the most poignant fashion.
Note the lack of aggression of the Borg and their spartan appearance before FC, they are above all an abstract enemy. When Picard reports about the horrors he has recently gone through in "Family" they are not bodily horrors like in the nightmare from FC but abstract horrors: the lack of agency, having to witness how you are used and abused to kill those who are dear to you.
While a movie like FC could not be as abstract as a television series and had to be more visual there was no excuse for continuing along the path of FC in VOY. The stories had a soapish quality and ex-Drones were Vulcanesque fellows who had some social problems but did not suffer from a trauma like Picard.
"Unity" is indeed the best Borg story on VOY but not because it "entertain
Ahh, yes, Dark Frontier, where the Voyager crew beams a photon torpedo onto a Borg ship.
Thus finally trying out what basically everyone watching Q, Who or BoBW was shouting at the TV every time an away team beamed over onto an unstoppable cube and casually strolled around.
Also, having beamed the torpedo along, it was good of the crew to make sure the countdown sequence was just long enough to give that little dramatic punch. Because when you're dealing with a technologically more sophisticated species that is known for their ability to rapidly adapt to threats, why rush, right?
Thus finally trying out what basically everyone watching Q, Who or BoBW was shouting at the TV every time an away team beamed over onto an unstoppable cube and casually strolled around.
Also, having beamed the torpedo along, it was good of the crew to make sure the countdown sequence was just long enough to give that little dramatic punch. Because when you're dealing with a technologically more sophisticated species that is known for their ability to rapidly adapt to threats, why rush, right?
Also, it was a Probe ship that wasn't any stronger than Voyager itself. That probably had a lot to do with it.
Of course, the Enterprise-E easily destroyed a Borg Sphere in FC and no one cared.
Like Hugh and his group? I don't remember any of them being traumatized either, except by Lore's experiments.
VOY was no-win in that regard: Either have the ex-Borg be traumatized like Picard, or have them NOT be traumatized like Hugh and co.
And no matter which choice they made, they get complaints over it.
Of course, the Enterprise-E easily destroyed a Borg Sphere in FC and no one cared.
Like Hugh and his group? I don't remember any of them being traumatized either, except by Lore's experiments.
VOY was no-win in that regard: Either have the ex-Borg be traumatized like Picard, or have them NOT be traumatized like Hugh and co.
And no matter which choice they made, they get complaints over it.
At the time of FC, though, that was plausible, since nothing else had been established about spheres. It was only later that it was implied/shown/stated that at least some varieties of spheres were tactically formidable.
I have no objection to Voyager defeating a Probe. It's entirely plausible that Intrepid-class ships possess superior firepower compared to Borg scout vessels.
What I object to is the idea that the Borg, a collective group consciousness theoretically renowned for their ability to adapt to any situation they've faced before, being flummoxed by an enemy clumsily beaming a bomb on board. Really? In the hundreds, maybe thousands, of years the Collective has been in business, no one tried that?
In the thousands of years the Collective has been around, apparently no one ever thought of hacking into the Collective either. Or using a solar flare as a weapon.
I suppose if BOBW was a Voyager story, folks would complain about the "Sleep" resolution and how the Collective should've been ready for that.
I suppose if BOBW was a Voyager story, folks would complain about the "Sleep" resolution and how the Collective should've been ready for that.
oh come on. You're reaching. The Borg in "Descent" weren't even part of the Collective, and there was a LOT more to the "BOBW" resolution than "sleep," and a lot of things that had to go right for them to pull it off. It was hardly an easy victory.
The vessel in Descent WAS a Borg ship, it just wasn't an Assimilation Cube. And NO ONE cared when the sun turned out to be powerful enough to destroy it. No one thought that the Borg should be more powerful than a Star.
BOBW's resolution was basically hacking.
I'm not reaching at all. If the Borg couldn't adapt to be immune to the power of Stars (which are older than anything) in thousands of years, or never considered the idea that someone could hack the Collective then no one should complain that Voyager could destroy a PROBE ship.
Then again, if either the solar flare or "sleep" had been used in VOY instead of TNG, perhaps folks WOULD just howl their guts out over it, seeing how VOY never gets a break over anything.
BOBW's resolution was basically hacking.
I'm not reaching at all. If the Borg couldn't adapt to be immune to the power of Stars (which are older than anything) in thousands of years, or never considered the idea that someone could hack the Collective then no one should complain that Voyager could destroy a PROBE ship.
Then again, if either the solar flare or "sleep" had been used in VOY instead of TNG, perhaps folks WOULD just howl their guts out over it, seeing how VOY never gets a break over anything.
You're either having a hard time following along, or are simply choosing not to acknowledge what I've already said. I'll try again, slowly.
1. I have no objection to Voyager destroying a probe ship.
2. How Voyager destroyed the probe ship was silly.
3. It would have been equally silly if it had been a cube, or sphere.
4. To recap: It's the tactic, not the target.
Hope that helps.
To win in "BOBW," the Enterprise crew needed:
1. an assimilated crewmember
2. A highly advanced android to help break into the Borg network
3. they needed Picard to be fighting through his "Borg programming" and give his suggestion
4. A daring and innovative plan to rescue the assimilated crewmember which barely worked
I can imagine that this scenario for victory, whereby a previously assimilated Borg is rescued by a Borg opponent and then turned against the Collective from the inside, does not come up that often.
Yes, technically, the Borg should have had protections against this. But, they made it look difficult and clever enough that there just wasn't as much of an objection. The writing was stronger than just "Have Janeway shoot a little box," like in "Dark Frontier."