Contact with the Borg

[Alienesse]

I watched "Q Who" last night, for a reminder of the chilling first appearance of the Borg. It was as exciting and eerie as ever, but it got me thinking about the whole business with Q introducing humans to the Borg. This episode clearly references back to the season 1 finale "The Neutral Zone", where a number of Federation outposts had been destroyed in exactly the same manner as the civilization on the M-class planet they encounter in the J-25 system. At the same time, in the last scene of the episode, Guinan tells Picard that "Q set a series of events into motion, bringing contact with the Borg much sooner than it should have come.", which seems a little contradictory.

If the Borg had already raided a few Federation outposts, doesn't that imply that contact had already been established? They'd already been to the Federation part of the galaxy, and they had probably already acquired information on both the Federation and the Romulan Empire by assimilating their citizens. What do you guys think about all this?

 

[Timo]

Oh, I think that if Guinan and Q can be trusted at all and the Borg really are hundreds of thousands of years old, they necessarily know the galaxy in and out. Humans have no doubt been duly recorded in the Collective databanks since the last ice age at least - and probably earlier still because in the Trek galaxy, you can always predict that humanoid species are destined for assimilable greatness.

The later portrayal of the Borg in VOY supports the view that they simply choose not to make themselves known in normal circumstances. They make "contact" at a moment of their choosing - but that's not related to them first observing a future victim. Rather, their "contact" means the moment when they decide to move from observation to assimilation.

As the TNG events show, full assimilation of an entire UFP homeworld (let alone the entire UFP) isn't what the Borg had in mind. Such assimilation attempts in VOY are performed by dozens of Cubes; single vessels merely scout, to get a taste of the goods, assimilating a city here, perhaps a planet there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Watch Voyager's "Dark Frontier" to see Federation researchers investigating the Borg 20 years prior to "Q Who"

Watch Star Trek Generations to see shipfulls of Guinan's people, fleeing the Borg attack on their world, be rescued by the Enterprise-B.

Watch Enterprise's "Regeneration" for Captan Archer taking on surviving Borg left over from the sphere destroyed in Star Trek: First Contact.

The Neutral Zone incident is the least of Borg/human first contact worries.

 

[Alienesse]

Yes, I know that, post-TNG, the issue of the "first contact" with the Borg becomes a complete mess, but I was wondering what the idea was when they were introduced.

I'm rather happy with Timo's explanation. If I understand you correctly, Timo, the Borg can make "contact" several times with a species without thinking twice about it until they actually decide to assimilate a group of its members. An argument in favor of Guinan's statement could also be found in the fact that the Enterprise was forced to attack the Borg cube in self-defense. I suppose an attacking vessel leaves a much stronger impression than a few defenseless colonies.

 

[Anwar]

A fan theory is that a Borg Cube attacked and assimilated the Neutral Zone outposts for both the Feds and Romulans (this is canon, as per "Neutral Zone" and Data saying that what happened at J-25 was the same thing); unimpressed, the Cube left and headed beyond the Federation to see what else was around.

Q then teleported the Enterprise-D to J-25 and into the course of that same Cube. The Borg wondered how this was possible since their prior assimilation gave no indication that the Feds could travel that far so easily, and when they sent those two drones to analyze the ship they still couldn't find out how they did it.

Then Q sends them back, right in front of the Cube, leaving them thinking "Okay, how the heck did they do THAT?!" so the Cube goes back to the Federation to set up the events of BOBW.

The loose end here is that once the Borg assimilated Picard they'd know about Q and get their answer on how the Feds did all that teleporting in "Q Who?" so they'd know the Feds didn't have some technologial advantage they didn't know about.

Then again, maybe knowing that a being like Q said that Humans had dangerous potential would be justification enough for them assimilating humanity.

 

[Gary7]

^ Interesting hypothesis. I do like the idea of "showing off" capabilities that the Federation didn't really have in front of the Borg, to entice them.

But... all of this speculation hinges on Guinan telling Picard that "Q set a series of events into motion, bringing contact with the Borg much sooner than it should have come," which could be viewed as a writer's mistake in relation to how the Borg story eventually rolled out. What she should have said was "Q set a series of events in motion, pushing the Borg's timetable of human assimilation further ahead than originally planned."


Unfortunately we really have 2 versions of the Borg: the true collective preoccupied with casual but deadly assimilation and exploitation of resources as needed, and the queen led collective that becomes purposefully interested in assimilation of the entire galaxy. That's my summary interpretation and I'm not saying it's exactly like this. But it helps explain why we didn't see the Borg relentlessly pursue the Federation in TNG, leaving only one assimilation vessel to "take care of humanity" when they could have sent a fleet and ensured complete assimilation with no chance for mistake.

I like the TNG version of the Borg best. The Borg are to be feared IF they become interested in you. Otherwise, they seem to just roam about doing their business. Almost like sharks. They're benign as they swim about you, but if they decide you're food? Forget about it. And so, for the individual-centric Federation, a few outposts may be consumed by a needy passing Borg cube but then no subsequent pursuit en-mass occurs, giving the Federation time to regroup and figure out a way to deal with the Borg. That's the real advantage--creativity. The Borg have none of that. They're very basic at the core, accumulating new technology along the way that is appended to their arsenal. They do not innovate, even with the technology they already have. This becomes their weakness. But their strength is technological superiority and large numbers. This is formidable.

The post-TNG version of the Borg is guided by an individual humanoid (or perhaps multiple queens--we don't know for sure), someone who has the potential to be creative. This combination could result in a thorough exploitation of most species, except for 8472 of course, until Janeway gives them the answer they need that they failed to think of for themselves--bio engineered nanoprobes that don't assimilate but instead act like a virus.

At least with the Borg having some creativity, they could adopt a more creative objective... Once they're strong enough and have assimilated enough cultures, they'll pull back and then seek to advance the technology they have to improve the quality of Borg life. Or maybe take up artistic pursuits.

 

[Timo]

Why should Guinan know all that much about the Borg? We know a lot about their methods thanks to the extensive exposure in VOY; Guinan only saw the aftermath of their assimilating her homeworld and much of her species and culture. Her assessment of how the Borg operate and what can be expected of them is probably correct, as far as she knows.

It's a nice learning process we witness here. Most of the claims and theories about the Borg from TNG prove to be incorrect or approximate, while all the evidence remains valid; our TNG heroes simply didn't read it correctly.

Whether the Borg behave differently when led by the Queen (or when manifesting their collective leadership through the Queen?), we can't really tell. The Queen was said to have been present in the events of "BoBW" already, and the decisions to use Locutus or to fight Starfleet at Wolf 359 or to go to Earth don't really differ from a lot of seemingly harebrained stuff the Queen was seen doing in VOY. And the idea that the Borg aren't out to conquer everything ASAP got its greatest reinforcement from a "Queen era" VOY episode, "Child's Play", where piecemeal, low intensity assimilation with recovery pauses for the victims was established as a Borg modus operandi.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kai Winn]

Oh, I think that if Guinan and Q can be trusted at all and the Borg really are hundreds of thousands of years old, they necessarily know the galaxy in and out...

Timo Saloniemi

Didn't Dragon's Teeth establish that the Borg were a mere nuisance 900 years before the events of Voyager, sitting on a couple of planets, while the Vaadwaur were dominant in the Delta quadrant?

 

[RAMA]

Guinan's people may not have wanted to speak of the Borg to the UFP just yet...kind of like an El-Aurian Prime Directive.

The Hansen's may have been lost to history, and the information gathered never transmitted. What ever Starfleet knew wasn't much and was probably sealed.

Regeneration may be an alternate history created by STFC, though if it's not, then Starfleet kept it a huge secret until Q Who.



RAMA

 

[Anwar]

Oh, I think that if Guinan and Q can be trusted at all and the Borg really are hundreds of thousands of years old, they necessarily know the galaxy in and out...

Timo Saloniemi

Didn't Dragon's Teeth establish that the Borg were a mere nuisance 900 years before the events of Voyager, sitting on a couple of planets, while the Vaadwaur were dominant in the Delta quadrant?

The Vaadwaur probably just ran into recently settled Borg worlds and assumed they were the entirety of the Collective.

 

[FordSVT]

I have no problem believing that the first contact with the Borg in "Q Who" was not the first contact at all, for either the Borg or the Federation.

Picard does not have the highest security clearance in Starfleet. Until the Borg presented a clear and present danger, the existence of an cyborg species of unknown strength from the other side of the galaxy would be need to know information.

 

[Mr Silver]

From what I can gather with all the Borg events and retcons going on...

2063: Unofficial first contact with The Borg - when Lily Sloane encounters the species aboard the Enterprise E. Zephram Cochrane is also aware of the Borg's presence
Early 2200's: Zephram Cochrane talks about a "cybernetic aliens from the future who came back in time to prevent first contact with the Vulcans". The story is brushed off as a prank by Cochrane
Mid 2200's: Borg left over from the events in 2063 assimilate a science research station and attempt to return to the collective. They are encounter by the Enterprise and ultimately destroyed (it seems that this incident is classified or merely forgotten about considering that the species were never identified as "Borg" and there was no other contact between this time and the events of "Q-Who")

It could be theoried that the El-Aurians didn't speak of the Borg to outsiders because they thought it was safer that less advanced cultures didn't know of their existence so they wouldn't go looking for them. It's possible that since the El-Aurians had no means of defending themselves against the Borg, that they assumed the Federation stood no chance and reasoned that The Borg wouldn't come for them until they attracted their attention through technological progress. We also don't know for sure when the Borg destroyed the El-Aurian's home planet, we know that several refugees were rescued by the Enterprise B in 2293, but this doesn't mean for sure that the Borg attacks on the El-Aurians were a recent thing. After all, the Enterprise B was familiar with the El-Aurian species, suggesting that they had been a prominent fixture in the Alpha Quadrant for some time. Surely if most of the El-Aurian species were wiped out around this time, the Federation would investigate what happened and the Borg would be retconned as being well known to Starfleet prior to the Enterprise D's encounter with them?

For whatever reason, rumours regarding the Borg floated around the Federation's science community to the degree that Erin and Magnus Hansen became obsessed with the Borg and decided to seek them out. It's very possible that the Hansen's were the first humans assimilated into the main Borg collective and this lead the Borg to deploy scout ships around the Neutral Zone in order to study the various species in the Alpha Quadrant and monitor technological progress, with the intention to assimilate them once they had reached the desired level of technological advancement.

This, of course didn't happen because Q introduced the Enterprise D to the Borg in the J-25 system and it could be theorised that the Borg were intrigued by the sudden appearance of a ship from a civilisation over 7000 lightyears away and decided to move their assimilation of humanity ahead of schedule.

 

[tafkats]

Also, Seven of Nine has memories from the captain of the USS Tombaugh, which the Borg supposedly assimilated shortly before the beginning of TNG Season 1.

There's pretty much nothing about the Borg chronology that makes any sense.

 

[Tiberius]

I watched "Q Who" last night, for a reminder of the chilling first appearance of the Borg. It was as exciting and eerie as ever, but it got me thinking about the whole business with Q introducing humans to the Borg. This episode clearly references back to the season 1 finale "The Neutral Zone", where a number of Federation outposts had been destroyed in exactly the same manner as the civilization on the M-class planet they encounter in the J-25 system. At the same time, in the last scene of the episode, Guinan tells Picard that "Q set a series of events into motion, bringing contact with the Borg much sooner than it should have come.", which seems a little contradictory.

If the Borg had already raided a few Federation outposts, doesn't that imply that contact had already been established? They'd already been to the Federation part of the galaxy, and they had probably already acquired information on both the Federation and the Romulan Empire by assimilating their citizens. What do you guys think about all this?

Q Who was the first time the Federation had contact with the Borg where someone came back to tell about it.

 

[Anwar]

The show itself tells us that the Borg had attacked the Federation before "Q Who?", so assimilating the Tombaugh fits with that.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

But... all of this speculation hinges on Guinan telling Picard that "Q set a series of events into motion, bringing contact with the Borg much sooner than it should have come," which could be viewed as a writer's mistake in relation to how the Borg story eventually rolled out. What she should have said was "Q set a series of events in motion, pushing the Borg's timetable of human assimilation further ahead than originally planned."

I agree.

I like the TNG version of the Borg best. The Borg are to be feared IF they become interested in you. Otherwise, they seem to just roam about doing their business. Almost like sharks. They're benign as they swim about you, but if they decide you're food? Forget about it. And so, for the individual-centric Federation, a few outposts may be consumed by a needy passing Borg cube

This is a really good and precise characterization of the pre-BoBW-Borg. Footage on nature shows, when sharks just seem to ignore all the tasty fish swimming about them, has raised my eyebrows, too.

I think it was also a writer's error in BoBW1 when Shelby says, "I thought they weren't interested in human life forms, only our technology." This remark over-interprets the events of Q Who?. In Q Who?, the Borg communicate with the crew, threatening punishment if they resist, and when they do resist, they punish the crew, by slicing out a chunk of the ship and taking away 18 crewmen. Clearly, the Borg know exactly what humans are, they know what humans' relationship with their technology is (in contrast, say with V'Ger, who is evidently clueless), and they have already demonstrated that they will communicate and deal directly with the crew, even to the point of taking some of them away, when they feel like it.

 

[Timo]

OTOH, it's perfectly in keeping with story logic that the character of Shelby would make an error of judgement.

That is, Riker apparently made an error, too - he thought the Borg had children the natural way and just raised them in drawers, whereas VOY seems to establish that children in the Collective are assimilated but not bred. But Riker's error didn't jeopardize the future of the Federation. Shelby's could, because Shelby was an antagonist character whose weaknesses would pave way for her downfall.

In the end, the writing on the Borg holds together remarkably well. It just gives us a storyline where the nature of the Borg is initially misunderstood by our heroes and sidekicks, sometimes grossly so.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I agree, insofar as it's fine (great, in fact) for characters to make mistakes, leap to erroneous conclusions, and so forth. The problem in this case is that I have the pretty clear impression that Shelby's dialog is intended to be exposition serving to fill in the viewers, in particular those who missed some or all of Q Who?, or who may have forgotten, about the Borg and bring them up to speed. That's why it's not just the character making an error in accordance with the in-universe human condition.

But then again, with brevity there's a tendency for distortion. That exposition is certainly brief, so maybe it's unfair to expect it to be completely accurate.

But yeah, I can, I suppose, accept in-universe that she may have overlooked the fact that the Borg did not completely ignore humans at J-25.

 

[Satyrquaze]

Also, it's worth pointing out that neither Q or Guinan are omniscient.

 

[Anwar]

The baby Borg from "Q Who?" can be reconciled with assimilation without the "they're assimilated babies" thing:

The Borg have two methods of adding to the Collective. There's assimilation and then there's invitro: They use their tech to grow babies from the DNA of the original Borg species (which amazingly look just like humans...) that are outfitted with Borg components as they grow (or are in the maturation chambers).

The second method is assimilation.

This explains Borg like Hugh, who clearly were never assimilated and were never individuals to begin with. That's why they were affected so greatly by Hugh's individuality and why Hugh had a blank personality instead of reverting to his pre-assimilation one.

I know Seven says that the Borg only assimilate, but she doesn't know everything about the Collective either.