'Dark Frontier' Where the Borg went wrong?

[Praetorian]

Voyager overpowering a small Borg probe never bothered me. Neither did the Hansen's adventures. Now, the Queen caving in to Janeway's threat? That did! As if the Queen would have a fear of death! She should have just said "Go ahead, blow yourself up, I'll just reincarnate..."

Yeah, the Queen is just stupid. It stops making the Collective a scary force without fear that cannot be reasoned with to just another disgruntled villain of the week.

And a villain that cannot be defeated is useless as an antagonist. The hero has to prevail so the villain has to be vulnerable to something or you can't use him, it's either that or you don't use him at all. I've heard your argument over and over and frankly it doesn't make any sense, everything is less scary the more you know about it. That's true in real life and in fiction. Villains are only useful to provide tension and then be defeated otherwise you don't need them at all. Then when you use them up you think up a new one.

R. Star didn't say the Borg shouldn't be unbeatable, only that they shouldn't be something you can reason with! I agree with everything you said!

The thing is, the Borg were defeated in BOBW, not because someone reasoned with them, and certanly not because they were afraid, but because of one of their weaknesses. The same way they find strenght in working as collective, and obtain massive knowledge through assimilation, having access to a former drone, with deep knowledge of the Collective (since they share everything), should be crippling to the Borg. And it was!

Through Picard, the Enterprise crew learned how to deal with the Borg. Through Seven, the Voyager crew learned how to deal with the Borg. There's no need for the Queen letting Janeway leave because she fears for her life, that particular situation should have been solved through Seven's intimate knowledge of the Borg. In part, it was! They just needed to go all the way.

As I said before, my problem with this particular episode is not Voyager blowing up some lowly probe, or escaping from them, it's the Queen having fear!

 

[Anwar]

What about the Borg losing to the 8472 aliens, was that "wrong" as well?

 

[Brit]

What about the Borg losing to the 8472 aliens, was that "wrong" as well?

8472 has to be a part of the big picture. Using the reported stardates I come up with this time line and in this chronological order, all happening within a three to four week period.


The Borg under Queen 1 encountered Species 8472.

Queen 1 decides to attack the Federation (First Contact) fails and dies.

Queen 2 is chosen or coroneted or whatever, but the key here is we are dealing with a Queen who is new to individuality and suddenly confronting a Species that they couldn't assimilate.

Queen 2 sends Seven of Nine to Voyager to get the "weapon" to defeat 8472. I don't believe that the Borg entertained the idea of really letting Voyager go for even a second, and I believe Janeway knew this.

Voyager escaped and in that escape separated Seven of Nine from the collective. I don't think it was an exaggeration when the Queen identifies Seven of Nine as her favorite. So we have much more than fear at work, we have jealousy and anger at work too.


Now skip ahead 18 months and you get to Dark Frontier. Now the Queen has had some time to think about what has happened. The mechanical or technological parts of the Collective can't do this, it's why they need the Queen.

So what has she got to think about? Well, Species 8472 is still at large and still unassimilateable, and what is worse they have opened some kind of dialogue with Janeway. She has had access to the memories of Enterprise's crew from First Contact and now she has to know now (if not before) that there is a species named Q that interacts with members of the Federation. They also know by now that the Alpha and Beta quadrant harbor the Organians, the Wormhole aliens and they probably know that something called "The Dominion" is claiming a lot of space in the Gamma Quadrant. All species that exhibit great power, but who are in all likelihood unassimilateable.

If she isn't scared she should be. She has to produce perfection and if she doesn't she can be replaced as she was after her failure at Unimatrix Zero.

There has to be some emotional factor to explain why they do what they do, if not then you have blown Star Trek's concept away, and completely reversed everything in David Mack's Destiny books.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It was the same Queen played by different actresses.

 

[Brit]

It was the same Queen played by different actresses.

Susanna Thompson was aware that she was playing a different queen from the one in Star Trek: First Contact. Shortly after appearing in this installment, the actress commented, "I'm not the same Borg Queen. She's the new Queen of the hive. There are similarities, but we are different." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 31, No. 11, p. 32)

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Dark_Frontier_(episode)

 

[Guy Gardener]

You do understand that although Susannah (and the writers) thought she was playing a new queen, which is a fair enough assumption since the movie Queen ran away back in time leaving a vacuum or created a new timeline which could have changed Borg history radically enough to have a new Queen, which could have been the truth in season 6, there's that the writers of Endgame in season 7 are purported to think that Alice's Queen in Endgame was the same Queen that Janeway had been butting heads with even if Alice's TV Queen wasn't the same Queen Alice's Movie Queen which keeps in line with the season 6 writers rooms beliefs above board.

Your prooving things in the wrong direction.

 

[Brit]

You do understand that although Susannah (and the writers) thought she was playing a new queen, which is a fair enough assumption since the movie Queen ran away back in time leaving a vacuum or created a new timeline which could have changed Borg history radically enough to have a new Queen, which could have been the truth in season 6, there's that the writers of Endgame in season 7 are purported to think that Alice's Queen in Endgame was the same Queen that Janeway had been butting heads with even if Alice's TV Queen wasn't the same Queen Alice's Movie Queen which keeps in line with the season 6 writers rooms beliefs above board.

Your prooving things in the wrong direction.

Nope, she didn't just decide they were different, she was told that they were. Susanna Thompson even had an extra prosthesis on her throat that Alice Krige didn't have in First Contact, but did have in Endgame.

But since you don't like my "Memory Alpha" evidence, then here is a quote from the Trek Website.

Information on this being is still very limited. Apparently the Borg Queen has been destroyed on a number of occasions, but another queen always seems to take her place. (It is not clear whether more than one queen exists simultaneously, or if a new queen is created when the old one dies.) The Borg's collective nature makes it likely that each Borg Queen has all her predecessors' (and/or counterparts') qualities and memories. Therefore when she speaks as "I," she is presumably referring to all previous manifestations of the Queen, going back probably thousands of years.

http://www.startrek.com/database_article/borg-queen

I can buy that all the Queens had access to all the previous Queen's memories, but the bodies were different, and the Queen could physically die. Her replacement was always there in her circle of drones in Unimatrix One, just like Seven of Nine.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I did read your memory Alpha link and then I read the Memory Alpha Link for Endgame where Alice admitted that she read the previous Borg Queen Voyager scripts in preparation of this role and resuming the character.

Alice thinks that the characters are the same and no one saw fit to change her mind.

Ideas behind the scenes are fluid.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm only saying that they're inconsistent.

When they did their press for Dark Frontier it's possible that they hadn't started writing Endgame yet.

 

[Infern0]

I've said before, The Borg were best when they were like a "slasher movie" bad guy.

Just this silent, unstoppable force.

To me, The Borg were great in "Q Who" and "Best of both worlds", past that they started to humanise them and they lost their edge, they were still borderline respectable until Voyager started dabbling with them, but as soon as we saw Species 8472 brutally destroying them, that was that.

Oddly, the Enterprise Borg Episode (forget the name) was somewhat of a renaissance for The Borg, and the first time they had been a legit threat for years.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I think Deep Space Nine used them just the right amount.

"Oh, I'm a widow? Fuuuuuuuuuck."

 

[Infern0]

I think Deep Space Nine used them just the right amount.

"Oh, I'm a widow? Fuuuuuuuuuck."

Haha, it was shocking DS9 managed to use them so little.

But i basically agree, they should be seen once or twice in a 7 season cycle, we don't need to know everything about them, they should be an unknown, mysterious.

Voyager couldn't get enough of the ol' borg, and watered them down to an unacceptable level.

 

[Guy Gardener]

First Contact happened during ds9's run?

Yes it did.

Thank you very much.

"Tough little ship."

Fuck you monkey!

I hate Riker.

Such a smug SOB.

Tar and feathers is too good for him.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I am cheered by these sentiments.

 

[Brit]

I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm only saying that they're inconsistent.

When they did their press for Dark Frontier it's possible that they hadn't started writing Endgame yet.

Oh I do understand that, and I'm not saying you are wrong either, but the idea of them being the same queen doesn't work for me. You know Guy, you are a lot of fun to spar with.

The idea that First Contact and Scorpion happened one after the other within a very short span of time got me thinking. Actually it made me write Borg Queen fic LOL, and not the naughty stuff I usually write.

 

[Praetorian]

What about the Borg losing to the 8472 aliens, was that "wrong" as well?

I don't believe so.There's always a bigger fish! And no one's invulnerable!

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm only saying that they're inconsistent.

When they did their press for Dark Frontier it's possible that they hadn't started writing Endgame yet.

Oh I do understand that, and I'm not saying you are wrong either, but the idea of them being the same queen doesn't work for me. You know Guy, you are a lot of fun to spar with.

The idea that First Contact and Scorpion happened one after the other within a very short span of time got me thinking. Actually it made me write Borg Queen fic LOL, and not the naughty stuff I usually write.

As a hypothetical...

The Alice Kriege Queen loves Picard.

Something awful happens to Picard, so she goes back in time to save him when he's still young and beautiful in 2373.

You say she died in Endgame?

I say that in Admiral Janeway's original timeline that the Queen lived well past 2378 which some people insist survived intact and the Admiral is not responsible for universal slaughter... Omnicide? But Seven admitted what the Borg did to 2063 duing Year of Hell. So the Queen entered History before the Admiral did.

If the Queen wanted to go back in time, why wait till she got to Earth? Why fight the Federation fleet for nine hours before she decided to play with time? How could the fleet have lasted nine hours unless she didn't want to kill them, and the Queen could have back stepped while she was still in Borg space and avoided any fuss. Why was she fighting left handed?

Maybe she was waiting for Picard?

Her boyfriend.

If so, then First Contact happened after Endgame.

Of course, why then did Picard remember Alice's Queen from the Best of Both Worlds flash back?

He didn't remember the Queen at all before the movie.

The memory might have been a faaaaaaaaaake?

(Or tweaked.)

 

[Anwar]

they were still borderline respectable until Voyager started dabbling with them, but as soon as we saw Species 8472 brutally destroying them, that was that.

If TNG had introduced the 8472 aliens, would you still say that? Or what if they had shown Q casually destroying a Borg ship?

 

[Melakon]

We frequently (in the franchise) saw incorporeal life forms as the pinnacle of evolution. Why weren't the Borg trying to achieve this? Or maybe they were, in their own misguided way.

 

[R. Star]

I am cheered by these sentiments.

Aww... he just wants to be loved.

 

[sonak]

"First Contact" really changed the concept of the Borg, with the introduction of the queen making them a lot less interesting. "Dark Frontier" merely went off from there, but yes, the "villain decay" did start with this episode, with Janeway marching right into Borg HQ and coming out victorious.