Did The Corbomite Maneuver inspire the Borg?

[HigHurtenflurst]

Recently watching the Corbomite Maneuver, it struck me how very much it reminded me of the TNG's first encounter with the Borg. The Enterprise, held in a tractor beam, dwarfed by an enormous sphere (cube), the sinister alien who mostly ignores attempts at dialogue... Obviously the Borg are their own thing, but the encounter itself seems too similar to have not been influenced.

If nothing else (maybe it's been done?) it might make a neat fan edit to replace the Fesarius with a Borg cube!

 

[Christopher]

Obviously the Borg are their own thing, but the encounter itself seems too similar to have not been influenced.

I came across this same thing in another thread just the other day -- the idea that something is too similar not to be an intentional influence. The truth is, since different creators are all drawing on the same pool of cultural referents and precedents, different works of fiction and art coincidentally resemble each other all the time. It's actually very hard to avoid accidental similarities to other works -- the primary reason why episode pitches to TV shows or submissions to fiction magazines get rejected is "We're already doing something like that."

Really, the trope of being held paralyzed in an energy beam fired by some vast ship can probably be found in many places throughout science fiction, going back to the pulp era. The Millennium Falcon and the Death Star spring to mind, or the abduction of the heroes' plane by the Metalunan saucer in This Island Earth. Within Trek, you could also cite V'Ger's tractor beam holding the Enterprise, and no doubt others. It's a pretty basic trope, tying into universal fears of being helpless in the face of something gigantic and powerful. The reason so many works of fiction resemble each other is because fiction is made up of recurring tropes that carry meaning to the audience.

As for comparing Balok to the Borg based solely on being uncommunicative, that's a hell of a reach. Balok communicated quite a bit, in a dominating, bullying way, as part of his test/intimidation. The Borg just gave a single rote announcement and otherwise took no interest in the crew. And of course both had totally different natures and intentions. So I don't see a parallel there.

So no, I have to disagree. There's no reason at all to suspect anything more than a coincidental similarity. All they have in common is one trope that can be found in a number of other science fiction works.

 

[Zaminhon]

The most intense part of the Borg introduction was the away team beaming aboard the cube with thousands of Borg that could wake up or take notice at any moment. It wasn't the cube so much as what was inside. Very different than dealing with a single alien that Kirk could reason with in Corbomite Maneuver.

 

[Marsden]

Plus, I think they owe more to Cybermen than anyone.

Back when the Cybermen were created, the notion of a cyborg was really new. Now they're as routine as any type. A cyborg was a novel concept.

And I wonder why they just named the borg such a generic name. I guess they really wouldn't have a species name because of all of the different species assimilated over time, that could justify it's genericness. That and thinking an abbreviation and lack of plurality would sound cool.

 

[Noname Given]

Recently watching the Corbomite Maneuver, it struck me how very much it reminded me of the TNG's first encounter with the Borg. The Enterprise, held in a tractor beam, dwarfed by an enormous sphere (cube), the sinister alien who mostly ignores attempts at dialogue... Obviously the Borg are their own thing, but the encounter itself seems too similar to have not been influenced.

If nothing else (maybe it's been done?) it might make a neat fan edit to replace the Fesarius with a Borg cube!

As an old TOS fan who honestly thinks 'The Corbomite Maneuver' is probably the best Star Trek episode made (across any of the Star Trek series); sorry, but I honestly think you're trying too hard to make a connection that doesn't exist.

Why? The actual situations in CM and the TNG episode 'Q-Who' were vastly different in that the First Federation was alerted by the destruction of their Buoy that a new race had in effect made contact and a ship was dispatched to test this new race and see if first contact could and should be initiated - and everything that followed in that episode was part of said test that ultimately did lead to first contact and an officer exchange.

In 'Q-Who' after Q hurled the 1701-D out into unexplored space (where he knew there was a Borg cube ); the Borg just ran across the 1701-D; analyzed it and found technology they could use - and they proceeded to start dismantling the ship.

The fact both episodes involved huge alien vessels and tractor beams was nothing new to either TOS (well, maybe for TOS as 'The Corbomite Maneuver' was in fact the first regular Star Trek TV episode filmed - even though it was the ninth episode broadcast because of the production time needed to complete the visual effects shots) or TNG; and also remember that Gene Roddenberry asked the early TNG writing staff NOT to watch TOS, and if they had seen any episodes, not to be influenced by them (IMO a HUGE mistake as TOS popularity was what gave the heavily retconned TNG it's opportunity to be made in the first place.)

Thus in the end, any similarities are probably more coincidence then anything else rather than someone actively remembering and/or doing some sort of homage to TOS' 'The Corbomite Maneuver'; but that's my take as anything's possible.

 

[Christopher]

Plus, I think they owe more to Cybermen than anyone.

Back when the Cybermen were created, the notion of a cyborg was really new.

Hmm, the word itself was fairly new, coined in 1960, but the concept was considerably older. There are examples of human/machine hybrids in fiction as far back as the 1870s. I'll grant that it was starting to become a more widely known concept and a "hot topic" around the '60s. Although Kit Pedlar was inspired to create the Cybermen more by the burgeoning field of organ transplantation, which he extrapolated to its extreme.

And I wonder why they just named the borg such a generic name. I guess they really wouldn't have a species name because of all of the different species assimilated over time, that could justify it's genericness. That and thinking an abbreviation and lack of plurality would sound cool.

Just seems like lack of creativity to me. Recall that when Maurice Hurley conceived of the Borg, the idea of assimilation didn't exist yet. In "Q Who," the drones were vat-grown from embryos, and the Collective was only interested in technology, not living beings. Assimilation was a retcon introduced in "The Best of Both Worlds" as an excuse to put Picard in danger. Then First Contact used it to make the Borg more like space zombies -- justified because only a few drones escaped their ship's destruction and they needed to rebuild their numbers. But Voyager then misunderstood that and forgot what TNG had done, and introduced the idea of the Borg building their numbers exclusively through assimilation, rather than just as an occasional tactic.

So really, there's no reason Hurley's version of the Borg should've had a name for themselves at all. It seemed more like a name that someone else would've made up to describe them. I've often suspected that Magnus Hansen made up the name, and that Guinan had heard about his research by the time she first mentioned the name to Picard. (Although the Destiny novel trilogy by David Mack offers another explanation for the name.)

 

[Maurice]

Where in "Q Who" does it say that they are "vat-grown from embryos"?

 

[Christopher]

Where in "Q Who" does it say that they are "vat-grown from embryos"?

When Riker and the landing party are aboard the cube, they find an incubation chamber with Borg babies. As Riker describes it, "We've entered what appears to be the Borg nursery... From the look of it, the Borg are born as a biological life form. It seems that almost immediately after birth, they begin artificial implants." Okay, that doesn't prove that the infants were artificially gestated rather than carried to term in female drones' wombs, but certainly the original intent was clearly that drones were born Borg. Again, the concept of the Borg abducting adults and transforming them into Borg wasn't introduced until TBOBW.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Just as an aside, and I'm sure it's a total coincidence, there are a few seconds in "The Best of Both Worlds" Part Two, when Riker "intervenes" and launched his rescue mission, where Ron Jones' score sounds very close to Steiner's "Corbomite" music.

 

[ThankYouGeneR]

I had never thought about a connection between the Corbomite Manuever and the Borg.