Do the Borg invade aquatic civilizations?

They just don't seem to have the tech for that sort of thing. How would they do it?

 

We haven't seen how they would assimilate a land-dwelling civilization, either. Their zombie-slow Drones couldn't really reach people who had two healthy legs (even the Mythbusters busted that one!), and the concept of dispersing the nanoprobes from up high appears novel and untried in "Scorpion".

Whatever allows them to assimilate standard humanoid civilizations (because we certainly know they do that) might well be applicable to nonstandard and nonhumanoid ones, too. I wouldn't really bet on even Changelings being immune to them!

Timo Saloniemi

 

Well if you have a bunch of zombies that could fill continents...

But water is more 3d.

But there is a question what if they move them down with machine guns, artilery. The fast Borg from the end of TNG might be used as special forces. I would love to see a full Borg army with various weapons and vehicles in the next JJ movie.


But water is more 3d.

 

Good points.

The Mythbuster special showed you need an absurdly high density of zombies to create a lethal hazard to a mobile target; you'd probably need at least a tenth of a percent of that all across the planet to search and assimilate everybody, and that's such a massive number already that it's difficult to see the point of even trying to add to it through assimilation...

Then again, nanoprobes might be released to swim in water, like they do in blood, whereas they apparently cannot become airborne easily...

Or with stun phasers from orbit - TOS Starfleet had the tech, so why not the Borg. But we don't know why the Borg assimilate. Do they want more crew? Do they want to reduce the numbers of the enemy? Do they search for ideas and inventions? Or do they just want to make everybody achieve paradise, as they claim? The latter two points would require keeping as many of the assimilation victims as possible alive; the first point would only require letting a desired number live, perhaps cowed to submission by the slaughter of the rest. The second point would not call for assimilation at all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Timo:

They come from the Delta Quadrant so you can do a retcon and say they started out small and there a bunch of planets with primitive populations so they got huge manpower before taking on other bigger entities.

 

I don't see any limitations as to what kind of planets the Borg could assimilate, although as pointed out there are some unexplained details about the assimilation process.

 

Imagine the specialty "aquarium cubes".

 

The Borg have a lot of technology we have not seen in action- most of what we have watched are space battles and the Borg marching through ships.
In both 'The Neutral Zone' and The Best of Both Worlds Pt1' the Borg scooped up entire colonies from orbit- if they can strip out technology on that scale then some water should not be that much a problem.
The big question is do they wish to assimilate an aquatic species? The Xindi Aquatics has some pretty impressive ships that would be tempting...

 

If we use the sensible Borg, those more interested in technology and not intersted in being robot-zombies in space, I would be surprised if they hadn't tried to find a way to assimilate technology that would allow them to control water-worlds.

 

It's not about zombie speed as even Data mentioned they typically have the same mobility as a regular human.

Regardless, they don't need to chase people down to assimilate them, they merely have to transport next to 2-3 people and jab em like they did when they snatched Picard then transport back up to the Cube, direct them to the hallway they need to travel to the awaiting drones to put stuff on them, transport down, rinse and repeat.

plus as mentioned, they can slice up a starship to get what they want and they can slice up chunks of a planet to take entire cities.

As for aquatic species they did travel to fluidic space, they just couldn't figure out how to adapt to Species 8472, so it's possible.

 

Rust.

 

So why is it that they move fast only in Descent?

 

The Borg may not want drones from an aquatic civilization (it would probably be too much trouble to keep a water environment on one of their cube ships) but if they saw technology they wanted from one, they'd take it.

 

This was my first thought.

They adapted.

 

Why are they slow again on VOY?

 

The Borg in "Descent" are uncoordinated, so they need speed. All other Borg can use Collective planning instead, trapping the enemy like chess pieces. Plus, the Collective Drones are pawns in another sense, often expended for tactical gain, while the "Descent" ones desire to survive.

Well, Picard was supposed to be a special case. And they captured him quite some time before injecting the skin-greying agent, which certainly is nonstandard.

Would it be practical to beam down next to victims? Wouldn't it be more sensible to capture victims via transporter?

Timo Saloniemi

 

My theory is that most adaptations are temporary, because the resource allocation they require when they aren't needed would be inefficient to maintain for no anticipated reason. This might explain why our hero crews always seem to be able to manage one good shot with a phaser before the personal shields come into play again, for example.

 

That's to be expected - if the Borg have been in the assimilation business for "hundreds of millennia", they are definitely carrying a lot of baggage. Minimizing that ought to be a priority.

Timo Saloniemi

 

They were fast in Descent because they were individuals using individual tactics and trying to keep themselves alive, rather than working as a collective, gathering information as they moved.

They're slow again in Voyager because those Borg were not separated from the collective.

The Borg basically send drones off like pawns in chess.... teleport these ones here to come at you, which either slows you down as you fight back, then transport more behind you and close you in.

Perfect example is when Picard was abducted. They sent one in one direction, killed, sent another which adapted to the phaser and cause attention to come towards him via Worf and Riker and while everybody was focused on him, another teleported by Picard, jabbed him and they all left.

No chasing needed.

Indeed he was, but this tactic is no doubt a common one they use over time beyond just scraping entire cultures off the surface of a planet..... otherwise they wouldn't really need so many drones per Cube with assimilation abilities.

 

Maybe the Collective would dismiss assimilating aquatic species because their life-support requirements would make them "inferior".

What Praxius said. The Borg seen in "Descent" had been severed from the Collective because Hugh's individuality was spreading like a virus and threatening Borg order. Afterwards without the hive mind's influence, Hugh's group of drones had no organizational structure, providing Lore the perfect opportunity to make them his personal anti-organic army. He taught the rogue drones to be motivated by hate of organics. That's why they aggressively moved in fights against Federation personnel. They had no hive mind to direct them with Borg patience.

In theory, though, let's consider if the Borg were confronted by some enemy imminently about to detonate omega molecules in Unimatrix One from aboard an extremely well-shielded ship. I would think that if the Collective could beam drones in through a small hull gap, then those drones would run as fast as possible to reach and neutralize the time-sensitive threat.