Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy?

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I wouldn't want to miss "Scorpion" or "Dark Frontier", but episodes like "Unimatrix Zero" and "Endgame" were just too much.

They should have dropped the Borg after "Dark Frontier" IMHO. There would have been a good explanation for it: At the end of "Dark Frontier", Voyager had traveled another 20,000 light-years with the help of a Borg transwarp conduit. This would have been a good opportunity to say that Voyager had left Borg space behind once and for all with that jump. And then a new enemy could have been created for Seasons 6 and 7.

The Borg like the Romans are conquers.
Even leaving behind Borg space, they'd still be Borg ships scouting for new conquests. They couldn't expand their empire or be a threat to anybody if they weren't out exploring, just like the Federation. It's like saying no Starfleet ship can leave Earth's orbit. So how do you recuit?

The writers decide if the Borg appear on the show or don't. And from a narrative point of view it would have been a wise decision to drop the Borg after "Dark Frontier" instead of wearing them out until Borg episodes become almost as boring as Kazon episodes. There weren't any Borg in Seasons 1 and 2, so it should be easy to let them disappear from Season 6 and 7 as well.

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I wouldn't want to miss "Scorpion" or "Dark Frontier", but episodes like "Unimatrix Zero" and "Endgame" were just too much.

They should have dropped the Borg after "Dark Frontier" IMHO. There would have been a good explanation for it: At the end of "Dark Frontier", Voyager had traveled another 20,000 light-years with the help of a Borg transwarp conduit. This would have been a good opportunity to say that Voyager had left Borg space behind once and for all with that jump. And then a new enemy could have been created for Seasons 6 and 7.

The Borg like the Romans are conquers.
Even leaving behind Borg space, they'd still be Borg ships scouting for new conquests. They couldn't expand their empire or be a threat to anybody if they weren't out exploring, just like the Federation. It's like saying no Starfleet ship can leave Earth's orbit. So how do you recuit?

And what has this to do with anything? The writers decide if the Borg appear on the show or don't. And from a narrative point of view it would have been a wise decision to drop the Borg after "Dark Frontier" instead of wearing them out until Borg episodes become almost as boring as Kazon episodes. There weren't any Borg in Seasons 1 and 2, so it should be easy to let them disappear from Season 6 and 7 as well.

Yes they do but we the audience are the ones that made the Borg fan favorites due to the response Borg eps. from TNG thru to Scorpion & Dark Frontier recieved. If you have a show that needs a ratings boost and the Borg are what folks watching the at the time are raving about, why wouldn't you continue to use them? It's only in retrospect that we're complaining about them. They aren't in seasons 1&2 because at the beginning they hoped they could make Voyager a show that didn't need to rely on them. Due to Scorpion & DF's success, we the audience told them different. They wouldn't have continued to use them if our feedback at the time wasn't positive.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

The Borg like the Romans are conquers.
Even leaving behind Borg space, they'd still be Borg ships scouting for new conquests. They couldn't expand their empire or be a threat to anybody if they weren't out exploring, just like the Federation. It's like saying no Starfleet ship can leave Earth's orbit. So how do you recuit?

And what has this to do with anything? The writers decide if the Borg appear on the show or don't. And from a narrative point of view it would have been a wise decision to drop the Borg after "Dark Frontier" instead of wearing them out until Borg episodes become almost as boring as Kazon episodes. There weren't any Borg in Seasons 1 and 2, so it should be easy to let them disappear from Season 6 and 7 as well.

Yes they do but we the audience are the ones that made the Borg fan favorites due to the response Borg eps. from TNG thru to Scorpion & Dark Frontier recieved. If you have a show that needs a ratings boost and the Borg are what folks watching the at the time are raving about, why wouldn't you continue to use them? It's only in retrospect that we're complaining about them. They aren't in seasons 1&2 because at the beginning they hoped they could make Voyager a show that didn't need to rely on them. Due to Scorpion & DF's success, we the audience told them different. They wouldn't have continued to use them if our feedback at the time wasn't positive.

Well, the writers should have known that the Borg itself don't make good or popular episodes. Good writing does. First of all, "Scorpion" had a good plot: What if there's species even more dangerous than the Borg which forces Voyager to enter an alliance with their arch-enemies?

But when they don't have any good ideas concerning the Borg left, it's simply time to move on. Then again, if every writer notices that he's writing crap, there wouldn't be any bad movies or shows at all... And even if we follow your argument, it's still hard to grasp why they continued to use the Borg up until "Endgame" even after the Borg children arc or "Unimatrix Zero" had bombed. That's like featuring the Borg again in "All Good Things..." after the failure of "Descent". So we're back at bad writing (or lack of ideas or whatever).

 

[exodus]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

And what has this to do with anything? The writers decide if the Borg appear on the show or don't. And from a narrative point of view it would have been a wise decision to drop the Borg after "Dark Frontier" instead of wearing them out until Borg episodes become almost as boring as Kazon episodes. There weren't any Borg in Seasons 1 and 2, so it should be easy to let them disappear from Season 6 and 7 as well.

Yes they do but we the audience are the ones that made the Borg fan favorites due to the response Borg eps. from TNG thru to Scorpion & Dark Frontier recieved. If you have a show that needs a ratings boost and the Borg are what folks watching the at the time are raving about, why wouldn't you continue to use them? It's only in retrospect that we're complaining about them. They aren't in seasons 1&2 because at the beginning they hoped they could make Voyager a show that didn't need to rely on them. Due to Scorpion & DF's success, we the audience told them different. They wouldn't have continued to use them if our feedback at the time wasn't positive.

Well, the writers should have known that the Borg itself don't make good or popular episodes. Good writing does. And when they don't have any good ideas concerning the Borg left, it's time to move on. Then again, if every writer notices that he's writing crap, there wouldn't be any bad movies or shows at all...

But if we follow your argument, it's still hard to grasp why they continued to use the Borg up until "Endgame" even after the Borg children arc or "Unimatrix Zero" had bombed. That's like featuring the Borg again in "All Good Things..." after the failure of "Descent". So we're back at bad writing (or lack of ideas or whatever).

As I said "retrospect."
What bad feed back was there about the Borg kids or Unimatrix Zero while the show was on?
The Borg eps. are popular(every fan knows them), so regardless if a some don't like them they served their purpose on Voyager.
Good writing is in the eye of the beholder.
Disliking for example Unimatrix Zero doesn't mean there aren't an equal number of others that do like it.
The title "Endgame" holds meaning to what was transpiring between Adm. Janeway & the Borg Queen.
It relates all the way back to what they started in "Dark Frontier".
Besides, what better way to end the last Trek series in the 24th century than to see the Borg get their asses kicked? So of course they were going to be in the finale.

 

[Adm_Hawthorne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

True that

I happen to like "Unimatrix Zero". Janeway kicks arse with a Bat'leth. What isn't there to like?

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

If we take the novels into account, Janeway *may* not be dead.

However, I will say that the Borg as an entity no longer exist. Or something.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

And then a new enemy could have been created for Seasons 6 and 7. But they couldn't just let go...

It was the audience that "couldn't let go", they rejected nearly every single attempt VOY made at introducing new alien enemies and forced them to go back to the Borg.

 

[froot]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Didn't they want to make the Vaudwaar (man I can't spell that) into a reoccurring enemy? They would have been neat.

I didn't like the Borg that much in TNG, so they never did much for me in VOY to start with. They always struck me as sort of silly and not really scary. Even their name is sort of lame and 80s-tastic.

There's good Borg episodes in TNG and VOY for sure, but, to me, they were always in spite of the Borg, not because of them. The Borg costumes were so... lame! The Borg Queen was the only scary-looking one.

And the 8472/Undine are a Protoss rip-off. Starcraft had come out not long before Scorpion, after all.

If the 8472 had stayed faceless and mysterious, I think I might have liked 'em a little better.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

And then a new enemy could have been created for Seasons 6 and 7. But they couldn't just let go...

It was the audience that "couldn't let go", they rejected nearly every single attempt VOY made at introducing new alien enemies and forced them to go back to the Borg.

That's because most of the other recurring enemies sucked. Especially the Kazon. And the Malon. So again, we're back to bad writing and lack of ideas. Exceptions are Species 8472 and maybe the Hirogen, who were both kind of cool.

Species 8472 was an enemy which couldn't be used too often either (and they became lame in "In the Flesh"). The Hirogen were discontinued on the writers' own initiative after only five episodes (but at least brought back later in Season 7, except that it didn't make much sense this late anymore, because Voyager had travelled tens of thousands of light-years since the last encounter).

Anyway, how do you measure that the new villains were "rejected" by the audience when the show was losing ratings with the Kazon just as much as it was losing ratings after the introduction of the Borg?? Or do you mean the good ratings of individual episodes like "Scorpion" or "Dark Frontier"? Well, that's because those were good episodes. My point is that you can also make Borg episodes which suck ("Unimatrix Zero", "Endgame", TNG's "Descent").

 

[Saxman1]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Let's not bring the novels into this. They are whole other kettle of fish that destroy so much more than the concept of the Borg.

Yes, for one the Borg can't ever be destroyed. Ever. They keep coming back for more.....in every TNG novel....

 

[Anwar]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

That's because most of the other recurring enemies sucked.

Given VOY's status as a lone ship with a small crew, it's not like they could have dozens of crew get killed by a new enemy when they wanted to show them as tough and cool. VOY's audience simply never gave any of them the chance to become anything and wrote them all off after their introduction episode, no matter how good they were.

Especially the Kazon. And the Malon. So again, we're back to bad writing and lack of ideas. Exceptions are Species 8472 and maybe the Hirogen, who were both kind of cool.

The Kazon couldn't be tougher or smarter because then the show would be over. This isn't like DS9 where they had the entire Trekverse to play with, they couldn't have the bad guys kill with impunity.

Species 8472 was an enemy which couldn't be used too often either (and they became lame in "In the Flesh"). The Hirogen were discontinued on the writers' own initiative after only five episodes (but at least brought back later in Season 7, except that it didn't make much sense this late anymore, because Voyager had travelled tens of thousands of light-years since the last encounter).

This is another case of unfairness, VOY couldn't keep running into their enemies more than a few times since they were always moving but yet SOMEHOW the audience expected the VOY writers to be able to make their enemy aliens as deep and developed as the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans etc within SIX EPISODES.

Seriously, it took TNG and DS9 YEARS to develop their foes and the audience somehow thought VOY could do the same in 1/1000th of the time.

 

[Ensign Johnson]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

As cool as the borg queen was with her removable body parts, I don't think she was good for the borg. She seemed evil and crazy and she hated Janeway. The borg shouldn't hate they should just adapt and assimilate useful technology. Why did the borg queen even care about unimatrix zero? if the drones couldn't remember it when they were awake then how was it a problem? I blame the queen's individuality for the downfall of the borg.

 

[Itachi]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Let's not bring the novels into this. They are whole other kettle of fish that destroy so much more than the concept of the Borg.

Agreed. They're really just published fanfiction.

 

[Navaros]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I do not accept the criticism that Voyager killed the Borg, but Voyager did maintain a portrayal of the Borg as a joke that started on TNG.

The Borg were made into a joke starting with having Picard 'un-assimilated' and made even further into a joke with the 'Hugh' episodes.

Voyager does get an unfair rap for killing the Borg when really TNG is the show that did that first, and Voyager just followed suit.

Certainly that is not to say the Borg were portrayed well in Voyager, though. They weren't. The blame for killing the Borg as a good enemy starts with TNG, and continues with Voyager.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Let's not bring the novels into this. They are whole other kettle of fish that destroy so much more than the concept of the Borg.

Agreed. They're really just published fanfiction.

C/7.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Dismissing Navaros' inanity, the truth is that the Borg don't work well with VOY's single ship on its own premise. If they had a bunch of dudes to serve as plot cannon fodder like DS9 did with the Dominion, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Of course the unfair bias against anything VOY created meant this really wasn't possible.

 

[Lord Garth]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

I liked Voyager. I thought it had some good characters, quite a few well-written episodes (as not just Scorpion and the Killing Game, but Jetrel, Author, Author, Prey, and Tuvix were all good episodes I feel).

But one common criticism of the show is that the Borg were less intimidating than in TNG. Do you accept this criticism of the show?

Not really. I think the Borg were undermined as a "fearsome" enemy at the end of "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" when Data put them all to sleep. Then Hugh "humanized" the Borg.

The Borg had to be modified in order to work as an ongoing threat as opposed to a seldom-used mega-threat.

If the Borg were really serious about defeating the Federation in TNG, they would've sent more than one cube and would've done so a lot sooner than First Contact. Not to mention, they didn't need to assimilate that much in order to add the Federation's biological and technological distinctiveness to their own.

The Borg were lazy. And they operate on a network. Get one and you can potentially get them all.

 

[Saxman1]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

As said above, the Borg needed to go away after "The Best of Both Worlds."

 

[SpyOne]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

Yes Voyager ruined the Borg, but the Borg were headed that way before.
The problem with the Big Bad Guy is if you use them too often, they get smaller.

I read an interview with some of the writers of the original Battlestar Galactica. They talked about the problems they had with the Cylons. The Standards and Practices people at ABC would not let the Cylons kill anyone, or even hurt people. (I think the Cylons killed one person after the pilot: Serena.)
The problem is that if the Cylons never kill anybody, eventually the audience will figure out that the Cylons can't kill anybody. And once that happens, the Cylons become useless as a scary threat.

So, there seem to be only two ways to keep your Big Bad Bad Guys scary:
1) Never use them
2) Each time you use them, have them do something truly horrible. To someone important.
Neither of these is particularly easy.
Among other things, option one has basically the same flaw as using them: if they never appear, eventually the audience will figure out that they never appear, and then they become useless as a scary threat.

So the only way to keep the Borg a scary threat would be to use them sparingly, and to have each time they appear spell major disaster for the crew. Assimilate Chakotay, for example. Beating the Borg should always be accompanied by "Yes, but at what cost?". It should NEVER seem like a good idea ("Hey, let's go fight the Borg again! It isn't like last time they assimilated 30% of the crew and we've all been pulling double shifts since then.")
By beating the Borg (with no significant cost to the heroes), they only serve to make the Borg seem ... beatable.

 

[Anwar]

Re: Do you accept that Voyager "killed" the Borg as a major Trek enemy

There's a third option, just make sure you have a lot of nameless faceless extras to kill off without harming the main characters. Galactica kept the Cylons dangerous by blowing up some of their Ragtag Fleet ships and killing everyone onboard (all of which were faceless extras of course), without harming the Galactica or any of the show's characters.

You couldn't do that with VOY, since it needed all its crew and it was only one ship.