Idea for making the Borg scary again

[Sketcher]

Yeah, you could do some horrifying things nowadays with cgi - bottom jaws replaced with mechanical parts, multiple mechanical appendages added to the body, holes in the middle of the body because the Borg deemed them irrelevant for that particular drone.

I always liked that scene in Best of Both Worlds where Locutus is being upgraded and there's a tear running down his cheek. Maybe that could be a constant for the drones, showing how horrified they are at there bodies being mutilated and having no control over their actions. Why the Borg would allow that, I don't know. Perhaps it's a malfunction they haven't quite worked out how to solve.

 

[Yistaan]

I always liked that scene in Best of Both Worlds where Locutus is being upgraded and there's a tear running down his cheek. Maybe that could be a constant for the drones, showing how horrified they are at there bodies being mutilated and having no control over their actions. Why the Borg would allow that, I don't know. Perhaps it's a malfunction they haven't quite worked out how to solve.

This is probably one of the few instances where an emotional Borg Queen being retconned in actually helps matters, as she's shown to be petty and cruel and probably enjoys having assimilated drones aware of their suffering and old lives as much as possible.

 

[Blamo]

Part of the problem with the Borg is that Voyager made them into a huge sprawling empire. That actually has the exact opposite of making them scary, since the viewer now expects a miracle solution, which is fine once but not repeated occasions.

 

[Romulan_spy]

Part of the problem with the Borg is that Voyager made them into a huge sprawling empire. That actually has the exact opposite of making them scary, since the viewer now expects a miracle solution, which is fine once but not repeated occasions.

Yeah. The fact that the Borg had hundreds of thousands of ships created an even bigger plot hole of why they never invaded the Federation en masse. Sure, they were fighting Species 8472 and losing but with so many ships, they could have spared say a hundred cubes to take the entire Federation in one go.

That is why I prefer my idea that the Borg are a nomadic race and the cube we saw in Best of Both Worlds was only one of a small number of ships that wander the galaxy. My backstory would be that thousands of years ago, the ancestors of the Borg we know today escaped in a few ships when their homeworld got destroyed. Eventually, the ships decided to go their separate ways and have been wandering the galaxy ever since, evolving in the Borg we know today through assimilation. I think the nomadic culture would better explain why the Borg only sent 1 ship to attack the Federation.

The nomadic culture could also explain assimilation. The Borg assimilate to survive because it is how the cube can continue functioning all alone. It needs to resupply, repair etc... So it just takes what it needs.

This could also create an interesting concept that if each Borg cube is so far from another one, that each Borg cube would be its own isolated Collective, and evolved slightly differently based on who that particular cube assimilated. If the writers had gone with this nomadic interpretation of the Borg, they could have done some interesting things creatively. They could have used the Borg sparingly but they could have shown each cube to be a bit different. We could have seen different kinds of Borg.

 

[DonIago]

I still like the idea that the Borg have never sent more than a single cube because they never felt the need.

If the cube succeeds, the Borg win.

If the cube fails, the Borg have plenty to spare and they've potentially learned new things they can use going forward. Plus they may have made their adversary tougher, for juicier future assimilation.

Either way, the Borg win eventually unless their adversary is so powerful as to become an existential threat, as was seen with 8472.

Put another way, I almost feel it's egotistical to ask why the Borg don't send more than one cube at a time, because ultimately the answer is that the Federation simply isn't that important to them.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I think the Borg are expanding their empire in all directions (N/S/E/W/U/D) and given how vast Space is, Earth is just a one Star System and the UFP is but a tiny organization compared to the size of the Borg Collective.

Who's to say that the Borg aren't sending vessels to other Galaxies at the same time to create local Collectives in that part of the Galaxy.

And remember, they invaded Species 8472 Fluidic Space to assimilate them.

Who knows how many Dimensions there are for the Borg to invade and assimilate.

I'm assuming that the Borg are pretty busy overall and have a pretty full schedule.

 

[fireproof78]

If that's to be comforting then maybe rework the speech.

 

[Force Smuggler]

Star Trek Destiny, the book trilogy was an amazing look at the Borg imo

 

[at Quark's]

The original scare factor of the Borg was that they were a faceless enemy, a force of nature. An enemy that you couldn't reason or negotiate with. Much like a virus, they'd simply take you over whenever you had something they thought worth the trouble, whatever you tried to tell them. An enemy that didn't even have a concept of diplomacy, didn't understand why species would even resist. An enemy that, upon the declaration 'We'd rather die than surrender to you!' would simply answer 'death is irrelevant. Your culture will adapt to service ours'.

Such an enemy is only scary as long as they're near invincible. So any attempts to make them 'scary' again would either need to restore them to that status -which also means you can't show them on screen too often, at least not if you want Our Heroes to survive-, or you have to do a 180 and turn them into basically something they originally were supposed to not be.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I really liked how Picard handled the Borg. The Borg themselves are victims who have lost all control over their actions and forced to turn more people into victims like them. Just framing it from their perspective of being mutilated and enslaved, then unable to stop yourself from trying to do it everyone is deeply terrifying.