If Borg assimilated Earth, who's next?

[Ralphis]

Alderaan

 

[Tim Thomason]

The only time a War is mentioned with regards to the Borg is with Species 8472 (at least from the POV of the Borg)... All others, are simply an acquisition of sorts.. The Borg do not attack to destroy - they attack to assimilate and absorb... They ignore that which is not a threat, and assimilate (or attempt to) that which is either a threat or that they deem an upgrade so to speak. Comparing the Borg to Nazi Germany is affable - as the Borg do not participate in genocide - oddly enough..

Vulcan - being as they are passive, and tend to refrain from violence unless provoked - could itself stay out of Borg sights for a while.. Their technology is unremarkable - and they are merely passvive scientists for the most part. Unless Vulcans en masse decided to attack the Borg out of retaliation for the Assimilation of Andoria, Earth, and the other Federation worlds, Vulcan itself may be totally overlooked.. Like away teams from the Enterprise D - ignored unless they become a important enough to warrant attention.

Then again - it is hard to say what the Borg find interesting enough to assimilate - maybe the Vulcan mind would be something they find interesting enough to assimilate for.. Perhaps not - they are unpredictable.

That leads to some interesting questions. What would a total Borg takeover of the galaxy look like? Would they just be a check on the power of the civilizations, constantly doing their R&D into Omega Particles or Fluidic space or whatever, while the ignored races just did their bestest to avoid the Borg?

How is diplomacy, for wont of a better word, conducted between the Borg and an ignored race? Can the Kazon ask for humanitarian aid from a passing Borg cube? Would the Borg be obliged to help in case they might one day become assimilatable?

Timo suggests that they're constantly pushing these lesser races to better themselves (bring about anti-Borg technology) so that they could assimilate them later when they have something to offer. Would the Kazon or Vulcans find themselves with an influx of new technology one morning and some empty threats? Would the Borg play wargames by pushing forward a rebellion amongst the non-Borg that could provide some real fruit someday down-the-line?

 

[Timo]

Those are very interesting questions, if hypothetical in the current context. If we take the "Q Who?" stuff about the Borg being hundreds of millennia old at face value, then I guess we also have to assume the Borg are frugal and careful not to assimilate too many species - otherwise, they would have completed this total takeover ages ago. Perhaps it's trivial for them to swipe aside those civilizations that form a threat to them, without inconveniencing the lesser species or hoarding galactic volume in the process. Perhaps the degree of Borg occupation of the Milky Way fluctuates a lot, though. Are we "currently" experiencing a high or a low tide?

In the current context, the Borg only tease a select number of species, not all of them, and not even all those at a specific level of technology. At "high tide", they might be engaging all the remaining species in some manner, though. Do they also encourage the emergence of all-new sapient humanoid species? This godlike technology was available to the ancient humanoids of "The Chase", but it hasn't been attributed to the Borg yet. "Hundreds of millennia" might already be a timeframe that would prompt the Borg to try, though.

Diplomacy with the Borg... What a delightful concept! The cyborgs do negotiate, and do see reason. Their negotiations in VOY concerned the extreme short term, too, so there might not be too much of this selling-your-soul-to-devil stuff there: they get A, you get B, and the rest is just "We will eventually assimilate you"/"Yeah, yeah, but for now, thanks and goodbye".

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Old Mixer]

Alderaan

Just as long as they spare Basketball....

 

[Romulan Loyalist]

I think that is the entire conundrum of the Borg - we never know exactly what they would be interested in at any given moment. They seem to have unpredictability as their greatest asset.

 

[publiusr]

I would think that the Bynars would be target number one
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Bynar

The Borg would find them pretty well pre-assimilated, already.