Impact of the Death of the Borg Queen
- Thread starter Komack
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Voyager fucked it up. When I left the theater in 1996, I was absolutely certain that Jean-Luc Picard had destroyed the 24th century Borg collective in a feature film.
After exploiting a major weakness in the Borg in BOBW, it made sense for the Borg to adapt by creating a leader that can direct the collective and protect it from exploits like that. But then First Contact establishes that there was always a queen and she was on the cube in BOBW, which makes zero sense
I find it hard to believe that the queen would have fallen for the "sleep" trick, since she directs the collective herself, and is not just another drone. Plus she was basically what Locutus was meant to be, a voice to speak for the Borg.
I find it hard to believe that the queen would have fallen for the "sleep" trick, since she directs the collective herself, and is not just another drone. Plus she was basically what Locutus was meant to be, a voice to speak for the Borg.
I just read a bunch of TNG novels about this and the Collective chooses a new Queen out of a random drone. But the Queen herself is not the true commanding force of the Collective, just the mouth piece. The Destiny Trilogy (which is really, really excellent) reveals the true secret behind the Borg and their origin.
Does every hive (cube) have a queen? It's not inconceivable. Maybe the queens are linked together as one. The interchangeable "I" and "we" used in the movie could suggest something like that. It would explain the queen being in both the Alpha and Delta quadrants, and the difference in appearance.
I really have no idea, just skipping rocks across the pond.
I really have no idea, just skipping rocks across the pond.
I think there's just one queen.
In fact the queen "herself" is probably just a virtual manifestation that resides somewhere within the confines of the collective. It can inhabit whatever body within the whole of the collective that it needs to in order to complete an objective.
Conceptually, the "queen" is just a more mainstream adaptation of what Locutus was--Piller's answer to a glaring writing conundrum created with Hurley's original concept.
The Borg were portrayed as mindless automata, yet they displayed clear evidence of some underlying conscious agenda inflated by hubris.
While, the "Q Who?" Borg were fine as a one-off, they needed to be rebuilt (re-assimilated) into something more mainstream otherwise they would have just become a convoluted existential mess and way too high-concept for a standard TV (and especially movie-going) audience.
Using Stewart as that "face" probably seemed like the best idea at the time. Moving forward, had he not stayed with the show, they could have at least brought him in as a recurring villain, perhaps. But once they'd moved on from that, they probably figured they may as will just go with the more obvious Queen.
She also makes a lot more sense from a dramatic standpoint.
I'm a huge nuTrek Borg proponent, but I think they would be hard to pull off without the queen, unless Orci is content with space tech-zombies. That would be fine too, but would be a huge detour in tone, scope, and theme from the first two.
But I do agree there's much, much room for improvement.
Exactly, it's a bad retcon to imply she was there at Earth, unless she jumped ship before they got to earth.
Of course First Contact wasn't very good once one got past the action part.
I always thought it would have been better to have had the Queen be more like a Locutus 2.0 - make her an Enterprise crew member or a known guest character (Shelby perhaps) that was captured and Assimilated during the battle to Earth.
The later could better explain them randomly deciding to time travel at the last moment... Outside the box (Cube) thinking.
The later could better explain them randomly deciding to time travel at the last moment... Outside the box (Cube) thinking.
I don't like FC. That script pǝʞɔnɟ up the Borg for good.
The "Q Who" Borg were something. I can agree it would be difficult to write with an enemy so powerful, but come on, a "collective mind" (previously established) and then they come with a f***ing QUEEN? how in space that makes any sense?
The Data subplot had to be hammered there just because of Spiner's star(trek)power and it shows. But in The Best of Both Worlds Locutus stated androids were "obsolete" for the Borg. Now the Queen wants to -- I dont know what she wants to do with Data.
Finally (and this I dislike less), Zepham Cochrane. He looks and sounds and effects the story absolutely nothing like the TOS character. Why have him at all? Why he is so cute as to be the inventor of warp, the FC-er with the Vulcans and to be given eternal life (with the Companion) -- and a 30-foot statue.
The "Q Who" Borg were something. I can agree it would be difficult to write with an enemy so powerful, but come on, a "collective mind" (previously established) and then they come with a f***ing QUEEN? how in space that makes any sense?
The Data subplot had to be hammered there just because of Spiner's star(trek)power and it shows. But in The Best of Both Worlds Locutus stated androids were "obsolete" for the Borg. Now the Queen wants to -- I dont know what she wants to do with Data.
Finally (and this I dislike less), Zepham Cochrane. He looks and sounds and effects the story absolutely nothing like the TOS character. Why have him at all? Why he is so cute as to be the inventor of warp, the FC-er with the Vulcans and to be given eternal life (with the Companion) -- and a 30-foot statue.
What the hell with that idiotic cap they put on Cochrane? Is that supposed to be some hip Fashion Statement? He is 62 in this feature, or whatever. Are we meant to be laughing at him? I don't really understand that. And when he insists on blasting poor Deanna's ears with his moldy butt-rocker SOUND MACHINE CD, it seemed so tacked on, like they kept pushing the "humour" to get us to "like" him, or whatever. Why they made him Comic Relief, I don't know. I can only surmise it's to give Lilly the job of having dramatic stuff to do. All of the ideas are there, some aspects just don't play as well as they should have, or should've been set up differently. Like, it would've been cool to have the Borg Queen be something new to the collective. Perhaps even as a direct result of Locutus, maybe the Borg would've seen some usefulness in having someone like that being the focal point of their hive mind. But, no ... they come right out and say it, that the Queen's always been and we the fans are only finding out about this, now. Wow ... don't I feel foolish ... I mean, of course, what else would a Hive Mind have, but a Queen!
Why can't STAR TREK leave certain species a mystery, when so many of their investigations into them turn out so poorly. Take the Q, for instance. Seemingly meant to be taken as a real threat to not only the Federation, but perhaps, the entire universe - oh, how ironic ... so unexpected - they turn out to be just like us! They even have men and women, which makes no sense to me, whatsoever, but ... where would we be without Ms. Q getting knocked up, whilst in the thick of America's Civil War?
Now that you mention the Q, Voyager fucked a lot of things up.
Though I liked the metaphor of the lonely diner at the endless desert street representing the Q continuum in one of the episodes.
But the American civil war thing... holy crap.
Or when the judges appeared on the casino set just because they wasn't enough money for a proper 21st century courtroom a la Encounter at Farpoint. So cringeworthy.
Though I liked the metaphor of the lonely diner at the endless desert street representing the Q continuum in one of the episodes.
But the American civil war thing... holy crap.
Or when the judges appeared on the casino set just because they wasn't enough money for a proper 21st century courtroom a la Encounter at Farpoint. So cringeworthy.
Hmmm... I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm glad. No need to fill me in; I'm glad I missed that shit.
Although I have come to dislike the concept of the Queen Bee ever since "Aliens" (@ Ripley: The eggs had already been on the derelict ship from "Alien" and the warriors simply transported these eggs to another location, no need to conclude the existence of a queen...) this thread has inspired me to fabricate a rationalization:
The Borg cube encountered in "Q Who" could have been one where the "queen" had died previously for reasons unknown to us and leadership had passed to the remaing drone collective consciousness.
Trying to get their hands on this enigmatic "Q drive" this cube travelled back to Federation space, trying to find the answers on Earth (because nothing about the "Q drive" was in the memory banks of the Enterprise) but was "defeated" by Captain Picard and Data.
This way the other cubes could have their "queens" but what we had seen previously in TNG was an exceptional and particular case (I still don't like it but couldn't that be a possibility?).
Bob
The Borg cube encountered in "Q Who" could have been one where the "queen" had died previously for reasons unknown to us and leadership had passed to the remaing drone collective consciousness.
Trying to get their hands on this enigmatic "Q drive" this cube travelled back to Federation space, trying to find the answers on Earth (because nothing about the "Q drive" was in the memory banks of the Enterprise) but was "defeated" by Captain Picard and Data.
This way the other cubes could have their "queens" but what we had seen previously in TNG was an exceptional and particular case (I still don't like it but couldn't that be a possibility?).
Bob
Yes, I loved their first appearance on Voyager. Even the comic elements. Why wouldn't God-like aliens have a sense of humor.
And is that the episode where it's said, "The Continuum would like for you to believe they are omnipotent, but they aren't."?
Which makes sense. To remove humanity (In "All Good Things..."), they had to come up with a horribly convulated plot.
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