It Just Dawned On Me

[All Seeing Eye]

The Borg aren't destroyed.

Admiral Janeway said the thing she infected them with was "just enough to bring chaos to order" and said nothing about it being enough to wipe them out.

We only saw the unicomplex destroyed and after infection we really only saw a communication problem between the Queen and the collective and not much else. She even said herself that a sphere could still hear her thoughts and it appeared to function perfectly fine even with the Queen infected and the communication system malfunctioning.

The shields on the transwarp hub rings were controlled directly by the Queen and the unicomplex (as was mentioned onscreen) and therefore Admiral Janeway only needed to infect the Queen and unicomplex to disrupt her from adapting the shields on the hub rings.

Since we know Borg Queens have died previously (first contact) and we know they must have been seperate queens for obvious temporal reasons then a new Queen no doubt took command of the collective from another complex.

So in Endgame we saw the death of that particular queen and the destruction of that particular complex and we saw only a communication malfunction between the Queen and collective.

So once the unicomplex and queen was destroyed a new Queen would have taken over the collective and order restored to chaos.

Since the queen said they had assimilated the armour technology that means that post endgame the Borg still exist in their full glory and hey have the knowledge for building and defending against the armour technology.

The only thing the Borg suffered was the death of a single queen, the destruction of a unicomplex and the destruction of the Transwarp Hub.

For some reason I had it in my head that in Endgame the Borg were destroyed but I realise now after watching it again on Virgin1 that the Borg are very much still alive.

Since we know the armour and torpedoes were developed specifically to combat the Borg Admiral Janeways actions have got Voyager home but weakened the Federation against the Borg and made the Borg stronger. Her actions have done more harm than good.

 

[Guy Gardener]

And that is why she should live out her days rangering the last kiwi's in the rain forests of New Zealand penal Colony.

 

[Michael]

I'd say that's just a case of the producers wanting to have their cake and eat it, too. On the one hand they wanted to have the Voyager crew prevail over one of their greatest villains, but on the other hand they also tried to preserve the opportunity to use the Borg again in later Trek productions.

But then again, the less one thinks about Endgame the better. At least as far as I'm concerned.

 

[kes7]

I thought it was pretty obvious they were still around and was surprised to find that the idea was controversial.

As for doing more harm than good ... yes, definitely. It's anyone's guess how much whatever is left of the collective was actually able to "download" from the dying queen regarding the new armor and weaponry Adm. Janeway brought back from the future, though.

 

[Brit]

The Borg aren't destroyed.

We only saw the unicomplex destroyed and after infection we really only saw a communication problem between the Queen and the collective and not much else. She even said herself that a sphere could still hear her thoughts and it appeared to function perfectly fine even with the Queen infected and the communication system malfunctioning.

***

Since we know the armour and torpedoes were developed specifically to combat the Borg Admiral Janeways actions have got Voyager home but weakened the Federation against the Borg and made the Borg stronger. Her actions have done more harm than good.

Except your "Communication Problem" would make it impossible for the dying Queen to share her knowledge, and as for the one Sphere that could hear her, well that was the one Janeway blew apart from the inside out with those torpedoes that Admiral Janeway brought with her. It's pretty obvious that they didn't adapt to them at all.

By the way that particular Complex was Unicomplex One. We saw the whole thing blew apart, we also saw the Transwarp Hub come apart too. As my daughter just reminded me you don't get much done if your processor can’t communicate with your memory.

While I don't think the Queens pick their successors, something does, something directly connected to the Queen and something that was infected right along with her.

If the Borg cannot communicate, they no longer have a "Hive Mind" so any drones left were basically freed, as in "Survival Instinct."

Of course by then we are going to see the civil war between those that want freedom and those that don't.

You need to go back to the drawing board.

Brit

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Queen isn't in charge, at least that's somewhat close to what she said in First Contact.

A cube has massive redundancy, economies of scale, why wouldn't their entire empire work under a similar principle?

They didn't seem to mind losing hundreds of worlds and thousands of cubes in their war with 8472, so I can't imagine it takes them too long to recoup their losses that one drone can turn a single world and the totality of it's resources entirely borg.

That being said there are still 5 other transwarp hubs in the milkyway galaxy.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I'd say that's just a case of the producers wanting to have their cake and eat it, too. On the one hand they wanted to have the Voyager crew prevail over one of their greatest villains, but on the other hand they also tried to preserve the opportunity to use the Borg again in later Trek productions.

But then again, the less one thinks about Endgame the better. At least as far as I'm concerned.

Agreed on all counts - They wanted to close the book on this era of Star Trek, and, in their minds, what better way than by defeating the ultimate enemy? Of course, the thing is, the ultimate enemy is still a popular one. So, yes, they have the crew strike this major blow to the Borg, making it seem like a final victory... But they also left the door open, so if anyone with a decent story came along, they could do something with it.

Also, if one thinks about Endgame for more than three seconds, they are likely to go mad.

 

[Deckerd]

Endgame is like haggis. You have to just eat it without thinking about what's in it. It's the perfect example of why Star Trek should never be taken seriously.

 

[Deks]

I don't think the Borg were destroyed either.
They certainly got dealt a lot of damage.
I would surmise that with the Queen assimilating the pathogen, it would spread through the Collective to a large degree.

Destroying the hub essentially wiped out all Borg TW hubs in the galaxy (a chain reaction was mentioned either way and that the hub they destroyed connected to others).
7 also confirms the Borg TW network was obliterated.

We do know the Queen mentioned they assimilated the armour technology, the torpedoes were not on the other hand.
However, it still remains to be seen if only the Sphere in question that was destroyed got the knowledge of the assimilated armour or was the knowledge distributed through the Collective.

Also, even if the Collective gained that knowledge, the virus completely neutralized their ability to communicate properly, and possibly inflicted a great deal of damage to the computer systems, possibly corrupting the said data after the sphere and the TW network got wiped out.

I wouldn't be surprised the Borg are still out there ... but back then, I'd surmise they would be in quite a large pickle given how they lost a Queen and a Unimatrix 01.

 

[Anwar]

If VOY had created their own enemy they battled throughout the entire series, and the finale involved them dealing a final defeat to THEM instead of the Borg, would it have worked out better?

 

[Guy Gardener]

You mean like the Nacene? Either the rest of their people who left Banjoman behind, Susperia again or a Time Travel episode involving the Caretaker?

it's called a bookend.

Now if Susperia took on the appearance of Seska, that would have been just awesome.

Why did Kreige get the job? Was Thompson busy, or did they just ignore her because they're bastards.

 

[Anwar]

They wanted Krige all along but had to settle for Thompson when she was unavailable. Since Thompson's Queen was destroyed they used it as an excuse to bring Krige back.

But yeah, I mean what if they had their own enemy for the entire series. Or at least a major recurring one that showed up in near every season or something.

I mean sure, the audience would have hated that but frankly I think VOY's audience deserved a few kicks to the balls by that point.

 

[Guy Gardener]

26 kicks to the balls a year for seven years was enough I'd have thought.

But what do I know?

They made Enterprise anyways.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

If VOY had created their own enemy they battled throughout the entire series, and the finale involved them dealing a final defeat to THEM instead of the Borg, would it have worked out better?

Absolutely.

 

[kimc]

If VOY had created their own enemy they battled throughout the entire series, and the finale involved them dealing a final defeat to THEM instead of the Borg, would it have worked out better?

Yeah it would!

Now if Susperia took on the appearance of Seska, that would have been just awesome.

That's actually a good idea.

 

[Anwar]

Well, seeing how there were complaints over seeing ANY aliens appearing more than a few times in the show how would they justify a core enemy showing up throughout the entire show?

And how could these guys be any sort of real threat if they couldn't destroy one ship? It wouldn't be much of a victory if they just took out one group of dudes who chased them a lot, compared to some major enemy who threatened the gaalxy.