Please Explain The V'Ger-Borg Theory

[The Wormhole]

Just how does anyone make this connection? Do people really think that if a primitive sattelite arrived in orbit of a Borg planet, the Borg would give it a god complex, task it with finding its creator, then build for it a ship that is larger than any other Borg ship we've seen, does not fit with their design lineage, and generates its own nebula for some reason?

No, I don't think so. If anything, the Borg would probably just view it as too primitive, non-threatening, unworthy of assimilation, and let it go on its way.

Sorry if this seems out of the blue, but after reading some recent V'Ger discussions once more trying to make the Borg connection, I felt I had to get that off my chest.

 

[JarodRussell]

I think Roddenberry himself made a joke once that the machine planet Voyager found could have been the Borg home planet.

 

[The Wormhole]

I think Roddenberry himself made a joke once that the machine planet Voyager found could have been the Borg home planet.

I'm aware of that. We can ignore it since:
1) It was a joke.
2) It was made during the filming of Q Who, when nothing had been established about the Borg. Seriously, they hadn't even mentioned assimilation yet.

What I'm wondering is do do people still cling to this theory, in light of all that's been established about the Borg?

 

[Bones2]

Well, machine planet. The Borg may have been quite different when V'Ger got there. Botched assimilation attempt.

I don't know. I sort of like the idea. Never given it a great deal of thought.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The Destiny trilogy does put the lie to the V'Ger / Borg theory, but it was entertaining while it lasted.

And if V'Ger really had stumbled across a Borg planet, they would have either ignored, destroyed or assimilated it. The Borg wouldn't have done what we saw in the film.

 

[Procutus]

The idea was also explored in the second Shatnerverse novel, The Return. But I tend to agree with what has been said here, that although the idea was entertaining, it just doesn't fit with the Borg way of doing things.

 

[DonIago]

If memory serves (note I'm not advocating this, just pointing it out) GR actually joked that the machine planet was the Borg homeworld...which doesn't necessarily mean Voyager would have encountered the Borg as we know them. Perhaps, if one wants to go down this road, Voyager encountered the Borg shortly before they formed a collective. Hell, Voyager could have even been responsible for the formation of the collective in some way, shape or form.

Again, not advocating.

 

[Christopher]

What I'm wondering is do do people still cling to this theory, in light of all that's been established about the Borg?

Because it's human nature to try to lump things into pat, easy categories. Whenever any two Trek species have any single trait in common, there are fans who try to link them to each other even if there are far more differences than similarities. Like the way people equate the Preservers with the First Humanoids from "The Chase" even though they lived billions of years apart and had totally different methods. Or the way people like to think Trelane is a Q even though he was far less powerful and needed a machine to do most of his tricks (and frankly, aside from moving Gothos around, he didn't do a single thing that couldn't be achieved with a holodeck and a transporter). Hell, I once even came across a fan theory that the Wormhole Prophets were a branch of the Q, which makes no sense on any level.

There's probably also some auteur worship involved too -- "If Roddenberry said it, it must be true."

 

[Brutal Strudel]

The Borg are as much creatures of carbon as they are of silicon (or tri-silicon technobabblide, as it may be in the Trekverse). I figure that, if Vejur were somehow part of the Collective, it would not be so clueless about carbon units. It seems far more likely that--as in your novel, Christopher, and GR's own novelization of TMP--the machines of the Machine Planet had "lived" so long without organic masters that they ceased to remember them--if they ever knew them at all (if our computers became sentient tomorrow, would they really be able to figure out our relationship to them?). This seems like much more of a real sf idea, rather than a theory borne of some fannish need to make the vastness of outer space about as incestuous as Mayberry, RFD. For this reason, I resist the idea that Trelane was a Q or that Norman Spinrad's Planet Killer was intended as an Anti-Borg weapon.

 

[wjaspers]

Thought the story was more like this: the voyager probe reached the home planet of the Borg CREATORS, not the Borg themselves or a Borg planet.
Or as in this vid, V'ger created the Borg : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anMOQ3vTy9k

 

[SRFX]

This theory annoys me. Just leave V'Ger alone! It was unique and beyond explanation!

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

The Borg are as much creatures of carbon as they are of silicon (or tri-silicon technobabblide, as it may be in the Trekverse). I figure that, if Vejur were somehow part of the Collective, it would not be so clueless about carbon units. It seems far more likely that--as in your novel, Christopher, and GR's own novelization of TMP--the machines of the Machine Planet had "lived" so long without organic masters that they ceased to remember them--if they ever knew them at all (if our computers became sentient tomorrow, would they really be able to figure out our relationship to them?). This seems like much more of a real sf idea, rather than a theory borne of some fannish need to make the vastness of outer space about as incestuous as Mayberry, RFD. For this reason, I resist the idea that Trelane was a Q or that Norman Spinrad's Planet Killer was intended as an Anti-Borg weapon.

Agreed. The Borg are not machines or robots, they are cyborgs. They start off as "carbon units" who are then mechanically augmented.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Isn't it kinda funny, though, how fans seem to want the Borg to assimilate every corner of Trek lore? It's as if the Borg were the Borg or something...

 

[Christopher]

The idea of V'Ger creating the Borg is just as absurd as the idea of the Borg creating V'Ger. Why would an entity that saw organic beings as a worthless infestation have bothered to fuse technology with organic beings?

Brutal Strudel is right -- it's ridiculously incestuous. The universe is vast. There must be thousands of cybernetic races or entities that arose totally independently of each other in our galaxy alone, so it makes zero sense to assume that any given two must have a common origin.

 

[Timo]

...Of course, we can also argue that the Borg are old, and that our galaxy is already their oyster. So perhaps everything that happens here on "their level" of existence is indeed the work of the Collective, or then forces intimately related to it. Building V'Ger might be the work of Borg heretics of some sort.

Similarly, perhaps the Q, being all-powerful or practically so, do indeed answer for all the "supernatural" stuff taking place hereabouts, in one form or another.

One has to admit that this would be pretty uninspiring in the greater dramatic sense. But it's not that crazy to allow one or more of the Trek plenipotents to actually rule sovereign, to really be the ultimate answer to everything. There can just be nuances within, such as said Borg heretics, or Q youngsters, or something more inspiring if possible.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Brutal Strudel]

The Borg don't hit me as being sophisticated or advanced to that order of magnitude, especially after Voyager--and Species 867530--were done with them. They aren't in Vejur's league. It seems to me that a flotilla of Borg cubes sent against Vejur would just end up as "wall exhibits in hell." No way do I want to link them.

 

[Timo]

If the Borg are what happens to somebody like humankind when they reach technological singularity, then perhaps V'Ger is what the Borg tend to have for singularity...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DWF]

After just rewatching the original movie I didn't hear them say anyting about the people living on the planet that Voyager 6 landed on, just that it was a machine planet. The language in the movie is imprecise, but them we are talking about the Voyager surviving and encounter with a black hole.

 

[Christopher]

The Borg don't hit me as being sophisticated or advanced to that order of magnitude...

Oh, absolutely. The Borg were primitive next to V'Ger. V'Ger was far ahead of them -- it had already accumulated all knowledge about our universe that it considered useful. The Borg have clunky bits of metal and plastic stuck onto organic bodies; V'Ger was technology so advanced that it functioned like an organism despite being completely inorganic. There's just no comparison. V'Ger is to the Borg as a starship is to a steam locomotive.

Really, V'Ger and the Borg have absolutely nothing in common aside from having a connection to technology. Linking them makes as much sense as assuming that, say, the asteroid field in "The Pegasus" was created by the Hortas because they're both made of minerals. It's a bizarre, random connection to draw, let alone to insist on.

and Species 8675309

What's the interdimensional calling code for fluidic space?

 

[The Wormhole]

If memory serves (note I'm not advocating this, just pointing it out) GR actually joked that the machine planet was the Borg homeworld...which doesn't necessarily mean Voyager would have encountered the Borg as we know them. Perhaps, if one wants to go down this road, Voyager encountered the Borg shortly before they formed a collective. Hell, Voyager could have even been responsible for the formation of the collective in some way, shape or form.

Again, not advocating.

Except, we know from Voyager (the series) that the Borg Collective has been around for over a thousand years.