Need? No, but life is a bit easier if there comes a measure of acceptance over what can be changed by whom.
Oh! But I think that it is *very* relevant. The Borg are a hive mind, with ‘hive’ also being a term coined by us humans for an insect colony structure. We also use the term ‘Queen’ to identify the central figure and leader of an insect colony. The (insect, not Borg, hehe) Queen is responsible for laying eggs and reproducing to ensure the survival of the colony, perhaps this is the analogy that the writers were taking when they first created the Borg Queen character. But the Borg are *not* insects, they are an interconnected network of assimilated life forms which are technologicallyd enhanced and augmented. The Borg do not need a physical manifestation in order to reproduce… they just need their ‘Queen’ to coordinate via a central ‘nexus’ and use their combined strength and knowledge to subjugate, conquer and expand through assimilation. Regardless, both the Queen of an insect colony and the Borg are impermanent and empty phenomena. They are not fixed entities but rather arise due to causes and conditions and need, and they will eventually pass away or at least desolve in warp coolant fluid (hehe). The insect Queen's role as a reproductive leader of the colony is not permanent, as she will eventually die and be replaced by another Queen. Similarly, the Borg Queen is easily replaceable….. Well if Terry wants his Legacy series he had better start to tighten (Titan) up his ship. USS… Tighten. Lol.
I'm pretty sure if I look at the credits for FC, she'll be listed as The Borg Queen. That's what I thought she was called in 1996, well before "Dark Frontier", and that's what everyone online referred to her as at the time. And yes, you're overcomplicating things. You won't say it, but you know you are, and I think you're enjoying it.
Of course he is. I don't want to speak for anyone in particular here, but I've noticed a trend with Trek fans in that they attempt to extrapolate greater sophistication from the material they enjoy in order to convince themselves, in turn, that the content they're consuming is more sophisticated or cerebral than it is. The Borg are not that complex. They're cyborg zombies ruled by an evil Disney-villain queen. Respectfully, you're talking out of your rear here. She's not some interchangeable, redundant function of some machine. Nothing on-screen supports this analysis.
Well, Terry does like zombies, and he is the show runner. Perhaps Disney will hire him next? I beg to differ, this has been most notable of such in Picard season 2. Annie Wersching’s Borg Queen ‘essence’ was quite easily transferred in to Jurati. She comes across as being a pretty hot swappable Queen to me, at least as depicted in Picard season 2. Look, here is a clip of the Borg Queen assimilating Jurati, turning her in to the vassal of what is left of the Borg Collective, and thus a new Queen. Endorphins… Also, do you remember that one time when Seven of Nine temporarily became a Borg Queen? I’m not even bringing in to account all of the different Borg Queen actresses yet such as Susanna Thompson… I am assuming that they are all different manifestations of a replaceable Borg Queen though?
All that proves is that she transfers her consciousness between bodies in the event of her destruction, not that the Queen as a person is replaced. The different actresses mean nothing. There aren't multiple Kirks because the character has been portrayed by three different people. The fact that Alice Krige has reprised the role three times now should be evidence enough of that. You're really cherry picking tenuous "evidence" and then ignoring whatever doesn't support your obstinate head canon. Seven didn't become THE Borg Queen, she just took control of a derelict cube.
Do you see it as being beyond the realms of possibility that the Borg Queen may have undertaken such a transference at the end of Picard season 3? She may quite simply have not had enough time to put on a stage show in this instance, though I am sure that she had a Disney villain style escape plan and may pop up again one day. We may not have seen the last of her… muwahahahahaha! My interpretation is still that the Queen *is* hot swappable, all of the evidence for this is there if you connect the dots together, ‘dots’ which I am helping to lay out, thus allowing you and others to draw your own conclusions and come up with your own fan theories about the Borg Queen if you do not agree with mine. The consciousness transference in Picard season 2 was of the remnants of the last Borg, not just the last Queen. In a fully functioning Collective, I believe that the Queen is a projection from within the hive mind consciousness, and can be projected in to any vassal that is capable of holding her embodiment. Borg Queens are still ‘special’ and unique as individuals, they could be hard to come by. I think that the writers made it pretty clear that Seven of Nine was taking on a Borg Queen role in this particular episode, with Seven temporarily becoming Queen of a ‘micro collective’. How else would you describe the role that Seven took amongst the Borg on the Artifact if not as being that of becoming a Queen?
Seven used her knowledge of the Borg to do that yes, but she wasn't THE Queen, nor does that action prove your point. I don't need to draw conclusions here because the conclusions have been drawn for me. I'm not going to engage in crackpot theories to justify a head canon so I can maintain a version of the Borg in my mind that hasn't existed in almost 30 years. The Queen being a representation of a hive mind consciousness just does not make any sense. How can a hive mind consciousness be lonely? How can it desire a counterpart to ease that feeling of isolation? How can a hive mind consciousness exist if there's no hive mind? Why would that manifestation of a hive mind consciousness talk to and contradict itself as being distinct from the Collective? I'm sorry, what we see and hear refutes your reading. I'm fine with speculation in areas that accommodate it; I'm not going to maintain that Picard has always had a full head of hair because I refuse to accept that male-pattern baldness still hasn't been cured in the 24th century. Alright cool, now you're getting the spirit of the character!
And in doing so gained full control of the Artifact micro Collective and in essence becoming their temporary Queen. Because a hive mind becomes one entity, a collective conciousness. Any conciousness can get lonely. They are a singular consciousness made up of many absorbed consciousness individuals. I agree that this is a paradoxical phenomenon but a hive mind consciousness is, by definition, is a collection of individual minds or entities working together as one cohesive unit, in the Borg case this hive mind being interconnected with technology/a neural link. Perhaps this is why the Borg continue to assimilate and add to their technological and biological distinctiveness, they may be infinitely lonely and wish to add to themselves in order to satisfy that endless need for connection. It would not exist, it would be an individual, not an interconnected, technologically augmented, Borg hive mind. Without such a hive mind, there can be no hive mind consciousness. Because the Queen is an avatar, a projection which is capable of acting semi autonomously, a compartmentalised facet of the Collective who is used to coordinate the hive mind. This is either the result of Borg evolution or a parasitic intelligence taking control of the Collective, which becomes the Queen. Why would anybody want to cure something that can be perceived as being physically attractive? Baldness is an attribute, not a flaw. Once again, I apologise for any contradictions, but the Borg are full of contradictions by nature - perhaps this is also what the Queen helps to manage. I even think that Data said that the Borg Queen is a contradiction at one point, but I cannot remember the exact quote. It also may not have been Data that said it.
Okay, it's good that we've come to an understanding on this. So the Borg Queen in both the prime and Confederation timelines becomes divested of her Collective context, yet still behaves in the exact manner she always did before. This is compounded by the fact that she yearns to hear voices other than her own, and chafes at the isolation wrought by the confines of her own mind. This is 100% indicative of individuality. If she were an avatar, she would not have any personality of her own, and thus would cease to be; her body would go limp like a puppet severed from its strings. Moreover, what need would an avatar have to wield first-person singular pronouns such as "I," "me," and "mine?" The voice of the Borg Collective considers itself only in plural terms. Moreover, a collective consciousness would never seek the companionship of an individual to soothe the burden of loneliness. The Borg are about folding everything into the whole, not maintaining the individuality of its constituent members. The Queen, as an individual with her own desires separate from the will of the Collective, does seek this form of "companionship," because the voices in her Collective are drones stripped of free will, hence why she was so disappointed in Locutus. This is beyond straightforward, my friend. Writers are going to stick with Occam's razor here for the purposes of narrative efficiency, and that, I suspect, is why you and many others are so disenchanted with the Queen and how she's been portrayed. She simplifies, humanizes, and demystifies an alien culture that you celebrated for its otherness. It's obvious you don't like—and mock—that she's written as a comic book supervillain. There's also a lineage here that can be traced from Brannon Braga all the way to Terry Matalas, since Terry worked with Braga in the past on multiple projects and even collaborated with him to write that Hive comic back in 2013 that portrayed the Queen as, surprise surprise, the actual Queen of the Borg. I understand being dismayed at this, but this is a fight you can't win; there's too much of this authorial intent in the material to ignore. You can say you prefer to interface with the material through the lens of your headcanon—and you'd be perfectly within your right to do so—but please don't pretend like your headcanon IS canon when discussing this material with others.
(I made a new Star Trek meme) I will check out the Hive comic as it looks cool, though I shall not be considering it as canon in any way.
Yep, I made the same point in another thread. The camera moves much more kinetically than the E-D does. Also, the scale of the size of the Borg ship (?) was established in several shots before the sequence and you get a sense of how vast it is.
It's almost like the Stealth Camera Drone documenting the flight of the Enterprise-D into the Queen's Mega Cube had to also dodge all the non-sensical Borg Structure that was in the way to avoid collision while filming the Enterprise-D do it's thing.
Haha, the Borg Planning Commission will have you know that those are LOAD BEARING structures extending across the gap at weird angles!
And? People complain about uniforms, ranks, badges, costuming errors, scale of ships, and registry numbers but this is too far? Being distracted by obvious CGI? I thought new Trek was to be ridiculed for relying on CGI too much but now I must welcome it with open arms or be told "this is ridiculous fan bullshit?"
Oh, I say it with love and affection as I am a frequent visitor and patron of the Pantheon of Ridiculous Fan Bullshit!
A Borg Planning Commission with the Queen as the only person running it is a "Rubber Stamp" commission. Her words hold no weight considering she slapped the approval seal herself.