Should the Borg be the villain in Trek 3?

[M'Sharak]

A non-Borg Threatened 24th Century would be interesting.

How about a 'Q Who' type episode with Kirk and crew - They meet up with Q who propells them into the Delta Quadrant to meet the Borg a la Picard style. But instead of getting a bloody nose and running like Picard, Kirk and crew kicks their collective asses, freeing them all, much to Q's dislike.

Fanwanky, I know.

Change Q to Trelane.

Please don't. Trelane was one of the worst characters TOS ever came up with. Literally a semi-ominiscient baby, who spent the entire episode whining and complaining. It was decent enough as a comedic episode of a tv series, but it would be complete crap as a film.

Interesting - I've never thought of "The Squire of Gothos" as an especially comedic episode, and it was exactly the notion that Trelane was a child which made it work for me.

"Omniscient" or "semi-omniscient" might not be quite the right descriptors but if you imagine a character who's the rough equivalent of a seven-year-old, with all the capacity for simple joy and sudden anger and meanness and casual cruelty which that entails, and you allow him the ability (within the defined limits of his "play area") to do anything he wants and manipulate/toy with/torment anything he chooses - well, that's potentially a pretty frightening sort of person for our crew to encounter. I thought that William Campbell did a very effective job at conveying the range of attitudes and behaviors called for by the story.

All that said, I'd just as soon see a new adversary in the next outing than I would a re-imagined Trelane, a spiffed-up and scarier Borg, or a V'Ger-Nomad-Doomsday-whale probe sort of thingy. I could even do without the Klingons, though at the moment that seems less likely.

 

[JRS]

I think Borg might make an appearance in the third film, them being in the five year mission and so on
How about that Enterprise would encounter a Klingon vessel during their voyage, that is under attack by the Borg.
Kirk and company saves them but they are not happy to see the Starfleet people, considering how many Klingons got killed in STID.
Spock figures that only way to defeat the Borg is to work together with the Klingons.
This would create some interesting dynamics, tension and explore both the Klingons and the Borg further in this "new" trekverse

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Change Q to Trelane.

Please don't. Trelane was one of the worst characters TOS ever came up with. Literally a semi-ominiscient baby, who spent the entire episode whining and complaining. It was decent enough as a comedic episode of a tv series, but it would be complete crap as a film.

Interesting - I've never thought of "The Squire of Gothos" as an especially comedic episode, and it was exactly the notion that Trelane was a child which made it work for me.

"Omniscient" or "semi-omniscient" might not be quite the right descriptors but if you imagine a character who's the rough equivalent of a seven-year-old, with all the capacity for simple joy and sudden anger and meanness and casual cruelty which that entails, and you allow him the ability (within the defined limits of his "play area") to do anything he wants and manipulate/toy with/torment anything he chooses - well, that's potentially a pretty frightening sort of person for our crew to encounter. I thought that William Campbell did a very effective job at conveying the range of attitudes and behaviors called for by the story.

I suppose it probably wasn't meant to be comedic, but I still have a very hard time taking it seriously. Maybe with a different script/actor, it could be much more impressive, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope.

All that said, I'd just as soon see a new adversary in the next outing than I would a re-imagined Trelane, a spiffed-up and scarier Borg, or a V'Ger-Nomad-Doomsday-whale probe sort of thingy. I could even do without the Klingons, though at the moment that seems less likely.

I would agree with that, as well. Really, I would prefer the next film focus more on a problem than a villain. The shows didn't focus on big bads every single episode and its starting to annoy me a little that the movies have gotten so obsessed with this formula.

 

[Smellmet]

I think Borg might make an appearance in the third film, them being in the five year mission and so on
How about that Enterprise would encounter a Klingon vessel during their voyage, that is under attack by the Borg.
Kirk and company saves them but they are not happy to see the Starfleet people, considering how many Klingons got killed in STID.
Spock figures that only way to defeat the Borg is to work together with the Klingons.
This would create some interesting dynamics, tension and explore both the Klingons and the Borg further in this "new" trekverse

That's one of the few scenarios that I'd be happy to have the Borg in ST3, only danger is of them doing a Spider Man 3 and overdoing it with the bad guys

 

[Captain Jed R.]

I think it's likely they will be. Depends how Abrams and co choose to do the 50th in cinema. But I honestly think the Borg are likely. They might even be good, if done well.

I'm not going to hold out much hope for the next film though, as these Abramsverse Trek films, while entertaining enough, haven't really done it for me as Star Trek.

 

[Smellmet]

I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see them in it (secretly, I would!) as long as they are done right, like an unstoppable plague of locusts, with modern effects it would be amazing. My problem is that so far we've had one classic TOS villain and that's it? Straight to TNG antagonists? Doesn't say much for the calibre of potential stuff they could plunder does it? I would like a Klingon story of some kind, with the conflict as a background story rather than the main focus. For me it doesn't matter that the Klingons have been done to death in Trek, as long as they bag actors of the calibre of Cumberbatch (I wouldn't object to him being awakened for part 3 to be honest, I loved him in STID) and give them something good to do, I'm in.

 

[quanchi112]

Klingons, Starfleet, Spock Prime at a loss to deal with this enemy so naturally they release Khan and his crew who end up aiding while being on their own side as well.

I personally loved Into Darkness as my favorite trek film by far.

 

[The Colonel]

The Borg would be awesome, so long as they ditch the Uncle Fester makeup and rubber costumes. Instead use CG to replace body parts with working machinery, take inspiration from Shatner's The Return (much more variation, nonhumanoid drones, organic machinery, an Escher-like Hypercube station in transwarp space) and crank up the horror factor.

Imagine a Borg drone without a lower jaw, skin almost mummified, with a totally mechanical arm with joints in unnatural positions and moving parts where intestines should be. The only issue would be keeping the Borg from being so grotesque as to crank up the rating and limiting the audience.

I really loved Shatner's portrayal of the Borg in "The Return" and the connection to Vger. It was better than anything Voyager ever did with them.

I'm a sucker for anything featuring the Borg, however I'm not sure I'd want them in the next movie, they wouldn't really fit with the light adventurous tone of JJ Trek. I'd rather see Kirk and company go out into deep space and find something new, even if that something is based on an old TOS plot.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The thing is, any depiction of the Borg in the next movie would be their 23rd century form. They're bound to be less advanced, less sophisticated, less powerful and less intelligent. So the threat they pose wouldn't be due to their advanced weaponry or ability to overwhelm their enemies' weapons, but simply by the fact they they are unbelievably persistent.

There was an interesting take in one of the Abramsverse novels that featured a Borg scout team at Starfleet Academy. In this case, they had no drones and no ships, but were just a highly intelligent nanite swarm that was aggressively harvesting tissue samples (and major organs) from people in San Francisco. A movie depiction would make more sense if they also lacked the ability to adapt to their enemy's weapons and instead simply depended on their ability to quickly regenerate themselves: if you blow their ship in half, the two halves of it sprout engines and keep on attacking you; if you kill one of their drones, the drone's head, arms, legs and organs crawl out of the chassis, sprout legs and keep on attacking you.

IOW I'd like to see the literal interpretation of Q's lines in Q-Who "You can't outrun them, you can't destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually you'll weaken, your reserves will be gone. They are relentless."

 

[BillJ]

The thing is, any depiction of the Borg in the next movie would be their 23rd century form. They're bound to be less advanced, less sophisticated, less powerful and less intelligent.

I don't think that is necessarily true. You're trying to apply human timescales to a decidedly non-human adversary. I have no problem with the Borg being as powerful as the Borg from the 24th century.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The thing is, any depiction of the Borg in the next movie would be their 23rd century form. They're bound to be less advanced, less sophisticated, less powerful and less intelligent.

I don't think that is necessarily true. You're trying to apply human timescales to a decidedly non-human adversary. I have no problem with the Borg being as powerful as the Borg from the 24th century.

That would imply nearly a hundred years of relative stagnation for the Borg's technological progression. Starfleet's meeting them -- and managing to thwart them with ever-increasing ease until Janeway manages to single-handedly curb-stomp their entire fleet in Endgame -- would be the final phase of what could only have been the slow death of their entire civilization.

Besides, the Borg we see in the 24th century DO seem to be rapidly evolving. When they invade Earth in "Best of Both Worlds" the assimilation process involves several hours of major brain surgery and several days to fully complete (and is also relatively simple to reverse). Five years later, they can assimilate their victims by touch in a process that takes a handful of seconds and is fully complete -- and permanent -- within an hour. These new upgrades are so widespread that Borg who were assimilated decades earlier (e.g. Seven of Nine) can no longer be fully de-borgified. That is also, arguably, the genesis of the Borg Queen: in "Best of Both Worlds" she was a disembodied manifestation of the Borg's collective unconscious; by First Contact she gets an actual body and license to speak in her own voice.

It would seem the Borg are actually evolving very rapidly by the 24th century, and it's entirely possible that we wouldn't even recognize them if we encountered them a century earlier (and I'm partly of the opinion that maybe we didn't).

 

[The Wormhole]

The thing is, any depiction of the Borg in the next movie would be their 23rd century form. They're bound to be less advanced, less sophisticated, less powerful and less intelligent. So the threat they pose wouldn't be due to their advanced weaponry or ability to overwhelm their enemies' weapons, but simply by the fact they they are unbelievably persistent.

But Nero's arrival changed everything(TM). If Praxis can be destroyed 34 years early, the Borg can be as advanced as we're used to.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The thing is, any depiction of the Borg in the next movie would be their 23rd century form. They're bound to be less advanced, less sophisticated, less powerful and less intelligent. So the threat they pose wouldn't be due to their advanced weaponry or ability to overwhelm their enemies' weapons, but simply by the fact they they are unbelievably persistent.

But Nero's arrival changed everything(TM). If Praxis can be destroyed 34 years early, the Borg can be as advanced as we're used to.

They could also be significantly less advanced in a way that makes them more interesting villains.

I use that term relatively, btw: "More interesting" in comparison to, say, any of the Borg episodes of Voyager or the second half of First Contact.

Suppose in the 23rd century the Borg are a bit like the Reavers from Firefly. Though still with the tendency to speak in a single voice (although maybe collectively with "I" instead of "we"), they are fast, ruthless, and practice a kind of coordinated savagery that is both terrifying and fascinating to watch (like an impeccably choreographed chainsaw massacre). The early Borg don't build their own ships (yet) they just assimilate ships they hijack from other races and ride around the universe raiding and pillaging, constantly on the hunt for highly specialized personnel or highly specialized equipment to add to their ships. In the 24th century, the Borg are not at all picky, they'll assimilate anything more sophisticated than a talking ape. Maybe a century earlier, with fewer resources at their disposal, they're still picking and choosing their battles, hunting for things that are only worth the effort of assimilating? Like, say, highly-experienced tactical specialists or certain rare engine components that are only found in the warp drives of constitution class starships?

My point is, you have to make them different enough to make them interesting, but small enough of a threat for their appearance to have a little bit of trek-lore credibility, but at the same time, still have a coherently antagonistic relationship with the heroes.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The cool thing about using the Borg is, you could justify any change in appearance or behaviour as being the result of them having assimilated different species in the last 26+ years of the AU and thus evolved differently.

 

[Sindatur]

In the 24th century, the Borg are not at all picky, they'll assimilate anything more sophisticated than a talking ape.

Actually, didn't they pass on Assimilating The Kazon?

 

[The Wormhole]

In the 24th century, the Borg are not at all picky, they'll assimilate anything more sophisticated than a talking ape.

Actually, didn't they pass on Assimilating The Kazon?

Indeed, they did.

 

[Uhurock]

Not only no, but as we used to say in NYC, FOK no.

 

[Robert_T_April]

Why do people keep bringing up the Borg?
The Federation doesn't make contact with the Borg for well over 100 years!...and that's only because Q accelerated that by several decades.
The story in the next Trek needs to centered around the Klingons as Into Darkness set up. How totally ridiculous would it be to "shoe horn" the Borg into the next movie? I would be embarrassed for the producers and writers, and Paramount if that were the case. Not to mention, totally disgusted!

 

[The Wormhole]

Why do people keep bringing up the Borg?
The Federation doesn't make contact with the Borg for well over 100 years!...and that's only because Q accelerated that by several decades.
The story in the next Trek needs to centered around the Klingons as Into Darkness set up. How totally ridiculous would it be to "shoe horn" the Borg into the next movie? I would be embarrassed for the producers and writers, and Paramount if that were the case. Not to mention, totally disgusted!

Actually, it makes complete sense the Borg would be in the next movie. Khan was already shoe-horned into STID for supposed marketing reasons, and thus the Borg could just as easily be in the next movie for the same marketing reasons. That is among the non-fans and casual fans they are rather recognizable. Hell, ask any random person on the street what the word assimilate means and they'll likely answer "what those Borg guys in Star Trek do" even if they're not Trekkies. The Borg have a catchphrase which I'm sure Bad Robot will love mangling the hell out of. And finally, zombies are at the moment "cool" so Orci likely will want his Trek movie to fit in with the current cool standards. Besides, what STID set-up with the Klingons has already been dealt with in the comics, making it clear there are no plans to go there with Trek XIII otherwise Orci wouldn't have signed off on it.

 

[ralph]

What must be considered in Trek 50th anniversary? The Original Series? A little of everything? A villain specifically or more villians? I think the Borg would be very scary (using 3D effects) but there is a dark side also, no-win scenario and this was approached in STID. In my opinion, ST3 likely would center on Klingons. They are well known villians. Borgs, not so much. By the way, Klingons were presented in last film.

Damon Lindelof offers one hint: "You can never see enough Klingons, and I think in this film we've Given the audience a little taste, but there's a promise que Also there's a larger conflict on the horizon, and would be fun to que see. "