The Borg 'de-individualizing'...

[Lance]

... has this ever been adressed anywhere? Either in canon obliquely, or else in spin-off form? Novels, comics, etc?

We all recognize that the movie First Contact made a conscious choice to retcon the Borg back to basics. After the TV show had basically taken them, boldly, into new directions by deciding not to just keep them as faceless enemy swarm but to introduce individualism into the collective, even the Descent two parter basically leaves them fundamentally changed. And the implication could be that Hugh's Borg are splinters from the collective, but that's never spelled out AFAIK, and it's equally possible that the whole collective has been changed (this certainly seems to be what they were trying to say). And yet FC essentially reset-buttons them back to their badass season 2/3 selves without explaination, and then VOY compounds this firstly by treating 7 of 9 as a unique case of a Borg being rehabilitated back into individualism (not even so much as a mention of Hugh or his kind), then again with the Borg children.

The only conclusion we have is that in-universe, Hugh's lot were either a splinter group that went no where (though the lack of mentioning them on VOY is curious to say the least), or the Borg collective overcame the spread of the individuals and either found a way to absorb them back, or else simply continued on without any serious effects. Again, Descent seems to suggest otherwise. And either way, ignoring Hugh and his lot is definitely a retcon.

Has this ever been tackled? Thoughts?

 

[-Brett-]

I never thought Hugh's group were meant to represent the whole race. There was only the one ship, and far too few Borg.

As for Voyager ignoring them, I don't think it's necessarily a good assumption that everyone knows about everything that happened on every ship off the top of their heads.

 

[Lance]

Well that's why they have a computer database? Sure, I take your point, but the Hugh Borg thing was known to more than the Enterprise, as Adm Nechehev tears him a hole for not using Hugh as a opportunity to destroy the collective. So the whole affair would surely be in the database.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm pretty sure "Descent" implies the entirety of the Borg had become individuals as Hugh's individuality had spread around the collective. Keep in mind this was long before the size of the Borg (trillions of drones across 10,000 light years +) was established in Voyager.

"Descent" wasn't great, I'm happy it's retconned down to one ship turning individual by FC, VOY and the novels.

 

[johnnybear]

I felt it was just the one cube that was affected rather than the entire species! But then again maybe that's why they reengineered their race to look like cybernetic zombies from First Contact onwards?
JB

 

[Lance]

I guess my big deal is that it wasn't even retconned to one ship, it was forgotten about altogether. I'd have expected some lip service about it, if not necessarily in the movie then certainly when VOY started rehabing it's own Borg babe.

If Riker can look up the polywater incident in "The Naked Now", I'd expect Voyager's crew to be able to do the same about something like this. And it'd surprise me if 'Borg cube becomes individual beings' wasn't something that would've been known about. Unless it was classified for some reason.

 

[Nyotarules]

The TNG relaunch novels are worth reading about The Borg, including what happened to Hugh and his team

 

[Timo]

When one believes in a galaxy-spanning, ancient Collective, one automatically also believes in powerful self-protecting measures that make short work of infections like this.

The thing is, we don't need to wait until VOY to see the scope of the Collective (and the Cube-amputating countermeasures in action). The very first episode directly dealing with them already has dialogue on the scope - the "hundreds of centuries old" bit comes from "Q Who?".

If anything, VOY scales the Borg back, suggesting they don't rule everything beyond the UFP "knowledge horizon" but prefer to lurk in the shadows despite having access to every corner of Milky Way. It's even possible for a culture to mistakenly think of the Borg as having been a minor nuisance less than a millennium ago, based on their modest contribution to local affairs.

It would seem inconsistent for our heroes to be able to make a dent in the Collective by the precedent of "Q Who?" already. And consistent for them to be in the mistaken belief that they could. But once they get disabused of that idea, they shouldn't pay all that much attention to past missteps such as the "Picard half-accidentally made thousands or at least hundreds of Drones briefly rebel!" letdown.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Coyote Annabis]

Even with their collective mind, if there are millions and millions of Borg, it would take time for individuality to propagate through the entire collective, especially if the collective is treating it like a virus and actively fighting it.

The full result of Hugh's integration may not be seen for decades, if at all.

I like to think that his ship was the only one to suddenly break away, and was thus excited from the collective as a whole, but the damage was done and over time, more Borg would develop a sense of individuality. It's fun to think about how that could turn out. Imagine if his little cadre grew to a significant size by taking in other outcast Borg tolerated by the collective on the premise of later integration.

 

[johnnybear]

Obviously the First Contact producers wanted a scarier version of the Borg other than the white faced goons dressed in black and holding appliances on their limbs! These Borg literally replaced the parts of the human body with metal devices and even showed the nanites flowing into their intended victims like a virus damaging the capillaries and draining away the colour of the skin and losing hair before succumbing to the metallic augmentation which bursts through their skin a bit like long forgotten shrapnel in soldiers of the First World War! Question is are we to assume that the television counterparts of these space age zombies are exactly the same as those here and in VOY or are they a more deadly upgraded army?
JB

 

[Lance]

The Borg implants really did look like kitchen appliances didn't they? I could've sworn that twitchy-twirly gizmo was a can opener Mind you, I suppose "your biological and technological advances will be added to our own" should rightly include kitchenware from across the galaxy

 

[johnnybear]

Maybe they found such implements while raiding a race of Gourmets in their space station kitchen?
JB