The Borg in JJverse

[The Green Mushroom]

Assuming that the Federation we saw in the first five seconds of the movie was the same Federation that existed before history changed, then I would have trouble believing that Kirk could defeat the Borg we all know and loved and then loathed. (I will admit that if the Borg Queen continues to become more and more decadent, then her efforts to make Kirk Locutus Model -1.0 would result in Kirk ending the collective forever and the Borg Queen carrying his baby)

There is another option. Do we really know that much about the 23rd Century Borg? Perhaps they were significantly less technological empowered and dependent. We could, for example, have a story where the 23rd Century Borg show up after having heard about their descendants fun and games with Cochrane and then Archer to invade the Federation. Only they are far from the challenge. Instead of being a race of bionic zombies, they are just a race of zombies. Individual Borg are easy to kill. Individual (but much smaller than familiar) cubes are easy to destroy. But they can still adapt. Instead of having one cube smash 39 ships, we have one ship smash 39 cubes only to find that 300 more or coming and they are more prepared. The race is for Kirk and Spock to defeat them before they become too strong.

Or something.

 

[JoeZhang]

Or they could just show up because it could make for an interesting two hour film?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

No! They must be logically and canonically enmeshed in the Trekiverse!!

 

[Jerikka Dawn]

The thing is the Borg Queen doesn't come off as the way you describe her, there several times where the Borg Drones are doing something and she orders them to stop it, like when the drones attacked Data in FC and the Borg Queen orders them to stop it. If the Borg Queen is just a physical representation of the collective mind, she should not need to order drones around.

True, but I view that as a representation for the audience so we know what was happening. I mean, technically, we shouldn't be able to see the beams of directed energy weapons like phasers - ever see a beam coming out of a laser pointer? But it's included as a representation so the viewer can see what is happening. With the queen, if everything was just in her mind, the viewer would have no way of knowing. We'd just see the drones attacking Data in FC, then suddenly stop, and we'd have no idea why. So they have her making some action so we know that she is the cause.

OT, but to be fair, phasers are not lasers. No, we shouldn't see the beam from a laser weapon, but that rule doesn't necessarily apply to a beam of energized particles, which is what a phaser is. Not to detract from your point though -- just saying there are better examples because we actually should see phaser beams

 

[Tiberius]

The thing is the Borg Queen doesn't come off as the way you describe her, there several times where the Borg Drones are doing something and she orders them to stop it, like when the drones attacked Data in FC and the Borg Queen orders them to stop it. If the Borg Queen is just a physical representation of the collective mind, she should not need to order drones around.

True, but I view that as a representation for the audience so we know what was happening. I mean, technically, we shouldn't be able to see the beams of directed energy weapons like phasers - ever see a beam coming out of a laser pointer? But it's included as a representation so the viewer can see what is happening. With the queen, if everything was just in her mind, the viewer would have no way of knowing. We'd just see the drones attacking Data in FC, then suddenly stop, and we'd have no idea why. So they have her making some action so we know that she is the cause.

OT, but to be fair, phasers are not lasers. No, we shouldn't see the beam from a laser weapon, but that rule doesn't necessarily apply to a beam of energized particles, which is what a phaser is. Not to detract from your point though -- just saying there are better examples because we actually should see phaser beams

Like the time we SAW the transfer of memories from one person to another in Dax's Zhiantara?

 

[ichab]

I loved the Borg, but they don't belong in this timeline. I realize this is an alternate reality and anything can go, but I hope they stick to either races in TOS era or create new ones. If you want a scary race, how about Gorn? What could be more scary than a race of monster lizards taking over the ship?

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Seeing as how how JJ wants to make the ships huge (insert innuedo about compensating here), a cube would be the size of a small moon!

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Gorn are the baddies in the prequel videogame (events from which will supposedly be referenced in the next movie):
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3i5kKiXoys[/yt]

 

[Tiberius]

Seeing as how how JJ wants to make the ships huge (insert innuedo about compensating here), a cube would be the size of a small moon!

And if they use that line from SW, I'll never forgive him!

 

[M'Sharak]

Seeing as how how JJ wants to make the ships huge (insert innuedo about compensating here), a cube would be the size of a small moon!

And if they use that line from SW, I'll never forgive him!

 

[Edit_XYZ]

If they're going to bring back the Borg, they need to be treated with respect. If they're supposed to be so fearsome, the writing needs to validate that idea, not undercut it.

Starfleet cannot be allowed to beat them except under very unusual circumstances, ie, the writers come up with a way for Starfleet to be astonishingly clever about it. And even then, this should happen rarely.

And assimilation is P E R M A M E N T. No more go-backs, no wiggle room. Allowing characters to be de-Borged just because they are main characters really undercuts the Borg's credibility.

And NO QUEEN!

Yeah that just about covers it.

A self-defeating prescription.

If you make the borg have no chinks in its armor, it'll utterly crush the federation. No amount of 'clever' can overcome the HUGE advantages - in terms of military technology/intelligence and numbers - that the borg enjoys - without said chinks in its armor.
The implausibility will become that it somehow fails to bitch slap the federation on an ongoing basis; more than enough to break the suspension of disbelief.

The writers' job is to make this plausible, that's what they're getting paid for. If the Borg are going to continue to be wussified, then its best to ignore them. I just outlined the problem, it's not my job to come up with a solution. I know it's not an easy problem to solve without recourse to some silly contrivance like Q puts up a magic barrier to stop the Borg.

A, yes - a credible way of consistently stopping an unstoppable juggernaut, with no exploitable chinks in its armor*.
The fact that this problem has no solution is a fatal weakness of your concept.

*After this, the writers could take on something easier - like creating a functioning free energy device.

As for the Queen, the problem is that she was invented to have some sexy babe harass Data in the movie, and it really had nothing to do with what makes the Borg interesting, namely their inhuman-ness.

They should be too indifferent to humans to bother creating a puppet with which to communicate - the way the Borg "communicate" is by assimilating your ass! - as as already mentioned, Queenie acted more like a individual than a puppet anyway. And why use the same puppet all the time? The Borg could assimilate a crew member and use that person as a puppet, that would freak the humans out real good.

The borg can be impossible to communicate to - too different, too alien - without being unstoppable.
We are talking about 2 very different attributes.