The Borg Queen

[archeryguy1701]

Something's always kinda bothered me in Voyager, and that is the Borg Queen. Aside from Voyager as a series ruining the Borg by making them the throw-away bad guy of the week, I always felt the Queen took something away from them.

So, my question is, what exactly was the Queen purpose? I know from a cinematic P.O.V., it was to give the Borg a face, but in the Star Trek universe, what exactly does the Queen do? Could anyone else figure out her reason for being that "intergral" part of the hive mind?

 

[Timo]

She could be a simple spokesperson, like Locutus, and as such would lie a lot about what she is.

Or she could be an incarnation of the Collective mind, called forth whenever the Collective wishes to incarnate.

Perhaps she is a special type of Drone for thinking sneaky thoughts.

Or the she is a parasitic lifeform living off the body of the Collective, having either emerged from it, or having entered from the outside.

Other ideas?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[archeryguy1701]

I have thought about her being a simple spokesperson, but they always seemed to have made her seem far bigger and far more important than drones such as Locutus.

Of course, the problem could always be that I'm just overthinking this whole thing

 

[Guy Gardener]

Well lets use "observation" to figure out her role in the scheme of things.

In dark frontier she's sending messages to seven and bargaining for Voyager's crews safety in return for her return. Seven and the Queen plan an assault on a world, and they figure counter measures or else the Borg would have surely failed.

In Unimatrix One, she's like a whitchfinder general on about a Borg Inquisition. She had the personal responsibility to destroy several Borg Vessels, crewed by a couple hundred thousand Drones just to strong arm Janeway into telling her about UNimatrix Zero. O, and she wanted to fuck Harry.

In the last one, End Game, she seemed to be like the fat controller from Thomas the tank Engine.

The Queen had been seen to seduce people into becoming Borg and they don't necessarily remember it after they have been recovered. Data, Picard, janeway. I was thinking there was some sort of drug used to make everyone docile during the assimilation proccess, but what if an AI queen is personally talking around/seducing/used car salemanning every potential drone into being rank and file at super speed... Well that's a lot of story telling.

Stuff.

but what does that add up to if "she" refuses to take responsibility for the collective and the meat of her body is adaptable or there are many queens? Or even if the Kriege Queen got pissed after end game and traveled back in time to stop the destruction of the transwarp hub by first altering Wolf 359 and the assault on Sector 001, and then the battle during 2370 and the return into the past to destroy earths warp program.

I would go as far as to say that she is a loud and flashy appendix that the borg use to draw fire away from important issues, y'know how Bush distracts the Press while Big Oil makes the decisions... Except that in First Contact, when Picard ordered the fleet to concentrate their fire power on a single point on the assaulting cube... That he was obviously targeting the queen himself as if he was following his dick.

 

[Akiraprise]

Guy you must have a lot of pent up sexual tension.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Oh no, it's all pent out. Pent out all over the place.

Sevens description of the Borg to Harry (You keep saying I am Borg, but what does that really mean?) seemed to be describing some roving AI intellect which hasn't got much to do with the meat of the drones who ably go about the busy work of the collective. So if the true nature of the Borg is operating in a different plain of existence that would make the Queen a foothold holding onto the real wold for some reaosn or another other than communication.

 

[The Borg Queen]

She is the Borg.

 

[Kegek]

The Queen is the natural result of the transformation of the Borg into basically vampiric ants.

Allow me to explain: In "Q Who?", the Borg are only interested in assimilating our technology. They operate with a hive mind - millions of beings born in a vat working together in unison.

In "The Best of Both Worlds", the Borg are the same as stated, only now they make an exception to assimilate a man (a rather cumbersome process in the episode), so he can serve as a mouthpiece - Locutus being the Latin for 'to speak' - and also provide them with handy tactical data. IIRC, "Descent" even calls this an atypical Borg action.

In "I, Borg", it is shown that members of the hive mind, while willing to be members of the hive, might reject it if given the option of individualism.

And in "First Contact", the Borg now assimilate at will. Assimilation is their main, apparently only, form of reproduction, and instead of evidently one cybernetic race the episode shows that they have many aliens with these implants. Now instead of a hive mind, they are a slave mind - the cybernetic implants enslave those they are inserted to and cause evident psychological harm. Now, as a slave mind, they needed some kind of master, some organ to whip it into shape, as it 'twere...

Enter stage left: The Borg Queen. They're vampiric in that they create new Borg by corrupting existing life, and ants in that they are led by a Queen. Voyager didn't really play with this formula much - it just drove it into the ground.

 

[archeryguy1701]

See, this is what I saw happening:
I didn't really think they changed. I figured in "Q who" they just assumed they were in it for the tech because the first thing they went after was the computer, and then didn't have the opportunity to take any people with them. The Borg used that information from the computer to decide Earth was a prime target for assimilation for one reason or another and went after it. They took Picard because they felt that having a human speak for and facilitate the assimilation process would make the humans more willing. Also First Contact established the Queen was around at BoBW. Your Slave mind concept makes sense, though. The need for a more powerful mind to hold it all together, make it run smoothly.

Personally, I think Voyager was the worst thing to happen to the Borg. While Voyager wasn't clobbering them left and right, they weren't the big scary bad guy they used to be. First Contact was, IMHO, their last good showing as a bad guy.

 

[Unicron]

I think it's become something of a fan myth that the Borg only cared about technology in "Q Who?" as opposed to living entities. There is no reason to assume they saw organics as anything more than a form of technology to be consumed, and I think that supports Q's statements very well. The fact that the Borg were already pretty much as we've seen them (i.e. cyborgs with clearly assimilated drones) supports this.

As for the queen, I've personally seen her as a central hub or coordinator for the whole collective. It's never been clear whether there is only one queen, or multiple queens acting as coordinators. The latter seems more plausible to me, as it adds a layer of redundancy and makes the queen less vulnerable as a target.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's not a fan myth.

Guinin said all they want is your technology in QWho, and then in the best of Both worlds they have an on screen conversation about the change in tactics of the Borg that they are now after people too. Though they should have figured that out from the neutral Zone colony excavations from the season finale of season one.

 

[Delta1]

Kegek said:
In "The Best of Both Worlds", the Borg are the same as stated, only now they make an exception to assimilate a man (a rather cumbersome process in the episode), so he can serve as a mouthpiece - Locutus being the Latin for 'to speak' -

That would be Locutus's cousin, Loqui. Locutus is a participle. Taking it as a substantive adjective, you could translate it as, "The Speaking Drone" (locutus servus).

I've entertained the thought that the Queen is a parasite living in the Collective, but the time to reveal that would've been in First Contact. Now I mostly think she's some kind of epiphenomenon of the hive mind, an executive faculty developed to handle things that occur outside the hive mind's regular, insect-like automated functions.

 

[TeutonicNights]

It still doesn't make sense. If a Queen really was present in BoBW, wouldn't she have been easily able to shut down the sleep command?

Also the Queen can't be the "ruler" of the hive mind, because
- there are multiple Queens (two at least).
- Based on the actions of the Queen in FC, someone like her wouldn't just send one cube at a time when the Transwarp tech allows them to head into Fed space with 100 ships at once.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Twp actresses. One Queen. We have been lead to believe.

That silly Season Three Episode where Chakotay had a Borg 0rgy, those Drones were from the the 2364 invasion. It seems that the borg sent prisoners back t the delta Quadrant. The Queen might have returned with them.

Unimatrix Zero is/was a parasite.

I like her better with no explanation.

 

[Delta1]

TeutonicNights said:
It still doesn't make sense. If a Queen really was present in BoBW, wouldn't she have been easily able to shut down the sleep command?

No. When you are forced into unconsciousness, can you will yourself into wakefulness? The epiphenomenon depends on the phenomenon; the Queen is generated by the hive mind and if it malfunctions, she does, too.

Also the Queen can't be the "ruler" of the hive mind, because
- there are multiple Queens (two at least).

Kind of. We don't know how many queens the hive mind is capable of generating and supporting simultaneously. It can probably create as many as it needs, according to certain preprogrammed triggers, each one operating within its segment of the collective. If you want to expand on the queen bee metaphor spread by Frakes back in '96, you could say queens develop naturally all the time, and are either killed, take over, or flee and establish new hives.

I would tend to believe the queen is latent in the hive mind wherever it meets certain conditions (size, echelon in the hierarchy), occasionally becomes active, but rarely takes physical form.

- Based on the actions of the Queen in FC, someone like her wouldn't just send one cube at a time when the Transwarp tech allows them to head into Fed space with 100 ships at once.

But that's exactly what the queen did in FC, she sent a single Borg cube to Earth.

 

[TeutonicNights]

Delta1 said:

But that's exactly what the queen did in FC, she sent a single Borg cube to Earth.

Or, the hive mind did it, and let her handle the mission

 

[Guy Gardener]

If they have one mind, then why did she have to vocalize her orders, or even "nod" to the drones to bump them into action?

It all has to be misdirection. Like how batman has all his body armour right underneath the big glowing yellow flurecent bat sigil on his chest.

 

[TeutonicNights]

I've always thought of her as an entity that can operate on her own for maximum efficiency in special operations (Like the one in FC), but is linked directly to the hive and the hive mind can speak through her and override her actions.

For example, while Picard and Worf are on their mission to take out the deflector dish, battling drones, she calmly does her thang as though nothing is happening, but suddenly, after Worf destroyed the dish, she looks up-shocked-as if the hive now "informs" her of the developments that have occurred,"force" their new orders on her and speak through her again "we have changed our plans"

Like the hive makes the general decisions, sending one cube after another, like a computer would do.
A Queen like the one in FC, however, acts very much like a human, making cunning moves, acting as the situation requires. It seems to me someone of her caliber would order 1000 Cubes to the worlds of the Federation, the Klingons and Romulans and end it in one strike.
But she can't, because her power is limited to single operations like the timesphere attack on Earth.
That's also why all of her drones self-destruct after her "death".

 

[Timo]

Of course, the Queen could be a more literal analogy to the queen of an insect hive - the lowest of slaves, an automaton dedicated to a single purpose that is beneath the rest of the hive and would hamper the hive's efforts if its other members had to participate.

The Collective could locally sprout a Queen or three whenever it needs to think dirty. The Queen would be a special Drone that has to tolerate a less than perfect contact with the rest of the Collective - sometimes even to communicate verbally. This forced isolation makes her something of an independent thinker, useful for limited tactical purposes (such as ST:FC) or for certain failsafe functions (such as "Unimatrix Zero"). While she performs this dirty work, the regular members of the Collective can drone on happily in their usual search for perfection.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Guy Gardener]

That just doesn't mesh. The Borg is every useful aspect of every personality they wanted acting in complete unison. Independence, even compartmentalizing, detracts from the perfection of the Borg singular purpose.

Did the Queen in first contact refer to herself as the Queen? Which is an altogether different question from asking how Voyagers magnificent chief writers twisted the original concept into their sweeps week stunts, because I think Seven might have called her the Queen, but then she might have just been adopting the terminology and language of the people in her company?

She could be a hell of a lot lower on the totem than "Queen" no matter what "we" call her because of our "narrow" interpretation of the events we have witnessed.