"The Borg usually collect their dead."

[Stevil2001]

To get my wife up to speed before Picard, I've been rewatching some TNG episodes that I think will be relevant with her; tonight we watched "I Borg."

Riker's line "The Borg usually collect their dead" stuck out to me. They usually do? I don't remember the Borg coming for their dead in "Q Who" or "The Best of Both Worlds." Am I just forgetting?

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

It seemed to go by the wayside with VOY, too. Presumably it had to do with the Borg not wanting their technology to fall into enemy hands, but when the Borg were killed on a Borg ship, it might not have been such a priority (since it wasn't in enemy hands). Seven discussed reusing some Borg stuff from the deceased as being part of the Borg way.

From a production standpoint, they probably didn't want to invest into a lot of extra special effects to do more de-materialization stuff, and it probably wouldn't have helped the pace of the action either. But it did seem to go by the wayside for the most part after being established fairly clearly.

 

[NCC-73515]

They took out some implants in Q Who, and the dead ones in BOBW were also dissolved. I guess that's what he meant.

 

[Stevil2001]

They took out some implants in Q Who, and the dead ones in BOBW were also dissolved. I guess that's what he meant.

Yeah, I thought of that, but that seems different than chasing down a crashed ship halfway across the galaxy. I mean, it's necessary for the episode to work, so I get why it's in there, but it seems like a leap based on what we've seen.

Maybe the Federation saw this happen during some of the Borg engagements that must have happened, but have largely been unchronicled. "They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back."

 

[Qonundrum]

Yeah, especially in STFC - if everyone's running around like caffeinated hamsters on meth, to either do the obligatory camera lock-off followed by retakes of the running people would just be too strenuous. Blue screen (green screen, yellow screen, color separation overlay) would work but only if people on screen are positioned in ways that would make placement of corpses easy to insert (and with comparable lighting).

Granted, today's technology makes it comparatively easy to mask existing objects... case in point:

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Also expensive, and harder to match up lighting 100% perfectly, but it works -- and it's the inverse of what was done for "Trials and Tribble-ations". Taking masks of running people and putting digitally behind them, disintegrating Borg bits could be done.