I maintain that the Borg were only really good as a species once, in "Q Who?" Even Best of Both Worlds, as good of an episode as it is, already started deballing the Borg. Once Maurice Hurley, who came up with the idea, left, the writers could never figure out how to work with a hive mind and instead had to keep coming up with ways to make the Borg a more traditional bad guy. (I go back here to my theory that Michael Piller was overrated as a writer and showrunner.)
The Borg
- Thread starter TheCaptainsLog
- Start date
Yeah I feel like the mystery and ambiguity of the Borg early on is what made them seem like such aesthetically appealing villains.
While I think Hugh and later Seven of Nine were fantastic additions to the franchise, I do think something was lost when the Borg started to feel less like a force of nature, though I think BoBW is fine in its own right. I largely blame FC for introducing the queen and VOY for its overreliance on and hence underpowering of them.
The PROD Borg episode was also a lowpoint, as the Borg are innately not a kid-friendly concept, so having Our Lovable Band of Misfits defeat them was especially unlikely without defanging them.
The PROD Borg episode was also a lowpoint, as the Borg are innately not a kid-friendly concept, so having Our Lovable Band of Misfits defeat them was especially unlikely without defanging them.
The Borg peaked extremely early.
They were never as terrifying and fascinating as their debut appearance (as a kid they actually gave me nightmares). BOBW was brilliant, of course, a height TNG arguably never quite scaled again, but even all those years ago I felt the way they were defeated defanged them significantly (“sleep, Data, sleep”, like putting your laptop into standby mode).
I, Borg worked as a Trekkian morality tale but Hugh was just way too cute in terms of writing and performance. Descent started promisingly but ended with one of the worst and most pitiful episodes of the entire series.
FC did some things really well; they were scary again, but they were also kind of generic space zombies and I loathed the concept and execution of the hypersexual Queen (“was it good for you, Data?”). And Voyager just turned them into increasingly dull villains of the week. Just a shadow of what once they were.
Nope, Q Who remains their best and most effective appearance. Diminishing returns from thereon in.
They were never as terrifying and fascinating as their debut appearance (as a kid they actually gave me nightmares). BOBW was brilliant, of course, a height TNG arguably never quite scaled again, but even all those years ago I felt the way they were defeated defanged them significantly (“sleep, Data, sleep”, like putting your laptop into standby mode).
I, Borg worked as a Trekkian morality tale but Hugh was just way too cute in terms of writing and performance. Descent started promisingly but ended with one of the worst and most pitiful episodes of the entire series.
FC did some things really well; they were scary again, but they were also kind of generic space zombies and I loathed the concept and execution of the hypersexual Queen (“was it good for you, Data?”). And Voyager just turned them into increasingly dull villains of the week. Just a shadow of what once they were.
Nope, Q Who remains their best and most effective appearance. Diminishing returns from thereon in.
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