The Buildup and Anticipation to the Borg

[Admiral_Young]

I was thinking about this the other day and thought to myself how excited I was about seeing the Borg in Voyager. I remember thinking they gotta show the Borg and how this crew would deal with them compared with the TNG crew. We got the first Borg episode "Blood Fever", when Chakotay discovers the Borg head. After that everything seemed to go down hill with poor execution and eventually of course overuse of the Borg, even to the extent of introducing a Borg character and liberating her from the collective.

What are your memories and feelings regarding this? Were you excited? What did you think would happen when Voyager encountered them? Did you like the Borg episodes? I will give Voyager credit for expanding our understandnig and providing background for them. Just the use of the Borg for me felt off somehow.

 

[Anwar]

I was excited by the first glimpse seen in "Blood Fever", but then I quickly realized it probably wouldn't end well when you think of how overpowered TNG made the Borg out to be and how VOY was just one weak ship with no advantages.

 

[Harvey]

I liked the slow build-up beginning in "Blood Fever" and culminating in "Scorpion." I'm not sure where the whole thing went to hell after that--maybe "Dark Frontier?"

Kes threw Voyager out of Borg space in "The Gift." Outside of Seven back-tracking into their space in "The Raven," I'm not sure we ever had a good reason for seeing them again.

But it has been a while since I bothered with Star Trek: Voyager.

 

[BlobVanDam]

I only watched VOY for the first time recently, and all in a short span of time, so my opinion may be different to most.
I thought Blood Fever was a nice episode, and even though it wasn't a full on Borg episode, I liked what it added to the Borg story, and it also set up the de-assimilation of 7 of 9 nicely (even if not intentional).

Scorpion was a great episode, and I think easily the best thing VOY did with the Borg. Maybe the alliance with the humans weakened them, but I liked the lesser of two evils storyline.
Dark Frontier was ok, but not particularly memorable. Even skimming the episode now, I can't remember a lot about it, and I only saw it a month or so ago.
Unimatrix Zero wasn't terrible, but didn't feel like it was worth using the Borg for a big double episode. I thought the concept was a bit silly, and humanized the Borg too much.
And unlike most, I liked Endgame. Again it didn't feel like the Borg aspect was necessary at all, but I thought it was still done ok.
Then we have the minor episodes like Collective and Drone. Collective was pretty bad. Drone was pretty good. It had more elements to the story than just reusing the Borg.

Overall I don't think they were overused, but they weren't used very well. After Scorpion it was downhill. I don't think they were bad episodes, but not as good as they should have been for big double episodes featuring the Borg.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

All over the place -- the Star Trek: Voyager motto.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

"Papa?"

Single worst Borg bit. I mean come on. I know there's an in universe reason for it, BQ found him and kept around as an attraction for 7, but it just struck me as very hammy. And I love 7.

I liked the Borg, I was never very keen on the Borg Queen's supposed fascination with Janeway and 7. Some of the Borg Queen's dealings with Janeway were very convoluted. However I still enjoyed the series being Borg heavy, great villain, always interesting (to me) if not completely coherent.

The 7 story arc itself is my favorite in all of Trek and of course you can't have that without Borg.

 

[Garak007]

After Scorpion part 1 the borg were not the same ever again

 

[Markira]

After Scorpion part 1 the borg were not the same ever again

I agree. I feel like VOY kind of neutered the Borg, unfortunately. I never took them seriously as a threat after they de-fanged and reverse-assimilated Seven of Nine.

 

[Anwar]

Q said that there were more powerful beings in the Galaxy than the Borg. "Scorpion" simply showed he was telling the truth; and if Picard could be de-assimilated and Hugh (who had been a Borg since birth) could become an individual than there's nothing wrong with Seven.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Q said that there were more powerful beings in the Galaxy than the Borg. "Scorpion" simply showed he was telling the truth; and if Picard could be de-assimilated and Hugh (who had been a Borg since birth) could become an individual than there's nothing wrong with Seven.

Interesting.. maybe the Borg's best power lies in their sheer numbers and expendability.

 

[Anwar]

The problem with the Borg was that they weren't well-enough defined in how powerful various Borg ships were.

I'd have made it clear that Borg Probe ships are pure cannon fodder: No adaptive shields, regular weapons.

Tactical Spheres/Cubes: Next level up, meant for fleet engagements. Still smaller than Assimilation Cubes, they have slower-working adaptive shields and regeneration capacity. Can still be overpowered by a squad of ships attacking at once but dangerous.

Assimilation Cubes: The killer, these buggers can take out civilizations. The type seen in "Q Who?" and "Best of Both Worlds".

If they'd made that clear, VOY could've just spent most of its Borg stories fighting Probe ships and Tactical Spheres/Cubes. The audience wouldn't mind as much because they'd already know that these ships are far inferior to the ships from TNG.

 

[Kai Winn]

I was thinking about this the other day and thought to myself how excited I was about seeing the Borg in Voyager. I remember thinking they gotta show the Borg and how this crew would deal with them compared with the TNG crew. We got the first Borg episode "Blood Fever", when Chakotay discovers the Borg head. After that everything seemed to go down hill with poor execution and eventually of course overuse of the Borg, even to the extent of introducing a Borg character and liberating her from the collective.

What are your memories and feelings regarding this? Were you excited? What did you think would happen when Voyager encountered them? Did you like the Borg episodes? I will give Voyager credit for expanding our understandnig and providing background for them. Just the use of the Borg for me felt off somehow.

overuse of the borg in voyager? tng had more borg episodes including the movie, and while voyager had a borg aboard, and crossed extensive borg space; enterprise never came nowhere near it. i rather feel that tng neuterized the borg, there was the story of lovely hugh, and evil lore recruited a faction of them, and their vessels, and workforce became quite harmless in first contact. credit to tng for introducing them, but the mess it left was fixed by voy.

 

[Quinton O'Connor]

I... really don't think TNG had more Borg episodes than VOY. I mean, I'm not digging out statistics but I rewatched TNG several months ago and they really didn't crop up that often.

Hell, hold on...

...yeah.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Borg

TNG (6) (add the movie and that makes 7...)
VOY (22)

 

[Anwar]

If you mark two-parters as one episode, TNG had 4 Borg appearances. The intro had them lose, and only be saved by Q, BOBW was the awaited confrontation, "I, Borg" let them hide (though the way they did it made no sense) and "Descent" was a weakened breakway group that didn't have adaptive or regenerative powers.

So in all of TNG, the actual Collective was only beaten once and even then it was on a technicality since it was the Collective that inadvertently destroyed the invasion force and not the Federation's weapons.

VOY would've been better off if they just outright said that the Probe ships and Spheres are vastly weaker than the Cubes, never have VOY battle a Cube and just have them fight the Probes and Spheres.

 

[Lynx]

I was never happy to see the Borg show up in Voyager.

As I see it, they were already wasted in TNG with characters like Hugh and the Borg Queen. They had already been "humanized" and everything that made them mysterious and exciting was lost.

When The Borg arrived in Voyager, everything about exploring and meeting new species were gone. From that moment it became too much of the Borg with adventures which could actually have taken place in TNG in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

 

[Anwar]

They had already been "humanized" and everything that made them mysterious and exciting was lost.

I keep reading this over and over again, how exactly does being "mysterious" make something good? Were the Cardassians or Romulans "mysterious", no they weren't but that didn't keep them from being interesting.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I found them more tragic the less mysterious they were. You came to see them as not a faceless enemy but as ordinary lives stolen a thousand fold over. The more humanized they were to us the more horrible it all was.

 

[CobraCommander]

The way I figure it was that the Borg should have been destroyed in FC. I don't understand how they could all be dying on the Ent-E and yet all be alive and well in the Delta Quadrant a few months later. If the Borg were that dependant on the Queen, how could she risk taking herself into the past. I don't believe its been ever shown that the Queen had deputy Queens in waiting. If counting the events in FC, I feel that Voyager should have entered Borg space that was in absolute disarray. There could have been factions vying for power and a civil war could have been occuring since the Queen was gone. Instead, the Queen was back as if nothing ever happened in FC. There was no reference by the Borg as to what effect FC had on their hive. Seven only mentions later how the Borg's interference helped humans make first contact with Vulcan. If FC is ignored, Scorpion was a great two parter. It was the peak of Voyager. Cobra

 

[Anwar]

I'm of two minds:

1) The Borg should have all been wiped out in BOBW, the Cube should have been the ONLY Cube carrying the entire Borg population.

2) The Borg should have all been killed when the Queen died, or "Scorpion" should have mentioned that the 8472 killed nearly all the Borg leaving only a small flotilla left by the time the story began.

Essentially, there never should have been a huge Borg Collective left by the time of Voyager.

 

[Harvey]

Actually, killing off most of the Borg after "Scorpion" isn't a bad idea. It wouldn't change many stories ("Hope and Fear," I suppose, would have to be revised a little) and the resulting power vacuum would have allowed for some interesting stories to play out.