THIS; was the Borg

[RobertScorpio]

There is a story out (I would hot link but I am not sure if we can hot link to newstory) today about how they now believe there is one super-mega colony of ants taking over the world. These Argentine ants, which are in south-american, USA and JAPAN, and parts of Europe, act as if they are in the same colony...

This is how I thought of the Borg. A colony of "ants" that, when a scout found something of value, would swarm and come get it. Bees are often more compared with the Borg, but not me...ants. But, as Q/Guinan state, there was no way to negotiate with the borg because they had no leader, just the common collective...

And then...the Queen came in FC and changed all that and made the Borg just another bumpy headed race with a leader (in this case a horny borg queen) and the Borg, IMO, from that moment on were de-clawed; or jumped the shark if you will.

Anyway, if you can, check this story out about the ants and their super colony. Its all over the place (I saw it on Drudgereport)

Rob

 

[Luckyflux]

I am undecided on the concept of the Borg Queen. I like putting a face to the villian sort of thing, but the Borg without the Queen seemed so much more ominous when Picard was starting at the vast open chamber of Borg stasis units (I think that was the scene).

Seeing that from Picards point of view made me feel very uneasy. I mean almost everytime Picard uses diplomacy to win, or to difuse a tough situation, or come through in the clutch. But when seeing Picard face a "face-less" enemy such as the vast empty chamber of Borg, I was like "How is Picard going to talk his way out of this one?"

I think Picard made the Borg better that way. Would we all feel the same way if Kirk met the Borg first? Kirk never used diplomacy as much as Picard, so it wouldn't have the same impact as with Picard.

But for some reason I did like the Borg Queen, even though I think they would have been better without her.

As for the ants, well I don't know buddy, yer guess is as good as mine.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I am undecided on the concept of the Borg Queen. I like putting a face to the villian sort of thing, but the Borg without the Queen seemed so much more ominous when Picard was starting at the vast open chamber of Borg stasis units (I think that was the scene).

Seeing that from Picards point of view made me feel very uneasy. I mean almost everytime Picard uses diplomacy to win, or to difuse a tough situation, or come through in the clutch. But when seeing Picard face a "face-less" enemy such as the vast empty chamber of Borg, I was like "How is Picard going to talk his way out of this one?"

I think Picard made the Borg better that way. Would we all feel the same way if Kirk met the Borg first? Kirk never used diplomacy as much as Picard, so it wouldn't have the same impact as with Picard.

But for some reason I did like the Borg Queen, even though I think they would have been better without her.

As for the ants, well I don't know buddy, yer guess is as good as mine.

But thats my point. PICARD could talk anyone into giving in because he just cant stop talking. Q/Guinan pretty much warn him it wont work with the borg because there is no "one" to talk to..and then...HE DID. Sure, she was still bad, but it introduced the concept that maybe someday we might be friends with the Borg and sing Kumbiya my lord around a campfire.

So were Q and Guinan telling him a lie? Or did Berman tell Braga/Moore to put a horny looking BORG babe in the movie so as to tittilate the 14 year old boys...ummm..I think thats why she was in the movie. I mean, talk about peeing all over continuity. I don't remember seeing a BORG QUEEN during BOBW part one or two. And yet, thanks to silly flashbacks, there she is.

It was, and always will be, the moment when the TREK/BORG concept was utterly ruined. And Voyager only made it worse by going down that path as well.

This is all my opinion I must stress.

Rob

 

[NIUPonyBoy]

The Queen IMHO did kill the Borg as a scary enemy without a doubt.

I would have liked to see more Romulan badies and not new race Remans(sp).

At ant rate, I heard a blurb on the radio about that but wasn't really paying attention.

 

[RobertScorpio]

The Queen IMHO did kill the Borg as a scary enemy without a doubt.

I would have liked to see more Romulan badies and not new race Remans(sp).

At ant rate, I heard a blurb on the radio about that but wasn't really paying attention.

Where I live, in San Diego, ants are a fricking pest. What we really need is for someone to find away to make ants...tasty. Then we could feed the starving world with ants. Heck, I would eat them if they made them taste good!

Rob

 

[NIUPonyBoy]

The Queen IMHO did kill the Borg as a scary enemy without a doubt.

I would have liked to see more Romulan badies and not new race Remans(sp).

At ant rate, I heard a blurb on the radio about that but wasn't really paying attention.

Where I live, in San Diego, ants are a fricking pest. What we really need is for someone to find away to make ants...tasty. Then we could feed the starving world with ants. Heck, I would eat them if they made them taste good!

Rob

Fired up with bacon or covered in chocolate makes everything good.

 

[RobertScorpio]

The Queen IMHO did kill the Borg as a scary enemy without a doubt.

I would have liked to see more Romulan badies and not new race Remans(sp).

At ant rate, I heard a blurb on the radio about that but wasn't really paying attention.

Where I live, in San Diego, ants are a fricking pest. What we really need is for someone to find away to make ants...tasty. Then we could feed the starving world with ants. Heck, I would eat them if they made them taste good!

Rob

Fired up with bacon or covered in chocolate makes everything good.

Yeah, it does. But what about filling up a pot with ants, dead of course, and then mixing in some hotsauce and cheese..and then cook for a couple hours of so....might be tasty. Lets get mikey to try it..he eats everything!!!

Rob

 

[Luckyflux]

What do you mean dead ants? Why can't we go all Klingon on those 6 legged buggers and do it Ga'gh (sp) sytle, alive!

Maybe like a live ant fondue...snatch one, dip him in chocolate or cheese, or bacon sauce and just shove him in the pie hole alive and well.

Might work, especially if you grew up with my Moms cooking (just kidding Ma)

 

[Finn]

How? Tunnels under the oceans?

 

[RobertScorpio]

How? Tunnels under the oceans?

Apparently they were spread via ships over the centuries...

Rob

 

[RobertScorpio]

What do you mean dead ants? Why can't we go all Klingon on those 6 legged buggers and do it Ga'gh (sp) sytle, alive!

Maybe like a live ant fondue...snatch one, dip him in chocolate or cheese, or bacon sauce and just shove him in the pie hole alive and well.

Might work, especially if you grew up with my Moms cooking (just kidding Ma)

I haven't had meatloaf since the fifth grade because my mom was such a bad cook of meatloaf...STILL a bad memory. But she did make the best tacos!!!

Rob

 

[hyzmarca]

The Queen could have worked, if they had presented her as an avatar rather than as a controlling force.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

The Queen could have worked, if they had presented her as an avatar rather than as a controlling force.

I thought they did present her as just that. She says to Data when he asks if she's in control of the Borg, you imply a disparity when none exists.

While it was never spelled out, I always assumed the Borg Queen was an adaptation of the hive to their encounter with the Federation. When we first see them, they are a faceless hive of drones. They are unable to absorb the humans fully (thanks to Q's intervention), but when they next encounter the Federation, they absorb Picard in order to make him a spokesman. When he escapes through individual ingenuity, the Borg adapt further and develop the Queen, an individual who is one with the hive, and who exists to interact with and facilitate the assimilation of the Federation.

Where the Borg jumped the shark was in not having them continue to adapt during Voyager. Instead the Queen devolved into a moustache-twirling one-dimensional villain with the drones as her minions. Had the Borg instead adapted further to humans - perhaps absorbing the changes of individuality introduced by Hugh - then they would have remained terrifying nemeses.

 

[RobertScorpio]

The Queen could have worked, if they had presented her as an avatar rather than as a controlling force.

I thought they did present her as just that. She says to Data when he asks if she's in control of the Borg, you imply a disparity when none exists.

While it was never spelled out, I always assumed the Borg Queen was an adaptation of the hive to their encounter with the Federation. When we first see them, they are a faceless hive of drones. They are unable to absorb the humans fully (thanks to Q's intervention), but when they next encounter the Federation, they absorb Picard in order to make him a spokesman. When he escapes through individual ingenuity, the Borg adapt further and develop the Queen, an individual who is one with the hive, and who exists to interact with and facilitate the assimilation of the Federation.

Where the Borg jumped the shark was in not having them continue to adapt during Voyager. Instead the Queen devolved into a moustache-twirling one-dimensional villain with the drones as her minions. Had the Borg instead adapted further to humans - perhaps absorbing the changes of individuality introduced by Hugh - then they would have remained terrifying nemeses.

Interesting...but I think they should have stayed they were introduced. They had been that way for thousands upon thousands of years, and to think just by encountering humans they would suddenly 'evolve' into nice guys or even bad guys you can talk with was what ruined it for them.

They should have been like GODZILLA was at the start, and what the BORG were presented as in QWHO. A freakish act of nature; beings that came after you and did so with out one ounce of humanity in them. ZOMBIES, I guess, is a better example. Pure and simple zombies acting as a collective.

STAR TREK has a ton of other folks you can have evolve into nice guys (Klingons come to mind). But by sugar coating the Borg and making them JUST another 'evolving' Gene Roddenberryish culture was the wrong way to go...IMO. FC ruined the borg..

Making GENERATIONS the best TNG movie..OF ALL!! (Just had to add that in there)

Rob

 

[Lapis Exilis]

The Queen could have worked, if they had presented her as an avatar rather than as a controlling force.

I thought they did present her as just that. She says to Data when he asks if she's in control of the Borg, you imply a disparity when none exists.

While it was never spelled out, I always assumed the Borg Queen was an adaptation of the hive to their encounter with the Federation. When we first see them, they are a faceless hive of drones. They are unable to absorb the humans fully (thanks to Q's intervention), but when they next encounter the Federation, they absorb Picard in order to make him a spokesman. When he escapes through individual ingenuity, the Borg adapt further and develop the Queen, an individual who is one with the hive, and who exists to interact with and facilitate the assimilation of the Federation.

Where the Borg jumped the shark was in not having them continue to adapt during Voyager. Instead the Queen devolved into a moustache-twirling one-dimensional villain with the drones as her minions. Had the Borg instead adapted further to humans - perhaps absorbing the changes of individuality introduced by Hugh - then they would have remained terrifying nemeses.

Interesting...but I think they should have stayed they were introduced. They had been that way for thousands upon thousands of years, and to think just by encountering humans they would suddenly 'evolve' into nice guys or even bad guys you can talk with was what ruined it for them.

They should have been like GODZILLA was at the start, and what the BORG were presented as in QWHO. A freakish act of nature; beings that came after you and did so with out one ounce of humanity in them. ZOMBIES, I guess, is a better example. Pure and simple zombies acting as a collective.

STAR TREK has a ton of other folks you can have evolve into nice guys (Klingons come to mind). But by sugar coating the Borg and making them JUST another 'evolving' Gene Roddenberryish culture was the wrong way to go...IMO. FC ruined the borg..

I didn't mean that they would evolve into nice guys. "Evolve" doesn't actually mean get better, it means change. If they had continued to adapt to always stay one step ahead of humans by incorporating useful parts of humanity that furthered their goal of absolute domination - they would have remained cool villains who were really scary, because the only thing scarier than a faceless hive of beings that use you up and throw you away (how they were presented in Q Who - with no interest in assimiliation of the beings they encountered, only in their technology), is a hive of beings that has accelerated evolution to such a pace that you can never hope to keep up.

 

[TedShatner10]

Ants, termites, and bees have queens as well. The Borg were always inconsistant villains comparable to George Romeo Zombies.

 

[Sci]

The Queen could have worked, if they had presented her as an avatar rather than as a controlling force.

I thought they did present her as just that. She says to Data when he asks if she's in control of the Borg, you imply a disparity when none exists.

The problem with the notion that the Queen is an avatar of the Collective is that we saw the Queen disagree with, and then overrule the instructions of, the Collective in "Endgame." It's obvious that the Queen and the Collective, despite her protestations, are actually separate intelligences -- and that the Queen outranks the Collective. It's a dictatorship.

While it was never spelled out, I always assumed the Borg Queen was an adaptation of the hive to their encounter with the Federation. When we first see them, they are a faceless hive of drones. They are unable to absorb the humans fully (thanks to Q's intervention), but when they next encounter the Federation, they absorb Picard in order to make him a spokesman. When he escapes through individual ingenuity, the Borg adapt further and develop the Queen, an individual who is one with the hive, and who exists to interact with and facilitate the assimilation of the Federation.

The problem with that idea is that it's flatly contradicted by both First Contact and "Dark Frontier." First Contact establishes quite thoroughly that the Queen already existed when the cube entered Federation space in 2366 and abducted Captain Picard (because, ironically, she was lonely and wanted Locutus as an equal of sorts). Meanwhile, "Dark Frontier" establishes that the Hansens discovered the existence of the Borg Queen in the 2350s, a decade or so before the Enterprise-D made contact with the cube in "Q Who?" and before the Borg themselves detected the presence of the S.S. Raven in the Delta Quadrant.

 

[RobertScorpio]

The Queen could have worked, if they had presented her as an avatar rather than as a controlling force.

I thought they did present her as just that. She says to Data when he asks if she's in control of the Borg, you imply a disparity when none exists.

The problem with the notion that the Queen is an avatar of the Collective is that we saw the Queen disagree with, and then overrule the instructions of, the Collective in "Endgame." It's obvious that the Queen and the Collective, despite her protestations, are actually separate intelligences -- and that the Queen outranks the Collective. It's a dictatorship.

While it was never spelled out, I always assumed the Borg Queen was an adaptation of the hive to their encounter with the Federation. When we first see them, they are a faceless hive of drones. They are unable to absorb the humans fully (thanks to Q's intervention), but when they next encounter the Federation, they absorb Picard in order to make him a spokesman. When he escapes through individual ingenuity, the Borg adapt further and develop the Queen, an individual who is one with the hive, and who exists to interact with and facilitate the assimilation of the Federation.

The problem with that idea is that it's flatly contradicted by both First Contact and "Dark Frontier." First Contact establishes quite thoroughly that the Queen already existed when the cube entered Federation space in 2366 and abducted Captain Picard (because, ironically, she was lonely and wanted Locutus as an equal of sorts). Meanwhile, "Dark Frontier" establishes that the Hansens discovered the existence of the Borg Queen in the 2350s, a decade or so before the Enterprise-D made contact with the cube in "Q Who?" and before the Borg themselves detected the presence of the S.S. Raven in the Delta Quadrant.

Great post. I didn't know that the Queen had been established before even BOBW, but in a sneaky way such as that. This just fuels my anger about how ruined the Borg were by FC, and later writing on Voyager. Its a pity; the Borg could have been great. But now? Just another bumpy-headed race on Star Trek...

Rob

 

[Lapis Exilis]

The Queen could have worked, if they had presented her as an avatar rather than as a controlling force.

I thought they did present her as just that. She says to Data when he asks if she's in control of the Borg, you imply a disparity when none exists.

The problem with the notion that the Queen is an avatar of the Collective is that we saw the Queen disagree with, and then overrule the instructions of, the Collective in "Endgame." It's obvious that the Queen and the Collective, despite her protestations, are actually separate intelligences -- and that the Queen outranks the Collective. It's a dictatorship.

I don't really know what other behavior the Queen exhibited after First Contact, except that, as you say, they were written to become a kind of standard facist society.

While it was never spelled out, I always assumed the Borg Queen was an adaptation of the hive to their encounter with the Federation. When we first see them, they are a faceless hive of drones. They are unable to absorb the humans fully (thanks to Q's intervention), but when they next encounter the Federation, they absorb Picard in order to make him a spokesman. When he escapes through individual ingenuity, the Borg adapt further and develop the Queen, an individual who is one with the hive, and who exists to interact with and facilitate the assimilation of the Federation.

The problem with that idea is that it's flatly contradicted by both First Contact and "Dark Frontier." First Contact establishes quite thoroughly that the Queen already existed when the cube entered Federation space in 2366 and abducted Captain Picard (because, ironically, she was lonely and wanted Locutus as an equal of sorts). Meanwhile, "Dark Frontier" establishes that the Hansens discovered the existence of the Borg Queen in the 2350s, a decade or so before the Enterprise-D made contact with the cube in "Q Who?" and before the Borg themselves detected the presence of the S.S. Raven in the Delta Quadrant.

I don't trust the Queen/Borg in First Contact. She/they are clearly liars and is desperately trying to separate Data from the humans with manipulation. Picard, with his lingering connection to the Borg, is susceptible to memory implantation - which is why he only "remembers" the Queen at the very end. That is, I don't think she actually was there when Locutus was made. I think it's legitimate to interpret it as that she developed out of the Borg afterward and they were lying to Picard and Data so that Data would hopefully feel a rivalry with his commander for the Queen's affections and throw his loyalty to the Borg rather than Picard.

As for what was written after First Contact, I know only that I've heard the Borg's history was rewritten and rewritten from Voyager to Enterprise, becoming less and less consistent as it went along - thus why people say they developed from great villains to very standard ones. By the end of First Contact they were still pretty good villains, even with the Queen. What happened after that - well, all of Star Trek took a giant nosedive so I quit watching. But I don't think the Queen/Borg was a bad idea when first introduced - they just were developed very poorly from then on out.

 

[USS Kongo]

There is a story out (I would hot link but I am not sure if we can hot link to newstory) today about how they now believe there is one super-mega colony of ants taking over the world. These Argentine ants, which are in south-american, USA and JAPAN, and parts of Europe, act as if they are in the same colony...

This is how I thought of the Borg. A colony of "ants" that, when a scout found something of value, would swarm and come get it. Bees are often more compared with the Borg, but not me...ants. But, as Q/Guinan state, there was no way to negotiate with the borg because they had no leader, just the common collective...

And then...the Queen came in FC and changed all that and made the Borg just another bumpy headed race with a leader (in this case a horny borg queen) and the Borg, IMO, from that moment on were de-clawed; or jumped the shark if you will.

Anyway, if you can, check this story out about the ants and their super colony. Its all over the place (I saw it on Drudgereport)

Rob

Ants getting together to take over the world? Never mind the Borg, has anybody seen Phase IV?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070531/

Sean