two stupid points that bring down "I, Borg"

[Rett Mikhal]

Funny, I've always thought this episode was the best example of Picard's character. He clearly harbors ill feelings to the Borg and considers them a threat, but when he thinks about it logically he realizes they're an alien race and deserve life as much as anyone else.

As for the virus, it was my understanding it was an impossible geometric shape that seemed possible and the more you tried to solve it the more impossible it became.

If you have trouble believing something like that could cause massive unrest, go into the general discussion forum of this or any board and ask "What happens when an unstoppable object hits an immovable object?", then watch the fur fly. You can argue the Borg are smarter than us (because they are) but the shape was specifically designed to interest and stump the Borg based on the experiments performed on Hugh.

As for the individuality thing, well that's technically another episode that simply revisits this one and you can't pin it on this episode. That said, I always got the impression Picard had some individuality simply because he was a temporary commander to defeat the Federation, and after that he would be a drone. That might be how they always do things, there's defiantly evidence to support that, right? Everything the Borg do on screen is new evidence for how they act because we don't know that much to begin with.

But a drone breaking free of the control of his OWN will is much, much different than that. I'm not just applying band-aids, either, this is how I've always felt about this episode and the Borg mentality.

 

[Vanyel]

Bear in mind that we aren't dealing with one guy, we;re dealing with a team of engineers who have developed this with the help of an android. AND they have all the knowledge about the Borg (including the wealth of data they got from Picard), so it's not like they haven't got experience with Borg technology.

A android, primitive by Borg standards, who was able to create, look at and analyze the virus with becoming infected himself. The virus was going to make the Borg use up more and more "processing" power until the Collective crashed. The Borg must know of pi, and that has never stopped them.

 

[Enterprise1981]

Recent Pocket Books novels did follow up on the computer virus premise. But it was as effective as the Brunali's approach, in that only crashed the cube that captured and assimilated someone infected with the virus. The Endgame virus, as it was called in the novels, did stop a Borg ship threatening Earth, but the Borg eventually found a way to block it.

 

[composerchris]

My problem exactly; Hugh says "Do I have a name?" Oops...

 

[DonIago]

But he doesn't say it in front of Captain Picard.

 

[tau136]

One consistent rule with the Borg seems there inability to cope with the unexpected — come at them from an unencountered angle & Gotcha !

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Recent Pocket Books novels did follow up on the computer virus premise. But it was as effective as the Brunali's approach, in that only crashed the cube that captured and assimilated someone infected with the virus. The Endgame virus, as it was called in the novels, did stop a Borg ship threatening Earth, but the Borg eventually found a way to block it.

The borg only adapted to a version of the paradox (after it worked once on a cube disconnected from the collective).
A modified version of the virus (with a long incubation period) was heavily implied to be able to dissolve the entire collective - and the borg only managed to adapt because, without being infected, they obtained a sample of it and analysed it.

One consistent rule with the Borg seems there inability to cope with the unexpected — come at them from an unencountered angle & Gotcha !

That's remarcably general. In order to be usable in the slightest, suggestions have to be a lot more concrete.

 

[Timo]

As for the virus, it was my understanding it was an impossible geometric shape that seemed possible and the more you tried to solve it the more impossible it became.

I thought the writers made it clear that the plan devised by Data and LaForge (and no doubt by the little people from various science and engineering and tactics departments) was a complex one, and that it could only be explained to Picard (or the audience) in the coarsest terms. The impossible geometrical figure was the lure, but there'd be finesse there that would ensure that the Borg wouldn't spit out the bait, would get hooked, and would be hurt by the hook.

However, just because Hugh was going to be re-assimilated after being separated from the Borg Collective, suddenly those concepts were going to make re-assimilating Hugh more difficult?

One important point here would be that the Collective would expect Picard to resist being turned into Locutus. However, the Collective would not expect Hugh to resist being turned back into 3 of 5, at least not to a similar degree. He might be assumed corrupted with enemy cyberweapons (or even bioweapons or kinetic bombs), and the Collective would try to purge or isolate those. But the Collective might fail to figure in the effect of Hugh being corrupted with enemy propaganda... And "Descent" suggests that this is exactly what happened, and that the better part of a big Borg vessel was lost before the isolation routines kicked in.

That's remarkably general. In order to be usable in the slightest, suggestions have to be a lot more concrete.

And I'm not sure it would be true even in general. The Borg have existed for a long time, and have probably weathered all possible (and a few impossible) kinds of attack. Yet whenever one confronts them, the first attack has good odds of success, regardless of whether it's surprising or not. A tommy gun will kill the usual two drones before the third adapts, even though the Collective must be aware of bullet-based weapons; a standard phaser kills two drones before the third adapts, even thought the Collective is known to be aware of standard phasers - our heroes have downed two drones with standard phasers in basically every Borg episode, and only the third one has adapted.

The secret for local success might lie not so much in surprise, then, but in the use of overwhelming force when this level of force is not expected. See a single drone walking towards you on a Borg ship corridor? Nuke him with as many gigatons as you can pack in a portable X-bomb, and you may be able to take his ship with him. But just destroy the drone with a midget X-bomb, then kill his successor with a sufficiently larger weapon, and suddenly all your future gigatons will become useless because the Borg have dug up and dusted off their tried and true adaptation to X-bomb attack.

Can this be scaled up, so that a "conventional" attack (say, a viral one) would take out large parts of the Collective, or even destroy it in its entirety? It's difficult to see how this could ever be done, since the Collective is so decentralized, but it's probably not impossible to significantly scale up a viral assault. Say, instead of a single-point injection of a single virus type, fifty million dissimilar viruses are released at eight trillion points, via some sort of a clever trap involving nanoscale virus injectors infiltrating Borg ships and sticking on to the drones there, waiting for the opportune moment for simultaneous detonation.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Deckerd]

Didn't Janeway do just that? Take out the collective with a virus?

 

[Timo]

Parts of it, anyway. (Un)fortunately, the ability to bounce back is the defining characteristic of the Collective.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ProtoAvatar]

That's remarkably general. In order to be usable in the slightest, suggestions have to be a lot more concrete.

And I'm not sure it would be true even in general. The Borg have existed for a long time, and have probably weathered all possible (and a few impossible) kinds of attack. Yet whenever one confronts them, the first attack has good odds of success, regardless of whether it's surprising or not. A tommy gun will kill the usual two drones before the third adapts, even though the Collective must be aware of bullet-based weapons; a standard phaser kills two drones before the third adapts, even thought the Collective is known to be aware of standard phasers - our heroes have downed two drones with standard phasers in basically every Borg episode, and only the third one has adapted.

The secret for local success might lie not so much in surprise, then, but in the use of overwhelming force when this level of force is not expected. See a single drone walking towards you on a Borg ship corridor? Nuke him with as many gigatons as you can pack in a portable X-bomb, and you may be able to take his ship with him. But just destroy the drone with a midget X-bomb, then kill his successor with a sufficiently larger weapon, and suddenly all your future gigatons will become useless because the Borg have dug up and dusted off their tried and true adaptation to X-bomb attack.

Can this be scaled up, so that a "conventional" attack (say, a viral one) would take out large parts of the Collective, or even destroy it in its entirety? It's difficult to see how this could ever be done, since the Collective is so decentralized, but it's probably not impossible to significantly scale up a viral assault. Say, instead of a single-point injection of a single virus type, fifty million dissimilar viruses are released at eight trillion points, via some sort of a clever trap involving nanoscale virus injectors infiltrating Borg ships and sticking on to the drones there, waiting for the opportune moment for simultaneous detonation.

Timo Saloniemi

I agree that using overwhelming force from the start is a very effective tactic against the borg.
And yet, Starfleet never seems to use it:
You see Starfleet vessels firing only a phaser at the cube, barely scratching it before it adapts, not using their deflectors to deliver a far more powerful phaser discharge, blowing up a large part of the cube;
Starfleet only beams personnel aboard a borg ship until it adapts, and never a warhead; etc.

The question becomes - why does the first attack always get through?

Most likely because "The Borg have existed for a long time, and have probably weathered all possible (and a few impossible) kinds of attack."
The collective's databse must be enormous - it takes time for the borg to 'remember' the apropriate defense. The more exotic the weapon, the longer it takes, because the information is 'burried' deeper.
The borg always react, they never anticipate - a rather large weakness. If you play your cards right, you could always have the initiative during a battle with the collective.

Of course, not even the borg have defenses against all concievable weapons. Where there is no recorded defense, the borg, through 'trial and error' evolve one.
This could reveal another weakness of the collective - they have no creativity. They 'evolve' defenses that work (through trial and error) but they don't know why they work (any more than nature knows why a living organism works); You could use a specifically designed weapon in order for the borg to evolve a particular defense - one that is highly vulnerable to a different king of attack (and since the borg don't know why the defense works, they're unlikely to figure out that they're exposing themselves).

About how a viral attack could destroy the entire collective:
All one has to do is make sure the virus has a long incubation time. During this time, it spreads through the collective mind, not causing any damage whatsoever, hidden. When it spread throughout the entirety of the hive mind, it activates, simultaneously attacking trillions of essential elements of the collective.

 

[Timo]

The collective's databse must be enormous - it takes time for the borg to 'remember' the appropriate defense.

Or perhaps to implement it? I mean, with a huge arsenal of defenses, a single drone would collapse under the weight (physical, or processing requirements) of all the equipment if he carried it on a permanent basis. It may be more beneficial to carry none of the defenses regularly, and to only construct them when under attack. Which means losing two drones, but it's considered an acceptable balance.

And probably sacrificing those two drones provides advantages as well: the enemy shows his hand there while the Borg lose nothing of real value.

All one has to do is make sure the virus has a long incubation time. During this time, it spreads through the collective mind, not causing any damage whatsoever, hidden.

The Collective is probably rather complexly structured, though: not all the sections and levels need be in interaction with each other, at least not in egalitarian terms of sharing everything. Just infecting all the drones might be a hollow victory, if one fails to infect the vinicula or the queen entity or possible so far unseen forms of Borg existence. The deeper and more important a hierarchical level, the less likely it is to be accessible; much of the Collective might be more advanced than the cyborgian drone level, too, essentially a nested series of noncorporeal lifeforms that bear only a superficial similarity to data networks.

Again, this is speculation on the supposed fact that the Borg have survived for hundreds of millennia already, despite facing civilization after civilization of people who fight back with lethal scifi show bulletin board tactics...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ProtoAvatar]

All one has to do is make sure the virus has a long incubation time. During this time, it spreads through the collective mind, not causing any damage whatsoever, hidden.

The Collective is probably rather complexly structured, though: not all the sections and levels need be in interaction with each other, at least not in egalitarian terms of sharing everything. Just infecting all the drones might be a hollow victory, if one fails to infect the vinicula or the queen entity or possible so far unseen forms of Borg existence. The deeper and more important a hierarchical level, the less likely it is to be accessible; much of the Collective might be more advanced than the cyborgian drone level, too, essentially a nested series of noncorporeal lifeforms that bear only a superficial similarity to data networks.

Again, this is speculation on the supposed fact that the Borg have survived for hundreds of millennia already, despite facing civilization after civilization of people who fight back with lethal scifi show bulletin board tactics...

Timo Saloniemi

In TNG'Q, who', Q says that the borg are millions of years old.
However, in Voy'Dragon's teeth', 7 of 9 says that, 700 years ago, the borg only controlled a 'few systems' - a minor power, at best.

Perhaps the borg - or a 'species', an 'army' (whatever you wish to call them) similar to them - were defeated many times in the past by various species.
And, perhaps, each time, a faction of them managed to survive and recommence its expansion; alternatively, perhaps a new species evolved into a highly aggresive collective species, with a philisophy realtively similar to that of its predecessors.


700 years ago, the surviving sliver of a previous collective - who could vey well have been defeated tens of thousands of years ago and in hiding since then - was just beginning its expansion.
Given the extraordiary speed of its expansion, this latest collective was very successful - perhaps because the contemporary Milky Way was relatively primitive by comparison?


In the past existed the Tkon, the Iconians and many other extremely advanced powers - empires that could hold the borg in check and defeat them.

Nowadays, during 'Enterprise', the Alpha/Beta quadrant species were just beginning to break the warp 5-7 speed limit. According to what we saw, most of the galaxy fared similarly.
Why? The borg, apparently, just caught 'a lucky break':
All the old powerful empires ascended, departed the galaxy, were destroyed or otherwise left the scene; now, by chance, the Milky Way was only populated by metaphorical 'children' - easy preys.