Vendetta

[JonnyQuest037]

I really liked how Vendetta explicitly showed that Picard coming back from Borg assimilation was the exception and not the rule -- a theory that the TV shows would blow to hell with Hugh and Seven of Nine. One of several places where I wish the TV shows could have followed the lead of the novels.

"Exception and not the rule" doesn't mean "can only happen once ever in all history". I think a dozen or two out of a trillion is still pretty exceptional.

The character of Hugh and the word "exceptional" are not two things that I would put in the same quadrant of the galaxy. Seven of Nine I mainly find interesting to look at. In both cases, I wish Trek had left well enough alone. I loved Vendetta's subplot of Geordi trying to reawaken the previous personality of the Borg drone & utterly failing. THAT was a story we hadn't seen before.

 

[Christopher]

I really liked how Vendetta explicitly showed that Picard coming back from Borg assimilation was the exception and not the rule -- a theory that the TV shows would blow to hell with Hugh and Seven of Nine.

Except Hugh was never assimiliated. People tend to forget that the original conception of the Borg, the one that carried through all of TNG, is that they were vat-grown drones who had never had any identity or personality of their own. Picard's assimilation was explicitly stated in BoBW to be an unprecedented change in the way the Borg did things. And the rest of TNG presumed that it was a unique event, that all other drones were blank slates with no sense of self. That's why Hugh was so easily influenced by Geordi's example -- because it was his nature to follow the crowd, and because he was an empty vessel ready to be filled by whatever was fed to him. And that's why Lore was able to dominate the liberated drones and make them followers of his cult -- because they had no identity or culture or beliefs of their own and were thus vulnerable to being manipulated, eager to lap up whatever sense of belonging and purpose was offered to them even if it was corrupt. Those stories only work within the context of the original premise that Borg drones are completely devoid of any personal identity.

In fact, Vendetta was the first work of fiction that portrayed assimilation as something that the Borg had ever done to anyone other than Picard. And frankly, in the context of TNG's version of the Borg, that couldve been considered a misinterpretation. But in retrospect, it seems more prophetic -- since with First Contact, TNG's producers retconned the Borg into horror-movie zombies that used assimilation as a matter of course, and Voyager extrapolated from that and portrayed the Borg as being made up entirely of assimilatees. (That's why in Greater Than the Sum I came up with the explanation that there were two different types of Borg, incubated and assimilated, and that the former population was mostly found out on the fringes of Borg-explored territory where the TNG crew would've encountered them -- and that the latter population became far more dominant after the Species 8472 war because the Borg lost a lot of their drones and had to replenish their stock with a heavy campaign of assimilation.)

So really, Hugh and Seven represent two completely different stories of the drone-to-individual transition. Paradoxically, the fact that Hugh started out as a drone -- vacant, submissive, quick to absorb concepts from the beings around him -- made it easy for him to embrace the idea of individuality that was fed to him by the Enterprise crew, while the fact that Seven started out as a human child -- possessed of will and ego, independent-thinking, wary of the unfamiliar -- made her much more resistant to the social pressure to abandon her Borg identity.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Except Hugh was never assimiliated. People tend to forget that the original conception of the Borg, the one that carried through all of TNG, is that they were vat-grown drones who had never had any identity or personality of their own. Picard's assimilation was explicitly stated in BoBW to be an unprecedented change in the way the Borg did things.

Good point, Christopher. I had forgotten that.

Unfortunately, that just makes Hugh's gaining of emotions and individuality even more unbelievable to me, not less. Why would a Borg drone even have the capability to gain emotions? I can't see any advantage in the Borg programming that into a drone. They should certainly have the ability to learn and apply new skills, but why give them an ability that would do nothing but cause the Borg trouble?

 

[Christopher]

Unfortunately, that just makes Hugh's gaining of emotions and individuality even more unbelievable to me, not less. Why would a Borg drone even have the capability to gain emotions? I can't see any advantage in the Borg programming that into a drone. They should certainly have the ability to learn and apply new skills, but why give them an ability that would do nothing but cause the Borg trouble?

Emotions aren't a learned or "programmed" behavior, they're hardwired into the brain and endocrine system. Since drones are basically humanoid, they must be based on an essentially humanoid template -- presumably that of the original species the Borg evolved from (which according to Destiny: Lost Souls was called the Kindir). The Borg supplement and regulate their drones with cybernetics, but keep the basic humanoid anatomy -- which makes sense, because the Collective isn't creative, just reactive. As long as a system works, they won't bother to change it. So they wouldn't have had the imagination to breed or engineer the innate humanoid psychology out of their drones. They would've just suppressed it, and that would've been enough because drones would usually have remained within the control of the Collective.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

One thing I thought during the reread of Vendetta was that the TNG characters seemed alittle "off" at times, especially Crusher and Troi. They seemed alot more blunt and cold hearted when dealing with Geordi and Bonaventure. Picard was an a-hole in some sections (but I guess that could be the result of this novel's events happening just a few months after what happened in Best of Both Worlds).

I think the memory cheats where Picard's characterization is concerned. In the series, especially the first three years, Picard could be a major asshole. That gets toned down fourth season and later, but it's definitely a facet of Picard's personality. The avuncular Picard of memory is more caricature than character.

In fact, Vendetta was the first work of fiction that portrayed assimilation as something that the Borg had ever done to anyone other than Picard. And frankly, in the context of TNG's version of the Borg, that couldve been considered a misinterpretation. But in retrospect, it seems more prophetic -- since with First Contact, TNG's producers retconned the Borg into horror-movie zombies that used assimilation as a matter of course,

The Borg's behavior in First Contact made sense given the circumstances the Borg faced in the film -- they were a few survivors of one ship who had to turn to extraordinary measures to survive. At the same time, though, I don't think that assimilation is entirely a misinterpretation, especially given Locutus' line in "Best of Both Worlds" that "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own," which does suggest that the Borg were prepared to absorb humanity into the Collective. Since they augmented their humanoid drones to make them cyborgs and they augmented and modified Picard to attach him to the Collective, it's not a stretch to assume that assimilation was the intention of Locutus' dialogue.

The main difference, of course, is that Picard's assimilation took some serious time and medical knowledge in "Best of Both Worlds," while First Contact made assimilation way too easy for the Borg.

Unfortunately, that just makes Hugh's gaining of emotions and individuality even more unbelievable to me, not less. Why would a Borg drone even have the capability to gain emotions? I can't see any advantage in the Borg programming that into a drone. They should certainly have the ability to learn and apply new skills, but why give them an ability that would do nothing but cause the Borg trouble?

It just dawned on me how much "Unimatrix Zero" copies "Evil of the Daleks." That's for another time, though...

I don't see what would be so unbelievable about a vat-grown drone having the capacity for emotions when removed from the Collective. Hugh's biological computer -- his brain, in other words -- might easily have the structures necessary for emotional responses. In fact, I'd be surprised if Hugh's brain didn't. Just because they never needed to be used before (since as a drone he would have been incapable of independent thought or feeling because of his connection to the Collective), it doesn't mean that the ability didn't exist.

 

[bfollowell]

After reading all the gushing about this title and seeing how fondly its remembered and knowing that its spiritual sequel is part of the TNG relaunch that I'll be starting in a few months, I think I'll have to read it.

I looked through my ebook collection and luckily this is one that I'd picked up years ago during my Microsoft Reader TrekLit collection phase. I picked up quite a few of them but, being before ereaders were very prevalent and not really liking to sit in front of my monitor to read, they just sat there. I'll have to look at converting this one to mobi and reading it on my Kindle soon.

Thanks for the recommendations everyone. I hope I enjoy it at least half as much as you guys praise it!

- Byron

 

[David cgc]

In fact, Vendetta was the first work of fiction that portrayed assimilation as something that the Borg had ever done to anyone other than Picard. And frankly, in the context of TNG's version of the Borg, that couldve been considered a misinterpretation. But in retrospect, it seems more prophetic -- since with First Contact, TNG's producers retconned the Borg into horror-movie zombies that used assimilation as a matter of course,

The Borg's behavior in First Contact made sense given the circumstances the Borg faced in the film -- they were a few survivors of one ship who had to turn to extraordinary measures to survive. At the same time, though, I don't think that assimilation is entirely a misinterpretation, especially given Locutus' line in "Best of Both Worlds" that "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own," which does suggest that the Borg were prepared to absorb humanity into the Collective. Since they augmented their humanoid drones to make them cyborgs and they augmented and modified Picard to attach him to the Collective, it's not a stretch to assume that assimilation was the intention of Locutus' dialogue.

Even more than that, in BoBW Part II, Locutus explicitly says twice that the Borg plan to assimilate the hell out of everyone as soon as they get to Earth.

When Riker hails the Borg to distract them at the beginning of the rescue op:

RIKER
We would like time to prepare our
people for assimilation.

LOCUTUS
Preparation is irrelevant. Your
people will be assimilated as
easily as Picard has been.​

And, later, when Locutus is being examined in sickbay:

LOCUTUS
Worf.

Worf silently studies him, mixed feelings.

LOCUTUS
Klingon species. A warrior race.
(beat)
You too will be assimilated.​

​

 

[Christopher]

Hmm, you're right. BoBW did lay the pipe for the idea that the Borg assimilated people rather than just technology as "Q Who" asserted. So I overreached myself there. But the point stands that subsequent TNG Borg episodes like "I, Borg" and "Descent" nonetheless depended on the premise that drones like Hugh and Lore's followers had no prior identity as anything other than drones, that they were something fundamentally different from the assimilated drones we saw throughout Voyager (and in Vendetta). So BoBW may have introduced the concept, but TNG never really followed up on it until FC.

I suppose the way to reconcile the two ideas, to unify the TNG version of the Borg, is to assume that once a race is assimilated, its gametes are used to create new drones in vitro and incubate them as seen in "Q Who." So the initial assimilated generation of a species would subsequently give way to generations of incubated drones like Hugh and his shipmates. The assimilation of a species would just be the first step in a process that in the long term would give us the identity-less, incubated Borg that we were shown throughout TNG.

And as Allyn says, the Borg's use of assimilation to replenish their numbers in FC makes sense in that context. The problem, then, lies with Voyager (gee, who'da thunk it?), which pretty much forgot or abandoned the established fact that the Borg could reproduce on their own and assumed that the entire Borg population consisted of assimilatees. Even when we were shown Borg children in "Collective," they were explained as having been assimilated, even the infant (who inexplicably disappeared after that episode). Which I suppose makes the Borg more threatening, because it requires them to be far more rapacious in their assimilation campaign in order to maintain or increase their numbers; but it raises questions about their population stability if assimilation is their only means of replenishment, plus it simply contradicts "Q Who." Unless you find a way to rationalize the inconsistency as I tried to do in Greater Than the Sum.

 

[Tiberius]

PAD's idea of the Doomsday Machine being a weapon the Preservers made to fight the borg was sheer brilliance.

 

[Christopher]

PAD's idea of the Doomsday Machine being a weapon the Preservers made to fight the borg was sheer brilliance.

Except for the Preservers part. There was no reason to believe it had anything to do with the Preservers; it was just one character's random speculation with no evidence to support it. But for the remainder of Vendetta and Before Dishonor, that unsubstantiated guess was treated as proven fact.

The problem with the Preservers is that they're so mysterious that people end up believing anything about them, giving them credit for anything and everything of mysterious origin, filling in the lack of information with all sorts of conjectures that build them up into this impossibly ancient, godlike race even though their one canonical act was only a few centuries in the past, making them a modern race rather than an ancient one, and even though they showed no abilities beyond what 24th-century science could achieve. (Not to mention a staggering lack of basic competence -- how do you "preserve" a population by settling it on a planet in the middle of an asteroid field and only giving them one deflector beam that has to be manually operated?)

 

[James Cole]

^ And you have the Shatnerverse novel Preserver giving the Preservers the ability to create the duplicate Earth from the TOS episode "Miri".

 

[Christopher]

^Right. It's like conspiracy theories. The less actual information there is, the more extravagant and far-reaching the speculations people fill the gaps with. In the absence of actual knowledge, there are no limits on conjecture. So there's no actual evidence that the Preservers did anything more than truck some endangered populations from one planet to another a couple hundred years ago, but because we don't have any specifics about who they were, when they lived, or what their technology was, they end up becoming the single most important and advanced ancient race in the universe, alive for billions of years (because of course everything in the past happened simultaneously) and responsible for every unexplained anomaly in the whole galaxy.

(Personally, I still think the Preservers are actually the Vians from "The Empath." They both did pretty much the same thing, relocating endangered populations.)

 

[James Cole]

^ The unifying theory of everything. Considering how turned over TOS has been for inspiring sequels I'm surprised the "Miri" Earth hasn't been more greatly examined.

And speaking of transplanting humans, you'd think the Briori, Skagarans, and other wow-let's-pick-humans-for-slave labor species would have gotten together and released that never ended well for the enslavers.

Were the Preservers ever mentioned in TAS? For some reason I remember it but I haven't seen TAS for over ten years. Otherwise it looks like their only actual appearance or mention was in "The Paradise Syndrome."

 

[Christopher]

Were the Preservers ever mentioned in TAS?

No. There has never been any onscreen reference to the Preservers outside of "The Paradise Syndrome" (unless you buy my theory that they're actually the Vians).