"Voyager Borg"

[Saito S]

A lot has been made about whether or not the Borg were "de-fanged" in Voyager. And whether or not that de-fanging, if it happened, began in Voyager, or with First Contact and the introduction of the Borg Queen.

So, what do people think of this concept? Did Voyager ruin the Borg? And if so, was it avoidable? Simply bad writing, or something else? Also, was it entirely rooted in things that took place within the show, or did it start in FC?

The origins of this discussion can be found here: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=113886&page=5

 

[Admiral Shran]

I don't think the Borg were "de-fanged" at all.

I always find it odd that 1.) people who complain about the "de-fanging" of the Borg never think the Dominion was de-fanged by their continual appearances, and 2.) People often complain that the Borg were overused on TNG of all places, even though Q appeared in more TNG episodes than the Borg did and he wasn't "de-fanged."

I also loved the addition of the Borg Queen in FC. The only problem I had with that character was that Alice Krige reprised the role in VOY "Endgame." They should have had a new actress play the role after each time a Queen was killed. That way it would suggest that a new Borg Queen was activated upon the death of the previous one.

Spoiler: Voyager Relaunch

Didn't the VOY relaunch books imply that that was the way things worked in the Collective? The Royal Protocol, I believe it was called.

 

[M-Red]

the Borg de-fanging began with Descent

 

[maneth]

Seven of Nine effectively killed the menace of the Borg, because she showed that assimilation wasn't necessarily forever, i.e. a drone separated from the collective could become a functioning individual again, albeit one with cyborg implants. The Borg children, who had all the menace of spoiled teenagers gone wild, ruined what was left.

 

[Deks]

I think the de-fanging began with the introduction of the queen herself.
Voyager was not really responsible for ruining the Borg.

Remember back in Q Who episode of TNG?
The Borg were a collective mind, no singular leader, or a concept similar to it in any capacity because a single leader can make mistakes.

Then with FC the writers decided to give the Borg a leader.

If I recall correctly, Voyager only barely got out alive of their confrontations with the Borg.

Granted, they became less scary as we and the protagonists began to know more about them, however, I do think that giving the Borg a leader was a bad move.

 

[kimc]

I think the de-fanging began with the introduction of the queen itself.
Voyages was not really responsible for ruining the Borg.

I agree. The borg were at their most fearsome when their only motivation was to assimilate. Once it was revealed there was a queen (yet another dictator, ho hum) they became just another bunch of bullies.

 

[Withers]

1.) people who complain about the "de-fanging" of the Borg never think the Dominion was de-fanged by their continual appearances,

The difference is in the way they were portrayed. The Dominion had an arc to establish themselves as bad guys. They were multi-layered in that they were comprised of The Founders, the Vorta, and finally the Jem'Hadar. Even before the war started they were shown to be very dangerous (as in the case with the destruction of The Odyssey). Even once the war began and Dominion ships were all over the place they were kicking ass. We knew in the end the Dominion wouldn't win but things were certainly looking grim for the Alpha Quadrant powers throughout the arc.

They were able to accomplish that by giving them all of those episodes to establish themselves. It wasn't just the Defiant going into the Gamma Quadrant, beating the shit out of them, and then leaving every time they were shown on screen and thats what it became with Voyager and the Borg. At one point Janeway even decides its a good idea to hunt the Borg for parts! How scary can they be at that point?

They invented some sort of neural suppressant to stave off the effects of assimilation. That, alone, made the only real threat the Borg posed no different from the threat posed by any other ship that could blow Voyager up. Because they decided to "pepper" the show with Borg appearances it Voyager would face them and come out on top every single time. When you add to that how footloose and fancy free the crew became about dealing with them it started to seem like the Borg were kind of a joke, certainly not to be taken as seriously as they would've been immediately following the events at Wolf 359.

I also think the idea of the addition of a Queen was a good one. Something I think Voyager lacked was an on-going antagonist for, specifically, Captain Janeway. Sure, she'd had her share of episode nemesis, she didn't have the stock of good recurring counter points other captains had and she certainly didn't have the primary nemesis Sisko had... unless you include the Borg Queen. As far as excellent counter points go I think she's a pretty good one. Without her it would have been more scenes of Janeway talking to a big empty green screen (and those were boring at best.)


(Moderator: Surely you noticed but Saito made almost identical threads. You can just delete mine... ya know, assuming you guys care about that kind of thing.)


-Withers-​

 

[AuntKate]

I think the Borg Queen, while a scary character, probably undermined the main threat of the Borg to blindly assimilate every race they felt could enhance them in their drive for perfection. The idea that an entity of some sort has to be a central "clearing house" would fly in the face of the Borg IMHO. They would clearly have some sort of decision matrix at work rather than a single drone (unless you want to argue that the Queen is the personification of that matrix).

However, the undermining of the Borg started long before the Queen appeared, much less Voyager. Not only did Picard escape their grasps relatively unscathed (thus setting up the brief dip into Borgdom that Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok experienced on Voyager), but a fully assimilated drone, Hugh, was also taken from the hive (to a certain degree), setting the stage for both Seven and One in Voyager.

To point a finger at Voyager for "undermining the Borg," is simply a failure to look at the big picture (and I won't mention a tendency to blame Voyager for every ill that the later Trek exhibited).

Voyager simply continued the process of undermining the Borg that had begun years earlier on TNG.

 

[RyuRoots]

I'm not a HUGE fan of the Queen, but I have to admit that I have a much greater appreciation for the character idea after reading the Destiny trilogy. Gives her some interesting aspects, that while they probably didn't have in mind while making the film, really make her make sense in a lot of ways.

So the Borg have a personal face now. I liked it better when they didn't, but okay, now they do. The Borg were still scary as hell and the threat of them taking the whole ship and botching everything our heroes were trying to achieve was VERY real.

Then cut to most post-Scorpion VOY Borg episodes where they're a flying joke. You can target individual systems and they'll stay off forever, you can go around hunting them for spares with no repercussions, etc.

So yes, I think the de-fanging started in VOY, not FC. Even if you want to say that FC undermined the Borg concept by introducing the Queen, okay. That's fair. But it was still VOY that dragged the Borg even further through the mud.

However, I think it's silly to say that they were undermined by BOBW or I, Borg. I wouldn't say "unscathed" considering what it cost in ships and emotional/mental scars before they got Picard back, for one thing. And Hugh was a unique opportunity.

 

[Anwar]

No, they didn't ruin the Borg. It was inevitable, since we all knew that VOY would survive every encounter (they're not going to end the show, people). And they had to up the ante in every encounter, while still escaping.

Now, if they had a bunch of expendable redshirt ships to get blown up and redshirts unnecessary to the ship getting assimilated every time then it would've been averted. Like how NuBSG had a rag-tag fleet full of faceless extras to get killed by the Cylons while leaving Galactica unscathed. But since the straitjacket allowed them only one ship with a limited crew that they couldn't arbitrarily kill off, the Borg couldn't do that.

And yes, they have to be brought back. This is a good example:

"Tonight on Voyager, the crew steal resources from a Krenim ship!"

Average viewer: Meh, who cares?

"Tonight on Voayger, the crew steal resources from a Borg ship!"

Average viewer: BORG! Great, gotta watch that!

Now, if the average joes just accepted anyone OTHER than the Borg the show wouldn't have to keep using them.

 

[Deks]

I think the de-fanging began with the introduction of the queen herself.
Voyager was not really responsible for ruining the Borg.

I agree. The borg were at their most fearsome when their only motivation was to assimilate. Once it was revealed there was a queen (yet another dictator, ho hum) they became just another bunch of bullies.

I edited the quote and the original post since I just noticed those horrid typos.


And yes, I definitely agree.
Essentially, the Borg were reduced to an enemy that had a leader (who made mistakes).
Had the writers kept the Borg as a unified Collective (where mistakes were rare, if not completely abolished) and not bother with the Queen to begin with, I suspect they would have to be much more creative in how the crew of Voyager would deal with the Borg.

The Voyager crew could have also adapted themselves more or less and still barely get out of most of their encounters alive.
Because what the Borg actually represent, they could have ignored Voyager despite all of it's 'blows' it dealt to the Collective and it could have been explained as a huge experiment.
Similar to how the Q is testing humanity actually, the Borg could have done that to Voyager ... so they would effectively be and remain in control.

Problem is that it was much easier to write as if you have a singular enemy.

 

[RyuRoots]

No, they didn't ruin the Borg. It was inevitable, since we all knew that VOY would survive every encounter (they're not going to end the show, people). And they had to up the ante in every encounter, while still escaping.

Now, if they had a bunch of expendable redshirt ships to get blown up and redshirts unnecessary to the ship getting assimilated every time then it would've been averted. Like how NuBSG had a rag-tag fleet full of faceless extras to get killed by the Cylons while leaving Galactica unscathed. But since the straitjacket allowed them only one ship with a limited crew that they couldn't arbitrarily kill off, the Borg couldn't do that.

And yes, they have to be brought back. This is a good example:

"Tonight on Voyager, the crew steal resources from a Krenim ship!"

Average viewer: Meh, who cares?

"Tonight on Voayger, the crew steal resources from a Borg ship!"

Average viewer: BORG! Great, gotta watch that!

Now, if the average joes just accepted anyone OTHER than the Borg the show wouldn't have to keep using them.

Man, I think you ARE a Borg sometimes.

DEATH IS IRRELEVANT, DECAY IS INEVITABLE

Anyway, no. They didn't have to keep bringing them back (or at the very least not as much as they did). By the logic presented above, every last episode without exception after Scorpion would be a Borg episode

And guess what? There ARE ways to make an adversary dangerous without killing a thousand people. I know, I know, it's hard for you to understand, but just hear me out.

The Hirogen (a Voyager villain) are a great example, actually. Did they kill half of Voyager every time they showed up? No. Is there any real doubt that they were very dangerous adversaries? Not in my mind.

Are the Hirogen and the Borg the same? Can they be treated in the same ways? Absolutely not, and it'd be silly to think so. My point is that this nonsense about a villain only being dangerous if they have tons of people to kill is patently absurd, and I have no idea where you got this notion.

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, they did have to keep bringing them back. They tried their best to get people to like non-Borg villains but eventually caved in and had to make them the Big Bad that kept showing up for whatever reason.

As for where I got the idea that a villain has to kill people to be effective, I looked back at all the other Trek villains:

Klingons, they were introduced as a major enemy of the Federation whom they battled numerous times to a stand-still which resulted in lots of death.

Romulans, introduced blasting apart lots of Fed outposts and killing a lot of people.

Cardassians, introduced as having fought wars with the Feds over the years that killed a lot of people.

Dominion, introduced easily destroying a Galaxy-class ship and annihilating all colonies and vessels in the Gama Quadrant that were Alpha ships.

Borg, introduced by cutting a section out of the ENT-D and killing 18 people.

You seeing the pattern emerging?

And besides, the Hirgen didn't kill half the crew in their appearances because everytime they were outnumbered by the VOY crew. If they HAD kept showing up they'd have decayed as well.

 

[Withers]

Alright, isn't as though there weren't any good Borg episodes of Voyager. They did manage to pull off some a few decent episodes idea wise anyway. Scorpion, where they tried to introduce something that could out-gun the Borg in a big-big way, didn't work. The new villain they introduced had no spokes person, no character anyone could connect to, and ultimately failed because the idea was so obvious.

This is where I can agree, that without something to destroy, the Borg seemed unusually harmless in both the sense that they were getting their asses kicked by 8471 and that Voyager was in no danger from them (as evidenced by the fleet of Cubes leaving them alone.)

However, Voyager also did episodes like Dark Frontier, where in spite of the fact that hunting the Borg for parts seemed ludicrous and unnecessarily dangerous, they executed a story involving the Borg that didn't have to include a massive battle where one is taking shots at the other. That story could have been cleaned up and adapted to suit this principle better.

Basically, it doesn't have to be Borg shows where the formula "It looks like we'll lose right up to the point we win" repeated over and over again. I rue the idea that the only way to make a decent villain is to show it blowing a bunch of Starfleet ships to bits. Yes, that worked for specifically the Dominion, but is that what really made the Female Changling so much better than the Female Sphere Builder? No. They both had arcs. They both had the ability to crush the opposition (in theory) and yet one shines as an example of creativity done well while the other shows up (not unlike the Borg) as just a necessary bad guy.

The difference is creativity and execution. In Deep Space Nine there were intricate connections between the villains, which established them as villains which were multi faceted. They became characters, through good writing, that we were equally as vested in as we were the main cast (and no, I'm not just talking about the Dominion personnel but characters like the Kai and Michael Eddington too.)

They never made the attempt on Voyager (outside of maybe Seska and Cullah) to connect the villains to anything other than the idea that they were a roadblock in any given episode. We knew the Federation Alliance was ultimately going to win the war. The point is that we were curious as to how given that we were vested in the villains. On Voyager we knew Voyager would beat the Borg every time they met but we didn't care how because they were meaningless to every crew member except for Seven of Nine.


-Withers-​

 

[vess]

At one point Janeway even decides its a good idea to hunt the Borg for parts! How scary can they be at that point?​

They invented some sort of neural suppressant to stave off the effects of assimilation. That, alone, made the only real threat the Borg posed no different from the threat posed by any other ship that could blow Voyager up. Because they decided to "pepper" the show with Borg appearances it Voyager would face them and come out on top every single time. When you add to that how footloose and fancy free the crew became about dealing with them it started to seem like the Borg were kind of a joke, certainly not to be taken as seriously as they would've been immediately following the events at Wolf 359.​

This.

I also think that the Borg stopped being menacing to me when their methods of operation were revealed. The more mysterious, the more scary.

Seven of Nine being "unassimilated" had nothing to do with it either. Especially considering the fact that just about every episode after Scorpion, Part II dealt with her returning to her human roots in some way.

 

[Anwar]

but is that what really made the Female Changling so much better than the Female Sphere Builder? No. They both had arcs. They both had the ability to crush the opposition (in theory) and yet one shines as an example of creativity done well while the other shows up (not unlike the Borg) as just a necessary bad guy.

That had more to do with the Sphere builder being part of the TCW, which the audience hated, and being on ENT, which the audience didn't like either. Plus the Sphere Builders never were more than just some omniscient council of guys whom they never really developed or even introduced properly, they were living plot devices. They at least introduced the Female Changling and had her show up as a recurring character for a few years until the War.

Seriously, the Borg ARE just plot devices themselves and not the type to be real villains in a personal sense. The 8472 ability to turn human could've been used to have them be recurring villains trying to spy on other species or track VOY while maintaining their menace (just explain that they can't use their powers in human form) and that VOY was passing out duplicate samples of the nano-weapon they made to everyone they encountered. The 8472 have to generate energy fields around their ships at all times to keep the nanites from destroying them immediately, which weakens their offensive power to the point they can't just blast away everyone like they used to. How it would end, I don't know because the 8472 are game-breakers for Trek.

 

[Navaros]

The Borg were de-fanged in TNG starting with how Picard is completely back to normal by the end of the first episode after he was so-called 'assimilated', and further de-fanged in the silly 'Hugh' TNG episodes.

VOY continued the de-fanged trend, although it didn't start it.

Having said that, VOY's Borg certainly were not the least bit interesting nor menacing to watch. Never have I been more disappointed with a teaser from any Trek episode not living up to its own grandeur in the episode itself than the one for VOY's 'Borg kids' episode (in fact, I even made a thread about that on this board a few years ago). The teaser made the episode look like it was gonna be a Balance of Terror-like epic (I.e: the best episode of VOY ever made and probably one of Trek's best too). I was sooo excited for it, and shocked that I was engaged by something amazing in a Voyager teaser. I thought I was in for a real treat after the commercial break ended.

...And instead all I got was freakin' 'Borg kids!'

I always find it odd that 1.) people who complain about the "de-fanging" of the Borg never think the Dominion was de-fanged by their continual appearances

That's because they weren't. The difference is that the Dominion remained threatening throughout and despite all their many appearances, because they were written so well as to maintain that illusion of a real threat to the heroes. On the other hand, the Borg were not; neither on TNG, nor in the TNG movies, nor on Voyager.

The point is, multiple appearances need not ruin a villain (as the Dominon proves), but it easily can if they are treated with poor/mediocre writing (as the Borg proves). It probably even requires excellent writing to be able to keep a recurring villain interesting, but once again, the Dominion proves that it can be done.

 

[Withers]

I'm inclined to agree with the idea that there weren't opportunities for the Borg to be developed like the hierarchy of the Dominion was in Deep Space Nine (i.e the Female Changling, Dukat, Damar, Weyoun etc.) but, understanding that that is the case, they did have one central villain handed to them on a silver platter in The Borg Queen. Rather than this... weird, quasi-sexual fascination she had with Seven of Nine, I'd think she could have had the kind of hatred of Starfleet Captains that Dukat had of Bajorans or at least the kind of resentment Eddington had for the Federation.

Rather that do that, however, they gave her less than convincing motives more or less the whole way through (ignoring cannon as they went along, only further compounding the evidence of lazy writing.) After a while it was like "Why does the Queen keep letting Janeway bitch slap her all over the quadrant? Just send 10 cubes and be friggen done with it already!"

I'll give that the possibilities for use of the Borg weren't necessarily as 'open-wide' as some of the more celebrated villains in other Trek. I don't think, however, that what they ultimately did with the Borg couldn't have easily been done better.


-Withers-​

 

[Anwar]

The Dominion had tons of Fed Alliance ships and personnel to kill who weren't main characters, while all VOY had was one ship on its own. If all the Dominion did was attack DS9 and the Defiant alone they'd be just as ineffective because then they couldn't do anything permanent.

It was a limitation of VOY's premise.

And BoT was only good because it was a rip-off of a WWII movie, "Enemy Below".

I admit, if they just had the Queen mention that she deliberately let VOY go because she thinks they are more useful unassimilated back in "Dark Frontier" it would've worked out better.

 

[Withers]

The Dominion had tons of Fed Alliance ships and personnel to kill who weren't main characters, while all VOY had was one ship on its own. If all the Dominion did was attack DS9 and the Defiant alone they'd be just as ineffective because then they couldn't do anything permanent.

That's not really true. First of all, the Dominion were scary long before the war broke out, as evidenced by their earlier appearances. Even then it wasn't about them attacking the Defiant/DS9 to be scary. If they wanted to continue expounding on the menace of the Borg in the way DS9 did early on withe Dominion all they'd have to have done was show some other Delta Quadrant species putting up a fight but ultimately being assimilated. Voyager wouldn't even necessarily need to be there.

You continually imply that it was the massive fleet battles that entrenched the idea of the Dominion being a serious threat. That is not the case. They were well executed from the moment we first saw them. The Borg simply weren't.

And BoT was only good because

It was good. It was good. No one gives a damn why it was good. If it was good then it was good.


-Withers-​