Voyager: Was I the only one who enjoyed the Borg appearances?

every so often i'll come across a post in one thread or another where people will mention how the borg appeared too many times or how they were 'watered down' or even, 'castrated'. i know, the last one sounds unbelievable, but i've seen it used 10+ times in reference to the show.

the borg were the recurring villain VOY needed as an overarching villain. they worked the same way the dominion did on DS9. in the beginning they were displayed to be unstoppable. the obliteration of a fully fledged galaxy class ship, the flagship of the federation. over time, more weaknesses were discovered: jem'hadar reliance on white, the founder disease, the vorta selfishness, i could go on and on. these weaknesses are necessary for the show's good guys to be able to fight and eventually, win. it happens on every season length show with an overarching 'big bad'.

the borg were what kept me viewing the show each and every week. they're half of what made VOY such a great show. the same goes for DS9. to be honest, without the dominion, i don't think i would have stuck with DS9. the scenes on cardassia prime are just so much more enjoyable than anything we see from the federation, bar section 31.

 

Seeing Borg cubes on the run from Species 8472 was neat. Just the fact that the Borg are running scared is interesting in itself.

As for being the villain in Voyager, it's only natural since they are in their neighborhood.

 

Except for Sisko taking some Jem'Hadar out the first time they ever showed up, you mean? They were never "unstoppable", and certainly never the force of nature that the Borg started as on TNG; just very, very strong. Also, argh with the page-stretching image. Everyone here knows what a Borg cube looks like.

 

The original Borg were basically a virus that assimilated or destroyed everything in its path. It has no emotions, it has no ulterior motives, it does not negotiate and it does not back down. The Borg was not supposed to be a civilization that you send delegates to. The Borg was not supposed to sign treaties with anyone. The Borg was not supposed to operate under the guidance of a Queen.

I don't know what happened along the way, but the Borg lost everything that made it an imminent, unrelenting, and ever-lasting threat with which the only choice is to destroy or be destroyed. The Federation could negotiate with everybody but never the Borg. Hell, even the Q is told to never provoke the Borg. (I know this last one is in the book, which some of you may not consider cannon, but I loved it)

Its not all the fault of the VOY. I blame the TNG movies as well for treating a Borg like a normal alien race. Like the Borg WAS the Dominion.

 

Guinan said that eventually the Federation would be able to reach a co-existence with the Borg. But folks tend to ignore that.

And they also ignore that Q himself said that the Borg were only ONE of the deadly threats out there, they were never meant to be the Uber-Enemy everyone kept thinking they were.

Being ill-defined and overpowered is what did the Borg in, there was no where for them to go but down after "Best of Both Worlds".

If they had bothered defining them better beforehand, then there'd be more to work with.

 

I enjoyed seeing the Borg on VOY, even if they weren't always the best episodes. I don't feel that VOY ruined the Borg or overused them. I just feel they didn't always use them well. But Scorpion was a great episode.

 

This.

The Borg weren't castrated by Voyager, they were castrated by TNG in "The Best of Both Worlds", moreso by "I, Borg", and it just kept getting worse the more often they appeared. Voyager didn't reconnect the lines, so to speak, it just continued the downward trend of the Borg. Voyager's big castration was Species 8472 - a race that was only in 3 episodes that started out wanting to wipe out humanity as an infestation and by the 3rd episode was cutting deals with the Voyager crew for some shitty reason...

 

Outside the episode Unity, I wish Voyager would've left the Borg alone. The Borg were nothing more than a crutch to the Voyager writers who were unable to come up with interesting, sustainable adversaries.

 

They were great until about Dark Frontier. That one is great, because it explores Seven's backstory. I'd have liked to seen the Borg Queen gone for good at the climax... instead of coming back for more. The Borg should have realised what their weak link was sooner. They're supposed to represent 'commitee thinking' and that could have been their undoing, just as easily as having some mano-a-mano between Janeway and a Queen.

 

VOY's very premise meant they'd never be able to create sustainable enemies.

But yeah, they were a crutch regardless.

 

No. Voyager's premise meant that the writers would have to think 'outside the box' to create a sustainable nemesis. Nothing more.

 

Not really, no. Not unless this was some deranged individual who was willing to go after the same folks for 7 seven over tens of thousands of Light Years away from his/her home for some reason. There isn't a single example of such a foe out there, and no the NuBSG Cylons don't count. And on top of that, the audience would just complain that the VOY crew were a bunch of losers for not being to defeat one person.

Sustainable enemies work for shows like TNG and DS9 where the show takes place in the same region for the entirety, not for a show like VOY where they're constantly moving away from everything else.

Back to the Borg: The whole concept of them needed work before they should've been used on Trek.

For starters, there should never have been a larger Collective of Borg to begin with. Instead, there should've been dozens if not hundreds of Collectives all opposed to one another spread throughout the Galaxy. Nearly every single Borg ship should've been a Collective unto itself, taking orders from no one but itself. And everytime they'd be contacted the "Many voices" voice should've been different enough so we'd know it was a different voice.

This would wrap up the TNG Borg story quite well: The Cube from "Q Who?" and BOBW would've been the only Cube of that particular Collective, it chose to attack the Federation on its own and it never told the other Borg about the Alpha Quadrant. Thus, when it's destroyed they have no fear of future Borg attacks because the other Collectives don't know they exist.

 

as others have pointed out, common misconception to the contrary, it was TNG that changed the Borg. It was FC that added the Borg Queen, a concept that makes no sense given what had been established with the Borg earlier.


Voyager actually changed the Borg LESS than TNG did during the overall run from "Q Who" to "First Contact."







the Borg two-parters on Voyager tended to be among the better episodes at any rate, and given the location in the DQ, it made sense to make use of the Borg.

 

I enjoyed it. Except for the kids. That felt contrived.

As to the evolution of the Borg, it makes sense in a way. They are all about efficiency, and selecting a 'spokesman' is expedient to many interactions. Take Locutus as an example. The Borg queen is essentially the same, a mouthpiece of the collective.

 

I liked most of the "main" Borg episodes, which most also happen to be on The Star Trek Fan Collective, as well as Star Trek FC, and Voyager episodes Unity & Collective. I think the Borg are one of the greatest things to happen to Star Trek, but like with everything, there are bound to be weak episodes.

Descent 1/2(which is also really a Data\Lore episode as much as a Borg one) is probably the one that stands out for me as my least favorite Borg Episode.

 

why would the Borg care about an individual mouthpiece? They're capable of communicating through the collective as seen pre-Locutus transformation in BOBW.

An individual Queen makes them far more vulnerable as it gives opponents of the Borg a target to focus on.

it's a step backwards for Borg efficiency, not forwards.

 

^ I agree. I'm not entirely sure why, based on their first introduction, they even needed a mouthpiece other than a reason to put one of our crew in danger...

 

They figured that maybe if they used a figurehead leader type, it might actually persuade some folks to just disarm and surrender to the Collective. Of course it didn't work, but hey it was worth a shot.

 

Listen to the writer's commentary on First Contact to find out why the queen was created.

 

Another problem is that they showed that it's possible to de-assimilate someone just as they had introduce the concept. So real fears over losing yourself to the Borg were negated by knowing you can be restored.

Maybe if they said "After 48 hours you can't be restored" or something then there's more menace to it while maintaining BOBW.