What are your opinions regarding Star Trek that are, shall we say, unorthodox?

[HIjol]

My (not so) unorthodox view of Star Trek is that, when I was younger (when it came out) and into my Thirties, I truly believed that when we got "there"; having something like a Star Fleet and a something resembling a Untied Federation of Planets - we would be better versions of the peoples who make up our world.

Now, I fear that it will just be a much more high-tech driven existence with many of the same social and political problems we have now...

 

[FredH]

Imagine time travel and the Borg at the same time. The result is something really good (FIRST CONTACT) or really awful (PICARD season 2).

Funny thing: I’d personally reverse those. I’m aware of how much the minority I am in that. I’d feel differently if FC had been the film that seemed to be promised by the opening battle.

 

[FredH]

Someone else said it up thread and I agreed with the sentiment. Susanna Thompson is a better Borg Queen than Alice Krige. Also, Dark Frontier really did use the Borg Queen the best, though I thought she being a common villain in the series was a nice idea in hindsight.

Regardless of who plays her, I wish they had firmly established whether
(a) there’s a single Borg Queen who transfers around the Collective and is rebuilt when necessary; or
(b) every cube has one, or an iteration/avatar available of her, and we could theoretically have had an episode with two or multiple different Queens interacting.
I think the evidence leads towards the first, but there’s circumstantial evidence for either.

 

[HIjol]

I love "(b)" !!!

 

[Farscape One]

I understand why the Borg Queen was created for the movie... it made sense to have a villain with a face for our heroes to interact with.

But in a series, it just diluted the Borg even more. The Borg were never as scary as they were in "Q Who"... though "REGENERATION" is a very close second place. (And actually did the impossible: made the Borg scary again after getting completely deganged by VOY.)

"The Best of Both Worlds" would be my third place pick, especially as the years go by.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Here's my unorthodox opinion: I don't think I've ever cared much if the Borg were scary or not.

I've always accepted that making them less scary was a bad thing, because people said so, and that this is one of Voyager's most obvious flaws... but the more I think about it, that's not how I feel at all. Star Trek villains start off as a threat, then we come to understand them more, and then we've got Klingons and Romulans at Starfleet Academy while a Borg commands the Enterprise.

 

[tomalak301]

Regardless of who plays her, I wish they had firmly established whether
(a) there’s a single Borg Queen who transfers around the Collective and is rebuilt when necessary; or
(b) every cube has one, or an iteration/avatar available of her, and we could theoretically have had an episode with two or multiple different Queens interacting.
I think the evidence leads towards the first, but there’s circumstantial evidence for either.

I've always been confused about the Borg Queen in relation to the Collective, and if the two contradict each other. We see the Queen die in First Contact, and that killed all the drones from the ship. If you kill a queen, shouldn't that wipe out the entire collective? Are there like mini collectives in the Borg system and each queen is assigned to each ship? If that's the case that's not really the whole "Collective" isn't it? I think the Queen just made the Borg hierarchy all the more confusing.

 

[FredH]

Here's my unorthodox opinion: I don't think I've ever cared much if the Borg were scary or not.

I've always accepted that making them less scary was a bad thing, because people said so, and that this is one of Voyager's most obvious flaws... but the more I think about it, that's not how I feel at all. Star Trek villains start off as a threat, then we come to understand them more, and then we've got Klingons and Romulans at Starfleet Academy while a Borg commands the Enterprise.

…not unfair.

 

[FredH]

I've always been confused about the Borg Queen in relation to the Collective, and if the two contradict each other. We see the Queen die in First Contact, and that killed all the drones from the ship. If you kill a queen, shouldn't that wipe out the entire collective? Are there like mini collectives in the Borg system and each queen is assigned to each ship? If that's the case that's not really the whole "Collective" isn't it? I think the Queen just made the Borg hierarchy all the more confusing.

I used to like the early vague hints that the Borg were more than they appeared, and at a much higher “level” than they seemed. Onscreen that has basically been limited to the Queen in FC dismissing Picard’s objection that her ship had been destroyed as being such a limited, three-dimensional viewpoint (I think), and the Queen’s awareness in PIC of multiple timelines and the Borg’s fate in each. In the (non-canon) novels, I recall moments like a Borg Hypercube (that’s therefore very hard to look at, because the dimensions don’t make sense), or a transwarp portal leading to a distant galaxy.

 

[1001001]

ENT had the good sense to not even obliquely refer to her, and kept the story to thawed-out drones from the 21st century who hijack an Earth ship and send a message to a distant part of the galaxy.

Interesting side note: the Federation scientist who gets assimilated in Regeneration was played by John Billingsley’s wife Bonnie.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

At a convention one time someone asked Spiner "how do you play a character with no emotions?"

He replied "you don't. You play a character that pretends to have no emotions,"

That sounds a bit more like Spock's department than Data's.

 

[tomalak301]

ENT had the good sense to not even obliquely refer to her, and kept the story to thawed-out drones from the 21st century who hijack an Earth ship and send a message to a distant part of the galaxy. For all the Prequel series' shortcomings it got the Borg right, and in an era when there was absolutely no need for a Borg story.

The amount of back and forth this board saw when that episode was announced makes some of the attitudes towards trek today feel like child's play. Then when the episode actually aired, I think everyone was shocked on just how good it was.

 

[Nerys Myk]

IIRC, the original pitch for the Borg was they were insect like. So a queen sort of makes sense.

 

[Farscape One]

IIRC, the original pitch for the Borg was they were insect like. So a queen sort of makes sense.

True, and it does make some logical sense.

Still diluted the Borg immensely, though. Instead of being a relentless force of nature, they got turned into toothless zombie cyborgs run by an obsessed queen.

 

[BillJ]

I like Janeway better than SNW’s Pike.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I like Janeway better than SNW’s Pike.

Pike still has two seasons to redeem himself.

But right now I'm also on Team Janeway.

 

[FormerLurker]

True, and it does make some logical sense.

Still diluted the Borg immensely, though. Instead of being a relentless force of nature, they got turned into toothless zombie cyborgs run by an obsessed queen.

That depends on what she's obsessed with. It's my headcanon that the Borg wouldn't exist without the queen. She's the reason they're the Borg. Without her, they're just using brain-computers to access their version of the internet. With her, and her obsessions, they're everything that their neighbors have feared for as long as they've been around, and it is she that has pushed them to come to the Alpha Quadrant to attempt to take over the Federation. Her primary obsession is power, and her willingness to do anything to get it.

 

[1001001]

That depends on what she's obsessed with.

Perfection.

 

[Guy Gardener]

During. He meets him a Khitomer. It's the "Hey, go see Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, coming soon to a theater near you!" hook that got Nimoy to do TNG.

So I'm thinking that the "obvious" Romulan we saw there in the movie was the Ambassador who plotted with Chang to murder Gorkon and try to whack Red Foreman, but his entourage involved in that weak ass plot probably called for "asylum" preferring Federation Justice over Klingon Justice after Romulus disavowed them?

Pardek may have been in a Federation jail or penal colony for Decades, and Spock was his only Visitor? Um.

Pon Far?

If Pardek was in a Penal Colony surrounded by opportunity, he could have worked something out, but if he was in a Federation Supermax, if such a thing exists, then he wasn't going to get a sweet release from any one except the only guy who visited him for 30 years, Spock.

The other half of Pon far is returning to Vulcan, so finding a bed mate adds up to Jack shit, unless you wonder how Tuvok swung it in the Delta Quadrant?

Did every Romulan for the last 2000 years have to sneak into Vulcan past customs with fake paperwork every 7 years like a sex tourist, or is this really why they had to invent Cloaking technology?

 

[XCV330]

Maybe not the best, but Gabriel Lorca was the most interesting captain we ever got to see, and I'll die on that hill. I only wish we'd gotten to see Mirror Lorca. I mean Lorca Prime