What if Voyager had been hunted by the Borg?

[Gotham Central]

So much of Voyager fell flat to me, and seemed to lack imagination. One of the places where Voyager really seemed to go off the rails was its depiction of the Borg. In fact the Borg had been weekend so far that the producers were forced to create a more menacing adversary in the form of Species 8472 (who where themselves defanged shortly there after).

One of the things that might have helped Voyager overall is if they'd had a more persistent threat...a reason to keep on the move and perhaps even a personal quest. This is what we eventually get on BSG, but it could have been included in Voyager in an interesting way.

I think that what we learn about the Borg in Scorpion and the Omega Directive provide an interesting insight into the way the Borg think. They will pursue knowledge or assimilation if it either offers them an advantage or moves them toward their idea of perfection. In the case of 8472, they'l pursue their goal even if it leads to their own destruction. So I started thinking, what if Voyager had knowledge about something that the Borg would REALLY want...thus pushing them o relentlessly go after Voyager and perhaps even threaten the Federation, Destiny style, if they did not get what they want.

So what might Voyager and the Federation have that the Borg would really want? I'm thinking that incidents with Nomad and V'Ger. Suppose Voyager found evidence for the location of the machine planet that Spock saw in his probe of the V'ger archive. Given the knowledge and technology at the disposal of that world, the Borg would likely stop at nothing to find it. Voyager, on the other hand would not want the Borg to find it, especially given what happened to V'ger when it was able to merge with biological organisms. The Machine Planet should have been the Borg's proverbial holy grail as merging with the beings there would lead to the fulfillment of their idea of perfection.

 

[R. Star]

Really the Borg are just like alcohol. In moderation they're great and can really enhance things. Too much and things just start getting stupid. Voyager's use of the Borg is really a case and point.

 

[Guy Gardener]

They were hunted by the Kazon for 2 seasons, but I do not believe that anyone told the spec writers who submitted most of their scripts before season one came to air based on the series bible.

If the Borg decided to hunt Voyager... I'm %100 certain that the Borg always knew where Voyager was all the time, after Scorpion because their scanning technology penetrating transubspace makes the limits of the galaxy seem downright neighbourly, and then using transwarp drive, it would take minutes to catch up to Voyager no matter where in that same galaxy she had run to, and I don't mean a cube. The Borg can just fire a torpedo from 55 thousand lightyears distance with uncanny accuracy that will hit it's mark in seconds.

Voyager wasn't worth the cost of a torpedo.

Besides, all they really had to do was turn Seven back on, but they were probably saving that trick until Voyager was parked in Earth orbit.

 

[Disruptor]

The Borg were still credible menace at the time of "Scorpion", they were lessened later. In fact they only had one real Voyager appearance prior to that episode, and those were disconnected drones.

If we think of Seven as a sleeper agent...maybe the Borg's handling of Voyager makes more sense.

I've got a problem with the Borg, they are consumers but are they innovators? Do in fact, they really need unassimilated cultures to "feed" them? Thus when they assimilate a whole species, they end any distinctive contributions that culture can ever make.

Perhaps the Borg are outright liars. Resistance to them may be futile in the long term, but it's desired. The Borg want more tech...tech that can resist the Borg would desired in the Borg outlook. They lose a cube or two at first, but when they eventually succeed they get whatever thing that defeated them.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I think we got to know too much about the Borg, thanks to Seven being onboard. Any air of mystery and intrigue they had vanished as we learned about vinculums and nanoprobes (which just happen to be able to save the day every other week).

Seven was a good character in conception, but after she became the shows deus ex machina and almost all episodes revolved around her, then it just got really dull.

As for the Borg being weakened, when a small light explorer such as Voyager can outwit and beat them on a regular basis, it really does render them pretty impotent.

 

[Guy Gardener]

It's called farming, but I felt like a smart puppy when I figured that out a while ago.

they could even send out exploratory cubes with exaggerated deficiencies to actively promote specific innovations in the as yet unassimilated, and besides once you see that the borg are picky that they will not assimilate a culture below a series of minimum set of thresholds, you can see that they're just as chosey as the Federation for their sign up process, why else wouldn't they have overidden the universe already?

But all that deduction although fun is hardly necessary.

Hugh said in I, Borg: "The Borg assimilate civilizations not individuals."

Seven said in something else "the Borg are efficient, not redundant"

They Know all about Federation species and Federation technology, so why bother?

 

[Anwar]

There's no way this plot could work, unless VOY got its' hands on some kind of stealth tech/untrackable engine tech that wouldn't allow the Borg to track them at all and it would only be through dumb luck they could find them.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You mean like the stealth Tech from Counterpoint or nightingale?

Honestly Voyager doesn't have to be invisible.

It just has to be using the wrong warp bubble configuration for a ship it's size, shape and weight, and the wrong intermix formulae, to appear to be a smaller/larger, slower/faster and non federation ship to fool long range scans.

 

[tighr]

So what might Voyager and the Federation have that the Borg would really want? I'm thinking that incidents with Nomad and V'Ger. Suppose Voyager found evidence for the location of the machine planet that Spock saw in his probe of the V'ger archive. Given the knowledge and technology at the disposal of that world, the Borg would likely stop at nothing to find it. Voyager, on the other hand would not want the Borg to find it, especially given what happened to V'ger when it was able to merge with biological organisms. The Machine Planet should have been the Borg's proverbial holy grail as merging with the beings there would lead to the fulfillment of their idea of perfection.

It would have been better if the Borg were revealed to have been originally from that machine planet, that the Borg were the machine's attempt 1000 years ago at merging with humanoid life in an effort to grow past their limitations. Instead of getting the "star child" of Decker and Ilia, we got cyborgs.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Initially they thought that Q snapping his fingers in Q Who to Transport the Enterprise thousands of light years in a wink of an eye was an an unknown type of stardrive.

After they figured out that was in error, they had already committed themselves to the task.

 

[Anwar]

Or, they figured that any species worth the attention of the Q was also worth assimilating.