Who were the Drones in Unity

[Mansa40]

I really liked this episode, but I notice a major problem. How did all those drones from the Alpha Quadrant get into the Delta Quad? One lady says she was assimilated at Wolf 359 which does not make any sense because that Cube was destroyed by the Enterprise-D. Meanwhile Romulans and Klingon's were present, which seems to indicated some unknown assimilation's by the Borg. But then how did the humans get on board the same Cube? If the humans had said they were assimilated while on Outposts near the Neutral Zone that would have made more sense.

Also what ever do you think happened to them after Voy left?

 

[Brit]

I think that little "cooperative" became a "mini collective" with Riley Frazier as their Queen.

Brit

 

[Xerxes1979]

They should have dropped the Wolf 359 reference and had the Enterprise-D crew members that were lost in system J-25. It would have served the same dialogue purpose.

 

[SilentP]

There is the theory that the Cube dropped off smaller ships that went around assimilating survivors and headed back to Borg territory. We already know that Cubes can hold Spheres on board.

 

[Timo]

Perhaps more significantly, we know that the Borg assimilate starships.

For all we know, every Borg Cube actually beings life as an assimilated alien starship. Certainly the Borg had plenty to choose from, after slaughtering the fleet at Wolf 359. Few ships were completely vaporized, it appears, since we see more than a dozen near-intact wrecks there. Quite possibly a dozen ships were converted into Borg vessels, crewed by assimilated Starfleet personnel, and sent to various destinations, including the Delta Quadrant.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mansa40]

AS it relates to this episode the Russin Doll theory of the borg seems most prudent. This would explain why Klingons and Cardassians were on board. The growth option makes sense too and would explain why the Borg have ships numbering in the tens of thousands. Constructing so many ships would be very difficult to manage even for the Borg. Moreover, why have so many when each one bascially can WTF own whole fleets of most races in the Galaxy

 

[Brit]

We know from "First Contact" that the Queen was present at Picard's assimilation. Perhaps she also stayed for the confrontation at Wolf 359. She apparently left sometime before the cube was destroyed. She may have taken newly assimilated drones with her.

Brit

 

[Xerxes1979]

Klingons and Romulans very well may have been present

Hansen

"Your engagements have given us valuable time.
We've mobilized a fleet of 40 starships at Wolf 359.
That's for starters.
The Klingons are sending warships.
We may even talk with the Romulans".

 

[Timo]

We know from "First Contact" that the Queen was present at Picard's assimilation.

For all we know, she's always present everywhere at once. She's probably just software, after all, only taking a bodily form every now and then by using local resources. She wouldn't need a ship for traveling - she could travel by databurst.

However, the regular Drones don't seem to do that. They may exist as "software", yes, thus being essentially immortal. Some of that we see in "Infinite Regress". But the "Unity" Drones had had their physical bodies hauled from Wolf 359 to Delta somehow. Possibly by an auxiliary craft launched by the Cube; possibly by a second Cube that met with the first one, out of sight of Starfleet eyes; possibly by assimilated Starfleet ships that eventually became Borg Cubes. Or then the Cube did a little detour to Delta Quadrant, using one of the existing transwarp tunnels for a merely hours- or minutes-long round trip, and then returned to hunt for Federation prey using conventional warp...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anwar]

There's a theory that there was more than one Borg vessel present during BOBW, the one that assimilated the people at the Jouret IV colony and the Main Cube that we focused on. The other ship either returned to the Delta Quad after assimilating Jouret IV or it detached from the larger Cube after the Wolf battle and returned to the DQ.

 

[Timo]

But what would the need for that be? In ENT "Regeneration", we see they can transform a puny little starboat into a formidable and fast starship in a matter of a few days. Given just a few more days, they'd have grown any of the Wolf 359 starships into a formidable vessel indeed, and would have reached Delta Quadrant in no time flat.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Brit]

We know from "First Contact" that the Queen was present at Picard's assimilation.

For all we know, she's always present everywhere at once. She's probably just software, after all, only taking a bodily form every now and then by using local resources. She wouldn't need a ship for traveling - she could travel by databurst.

Well as exhibited also in "First Contact" the Queen is "hardware" too, true there are almost no organic parts left but we saw a Queen "killed" in both "First Contact" and "Endgame." I'd say that's pretty good evidence that the Queen is a physical being.

Brit

 

[Anwar]

Taking the expedition's sample back to the home base for analysis just in case the whole assimilation of Earth turned out to be bust because they had nothing really to offer?

The whole thing is kind blurry since it was a one-line retcon they likely didn't think through.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Well it was made clear that the Borg Queen was present during the assimilation of Picard and yet somehow she survived the Cubes destruction.

I assume that after the battle the Queen left the Cube in a sphere leaving Picard to attack Earth.

EDIT: Sorry someone already mentioned that, I posted without reading the thread.

 

[Timo]

That sounds unnecessarily conventional to me. The Queen has been shown surviving having her flesh melted away by warp coolant and her neck broken by Picard; she was up and running again in Voyager.

Granted that the VOY Queen was the likeness of Susanna Thompson, not Alice Krige. But then she AGAIN became Alice Krige for the final episode. Apparently, she really is mostly software, capable of escaping physical doom by retreating to the Collective as a lump of data, and can take on one of these "standard bodies" of Species 125 type whenever she feels like having a body.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Brit]

Granted that the VOY Queen was the likeness of Susanna Thompson, not Alice Krige. But then she AGAIN became Alice Krige for the final episode. Apparently, she really is mostly software, capable of escaping physical doom by retreating to the Collective as a lump of data, and can take on one of these "standard bodies" of Species 125 type whenever she feels like having

There were some differences between the Susanna Thompson Queen and the two Alice Krige ones, and I think that a case can be made for these being three separate beings.

The raw material in the form of female drones is already in place for making Queens, and I think that there were thousands of potential Queens at any given time, drones that had extra special programming as in "royal jelly." So long as the central processer is intact, a new Queen can be chosen if something happens to the old one.

I believe there was only one Queen at a time, she is the one who speaks, and she has a certain amount of individuality. One hive mind = one voice, anything else would be redundant, confusing to that one hive mind and would set up a lot of inner conflict within the Borg.

There is a Queen that controls the Borg and a mechanical central processor that controls the Queen. When you disrupt that Central Processor (which is what I believe happened in "Endgame") you disconnect all the drones and we have good evidence that disconnected drones regain their individuality and do so almost at once.

That leads us back to the first question "Who were the Drones in Unity?" They were interesting in that it could be looked at as a scenario on how the Borg came to be in the first place.

Freed individual drones, a lot of infighting and discord and the leaders of that group decide that they will form a "Cooperative" and all the former drones are involuntarily reconnected. That is power and just how long will it take for someone to desire the power to order this new society because that person "Knows what is the right way to go,” to use that power to reform their Cooperative into a Collective.

They are just one step away from being a new Collective. This is where I believe Trek Lit has missed its mark. That is the former Borg Collective has been reduced to individuals, some of which are not above using existing Borg technology to reform into Cooperatives that evolve into Collectives and the whole thing starts again only this time they will have to fight each other too.

Ok you guys are doing it to me again, you are going to make me write fic and I don't have time. I'm doing NaNoWriMo starting tomorrow with original characters, space ships and a newly discovered Jump Gate orbiting Jupiter.

So many stories, so little time.

Brit

Edited to add, ok natural progression here. The Borg had some idea (and I think a misguided one) that only females could be "The One Who Speaks". I personally think that had to do with the Borg idea of perfection and the way female chromosomes line up. Other evolving Collectives may not have that particular hang up, so we could see Borg Kings too.

 

[Mansa40]

It is definately possible that the Queen as a physcial entity was present in the BOBW. She may have simply made Locutis then left when she felt that a borg counterpart was set up. Presumably Picard was to build the Borg empire in the Alpha Quadrent