Why does this show seem determined not to acknowledge "Voyager?"
- Thread starter WarpTenLizard
- Start date
A canon is just a set of stories, creative works by human authors and artists. Of course we can criticize the creative choices made by storytellers as bad or silly ideas, or as contradictions of what previous stories have established. We're not required to believe it's "true" just because someone put it in a story. None of it is true. It's make-believe. Roddenberry himself considered a lot of the things he had to settle for in TOS as mistakes or bad ideas (e.g. smooth-headed Klingons) and tried to correct them in later productions. Because that's what creativity is -- a process of change and adjustment. The details are always negotiable.
Look at any long-running fictional canon and you'll find many contradictions. When a detail is presented one way in most stories (e.g. the Borg as a single hive mind) and a different way in just one or two stories (e.g. the Borg Queen issuing verbal commands to her underlings), then of course you can disregard the exception in favor of the rule, especially when the exception is stupid as hell.
That's anthropomorphizing and missing the point. The Queen has a personality, yes, but it's the personality of the entire Collective. All of the Borg are speaking through the Queen's body. She literally said as much in FC:
http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie8.html
The Queen is the Collective. They are one and the same. Her mind is the Collective's mind. Her will is the Collective's will. She is not the leader of a nation or crew; she is the brain and the drones and cubes are her body. She appears to be an individual because all the Borg combined are only one mind, a mind that speaks through the Queen. "I am the Borg."
Which I consider bad writing. Picard is treating her like a mustache-twirling melodrama villainess, and it's ridiculous.
None of this is real. This isn't a textbook we're studying for an exam where we have to get the correct answers. This is a work of entertainment meant for our enjoyment. We're allowed to say that parts of it are unsatisfying or bad ideas. We're not "required" to believe any of it; we choose whether to suspend disbelief. It's the storytellers' responsibility to make us want to by making good choices. Critiquing their bad choices is necessary if we want them to do better.
I just gave it to you. It's in the movie where the character debuted and spoken by the character herself. It couldn't be any clearer that it's what the creators of the character intended.
The Borg have been around for 33 years, and the Borg have had a queen for 27 of those years. The "rule" in this case would be how the Borg have been depicted in each successive iteration, and those iterations have maintained the precedent set by First Contact.
In First Contact, she directs drones with gesticulations. In all her appearances on Voyager, she's witnessed issuing oral decrees (e.g. "Assimilate them!" "Bring me his cortical array." "No. They haven't compromised our security. Let the vessel continue—for now. I'll keep an eye on them.").
Let's look at Picard. She's severed from the hive and yet she remains an individual with brazenly megalomaniacal designs. She even waxes poetic about guiding armies and subjugating civilizations. When Picard expounds upon his time as a drone, he distinguishes her from the rest of the Borg by emphasizing that she was always in control. She's not an embodiment or "avatar."
That's your rule. The Borg, as you know them, are over. They've been over—for a loooong time.
You're half right. When the Queen says she's the Borg, she's speaking of her influence over the Collective. Their will is indeed her will, because she's imposing her will upon them. It's narcissistic.
They conceived her as an individual, wrote her as such, and continue to write her that way now.Ronald D. Moore circa 1997 via AOL Chat said:
Sure. But that doesn't grant you license to submit your opinions under the pretense that they trump canon. I can say that Gul Dukat is a faithful monogamist all I want, but at least a dozen DS9 episodes contradict that baseless reading. I'm just conjuring up alternate reality fan fiction at that point. If you don't like the Borg anymore, that's fine. Feel free to express your displeasure as vociferously as you want, just don't go into a conversation plugging your ears and pretending your idealized vision is a substitute for official media.
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And until "Unimatrix Zero," the Queen was portrayed as originally conceived, as the embodiment of the entire unified Collective -- "I am the Borg." She acted like an individual because the consciousness speaking through her mouth was the unified hive mind of the Borg Collective, not because she was some kind of literal "ruler" of a distinct population. She was the ruler only in the sense that your brain is the ruler of your body.
It wasn't until "Zero" that the writers got sloppy enough to forget what "collective consciousness" means and give us the stupidity of her issuing verbal orders to drones that were extensions of her own mind. It's only that and "Endgame" that are the exceptions to the way she was otherwise portrayed. And I consider it a rhetorical cheat to count the 21 years between "Endgame" and Picard in your tally, because there have been no onscreen stories about the Borg Queen in that interval (except for a holosimulation in a Lower Decks episode).
As for the Picard version, she's not inconsistent, strictly speaking, because she actually is an individual; recall that when we met her, the entire Borg Collective in the Confederation timeline had been exterminated and the Queen was the only one left. That justifies why she acts more individualized -- and more unstable -- that the Queen has in the past. And she didn't really begin to be written as a flamboyant mustache-twirling cartoon villain until after her link with Jurati, so I assume she's absorbed a degree of Agnes's garrulousness; after all, every individual in the Collective contributes their distinctiveness to the whole, like ingredients blended into a smoothie, and the Queen and Jurati currently form a collective of two (which, indeed, was the basis for the title of this week's episode). I don't like the way the character is being written, but I can rationalize it.
Which was stupid writing that misses the entire point of a collective consciousness. I choose to take it as dramatic license for the benefit of the audience, a figurative representation of what would really be an internal communication through the cloud consciousness. But it's still an insult to the audience's intelligence. It cheapens the concept of the Borg to treat the Queen as just another generic evil monarch or commander. That's my problem with the writing in Picard, even though I can handwave the in-universe reasons for it.
I wonder if you're aware that I wrote the Borg-centric novel Greater than the Sum. While the Queen did not appear in it, I did discuss her nature and role within the Collective as a central coordinating node, and a replaceable one -- basically a specialized drone installed with what was established in earlier novels as the Royal Protocol, the Collective's core programming. Now, every professionally published Trek novel needs to be approved by the studio's licensing people, who are experts on Trek continuity and make sure our books are consistent with it. And they were perfectly fine with me and my fellow authors portraying the Queen as effectively a replaceable CPU for the Collective rather than a "ruler." So I literally have official confirmation that my "opinions" align with canon -- at least insofar as that canon aligns with itself, which no large canon does perfectly.
No, no you don't. Your books have no bearing on the show, the Borg, or anything else the franchise produces than a random fanfic writer.
I appreciate your inventive imagination and your obdurate insistence on wielding said imagination to reconcile the Borg of today with the Borg of 1989. I say that without irony. However, you need to be mindful that your head/beta canon is not representative of official—not just licensed—Star Trek material. It would also be helpful if you acknowledged some of the points others are making.
-"Unimatrix Zero" was not the point at which the writers began depicting the Queen as a tyrant. As I stated earlier, she was shown ordering drones in both First Contact and "Dark Frontier."
-Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga, the two creators of the Borg Queen, always considered her an individual. While authorial intent is tenuous when discussing canonicity, the Queen's portrayals have consistently adhered to their original concept.
-Your explanation for why the Queen is a loquacious "mustache-twirling villain" in Picard clashes with the Queen's own testimony. She says her lucidity is caused by their place in the timeline. And to be fair, the Queen has always been villainous and manipulative, which is why the writers on Picard are playing it up. "Watch your future's end," she says as her face melts into sadistic delight. Remember all those times she cursed Janeway's name like they were arch enemies? Remember when she let slip a sinister grin when Janeway et all. were assimilated?
That's a fair statement, but our understanding of the Borg—as far as canon is concerned—went undisturbed until 2020, when Picard upheld the changes made by First Contact and Voyager. And if we really want to get tit for tat, then we can remind ourselves that the post-FC Borg have appeared in 34 episodes plus a motion picture, and that's not counting Lower Decks. The pre-FC Borg existed in a measly six. Either way, it's time for people to start letting go. The Borg are never going back to the way they were in "Q Who." If you want to continue jumping through hoops to reconcile the TNG Borg with modern Borg, then that's your prerogative, but that head canon isn't what we're getting in official on-screen media.
And that reminds me. The Borg articles on Memory Alpha need a MAJOR overhaul once this season of Picard ends. It's kind of alarming how sloppy and full of biased/baseless conjecture they are.
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Well, it's just a fan-run wiki. They get lots of stuff wrong.
I've seen First Contact and a number of the Queen's appearances on Voyager. She's always been a sinister character, created to give the Borg a villainous presence for the movie and used that way since. A lot of rationalization trying pointlessly to reconcile her with the older, superceded Hurley Borg is a waste of time.
I've seen First Contact and a number of the Queen's appearances on Voyager. She's always been a sinister character, created to give the Borg a villainous presence for the movie and used that way since. A lot of rationalization trying pointlessly to reconcile her with the older, superceded Hurley Borg is a waste of time.
A fan run project run for free with no oversight.? Color me shocked.
The Borg Queen is a character. Positing that her personality is somehow a product of the way the hive consciousness is processed under the Royal Protocol (snicker — what a ridiculous name) would essentially just be her backstory, and a very technobabbly backstory at that.
It chafes at the pedant lurking within me.
Oh, it chafes me too. There is a reason I don't attempt to participate in such projects any more.
Harry Kim is set to return as a member of the Stargazer crew.
Still as an ensign
Still as an ensign
As opposed to the rest of the Very Important Stuff we do here?
I like the Borg Queen concept, and always have. It just makes more sense to me.
Harry Kim is set to return as a member of the Stargazer crew.
Still as an ensign
The Once and Future Ensign.
Smart ass. Get back to that place downstairs and straighten out the Electoral Congress.
I expect a progress report in the morning.
I'd like to see Allison doing her Borg Queen best in the bar singing 'I Want to be Evil' while she assimilates/eliminates everyone in the bar.
>A reference only for the sake of a reference is just the writers showing off how well they know continuity, and why the hell should we care about that?
My hat's off to any & all production crew on every sequel to TOS save TAS (which shared the original crew), who have the toughest of jobs: write stories that will draw us fans, while not alienating folks who've just wandered in with little or no knowledge of prior shows.
And as for us, we're a contentious bunch, to say the least. A few weeks back, someone put up a "funny" video, taking a single line from an episode of Discovery, in which some Starfleet guy or other says something like "We've never been outside the galaxy," and following it with TOS clips. But...that episode was titled "The Galactic Barrier," and (IIRC) included use of some variant of the "where no man has gone before" line--which would seem to me to establish the writers knew their canon.
I tend to enjoy what's now been dubbed with the idiot term "Easter eggs"--but the most savory of these appear in "product" pitched TO fans...i.e., novels. I loathed Greg Cox's take on the Eugenics Wars/Khan, chock full of tips of the hat...but can you imagine pitching those stories as movies? The higher ups would call guards to show you the door.
Personally, I think the Borg have been handled rather sloppily, almost the extent that each and every appearance features a different universe's Borg. But they all succeed on the most important level, that of being horrifying. Good enough for me.
"The Borg are everywhere!" Talk about an analogy with contemporary events...
My hat's off to any & all production crew on every sequel to TOS save TAS (which shared the original crew), who have the toughest of jobs: write stories that will draw us fans, while not alienating folks who've just wandered in with little or no knowledge of prior shows.
And as for us, we're a contentious bunch, to say the least. A few weeks back, someone put up a "funny" video, taking a single line from an episode of Discovery, in which some Starfleet guy or other says something like "We've never been outside the galaxy," and following it with TOS clips. But...that episode was titled "The Galactic Barrier," and (IIRC) included use of some variant of the "where no man has gone before" line--which would seem to me to establish the writers knew their canon.
I tend to enjoy what's now been dubbed with the idiot term "Easter eggs"--but the most savory of these appear in "product" pitched TO fans...i.e., novels. I loathed Greg Cox's take on the Eugenics Wars/Khan, chock full of tips of the hat...but can you imagine pitching those stories as movies? The higher ups would call guards to show you the door.
Personally, I think the Borg have been handled rather sloppily, almost the extent that each and every appearance features a different universe's Borg. But they all succeed on the most important level, that of being horrifying. Good enough for me.
"The Borg are everywhere!" Talk about an analogy with contemporary events...
She killed my Prized Beagle!? 
But why? What did poor old Porthos VIII do to her?
And here I thought that funny little Scotsman was responsible. Guess I owe him an apology for marooning him on Delta Vega. Oh wait, you didn't hear that from me. Move on, nothing to see here!
But why? What did poor old Porthos VIII do to her?
And here I thought that funny little Scotsman was responsible. Guess I owe him an apology for marooning him on Delta Vega. Oh wait, you didn't hear that from me. Move on, nothing to see here!
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