It's best not to think too deeply about these things.
Spoilers Will Hugh still go by "Hugh"?
- Thread starter NewHeavensNewEarth
- Start date
It's best not to think too deeply about these things.
Of course in English "You (singular)" and "You (plural)" are the same word.
Interestingly, the French in "I, Borg" (the first time "You will be assimilated" was said, is "Vous serez assimiles", rather than "Tu serez assimiles". Later Hugh says "You are not Borg", again "Vous".
(my French is rusty, does vous also refer to singular when you are being formal? Indeed Guinan's line "You don't look so tough" is "Vous n'avex pas l'air si dur". If so, are there any languages that do differientiate?)
Where is the evidence in Q-Who to say they reproduce?
RIKER: From the look of it the Borg are born as biological life form. It seems that almost immediately after birth they begin artificial implants. Apparently the Borg have developed the technology
That doesn't mean Riker is right. We know from Voyager that the Borg assimilate babies and children, we know they put those children into maturation chambers until they have matured long enough.
If you want to complain about the Borg changing, blame it on TNG and First Contact. First Contact Borg were far closer to Endgame Borg than to Q-Who Borg.
I'm sure cloning body parts is not beyond their power, but they do leave unassimilated planets and populations behind, especially inferior ones. Icheb's planet comes to mind.
Besides, there's a lot of planets out there, and the Borg have barely scratched the surface of the galaxy even after thousands of years.
Seven still has her ocular implant, and she's undoubtedly one of the most famous people in the Federation.
That was never really intended to be anything more than a rumor about a foe the Federation hadn't met yet and knew little about. The developer of the Ferengi, Herb Wright, disapproved of the inclusion of the line about the Ferengi finding their business partners "tasty" in "Encounter at Farpoint," because it was never how he intended the Ferengi to be portrayed. As we saw in "The Last Outpost," the Ferengi deliberately presented themselves as scary and mysterious to make themselves seem more intimidating than they really were, much like Balok in "The Corbomite Maneuver." I always figured they spread the cannibalism rumors themselves as part of that process.
The real reason for the change was to make the stories more personal. You can't tell a lot of stories about fighting an impersonal force of nature with no awareness of individual people. That's basically a disaster movie. You can certainly do a story about your heroes going up against a hurricane, but you can't keep bringing the hurricane back as a recurring threat; it would get repetitive quickly. So the Borg had to be reconceptualized to operate on a more personal level, one more conducive to storytelling. So they were rewritten to be interested in assimilating people, and Picard was taken to be a spokesman (an idea that always seemed implausibly contrived -- why should the Borg care about propaganda?). Then we got stories like "I, Borg" and "Descent" focusing on the experience of ex-drones discovering individuality. Then we got the retcon that the Borg had a single Queen to speak through, and assimilation was changed from something done to whole civilizations to a zombie-movie attack on individuals who were turned into members of the horde. And so on.
Yes, exactly. To the TNG Borg, it would only be plural.
It's not about whether Riker was right, because Riker is a fictional construct, and so is the world he occupies. So whether he was right or not can change depending on who's telling the story. The writers of "Q Who" no doubt intended him to be right when they wrote the scene, or they wouldn't have written it that way. Later writers changed things so that he wasn't right anymore. Of course the later version becomes "true" in-universe, but it's still worth stepping outside the universe, being aware of the series as a fictional creation and being informed about how its concepts have evolved over time. You can't fully understand the thinking behind an earlier story if you mistakenly back-project later writers' assumptions onto it.
In any case, the intent of "Descent" was that the entire population of Hugh's liberated cube were turned into blank slates with no names or identities to fall back on, leaving themselves vulnerable to Lore's cult-leader manipulation. That's hard to reconcile with the Voyager paradigm. Were all the drones on that cube, thousands upon thousands of them, assimilated as infants? How does that make sense?
We pretend that all the Trek shows represent a cohesive reality, but the fact is, the TNG version of the Borg and the FC/VGR version were significantly different entities that can be difficult to reconcile.
Won’t we find out if he will or won’t?
(I really don’t see the point to asking questions that will almost certainly be answered. Aside from being redundant, it’s also a way of half-spoiling a future episode when you happen to be right, as opposed to maximizing surprises by virtue of not having prepared for them in the slightest. I’ve seen the trailers, unfortunately, but now I’m actively avoiding previews and future episode titles.)
(I really don’t see the point to asking questions that will almost certainly be answered. Aside from being redundant, it’s also a way of half-spoiling a future episode when you happen to be right, as opposed to maximizing surprises by virtue of not having prepared for them in the slightest. I’ve seen the trailers, unfortunately, but now I’m actively avoiding previews and future episode titles.)
She doesn't hide the implant on her face...
Nope. TBOBW part 2 rather abruptly starts talking about assimilation as though it's SOP for the Borg. Indeed, in I Borg Hugh keeps telling everyone at the start they'll inevitably get assimilated some day, and Picard tests Hugh to see if he really is an individual by ordering him to assimilate the Enterprise.
Going in circles now. We've already established that TNG defined assimilation as something done, in Hugh's own words, to "civilizations, not individuals." The Borg as conceived in TNG were interested in the whole, not the parts, and "You will be assimilated" meant "you" collectively.
And I've already pointed out that even with all the talk of assimilation, TNG never actually depicted any specific drone beside Locutus as an assimilation victim. I've already pointed out three or four times that the plots of "I, Borg" and "Descent" rely on the drones not having any prior identity. Why is this so hard to understand? Just because the word "assimilation" was used does not mean that the stories were written in the same way that Voyager's Borg stories were. There's a big difference between saying something and showing it.
May I just point out that your thread is rightly marked “Spoiler,” but your thread title contains a spoiler, which kinda defeats the spoiler tag.Looks like our friend Third-of-Five, otherwise known as Hugh, will be back in episode 3. He received his nickname while under the tender loving care of Geordi and Beverly, but if his memories have returned and he's able to remember his pre-Borg name, we might have to get reacquainted with him under a new name. Or if he simply decided to change it because he thought "Hugh" was a dumb name.
It's unclear why the designations Seven and Third-of-Five weren't consistent with using cardinal and ordinal numbers (not "Seventh of Nine"), and clearly this is a plot hole that PIC will have to spend a ton of time addressing. And that is meant to be pure sarcasm, if you hadn't guessed.
In any case, since we've learned that Geordi is still alive, hopefully he & Hugh are roomies.
How so? By mentioning Hugh? No different than threads about Seven of Nine (and there have been plenty of those). He's been in the trailers for months now, and Jonathan Del Arco's been doing as many interviews as Jeri Ryan or anyone else has. Not a spoiler.
Yes, "vous" is used as a singular when being formal, like when speaking to your teacher.
A spoiler tag means there are spoilers inside, so if you're trying to avoid spoilers, don't click on them.
The title is no different than if there were a thread entitled "Will Seven still go by 'Seven'"? It wouldn't matter whether it was posted a week before her episode or months ahead.
Pretty much every thread on here is asking questions that will be answered, so feel free to copy and paste that all over the board. It's a little like insisting that sports stations shouldn't speculate about the games coming up, because those questions will be answered when the game is finished.
There is nothing wrong with speculation. It promotes discussion, and this is a discussion board.
It's a little like insisting that sports stations shouldn't speculate about the games coming up, because those questions will be answered when the game is finished.
But there is a difference between thinking about teams in order to figure out their chances and strategies and simply asking if Hugh will go by ‘Hugh’. Will he? Won’t he? He will or he won’t. Anything more complex is bound to be off-topic.
Discussion on whether he will or he won’t?
Your point about asking the question about Seven in a thread title; that is a spoiler as well if the thread title is posted before the episode that contains the spoiler airs. Just because you aren’t the only one who made this mistake does not make not a mistake.A spoiler tag means there are spoilers inside, so if you're trying to avoid spoilers, don't click on them.
The title is no different than if there were a thread entitled "Will Seven still go by 'Seven'"? It wouldn't matter whether it was posted a week before her episode or months ahead.
No, pretty much every thread on th first page of the forum tonight, is not asking questions that contain spoilers in the thread titles. If they do, then those are spoilers as well. Go look at the thread titles on the first page. There is one other Hugh spoiler besides yours.Pretty much every thread on here is asking questions that will be answered, so feel free to copy and paste that all over the board. It's a little like insisting that sports stations shouldn't speculate about the games coming up, because those questions will be answered when the game is finished.
It’s not at all like a sporting event where everyone knows the players, the sport, who is favored, has seen the teams play before, etc. Many people, such as myself, avoid all spoilers as much as possible. The only reason I knew about Seven was because I made the mistake of watching a trailer. Some people avoid all trailers. I was spoiled about Hugh when I saw your thread title.
I think the spoiler faq mentions spoilers in thread titles, though I haven’t read it in years. You might want to check it out. Regardless, as a courtesy, I would ask that you not include spoilers in your thread titles.
Last edited:
We're generally more concerned about plot spoilers than basic show info like which characters are in it, especially if that info is out and about in trailers and other promotional material. Heck, some of the Picard trailers now meet the BBS's general six-month policy on spoilers.
Yes, but there is a lot to be said for watching a show or a movie freezing cold so one can form impressions based on the content alone, minus all the pre-release hype that wants you to buy into a shared fan experience (and that goes for Star Wars movies also).
Similar threads
