Wolf 359 Questions

[Timo]

And little Frodo took down the armies of Sauron. I don't consider that a significant fault. After all, Picard's ship did the very same thing: they shut down one Cube with silly handwaving, and destroyed another one by firing at a "weak spot", long after it had been established that Borg ships don't have weak spots.

The Borg in TNG were dull for their almost total lack of character. VOY did what it had to in order to keep the Borg as a credible villain, so that the thin "story" of "Q Who?" wouldn't have to be retold again and again and again. Without VOY, we wouldn't have the Borg, except as a cardboard backdrop.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

It's thanks to VOY writing that we have this rich information on the Borg culture in the first place.

You okay there, ol' pal? Lie down and have a little brandy. Or, a little LESS brandy, as the case may be.

 

[Kirk1980]

If by rich information, you mean like the rich scent of feces...then yes, yes, we have VOY to thank.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

The Borg in TNG were dull for their almost total lack of character.

Heh. Heh heh. HAHAHAHAHA... oh.

You're serious...

 

[kissthestar]

One thing I've often wondered about is the apparent difference between the Borg as originally shown in 2nd and 3rd seasons of TNG and their appearance in later eps and other Trek series and a TNG movie. At first, it seems the Borg are simply ordinary humanoids enhanced by mechanical implants. Then, later on, they are created by injection of nanites. The two types of Borg look quiet different. What are the various explanations?

 

[Forbin]

What are the various explanations?

Evolution of the concept, without regard to what's come before.

Like everything else in Trek.

 

[Timo]

Or the fact that the Borg were alien - so our heroes initially made a lot of assumptions, all of which ultimately proved false.

Riker saw babies in drawers, and mistook them for a cloning program. Q showed the heroes some Borg who were interested in assimilating the E-D but not her crew, and the heroes jumped into the silly conclusion that the Borg weren't interested in people. Sorry, Picard and Riker, they just weren't interested in you...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

It's good for the Borg to have motivation, but to be driven by traits which could be considered human (See: FC, VOY) just... demolishes the point of The Borg. They're not like other aliens.

Other aliens are people.

The Borg are a friggin hurricane. You don't negotiate with a hurricane, hurricanes don't bear any ill will towards you, but they're still gonna f**k ya up.

And THAT is where their portrayal frakked up. By giving them personality in the form of the Queen, they were given a humanistic, relatable touch. A face, as it were...

 

[Timo]

But possibly a false face. The Queen is mostly smokescreen and intrigue in her rather irregular VOY appearances. She only goes to full prissy-ranting mode in "Unimatrix Zero", which admittedly isn't one of the proudest hours of Star Trek.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

admittedly isn't one of the proudest hours of Star Trek.

That should be the TV Guide blurb for every Voyager episode.

 

[Timo]

Why not every TNG episode? Most of that show was trite soap towards the end, and half-baked scifi at best, with nary an element of adventure in the mix. VOY at least dared tackle a few scifi concepts, plus its soap characters were more varied. (I'd stop short of saying three-dimensional, although Seven of Nine did have some of that, also in the literal sense...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

Why not indeed?

 

[Praetor]

But possibly a false face. The Queen is mostly smokescreen and intrigue in her rather irregular VOY appearances. She only goes to full prissy-ranting mode in "Unimatrix Zero", which admittedly isn't one of the proudest hours of Star Trek.

Timo Saloniemi

That really wasn't the show's best two-parter. She seemed a bit too human there. I'll forever advance my personal pet theory that the 'Queen' is just an embodiment of the collective individuality (oxymoron, I know) or perhaps better said personality of the members of the collective, reflecting their will rolled up in one being. That's how she gives order to chaos, by giving them a direction, one reflective of all their wills. That's also why she needed Locutus as her mouthpiece; her job wasn't to speak for the Borg, it was only because she took a special interest in the 'First Contact' mission and her interest in the Enterprise that she revealed herself there and in Seven that she revealed herself to Voyager.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Unicron]

I tend to view her the same way. I also think it's likely that there may be multiple queens, even though only one has been shown at a time, to better facilitate managing the Collective and to act as backups if a queen should be incapacitated.

 

[Timo]

Really, the idea of seeing the Collective through an individual sounds like the one and only logical option. The separate Borg Drones aren't individuals, but the Collective as such is a "character" of Star Trek, much in the same way as the starship Enterprise is a character. Sometimes this is sort of implicit, but sometimes the concept needs to be made explicit by giving the character some conventional character. Say, giving the Borg a mouthpiece (first done in "BoBW" with Locutus, quite enjoyably, and later repeated in ST:FC with the Queen now that Locutus would no longer serve), or giving the Enterprise a voice (first done in "Tomorrow is Yesterday").

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unicron]

Agreed. The Zerg were handled in a similar way in StarCraft, although their collective structure is different than the Borg's. The Zerg have a clear hierarchy and a more rigid system of assimilation.

 

[Praetor]

^In some ways more logically, IMHO.

 

[Atavachron]

You know, I've searched this entire thread and after reading the topic I have a question:

Who's this Wolf guy and what are the other 356 questions?


Atavachron

 

[Hermiod]

Actually, a lot of Star Trek fans I've encountered over the years are unaware that Wolf 359 is a real solar system, 7.7 light years away - it's the third closest to our own after Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star.

 

[Timo]

...In a sense, a logical location for a "last stand".

Yet when one thinks it through, it makes zero sense. The only possible place to mount a last stand in space warfare is the target itself. The Borg would have had no reason to stop at or near Wolf 359, after all.

The fact that the last stand battle was still fought tells us two things. One, the Borg made an absolute beeline from Jouret to Earth (or else Starfleet couldn't have predicted where to wait for them, as a beeline would have been the only course in the universe that would have been predictable enough for an intercept attempt). And two, the Borg wanted the fight as badly as Starfleet did (or else they wouldn't have stopped, at least not for long).

Timo Saloniemi