Would Borg Queen allow "Sleep" in BoBW?

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I basically got from the movie "First Contact" that the Borg Queen was there to basically stop the infinite loops going through a Borg program and the little things that wouldn't make sense to a machine. If she was on the ship during Best of Both Worlds, would she have allowed the destruction of her ship in that way? Was she affected by the sleep command from Data as well, or would she have been all "Wait a minute, wake up, fools, this won't work."?

That's all.

 

[Borg451]

nice thinking..
i like it..

 

[sbk1234]

Hey, when did logic EVER have anything to do with Star Trek?

 

[Vanyel]

How I understood it, when the Queen tells Picard that she was with him in the events of BoBW, she didn't mean physically. Remember how she tells Picard that his perceptions were limited (or something along those lines)? I took that to mean that she was there with him in that she is the embodiment of the Borg Collective Consciousness. Picard could remember her being with him because he was with her in the Collective. The two would have interacted in the Collective, not the real world. So she wasn't there with him.

My thoughts on the matter were that she wanted Picard like he says, as a counterpart. Once he was taken from the Collective and started to break free of it, the Borg plan was undone and the cube was allowed to self destruct to prevent the Federation from gaining any Borg technology and being able to adapt.

 

[Timo]

It's quite possible that the Queen is more analogous to the queens of insect communities than to Victoria I or Catherine the Great. That is, the Queen would be the lowest of the slaves - a breeding machine for an anthill, a thinking machine for the Collective. She is only called to think when the Collective decides there is a need for such a thing... And in "BoBW", the Collective didn't decide anything because it was asleep!

About the only time the Queen demonstrates initiative possibly not directly stemming from the Collective is "Unimatrix Zero". And even there, she could merely be the mouthpiece for the Collective's self-worries, even if she comes out looking a bit like the mad "Off with their heads!" kind of monarch.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Excellent answers! See, this is what I was hoping for. Some good explanations given to me so that I wouldn't hate the idea.

(I actually never hated the idea. But still, always fun to debate these things)

 

[Locutus of Board]

I just want to know why sleeping caused them to blow up.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Well, you see, you have to blame Paramount for this. The people behind FC were going with regular old Borg, but ParamountStupidity wanted their to be a singular villain.

So they had to force one in.


I count it as a Trek movie, a particularly unimpressive barely average one, but nothing more when it comes to Borg/TNG continuity.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

^^^
I thought Moore came up with the Queen idea so that the enemy could have a "face" since the change in medium almost dictated that type of storytelling?

 

[Jack Bauer]

M'rk, son of Mogh said:
^^^
I thought Moore came up with the Queen idea so that the enemy could have a "face" since the change in medium almost dictated that type of storytelling?

It was an executive at Paramount's idea for their to be a singular face for the Borg as he thought it would make the movie more interesting than if it was just faceless Borg after faceless Borg like zombies. Moore and Braga then fleshed out the idea of the Queen.

 

[Timo]

...And that's pretty consistent with the "Locutus" idea of "BoBW", too.

I just want to know why sleeping caused them to blow up.

Self-preservation?

The Borg aren't just this single Cube (although at the time, we couldn't really tell ). They are a Collective that is ready and willing to sacrifice its components for the greater good. Now one of the components has been compromised big time: the enemy has been able to order it around. Such a vile disease cannot be allowed to spread - the Cube must be blown up immediately.

Similarly, the Collective would decide to blow up potentially contaminated Cubes in "Unimatrix Zero" rather than risk harm to the greater whole. Contact would be severed with Icheb's ship as well, after that "Child's Play" type attack on it. When the Borg face a threat they don't understand, a threat the severity of which they understand all too well, they don't hesitate much with seppuku.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral_Young]

Interesting question that comes from continuity revisions..but I've always thought along the lines of Vanyel's suggestion. I think it would've been more interesting had they established the Queen as being this uber command program that essentially "lives" within the entire Collective and when the program needs to take on a physical form a part of that program is downloaded into a drone host and given autonomy. We could also see the Queen as being part of the Collective voice as they speak as one...she somehow coordinates all of their voices while in the hive mind.

Admiral Young

 

[FordSVT]

Admiral_Young said:
Interesting question that comes from continuity revisions..but I've always thought along the lines of Vanyel's suggestion. I think it would've been more interesting had they established the Queen as being this uber command program that essentially "lives" within the entire Collective and when the program needs to take on a physical form a part of that program is downloaded into a drone host and given autonomy. We could also see the Queen as being part of the Collective voice as they speak as one...she somehow coordinates all of their voices while in the hive mind.

Admiral Young

And really, most of the on-screen evidence points toward something very similar to that, with the Queen being more the embodiment or an avatar for the entire collective rather than some kind of central decision maker. Even during times when it seemed like she was acting as an individual, you can rationalize that her actions are simply the result of a collective thought process realized at the singular level. Her cryptic answers also back this up, she always said she was one with the collective, she used the term "us", not "I", and was very cryptic when it came to her own individuality. It's not one individual, it's a designation given to an individual Borg that's assigned a very specific task not given to the "average" drone.

 

[WalkinMan]

The Queen was a ret-con, which IMO worked for FC, but not for VOY or what followed (Scorpion was best because it lacked the Queen; there were rumors that the Borg's vulnerability to 8472 was because of lacking the Queen--sadly the later VOY eps showed that the Queen introduced stupidity in the form of petty jealousy etc.)

Anyhow, it's an interesting question, one I pondered after FC. I thought of several possibilities, but more on that later.

One other detail is...Picard seemingly 'just remembered' the Queen in FC, and had never mentioned him before.

Picard says: "I remember...you were there all the time" or something like that, and then "but that ship...and all the Borg on it were destroyed."

To which the Borg Queen replies, "You think in such three-dimensional terms. How small you've become."

Very enigmatic, but now I think the idea of how Picard had amnesia about the Queen is a disconnect, much like how the Queen somehow 'allowed sleep' in BoBW. So, it's possible that...

1) She was not physically there, she just was a manifestation of the Queen consciousness. There is however a flashback to the Queen seducing Locutus, was that virtual reality or what?

2) She was there, and tried to convince Picard to join them willingly, somehow. Actually I have a strange vision of her adopting a humanesque facade, like the real Alice Krige, or sort of like Vina in "The Cage" to get Picard to join her.

Anyhow, that leads to the possibilities on her involvement in the end of BoBW:

A) She was disconnected from the hive after the regeneration cycle began. Perhaps this was like the ending of "Dark Frontier" where the Queen is powerless as her command interface is disrupted. The drones freeze, while the Queen looks around herself helplessly and her control over the Borg shielding is disrupted. It is only momentary however, it seems. But maybe she developed that ability after BoBW.

B) Borg Queen escapes, as seen in the Shatner/Reeves-Stevens novel, "The Return" where a Borg escape transporter beam is used IIRC, and she just transports back to the DQ as the ship explodes.

C) Borg Queen is killed. Perhaps the 'regeneration' cycle caused her to freeze like a statue, just as the other drones went into hibernation.

Also, it's possible that the Queen was far less active in BoBW. Perhaps an earlier version of the Queen, much less sophisticated, brought out only for seduction. Note how they needed Locutus to address the others, and whenever shown Locutus was alone or with drones (except for the FC brief flashback). Perhaps the Queen was only briefly used, then shut down.

It would have been interesting to see a 'TNG Queen' where the EFX, costumes were different. I liked how the Borg look has evolved, however in 'Dark Frontier' and others there was a ret-con not only in the Borg appearance, but also the Federation consoles as seen on the Raven.

In the end however I would like to see some of the VOY damage to the Borg undone. I want to see the Feds defeat the Borg, but in a heroic and intelligent way, not 'cheating' with quick techno fixes and time travel/breaking the Temporal Prime Directive.

It was such a contrast from the faceless, deadly enemy in TNG that hailed the Enterprise, with the 'Dragon lady" dictator that hailed VOY in "Unimatrix Zero" and had the Queen say "stay out of what doesn't concern you." Laughable.

I propose a scene for the comeback of the Borg, where the collective themselves subsume the Queen as a defective program which has not benefitted the collective. In every single instance we've seen her deployed--either to seduce Picard/Locutus, to stop First Contact/seduce Data, to seduce Seven to their side, to stop Janeway, she's failed miserably. The only time the Borg do well with individuals is when they are assimilated for their knowledge (Locutus/Wolf 359) or used for limited negotiation purposes (Seven of Nine/Scorpion). Otherwise, it is better that the will of the collective be used; it frightens individuals into submission and is a lot harder to target than a single Queen individual. Not to mention a lot more scary, alien, and faceless to have the collective voice hailing you.

 

[Unicron]

Admiral_Young said:
Interesting question that comes from continuity revisions..but I've always thought along the lines of Vanyel's suggestion. I think it would've been more interesting had they established the Queen as being this uber command program that essentially "lives" within the entire Collective and when the program needs to take on a physical form a part of that program is downloaded into a drone host and given autonomy. We could also see the Queen as being part of the Collective voice as they speak as one...she somehow coordinates all of their voices while in the hive mind.

Admiral Young

I tend to feel the same way, and I think it's also possible there might be more than one queen. If her primary purpose is to serve as a sort of hub/regulator for the collective, then it would be a disadvantage to have only a single queen. The entire structure would collapse if she died, and her consciousness was prevented from being transferred to a new drone body. Perhaps a "sleep" command could be used to accomplish that effect. With multiple queens, you have a layer of redundancy and it's harder to pull off such a tactic.

 

[startrekwatcher]

The nature of the Borg Queen seems to spawn the most number of theories since the writers made her so nebulous.

FC, for the most part, made her seem like she was simply a physical construct that the Hive mind became. In other words whenever interacted with her it was really the Collective. However, there were some moments where she would behave like a single entity controlling the Collective like when she behaved like a scorned lover at Picard/Locutus' rebuke.

In reality the vagueness surrounding her in FC was the result of disagreement between Berman, Braga and Moore. Moore saw her as a single individual entity not an avatar. She had her own mind, there was only ever just one of her and her death would have been the end of her. He saw her as "the big Kahuna of Borgdom". She was unique.

And that fits in with the oft-debated line about thinking in such three-dimensional terms. That to me came across as the Queen scolding Picard for forgetting that being Borg and part of the Hive Mind transcends the physical--three-dimensions- and is all about shared thought. So the reason Picard didn't remember the Queen very well was because she really wasn't on the cube in BoBW but was there with him in his mind. It also explains how she survived the cube's destruction without a lot of the mental acrobatics that theories such as subspace transporters, escape sphere taking her away before the explosion etc involve.

Berman, on the otherhand, didn't want to do that because he thought she might end up on Voyager. So they compromised hence all the cryptic answers in FC.

Then when the Queen popped up on VOY in "Dark Frontier" they had intended Alice Krige to resume the role but her schedule conflicted so Susanna Thompson was hired. In an interview Thompson said she had asked Braga whether she was the same Queen in order to know if she should tailor her performance to Krige's. He told her she was a different Queen.

As VOY continued using her it became obvious Braga saw her as a central leader with her own mind and the drones became nothing more than mindless henchmen. Compare that to the Collective in its TNG heyday where the Borg didn't come off as lumbering zombies but part of a unified mind derived from their combined intelligence.

Even in Dark Frontier the Queen discusses that she was part of species 125 demonstrating the body wasn't some template cloned each time a new queen was needed. It was strongly hinted that a Queen was created from a pre-existing assimilated drone and then given the Queen makeover where she would take over Unimatrix One and coordinate the Collective.

In fact, the impression I always had was Seven was being groomed. She was a female, she was assimilated as a child like the UZ Queen and therefore could be allowed individuality because she would have been indoctrinated into believing in the Borg philosophy and therefore ran no risk of defecting.

WalkinMan said:
1) She was not physically there, she just was a manifestation of the Queen consciousness. There is however a flashback to the Queen seducing Locutus, was that virtual reality or what?

The flashback came across to me as one of those stylized memories where the Queen wasn't really there but was meant to represent her connecting with Locutus inside his head hence her standing on his side whispering into his ear.

 

[DanTheGrey]

For the simple answer, I will refer to Kirk's line about cheating in the Kobyashi Maru simulation...

"It had the virtue of never having been tried before"

Maybe the Borg in had just never encountered a set of beings who could take a drone and hack into their collective and determine (with the willing cooperation of the drone) what commands could disable a Borg ship given that all of the "essential" systems were locked down.

 

[Unicron]

Perhaps the queen is somewhat like the Zerg Overmind in StarCraft, although it's harder to parallel because the Zerg have a clear hierarchy. The Overmind was sentient, had its own personality, and was the ultimate leader of the Zerg Swarm, but it was an amalgamation of all of the primary Zerg drives. So, in that sense, it was the ultimate essence of what the Zerg were.

 

[WalkinMan]

Fascinating, if Berman didn't want the 'single character' idea then was he against her showing up on VOY? It did happen after all.

I agree, the idea of the Queen in BoBW being a mental construct, sort of like Number 6 in nBSG, makes sense. She was there, but not physically.

It's also a cool but different theory to have the Queen be created in response to the single individual-attack of BoBW. The Queen, if physically present, would have stopped Data in BoBW...perhaps...

I also think there's a 'non-3d' view which has the Borg Queen being both 'the collective' and an individual, transitioning as needs be.

However I still prefer the unified mind concept of a faceless enemy, that aspect was lost with VOY.

 

[Praetor]

Unicron , exactly! That's how I've always imagined the queen, as an analog to the Zerg Overmind. In some ways the Zerg are the Borg done right albeit organically... I'd say they were definitely inspired by them. I've always thought the Queen carried the entirety of the Collective's individuality in her mind, that she was the vessel for the individuality that was repressed by the will of the Collective, if that makes sense. She had her own personality and desires, but it was primarily derived from an amalgamation of the millions of members of the collective... so the collective mind merges in a supercomputer or whatever that is directly routed into the queen's brain. If the queen is destroyed, then her consciousness does not cease to exist, she just gets a new body. I also like the notion from the "Legacy" VG backstory that the queens are of one specific race because the females of that race have unique mental abilities that make their 'job' easier. I doubt that the queens are clones, I'd say that the resemblance between them is the result of genetic and cybernetic modification to suit their task.

But back on topic, I'd say that the Queen couldn't prevent the 'sleep' command. The Enterprise crew hacked the command system, which is surely something the Borg had never encountered before, and probably put her, if she was physically onboard, to sleep as well, possibly temporarily disrupting the entire collective. I'm not entirely convinced the queen was onboard anyway, I would say as others have suggested Picard's memory was more of a hallucination... he felt her presence in his mind rather than her physical presence.

On a side note, I think that the Borg don't think of the Federation as the Federation thinks they do. If the Borg felt the Federation was such a dangerous threat, and it was within their ability, I think the Federation would already be assimilated. The Borg clearly have the resources to launch a mass invasion, yet on screen they haven't, begging the question of why. This of course opens the possibility that the Borg fear the Federation more than they let the Federation think... which is supported particularly by Janeway's dealings with the Borg.