Borg

[Bartmanhomer]

I watch Star Trek Voyager and there's a Voyager named Seven Of None who happens to be a Borg. I find the Borg intriguing. What is a Borg? Is all Borg's evil? I would like to learn more about the Borg race.

[DarthArminius]

I watch Star Trek Voyager and there's a Voyager named Seven Of None who happens to be a Borg. I find the Borg intriguing. What is a Borg? Is all Borg's evil? I would like to learn more about the Borg race.

In Star Trek, the Next Generation, they explain the Borg. You might want to binge watch a lot of TNG.

[Mando Knight]

In Star Trek, the Next Generation, they explain the Borg. You might want to binge watch a lot of TNG.

They only directly show up six times (four if you only count the two-parters once each) in TNG (and then in First Contact), and TNG's episodic nature means that you don't really need to binge an entire season just for the context of one or two episodes.

I don't know if I'd consider "Descent" (parts I and II) essential to understanding the Borg, but the other four episodes ("Q Who", "The Best of Both Worlds" I and II, and "I Borg") and First Contact are definitely on the must-watch list for TNG in general and all the more so for a Borg-specific run.

[JadedDM]

The Borg are a hive-mind race, so each 'person' in their ranks is not an individual, with their own thoughts and feelings, like humans. More like parts of a whole. A lot like ants, in fact; with a queen leading and the drones doing whatever she mentally commands them to do. The Borg have no culture, no religion, no language, and no ideals beyond becoming a perfect form by assimilating every species they come across, with force if necessary. They are highly adaptive, do not feel pain or fear death, and have incredible technology (all of it stolen from others). They do not sleep or eat, but rather, like a plague of interstellar locusts, consume everything they come across. Resistance is futile.

[factotum]

The Borg are a hive-mind race, so each 'person' in their ranks is not an individual, with their own thoughts and feelings, like humans. More like parts of a whole. A lot like ants, in fact; with a queen leading and the drones doing whatever she mentally commands them to do.

I personally preferred them when they were a hive mind with no single "queen"--it's a lot scarier when there's no single target you can destroy to stop them.

[Ravens_cry]

I personally preferred them when they were a hive mind with no single "queen"--it's a lot scarier when there's no single target you can destroy to stop them.

Indeed, I too preferred that version, as much as I enjoyed First Contact. My head canon is that, after the successes of Locutus of Borg at Wolf 359, the Borg Collective created the Borg Queen as an experiment in centralized command. After several disastrous encounters with the Federation Starship Voyager, they gave up on the idea as a bad job. Ants, incidentally, are not 'lead' by the queen. She is the equivalent of gonads and cellular reproduction in a multi-cellular organism. Protected, certainly, she is necessary for the continued survival of the colony, but she does not lead.

[Algeh]

Indeed, I too preferred that version, as much as I enjoyed First Contact. My head canon is that, after the successes of Locutus of Borg at Wolf 359, the Borg Collective created the Borg Queen as an experiment in centralized command. After several disastrous encounters with the Federation Starship Voyager, they gave up on the idea as a bad job. Ants, incidentally, are not 'lead' by the queen. She is the equivalent of gonads and cellular reproduction in a multi-cellular organism. Protected, certainly, she is necessary for the continued survival of the colony, but she does not lead.

To be fair, I've met some people who were pretty much led by their gonads...

[Traab]

Indeed, I too preferred that version, as much as I enjoyed First Contact. My head canon is that, after the successes of Locutus of Borg at Wolf 359, the Borg Collective created the Borg Queen as an experiment in centralized command. After several disastrous encounters with the Federation Starship Voyager, they gave up on the idea as a bad job. Ants, incidentally, are not 'lead' by the queen. She is the equivalent of gonads and cellular reproduction in a multi-cellular organism. Protected, certainly, she is necessary for the continued survival of the colony, but she does not lead.

I agree, I felt the borg were scarier when they basically worked as a consensus. The queen MIGHT have worked better had she been given less of a personality and basically been portrayed as the hub for this consensus to gather the information from all angles then decide on the next action. Instead she was basically a unique mind ordering the borg around.

[Cikomyr]

The Borg are a hive-mind race, so each 'person' in their ranks is not an individual, with their own thoughts and feelings, like humans. More like parts of a whole. A lot like ants, in fact; with a queen leading and the drones doing whatever she mentally commands them to do. The Borg have no culture, no religion, no language, and no ideals beyond becoming a perfect form by assimilating every species they come across, with force if necessary. They are highly adaptive, do not feel pain or fear death, and have incredible technology (all of it stolen from others). They do not sleep or eat, but rather, like a plague of interstellar locusts, consume everything they come across. Resistance is futile.

The Borg expands by forcefully integrating individuals in its Collective, a process called Assimilation. The victim is injected with nanoprobes that creates the link within 30 second. The collective then cybernise the new drone more completely later.

An individual drone cut off from the Borg Collective can be restored to its individuality, but it's a long and painful process, and it gas left everyone who went through it utterly traumatized. 7of9 was assimilated as Annika Jensen at the age of 7, if I remember right. She was freed in her late 20s, so had a lot of trouble reintegrating with humanity.

Picard was assimilated for a week in his.. 50s I think. He had an easier time.

[hamishspence]

7of9 was assimilated as Annika Jensen at the age of 7, if I remember right. She was freed in her late 20s, so had a lot of trouble reintegrating with humanity.

Picard was assimilated for a week in his.. 50s I think. He had an easier time.

Yes to both of those. 7 of 9 was about 25 when freed, Picard was about 60, using Memory Alpha's dates.

[Hunter Noventa]

I agree, I felt the borg were scarier when they basically worked as a consensus. The queen MIGHT have worked better had she been given less of a personality and basically been portrayed as the hub for this consensus to gather the information from all angles then decide on the next action. Instead she was basically a unique mind ordering the borg around.

I've got two conflicting headcanons about this.

One is that the 'Queen' is used as a localized command nexus, sort of as you suggested, to make the decision-making process flow more smoothly on a local scale, especially when separated from the main collective by distance. (Though this doesn't explain her presence in Voyager, unless you expand it to any decision that has to be made faster than the entire collective could be queried, but this makes the Borg sound more like the Geth, which they aren't).

The other is that the Borg assimilated some manner of already hive-minded, single-entity-led race, and effectively infected themselves with the same structure, adapted to their objectives of assimilation.

[Cikomyr]

I've got two conflicting headcanons about this.

One is that the 'Queen' is used as a localized command nexus, sort of as you suggested, to make the decision-making process flow more smoothly on a local scale, especially when separated from the main collective by distance. (Though this doesn't explain her presence in Voyager, unless you expand it to any decision that has to be made faster than the entire collective could be queried, but this makes the Borg sound more like the Geth, which they aren't).

The other is that the Borg assimilated some manner of already hive-minded, single-entity-led race, and effectively infected themselves with the same structure, adapted to their objectives of assimilation.

The idea of some sort of nominal leader that is both within and outside the Collective is not entirely new to First Contact. After all, why the Hell did the Borg needed Locutus?

I have my own pet theory about how the Borg should have been developped after Best of Both World. I don't like their "Galactic Intelligent Zombie Horde" approach. Instead they should have had a role closer to Babylon 5's Shadows. Coopting cultures and civilizations to service their goals instead of just consuming everything.

After all, "your culture will adapt to service us" gives more of a submission than consumption goal.

Also, why would the Borg [b] scoop[/] colonies? I think it would have been interesting - and full of storytelling potential--if the Borg literally adbucted and transplanted populations across the Galaxy for their own mysterious purpose. You'd have human Borg-seeded colonies everywhere.

[Hunter Noventa]

The idea of some sort of nominal leader that is both within and outside the Collective is not entirely new to First Contact. After all, why the Hell did the Borg needed Locutus?

I have my own pet theory about how the Borg should have been developped after Best of Both World. I don't like their "Galactic Intelligent Zombie Horde" approach. Instead they should have had a role closer to Babylon 5's Shadows. Coopting cultures and civilizations to service their goals instead of just consuming everything.

After all, "your culture will adapt to service us" gives more of a submission than consumption goal.

Also, why would the Borg [b] scoop[/] colonies? I think it would have been interesting - and full of storytelling potential--if the Borg literally adbucted and transplanted populations across the Galaxy for their own mysterious purpose. You'd have human Borg-seeded colonies everywhere.

Well they definitely grabbed Picard because he knew things about Starfleet that would provide a Tactical advantage, given his position and experience.

The rest of it doesn't fit, you're absolutely right. Probably a combination of less-than-stellar writing combined with artifacts of the Borg originally going to be an insectoid race, until the effects proved too difficult to produce.

We never did get a clear picture of the Borg's ultimate goal. Yes, something about combining organic and artificial to reach a perfect form, but where did that come from and why?

Also...the Borg know how to travel through time. Literally no one should be able to withstand them because they could assimilate you before they even know you existed. They are very badly written, once you get past TNG, and it's a shame.

[factotum]

We never did get a clear picture of the Borg's ultimate goal. Yes, something about combining organic and artificial to reach a perfect form, but where did that come from and why?

In their very first appearance their stated aim was pretty clear--to integrate both tech and organic elements of other races to improve their own. The Borg cube even carved a small chunk out of the Enterprise and would have chopped the entire ship to bits if Q hadn't intervened. Later on, the "stealing tech" part seemed to be forgotten and it was purely about assimilating organic life forms.

[Cikomyr]

Well they definitely grabbed Picard because he knew things about Starfleet that would provide a Tactical advantage, given his position and experience.

But that's "assimilating Picard". You can do that without giving one a custom name like Locutus.

You assimilated one Starfleet officer of high rank. There's no reason to keep him around in a position of prominence.

[The Fury]

Funnily enough, I feel like Voyager in general and Seven of Nine in particular do a pretty good job of explaining what The Borg are and how they work. The TNG episodes "Q Who?" and "Best of Both Worlds" make up what Voyager's understanding of who The Borg are is built on, so they're worth a watch. The movie First Contact as well, I guess.

All that said, I think you can get a pretty comprehensive understanding of The Borg by just watching Voyager episodes.

[Bohandas]

The Borg are a hive-mind race, so each 'person' in their ranks is not an individual, with their own thoughts and feelings, like humans. More like parts of a whole. A lot like ants, in fact; with a queen leading and the drones doing whatever she mentally commands them to do. The Borg have no culture, no religion, no language, and no ideals beyond becoming a perfect form by assimilating every species they come across, with force if necessary. They are highly adaptive, do not feel pain or fear death, and have incredible technology (all of it stolen from others). They do not sleep or eat, but rather, like a plague of interstellar locusts, consume everything they come across. Resistance is futile.

More than that they're a really jerkish, condescending, and imperialistic hive mind. Unlike the Bynar or the Trill (but similar to the Changelings)

EDIT:
It's also worth noting that in addition to what's been said already, they also have quite a bit in common with zombies; they're fairly mindless and they turn others into more of their kind through a kind of infection (albeit of nanobots rather than a virus). The specific variety of zombies varies however; when first introduced they are like an undirected horde of horror movie zombies, but in First Contact they change over to being more like fantasy zombies in that they now have someone controlling them.

[Gnoman]

But that's "assimilating Picard". You can do that without giving one a custom name like Locutus.

You assimilated one Starfleet officer of high rank. There's no reason to keep him around in a position of prominence.

My headcanon on this is that there was some sort of psychological play involved. Either they wanted to inflict psychological damage on the individualist humans by flagrantly absorbing a prominent hero, or else they thought the individuals would be more receptive to demands from a single figurehead. In the latter case, Locutus would be serving as sort of a Herald of the Borg. This would also explain the Borg Queen - using an assimilated individual that way backfired badly, but they could form their own "individual" that won't betray them.

[JadedDM]

I mean, the truth behind the discrepancies is that they were ret-conned over time. The idea that the Borg inject nanites into people was not a thing until First Contact. Prior to that, it was implied that their changing Picard into a Borg was an unusual occurrence. There was even a scene in one episode where Riker finds a nursery on one of their ships, which had Borg babies on it.

[Hunter Noventa]

I mean, the truth behind the discrepancies is that they were ret-conned over time. The idea that the Borg inject nanites into people was not a thing until First Contact. Prior to that, it was implied that their changing Picard into a Borg was an unusual occurrence. There was even a scene in one episode where Riker finds a nursery on one of their ships, which had Borg babies on it.

I always took the nanite injection thing to be a recent addition to the Borg in First Contact, though the characters certainly don't act like it is.

[Arcane_Secrets]

I watch Star Trek Voyager and there's a Voyager named Seven Of None who happens to be a Borg. I find the Borg intriguing. What is a Borg? Is all Borg's evil? I would like to learn more about the Borg race.

The Borg Collective is evil, yes. Individuals or groups of Borg that break away from the collective and its imperatives to assimilate or destroy all other species, and universally repress all traces of individuality aren't necessarily such (although if they get basically cult leadership, like they did in Descent, they can be, but that's true for members of any species).

On the subject, considering that in First Contact the Borg got closer to assimilating Earth than they did at any other time to the extent that the Enterprise could actually see the assimilated planet as they were following the Borg sphere backwards in time, why didn't the Borg just keep trying time travel attacks against Earth itself until one of them succeeded and the Federation/Enterprise lost? Was this explored at any point in any other work at all?

[Arcane_Secrets]

I mean, the truth behind the discrepancies is that they were ret-conned over time. The idea that the Borg inject nanites into people was not a thing until First Contact. Prior to that, it was implied that their changing Picard into a Borg was an unusual occurrence. There was even a scene in one episode where Riker finds a nursery on one of their ships, which had Borg babies on it.

But doesn't one of the opening scenes in Best of Both Worlds Part II show Picard getting injected with them (although only through implication) which causes his skin to become pale like the rest of the Borg, and Crusher discusses how she can't fix Picard until after they manage to get him disconnected from the collective?

I think they also find Borg children (as in actual, biological children, not children assimilated as Borg) in the episode of Voyager where they take some of the Voyager crew members hostage after their cube got nearly destroyed but I'm less certain about that.

[Willie the Duck]

I agree, I felt the borg were scarier when they basically worked as a consensus. The queen MIGHT have worked better had she been given less of a personality and basically been portrayed as the hub for this consensus to gather the information from all angles then decide on the next action. Instead she was basically a unique mind ordering the borg around.

Like many horror movies (and let's be clear, I consider the Borg to be a horror-movie-style side plot in the Star Trek universe), the borg were scarier the less we knew about them. As we learned more*, they went from fearsome threat, scary in their very existence to merely super-powered threat, fearsome in that they could defeat our protagonists.
*Admittedly, this also coincided with the protagonists continually defeating said villains, so there's also a bit of normal villain usage-decay going on at the same time.

[Rodin]

More than that they're a really jerkish, condescending, and imperialistic hive mind. Unlike the Bynar or the Trill (but similar to the Changelings)

I've never thought of the Trill as a hive mind before. I'm not sure it fits.

Each Trill joining is of two people - the symbiote, and the person being implanted. The dominant personality remains the person being implanted. They just pick up some traits of the previous hosts and the symbiote itself via the memories they receive. The host influences the symbiote with their personality, and those changes remain when the host passes on. It isn't a group of people subsuming their personalities together to form one, but rather consecutive people passing their knowledge on to future generations while still maintaining their individuality. It's closer to genetic memory.

[GloatingSwine]

Seven Of None

I was not ready for Borg existentialism.

[Talakeal]

The Borg Collective is evil, yes. Individuals or groups of Borg that break away from the collective and its imperatives to assimilate or destroy all other species, and universally repress all traces of individuality aren't necessarily such (although if they get basically cult leadership, like they did in Descent, they can be, but that's true for members of any species).

On the subject, considering that in First Contact the Borg got closer to assimilating Earth than they did at any other time to the extent that the Enterprise could actually see the assimilated planet as they were following the Borg sphere backwards in time, why didn't the Borg just keep trying time travel attacks against Earth itself until one of them succeeded and the Federation/Enterprise lost? Was this explored at any point in any other work at all?

My theory is that as their goal is to assimilate technology (as well as culture and biology). The further they go back in time, the less technology there is for them to assimilate.

[Seppl]

Or they could send, I dunno, two cubes? Out of the thousands or tens of thousands that they must have. Surely they could if they really wanted. My pet theory is that they do not really want to conquer the alpha quadrant, yet. Just keep them on their toes, so that they develop even better technology to assimilate later. And it seems to be working, considering that the Federation has started developing new weapons and tactics in response. Star Fleet is still no threat to a real Borg attack but now the Federation makes for a better prize.

Minor powers, on the other hand, will either be assimilated right away using full force or be ignored completely (see the Kazon) because the potential for technological advancement is too low. The Borg must have seen the potential for growth in the alpha quadrant powers and started milking them.

[Tyrant]

On the subject, considering that in First Contact the Borg got closer to assimilating Earth than they did at any other time to the extent that the Enterprise could actually see the assimilated planet as they were following the Borg sphere backwards in time, why didn't the Borg just keep trying time travel attacks against Earth itself until one of them succeeded and the Federation/Enterprise lost? Was this explored at any point in any other work at all?

Not that I disagree, but this is a problem with time travel in general. Even with this specific scenario, why not just time travel in the near infinite void of space anyplace except where the fleet is gathered to fight you? Then go to Earth. Or as Seppl pointed out, why not send two cubes? One is enough to cause mass destruction and very nearly accomplish stated goals when they send one, so why not send two? Or three?

Similar to time travel, the real answer is that the story wouldn't work. If the Borg (or literally any other time traveler) were to time travel at a time and place that Starfleet doesn't have the flagship they could do whatever they wanted. Instead they choose to do it when surrounded by a fleet of ships because plan A failed. And plan A probably would've worked had they sent a second or third cube.

This is kind of like the Terminator. Why send the T-1000 to the 90's? Why not send it to the exact same moment as the one sent to the 80's where Reese stands no chance of stopping it? Or to right after Reese and the T-800 are dead? How is Sarah supposed to stop that?

[Florian]

I watch Star Trek Voyager and there's a Voyager named Seven Of None who happens to be a Borg. I find the Borg intriguing. What is a Borg? Is all Borg's evil? I would like to learn more about the Borg race.

There's no easy answer to this.

As you should be able to guess, "Borg" is short for "Cyborg", so technologically enhanced individuals, with the added benefit of total and immediate networking.

Basically, they are what happens if someone in Hollywood thinks about the CCCP or PRC, but in spaaaaace.

[tomandtish]

I personally preferred them when they were a hive mind with no single "queen"--it's a lot scarier when there's no single target you can destroy to stop them.

This is exactly why First Contact has gradually slipped down on my list of Star trek movies. The queen was a horrible idea AND became even worse in Voyager.