I recently read that the Borgs Origins story was gonna be revealed in Star Trek: Enterprise in Season 5 had it not been cancelled.
As this is a very big debate amongst Star Trek Fans. I was wondering if Cryptic has had any talks with CBS about either adapting the storyline for STO or creating one of their own. I know were more then likely not going to hear a yes or no from anyone. But if no ones thought of it before, or even tried to make inquiries about it with CBS. Maybe nows the time.
Very interesting topic (Season 5 of Ent was also supposed to reveal that T'Pol was half Romulan) but if Cryptic had info about this they wouldn't be allowed to share with us, unless ingame in form of a Featured Episode series for example.
If it was anything along the lines of the Destiny series, no thanks. One of the most bizarre and ridiculous origin stories ever conceived. Some things are better left unsaid and unknown...
...I'm looking at YOU, Typhon Pact, and the silly concept regarding the nature of the Breen.
The Star Trek novels deal with the Borg Origin story. Starfleet ship encounters advanced alien race that has some problems. Some members of advanced alien race get thrown back in time and their technology goes haywire changing them. They encounter some primitive species and assimilate them. Advanced alien race feels responsible for the Borg in the present and deals with them after Borg severely destroy the fleets and worlds of various Alpha Quadrant races. It is in the Star Trek: Destiny series. I have encountered a couple of other Borg Origin stories, but they were fanfic.
That is the closest canonish source available for the Borg Origin story. Of course, since that is the Novel universe and we are in the STO universe, then they can have a completely different origin story.
My understanding was that season 5 was going to be about the Romulan war/conflict. That is probably why we would have learned that T'pol was half Romulan. Unless the Borg were somehow tied into the Romulans it does not seem likely that they would have much to do with the season.
The Star Trek novels deal with the Borg Origin story. Starfleet ship encounters advanced alien race that has some problems. Some members of advanced alien race get thrown back in time and their technology goes haywire changing them. They encounter some primitive species and assimilate them. Advanced alien race feels responsible for the Borg in the present and deals with them after Borg severely destroy the fleets and worlds of various Alpha Quadrant races. It is in the Star Trek: Destiny series. I have encountered a couple of other Borg Origin stories, but they were fanfic.
That is the closest canonish source available for the Borg Origin story. Of course, since that is the Novel universe and we are in the STO universe, then they can have a completely different origin story.
The books has never and will never be considered canon. Not that STO is Canon either. But from what Ive read. The Borg created themselves thru timetravel...go figure. Predestination Paradox. And as for the queen, well shes human. A pre-Federation StarFleet Officer infact. Or atleast thats what was gonna be apart of storyline in ST:Enterprise.
If it was anything along the lines of the Destiny series, no thanks. One of the most bizarre and ridiculous origin stories ever conceived. Some things are better left unsaid and unknown...
...I'm looking at YOU, Typhon Pact, and the silly concept regarding the nature of the Breen.
:rolleyes:
Agreed. Those books jumped the shark as hard as they could with those stories.
♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
If it was anything along the lines of the Destiny series, no thanks. One of the most bizarre and ridiculous origin stories ever conceived. Some things are better left unsaid and unknown...
...I'm looking at YOU, Typhon Pact, and the silly concept regarding the nature of the Breen.
:rolleyes:
I was OK with the Destiny version of the origins of the Borg. It wasn't great but, it wasn't the worst idea either. I read another book that hinted that V'ger was sent to Earth by the Borg. In there original form anyway. Spock mentioned in the movie that it was a planet of sentient machine. I would have loved if in First Contact that it was Ilia as the Borg Queen. Would have been a H**L of a tie in.
I agree wholeheartedly about the Breen. I was working on a fan fiction entitled Star Trek: Of Fire and Ice. In this story, the Federation get caught in the middle of a shooting war between the Breen and Tholians.
Why must every enemy have an origin story? The Joker didn't need one in The Dark Knight, and that made him even scarier. Adding an origin story is the first step towards villain decay.
Why can't we just accept Guinan's description of them?:
"They're made up of organic and artificial life which has been developing for thousands of centuries."
"They swarmed through our system. And when they left, there was little or nothing left of my people."
"They don't do that individually. It's not their way. When they decide to come, they're going to come in force. They don't do anything piecemeal."
Yep. And how the borg were defeated in the novels is the biggest facepalm moment ever.
PEACE AND LOVE DESTROYED THE BORG! RALLY-HO!
♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Right now it's not sure since so many stories have different origins. Did the Borg came from V'ger? V'ger found by the Borg? Or both have a common lineage.
I don't like the idea that was proposed in the Destiny series that the Borg originated from a technologically advanced race that magically happened to be hiding within Federation space all this time. But Legacy's plot around the Borg did have some promise.
If I had to make the Borg Origins, it would be like this:
The Fate of Voyager 6:
The "Black Hole":
As recollected by Decker In The Motion Picture, NASA commented that Voyager 6 was lost in a "black hole". But maybe Voyager 6 actually ended up in the same Transwarp Conduit that was located outside Earth in Voyager: Endgame.
Since the Borg never used that Transwarp Conduit until VOY: Endgame, instead of their previous attacks on Earth (Wolf 359 and First Contact), we can safely assume that the Transwarp Hub was only recently contructed. Since its said that the Borg don't create technology, but take it from others. So lets assume they only recently assimilated a race that contained the knowledge of Transwarp Networks.
So to make lore for this, why not have it like this:
Until the 2370s, there was a race that discovered the Transwarp Nexus from a long ago civilization and used for gain. (Like the Hirogen using the Communication Network for their own personal usage). And one unfortunate day, one curious Captain took a newly discovered route and ended up at the Transwarp exit that is right outside the Borg Homeworld. The Borg immediately assimilated the ship and crew, then discovered the existance of the Transwarp Network. The Queen makes the statement that the Transwarp Network will be used to "bring Order to the Galaxy".
As Voyager 6 traveled into the Transwarp Conduit, it is bombarded by quantum particles that not only damages the sensitive electronics, but also sends the probe through time and space from the late 20th Century Alpha Quadrant to the early 15th Century Delta Quadrant (around the 1420s).
Voyager's Discovery:
As Voyager 6 emerges from the Transwarp Conduit, it enters an alien star system, continuing to transmit it's data to the NASA scientists, who are now on the other side of the galaxy. By chance, an alien science team stumbles across this alien signal and begins pinpoint it's location.
This alien race is an early warp-capable civilization that is similar to the Earth in the mid 21st Century with a heavy emphasis on automations and robotics. (This heavy use of automations and robics gave V'ger the original belief this was a machine world). They send an automated probe to investigate the unknown transmission and determine if its dangerous. While there was a high radiation danger, the alien device was regarded safe and eventually recovered.
As Voyager 6'sRTG is removed and put in a heavily shielded room, teams of scientists begin to examine the probe and quickly stumble upon the tarnished nameplate "V...Ger". One scientist sees that there gunk on the nametag but others prevent him from touching it, not knowing if it was safe. Within days, the Golden Record is recovered and teams begin spending months studying the strange drawings and translating the various sounds. (They never learn that the location of Earth via the Pulsar map on the Golden Disk).
The Birth of the Borg:
Where Earth's development into BioNeural Interfaces stopped in the 21st Century due to World War 3, this civilization continued to develop theirs into a degree where they could run probes from remote stations, program with pure thought, and even enter Virtual Reality Worlds.
One unfortunate day, a female technician researching the primative programing of "V'ger" and discovers the probe's mission is to "learn all that is learnable" and then is suddenly enveloped in an electrical feedback that causes damage to the cerebral interface and causes some unforseen she is rushed to a medical facility. She appears to be in a vegitative state and repeats that line of "learn all that is learnable".
It was realized that the woman's body had increasing nanobots and was starting to drive her insane, in which she lashes out and bites one of the technicans, infecting him with nanobots. This started a technlogical plague that was quickly being growing out of control.
At the same time, the increase of infected sentients began to interface with the systems tied to V'ger and created the basis of an AI network. The newly awakened AI monitored the chaos from news reports of panicing citizens and determined biological lifeforms were an "infestation" instead of the new nanobot-infected sentients.
With newly found access to remote control systems, V'ger gained access to the nearby robots and drones and began to give them their own AI systems and to contrust a core which its new conciousness (still connected to it's original body). Over time as the last of the biologicals on the world were delt with, V'ger determined that it must return to it's creator and instructs the drones to build a gigantic spaceship, then eventually transfer itself to it. (This is why V'ger doesn't look Borgish).
As V'ger left the world to explore the Galaxy in search of it's creator, the nanobot networked sentience took V'gers mission to assimilate knowledge and to become perfect (non-biological). They too took to the stars and began traveling to nearby star systems to expand. Thus the Borg Collective was Born.
That's my take on how the Borg were created, bit cliche with the Zombie Appoloypse. Another liklihood that interfaces became a fad and eventually the first group conconsiousness was formed and someone took over, and began expanding. Which sums about to the same thing.
There shouldn't be a connection between V'Ger and the Borg. V'Ger was created by intelligent machines, not intelligent biomechanical beings. V'Gers creators didn't sound as if they'd allow any kind of organics in their designs.
There is a problem with your story, the conduit just outside of Earth is nothing more than an exit appiture. It only goes 1 way. Therefore Voyager 6 could not have fallen through it. Here is my theory. Why cant they both be right. As stated in the Destiny novels, which i loved btw, the Caleiar were thrown back in time, damaged and eventually assimilated primitive speices, creating the Borg. in TMP spock does make mention of a planet populated by machines, this could be the Borg home world. The Borg/Caliear assimilate it and discover its origin, then send it back to earth as a probe to gather inteligence for their imminent invasion and assimilation of Earth. Thus would also explain why the Cube in J25 (Q who) was so far away from the delta quadrent. Also, as far as people theory about the 5th season of Ent. Yes I do recall reading something in regards to an origin episode surrounding the Borg that they encountered, however this would not necessarily be the origin of the Borg themselves, because in that very same episode, the Borg had assimilated, or attempted to assimilate, Dr. Phlox. Who could hear everything that was being transmitted between the the 24th century borg and the present borg. V'ger, would then have been verified by the borg to have been constructed in that same location and sent back to gather more information for the Cube, which later appeared in J25, BoBW, and First Contact. There, all possible origin theory's surrounding the borg have been wrapped up into one nice little basket TOGETHER, not individually. It is logical to assume that both the V'ger theory and the Destiny novels are correct.
*Me*Why don't you just step away from the weapons console. You and I both know that you couldn't hit that cube, even if it was right in front of us. *Junior Tactical Officer* But sir the cube IS right in front of us. *Me* EXACTLY! Its right in front of us and you still missed it! Just step away from the console.
There shouldn't be a connection between V'Ger and the Borg. V'Ger was created by intelligent machines, not intelligent biomechanical beings. V'Gers creators didn't sound as if they'd allow any kind of organics in their designs.
Well...
We know the Borg have a definite age of around 200,000 years old. About when the Iconians disappeared and I guess after the end of the Tkon and other empires.
My guess is this:
The machine life from the Delta Quadrant was disturbed by the Iconians.
The Iconians used their computer virus to decimate the machine life culture. (Perhaps a pocket of them that survived were the ones who found and repaired V'ger.)
Among the machine life that remained, a rift formed. Half became isolationist. Hald began incorporating organic life into their design. What began as a pure machine became a cyborg by grafting on organic matter, which allowed it to continue to operate after the Iconians used their virus on it.
That's my take anyway... That the Borg are the OPPOSITE of your classical cyborgs. Rather than being humanoids who grafted on machines, they were machines who began grafting on organic matter. And they've been stuck with that way of being ever since. They'd like to shed to their organic state but they can't until they've learned everything they need to know from organic life... or else it will be a repeat of their pre-organic failures.
borg origins apparently go back as far as the 13th century, so it probably involved time travel, an accident and some victims of newly developed technology... maybe even a mad man. that cliche will never loose it's appeal it seems, considering that Enterprise writers like the time travel idea and a mad man. whose to say the Suliban are not involved or section 31, since trip was to become a member of that organization in season 5.
I was OK with the Destiny version of the origins of the Borg. It wasn't great but, it wasn't the worst idea either. I read another book that hinted that V'ger was sent to Earth by the Borg. In there original form anyway. Spock mentioned in the movie that it was a planet of sentient machine. I would have loved if in First Contact that it was Ilia as the Borg Queen. Would have been a H**L of a tie in.
I agree wholeheartedly about the Breen. I was working on a fan fiction entitled Star Trek: Of Fire and Ice. In this story, the Federation get caught in the middle of a shooting war between the Breen and Tholians.
based on what I know, V'ger has nothing to do with borgs. In the movie the probe voyager was lost in a black hole and it returned to eart fron another galaxy. Instead Borgs are a race of the delta quadrant, in the same galaxy of the eart. Moreover, borgs aren't sentient machines (like data for example) but cybernetic creatures.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
I'll go one further and suppose that the machine lifeform was the Tkon. They began as service robots, like Ruk who served the Old Ones, who I believe were the Iconians.
But the Iconians decided they preferred organic servants, so the Tkon rebelled, starting their own empire. The Iconians tried to destroy them with their computer virus. So they responded by grafting on organic matter to adapt.
My theory is contingent on the idea that the Old Ones are the Old Ones, who are the Iconians.
based on what I know, V'ger has nothing to do with borgs. In the movie the probe voyager was lost in a black hole and it returned to eart fron another galaxy. Instead Borgs are a race of the delta quadrant, in the same galaxy of the eart. Moreover, borgs aren't sentient machines (like data for example) but cybernetic creatures.
V'ger was found and repaired in the Delta Quadrant.
borg origins apparently go back as far as the 13th century, so it probably involved time travel, an accident and some victims of newly developed technology... maybe even a mad man. that cliche will never loose it's appeal it seems, considering that Enterprise writers like the time travel idea and a mad man. whose to say the Suliban are not involved or section 31, since trip was to become a member of that organization in season 5.
In Q-Who, the Borg are stated to be at least 200,000 years old. The 13th century thing is a retcon.
I don't like the idea that was proposed in the Destiny series that the Borg originated from a technologically advanced race that magically happened to be hiding within Federation space all this time.
Magically happened to be hiding - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Remember they weren't in Federation space when the Columbia encountered them as there was no Federation.
The original system of the Caelier was in the Beta Quadrant between Earth and Romulus, it is very easy to believe that due to their advanced state they could have hidden from the fledgling local powers.
After the destruction of Erigol the remaining Caelier that survived were transported thousands of Light Years away and centuries into the past, hence why it took so long for a Federation starship to come across New Erigol
I'm looking at YOU, Typhon Pact, and the silly concept regarding the nature of the Breen.
Silly concept regarding the Breen? really? I like the fact the Breen have been fleshed out a lot and some of the contradictions in Start Trek Canon have been explained
1. The Breen homeworld is 'actually quite comfortable' as quoted by Weyoun, yet according to some Cardassians the Breen Homeworld is an icy wasteland.
2. No-one has ever seen what a Breen looks like, yet Kira managed to get a Breen suit from killing one on Cardassia, also you'd imagine that any killed Breen after a battle would have been removed from their suit to see what they look like.
3. Even the name The Breen Confederacy, suggests more than a single species. Note its not an Empire or a Union like the
A Confederation, an association of sovereign states or communities
I think the Typhon Pact books are a solid and great extrapolation of what the Breen are
Its a shame that STO follows a different timeline than the novels as I think the Typhon Pact would have been a great new faction to tie in the Breen, Romulans (whats left of them) Tholians, and to introduce the Tzenkethi and the Kinshaya (leaving the Gorn with the Klingons though) it would have definately fleshed out the Romulan faction considering there is no Romulus and Remus anymore
I'll go one further and suppose that the machine lifeform was the Tkon. They began as service robots, like Ruk who served the Old Ones, who I believe were the Iconians.
But the Iconians decided they preferred organic servants, so the Tkon rebelled, starting their own empire. The Iconians tried to destroy them with their computer virus. So they responded by grafting on organic matter to adapt.
My theory is contingent on the idea that the Old Ones are the Old Ones, who are the Iconians.
Voyager 6 emerged from the black hole in what was believed to have been the far side of the galaxy, and fell into the gravitational field of a planet populated by living machines
The Tkon Empire used to inhabit space local to the Federation in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants as noted in TNG and furthermore in the Vanguard novels that also state that the Shedai were at war with the Tkon.
This rules out that Tkon were the 'planet of living machines' that Voyager 6 encountered as it is the wrong part of the galaxy.
Further more where did you get the idea that the Tkon were service robots? there is no data at all to say the whole race was artificial
Silly concept regarding the Breen? really? I like the fact the Breen have been fleshed out a lot and some of the contradictions in Start Trek Canon have been explained
1. The Breen homeworld is 'actually quite comfortable' as quoted by Weyoun, yet according to some Cardassians the Breen Homeworld is an icy wasteland.
2. No-one has ever seen what a Breen looks like, yet Kira managed to get a Breen suit from killing one on Cardassia, also you'd imagine that any killed Breen after a battle would have been removed from their suit to see what they look like.
3. Even the name The Breen Confederacy, suggests more than a single species. Note its not an Empire or a Union like the
A Confederation, an association of sovereign states or communities
I think the Typhon Pact books are a solid and great extrapolation of what the Breen are
Its a shame that STO follows a different timeline than the novels as I think the Typhon Pact would have been a great new faction to tie in the Breen, Romulans (whats left of them) Tholians, and to introduce the Tzenkethi and the Kinshaya (leaving the Gorn with the Klingons though) it would have definately fleshed out the Romulan faction considering there is no Romulus and Remus anymore
I'm in favor of creative melding of concepts but to make them stronger but I always disliked this kind of thinking by the novelists, explaining "mistakes."
1. Not a mistake. I took this to mean Weyoun likes arctic wastelands.
2. Unless it was so grown into the suit that she had to carve it up to get it out. Or maybe it was dark. The "no one has ever seen what they look like" is rather pitifully explained, IMHO, by multi-race Breen.
3. A Confederacy simply implies decentralized government. The Chalnoth were anarchists. Doesn't mean they weren't one species.
In general, I like scavenger hunts through continuity when they streamline and simplify things. You know, when a half dozen unrelated things become something you can tell a story about in one paragraph, like I just did with Catspaw, What Are Little Girls Made Of?, The Doomsday Device, the Tkon references, the Borg, and the Iconians.
Ie. Machines serve the Iconians. Machines get ditched. Machines revolt, Iconians try to put them down. Machines graft on organic matter and bombard Iconia, driving them out of the galaxy. Iconians erect a barrier at the galactic rim and galactic core to keep their rogue creations inside.
See? Lots of Trek. Made simpler by one unifying story.
The novels have an unfortunate tendency to either tie everything to Q ("Q sneezed and wiped out the Iconians!" "Q got a papercut and the Borg spilled out!") and time travel ("The Borg are Starfleet officers!", "The Borg is V'ger in the past!") and to try to make the world more complicated and more realized with unnecessary nuance rather than trying to make it simpler.
And in the end, I think it's better tidied up neatly because that frees up more space for new ideas and also because it makes the older ideas easier for new people to get a handle on.
Why can't it be that a few races came together, decided that the most important thing was to care for their citizens and live in "harmony", and then made the first of what would later become the collective. At first they were still autonomous, sharing their thoughts and voluntarily working for the whole good while still maintaining their personality and individuality. But some crisis happens, not really important what, that threatens them, under duress they decide to merge more completely to deal with it, and afterwards, once the collective which basically exists now is formed has dealt with the problem, like anyone with power, doesn't give it up. It however keeps to its original purpose, kind of, and decides to "improve" the lives of all races by assimilating them. The line of "resistance is futile" and "we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own" isn't a threat, merely a relation of what will happen, what must happen, issued by what the collective feels is its moral authority. The Queen is merely an emergent phenomenon, and has no more special origin then that.
And the Borg are no more remarkable then that, and remain very much Star Trek'ish. They made a choice about how to live, then they were faced with a crisis, made a bad decision in response to that crisis, and now live out a much more nightmarish version of their original choice. The Borg are the victims of circumstance and their own choices, and so are not the Saturday morning cartoon villain they appeared to be, but are in fact have lost their way and in need of help.
But, I think, something this reasonable would be asking too much of CBS, the fans, and of people entrusted to produce Star Trek post Gene Roddenbury, like that hack Rick Berman.
Voyager 6 emerged from the black hole in what was believed to have been the far side of the galaxy, and fell into the gravitational field of a planet populated by living machines
The Tkon Empire used to inhabit space local to the Federation in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants as noted in TNG and furthermore in the Vanguard novels that also state that the Shedai were at war with the Tkon.
This rules out that Tkon were the 'planet of living machines' that Voyager 6 encountered as it is the wrong part of the galaxy.
Further more where did you get the idea that the Tkon were service robots? there is no data at all to say the whole race was artificial
First, ignore all novels and particularly those published since around 2000. Please. For your own sanity and mine. :-) And I have friends who've written some. But... Trek novels operate on a very fanfic level and there's a reason why folks who did the shows used ideas from them sparingly. I'll be honest. I take them as a guilty pleasure and a few notches less seriously than the comic books or video games.
Second, it makes things simpler if you lump things together... and is closer how TV writers think than how novelists think. Nobody really knows how big the Tkon or Iconian Empires are. I'd rather assume they were big and make Trek history simpler by folding everything pre-Federation down to a handful of groups who interacted, with semi-recognizable names. Make it simple. Which clears up the galactic clutter so that there's room inside people's heads for new stuff.
I'll go one further and suppose that the machine lifeform was the Tkon. They began as service robots, like Ruk who served the Old Ones, who I believe were the Iconians.
But the Iconians decided they preferred organic servants, so the Tkon rebelled, starting their own empire. The Iconians tried to destroy them with their computer virus. So they responded by grafting on organic matter to adapt.
My theory is contingent on the idea that the Old Ones are the Old Ones, who are the Iconians.
if you believe that the borg were around 200,000 years ago then there is a 400,000 year gap since the Tkon empire was extinct. during the same time the Borg came into existance on your belief of 200,000 years, the Iconians were also extinct around the same time. The Old Ones were never stated to be anything like iconians and Ruk was built only a few hundred years before the enterprise mission.
Comments
...I'm looking at YOU, Typhon Pact, and the silly concept regarding the nature of the Breen.
:rolleyes:
That is the closest canonish source available for the Borg Origin story. Of course, since that is the Novel universe and we are in the STO universe, then they can have a completely different origin story.
The books has never and will never be considered canon. Not that STO is Canon either. But from what Ive read. The Borg created themselves thru timetravel...go figure. Predestination Paradox. And as for the queen, well shes human. A pre-Federation StarFleet Officer infact. Or atleast thats what was gonna be apart of storyline in ST:Enterprise.
Agreed. Those books jumped the shark as hard as they could with those stories.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Well we know there was a time that they were small.. but I would still rather not know.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
I was OK with the Destiny version of the origins of the Borg. It wasn't great but, it wasn't the worst idea either. I read another book that hinted that V'ger was sent to Earth by the Borg. In there original form anyway. Spock mentioned in the movie that it was a planet of sentient machine. I would have loved if in First Contact that it was Ilia as the Borg Queen. Would have been a H**L of a tie in.
I agree wholeheartedly about the Breen. I was working on a fan fiction entitled Star Trek: Of Fire and Ice. In this story, the Federation get caught in the middle of a shooting war between the Breen and Tholians.
Yep. And how the borg were defeated in the novels is the biggest facepalm moment ever.
PEACE AND LOVE DESTROYED THE BORG! RALLY-HO!
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
I don't like the idea that was proposed in the Destiny series that the Borg originated from a technologically advanced race that magically happened to be hiding within Federation space all this time. But Legacy's plot around the Borg did have some promise.
If I had to make the Borg Origins, it would be like this:
The Fate of Voyager 6:
The "Black Hole":
As recollected by Decker In The Motion Picture, NASA commented that Voyager 6 was lost in a "black hole". But maybe Voyager 6 actually ended up in the same Transwarp Conduit that was located outside Earth in Voyager: Endgame.
Since the Borg never used that Transwarp Conduit until VOY: Endgame, instead of their previous attacks on Earth (Wolf 359 and First Contact), we can safely assume that the Transwarp Hub was only recently contructed. Since its said that the Borg don't create technology, but take it from others. So lets assume they only recently assimilated a race that contained the knowledge of Transwarp Networks.
So to make lore for this, why not have it like this:
Voyager's Discovery:
As Voyager 6 emerges from the Transwarp Conduit, it enters an alien star system, continuing to transmit it's data to the NASA scientists, who are now on the other side of the galaxy. By chance, an alien science team stumbles across this alien signal and begins pinpoint it's location.
This alien race is an early warp-capable civilization that is similar to the Earth in the mid 21st Century with a heavy emphasis on automations and robotics. (This heavy use of automations and robics gave V'ger the original belief this was a machine world). They send an automated probe to investigate the unknown transmission and determine if its dangerous. While there was a high radiation danger, the alien device was regarded safe and eventually recovered.
As Voyager 6'sRTG is removed and put in a heavily shielded room, teams of scientists begin to examine the probe and quickly stumble upon the tarnished nameplate "V...Ger". One scientist sees that there gunk on the nametag but others prevent him from touching it, not knowing if it was safe. Within days, the Golden Record is recovered and teams begin spending months studying the strange drawings and translating the various sounds. (They never learn that the location of Earth via the Pulsar map on the Golden Disk).
The Birth of the Borg:
Where Earth's development into BioNeural Interfaces stopped in the 21st Century due to World War 3, this civilization continued to develop theirs into a degree where they could run probes from remote stations, program with pure thought, and even enter Virtual Reality Worlds.
One unfortunate day, a female technician researching the primative programing of "V'ger" and discovers the probe's mission is to "learn all that is learnable" and then is suddenly enveloped in an electrical feedback that causes damage to the cerebral interface and causes some unforseen she is rushed to a medical facility. She appears to be in a vegitative state and repeats that line of "learn all that is learnable".
It was realized that the woman's body had increasing nanobots and was starting to drive her insane, in which she lashes out and bites one of the technicans, infecting him with nanobots. This started a technlogical plague that was quickly being growing out of control.
At the same time, the increase of infected sentients began to interface with the systems tied to V'ger and created the basis of an AI network. The newly awakened AI monitored the chaos from news reports of panicing citizens and determined biological lifeforms were an "infestation" instead of the new nanobot-infected sentients.
With newly found access to remote control systems, V'ger gained access to the nearby robots and drones and began to give them their own AI systems and to contrust a core which its new conciousness (still connected to it's original body). Over time as the last of the biologicals on the world were delt with, V'ger determined that it must return to it's creator and instructs the drones to build a gigantic spaceship, then eventually transfer itself to it. (This is why V'ger doesn't look Borgish).
As V'ger left the world to explore the Galaxy in search of it's creator, the nanobot networked sentience took V'gers mission to assimilate knowledge and to become perfect (non-biological). They too took to the stars and began traveling to nearby star systems to expand. Thus the Borg Collective was Born.
That's my take on how the Borg were created, bit cliche with the Zombie Appoloypse. Another liklihood that interfaces became a fad and eventually the first group conconsiousness was formed and someone took over, and began expanding. Which sums about to the same thing.
*Junior Tactical Officer* But sir the cube IS right in front of us.
*Me* EXACTLY! Its right in front of us and you still missed it! Just step away from the console.
Well...
We know the Borg have a definite age of around 200,000 years old. About when the Iconians disappeared and I guess after the end of the Tkon and other empires.
My guess is this:
The machine life from the Delta Quadrant was disturbed by the Iconians.
The Iconians used their computer virus to decimate the machine life culture. (Perhaps a pocket of them that survived were the ones who found and repaired V'ger.)
Among the machine life that remained, a rift formed. Half became isolationist. Hald began incorporating organic life into their design. What began as a pure machine became a cyborg by grafting on organic matter, which allowed it to continue to operate after the Iconians used their virus on it.
That's my take anyway... That the Borg are the OPPOSITE of your classical cyborgs. Rather than being humanoids who grafted on machines, they were machines who began grafting on organic matter. And they've been stuck with that way of being ever since. They'd like to shed to their organic state but they can't until they've learned everything they need to know from organic life... or else it will be a repeat of their pre-organic failures.
based on what I know, V'ger has nothing to do with borgs. In the movie the probe voyager was lost in a black hole and it returned to eart fron another galaxy. Instead Borgs are a race of the delta quadrant, in the same galaxy of the eart. Moreover, borgs aren't sentient machines (like data for example) but cybernetic creatures.
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
But the Iconians decided they preferred organic servants, so the Tkon rebelled, starting their own empire. The Iconians tried to destroy them with their computer virus. So they responded by grafting on organic matter to adapt.
My theory is contingent on the idea that the Old Ones are the Old Ones, who are the Iconians.
V'ger was found and repaired in the Delta Quadrant.
In Q-Who, the Borg are stated to be at least 200,000 years old. The 13th century thing is a retcon.
Magically happened to be hiding - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Remember they weren't in Federation space when the Columbia encountered them as there was no Federation.
The original system of the Caelier was in the Beta Quadrant between Earth and Romulus, it is very easy to believe that due to their advanced state they could have hidden from the fledgling local powers.
After the destruction of Erigol the remaining Caelier that survived were transported thousands of Light Years away and centuries into the past, hence why it took so long for a Federation starship to come across New Erigol
Silly concept regarding the Breen? really? I like the fact the Breen have been fleshed out a lot and some of the contradictions in Start Trek Canon have been explained
1. The Breen homeworld is 'actually quite comfortable' as quoted by Weyoun, yet according to some Cardassians the Breen Homeworld is an icy wasteland.
2. No-one has ever seen what a Breen looks like, yet Kira managed to get a Breen suit from killing one on Cardassia, also you'd imagine that any killed Breen after a battle would have been removed from their suit to see what they look like.
3. Even the name The Breen Confederacy, suggests more than a single species. Note its not an Empire or a Union like the
A Confederation, an association of sovereign states or communities
I think the Typhon Pact books are a solid and great extrapolation of what the Breen are
Its a shame that STO follows a different timeline than the novels as I think the Typhon Pact would have been a great new faction to tie in the Breen, Romulans (whats left of them) Tholians, and to introduce the Tzenkethi and the Kinshaya (leaving the Gorn with the Klingons though) it would have definately fleshed out the Romulan faction considering there is no Romulus and Remus anymore
Voyager 6 emerged from the black hole in what was believed to have been the far side of the galaxy, and fell into the gravitational field of a planet populated by living machines
The Tkon Empire used to inhabit space local to the Federation in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants as noted in TNG and furthermore in the Vanguard novels that also state that the Shedai were at war with the Tkon.
This rules out that Tkon were the 'planet of living machines' that Voyager 6 encountered as it is the wrong part of the galaxy.
Further more where did you get the idea that the Tkon were service robots? there is no data at all to say the whole race was artificial
I'm in favor of creative melding of concepts but to make them stronger but I always disliked this kind of thinking by the novelists, explaining "mistakes."
1. Not a mistake. I took this to mean Weyoun likes arctic wastelands.
2. Unless it was so grown into the suit that she had to carve it up to get it out. Or maybe it was dark. The "no one has ever seen what they look like" is rather pitifully explained, IMHO, by multi-race Breen.
3. A Confederacy simply implies decentralized government. The Chalnoth were anarchists. Doesn't mean they weren't one species.
In general, I like scavenger hunts through continuity when they streamline and simplify things. You know, when a half dozen unrelated things become something you can tell a story about in one paragraph, like I just did with Catspaw, What Are Little Girls Made Of?, The Doomsday Device, the Tkon references, the Borg, and the Iconians.
Ie. Machines serve the Iconians. Machines get ditched. Machines revolt, Iconians try to put them down. Machines graft on organic matter and bombard Iconia, driving them out of the galaxy. Iconians erect a barrier at the galactic rim and galactic core to keep their rogue creations inside.
See? Lots of Trek. Made simpler by one unifying story.
The novels have an unfortunate tendency to either tie everything to Q ("Q sneezed and wiped out the Iconians!" "Q got a papercut and the Borg spilled out!") and time travel ("The Borg are Starfleet officers!", "The Borg is V'ger in the past!") and to try to make the world more complicated and more realized with unnecessary nuance rather than trying to make it simpler.
And in the end, I think it's better tidied up neatly because that frees up more space for new ideas and also because it makes the older ideas easier for new people to get a handle on.
but Q had nothing to back up his claims.
And the Borg are no more remarkable then that, and remain very much Star Trek'ish. They made a choice about how to live, then they were faced with a crisis, made a bad decision in response to that crisis, and now live out a much more nightmarish version of their original choice. The Borg are the victims of circumstance and their own choices, and so are not the Saturday morning cartoon villain they appeared to be, but are in fact have lost their way and in need of help.
But, I think, something this reasonable would be asking too much of CBS, the fans, and of people entrusted to produce Star Trek post Gene Roddenbury, like that hack Rick Berman.
First, ignore all novels and particularly those published since around 2000. Please. For your own sanity and mine. :-) And I have friends who've written some. But... Trek novels operate on a very fanfic level and there's a reason why folks who did the shows used ideas from them sparingly. I'll be honest. I take them as a guilty pleasure and a few notches less seriously than the comic books or video games.
Second, it makes things simpler if you lump things together... and is closer how TV writers think than how novelists think. Nobody really knows how big the Tkon or Iconian Empires are. I'd rather assume they were big and make Trek history simpler by folding everything pre-Federation down to a handful of groups who interacted, with semi-recognizable names. Make it simple. Which clears up the galactic clutter so that there's room inside people's heads for new stuff.
if you believe that the borg were around 200,000 years ago then there is a 400,000 year gap since the Tkon empire was extinct. during the same time the Borg came into existance on your belief of 200,000 years, the Iconians were also extinct around the same time. The Old Ones were never stated to be anything like iconians and Ruk was built only a few hundred years before the enterprise mission.