If I were writing the borg origin, I'd probably try some sort of tragic hero story, like of a noble race fighting against the Iconians, who in their struggles to get an advantage, turn to cyborg technology and keep striving for that 'perfect' balance. Then, despite being partially successful at fending off the Iconians, the full cost of their actions is revealed and I'm sure we can fit some sort of nice Star Trek morale in there. Ad for Voyager 6, it could be some sort of inspiration, an accident, completely unrelated, or something else.
I've always been wary of Borg origin stories. In my mind, the more explanations we get about the Borg the less interesting they become. They work better as a mystery, or a force of nature. Unexplainable. Like the Q, they just are.
They began as machines. The Iconian computer weapon forced them to take on organic components. They still haven't perfected how to shield against the Iconian virus and until the machine half is perfect, they rely on cybernetic fusion to organics.
They had to compromise themselves by incorporating organics to survive.
My preference since the origins of the Borg (according to Guinan) coincide roughly with the fall of the Iconians AND since we know the Iconians' master weapon was a computer virus...
Is that V'Ger popped up 200,000 years ago in the near corners of the Delta Quadrant. Possibly due to Tholian tampering.
Everyone in the galaxy scrambled to pull technology from the future to overthrow the Iconians who enslaved them. The Borg lead the charge.
(Although one of my preferences is actually that the Borg began as machine life and started out by adding on organic components to shield against the Iconian computer weapon. The Borg clearly don't believe that pure machine life is REALLY superior and using organics is a rather silly affectation when you think about it. There has to be a reason they continue to assimilate people instead of just sucking the information from their brains and building robots.)
While your story is indeed interesting, but to overwrite Star Trek canon which stated the Borg were at least 1000 years old to suddenly becoming hundreds of thousands of years old, might cause problems within the Star Trek community.
Then there is the flaw if the Iconians being defeated by the Borg, okay then explain why the Borg sat in their little corner of the galaxy between 1000 to 200,000 years ago? Why suddenly they just decided one day to assimilate everything? And the idea of people just magically time traveling or the Tholians getting involved, its just over complicating the origin.
The origin has to be in a way that makes all Star Trek fans go "wow". And if Cryptic does take this on, it hopefully avoids cliche. And that, will require some major brainstorming.
I've always liked the idea that the BORG are something that Picards' Q created on a whim at some point in his past, and he got punished for it by the Continuum...
(we don't really know how long Picards' Q has been around, it might be he's older than dirt)
This could also be why he has an antagonistic relationship with the Continuum.
They won't let him get rid of his 'toy', but they won't let him play with it either.
By tossing Picard and the gang into the BORGs' path, he gets to indirectly interact with his creation while also annoying his fellow 'Q' (as well as Captain Picard).
This might also be why Guinan hates Q... she knows what he did.
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
I'm not keen the V'ger-Borg connection at all. Makes no sense in relation to the TMP movie story. The Destiny storyline is even more ridiculous. This constant push to make Enterprise an important facet of Trek lore reminds me of Star Wars and what Lucas has done with the Prequel/Clone Wars era in contrast to the OT/Empire era in Star Wars - enough already.
Guinan said the Borg had been doing their thing for "thousands of centuries". That's good enough for me - I don't need an origin story. In fact, sometimes it's better not to have one...
I've always liked the idea that the BORG are something that Picards' Q created on a whim at some point in his past, and he got punished for it by the Continuum...
(we don't really know how long Picards' Q has been around, it might be he's older than dirt)
This could also be why he has an antagonistic relationship with the Continuum.
They won't let him get rid of his 'toy', but they won't let him play with it either.
By tossing Picard and the gang into the BORGs' path, he gets to indirectly interact with his creation while also annoying his fellow 'Q' (as well as Captain Picard).
This might also be why Guinan hates Q... she knows what he did.
Or maybe Guinan's race did which is why Q warned Picard to get her off his ship.....then all of a sudden he sends them to meet the Borg coincidence.....hmmmmmmm:D
I'm not keen the V'ger-Borg connection at all. Makes no sense in relation to the TMP movie story. The Destiny storyline is even more ridiculous. This constant push to make Enterprise an important facet of Trek lore reminds me of Star Wars and what Lucas has done with the Prequel/Clone Wars era in contrast to the OT/Empire era in Star Wars - enough already.
Guinan said the Borg had been doing their thing for "thousands of centuries". That's good enough for me - I don't need an origin story. In fact, sometimes it's better not to have one...
:rolleyes:
Yeah, I like the Borg just being the Borg.....I like to think of them as Fire.....fire is going to do what it's going to do its not evil, the borg are not evil.
Maybe Commander Decker jumped into a green light, and the light spread all over the Galaxy combining synthetics and organics.....Wait I might be confusing Commanders
I'm not keen the V'ger-Borg connection at all. Makes no sense in relation to the TMP movie story... Guinan said the Borg had been doing their thing for "thousands of centuries". That's good enough for me - I don't need an origin story. In fact, sometimes it's better not to have one...
In my opinion it is less about trying to connect V'Ger to the Borg as much as it is trying to answer the question of who made V'Ger and do "they" in some way have a relationship or connection to Borg.
The "machine planet" that Spock sees in the holo storage of V'Ger is what has led to all the speculation of "Borg" because we see machine planet and say - hey that looks like Borg!
But the fun may be to investigate what that machine planet really was and if it has any connection to the Borg at all.
That doesn't need to explain where the Borg came from, but it might be intriguing to know if there is "another" machine race similar or different to the Borg.
It certainly would be fun to go back and investigate all of this. I refuse to change my forum avatar until we get a V'Ger origin feature episode series!
Why not a borg origin STF? You do know that it's going to be quoted to death until you adress it now? :P
Humans creating the Borg through their actions is why I hated part of the Destiny novels and why I hate V'Ger's connection to the Borg. I find there to be little difference between the goals of the Federation and the Borg, striving for perfection. Its just that the Borg went to far with it. I could see the Borg being an organization like the Federation before they started assimilating. The only acceptable Borg origin stories IMO are someone developing nanites to protect a race from an invasion force or a race striving for perfection and losing something valuable in the process.
Borg command ships are a game design, but to make up a story we could say that the Borg were inspired by V'ger as a symbol of the perfection they seek.
As for a Borg - V'ger connection, sorry I don't see it and I'll give my reason with one name, Ilia.
V'ger could assimilate a humanoid lifeform, convert it into pure data and reproduce it perfectly in mechanical form. Being capable of that, why would it resort to creating the clunky grotesque abominations that are the Borg? It just doesn't add up.
Remember V'ger thought machines were the only true lifeforms, it had no use for "carbon units".
I generally agree with this, and I know I've gabbed about it in the forums and elsewhere at one point in the past, but it's more clear to me that the Borg are inspired by V'ger and not related any more closely beyond that.
Most of the explanations we've seen have been *too* much of a tie-in to eachother, everything from Legacy to the Shatner novels. The Shatner novels, while in a universe of their own (Kirk brought back to life, need I say more?), explained that the Borg itself are the machine race that rebuilt V'ger and sent it back. But knowing the Borg and how primitive they are compared to the all-powerful V'ger, that doesn't add up.
This machine race is obviously capable of amazing feats in science and engineering, able to build a vessel for V'ger merely to help fulfill its primitive programming and to take it back home to report back. This leads me to believe that such things are a trifle to deal with for this machine race, at least compared to all the other races, species, and factions we've seen in Star Trek.
The fact that now, in STO, the Borg are building similar but much weaker vessels seems more like some sort of sign of worship to me, like building an idol of a god. We already know the Borg possess a certain religious zeal for perfection and things that relate to such perfection, like the Omega particle...and the assimilation of the known universe. Now I'm not saying they literally worship as humans might, but in their own way they're pursuing such.
My feeling on their desire to merge all organic beings and machines together may be based on V'ger's desire to merge with its creator, which ended up being a fleshy meat-bag named Decker, coming together to transcend this existence to explore other dimensions and the like. This, to the Borg, must be some kind of ultimate merging, something they hope to achieve, picking the best of the universe to become part of its whole.
It's kind of fascinating as well because, and while this was slightly retconned, the Borg weren't interested in organic beings in their first episode of appearance, changing their mind as Locutus called it later on. It's possible that they learned of V'ger during their official first contact with the Enterprise-D, when they took a sample of the ship, crew and technology both, to study, discovering there might be more to merging man and machine than just a handy bag of bones to move around in.
As for the Borg and V'ger's comparative age, we all know what happens when black holes, black stars, wormholes, and etc. are involved. Time travel. I know there's more than one source (like the TDI novels) that suggests V'ger was thrown not only across space but across time, giving V'ger plenty of time to cross space and get noticed. Spock *did* say V'ger had collected "whole galaxies" of information, and while that may not be literal, it's still a *lot* of data that suggests V'ger had been exploring for a long time, probably stopping at every location of interest on the way back to fulfill its mission of data collection.
This also suggests that the machine race might not even *be* in this galaxy, perhaps they're from a nearby globular cluster, who knows? We certainly haven't seen any evidence of a highly advanced machine race yet in our own galaxy.
Anyway, I'm just rambling at this point, but I like to think there might be some sort of *inspired* connection, but not a direct connection beyond that.
In my opinion it is less about trying to connect V'Ger to the Borg as much as it is trying to answer the question of who made V'Ger and do "they" in some way have a relationship or connection to Borg.
The "machine planet" that Spock sees in the holo storage of V'Ger is what has led to all the speculation of "Borg" because we see machine planet and say - hey that looks like Borg!
But the fun may be to investigate what that machine planet really was and if it has any connection to the Borg at all. That doesn't need to explain where the Borg came from, but it might be intriguing to know if there is "another" machine race similar or different to the Borg.
Well doesn't help when Roddenberry himself pointed out a possible connection with V'Ger and the Borg. :P
The Machine planet would be interesting when the Delta Quadrant is opened up. And be somewhat like Mol'Rihan and the world is dead and we find bits and pieces of the history and the Borg's origin.
I've always liked the idea that the BORG are something that Picards' Q created on a whim at some point in his past, and he got punished for it by the Continuum...
(we don't really know how long Picards' Q has been around, it might be he's older than dirt)
This could also be why he has an antagonistic relationship with the Continuum.
They won't let him get rid of his 'toy', but they won't let him play with it either.
By tossing Picard and the gang into the BORGs' path, he gets to indirectly interact with his creation while also annoying his fellow 'Q' (as well as Captain Picard).
This might also be why Guinan hates Q... she knows what he did.
But you know what would be an interesting twist? If the Q originated from V'ger.
At the end of TMP, we obviously know the merging created somekind of noncoporial life. And V'ger knew everything in the universe, which the Q obviously possess. Which could explain why the Q are so interested in Humans and the Borg - because humanity is part of their origins.
So to assure their creation, Q alerted the Federation of the incoming Borg threat. Which eventually prevented Earth from being assimilated in the past in First Contact. And in saving the past, it allowed Kirk, Spock, and Decker to complete V'ger's journey. Thus the Q are allowed to be born.
Now with the Borg, we know they were attracted to the signal by the Borg that survived First Contact and was returning to the Collective and eventually sending the Cube that Picard encountered. But what if there was more?
For some reason the Borg are awfully determined to assimilate the Earth, inspite of their failed attempts. So there has to be something more to Earth that the Borg let on.
Maybe it has to do with V'ger? They want to go to Earth to find V'ger or the Creator, and knowing it's in the past they travel back to assimilate the Earth and wait for V'gers return in 2273 to gain pure perfection.
We certainly haven't seen any evidence of a highly advanced machine race yet in our own galaxy.
What about the Old Ones from Exo III? They were around 500,000 years ago and humanoids who eventually turned towards mechanics. So why not they eventually become the machine race that scattered throughout the Galaxy. With the Iconians being around at that time, maybe the Old ones had a colony on the other side of the Galaxy, away from the Iconians.
Then there are the Androids that Mudd discovered that came from the Andromeda Galaxy, which also said to be 500,000 years ago.
So maybe we could have a race left the Andromeda Galaxy, came here to settle, colonized a bunch of worlds all over the Galaxy with one becoming the Machine World that V'ger stumbles upon. And why there isn't more worlds is that it could turn out that the Old Ones were one of the Iconian rivals and eventually they killed each other off, and only the androids on these worlds remained, a relic of a ancient past.
What about the Old Ones from Exo III? They were around 500,000 years ago and humanoids who eventually turned towards mechanics. So why not they eventually become the machine race that scattered throughout the Galaxy. With the Iconians being around at that time, maybe the Old ones had a colony on the other side of the Galaxy, away from the Iconians.
Then there are the Androids that Mudd discovered that came from the Andromeda Galaxy, which also said to be 500,000 years ago.
So maybe we could have a race left the Andromeda Galaxy, came here to settle, colonized a bunch of worlds all over the Galaxy with one becoming the Machine World that V'ger stumbles upon. And why there isn't more worlds is that it could turn out that the Old Ones were one of the Iconian rivals and eventually they killed each other off, and only the androids on these worlds remained, a relic of a ancient past.
That's possible, but I personally feel a bit of a stretch, considering the very alien appearance of V'ger's vessel and apparent level of technology. I'm not going to deny that it'd be interesting to see some more background on the Old Ones, but not sure we want *everyone* to be connected to each other in some way either, Old Ones, V'ger, Borg, and humans together. I'm also curious about where you got the 500,000 years old info from, as I can't seem to find anything on that. Was that in the episode(s) relating to the Old Ones?
Although I do like the Iconian/machine race connection possibility. I was thinking after I first posted that the machine race or V'ger *could* have studied or met the Iconians at some point (or vice versa?), which led me to thinking it'd be kind of neat if we could get the prior-mentioned "memory wall" outpost as some sort of one-shot story mission that might give us more hints about the Iconians.
In addition, I only just remembered that the perhaps-canon Star Trek (2009) spin-off comics (believe the film writers have direct input in them) had a V'ger cameo with Nero stating that V'ger and the Borg have a common ancestry of sorts after communing with V'ger (in order to use its capabilities to compute a time and location for Spock's arrival in the film after the Borg-enhanced Narada was lured to V'ger due to their shared machine intelligences. It's in the Nero issue 3).
This definitely lends to the idea that the machine race could definitely be at the heart of things, though that doesn't necessarily rule out the idea that the Borg are inspired by V'ger. Perhaps the Borg's earliest development was due to the machine race somehow, directly or indirectly, during a point where the Borg were less interested in organics than they were in technology (again, referring to the earliest Borg episodes). But with knowledge of what became of V'ger, the ultimate and perfect merging of man and machine that transcended existence, I imagine that would be a bit of a game-changer. Suddenly, merging with fleshy organics isn't just handy and a good way to recycle, but now it's a way to *ascend*!
I will definitely say, this all is a lot more interesting and likely than the way the Destiny novels handled it...not like the novels don't already have some half a dozen different origin stories for the Borg alone that conflict with Destiny as it is.
What if all of the borg origins are true to an extent, theres nothing that says that the collective isnt the merger of 2 or more mechanical races,
The most interesting thing I've seen on the origin is that there is no "THE origin".
One peculiarity of Borg behavior is that (in the show) they always introduce themselves to a new race by attempting to convince the race to join them voluntarily. Why? I don't think they would do that if it had never worked in the past. This leads to the conjecture that it HAS worked in the past and that the Borg in TNG and VOY are the result of a fusion between several cybernetic races.
V'Ger was never part of the Borg, merely a passerby that was never officially part of the Collective (nothing ever is until they're assimilated)
Within Star Trek, there are a number of contradictions on it's own facts. We must keep that in mind as we go about the lore
I don't mind having the Borg's origin just be a mystery that only the Borg Hive mind knows....or maybe one that the hive mind itself doesn't even remember.
Personally I think it makes them a little more frightening.
The Great Bird of the Galaxy's take on V'ger and the Borg was that it was the Borg that discovered Voyager 6, rebuilt it, and sent it back to complete it's mission and report back to "it's maker".
So accoding to GR, V'ger is not the maker of the Borg - it is the Borg that are the makers of V'ger. As I see it, that is why some Borg vessels and weapons in this game resemble V'ger (that is so classily cool by the way) - because they made V'ger - so of course there would be resemblences. That is of course assuming you subscribe to the version according to Gene Roddenbury.
Of course, this only accounts for the origin of V'ger, and does not help at all in the origin of the Borg. :)Ahem.
I have never liked overwriting or overthinking the Borg. Voyager does it to death. The Borg should have always been in the form that they were in The Best of Both Worlds: Utterly stoic, relentless and devoid of emotion, with nothing we can connect to. They were horrifying and intriguing in equal nature because they were nothing like the other races we had encountered, they had no origin, no leader (until the Queen came and ruined it), no morals or politics, no cultures or traditions, no motivation other than assimilating the entire galaxy. Thinking too much about their origin just detracts from this effect. Maybe they should just be taken as a curse from some higher power or force?
It makes perfect sense for them to do so. Why would they commit military resources to forcefully assimilate a species if they don't have to?
In that Voyager episode about the Vaudwaar, Seven tells Janeway that the Collectives memories of 900 hundred years ago are very fragmented. It's entirely possible that the Borg indeed have long "lost their way" and just keep doing what they're good at. They themselves don?t remember where they come from.
It makes perfect sense for them to do so. Why would they commit military resources to forcefully assimilate a species if they don't have to?
I don't think its a consideration of whether to commit X military resources or not. The whole reason why the Borg choose to assimilate is because they deem that species of technology as the next step forward towards perfection. Its not optional. Its all or nothing.
Its my opinion that the intro message is a means to get their targets to voluntarily submit and therefore preserve every aspect of what the Borg where after, and not run the risk of destroying it during conflict. For example, if they are after a particular genetic advancement that some members of a species may posses, the last thing you want to do is risk obliterating the populace and risk killing all of those who have that genetic advantage.
I don't think its a consideration of whether to commit X military resources or not. The whole reason why the Borg choose to assimilate is because they deem that species of technology as the next step forward towards perfection. Its not optional. Its all or nothing.
Its my opinion that the intro message is a means to get their targets to voluntarily submit and therefore preserve every aspect of what the Borg where after, and not run the risk of destroying it during conflict. For example, if they are after a particular genetic advancement that some members of a species may posses, the last thing you want to do is risk obliterating the populace and risk killing all of those who have that genetic advantage.
Exactly! It's faster and more efficient if the race submits willingly. But the Borg don't take no for an answer.... ever. You WILL be assimilated!
I really have to wonder though.... how many races have chosen to be peacefully assimilated?
The Queen isn't the leader of the Borg. She's said so herself.
Right, I saw her more as an "officer" unit to direct drones and carry out the borg's directives when isolated or cut off from the collective in order to do unusual missions....like say going back into the past to affect one world.
Comments
Just my random thoughts.
While your story is indeed interesting, but to overwrite Star Trek canon which stated the Borg were at least 1000 years old to suddenly becoming hundreds of thousands of years old, might cause problems within the Star Trek community.
Then there is the flaw if the Iconians being defeated by the Borg, okay then explain why the Borg sat in their little corner of the galaxy between 1000 to 200,000 years ago? Why suddenly they just decided one day to assimilate everything? And the idea of people just magically time traveling or the Tholians getting involved, its just over complicating the origin.
The origin has to be in a way that makes all Star Trek fans go "wow". And if Cryptic does take this on, it hopefully avoids cliche. And that, will require some major brainstorming.
(we don't really know how long Picards' Q has been around, it might be he's older than dirt)
This could also be why he has an antagonistic relationship with the Continuum.
They won't let him get rid of his 'toy', but they won't let him play with it either.
By tossing Picard and the gang into the BORGs' path, he gets to indirectly interact with his creation while also annoying his fellow 'Q' (as well as Captain Picard).
This might also be why Guinan hates Q... she knows what he did.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Guinan said the Borg had been doing their thing for "thousands of centuries". That's good enough for me - I don't need an origin story. In fact, sometimes it's better not to have one...
:rolleyes:
Or maybe Guinan's race did which is why Q warned Picard to get her off his ship.....then all of a sudden he sends them to meet the Borg coincidence.....hmmmmmmm:D
Yeah, I like the Borg just being the Borg.....I like to think of them as Fire.....fire is going to do what it's going to do its not evil, the borg are not evil.
it's just part of their nature.
I lol'd alot.
In my opinion it is less about trying to connect V'Ger to the Borg as much as it is trying to answer the question of who made V'Ger and do "they" in some way have a relationship or connection to Borg.
The "machine planet" that Spock sees in the holo storage of V'Ger is what has led to all the speculation of "Borg" because we see machine planet and say - hey that looks like Borg!
But the fun may be to investigate what that machine planet really was and if it has any connection to the Borg at all.
That doesn't need to explain where the Borg came from, but it might be intriguing to know if there is "another" machine race similar or different to the Borg.
Why not a borg origin STF? You do know that it's going to be quoted to death until you adress it now? :P
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I generally agree with this, and I know I've gabbed about it in the forums and elsewhere at one point in the past, but it's more clear to me that the Borg are inspired by V'ger and not related any more closely beyond that.
Most of the explanations we've seen have been *too* much of a tie-in to eachother, everything from Legacy to the Shatner novels. The Shatner novels, while in a universe of their own (Kirk brought back to life, need I say more?), explained that the Borg itself are the machine race that rebuilt V'ger and sent it back. But knowing the Borg and how primitive they are compared to the all-powerful V'ger, that doesn't add up.
This machine race is obviously capable of amazing feats in science and engineering, able to build a vessel for V'ger merely to help fulfill its primitive programming and to take it back home to report back. This leads me to believe that such things are a trifle to deal with for this machine race, at least compared to all the other races, species, and factions we've seen in Star Trek.
The fact that now, in STO, the Borg are building similar but much weaker vessels seems more like some sort of sign of worship to me, like building an idol of a god. We already know the Borg possess a certain religious zeal for perfection and things that relate to such perfection, like the Omega particle...and the assimilation of the known universe. Now I'm not saying they literally worship as humans might, but in their own way they're pursuing such.
My feeling on their desire to merge all organic beings and machines together may be based on V'ger's desire to merge with its creator, which ended up being a fleshy meat-bag named Decker, coming together to transcend this existence to explore other dimensions and the like. This, to the Borg, must be some kind of ultimate merging, something they hope to achieve, picking the best of the universe to become part of its whole.
It's kind of fascinating as well because, and while this was slightly retconned, the Borg weren't interested in organic beings in their first episode of appearance, changing their mind as Locutus called it later on. It's possible that they learned of V'ger during their official first contact with the Enterprise-D, when they took a sample of the ship, crew and technology both, to study, discovering there might be more to merging man and machine than just a handy bag of bones to move around in.
As for the Borg and V'ger's comparative age, we all know what happens when black holes, black stars, wormholes, and etc. are involved. Time travel. I know there's more than one source (like the TDI novels) that suggests V'ger was thrown not only across space but across time, giving V'ger plenty of time to cross space and get noticed. Spock *did* say V'ger had collected "whole galaxies" of information, and while that may not be literal, it's still a *lot* of data that suggests V'ger had been exploring for a long time, probably stopping at every location of interest on the way back to fulfill its mission of data collection.
This also suggests that the machine race might not even *be* in this galaxy, perhaps they're from a nearby globular cluster, who knows? We certainly haven't seen any evidence of a highly advanced machine race yet in our own galaxy.
Anyway, I'm just rambling at this point, but I like to think there might be some sort of *inspired* connection, but not a direct connection beyond that.
For STO, while I don't necessarily want to see a full explanation of things, I *would* love to see some hint of V'ger's impact in the universe, maybe a lost outpost, a "memory wall" remnant of sorts to explore? Such as the not-used portion of the TMP film as seen here: http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/illustrated-script-of-the-memory-wall-sequence/
and:
http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/producing-the-memory-wall-sequence/
What do you think, DStahl? =P
Well doesn't help when Roddenberry himself pointed out a possible connection with V'Ger and the Borg. :P
The Machine planet would be interesting when the Delta Quadrant is opened up. And be somewhat like Mol'Rihan and the world is dead and we find bits and pieces of the history and the Borg's origin.
But you know what would be an interesting twist? If the Q originated from V'ger.
At the end of TMP, we obviously know the merging created somekind of noncoporial life. And V'ger knew everything in the universe, which the Q obviously possess. Which could explain why the Q are so interested in Humans and the Borg - because humanity is part of their origins.
So to assure their creation, Q alerted the Federation of the incoming Borg threat. Which eventually prevented Earth from being assimilated in the past in First Contact. And in saving the past, it allowed Kirk, Spock, and Decker to complete V'ger's journey. Thus the Q are allowed to be born.
Now with the Borg, we know they were attracted to the signal by the Borg that survived First Contact and was returning to the Collective and eventually sending the Cube that Picard encountered. But what if there was more?
For some reason the Borg are awfully determined to assimilate the Earth, inspite of their failed attempts. So there has to be something more to Earth that the Borg let on.
Maybe it has to do with V'ger? They want to go to Earth to find V'ger or the Creator, and knowing it's in the past they travel back to assimilate the Earth and wait for V'gers return in 2273 to gain pure perfection.
What about the Old Ones from Exo III? They were around 500,000 years ago and humanoids who eventually turned towards mechanics. So why not they eventually become the machine race that scattered throughout the Galaxy. With the Iconians being around at that time, maybe the Old ones had a colony on the other side of the Galaxy, away from the Iconians.
Then there are the Androids that Mudd discovered that came from the Andromeda Galaxy, which also said to be 500,000 years ago.
So maybe we could have a race left the Andromeda Galaxy, came here to settle, colonized a bunch of worlds all over the Galaxy with one becoming the Machine World that V'ger stumbles upon. And why there isn't more worlds is that it could turn out that the Old Ones were one of the Iconian rivals and eventually they killed each other off, and only the androids on these worlds remained, a relic of a ancient past.
That's possible, but I personally feel a bit of a stretch, considering the very alien appearance of V'ger's vessel and apparent level of technology. I'm not going to deny that it'd be interesting to see some more background on the Old Ones, but not sure we want *everyone* to be connected to each other in some way either, Old Ones, V'ger, Borg, and humans together. I'm also curious about where you got the 500,000 years old info from, as I can't seem to find anything on that. Was that in the episode(s) relating to the Old Ones?
Although I do like the Iconian/machine race connection possibility. I was thinking after I first posted that the machine race or V'ger *could* have studied or met the Iconians at some point (or vice versa?), which led me to thinking it'd be kind of neat if we could get the prior-mentioned "memory wall" outpost as some sort of one-shot story mission that might give us more hints about the Iconians.
In addition, I only just remembered that the perhaps-canon Star Trek (2009) spin-off comics (believe the film writers have direct input in them) had a V'ger cameo with Nero stating that V'ger and the Borg have a common ancestry of sorts after communing with V'ger (in order to use its capabilities to compute a time and location for Spock's arrival in the film after the Borg-enhanced Narada was lured to V'ger due to their shared machine intelligences. It's in the Nero issue 3).
This definitely lends to the idea that the machine race could definitely be at the heart of things, though that doesn't necessarily rule out the idea that the Borg are inspired by V'ger. Perhaps the Borg's earliest development was due to the machine race somehow, directly or indirectly, during a point where the Borg were less interested in organics than they were in technology (again, referring to the earliest Borg episodes). But with knowledge of what became of V'ger, the ultimate and perfect merging of man and machine that transcended existence, I imagine that would be a bit of a game-changer. Suddenly, merging with fleshy organics isn't just handy and a good way to recycle, but now it's a way to *ascend*!
I will definitely say, this all is a lot more interesting and likely than the way the Destiny novels handled it...not like the novels don't already have some half a dozen different origin stories for the Borg alone that conflict with Destiny as it is.
One peculiarity of Borg behavior is that (in the show) they always introduce themselves to a new race by attempting to convince the race to join them voluntarily. Why? I don't think they would do that if it had never worked in the past. This leads to the conjecture that it HAS worked in the past and that the Borg in TNG and VOY are the result of a fusion between several cybernetic races.
BEHOLD: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Borg_history
My character Tsin'xing
I don't mind having the Borg's origin just be a mystery that only the Borg Hive mind knows....or maybe one that the hive mind itself doesn't even remember.
Personally I think it makes them a little more frightening.
So accoding to GR, V'ger is not the maker of the Borg - it is the Borg that are the makers of V'ger. As I see it, that is why some Borg vessels and weapons in this game resemble V'ger (that is so classily cool by the way) - because they made V'ger - so of course there would be resemblences. That is of course assuming you subscribe to the version according to Gene Roddenbury.
Of course, this only accounts for the origin of V'ger, and does not help at all in the origin of the Borg. :)Ahem.
In that Voyager episode about the Vaudwaar, Seven tells Janeway that the Collectives memories of 900 hundred years ago are very fragmented. It's entirely possible that the Borg indeed have long "lost their way" and just keep doing what they're good at. They themselves don?t remember where they come from.
I don't think its a consideration of whether to commit X military resources or not. The whole reason why the Borg choose to assimilate is because they deem that species of technology as the next step forward towards perfection. Its not optional. Its all or nothing.
Its my opinion that the intro message is a means to get their targets to voluntarily submit and therefore preserve every aspect of what the Borg where after, and not run the risk of destroying it during conflict. For example, if they are after a particular genetic advancement that some members of a species may posses, the last thing you want to do is risk obliterating the populace and risk killing all of those who have that genetic advantage.
Works for more than one cyber-mechanoid race, just saying..
I really have to wonder though.... how many races have chosen to be peacefully assimilated?
My character Tsin'xing