The origin story for the Borg differs from writer to writer. William Shatner's Trek series established a connection between the Borg Central Node, which was planet-sized, and the V'Ger entity. (Gene Roddenberry is said to have quipped that the machine planet the Voyager 6 probe landed on might have been the Borg homeworld.)
Whatever the origin is, it has never been officially established on television or in cinema, so it's basically up to whatever a given Trek book author imagines.
My own origin story would go something like this. A race of beings, now long dead or assimilated, had highly advanced technology and became known in its area of space as specializing in cybernetic enhancement of the organic form. At some point this people decided to try and achieve the perfect union of flesh and machine, and created a group of cybernetic organisms capable of adding to their number by way of nanoprobes and more direct surgical enhancement. This group quickly assimilated its parent race, and eventually the whole of their planet, creating the Central Node alluded to by Shatner and hinted by Roddenberry to be the planet Voyager 6 crash-landed on. Interpreting the probe's programming literally, they repaired it and sent it back to its creator, assuming it was a machine much like the probe itself, in hopes that the upgraded probe might add such a being to the technological distinctiveness of the Node and its drone-children. The enhanced Voyager 6 probe had the ability now to assimilate everything in its path through a process of direct conversion to energy, in which objects, beings, and even whole planets and star systems were reduced to raw data, growing V'Ger's intellect. The rest, as they say, is (Trek) history.
The Borg "Queen" is in fact nothing more than a puppet through which the entire Collective speaks. When "she" says "she" IS the Borg, "she" is speaking literally, as the avatar is the physical mouthpiece of the entire will of the Collective.
When a mummy Borg and a daddy Borg love each other very much, they get certain... urges...
<center><font size="+5"><b>Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day... Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
The Borg "Queen" is in fact nothing more than a puppet through which the entire Collective speaks. When "she" says "she" IS the Borg, "she" is speaking literally, as the avatar is the physical mouthpiece of the entire will of the Collective.
It's a shame this isn't the way she was portrayed on screen (big and small). Instead she's an individual, with feelings who "runs" the Borg. They went with an insect analogy, a hive run by a "queen", instead of a true collective consciousness.
Although there was a collective consciousness, it came off as a separate entity that she controlled. I suppose the role would have been a bit boring if she was just a puppet, but it would have been truer to the vision I had of the Borg.
It's a shame this isn't the way she was portrayed on screen (big and small). Instead she's an individual, with feelings who "runs" the Borg. They went with an insect analogy, a hive run by a "queen", instead of a true collective consciousness.
Although there was a collective consciousness, it came off as a separate entity that she controlled. I suppose the role would have been a bit boring if she was just a puppet, but it would have been truer to the vision I had of the Borg.
As good a movie as First Contact was, they ruined the Borg with the introduction of the queen. I much preferred the monolithic force of nature the Borg were originally presented as rather than the queen who was quite obviously guiding the Borg based on an emotional hatred of organic lifeforms.
You remember how V'ger said something about an entire species of robot with their own planet, and how they build that entire structure around the original Voyager probe? It then returned to Earth, where Kirk let V'ger bond with a human. That was the moment the first Borg came into existence.
V'ger returned to that robot species, and taught them how to bond with meatbags. And they started bonding with whatever meatbags they encountered, and taking their technology. And over the next few centuries, they evolved into the modern Borg that you all know and love.
So basically, you have Kirk to blame for everything.
GEDRIN: You're Borg.
SEVEN: How do you know that?
GEDRIN: Don't you recognise my people? The Vaadwaur?
SEVEN: The Collective's memory from nine hundred years ago is fragmentary.
GEDRIN: I've had many encounters with your kind.
EMH: And lived to tell about them? Impressive.
...
GEDRIN: The Borg? In my century they'd only assimilated a handful of systems
As good a movie as First Contact was, they ruined the Borg with the introduction of the queen. I much preferred the monolithic force of nature the Borg were originally presented as rather than the queen who was quite obviously guiding the Borg based on an emotional hatred of organic lifeforms.
Very much this!
The borg where much more menacing before the Queen was established. Actually i think the Queen is the achilles heel of the borg, because of her egoistic way of thinking.
The hive mind like portrayed in their first appearance in TNG, was a force of nature, so to speak.
They where also shown only interested in technolgy they could recycle for themselves, not as space zombies like in ST:8 (how cheap is that, lol)
I much more prefer the inexorable and merciless Borg, which have NO gender and have very different goals than just "assimilate" or even more cheap "destroy". Such borg make me shudder, not space zombies tbh.
ST:8 has taken away so much of Treks originality on so many levels, making Trek much more trivial and mainstream.
"...'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured...the first thought forbidden...the first freedom denied--chains us all irrevocably.' ... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today--"
- (TNG) Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie
Let's not forget, the original Borg in Best of both worlds wanted to assimilate everyone to raise them into a higher level of being. It wasn't about perfection, it was about unity. They wanted you because you were chaotic. They would bring about harmony to the galaxy. A dark perverse reflection of the Federation. That was their intent. That was who they were. That was part of their scare. I hate the Borg when on a quest for perfection.
Also occurs to me that is probably why they ignore everyone on their ships. You're not being chaotic, you're not being a problem, thus you are part of the unity, thus you are part of the one, thus you are ignored.
*******************************************
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
Anyway, while I agree I don't like the idea of the Borg Queen, they were based on insects weren't they? I also didn't like the Destiny idea of Borg, although both ideas solve certain problems. Example, the Queen is a fallible individual who controls the Borg, I'd find it much easier to outsmart that, than an amalgam of billions of individuals. The Destiny origin sort of explains why the Borg are so adamant about coming after Humans, out of everyone. Makes it a little more understanding of why they would not have gone for Vulcan or Betazed or something instead.
Well, although Trek is known for vast discontinuity, there are parts that link. The Borg almost certainly existed before contact with V'Ger, given testimonies from species like the Vaadwaur. As for the Enterprise episode that features the Borg: remember in First Contact where the Borg sphere vortex-es back in time, and gets quan-torp'd by the Enterprise (D)? The remains of Borg they find in the arctic circle in the Enterprise episode, are from that same sphere (that the Enteprise torpedoed)
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "The Borg - party-poopers of the galaxy"~ The Doctor
Destiny kinda solves that problem, the obsession with the Borg and why the Borg hasn't gone all out on the Federation. 1 cube to assimilate 150 worlds? It's as though there was an underlying program determined to protect humanity.
Linking the Borg back to Voyager 6 would mean that humanity started the whole thing to begin with. What is with people linking everything created back to humanity? That would mean humans caused the problem. If that was it, that certainly would make me want to change sides in the Trek world and start rooting for the Romulans, or the Klingons. If humanity created the Borg on purpose or by accidant it will certainly qualify them as the biggest trouble makers in the galaxy. I can't agree with that one.
The Borg queen... I didn't like it either. It sounds like a writer's tool. When creating a villin it's easier to give it a name and a personality which Borg have niether.
My take on the Borg is that it was an answer to some kind of disease or medical problem that grew out of control. I thought it would be nice irony if Borg nanoprobes was supposed to be a vaccine that turned into something else. A huge accidant.
It's all fiction, which means we can play with it anyway you want. Remember in "Q-Who" when Commander Riker opened a drawer full of little babies with Borg inplants? Saying that they start the inplants when they were young. But in First Contact all of a sudden it turned into nanoprobes. The Borg evolved how they reproduce. Which would make sense since technology does evolve faster than humans. Computers made in the 1970's are not the same as the ones now.
Linking the Borg back to Voyager 6 would mean that humanity started the whole thing to begin with. What is with people linking everything created back to humanity? That would mean humans caused the problem. If that was it, that certainly would make me want to change sides in the Trek world and start rooting for the Romulans, or the Klingons. If humanity created the Borg on purpose or by accidant it will certainly qualify them as the biggest trouble makers in the galaxy. I can't agree with that one.
Well, there's the constant attacks, half-hearted on Earth.
also, the Destiny novels don't exactly blame humanity... we didn't do it, but we were there
You remember how V'ger said something about an entire species of robot with their own planet, and how they build that entire structure around the original Voyager probe? It then returned to Earth, where Kirk let V'ger bond with a human. That was the moment the first Borg came into existence.
V'ger returned to that robot species, and taught them how to bond with meatbags. And they started bonding with whatever meatbags they encountered, and taking their technology. And over the next few centuries, they evolved into the modern Borg that you all know and love.
So basically, you have Kirk to blame for everything.
William Shatner
was in
Osmosis Jones (2001)
with
John J. Burke
was in
Black Mass (2015/I)
with
Kevin Bacon
Comments
Whatever the origin is, it has never been officially established on television or in cinema, so it's basically up to whatever a given Trek book author imagines.
My own origin story would go something like this. A race of beings, now long dead or assimilated, had highly advanced technology and became known in its area of space as specializing in cybernetic enhancement of the organic form. At some point this people decided to try and achieve the perfect union of flesh and machine, and created a group of cybernetic organisms capable of adding to their number by way of nanoprobes and more direct surgical enhancement. This group quickly assimilated its parent race, and eventually the whole of their planet, creating the Central Node alluded to by Shatner and hinted by Roddenberry to be the planet Voyager 6 crash-landed on. Interpreting the probe's programming literally, they repaired it and sent it back to its creator, assuming it was a machine much like the probe itself, in hopes that the upgraded probe might add such a being to the technological distinctiveness of the Node and its drone-children. The enhanced Voyager 6 probe had the ability now to assimilate everything in its path through a process of direct conversion to energy, in which objects, beings, and even whole planets and star systems were reduced to raw data, growing V'Ger's intellect. The rest, as they say, is (Trek) history.
The Borg "Queen" is in fact nothing more than a puppet through which the entire Collective speaks. When "she" says "she" IS the Borg, "she" is speaking literally, as the avatar is the physical mouthpiece of the entire will of the Collective.
When a mummy Borg and a daddy Borg love each other very much, they get certain... urges...
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
It's a shame this isn't the way she was portrayed on screen (big and small). Instead she's an individual, with feelings who "runs" the Borg. They went with an insect analogy, a hive run by a "queen", instead of a true collective consciousness.
Although there was a collective consciousness, it came off as a separate entity that she controlled. I suppose the role would have been a bit boring if she was just a puppet, but it would have been truer to the vision I had of the Borg.
As good a movie as First Contact was, they ruined the Borg with the introduction of the queen. I much preferred the monolithic force of nature the Borg were originally presented as rather than the queen who was quite obviously guiding the Borg based on an emotional hatred of organic lifeforms.
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V'ger returned to that robot species, and taught them how to bond with meatbags. And they started bonding with whatever meatbags they encountered, and taking their technology. And over the next few centuries, they evolved into the modern Borg that you all know and love.
So basically, you have Kirk to blame for everything.
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GEDRIN: You're Borg.
SEVEN: How do you know that?
GEDRIN: Don't you recognise my people? The Vaadwaur?
SEVEN: The Collective's memory from nine hundred years ago is fragmentary.
GEDRIN: I've had many encounters with your kind.
EMH: And lived to tell about them? Impressive.
...
GEDRIN: The Borg? In my century they'd only assimilated a handful of systems
...
The borg where much more menacing before the Queen was established. Actually i think the Queen is the achilles heel of the borg, because of her egoistic way of thinking.
The hive mind like portrayed in their first appearance in TNG, was a force of nature, so to speak.
They where also shown only interested in technolgy they could recycle for themselves, not as space zombies like in ST:8 (how cheap is that, lol)
I much more prefer the inexorable and merciless Borg, which have NO gender and have very different goals than just "assimilate" or even more cheap "destroy". Such borg make me shudder, not space zombies tbh.
ST:8 has taken away so much of Treks originality on so many levels, making Trek much more trivial and mainstream.
Lol. Almost spilt my coffee.
Also occurs to me that is probably why they ignore everyone on their ships. You're not being chaotic, you're not being a problem, thus you are part of the unity, thus you are part of the one, thus you are ignored.
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
LOL. This^
Anyway, while I agree I don't like the idea of the Borg Queen, they were based on insects weren't they? I also didn't like the Destiny idea of Borg, although both ideas solve certain problems. Example, the Queen is a fallible individual who controls the Borg, I'd find it much easier to outsmart that, than an amalgam of billions of individuals. The Destiny origin sort of explains why the Borg are so adamant about coming after Humans, out of everyone. Makes it a little more understanding of why they would not have gone for Vulcan or Betazed or something instead.
"The Borg - party-poopers of the galaxy" ~ The Doctor
The Borg queen... I didn't like it either. It sounds like a writer's tool. When creating a villin it's easier to give it a name and a personality which Borg have niether.
My take on the Borg is that it was an answer to some kind of disease or medical problem that grew out of control. I thought it would be nice irony if Borg nanoprobes was supposed to be a vaccine that turned into something else. A huge accidant.
It's all fiction, which means we can play with it anyway you want. Remember in "Q-Who" when Commander Riker opened a drawer full of little babies with Borg inplants? Saying that they start the inplants when they were young. But in First Contact all of a sudden it turned into nanoprobes. The Borg evolved how they reproduce. Which would make sense since technology does evolve faster than humans. Computers made in the 1970's are not the same as the ones now.
Well, there's the constant attacks, half-hearted on Earth.
also, the Destiny novels don't exactly blame humanity... we didn't do it, but we were there
William Shatner
was in
Osmosis Jones (2001)
with
John J. Burke
was in
Black Mass (2015/I)
with
Kevin Bacon
I blame Kevin Bacon for the Borg!