Question: Were the Borg ruined? Agree or Disagree.

jake477 · February 2020

I saw the question posed in a YouTube video a day ago and it got my mind thinking about how much the Borg changed from an all devouring collective storm, to a Collective pushing their own twisted version of perfection driven by a Queen. The Borg still give me nightmares sometimes if I watch the Blu-Ray of First Contact, and I am a grown adult. So for me they were always kind of scary but some people have argued the Borg's teeth haven't been as sharp as they were introduced in TNG Season 2 "Q Who". I mean they had driven Picard to beg Q for help and in Season 2 Picard would rather have died on the operating table then show weakness toward his crew because of a "routine" surgery. Best of Both Worlds is in a league of its own. Then First Contact showed up, the Borg were still scary and they introduced a Queen who was behind it all, at the time the revelation was unsettling. I still find FC as being one of the best action/sci-fi movies ever made and that is saying something next to Wrath of Kahn. Given deeper thought however one could argue it undermined what made the Borg so scary in the first place, they were a Collective and not driven by any one person or entity except under very rare circumstances like in the case of Lore. Personally my theory about this was it was easier for the writers in the episodes Best of Both Worlds and then later Descent to use a "villain" of sorts to push the Borg's objectives. Coming from a writing stand point a single voice in our society has more impact then a group of people. Voyager however turned the Borg into another in a long list of rogue gallery villains rather then the Ace they once were. The Krenim did more to Voyager then the Borg, several years earlier that said Borg took out a quarter of Starfleet and almost conquered Earth twice with a single cube, then they came back in the ST TNG Destiny Novels and took out half of the Federation and Klingon Empire combined. If the Borg were treated like an innuendo villain in Voyager like Emperor Palpatine was in Star Wars, constantly in the shadows and being revealed only in a Season Finale and the Series Finale, their gravitas would still be there.

Star Trek Enterprise did try and put some teeth back into them and tried to make the Queen less of the focal point as was the case in TNG but by then the damage was done unfortunately.

What are your thoughts on this?

rattler2 · February 2020

The Borg still have the capability of being the big scary bad. For a long time after First Contact I was scared of them.

Voyager kinda defanged them because of the fact they ended up dealing with them a lot more than in any other series. Not only that... having basically the equivelent of the apocalypse knocking on your ship multiple times... in order to keep the show going you can't have your ship obliterated by the Borg otherwise show over. So it was a bit of a give and take in Voyager. The Borg were defanged out of necessity to keep the show going until the end.

And then, IMO, we have the Borg in various video games. Pretty much every TNG era game has the Borg in it. The Borg are overused in media as the ultimate enemy or as an enemy at some point.

So its actually, for me anyways, Yes and No.
Yes they were ruined because of oversaturation and necessity in one series.
No because they are STILL the unstoppable world destroyers if done right even with everything that's been added over the years.

Ultimately... it comes down to personal viewpoints.

angrytarg · February 2020

Yes, absolutely. Because they were rewritren to be a 'relatable' villian, which it never was meant to be. Facing the Borg in space was akin to be surprised by a natural disaster. Impossible to negotiate with, just seek shelter and hope it moves on. As a villian with a very simple goal, with a emotionally unstable leader that got beaten so often they lost everything that made rhe concept unique, alien and scary.

artan42 · February 2020

I liked FC and Resurrection. I couldn't care less about any other Borg episodes. FC gave me nightmares when I first saw it back when I'd not seen any other Trek.

In TNG they were like everything else in TNG, boring, toothless, generic. In VGR they were like everything else in VGR, just like TNG but worse.

khan5000 · February 2020

I think they are overused. And every time we see them they’re kinda different than the last time we saw them.
I head-canon all that to mean the Borg evolve when they get defeated.

captainbrian11 · February 2020

Allow me to begin by explaining the concept of villian decay. Villian deacy is described as "a villian whom is extremely scary in their first apperances, becomes a joke after a few more apperances"
A good example of this is Megatron in the Micheal Bay movies, who goes from being an extremely dangerous bad TRIBBLE in the first movie, to a easily disposed of joke in the follow ups.

The Borg got hit with Villian decay BAAAAAD in voyager. in TNG and first contract they where a "serious threat" but voyager used them so much, and so poorly, the borg became less of a threat.
TBH STO also hits the borg with villian decay. we're running around blowing up multiple cubes a mission

captaincelestial · February 2020

reyan01 wrote: »

Completely disagree.

I still recall when ' Q Who' first aired. Seeing that Cube (along with the appropriately dramatic music) for the first time sent a shiver down my spine.

At this point the Borg were a big unknown, and they presented us with a new concept: an enemy that the heroes couldn't defeat. There was no diplomatic solution, no chance of the encounter ending peacefully. We then found out that Guinan knew of them :"My people encountered them a century ago. They destroyed our cities, scattered my people throughout the galaxy. They're called the Borg. Protect yourself, Captain, or they'll destroy you"
And one of the very first lines of dialogue we hear from the Borg themselves: "We have analyzed your defensive capabilities as being unable to withstand us. If you defend yourselves, you will be punished"

So even before the 'action' began we were getting the idea that the Borg were something different.

And when the 'action' did start we discover that Q was right - "You can't outrun them, you can't destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually you will weaken. Your reserves will be gone. They are relentless!"

This was something new for Trek at the time; the heroes basically lost. The Captain had to swallow his pride and beg Q for help. Had he not done so the Enterprise would've been carved to pieces as they were absolutely NO match for the Borg at this point in time.

I, personally, didn't get any of that from First Contact. Yes it was good (although I still feel it's overrated) and yes the Borg were threatening - biut they didn't come across as the unstoppable, overwhelming, threat they were in Q Who and Best of Both Worlds.
And then they gave them a personality (the Queen) and had HER try to seduce Robot the Sidekick and display obsessesive behaviour toward Picard. I stopped taking them seriously at that point.

To be honest, when I saw Picard being abducted, I thought he was knocked out when the drone used it's assimilation system on him in TNG. Maybe that was the point at the time, with the colour drain while he was on the slab was when he was actually assimilated. If that's the case, than First Contact improved on that with the assimilation process, which was carried into Voyager.

mirrorchaos · February 2020

Were the borg turned into a joke? yes. The ever reckless Janeway saw to that after her future self killed trillions of drones, ships and the unimatrix itself just to get her younger self home through selfish reasons.

markhawkman · February 2020

captainbrian11 wrote: »

Allow me to begin by explaining the concept of villian decay. Villian deacy is described as "a villian whom is extremely scary in their first apperances, becomes a joke after a few more apperances"
A good example of this is Megatron in the Micheal Bay movies, who goes from being an extremely dangerous bad TRIBBLE in the first movie, to a easily disposed of joke in the follow ups.

The Borg got hit with Villian decay BAAAAAD in voyager. in TNG and first contract they where a "serious threat" but voyager used them so much, and so poorly, the borg became less of a threat.
TBH STO also hits the borg with villian decay. we're running around blowing up multiple cubes a mission

Well a large part of villain decay is the simple act of BEATING a villain. If you know how to beat a villain they're inherently less scary

artan42 · February 2020

reyan01 wrote: »

I still recall when ' Q Who' first aired. Seeing that Cube (along with the appropriately dramatic music) for the first time sent a shiver down my spine.

Possibly part of it. I saw Q Who on a laptop screen about 5 years ago with the non-remastered version making it as impressive as a youtube advert. Where as I saw FC back in year 8 at school an a big projector in a cinema like arena.

reyan01 wrote: »

At this point the Borg were a big unknown, and they presented us with a new concept: an enemy that the heroes couldn't defeat. There was no diplomatic solution, no chance of the encounter ending peacefully. We then found out that Guinan knew of them :"My people encountered them a century ago. They destroyed our cities, scattered my people throughout the galaxy. They're called the Borg. Protect yourself, Captain, or they'll destroy you"
And one of the very first lines of dialogue we hear from the Borg themselves: "We have analyzed your defensive capabilities as being unable to withstand us. If you defend yourselves, you will be punished"

They kinda mooched around not really doing much except being talked about.

reyan01 wrote: »

So even before the 'action' began we were getting the idea that the Borg were something different.

The concept was fine. I just wasn't impressed with the execution.

reyan01 wrote: »

And when the 'action' did start we discover that Q was right - "You can't outrun them, you can't destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually you will weaken. Your reserves will be gone. They are relentless!"
This was something new for Trek at the time; the heroes basically lost. The Captain had to swallow his pride and beg Q for help. Had he not done so the Enterprise would've been carved to pieces as they were absolutely NO match for the Borg at this point in time.

That was barely evident in the final product. For me anyway. That's the issue with having no budget, your high concepts are limited to talk.

reyan01 wrote: »

I, personally, didn't get any of that from First Contact. Yes it was good (although I still feel it's overrated) and yes the Borg were threatening - biut they didn't come across as the unstoppable, overwhelming, threat they were in Q Who and Best of Both Worlds.

The Borg were a relentless march of dread in FC. The visually striking and effective visuals of the assimilated crewmembers, the vivisection of Lynch, the smooth Starfleet walls twisted into asymmetrical Borg shapes. Loosing deck after deck. Picard snapping and picking a fight with Worf. Crew showing actual emotion and not the vanilla fear of early TNG.
What Q Who and BoBW could only hint at, FC showed.

reyan01 wrote: »

And then they gave them a personality (the Queen) and had HER try to seduce Robot the Sidekick and display obsessesive behaviour toward Picard. I stopped taking them seriously at that point.

Oh I don't really care about that. I don't care for either the Queen or Mr Robot and the Queen was overplayed in VGR but she gave Picard somebody to play off against in FC.

I admit it's probably nostalgia as FC was the first piece of ST media I'd seen and I wouldn't see any more until year 10 (two years later I saw VGR from about series 4) then properly after 09, but, due to the budget, it properly conveys the body horror the Borg should be even now where as TNG doesn't.

After FC, VGR downgraded that to the point Janeway and Tuvok were getting assimilated voluntarily at which point it looses all effectiveness.

Question: Were the Borg ruined? Agree or Disagree.

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