If "classic" Trek had introduced the Borg...

Discussion in 'Star Trek - Original Series' started by Redfern, Aug 31, 2011.

  1. RAMA

    RAMA Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I agree, two totally divergent cultures there...and V'Ger was already a machine people....it may have evolved, but whatever it was, it wasn't a cyborg! The Borg seemed insignificant by comparison to it's technology.

    RAMA
     
  2. Wingsley

    Wingsley Commodore Commodore

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    I agree with Christopher; the Borg could not be connected to V'ger. It would be neat to see a Borg cube get zapped by one of those plasma-lighting bolt weapons, vanishing from existence to become "wall exhibits in Hell". V'ger could easily wipe the Borg out if it cared to.
     
  3. DeepSpaceWine

    DeepSpaceWine Commander Red Shirt

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    I'm thinking they would have looked like the alien robot race from Time Tunnel "Visitors from Beyond the Stars". That paralleled TOS Season 1 and had a small budget, so I think that's the closest depiction to what TOS Borg would have been like.
     
  4. YARN

    YARN Fleet Captain

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    not to worry, they'll probably show up in the next nuTrek movie...
     
  5. Maximara

    Maximara Lieutenant Junior Grade Red Shirt

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    The strange thing is the Borg apparently assimilated the bases along the Romulan Neutral Zone (stardate 41986.0)...and then went off for a cup of coffee or something. The even weirder part is in Q'Who Picard references the earlier episode. So the Borg were already aware of the Federation's existence.

    So just what was the Borg cube that had been supposedly picking up Starfleet bases along the Romulan Neutral Zone like Pokemon doing with itself?
     
  6. Timo

    Timo Admiral Admiral

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    The usual stuff?

    I mean, why would the Borg be in any particular hurry with Earth, or with anything else for that matter? They're an ancient lot, and if they really wanted to simply conquer everything, they'd already have had time to do it many times over without undue haste.

    For all we know, the Borg had been violating UFP assets every twenty years for the past three centuries already, and they simply hadn't been noticed yet - they're fairly secretive like that, and they don't tend to leave witnesses.

    Indeed, the Borg may have been more or less regularly visiting Earth before that, doing their "Yeah, still too primitive" checks in wait of interesting technologies to assimilate. Hence the Grey myths..

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  7. Anwar

    Anwar Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It left, and arrived at J-25 because it was unsatisfied with what it found at the Neutral Zone. Then when Q teleported the Enterprise to J-25 it got curious and wondered how it could do that, and when the databank search it did failed to yield answers it decided to go back to the Federation to see what it missed.

    Weird thing is, once they assimilated Picard they'd know that it was Q who did all that but they still wanted to assimilate the Feds. Guess they figured if the Q were interested there may have been something worthwhile about them.
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    The Borg knew about the Feeration even earlier than that, when they assimilated Magnus, Irene, and Annika Hansen in 2356. But the thing to keep in mind is that the galaxy is very, very large and there's a whole lot of stuff in it that has nothing to do with the Federation. The Borg had plenty of other matters closer to home to occupy their attention. The Federation was very, very far away from their territory, so it was low on their list of priorities. Borg space is huge, so it stands to reason that at any given moment, they're waging wars against dozens of civilizations or coalitions strong enough to offer some significant resistance to assimilation. Not to mention the resources and effort they'd have to expend on "domestic" affairs, managing the logistics of keeping such an immense territory operating, transferring resources to where they're needed, etc. Even with a single hive mind controlling it all and smoothly coordinating it without internal dissent, it would be a monumental effort just to keep such a vast entity from collapsing under its own weight. The Collective has a hell of a lot on its mind, so you can't expect it to drop everything to go after some new civilization it's discovered half a galaxy away.

    Probably, after they assimilated the Hansens, the Borg decided to send one cube to survey the area around the Federation, perhaps not right away but when they could spare the time. It sampled some stuff around the Neutral Zone and went back to report, and the Borg filed the data away for future reference, but still had plenty of other more immediate matters to contend with. Once a large, powerful Federation vessel showed up closer to Borg territory and then escaped through inexplicable means, though, that probably piqued the Borg's curiosity enough to send a cube to assimilate it.
     
  9. jgalley

    jgalley Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    y'know that part of me that likes to see "little things" connected kinda likes the V'Ger/Borg connection.

    but the intelligent part of my brain just can't accept that.

    if you have any shred of intelligent thought in your head and look at the info given to us about V'Ger and then what is shown/known about the Borg...even a moron could figure out that there's no way the two are related IN ANY WAY.
     
  10. Herbert

    Herbert Captain Captain

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    The idea of a connection between the Borg and Vejur originated with a joke made by Gene Roddenberry during an interview shortly after "Q Who?." He joked that the planet of living machines might be the Borg's homeworld.
    http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Vejur
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2011
  11. Destructor

    Destructor Commodore Commodore

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    I think that joke gives the theory a bit more creedence than the normal fan-theories we make here, but I have to admit, even before the internet (and so before I'd ever heard that GR had said such a thing), when I was watching TMP for the first time and the probe 'assimilated' Ilia so that she could speak for the machine intelligence, and then it mentioned a distant machine world, I totally said: "That could definitely be the Borg." so it's not a difficult connection to make.
     
  12. Maurice

    Maurice Vice Admiral Admiral

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    V'ger stored Ilia as a memory pattern and made a machine facsimile with her thought patterns. Not at all the same thing.
     
  13. jgalley

    jgalley Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    but still not an intelligent one, no offense.

    as already stated (just above) she wasn't "assimilated" it was an entirely new being that just had her look and memories...the borg are half-organic, half-machine...

    again any intelligent thought shows that there's no way they can be related.

    it's like saying the holodeck is borg because it can re-create "real" people. it's not even close.
     
  14. Mytran

    Mytran Commodore Commodore

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    William Shatner used the notion in one of his Trek novels (I forget which one, the second or third I think). Spock connects with the Borg and realises its not the first time (the first time being V'ger). The differences are explained by there being different sects of Borg, each doing the assimilation thing in slightly different ways. In the case of V'ger's sect, they assimilate via information and energy patterns.

    So; an explanation, but I agree that it's a stretch.
     
  15. Anwar

    Anwar Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It does make sense there would be different Borg groups with different methods. One thing that was overlooked with the assimilation idea was that, if the Borg Hive Mind is really made of the minds of everyone in the Hive including the Assimilated people, then shouldn't the assimilation of new individuals with new personalities eventually have some effect on the Hive Mind?

    I mean, if a Borg Cube assimilated a bunch of Klingons to the point there were more assimilated Klingons than anyone else on that ship, wouldn't their combined personalities have more of an influence on the Collective will than any other?
     
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^But it doesn't make sense, since the Borg Collective is, well, a collective. Every drone throughout the galaxy is controlled by a single collective consciousness. There are no separate "nations" within it, just a single homogenized whole. Yes, assimilating a new species would theoretically add some new elements into the mix, but with so many thousands of species in there already, it would be diluted to a homeopathic degree (well, not quite homeopathic, since at least there'd be some actual trace of it present). It wouldn't significantly change the whole in any noticeable way, and any subtle change that did occur would be uniform throughout the entire Collective.

    Especially given that the Borg are complete hypocrites. They claim to welcome new distinctiveness, but they're the ultimate conformists, ruthlessly suppressing and expunging anything that doesn't fit their preconceived notions of "perfection." So they probably discard all the really novel and distinctive traits of their assimilated species and just keep the stuff that's pretty much the same as what they already have.
     
  17. Anwar

    Anwar Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Exactly, the Collective really isn't a Collective as it is really a malevolent viral being that infects and contaminates life.
     
  18. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk The Real Me Premium Member

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    A connection between V'Ger and the androids of Exo III or Mudd's World would make more sense than the Borg.
     
  19. Uxi

    Uxi Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Well, it was only supposed to be interested in technology originally. Only later did it get interested in life. For reasons unspecified. Maybe they absorbed some tech from a militant species and that was the reason?

    In any case, the V'ger planet could have been an offshoot or predecessor to the Borg as seen by TNG.
     
  20. Anwar

    Anwar Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Originally, the idea was that the Borg were just one species that willingly turned itself into an organic/technology hybrid unified as one mind and that they went around searching for new technologies they could use for themselves (destroying the origin of said technology in the process, making it more unique?).

    This got retconned by TNG itself so that they went around assimilating entire species as well as their technology, so it's a case of changed premise.

    Frankly, both were a bit too nebulous and the whole Borg concept could've used some pre-planning if they intended them to be anything more than a one-shot foe.
     
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