Redshirts Roundtable: Resistance is Futile

Star Trek Deep Space Nine Emissary

Andrew Depledge:

The Borg came into Star Trek at a perfect time for me, exactly like David said they had lacked a real bad guy, an unstoppable force.

Up until then, we hadn’t seen anything on the scale of the planet-eating monsters from The Original Series and the Borg doubled down on the concept being civilization eating monsters.

The addition of Locutus was one I liked, a representative to bring the Borg to Earth made sense, which when I put it in those terms makes me wonder why I’m not a fan of the Queen concept. I suppose it’s something to do with the fact that I believe Locutus becomes a faceless drone when they try to assimilate the Romulans rather than a leader.

Unfortunately, I think a combination of the writing and lower production values on the Borg in Voyager hurt them. The transwarp network became a Deus Ex Machina to help get Voyager home and didn’t feel organic. Let’s face it if the network existed why did the Borg ever visit Wolf 359? They could have exited right at Earth just like Voyager did. To do otherwise is futile.

I think that there’s still a chance to rebuild them. The addition of Hugh and Lore to the collective was great, I liked where the individuality virus (for lack of a better term) was going, they just need to double down again and put some bite back into the Borg.

But as far as who deserves to be the Big Bad, I think it’s time for a new one, species 8472 proved it could be done, but by the end they were toothless, and the Dominion war is over. Personally, I’d like to see a new force in the same vein as the Ori in the later seasons of SG1, vastly superior technology, a strong but flawed ideology and need to control the galaxy rather than just improve themselves.