But for a Borg in the Collective, it would not be his will that matters. I’d imagine the Collective is a very strong will. If you somehow got a Borg who was cut off from the Collective, than a Jedi could wave his hand and make him think he is a tree. But if he tried that on a Borg connected to the Collective, he’d get a neck full of nanites.
As for who would win? Really, in the Star Trek universe there is no reason for the Borg to have lost. I could buy it the first time. But the second time they invaded, they should have sent 3 cubes. Game over. Hell, send an armada to all the major powers in the quadrant at the same time.
If the Borg acted as they would in the real world, not as the writers would have them act, they would win through shear numbers.
EDIT: Please delete the post I made before this one. hit a series of wrong keys, and made a post of only three words.
Come on. Picard defeated the Borg by ordering them to take a nap! You don’t think the Jedi don’t have a couple of mind tricks at least a powerful as a lullaby?
I don’t doubt that the Borg would quickly adapt to lightsabers. However, if the writers were prone to allow it, they might allow Jedi to harmonically shift their lightsabers or some such technobabble.
Borg can’t adapt to physical shit, because we know they’ve been shot and karate chopped to death. I assume Worf wasn’t the first guy in history to punch a Borg or swing a bladed weapon at one. So they could force push a Borg as easily as they do those shitty Trade Federation Battle Droids.
I imagine the Jedi would sense which cube held the Borg Queen, and a small force would land on it, and get into a an exciting boss-battle.
I completely agree. There have been some comments upthread about how the Borg don’t seem to be able to adapt to pushes, or ‘physical forces’. Every force is physical. If I walk up to a Borg drone and give it a good hard shove, that is actually the electromagnetic force. I am using my electrons to transfer energy: from chemical potential energy in my muscles to kinetic energy in my limbs to kinetic energy in the Borg drone’s body. Same thing with a knife and a bullet.
Now, here’s where I shift from actual science to fanwank. If the Borg were being sufficiently stymied by good hard shoves, or knives, or bullets, they would reconfigure their shields to resist the electrons that deliver the energy. We don’t know how shields work in Star Trek, but there is no a priori reason to believe that they could not be attuned to kinetic impacts by ordinary matter. As corroborating evidence, every Federation starship has a deflector dish for the purpose of deflecting all the dust and gas and tiny rocks that exist in interstellar space. Same deal. If you started throwing Borg off the Chrysler building, yes, they would adapt. Either they would use the personal forcefields to absorb the impact energy, or they would start constructing JETPACK DRONES.
As for the perennial bullets issue: Those were holographic bullets, with the holodeck safeties turned off. That means they were one of two things: 1) Real metal slugs, replicated by the holodeck. The Borg could eventually adapt to this. See above. But we only saw two drones get hit. 2) A complicated arrangement of electromagnetic fields designed to be shaped like a metal slug and match human tactile sensations of same. As far as killing Borg drones is concerned, this is just another energy projectile. It worked on two drones because it was new, and if there were ten drones in the room they would have adapted their shields accordingly. The instances of physical trauma killing drones are few in number, and more to the point, each one used a slightly different method.
Bottom line: if the Jedi aren’t actual, no-shit magic, the Borg eventually adapt and win by sheer force of numbers. Their only hope (aren’t I clever) is to avoid being detected by the Borg by mindwiping whatever individual drones they come across. I doubt they could mind trick the Collective hive mind, it’s too powerful.
Second, what situationa re we talking here? No, I doubt even the msot powerful Jedi can defeat any number of borg soldiers. Yes, I’m pretty sure one Borg would easily get killed by even a very stupid Jedi.
Also, are we talking about early borg or late borg? Because the two are nothing alike. Early borg, you may recall found meant immaterial; it was simply a tool. They assimilated technology. They raised children and borged them out th hard way, not with any magic nanotubes :rolleyes: Picard was a special case. Later borg did nothing but assimilate people.
It’s basically the same appearance but completely different group. The former would completely ignore the Jedi. The latter would get defeated because they crossed the line from sci-fi threat to fantasy villain. And jedi are made to take down fantasy villains.
Well, the problem with this is that you’ve basically said, “The Borg are completely invincible and adapt to anything.” Which really makes no sense, because they get curbstomped repeatedly by [people who use things they don’t adapt to. In fact, they seem to be unable to “adapt” to anything except phasors with their convenient frequency controls.
Frankly, uynless you assume numerous capabilities out of thin air, the borg lose unless you simply give them effectively endless numbers. Which is certainly fair, but Jedi lose to endless numbers of rabid squirrels, too. And my money is that rabid squirrels do the job faster and with fewer casualties. But frankly, borg are slow, stupid, and ill-equipped to deal with anything more dangerous than your standard useless federation goon, handed a mediocre weapon he doesn’t understand.
This. Do you remember the ST:TNG episode with hundreds of Enterprises from alternate universes? One was commanded by a frantic-looking Will Riker, begging to be allowed to remain in “our” universe, because his own had been completely overrun by the Borg. I thought that was a much more realistic outcome, and a series following that premise could have been very interesting.
Watch that slope you’ve got there, it’s a bit slippery. Here is a list of things I did not say:
The Borg are invincible.
The Borg are able to adapt to anything.
I said only that the Borg could adapt to what people seem to think is their greatest weakness: kinetic assault. I made this argument to counter the arguments that the Jedi need only use Force Push to defeat the Borg. I did not say they would adapt quickly, nor did I say they would adapt well, nor did I say that it would be easy for them to adapt. The core of the argument is that the science of kinetic assault is well understood, so their resistance to force push is greater than zero.
Well, I think Bjorn is getting up in years to take out the jedi, but back in the 70’s he would’ve drawn them to the net, then dropped a sweet topspin lob winner that would be so awesome that the jedi would stare in admiration, refusing to use their Force powers as an homage to Borg’s shotmaking mastery.
The Borg are hardly invincible. They can be defeated. The problem with the Borg is that they simply do not stop. They might retreat, lose cubes, or wait a thousand years slowly whittling the Jedi down. They are good at adapting technology to their use, and can do so quickly when under the direction of a queen. Less so when they are on their own.
Lets address Force tricks for a minute. Physical tricks have their limitations. A jedi can only do that so many times before they tire after all. Even worse, the Borg will learn that their opponent can do something like that and adapt solutions to impair progress if it cannot be stopped. For example, on a starship they might disable the ship’s gravity and use mag fields in their boots to allow them to cling to the surfaces. The Jedi now has to overcome basic physics as well as the additional resistance of the mag field. Certainly they might do this, and do it well. They can’t use the force over and over without fatigue though. In time the Borg will overrun our Jedi and then the numbers game takes over.
Now Mind tricks is where this could become sticky. The Borg DO know about telepaths and mental suggestion. It is possible that they have technology to overcome this issue. If not, their collective nature may make them VERY weak to such an intrusion.
Lightsabres are irrelevant, except as a defense against other weapons (I’ll be generous and assume they can deflect phaser bolts the same way they do blasters). We’ve already seen, in the Star Wars universe, that forcefields can resist lightsabres. It’s possible that the Borg forcefields won’t resist them immediately, but given that it’s known that forcefields can resist them, I see no reason they couldn’t adapt that.
The Mind Trick is more problematic, though. Resisting them isn’t as simple as just strengthening the hive mind commands, since that would mean even less autonomy for the drones. A Mind Tricked drone would think that what the Jedi just told it was its orders given through the extra-strong hive mind. And given just how dominated the drones are by the hive mind, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a Jedi could suborn an entire cube full of drones.
What then, though, I’m not sure. I don’t think the Mind Trick could be used to force one cube to attack another, and the Borg might even have more cubes than the Jedi have knights. Probably the best bet would be for each knight to use the Mind Trick to stop the drones from noticing him placing scuttling charges, blowing the cube, and then moving on to the next one.
Eventually, of course, the Borg would learn to recognize the Jedi ships, and what range the Mind Trick is effective at, and not let any Jedi get into close enough range. But I’m unsure how long that would take.
This. If the Borg can regularly get turned back or outright defeated by Capt. Picard and crew more or less single-handedly (or rather, single-crewedly), the Jedi should be able to manage as much what with their ability to communicate telepathically (presumably without Borg eavesdropping), manipulating stuff without touching it, etc.
Unless the Borg can assimilate a few Jedi and touch the Force through them, it wouldn’t even be very interesting.
I’m not so sure. Mentally, what is the difference between a Borg drone and a droid? Except a droid has free will. Personally, I don’t think a Jedi could mind trick a Borg drone any more than he could a toaster.
