So I’m on a quest to watch (or re-watch) all of the Star Trek Borg episodes. Right now I’m working my way through Voyager, even though it is definitely not my favorite of the Trek series.
There are a few episodes where the crew comes upon Borg “territory” and has to figure out how to get through it. The show is pretty vague about what constitutes Borg space and how large it actually is, but it is clear that the region is incredibly vast. However, even beyond Borg space they continue to encounter the Borg. There are many episodes that make it clear the surrounding species have also encountered Borg. The entire concept of saying the Borg have a certain territory seems odd to me, because the Borg are not known for respecting the concept of “mine” and “yours” but anyway…
Here’s my question: How does anybody live next door to the Borg?
The Borg’s whole deal is that they relentlessly assimilate anything and everything they come across. They don’t even reproduce; Presumably any new Borg drones must be acquired through assimilation. So how is it possible that a species could just hang out next door to the Borg without being gobbled up? The Borg had no problem crossing tens of thousands of light years to attack Earth (repeatedly) but they appear to ignore other cultures that are just sitting there on their doorstep. We also never hear about Borg invasions of the Klingons or Romulans or other cultures neighboring the Federation. They just seem to have a hard-on for Earth and ignore everyone else.
So what’s the deal with this? Do they just ignore civilizations that aren’t worth their effort? Or have other species figured out how to keep them at bay? Was there ever an explanation or fan theories about how this works?
Borg territory is simply the area of space where the Borg have assimilated planets full of people. That territory might not all be contiguous considering they have transwarp conduits to many different areas of the galaxy, including near Earth.
Yes - Seven says on a couple occasions that certain species were not deemed candidates for assimilation. I believe the Kazon were one.
It’s never been explicitly stated, but there may be species without assimilation potential who “pay homage” to the Borg just to avoid extermination, which would seem to be what a bunch like the Borg would to to lessers.
Their space has to have some borders, or they would have all space.
As shown in Voyager, what counts as “Borg space” seems to be where the Borg actively patrol, as they are worried about encountering them, and then make it through. They seem to not go anywhere near Kazon/Vidiian space, as we leave those in Season 2, and the first encounter with the Borg is in Season 3, not reaching Borg space until the last episode. They do seem to go the other direction, since the Borg are encountered from here on out.
And of, course, there’s a transwarp hub in the last episode, which is not a part of what they called “Borg space,” yet the main Queen seems to be there, with a ton of cubes. So the idea that there may be local pockets of Borg space around the conduit holes does seem to be born out. That hub is practically the capital.
The Borg didn’t need to assimilate every member of a species. They could learn everything about their technology and science by assimilating one planet.
Why waste time assimilating the same species on a neighboring plant?
Been there, done that, and got the T-shirt.
This allows for other Species bordering Borg territory. The Borg ignore them because they already have their science and technology.
Because they don’t reproduce, as suggested by Voyager and the kid drones (who were in maturation chambers but were from other species), along with the fact that we never encountered any drone that was not an assimilated species. Even the Queen was from an assimilated species (160, I believe), even if she was more machine than Man
Without reproduction, they need to keep their numbers up. Especially given how often they kill off their drones in their assimilation attempts.
Though that raises the question: why not leave small populations in low tech situations which could be used as breeding stock? Let them make more, then come back and get them. So, indirectly, you get back to your idea. Leave some of them alone, so they will make more future drones. Farm them.
Really, that is “Borg Reproduction” in a meta- kind of way. It functions the same, just using enslaved species as raw materials.
(Sorta like the ancient Greek myth of the Amazons, who’d go out and kidnap men every so often, have sex, then kill any baby boys. They can’t “reproduce themselves” but can accomplish the same effect by enslaving others.)
(Silly waste of effort: there’s lots of guys who’d happily volunteer for the duty!)
Star Trek has never been consistent with the Borg. Okay, they are not very consistent with anything, but especially with the Borg.
Originally, the Borg weren’t even about assimilating. They were just fluttering about the galaxy, scavenging technology wherever they went. I actually liked that interpretation best, as it set them apart from all the other adversaries.
In my mind’s canon, the Borg were just a bunch of tech geeks who kept wanting more and more gadgets, and didn’t care who got in their way as they kept adding to their collection. They just wanted all the tech they could get their hands on.
Then one day they met up with the Enterprise. Just another random tech grab to them. They ignored the humans, and only wanted the ship. But as they pursued the Enterprise, and almost caught up them, the ship was suddenly whisked away by Q.
The Borg had no idea it was Q’s doing, they thought that the humans were just that advanced. This prompted them to decide that they must integrate the cleverness of the humans into their collective.
To me this is much more interesting than what they became on Voyager.
My favorite Borg episode was Unity, Voyager finds a wrecked Cube. The survivors had lost their link to the hive.
It was absolute anarchy. With many different species, some criminal, some highly educated. One small group had sealed themselves into a safe area and formed a collective. They were living and functioning normally. The other group attacks.
The solution to reconnect the hive and bring order was very thought provoking. It saves these people from destroying themselves. At the expense of their individuality.
There’s also the long term consequences of creating a hive on that planet.
One issue I have with unity and a lot of other voyager borg episodes was that they kept having alpha quadrant species who were assimilated at worf 359. They might not remember this but that ship was destroyed. It’s not like the cube made a trip to the delta quadrant to drop off their new acquisitions before continuing on to earth.
I like your analysis. I’d like to add that I would have been happy if the original Borg cube was ALL the Borg there was. Why would they need any more? Just one big collective, driving around looking for stuff to make them go.
But, given that the producers couldn’t leave a good idea alone, they brought them back.
To expand on your idea, I’ve always thought that, before their encounter with the Enterprise, that there was NO Borg queen. The queen was the Borg’s “adaptation” to humans. They’ve always been quite capable of defeating anyone just fine the way they were, but when human’s hierarchical command structure defeated them in TBoBW, they decided to adapt THAT to their collective. So the queen was created as a hybrid - both collective, and leader. E plurubus unum. The collective took some of the idea of the individual and made it fit in the collective. The queen was just the drone that added the variable of the individual to the collective.
It was Picard’s great failure that he never saw that, and played right into the Borg’s plan. He kept treating the queen as if she controlled the collective, and that he could deal with her. She could also have been a deliberate distraction - keep Picard thinking there was a leader that he could defeat. But it’s a trap!
And they almost got away with it, if it wasn’t for that meddling Data…
It was that decision to create a ‘face’, a personality that could be interacted with, reason, cajole, threaten and be overcome that really killed the Borg. If they had remained this vast and frightening force of pure IMPERSONALITY, they would have been much more frightening, but much more difficult to write effectively.
Just because the Borg there is the concept of “Borg Territory” doesn’t mean the Borg comprise a nation-state with well-defined borders that you can be “just on the other side of”. There are planets the Borg have assimilated in their entirety (and presumably there are planet-bound Borg of some type) and those planets form a fuzzy region with greater-than average Borg control.
Near the edges of that region, Borg control just peters out and control of competing powers increases. Like the marches of old Europe.
This was my confusion. The Borg only really understand two things: Stuff we have assimilated and stuff we haven’t assimilated yet. So designating a portion of space as their “territory” doesn’t make much sense. But I watched another episode recently that shows the Borg deciding to attack a Voyager shuttle because it contained “relevant technology.” I assume that if the shuttle was old and busted (irrelevant) they wouldn’t have bothered.
As for the other issue, I get why they invented the Borg queen. From a dramatic perspective, it is much easier for the audience to see a single villain that can interact with the other cast members. And while her design is super creepy, I agree that it kind of subtracted something from the Borg as a concept.
I vaguely recall that there was some planet where they were deliberately staying low-tech to avoid Borg attention. <quickly checks memory-alpha> This one.
