SpikeTV is showing some Star Trek movies today and right now The Motion Picture is on.
I’m not sure it this has been discussed before (sorry, to lazy to do a search), but doesn’t V-ger seem to be a pre-curser to The Borg? The whole “V-ger must join with the creator” and talking about turning the “carbon units” into data units sure sounds like assimilation to me. And they really don’t show what happens other than Decker turning all sparkly and windblown. So maybe STTMP was good for at least giving them the Borg idea somewhere down the line…?
They’re also showing Treks III, IV and VI today. Mercifully no V!
Gene Roddenberry once joked that he thought V’ger was the Borg homeworld, or somesuch.
This concept was later followed up in a Trek novel written by William Shatner (well…in all likelihood it was ghostwritten with Shatner’s name attached) that had the Borg resurrecting Kirk in the aftermath of Generations. The surviving members of TOS (Spock, Scotty and a very, very old McCoy) teamed up with the TNG crew to rescue Kirk. For some reason, the Borg didn’t assimilate Spock, apparently because they recognized him from his mind-meld with V’Ger. Yep, turned out V’ger was a branch of the Borh.
Allegedly, this was the proposed sequel to Generations that never made it off the drawing board.
As **ResIpsaLoquitor ** said, it’s something that has been explored in depth by William Shatner (his ghostwriters are Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, the authors of the fantabolous "Prime Directive, my favorite Trek novel not written by Peter David) in his various novels but canonically, it really holds no water.
I personally like to think of them as just similar life forms. Much like the Talosians, Medusans, Q, Organians, and so on. But I hate TMP, so I might be biased.
A fan theory I’ve heard—based on the Roddenberry half-joke—is that when Voyager 6 was first discovered by the Machine Planet, the machines weren’t actually Borg…yet. However, after repairing V’Ger and sending it on it’s merry way, they were inspired by V’Ger’s “seek out all knowledge” directive, and that’s why they set out to assimilate everything in existance.
This is helped out a bit by the fact that the Borg’s original motivation was being the “ultimate users,” only seeking out technology and information. This has changed somewhat, in Star Trek’s recent years.
V-ger found Dune’s Ix.
Well, that’s a thought, anyways…
I’d like to see that whale novel sequel made as a movie. Maybe with DS9 and VOY people in place of the characters in the book. Aes knows what book I’m thinking of, I’m sure.