# Why Did They Nerf the Borg? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 16, 2006, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852 "2006-04-16T04:10:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/21 "2006-04-17T12:39:16Z")
Yeah, don’t worry about length, you’re still only at, what, 3 paragraphs a year? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/22 "2006-04-17T16:36:48Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Switching between _The Ten Commandments_ and an episode of Enterprise where they find the Borg on Earth, I was wondering why the writers/producers so badly nerfed the Borg. I mean, the Borg kicked ass in “The Best of Both Worlds” though you could start seeing the nerfing by the end of the Borg-related episodes in Next Generation. Then, of course, they managed to basically become a joke in Voyager (and I’ll admit, I stopped watching Voyager about three episodes in. As someone said, the entire premise suffered from Gilligan’s Island syndrome.) Is this just another example of idiotic producers? Your reference to _The Ten Commandments_ reminds me how God got nerfed between the OT and the NT. 🙂 ST-TOS solved this problem quite neatly, before it even happened. _Errand of Mercy_\* both introduced the Klingons and set firm limits on what the Klingons could do - which made the conflict more intellectual and not the kill or die situation with the Borg. The Romulans didn’t get this treatment, but they were so far away, and covered by the neutral zone, so this wasn’t a big issue. Nerfing didn’t start with TV and movies. Dr. Fu Manchu was nerfed rather badly by the end of the series. It happens with any continuing villain - you’ve got to wonder how the villains who lose all the time make any money. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/23 "2006-04-17T17:15:33Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Your reference to _The Ten Commandments_ reminds me how God got nerfed between the OT and the NT. 🙂 I thought about citing that as an example of my law, but decided I really didn’t need that kind of trouble. ---
**Author:** ![kingpengvin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9dc877/32.png) [@kingpengvin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingpengvin)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/24 "2006-04-17T17:34:59Z")
> [@Robot Arm](#): > > I thought about citing that as an example of my law, but decided I really didn’t need that kind of trouble. But why exactly did God need with a Starship? ooop sorry. The Biggest Problem with the Borg was that they were brough to earth and defeated way to soon. The faceless hive minded enemy would make for a good device as an ongoing encroaching threat. The drama would not have been with the full conflict with them but how the characters and the Federation society deals with that threat. You know they could have made a few references to them coming closer, a distant… distant battle. Maybe a horrendous loss (A la wolf 359) and the effects that has on Starfleet personel. The Borg, due to the distance and possibly any type of futile resistance that would slow, but not stop them, could have been crusing from outter systems for quite some time. Building the tension. Unfortunately, once the Borg were defeated the first time, that was it. They were no longer the unstoppable threat. Each time they were brought back the weaker they became because despite their vaunted adaptability, they had so many fricken achilles heels. (Lotta legs on those cubes you know) ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/25 "2006-04-17T18:10:35Z")
> [@Larry Borgia](#): > > Oops. Oh well, as an Alice Krige fan, I appreciate the opportunity to mention her, regardless of my misunderstanding. I could go either way, although I have to say I prefer Six of One with the Borg breast implants. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/26 "2006-04-17T18:10:50Z")
> [@Incubus](#): > > I liked the pre-nerfed borg- they were scary! They really gave me this feeling of a hopeless battle. In ‘First Contact’ I really liked Picard’s resolve against the borg. Of course, he kind of had an axe to grind. Yeah, but since Borg defenses don’t work against the most simply delivered energy form (ie. kinetic), the good guys should have just made a bunch of slugthrowers and eliminated the problem in 15 minutes or so. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/27 "2006-04-17T18:41:46Z")
> [@Procyon](#): > > **Some crew member** : Captain, we have a horrible problem. > > **Janeway** : Try and fix it. > > (_fifteen minutes pass_) > > **Some crew member** : The problem has gotten worse by several orders of magnitude. > > **Janeway** : We might never make it home! > > (_twenty minutes pass_) > > **Some crew member** : We are absolutely doomed. There is no possible way for us to escape our current predicament. > > **Janeway** : Modulate the shield frequencies. That might buy us some time. > > (_twenty minutes are bought_) > > **Some crew member** : Captain, I have discovered a miraculous solution. > > **Janeway** : Do it. > > **Some crew member** : We are saved! > > (_roll credits_) I feel like I just watched the entire _Voyager_ series on DVD. ---
**Author:** ![DiggitCamara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@DiggitCamara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiggitCamara)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/28 "2006-04-17T19:15:28Z")
> [@kingpengvin](#): > > But why exactly did God need with a Starship? > > ooop sorry. > > The Biggest Problem with the Borg was that they were brough to earth and defeated way to soon. The faceless hive minded enemy would make for a good device as an ongoing encroaching threat. The drama would not have been with the full conflict with them but how the characters and the Federation society deals with that threat. > > You know they could have made a few references to them coming closer, a distant… distant battle. Maybe a horrendous loss (A la wolf 359) and the effects that has on Starfleet personel. > > The Borg, due to the distance and possibly any type of futile resistance that would slow, but not stop them, could have been crusing from outter systems for quite some time. Building the tension. > > Unfortunately, once the Borg were defeated the first time, that was it. They were no longer the unstoppable threat. Each time they were brought back the weaker they became because despite their vaunted adaptability, they had so many fricken achilles heels. (Lotta legs on those cubes you know) Kind of like the process the Dominion went through on DS9, ain’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/29 "2006-04-17T21:51:40Z")
How so? The Dominion was a juggernaut right up until the end. It took the combined might of the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans; clandestine biological warfare; and an eleventh hour betrayal by the Cardassian Union to contain them and, even then, if it weren’t for the (incredibly annoying deus-ex-machina) intervention of the Prophets, they’d’ve won handily. ---
**Author:** ![Procyon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac91a4/32.png) [@Procyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procyon)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/30 "2006-04-17T23:28:16Z")
You all are far too kind. There was one thing I was going to mention in my other post but forgot to as my outrage toward _Voyager_ became increasingly overwhelming. The fact is that, for all its faults, _Voyager_ made the Borg look much cooler. If you actually go back and watch the original _Next Generation_ episode that introduces the Borg, you will see that the inside of their ship looks like the inside of a warehouse. Admittedly, the low-tech appearance made the writers have to work extra hard to make the Borg seem alien and scary, something the writers for _Voyager_ were clearly less burdened with, but I won’t deny that the black-and-green biotechnological nightmare look is far cooler. I also want to express agreement with **Terrifel’s** opinion about why the Borg, as initially conceived, were destined to end up nerfed, in one way or another. As much as I love the idea of the implacable, ceaseless villain, they are ultimately much shallower than something like the Romulans. I think that the people in charge tried to correct the problem by adding the Borg Queen (Alice Krige, sadly, did not reprise the role in _Voyager_). She was an attempt to give the Borg an ego, something that could be reasoned with, manipulated, and possibly even tricked. Yet at the same time her existence really detracts from what made the Borg so unique in the first place: the lack of those same human qualities. The decline of the Borg is not just that they became weaker, but that they became high-tech Cardassians with a catch phrase. As much as I love a good space battle, the greatest storytelling potential of the Borg is probably in exploring the consequences of their hive-mind social order. They played around with these ideas in the excellent “I, Borg” and even _Voyager’s_ comparatively decent episode called “Unimatrix Zero,” in which mutant Borg are able to escape the collective consciousness to a weird fantasy-world while they’re sleeping. If they’re going to be nerfed, the Borg might as well be interesting. ---
**Author:** ![aleong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4af34b/32.png) [@aleong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aleong)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/31 "2006-04-18T00:50:15Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > Yeah, but since Borg defenses don’t work against the most simply delivered energy form (ie. kinetic), the good guys should have just made a bunch of slugthrowers and eliminated the problem in 15 minutes or so. > > -Joe Maybe that’s why they seek species with new technology to assimilate… any species not at the level of energy weapons can’t be assimilated, as the Borg can’t fend off bullets (as seen in “First Contact”) nor bladed weapons (as seen in “Unimatrix Zero”). So if the Borg arrived on Earth today, we could probably kick their asses! ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/32 "2006-04-18T01:30:31Z")
> [@aleong](#): > > Maybe that’s why they seek species with new technology to assimilate… any species not at the level of energy weapons can’t be assimilated, as the Borg can’t fend off bullets (as seen in “First Contact”) nor bladed weapons (as seen in “Unimatrix Zero”). So if the Borg arrived on Earth today, we could probably kick their asses! Even that has been retconned. Originally, their personal shields _could_ adapt to repeal physical attacks, IIRC. So enough bullets and their shields would “figure out” the right way to block a bullet. But they basically decided to remove that quality in _First Contact_. And by the time _Voyager_ came out, they couldn’t even adapt to phasers anymore (as evidenced by the fact that Voyager and her crew destroyed lots of cubes and killed lots of drones.) But Voyager did have a few good Borg episodes. The one with the “future borg” was interesting, because it showed a borg that was created outside the collective, then learned about it, and actually expressed interest in joining it. Granted, in the end, he made the “right choice” and opted to be “free” and sacrifice himself to save Voyager, but just the fact that if only for a brief period of time _someone_ acknowledged that the borg and the collective are not 100% evil, and that some races might have _choose_ to join them (at the very least, the first borg(s) choose to become borg.) ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/33 "2006-04-18T02:51:20Z")
> [@kingpengvin](#): > > The faceless hive minded enemy would make for a good device as an ongoing encroaching threat. The drama would not have been with the full conflict with them but how the characters and the Federation society deals with that threat. This is good, but this isn’t the only option if you don’t nerf them. You could have a scenario something like this: The Borg advances across the galaxy, as inevitable as the coming dawn. All races, Federation and non-Federation, realize it is futile to try and fight them off alone, so they form into an Alliance and finally manage to kick some Borg ass. This is a terrible war of attrition, with the Alliance slowly pushing back the Borg using weapons and tactics considered obsolete for hundreds if not thousands of years: rifles, high explosives, and landing/boarding craft to the exclusion of teleportation. Soldiers are issued suicide vests filled with high explosives and ordered to kill themselves instead of being captured. The Borg technology cannot push back the sheer tide of bodies. The Borg is faced with extinction and evolves to survive. It has learned about religion from assimilated members of lesser races, and it decides to make the Borg a new religion that individuals will choose to join. It reduces the size of the implants to a single in-skull neural implant and a small golden cube on a golden chain that keeps the individual connected to the whole. Finally, and most startlingly, individuals are apparently allowed to keep their personalities and do not forcibly convert others. The Alliance splinters on the issue of whether to recognize the new Borg faith as a way to end the war, or to destroy all Borg whatsoever, regardless of what they look like. Picard, convinced that it is his destiny to destroy all Borg in the Universe, represents one extreme, and Riker, disturbed over his old friend’s apparent insanity, represents the other. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/34 "2006-04-18T03:40:35Z")
> [@Procyon](#): > > … _Voyager’s_ comparatively decent episode called “Unimatrix Zero,” in which mutant Borg are able to escape the collective consciousness to a weird fantasy-world while they’re sleeping. If they’re going to be nerfed, the Borg might as well be interesting. That was where I discovered that Six of One had Borg Breast Implants. You saw her as she would have been had she not been assimilated. I think they had to get nerfed in order to have enough contact to be interesting villains. There are only so many variations on the theme with the original Borg. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/35 "2006-04-18T04:04:29Z")
I think a related question is why do Sci-Fi serialists habitually create unbeatable enemies which subsequently must be nerfed to avoid the destruction of their protagonists? I mean, they’d look a lot less silly if they just exercise some restraint when creating the hyper-adversaries. What goes on in these peoples’ heads? “Dude! Let’s create a race with the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of advanced civilizations and rapidly adaptable weaponry and defenses of immesurable power that relentlessly seeks to assimilate all life! Awesome!” Months later… “Hey, waitaminnit! These bitchin’ new aliens should be able to squash the Federation like a bug! D’OH!” ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/36 "2006-04-18T04:05:19Z")
Damn, **Derleth** , that would have been cool. ---
**Author:** ![Tarrsk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/97f17d/32.png) [@Tarrsk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tarrsk)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/37 "2006-04-18T04:37:51Z")
> [@Larry Borgia](#): > > Damn, **Derleth** , that would have been cool. Ditto. Ah, what might have been… > [@](#): > > How so? The Dominion was a juggernaut right up until the end. > > It took the combined might of the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans; clandestine biological warfare; and an eleventh hour betrayal by the Cardassian Union to contain them and, even then, if it weren’t for the (incredibly annoying deus-ex-machina) intervention of the Prophets, they’d’ve won handily. They only really became a visible enemy when the Dominion War began. For essentially all of Season 2, the Dominion were entirely mysterious, only described in rumor. It isn’t until “The Jem’Hadar” that we see a single member of the Dominion, even though we heard about them all season. Of course, they rapidly become the massive juggernaut you describe in the following seasons, but their introduction was extremely gradual. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/38 "2006-04-18T05:08:21Z")
> [@Larry Borgia](#): > > Damn, **Derleth** , that would have been cool. Shit, it would have been outstanding. Controversial, but a hell of a story arc nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/39 "2006-04-18T05:22:34Z")
> [@Larry Borgia](#): > > Damn, **Derleth** , that would have been cool. Thank you. To me, the coolest part is that nobody outside the Borg, not even Picard, really knows if the Borg have nerfed themselves or not. Picard has faith that the Borg will always be the Borg and are merely setting up a long-term infiltration for a sudden attack later on, but Riker\* and others think that, like a disease evolving to become chronic instead of acutely fatal, the Borg have turned into something the non-Borg races of the galaxy can live with. Of course, there are many things that could be done with the concept of the Alliance. It is, in my imagination, a group that is _de facto_ egalitarian and multilateral but is _de jure_ run by the Federation simply because the Federation emerged from the initial Borg onslaught with the most ships intact. (I’m retconning out Wolf 359 _et seq._ in this paragraph.) There is a definite aura of humiliated hostility about all of the proud Cardassian officers who are forced to take orders from Earth-born Federation slime. Of course, if you keep Wolf 359 and the results in continuity, you could have the Borg claim Earth right after the majority of the humans leave or commit suicide. (Suicide is such a touchy subject, and there are never enough witnesses to convince everyone that all of the dead died of their own hand and not somebody else’s.) Humanity is a race without a planet, forced into refugee status and, to hear some of them, left to the tender mercies of Cardassian butchers and Dominion maniacs. The Federation is forced to fly alien ships and take orders from alien officers. The Alliance is predicated wholly upon the threat of the Borg. Does Picard truly think the Borg are still a threat or does he simply want to keep his high office within the only real navy left in the galaxy? Is keeping the Alliance justified to prevent the horrible war sure to ensure when it dissolves? There. Two separate continuities, two separate political realms, no chance of either of them getting produced. We’ll see the best of neither world. _:: ducks and runs ::_ \*(P.S.: Why did I pick on gung-ho Riker? Because he’s never seen war 20th Century style. Can you imagine the Federation ever losing 2/3 of a planet’s population just to push back an enemy a fraction of a light-year? Riker will make himself a line officer early in the Alliance campaigns, and he will see fellow humans and friendly aliens and sentient androids (Data’s children) turned into something worse than corpses. Advanced medical technology is difficult to see when it can ‘save’ someone who had half his body and most of his mind splattered across two bulkheads.) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852/40 "2006-04-18T14:39:17Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Finally, and most startlingly, individuals are apparently allowed to keep their personalities and do not forcibly convert others. Makin’ em Jewish, huh? You’d have to change their name to Berg. ;j 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-they-nerf-the-borg/352852.md?page=3)