Weren't the Borg destroyed in TNG?

[Darth Wong]

It would have been funnier, though, if the Borg had come back as the Hugh Collective.

If it were up to me, they would have come back as Hughians: worshippers of Hugh. And the Federation would have to respect their religious beliefs because of cultural diversity.

[Gil Hamilton]

Dang it Sean, that post's going to take me hours to respond to. That's the problem with these sort of discussions is when the posts grow geometrically. I've read it, but I think I'll start into it tonight.

[seanrobertson]

Dang it Sean, that post's going to take me hours to respond to. That's the problem with these sort of discussions is when the posts grow geometrically. I've read it, but I think I'll start into it tonight.

Take your time bro. If you want to do little pieces, that's certainly cool by me. I just didn't want to "not" respond to anything you said

These things do get too long. That's another reason why the Hughians or Hugh Collective idea is most appealing on some levels

[MKSheppard]

Take your time bro. If you want to do little pieces, that's certainly cool by me. I just didn't want to "not" respond to anything you said

Your post and it's attendant analysis, reminded me of those first
Borg episodes....and how you pointed out the Borg kept changing
over the years from their initial appearance in TNG, from sexless
drones to 7 of 9 and the Queen.

Good call there.

[seanrobertson]

Take your time bro. If you want to do little pieces, that's certainly cool by me. I just didn't want to "not" respond to anything you said

Your post and it's attendant analysis, reminded me of those first
Borg episodes....and how you pointed out the Borg kept changing
over the years from their initial appearance in TNG, from sexless
drones to 7 of 9 and the Queen.

Good call there.

Are you teasing me Shep? I ask 'cause I didn't know I established any of that too well, LOL.

[Gil Hamilton]

*takes a deep breath* OK, let's start into this thing.

Hmm...yes and no, I guess (I'm not sure you can ever call not watching much VGR a problem, though, LOL.)

During VGR, it does seem as if they're pussified in many ways. I think people are generally a little hasty to distinguish between "TNG and VGR Borg," but what you've gathered isn't without merits.

Don't feel bad for me, though...I'm under no illusions of VGR's greatness I did watch all the Borg shows, though, all of which were at least guilty fun on some level (well, "Unimatrix Zero" excepted...it was pretty terrible).

I should probably watch the Borg episodes too. I have Scorpion on tape because someone lent it to me and then left the country before I could return it (no joke either).

Right.

My explanation would be something like this:

The Borg in ENT needed more drones to operate a starship and take them to safety. Technology was secondary, especially since it was pretty shitty at that point (these drones, of course, coming from a 24th century perspective).

But isn't that against what we know about lost Borg? Hugh didn't try to take over the Enterprise when he found himself disconnected from the Collective. 7 of 9 didn't try to take over Voyager to get back to the Collective. Baldy-of-Borg tried fight a bit, but he was still intimately connected to the Cube that was trapaising about human space blowing blowing stuff up.

In VGR...that's more complicated. The short answer is, the Borg were always about assimilating both people and tech, but their priority is generally technology when they've got to travel a long way to get you. If you're sufficiently nasty, and can kick their ass a time or two though, they'll make an effort to assimilate your species, believing it's somehow "special" (which the Queen notes of the otherwise physically/mentally deficient humans in "Dark Frontier").

"Q Who?" would disagree, since they were only interested in the Enterprise, ignoring the crew even when the crew was shooting at their boarding party, and didn't have to go a long way to get it... Q brought the Enterprise to them on a silver platter.

When you're not looking at such vast distances, though, the Borg don't seem to exercise such priorities. They still might be a *bit* more interested in tech, because most of the species that we've heard were assimilated en masse were pretty sophisticated.

But when in their native territory, I think the Borg just assimilate people and tech according to their needs at the time.

See above.

Yes.

THAT is problematic. It could be that the TNG Borg were like this all along--Picard did, after all, eventually remember that the Queen was present during some of "BoBW"--but VGR definitely complicates the collective mind concept.

Of course, I have to note that TNG's portrayal of the Borg is inconsistent itself. The Borg we see in "Q Who?" are notably different than those which use a mouthpiece like Locutus in "BoBW."

That bit of First Contact was clumsy writing and can't possibly be seen as anything else. It was basically Picard going "OH YEAH! You were their, weren't ya, queenie?" I think the difference between Baldy-of-Borg and the Queen is that Locutus was assimilated and made slightly independant because the Borg wasn't a visible singular figurehead when dealing with the Federation. If not, they could have just installed Assimilation On-Line on Picard, and then have any old drone be their mouthpiece since they are literally the same person.

Hmm...Seven...*Homer Simpson drool*

Mmm.

Err, anyway cough, the genderless comment's amusing but easily explicable. Q said, "It's not a he, not a she," which is only really relevant in the context of reproduction. The Borg don't have sex*, so their natural genders are in a sense irrelevant.

*Apropos what we learned of the Borg early on, Riker entered a corridor that held a Borg maturation chamber. He opened it up and said, "The Borg appear to be born human." He went on to add that they seemed to add technology to their bodies immediately after birth.

This doesn't quite wash. A nun doesn't have sex either... does that mean they aren't really female? In fact, one of my cousins is sterile, so he'll never reproduce, but he's still male. That means that Q's statement really only makes sense if the Borg were androgynous, which makes a fair amount of sense (why would a Borg need a penis? It's more efficent to take it out, install a cathater to the bladder and stick something useful there).

They probably had the nanoprobes in TNG; we see Picard injected with something that quickly turns his skin the shade of a Scotsman's

But it wasn't really nanoprobes. He was already assimilated when they injected the stuff into him. I read the scene as they weren't injecting the stuff into him to jolt his system, and it had the side effect that it turned his skin titanium white.

Also, I'm not 100% certain but I seem to recall a reference which dated their nanoprobe tubules back hundreds of years.

Let me guess, from Voyager right?

Regardless, it's true that they treated Picard with kid's gloves. I have a hypothesis about that:

Remember how, in "First Contact," Picard remarked that the Queen wanted him as a "counterpart," a person who could "give himself willingly" to her?

Perhaps through typical assimilation means, that certain spark of individuality, that ability to still surrender your will to the Borg is too easily eradicated.

But the Borg in BoBW didn't want him as a counterpart, they wanted him as their spokesperson to Earth. They stated this repeatedly in the show. They only made up the "Queen wanting a King" thing in FIrst Contact.

They are rather more greasy and zombie-like later on, but I gathered that, rather than heavy make-up, their skins were simply pallid in TNG. We saw Picard turn from pink to bluish-white following the aforementioned injection. Maybe you're making a joke here

I am making a joke, but it's also true. That's not pallid skin in TNG, that's heavy face paint. People with pallid skin or even with no pigmentation, like an albino, don't have solid super-white shiny skin, it's more of a sickly translucent that is more a pale pink than white (because there is no pigmentation to cover the blood vessels in and under the skin).

Meanwhile, the Borg in First Contact on aren't like that. They are more of a diseased whitish-greenish-blue, with a very decayed quality about them, and covered in slime (I said KY Jelly above because that's actually what the costume designers used to make the Borg in First Contact and Voyager glisten like that, while I know for a fact that they used heavy titanium white face paint in TNG, because it was really cheap).

Well, they can certainly share a group consciousness and not necessarily be aware of every other drone's thoughts in real-time. That they share minds and act as one fits Q's description. (Also, don't make too much of the fact that Seven was out of touch with the rest. I focused on that mainly to demonstrate that information wasn't transmitted through the Collective so fast that it shot straight through a check-system.)

How can they share a group consciousness and not be aware of every other drones thoughts? In a group consciousness, a hive mind, it's impossible because there is literally only one of them. Only one mind is operating, which the drones are all apart of. One drone cannot be out of the loop, because there is no loop. They have seperate bodies, yes, but there is only one brain.

The Queen has always been a problem, especially one who's willing to appeal to a being's sexuality.

Then again, I don't see the Queen as *that* much of a bigger problem than Locutus. She speaks as an individual, as did Locutus ("I will remain here to speak for the Borg"). She seems to operate semi-autonomously from the Collective, yet is said to be the Collective.

Locutus is much less of a problem, because he's a figurehead. He was a liason, you would expect him to be a midpoint between humanity and the Borg, as the whole point of a liason is a party that can associate with both groups.

The Queen, however, was the result of massively bad writing. A hive mind cannot have a head or leader by definition, as there is only one thinking organism total. It would be like me sitting by myself and going "I'm the leader!"

In truth, the only thing really holding us back is what Q said, and I don't have the exact quotes immediately on hand. I can't deny his insights, but we know he's omitted things or been fuzzy on details when he risked revealing the future. I think his vagueness in "All Good Things..." is a perfect example of this.

He's still the official deus ex machina of TNG, and thanks to his omniscience, he'd still be in a position to know.

That alone would be good reason to not say, "But by the way, the group consciousness is kind of a misnomer because, like an insect hive, they have this Queen who you're going to encounter in 2372 and have to fight in order to save your own history--OOPS! I've said too much."

That would be a VERY smartass sort of thing that Q would say, actually, especially the "OOPS! I've said too much.", since he loves lording his superior knowledge of everything over Picard.

That's not to mention the fact that Q has a flair for the dramatic, and attempting to cover too many details with my brand of verbosity is a VERY quick way to kill any kind of verbal momentum.

Naturally, but that doesn't mean he has to out and out lie about what they are.

Well, I think the only reason he knew that was a vulnerable area was because he overheard the Borg saying something about that spot. Had he known it was vulnerable from the start, he probably wouldn't have wasted a good 30 seconds in shooting at it.

He needed to get a status report before he was sure it was exposed.

The Central Plexus question is a good one, but it needn't require too complicated an answer. We learn that the Borg would upload Hugh's memories, then file them for consideration later on.

Well, what if they file this into the central plexus? Hugh would've already contained that file, so it's not necessary for the E-D crew to masquerade as drones or anything like that; the important thing is, to transmit Collective-wide, you need to get to that CP.

Then why didn't Picard mention it? Picard said that the program (and Hugh's individuality) would effect the entire Collective as soon as they plugged him in but before they could formatting him (indicating a real Collective, by the way). No mention of having to introduce the virus directly into the Central Plexus was made, in fact, the words "Central Plexus" were never used (obviously because the writers for Voygaer made up the device as to be a plot device that would serve as a goal for the characters in the show... but you don't want to appeal to the truth when you can make up a convoluted and complex bit of speculation, it seems). He should have said "This won't work, we need to get this file in their Central Plexus in the Delta Quadrant... this will only fry one cube..."

It's also conceivable that, while somewhat confident the approach would work, Picard wasn't certain of its success. I'm sure Picard would understand a good deal about Borg shipboard functions and something of the Collective's structure, but as I pointed out before, it seems more and more that his access was somewhat limited.

If he was familiar with Borgs shipboard functions and the Collective (after all, the Collective couldn't have possibly lied or denied him access, they are a hive mind and thus he's part of the same mind), then he would have certainly have been aware of a Central Plexus if it was so important to the entire Collective.

For example, he didn't remember the Queen very well. He was very likely unaware that, during the events of BOBW, the cube he "commanded" either briefly met with or disembarked some kind of ship. (In "U0" and "Unity," we learn of at least two different Starfleet personnel assimilated at Wolf 359. They were taken back to the Delta Quadrant, which would require a second shooter on the grassy kno...err, "second ship"!)

I don't know what to say. You don't seem to understand that these are all examples of later writers retroactively re-writing previously written episodes to be convenient for their episode or movie. That's the truth. In BoBW, the Borg cube smashed up the fleet at Wolf 359 and then immediately beelined from Earth, with the Enterprise nipping at it's heels. The Enterprise was practically right behind it when the Borg blew up the fleet, listened to the battle in realtime, and arrived on the scene before the rubble of the fleet has stopped smoking and had drifted too far apart. Then it went straight to Earth. Now, the Enterprise never has had any trouble tracking Borg ships, they are as subtle as an elephant, and would have certainly seen a second cube making a break for it. That's what happened. Then the writers of Voyager, being script hobos of poor quality, thought "Hey, what if the Borg assimilated people at Wolf 359 and brought them back to the Delta Quadrant? That's the ticket!" even though no Borg made it back from trapaising about human space and it doesn't make much sense to ship people back to the Delta Quadrant when they can grow all the manpower they need there already.

That he wasn't given full access to the run of their secrets is substantiated by the fact that VGR, which should've had access to Picard's Borg debriefing files (Janeway quotes from one IIRC), was totally in the dark about Borg junk until Seven came along. I think it's also loosely suggested by my "counterpart" idea. If the Queen did try to feed him lingering degrees of self-control for that purpose, she'd best not fully appraise Locutus/Picard of every little Borg secret 'til he conceded.

Well, I actually meant more mental/computational than physical damage.
Speaking to the former, the Borg might've only recognized that he was separated from the Hive or that his self-awareness was interfering with their internal dialogue/monologue/whateverthefuckhivemindshave. And I can say with certainty that a drone's sense of individuality doesn't seem to equal "hopelessly flawed" in the Collective's eyes, so picking him up in spite of mental defects isn't unprecedent.

That's the thing though. He was broken. He ceased to be a Borg by the time they stuck him back at the crash site, as was demonstrated by the scene between Hugh and Picard where Picard pretended to be Baldy-of-Borg. He was also mentally changed enough that the moment they plugged him back in, his Cube (or the entire Collective, depending on how we look at the dialogue) broken down irrevocably. If making his Cube shit itself upon entry isn't broken, I don't know what is.

Speaking to physical damage for a moment, we know the Borg will sometimes revive even drones who've been dead for upwards of a day (yet other times they'll deactivate a seemingly fully functional one...what constitutes irreparable damage to them I dunno). Seven revived Needledicks in such a manner.

We've seen them just give up on drones that had no visible physical damage and just rummage for a few chips about their person before leaving them.

(Side note: that's appropriate, isn't it? Literal, ZOMBIE BORG! LOL.)

Judging by what I've seen of later Borgt episodes, they arezombies that like RadioShack too much.

Finally, forcible disconnection doesn't seem to be a reason that they'd ditch a drone, not unless that disconnection was suspected to be the result of a virus. Seven and her three companions in "Survival Instinct" were certainly forcibly disconnected, and yet they were picked up.

I haven't seen the episode, really.

However, ALL that said, you do hit upon an important question here: why would Hugh, after rejoining the Collective, have such a wild-ass effect on them?

I don't have an answer for that one. I could speculate to some very wild ends, but that's about it.

I'd say because the writers of TNG had an entirely different idea of what the Borg were compared to later on, but you don't like that explaination, so I don't know either.

For one thing, I think the lingering ties to the Collective are something they can't help. Every ex-Borg I'm aware of retained the ability to hear other drones' thoughts. Baldy, Seven, the people in "Unity", and the Borg kids could all do this. I think ex-drones still have lots of little bits of Borg tech in their bodies that are never fully removed.

As such, the Borg might try to cut ties to these drones, and they may well do so in meaningful ways. However, they can't totally eliminate that tenuous bond without killing the ex-drones or wholly excising Borg tech from the former drones' bodies.

But that's the thing isn't it? Why can't they cut ties to them? People beign tied to the Collective doesn't happen by magic. It means that somewhere on their bodies there is a transmitter and receiver that is still tuned into the Borg Channel (I assume it's located in the rectum in the case of Picard). That means when they hear the Borg, somewhere in the Borg Collective there is a transmitter that is constantly broadcasting to them. For instance, in First Contact, Picard started receiving signals from the Collective when the Cube was hundreds and hundreds of lightyears away, letting him know that Something Was Wrong. That means that on that Borg Cube, the Borg was pumping out a signal that was powerful enough that to be received by a tiny transmitter in Picard, something that must have been consuming ALOT of power by the very nature of broadcasting over such a vast distance. I don't see why the Borg Cube couldn't have been thinking "Hmmm.... my Borg Signal seem to be going up the ass of a Frenchmen. I'll just turn that off."

My guess is something like this:

Instead of immediately acting, as you'd probably expect Picard to if he was working from insider knowledge, Picard stared at the screen tersely for some time and watched as at least two ships were destroyed.

Only after he overheard a snippet of those Borg "whispers" did he decide on a course of action. He then fed the coordinates to Data. (You'd also think that, if he knew of this weakness for some time beforehand, he probably would've included something about it in his debriefing. Surely Data would've read such a thing.)

The delay would suggest that something of those whispers indicated where to attack. Aside: And even then, IIRC, it took about 15 torpedoes and a lot of phaser fire blowing up deep inside the cube to send it off...that's hardly a fixed value given the thing's volatile nature, but I wanted to make the point that some effort was still required to finish the job.

The thing is that he didn't know that it was vulnerable. It undoubtably wasn't vulnerable all the time, but only after the Borg had taken considerable damage and the section was exposed, and Picard asked for a status report did Picard decide to hit that system. Even hearing the Borg chattering in his head and with Data's brief report, it would still require a rather large knowledge of the technical details of the Cube to make that determination.

Besides, compared to the bombardment that the Cube hit, the bombardment that had hit that section was quite small relatively. It was alot like a "shoot here to win a prize" point.

Also, you didn't answer the question. Why was Picard not aware of the Queen aboard the ship?

Dunno about that one. As you're aware, sometimes when angry people don't worry too much about precision in their language. Hugh's anger is actually a decent motive for him to exaggerate, though I honestly don't think he was; he simply didn't know better.

It's also very possible that he didn't know what shape the rest of the Collective was in. Even those with the so-called "lingering ties" must still be near a true Borg ship to hear the hive mind. Hugh could've vacillated between thinking the entire Collective was destroyed, something he wanted to believe out of anger, earlier in the episode; only later, after they kicked Lore's ass, might he have softened enough to consider that the Collective could still be out there.

Those "lingering ties" mean that that the Borg would be transmitting to them still. That would be evidence enough that the Borg were still out there. He didn't mention it, but your point is taken.

Put another way, if Hugh's signals were ignored (which isn't without precedent), and he didn't see other Borg ships nearby, how would he or his pals know the fate of the greater Collective either way?

Because he wasn't receiving any broadcasts from the Collective that all other former members of the Collective still receive even though they aren't Borg any longer. After all, Picard, Seven, and all the others still were receiving signals from the Borg Channel... why wouldn't Hugh?

[Robert Walper]

Dang it Sean, that post's going to take me hours to respond to. That's the problem with these sort of discussions is when the posts grow geometrically. I've read it, but I think I'll start into it tonight.

Take your time bro. If you want to do little pieces, that's certainly cool by me. I just didn't want to "not" respond to anything you said

Well, it's good to know that when I'm not around Sean, you pick up the slack and defend the mighty Borg.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer until I'm permanently on the net and we can join forces and become the little ole drones(or Collective? :p) around here...LOL

By the way, send me an e-mail some time. Should catch up.

[seanrobertson]

Ah, crap. ONE more EDIT for clarity's sake--

But isn't that against what we know about lost Borg? Hugh didn't try to take over the Enterprise when he found himself disconnected from the Collective. 7 of 9 didn't try to take over Voyager to get back to the Collective. Baldy-of-Borg tried fight a bit, but he was still intimately connected to the Cube that was trapaising about human space blowing blowing stuff up.

It's not necessarily a contradiction, especially since Seven actually did try to take over VGR twice, once at the end of "Scorpion, pt. II" and again in "The Gift."

As for Hugh: by the time he got out from behind that forcefield, he was already fighting his programming, and deprived of the hive mind. He was all but an individual, so his behavior, not the rest, is actually the aberration.

"Q Who?" would disagree, since they were only interested in the Enterprise, ignoring the crew even when the crew was shooting at their boarding party, and didn't have to go a long way to get it... Q brought the Enterprise to them on a silver platter.
See above.

I think "Q Who?" is in line with what I was saying.

That is, the Borg are primarily interested in acquiring technology from unknown species. Consider that their first priority.

If that species proves very resilient, they deem said species worthy of assimilation. That's a lesser priority.

But depending on their needs, the Borg can reverse those priorities and assimilate life forms first.

For instance, there have been times during VGR in which we're told a technically unsophisticated species, like the Talaxians, were assimilated for their value as tactical drones (don't ask). The Borg don't screw, and the Queen doesn't lay eggs; it's only natural that they'd experience manpower shortages here and there.

What Q said is still very much true. The cube in "Q Who?", deep in the Beta Quadrant, didn't seem to hurt for drones, so it was "only interested in your ship...it's technology...they've recognized it as something they can consume."

That their first goal was to assimilate technology doesn't preclude the possibility that, after humans proved themselves sufficiently "resistant," the Borg decided something about us warranted mass-assimilation.

That bit of First Contact was clumsy writing and can't possibly be seen as anything else.

Well, you know how I feel about that. But I might hold you to this approach

This doesn't quite wash. A nun doesn't have sex either... does that mean they aren't really female? In fact, one of my cousins is sterile, so he'll never reproduce, but he's still male. That means that Q's statement really only makes sense if the Borg were androgynous, which makes a fair amount of sense (why would a Borg need a penis? It's more efficent to take it out, install a cathater to the bladder and stick something useful there).

A penis...not...not useful?!?! Impossible!

All I can say is that nuns and your cousins are still human beings, people who live in a culture which exists as a result of sexual reproduction. Even those who eschew sex are shaped by that culture.

They're also the exception to the rule, and don't make a very good analogy. To survive, humanity must reproduce. Simple as that.

That's a whole different paradigm than the Borg, who don't reproduce in that manner. They really are effectively genderless in their own culture because they have no need for it to perpetuate their "race," if you could call it that.

You could say that "effectively" isn't good enough, and fall back to biology. Okay:

That they have the parts down below some fancy jockstrap means very little if they're not considered individuals. Perhaps that's what Q meant; even when you've got the appropriate gear, you can't be a "she" or "he" if you are part of a collective consciousness.**

Now, I'm going to edit a bit and put two similar statements together for the sake of clarity

But it wasn't really nanoprobes. He was already assimilated when they injected the stuff into him. I read the scene as they weren't injecting the stuff into him to jolt his system, and it had the side effect that it turned his skin titanium white.
...

Perhaps. As per my thoughts, they treated him somewhat differently. If he'd been hit with a full dose of nanoprobes from the start, he wouldn't be able to play submissive with the Queen, etc. (a bit more on that in a second). He'd be just another automaton.

But the Borg in BoBW didn't want him as a counterpart, they wanted him as their spokesperson to Earth. They stated this repeatedly in the show. They only made up the "Queen wanting a King" thing in FIrst Contact.

Spokesperson cannot also be a counterpart? Why the dichotomy?

Besides, that's what Picard remembered. It might've been unveiled in FC, but his recollection stemmed from "BOBW."

Let me guess, from Voyager right?

Where else were the Borg butchered wholesale?

I am making a joke, but it's also true. That's not pallid skin in TNG, that's heavy face paint [snip]

Meanwhile, the Borg in First Contact on aren't like that. They are more of a diseased whitish-greenish-blue, with a very decayed quality about them, and covered in slime *snip about KY jelly*

True.

I'm a little curious on this count, though...you're willing to step outside continuity and talk about VGR or FC's bad writing, and IIRC, you were willing to dismiss the whole Klingon forehead dilemma on the basis of budget issues (?).

Why are you not willing to do the same here? Is this not the perfect time? It's certainly a result of TNG's smaller budget.

I'll work on an in-continuity explanation, but I had to ask first

How can they share a group consciousness and not be aware of every other drones thoughts? In a group consciousness, a hive mind, it's impossible because there is literally only one of them. Only one mind is operating, which the drones are all apart of. One drone cannot be out of the loop, because there is no loop. They have seperate bodies, yes, but there is only one brain.

I will hold you to the one mind concept when it comes to Borg genders!**

I honestly don't like that I brought up the real-time communication bit as it's largely irrelevant, but I know that there are times in which drones don't have contact with the entirety of the Collective and yet, act very much like Borg.

You've shown a willingness to treat VGR and "FC" differently than TNG, so why not here? I agree with you; a true collective mind shouldn't be in this position. But it's happened.

Locutus is much less of a problem, because he's a figurehead. He was a liason, you would expect him to be a midpoint between humanity and the Borg, as the whole point of a liason is a party that can associate with both groups.

The Queen, however, was the result of massively bad writing. A hive mind cannot have a head or leader by definition, as there is only one thinking organism total. It would be like me sitting by myself and going "I'm the leader!"

Like I said, apply this logic above.

All else I can suggest is that either the Borg aren't a true collective consciousness, and/or that the Queen isn't so much as a "leader" as she is the embodiment of the Collective; e.g., "You imply disparity where none exists. I am the Collective."

He's still the official deus ex machina of TNG, and thanks to his omniscience, he'd still be in a position to know.

Well, he's not omniscient. He was surprised when Sisko punched him in the face.

Q should still probably know, I agree, but whether or not that contradicts anything depends on your approach and interpretation of his words.

To be sure, I refuse to treat his word as if they're inherently more valuable than what we observe from the shows, VGR included. Though I'd like to rationalize the two, in a conflict, I go with my observations.

That would be a VERY smartass sort of thing that Q would say, actually, especially the "OOPS! I've said too much.", since he loves lording his superior knowledge of everything over Picard.

He does, but he's held back information before. Picard even called him on this in "AGT" when he asked Q, "What kind of meaningless double-talk is this?"

That's not to forget that "AGT's" premise hinged on Q being vague.

Naturally, but that doesn't mean he has to out and out lie about what they are.

Agreed.

The thing is, I don't think it has to be a lie. See what you think of the "not a he/she" vis-a-vis the idea that in a collective, there are no individuals and, therefore, no men or women--then we'll talk more about this.

He needed to get a status report before he was sure it was exposed.

Maybe, but how long did it take Data to say, "The ship has taken heavy damage to its outer hull. I am reading fluctuations in their power grid"?

Next to the time Picard spent standing around watching, not very long

Then why didn't Picard mention it? Picard said that the program (and Hugh's individuality) would effect the entire Collective as soon as they plugged him in but before they could formatting him (indicating a real Collective, by the way).

Actually, that's not stated:

PICARD
It [puzzle] looks harmless enough.

GEORDI
We had to disguise it as something
innocuous. The Borg have ways
of screening out programming
anomalies.

PICARD
How can a geometric form
disable a computer system?

Note: Based solely on his experience with the Borg, Picard has no idea whether or not it'd work.

DATA
The shape is a paradox. It cannot
exist in real space or time.

GEORDI
When Hugh's imaging apparatus
imprints it on his bio-chips,
he'll try to analyze it.

DATA
He will be unsuccessful, and will
store the shape in his memory
banks. It will be shunted to a
subroutine for further analysis.

GEORDI
When the Borg download his memory,
they'll incorporate it into their
network. Then they'll try to
analyze it.

Note: "network." Might that include their equivalent of a computer, this now infamous central plexus?

DATA
It is designed so that each
approach they take will spawn an
anomalous solution. The anomalies
are designed to interact with each
other, linking together to form
an endless and unsolvable puzzle.

PICARD
Quite original. How long before
total systems failure?

Note: total systems failure in what...one ship? The "entire Collective" is never referred to.

GEORDI
Not until the shape has gone
through several hundred
computational cycles.

PICARD
When can you begin the process?

GEORDI
Another twenty hours. Doctor
Crusher wants to make sure the
new implants have taken hold.

PICARD
Very well. Proceed as soon as
you're ready.

No mention of having to introduce the virus directly into the Central Plexus was made, in fact, the words "Central Plexus" were never used (obviously because the writers for Voygaer made up the device as to be a plot device that would serve as a goal for the characters in the show... but you don't want to appeal to the truth when you can make up a convoluted and complex bit of speculation, it seems).

Two things:

1--I think the necessity of mentioning the CP is a false dichotomy: "either it's referred to by name, or it doesn't exist" does not ring true.

That requires that Picard and his incomplete Borg knowledge (ref: memories of the Queen) know of it in the first place, naturally.

2--An appeal to the truth in this case is nothing of the sort.

We can no more talk about writers or different shows than we could claim that God wrote the script for the 20th century. It's stepping outside suspension of disbelief and is thus inconsistent when we try to make meaningful claims about realness in other aspects of the show; e.g., that phasers don't really vaporize things.

Is your method simpler? Oftentimes yes, and in some cases it's the only answer we can come up with. Does its simplicity make it better?

IMO, no. It doesn't account for all the facts at hand. It's inconsistent, and too easily blows off lots of material as "bad VGR writing."

He should have said "This won't work, we need to get this file in their Central Plexus in the Delta Quadrant... this will only fry one cube..."

The CP is at the heart of every Borg ship. And as noted above, Picard never said it'd destroy the entire Collective. He didn't even know it could work 'til told otherwise.

If he was familiar with Borgs shipboard functions and the Collective (after all, the Collective couldn't have possibly lied or denied him access, they are a hive mind and thus he's part of the same mind), then he would have certainly have been aware of a Central Plexus if it was so important to the entire Collective.

He seems to be privy to some information, but not all.

Of course, I am trying to rationalize what's said in all the shows to that end. I'm under no illusions to the contrary.

I don't know what to say. You don't seem to understand that these are all examples of later writers retroactively re-writing previously written episodes to be convenient for their episode or movie. That's the truth.

I understand it perfectly well. What I'm trying to tell you is that I think the best approach doesn't allow invocation of writers as "gods" or treats equally canon shows as if one's facts are more relevant than another's.

That's hardly a novel concept; Mike's talked about one and the same at various points throughout SD.net. On the opening page, he states:

This website has two goals:

Discuss the question: if we "suspend disbelief" and pretend that the canon events of Star Wars and Star Trek really happened as depicted in the films and television shows, then how could we apply the principles and methods of science to determine what those events tell us about the military strength of the Federation vs the Empire?

I'm suspending disbelief. I can't do that and constantly talk about the shitty writers at the same time.

In BoBW, the Borg cube smashed up the fleet at Wolf 359 and then immediately beelined from Earth, with the Enterprise nipping at it's heels. The Enterprise was practically right behind it when the Borg blew up the fleet, listened to the battle in realtime, and arrived on the scene before the rubble of the fleet has stopped smoking and had drifted too far apart.

Hmm...no. Sorry man, but that never happened. They received one communique from an old admiral, who stated, "The battle does not go well, Enterprise..."

They didn't know what happened until they got to the Wolf system some time later.

Then it went straight to Earth. Now, the Enterprise never has had any trouble tracking Borg ships, they are as subtle as an elephant, and would have certainly seen a second cube making a break for it. *snip*.

Alright. Then, without stepping outside our little microcosm, can you explain how humans assimilated at Wolf 359 wound up in the Delta Quadrant?

That's the thing though. He was broken. He ceased to be a Borg by the time they stuck him back at the crash site, as was demonstrated by the scene between Hugh and Picard where Picard pretended to be Baldy-of-Borg. He was also mentally changed enough that the moment they plugged him back in, his Cube (or the entire Collective, depending on how we look at the dialogue) broken down irrevocably. If making his Cube shit itself upon entry isn't broken, I don't know what is.

Okay, he's broken. How does that change the fact that the Collective is alive and well, short of his small group, later on?

I'm not trying to dodge or misrepresent you, here, but don't think I enjoy writing several tomes on the subject. It's fun to an extent, but we really need to return to the central point at hand.

We've seen them just give up on drones that had no visible physical damage and just rummage for a few chips about their person before leaving them.

Visible physical damage = no damage is a non sequitur. They'd been blasted by phasers, been cut or what-have-you, and were obviously dead. What about internal damage?

I'd say because the writers of TNG had an entirely different idea of what the Borg were compared to later on, but you don't like that explaination, so I don't know either.

It's not that I don't like it at all; it's that, by accepting it, I feel my method would be inconsistent.

But that's the thing isn't it? Why can't they cut ties to them?

Isn't that what Crusher called the Borg "Achilles Heel" in "BOBW"? That is, that cutting off Picard in that case would be like asking the Borg to remove an arm or leg?

I have no clue why they can't prevent former drones from hearing those "whispers," and have forgotten why that was relevant.

People beign tied to the Collective doesn't happen by magic. It means that somewhere on their bodies there is a transmitter and receiver that is still tuned into the Borg Channel (I assume it's located in the rectum in the case of Picard).

Again, I'm confused...why are you not chalking this up to incompetent writing? You don't have my reservations about noting that, and it's another opportune moment to criticize writers' oversights.

The thing is that he didn't know that it was vulnerable. It undoubtably wasn't vulnerable all the time, but only after the Borg had taken considerable damage and the section was exposed, and Picard asked for a status report did Picard decide to hit that system. Even hearing the Borg chattering in his head and with Data's brief report, it would still require a rather large knowledge of the technical details of the Cube to make that determination.

Why? Any idiot could've seen it was a good idea to shoot into that big gaping hole.

Also, you didn't answer the question. Why was Picard not aware of the Queen aboard the ship?

Didn't I? That he had limited access, plus the fact that the Queen's not always this disparate entity she appears to be in VGR at times, could explain that rather well.

Those "lingering ties" mean that that the Borg would be transmitting to them still. That would be evidence enough that the Borg were still out there. He didn't mention it, but your point is taken.

Cool.

Because he wasn't receiving any broadcasts from the Collective that all other former members of the Collective still receive even though they aren't Borg any longer. After all, Picard, Seven, and all the others still were receiving signals from the Borg Channel... why wouldn't Hugh?

Proximity.

Seven and Picard didn't receive these signals across thousands of light years. Otherwise, Seven's had would've been full of chatter throughout VGR.

Only when a Borg ship gets fairly close, within tens of light years it'd seem, do former drones start hearing the voices in their heads (which would make them insane zombies , LOL).

[seanrobertson]

Hopefully it won't be too much longer until I'm permanently on the net and we can join forces and become the little ole drones(or Collective? :p) around here...LOL

By the way, send me an e-mail some time. Should catch up.

We should indeed! It's been years now, pretty much.

You might want to operate your own splinter Collective in that attempted drive toward Coruscant, methinks , but I do enjoy trying to piece together the Borg puzzle. It's a challenge and, for the criticisms I level their way, I do still like the Borg.

[Ender]

Thought on the starfleet in DQ:

As was mentioned, cubes aren't exactly hard to track.

As we saw in FC, cubes can carry spheres within them.

Perhaps they were offloaded onto a sphere, which made the voyage back. A sphere is smaller, thus harder to track, and is a borg ship like they have never seen before, so they would not recognize the signature. Further, being smaller its warp trail should be easier to mask, especially amid all the debris and energy from the battle (and warp trails are hidden by moons, so it could have just been on the opposite side of the planet)

[seanrobertson]

Thought on the starfleet in DQ:

As was mentioned, cubes aren't exactly hard to track.

As we saw in FC, cubes can carry spheres within them.

Perhaps they were offloaded onto a sphere, which made the voyage back. A sphere is smaller, thus harder to track, and is a borg ship like they have never seen before, so they would not recognize the signature. Further, being smaller its warp trail should be easier to mask, especially amid all the debris and energy from the battle (and warp trails are hidden by moons, so it could have just been on the opposite side of the planet)

That was my thought as well. I mentioned "docking with another ship" only to cover all the bases

As I recall, at least one of the people assimilated at Wolf 359--Chakotay's squeeze in "Unity"--had been in the Delta Quadrant for at least 5 years. She was <10,000 ly from the Caretaker's space station, so her location would be >60,000 ly from Earth.

Wolf 359 happened in 2367, and "Unity" took place in 2373, so the ship departing the Locutus cube took less than a year to reach the Delta Quadrant.

It could be considerably less. I don't have the episode's transcript on hand, so I can't check to see how long Chakotay's girl had been in the Delta Quadrant beyond those five years. Oh well; that makes it very likely they used transwarp, in any event.

Another quirk: the same ship, or the Locutus mothership before it, seemed to have picked up Cardassians, Romulans and Klingons, all of whom are a bit off-course from the events in "BOBW," eh? (It's too bad those Romulans and/or Klingons couldn't have been assimilated at the Wolf system. That would've been neat.)

[Uraniun235]

But that's the thing isn't it? Why can't they cut ties to them?

The point behind Crusher's "removing an arm" line is, I think, that to the Borg there really is no distinction within the Collective. The Borg are (well, were supposed to be) one mind. If a Borg drone looks around a cube, it doesn't see other Borg, it sees the Borg, it sees themself.

If your pinky finger was infected, you couldn't will your body to cut off bloodflow to your finger and kill it off. Your body's not set up to do that. The same might be true for the Borg; there may be no programming designed to separate a Borg from the collective.

[Shrykull]

"I, Borg" happened to be on Spike tonight. Personally, I always liked the suggestion Phil Farrand once offered that the next time they encountered the Borg, they should have been announcing "We are Hugh. Prepare to be assimilated".

Of course, we know that the Borg were ultimately destroyed on Voyager —by the writers.

really? I thought just the unicomplex was destroyed by that virus janeway gave to the BQ, they'd still have plenty of more worlds where she could switch to another body.