Borg Decay Theory

[Darth Fanboy]

-Borg Encounter humans, Borg say, "Hey we could use these"

-Borg Capture Picard, the Collective now has a leader with a name. Locutus, this is has little precedent, if at all. The Borg find themselves much more effective with an actual leader.

-Borg Queen is created in its stead, before BoBW she was simply the voice of the collective, but now she is the voice of the collective manifested. Queen is granted individuality traits.

-Of course all individuals are selfish to a degree and the queen is no different, the queen begins to thirst for power and as such the Borg begin a rampant program of assimilating every world and being they come across. Now instead of assimilating those they need/want/find interesting they go after everything (hence a change in tactics from TNG to VOY).

-the Borg begin to overstretch the collective though, and with the mass assimilations the collective, the centre of Borg life, is overloaded and overstretched, meaning that the masses of Borg grow less effective per unit. Borg Tech advances though so that nanoprobes can be utilized instead of the intensive surgical operation like Picard underwent. The Borg spread faster across the Delta quadrant but still grow "dumber".

-This "mental decay" is responsiuble for several incidences, the "sanctuary" where the regenerating Borg went to, their complete inability to deal with species 8472 even though their technology was up to the task as Voyager proved, and of course their inability to use their strength to beat the Federation, while it once took but one ship to smite the UFP, the Federation could now deal with them more easily (provided they had the firepower availiable of course)


Now, the fun part, "flaws, questions, and comments!"

[Patrick Degan]

-Borg Encounter humans, Borg say, "Hey we could use these"

-Borg Capture Picard, the Collective now has a leader with a name. Locutus, this is has little precedent, if at all. The Borg find themselves much more effective with an actual leader.

-Borg Queen is created in its stead, before BoBW she was simply the voice of the collective, but now she is the voice of the collective manifested. Queen is granted individuality traits.

Unfortunately, the opening minutes of Worst Contact contradict this theory. The Queen supposedly existed when Picard was turned into Locutus. Remember the nightmare scene?

Of course all individuals are selfish to a degree and the queen is no different, the queen begins to thirst for power and as such the Borg begin a rampant program of assimilating every world and being they come across. Now instead of assimilating those they need/want/find interesting they go after everything (hence a change in tactics from TNG to VOY).

-the Borg begin to overstretch the collective though, and with the mass assimilations the collective, the centre of Borg life, is overloaded and overstretched, meaning that the masses of Borg grow less effective per unit. Borg Tech advances though so that nanoprobes can be utilized instead of the intensive surgical operation like Picard underwent. The Borg spread faster across the Delta quadrant but still grow "dumber".

-This "mental decay" is responsiuble for several incidences, the "sanctuary" where the regenerating Borg went to, their complete inability to deal with species 8472 even though their technology was up to the task as Voyager proved, and of course their inability to use their strength to beat the Federation, while it once took but one ship to smite the UFP, the Federation could now deal with them more easily (provided they had the firepower availiable of course)

It could be that the losses they took in such a short timeframe against the 8472 aliens damaged the cohesion of the Collective.

Of course, I hold with my theory that when the Queen assimilated Future Janeway in "Endgame", the sudden torrential flood of 30+ years of accumulated stupidity dealt the death-blow.

[Tsyroc]

In my own personal backstory for the Borg I have the person who ends up being the personality template for the Borg Queen as the primary scientist behind developing technology that allows humanoids to form collective conciousness. Most likely by design she retains at least some of her individuality in the collective. For whatever reason people join her collective voluntarilly, others are brought in because the collective is better for the overall good (I'm thinking of that Voyager episode where the ex-drones reestablish their collective conciousness on a planet's surface because they were being attacked by the people from warlike species. The warlike species weren't given a choice about going into the new collective but it was for "everyone's good").

The collective conciousness of the equivalent of just one Borg cube seems to have quite of bit of power which benefits the whole. So I constantly picture the Borg Queen as being some pompous "I know better than you" liberal scientist who starts this thing up without quite putting her money where her mouth is (ie becoming equal with the others).

[Dark Primus]

My own theory is that B&B wrote bad scripts.

[Tsyroc]

My own theory is that B&B wrote bad scripts.

Ture, but that's the easy way out.

[Solauren]

Fix for the Queen

The Queen was the voice, and had her individuality
Assimilate pichard into voice and leaderposition, she's still an individual.

Pichard done, transfer leadership to the queen due to new programming..

Queen however's an idiot.

[Lancer]

Fix for the Queen

The Queen was the voice, and had her individuality
Assimilate pichard into voice and leaderposition, she's still an individual.

Pichard done, transfer leadership to the queen due to new programming..

Queen however's an idiot.

Queen is locked into a certain way of thinking. That's why she sought to have more individuals partially but not totally incorporated into the Borg. She doesn't need any more drones, she needs more thinkers.

[Darth Fanboy]

Unfortunately, the opening minutes of Worst Contact contradict this theory. The Queen supposedly existed when Picard was turned into Locutus. Remember the nightmare scene?

well remember how I said that the Queen was created out of the voice of the collective to serve as a leader? picard may have heard her, but only as a disembodied voice of the collective, her actual physical form could have come about later.

It could be that the losses they took in such a short timeframe against the 8472 aliens damaged the cohesion of the Collective.

Of course, I hold with my theory that when the Queen assimilated Future Janeway in "Endgame", the sudden torrential flood of 30+ years of accumulated stupidity dealt the death-blow.

Oooh, I like that.

[Sharp-kun]

well remember how I said that the Queen was created out of the voice of the collective to serve as a leader? picard may have heard her, but only as a disembodied voice of the collective, her actual physical form could have come about later. .

We see them together at one point.

[Lancer]

Of course, I hold with my theory that when the Queen assimilated Future Janeway in "Endgame", the sudden torrential flood of 30+ years of accumulated stupidity dealt the death-blow.

Oooh, I like that.

don't forget, the stupidity was amplified by a virus.

[Patrick Degan]

Of course, it could also be because the Queen touches herself.

[Major Diarrhia]

I basicaly like your theory a lot.

-Borg Encounter humans, Borg say, "Hey we could use these"

-Borg Capture Picard, the Collective now has a leader with a name. Locutus, this is has little precedent, if at all. The Borg find themselves much more effective with an actual leader.

Because they then know exactly how to react and adapt. Otherwise they default to “Charge!”

-Borg Queen is created in its stead, before BoBW she was simply the voice of the collective, but now she is the voice of the collective manifested. Queen is granted individuality traits.

The Queen is or was based on species 117 if I remember correctly. This means that she wasn’t allways around, otherwise, shouldn’t the Queen be species 00 or 01. Something like that.

-Of course all individuals are selfish to a degree and the queen is no different, the queen begins to thirst for power and as such the Borg begin a rampant program of assimilating every world and being they come across. Now instead of assimilating those they need/want/find interesting they go after everything (hence a change in tactics from TNG to VOY).

Not everything, remember that 7of9 said that the Kazon were considered imperfect, substandard, and/or unexceptional and thus weren’t chosen for assimilation.. They have standards still but insead of being after only technology, as they originaly were, it seems that the Queen is vain maybe and is after biological and technological perfection, not just accumilation.

-the Borg begin to overstretch the collective though, and with the mass assimilations the collective, the centre of Borg life, is overloaded and overstretched, meaning that the masses of Borg grow less effective per unit. Borg Tech advances though so that nanoprobes can be utilized instead of the intensive surgical operation like Picard underwent. The Borg spread faster across the Delta quadrant but still grow "dumber".

Not neccesarly, it was made clear that the Queen was playing with Voyager. Plus, the weakness of the Borg in Voyager is overrated, the only Borg ships they actualy destroyed were a scout with a teleported torpedo (a strategy they didn’t even think would work) and in End Game with the near future tech. All other times, Voyager, was getting its ass kicked by Borg ships.

-This "mental decay" is responsiuble for several incidences, the "sanctuary" where the regenerating Borg went to, their complete inability to deal with species 8472 even though their technology was up to the task as Voyager proved,

That has more to do with how their technology works and how they think. They react, they don’t research or think ahead or anilize. They also seem to be in a permenent state of melowness. Because their nanoprobes couldn’t servive long enough to adapt, they couldn’t adapt. The Doctor was able to adjust the nanoprobes becaues he took a sampe of 8472 and anilized it, then adjusted the probes. I think the Borg also have a massive arogence when it comes to their tech, they know it will work no matter what, even if it’s obvious it won’t work.

and of course their inability to use their strength to beat the Federation, while it once took but one ship to smite the UFP, the Federation could now deal with them more easily (provided they had the firepower availiable of course)

That one’s easy. It was stated by the Queen quite clearly that humans are a substandard species. If I remember correctly; sub average inteligence, lack of internal redundancy, weak, etc. So you have to ask why they would even bother assimilating humanity. Well, in the first instance, I think they were very interested in how the E-D got so far with such aparently primitive engines. When they arrived, they can’t figure things out so they deside to just assimilate the lot of them. Inexplicable, the humans actualy destroy the cube, it’s insane that such a weak civilization could possibly destroy a ship that could litteraly destroy fleets. Right now the Borg have bigger fish to fry so they just hold off on another attack because humanity isn’t really important. First Contact roles around, they send another cube. One should be more than enough but once again, do to some huge fluke in probability, they destroy another damn near unstopable cube. Borg: “WTF!” The Queen finds this rather interesting and desides to wasting ships on these weirdos, instead she'll make a nanoprobe virus. We know the Borg will send more than one cube if they have to, from “Dark Frontier”, they send two cubes. Those two cube worthy guys dropped the Borg shields to 60% in a few seconds but the Borg quickly adapted and destroyed their fleet. That alone shows those guys are more powerfull than the entire First Contact fleet yet they had only a few ships.

Just my two cents.

[2000AD]

So Fanboy's theory is that the Borg suffer from Pratchett's Theory of Mob Intelligence:
The Intelligence of a mob is the intelligence of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the mob.

[General Zod]

So Fanboy's theory is that the Borg suffer from Pratchett's Theory of Mob Intelligence:
The Intelligence of a mob is the intelligence of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the mob.

you have to admit, this would explain their idiotic tactics, drone like mentality and the fact that they consistently get beaten by the Federation