posted
Now I'm pretty sure that this has been talked about before but just in case I'm bringing it up. If I remember correctly the discussion was about if the Borg reproduced or if they just assimilated. Last night I was watching the voyager ep with the 29th century Drone. Anyway Seven says that its maturation is 25 times faster then normal Borg maturation. Unless this is a snafu the Borg have kids.
------------------ Death before Dishonor! However Dishonor has quite a disputed defintion.
posted
Seen "Q Who"? In it Riker discovers the "Borg nursery". Considering 7's line it doesn't make sense. In fact, before she said that it never made any sense, why would the Borg procreate like that?
One theory I thought of was those were infants of some race the Borg assimilated but couldn't do anything so the Borg just stuck them in the "nursery" until they were a certain age and are ready to serve the collective.
------------------ Calvin: "I'm a man of few words." Hobbes: "Maybe if you read more, you'd have a larger vocabulary." Federation Starship Datalink - Now with a pop-up on every page...damn you Tripod!
posted
I think Hobbes' theory is a very good possibility.
In fact: 1: Seven herself is proof that the Borg do not just assimilate adults, but children too. 2: More than ones it is mention that they assimilate ENTIRE species, which (most of the time) includes children, babies AND pregnant people.
------------------ "Scan that ship Mr. Worf!" "Aye sir, 600 DPI?"
posted
Altair does seem to sum it up. One might note that the infants (we only saw one, though) in "Q Who?" were pink, not the grey hue always associated with assimilated individuals. So probably they weren't assimilated postnatally, but were born by drones who were pregnant when assimilated. While this might be a rather mariginal way for the Borg to multiply their numbers, it certainly is *one* of them.
It seems unlikely that adult Borg drones could bear children, though. In the very same episode, Q makes a point about saying the Borg are neither male nor female. Okay, so this may be surgically reversible, so that Picard now is male again and Hansen is female. But during Seven's existence as a drone, she should have been incapable of having children, if we take Q literally. So babies are only harvested when the option arises immediately after an assimilation attack, but not specifically produced...
posted
I think the Borg are capable of reproduction, and they might have special drones assigned to this task, or they could have special genetic techniques (cloning) for this. It could be essential for their survival to rely on their own species if not sufficient other species (a limited resource) can be assimilated.
------------------ "When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." A somewhat different Janeway in VOY: "Living Witness" Ex Astris Scientia
posted
That's a very cool thought. So many comparisons have been made between the collective and an insect hive. Maybe there is a special reproduction unimatrix. The fetuses develop to a certain stage, are harvested, and put into maturation chambers to accelerate their growth. Interesting thought. Thousands of "people" who were born Borg and have never known anything but the collective mind.
posted
Well, there's nothing wrong with the Borg way of life; the problem is with the assimilation, which isn't an issue for anyone who is a Borg to begin with.
------------------ Frank's Home Page "We've got some new songs here that are not even on the MP3 thing. They're not available in any format, except of course the bootlegs that seem to proliferate all through our audience, as we watch people lip-synch along to songs that HAVEN'T BEEN RELEASED! DAMN YOU!" - John Linnell
At any rate, I agree. There isn't anything fundamentally wrong with a collective consciousness, as far as we know. The problem is that the Borg Collective just happens to believe itself to be the most perfect entity in the universe, and that which all others should aspire to. Zealotry at its most dangerous.
------------------ "If you are going to be my girlfriend please don't dump me after I like you." -- Michael
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Black Knight: Snickering? Consider that the Borg might just harvest gametes rather than having adult Borg mate. The gametes could them be scanned for "imperfection" and only the "perfect" ones used to create new Borg.
They could possibly implant them in living hosts, perhaps of either sex. After all, if they can harvest an individual for parts, they could implant a womb in any likely donor (or do they only salvage electro-mechanical bits?) I would imagine that if they could harvest organs, they might just put harvested wombs in a box, so to speak (with appropriate support machinery to keep it in functioning order). This would allow infants to be grown without having to weigh down a Borg adult with the extra mass and nutritional burden required to carry an infant to term internally.
Once the fetus reached a sufficient level of maturity (not necessarily term, for the borg) it might be transferred to a maturation chamber, as suggested above.
Neither racy nor romantic, but possibly efficient.
posted
I think that the idea of a preggers Borg walking around would be awesome. It would show how imperfect the Borg really are at this point in time, having to occasionally turn back to the biological to sustain the advancement of the technological.
posted
I meant it was sort of scary thought for us individuals. But I think you're right that the only thing "wrong" with the Borg way of life is that it is so undesireable to those outside the collective.
As far as a preggers Borg, I had more the idea of a bunch of drones strapped down in a medical unit doing nothing but being implanted and being harvested until their biological systems failed.
posted
I would imagine that, if the Borg chose to grow their own children, they'd dispense with using drones altogether. Much more efficient to just use biomechanical wombs.
------------------ "If you are going to be my girlfriend please don't dump me after I like you." -- Michael
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