Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Origin of the Borg

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Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

I was watching "The Outer Limits" (well, only the first part, anyway). It featured a scientist who developed a microrobot, the size of a blood cell, which acts like a T-cell, repair damages to other cells, etc. etc.

One of the reporters said: "You're basically playing God here......"

Scientist: Well, God made a few errors, and I was basically fixing it up.

What I believe in is that an advanced race long ago tried doing the same thing, by creating nanoprobes which could help in saving lives and eliminating sickness. Unfortunately for them, something went wrong. Well, it did help in eliminating disease, but at the same time, had disasterous results (possibility is that the nanoprobes gained sentience), namely changing them into a new lifeform. Thousand years later, they evolve and are now the so called dreaded race of the Federation.

Footnote: Something like this could have also happened with the Federation and their Naanites. Fortunately for them, they weren't very advanced........ The Naanites that did become sentient had a completely different goal than the nanoprobes: while the Nanoprobes were interested in using organic tissue to further their means, the Naanites were only interested in self preservation.

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I can resist anything.......
Except Temptation

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Hmm...I can't say I'm too warm to the idea of the nanoprobes being the evil instigators for the Collective. Not that it's a bad idea. I just personally find it more creepy to think that the Borg were created by choice. It's not like anyone twisted my arm to come online today. What happens when I can come online all the time, everyday?

I find the idea of people making an informed choice that still leads them down a dark path to be more compelling than happening upon it by accident.

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"And much of Madness, and more of Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot."
--
The Conqueror Worm, by Edgar Allan Poe

Posted by The First One (Member # 35) on :

quote:
What happens when I can come online all the time, everyday?

You become Frank. 8)

I suspect one day they'll finally reveal the orignis of the Borg. And they'll be diminshed because of it.

Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :

Though the nanobots of O.L. only changed the biological side of humanity, they added nothing technological. And the victims memory, values and ethics never changed, thus letting him decide to kill himself to spare humanity or something like that.

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-You're crazy!!!
-Funny, I thought I was pisces!

Posted by Elim Garak (Member # 14) on :

I agree with Lee. Any chance at trying a canon, non-cryptic explanation of the origins of the Borg has high potential to damage how we perceive them. It would probably be best to leave the subject to the fans to debate.

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Elim Garak: "Oh, it's just Garak. Plain, simple Garak. Now, good day to you, Doctor. I'm so glad to have made such an... interesting new friend today." (DS9: "Past Prologue")

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I agree that any definate origin would turn out to be as dissappointing as the flashbacks in "Dark Frontier". I read somewhere in a non-canon book that the planet killer monster in TOS that Kirk blew up with the Constellation, was created by a race eons ago to fight the Borg. Interesting theory, no?

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"Resolve and thou art free."

Posted by Chimaera on :

I haven't seen anything in either TNG or Voyager that points to nanoprobes being the source of borg sentience. The borg consciousness, IMHO, forms the same way our own does, through a neural type network, only where we have neurons, the borg have drones. The nanoprobes seem to me to be only a tool for assimilation (and other nifty things).

The most likely explanation for the origin of the borg seems to be that a civilization developed cybernetic technology, began implanting devices in themselves to expedite interfaces with their computers/each other, and probably lost their minds when a greater sentience developed. Their brains probably slowly became dependent on the implants, and they began to lose independent thought. And the creepy thing is, as Sol System says, they would do this willingly.

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"But, it was so artistically done."
-Grand Admiral Thrawn

Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :

You want another theory? Remember V-Ger in ST:TMP? Well, it was said that the Voyager Satellite ran into some advanced world, where it was transformed into the machine known as V-Ger. Gene Roddenberry himself probably thought that the advanced world was probably the Borg Homeworld itself......

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I can resist anything.......
Except Temptation

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

That book mentioned is "Vendetta" by Peter David, by the way.

Re: V'ger.

The problem is that V'ger and the Borg have almost nothing in common. In fact, I might go so far as to say that they have nothing at all in common, aside from the fact that they are both far more powerful than the Federation.

V'ger completely discounted the idea that anything organic could be useful. Unlike the Borg, who, dare I say it, tend to use the best of both worlds.

Reworking computers into independant entities isn't the Borg's style. Why would V'ger be given a mind of its own and launched about its merry way?

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I do indeed and shall continue
Dispatch the shiftless man to points beyond
--
Soul Coughing

Posted by Kosh (Member # 167) on :

He's even begining to sound like frank.

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Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, it's to dark to read. Groucho Marx

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

I thought that planet Spock called V'ger's homeworld was the Borg homeplanet....

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Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Yes, but perhaps V'Ger met the Borg before they had become the Borg.

Then again, I thought that they had said that it was a planet of "intelligent machines," which would not be an accurate thing to call the Borg.

I don't know. I prefer to speculate that on some adventure we weren't privy to (it's been censored by the Federation News Net,) Voyager accidentally went back through time, and was ultimately responsible for the creation of the Borg. It WOULD be just like them to do something stupid like that.

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"We shall not yield to you, nor to any man." -- Freak, The Mighty.

Posted by Kosh (Member # 167) on :

I think Nightwing is refering to one of Shatner's books. The Borg got hold of Spock, but they didn't assimilate him, because he was already Borg, through his contact with.. Uhh, wait a minute, I'm mixing up my probes here. Nomad was the one that Spock managed to meld with, and was refered to in Shatner's book.

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Outside of a dog, a book is a mans best friend. Inside of a dog, it's to dark to read. Groucho Marx

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Frank? I'll either overlook that or take it in the "times when Frank says something meaningful and important" sense.

At any rate, no. Shatner's book definately mentioned V'ger. It went so far as to postulate some bizarrely complex system in which different "branches" of the Collective assimilate things in different ways, and V'ger was from a "branch" which equated assimilation with recording everything on Encarta.

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I do indeed and shall continue
Dispatch the shiftless man to points beyond
--
Soul Coughing

Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

"The Return".

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"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people . . ." To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
- Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1791