Flare Sci-Fi Forums: The nature of the Borg Queen

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

O.K., I haven't seen the finale of Voyager yet, (assuming it's been played), but seeing as how the Borg queen appears to be back, I thought I'd start a little debate over what she is exactly. We've sort of covered this before, but it's a very interesting subject I think. I'm just going to start off with my theory. Then you guys can rip it to shreads

In FC, the Borg Queen tells Data, "I am the Collective." Also, the fact that she keeps popping back up after apparent deaths seems to suggest that she is not limited to a physical form. My theory is that she is an intelligence that exists within the Collective. She can be anywhere she wants and everywhere within the Collective. She literally IS the Collective. When she wishes, she takes a physical form to experience an event first hand. All Borg ships are capable of generating a body for her (and she seems to prefer the use of females from this one particular species for her bodies). She is not an individual or separate from the Collective, but rather the individual embodyment of the Collective Mind.

Have at it.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

I think you have got a very sound theory there.

What has got me thinking is that it looks like the Queen hasn't got TOTAL control over everything that is Borg.

Some facts:
- In 'Dark Frontier' we see Seven tell Janeway to destroy a node of somekind that kills the contact with other Borg.
- In 'First Contact' we see the Queen wave her hand to halt several Borg.

It seems like some part of control is put into the (or: a) Queen's body. And when that body or the transmission node is destroyed, the Borg in the immediate surroundings are deactivated. To me that doesn't imply a collective mind...

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Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

The Queen could be an emergent lifeform within the Collective - a sort of a mental parasite that sprung up at one point when the Collective became complex enough. She would use the Collective as her host body, and toy with it. That way, she would "be the Collective" because she has taken control of all the relevant functions of the earlier more equality-oriented Collective.

Perhaps the Collective isn't all that fond of this kind of parasite, but is helpless to exorcise the Queen from the system. Or at least it cannot do it without doing damage to itself.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :

I�ve always thought that the analogy of an ant-society to be a good parallell. The queen there is born and runs the collective. If a queen dies, a new one is ready to take its place. And here�s a thought, in ant-societies, they send out queens and soldiers to establish new collectives. What if the Borg does the same thing?

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I think that the deactivation of Borg near the Queen when she dies or when a node is destroyed implies an overload or the inability to deal with such an abrupt change. The Borg close to the Queen would be receiving instruction directly, not buffered or filtered by the Collective. Then all the sudden, the direct source of their info is cut off and the Queen has to "reboot". I can see where this would lead to problems for some of the drones.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

Maybe the Borg close to the Queen can react faster with a direct link, the command do not need to go throught the whole collective...

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Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

(-=\V/=-)

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Aban...? Sort of a "Borg screen of death"?

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Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :

Pin'A'Sov:

Your comparison with the ant "society" is IMHO not entirely accurate: ants are relatively simple lifeforms without (we don't really know) self-awareness. The Borg, however, are very much selfaware. I think that what happened is that sometime in the Borg history (before they became linked) all of their people agreed to some sort of "vote" in which they were asked (really, really speculative I know) to join this new cybernetic consciousness they had come up with (not very dissimilar to what is occuring on our planet now, the integration of the Internet into everyone's lives or the implementation of micro-electronics into our bodies for instance could be the beginning of a society not unlike the Borg). The "Queen" could have been a high member of the pre-Borg civilisation (the Empress so to speak) who either voluntarely or forcefully became the "manager" (the network server to use a computer term) of this new joined life.

I wish the ST writers would spend some more time on this Borg history instead of coming up with stupid VOY episodes which we've already seen twice. It would be worth it.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Hmm. After "Unimatrix Zero", I hope that Star Trek never even mentions the word Borg again.

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

I think the collective recognizes that there are occasionally advantages to being an individual, even with all its limitations. That's why the queen shows up when she does. Dealing with individuals effectively requires individuality. The queen is created when she is needed. Now when she's disassembled is another question...

She is the embodiment of the collective, more or less. She just has the advantages and disadvantages of being an individual, too. Thus, "I am the Borg".

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Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

TEL: So, the Borg queen is basically a galactic SysOp? *L*

Personally, I'm all for treating every mention of the Borg in FC and VOY in the same light as ST5. However, if it must be counted, I think I like what Timo and Aban said...

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

I've been ok with the Borg up till now. Sure, I'd like them to emphasize the collective nature more, but that can be hard to do in a visual medium.

Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :

Janeway: "It's been a long time, how are things in the Collective?"

Queen: "Perfect. And Voyager?"

I miss the terrorfying, single-minded Borg of past where the mere mention of the Borg would scare the crew and if a starship was in the same sector of a Cube it would run like hell out of there.

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"If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you."
Federation Starship Datalink - On that annoying Tripod server.

Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Hobbes: Yeah! Since when can a single Federation ship hold it's own against a Borg vessel. I mean they were still able to adapt the phaser rifles, so what the heck was preventing them from blowing the Hell outta Voyager? Chakotay's iron will? Me thinks not. And since when can they out run the Borg? And since when do the Borg not pursue?

In some ways they've gotten more terrifying. They have transwarp now and should be everywhere. But then, they're not. They should be more powerful than ever. But then, they're not. They're just not an original enemy any more.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

In some ways it is so very typical of Star Trek.

Every major adversary is weakend down and eventually there is a point where the Federation turns them into a friend.

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"From where I'm sitting now, the plot is manacled to a monorail with a GPS system stapled to its buttocks."
- Jim Wright, about 'Unimatrix Zero'

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

See, I've got to disagree about that. Star Trek is all about humanizing villians, but that doesn't mean they're no longer villians. It means they aren't grinning cartoon madmen.

Of course, that isn't what has happened with the Borg.

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

That's true...

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"From where I'm sitting now, the plot is manacled to a monorail with a GPS system stapled to its buttocks."
- Jim Wright, about 'Unimatrix Zero'

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

I've always sort of thought of the different major alien races as extremes of human personality. For instance, Romulans are a society based (genrerally)on suspicion and fear. The Cardassians remind one of the movie 1984 and represent government control to the super-extreme. Klingons are a society based on agression and conquest.

What was unique, and scary, about the Borg were that they had no human qualities. They represented a complete lack of humanity. In fact, those characteristics had been ripped away from the members. We couldn't relate in any way to the Borg and becoming a part of their society was terrifying. You were lost.

This is no longer the case with the Borg. When Janeway has witty banter with the Borg Queen, it destroys the image. Having her seduce Data or Seven all alone in a dark room was alright, but noone else should really ever see her. She should never be seen in "public". Maybe heard or felt, but never seen.

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

Posted by Michael Dracon (Member # 4) on :

I agree with that. It was good to see that she was the one behind the Borg voice after all. 'Dark Frontier' had some fine Borg Queen stuff. But it went down the drain when the Queen made personal contact with Seven.

From another perspective: What if the Borg really works like an ant colony? That explains a lot. What brings me to this: The Borg were SUPPOSED to be bugs! But lack of money prevented that idea from becoming a fact. Anyone remember that 1st/2nd season episode with the spider like creatures that took over several of the best captains and admirals? Some type of queen was inside a persons body. At the end there was some type of transmission send to outer space. But we never got to see what happened after that...

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"From where I'm sitting now, the plot is manacled to a monorail with a GPS system stapled to its buttocks."
- Jim Wright, about 'Unimatrix Zero'

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[This message has been edited by Altair (edited May 31, 2000).]

Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

I just read 1984, and something occured to me about the Borg: is it not possible that the original species that created the collective was not unlike the society in 1984? It just seemed so similar. The destruction of the individual. The idea that death is irrelevant, as you would continue to live on in the whole. The Party even practiced assimilation, of a sort.

Let's extrapolate from the world described in that book. Given time, they would eventually come up with technology to directly read someone's mind. They would then implant EVERYONE with this technology, and watch them like they did before with the telescreens, albeit far more effectively. A collective mind would seem to be the ultimate objective of the Party, as it would prevent ANY crimethink at all.

Whadda ya think?

Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :

Heh.. crimethink, you obvisously got into Newspeak. But I agree, I also just read 1984 for English 4 and your analysis is pretty good. There was a movie made on the novel? I might have to go to Blockbuster and look for it.

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"If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you."
Federation Starship Datalink - On that annoying Tripod server.

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

What's wrong w/ Newspeak? It's fun to say things are "double-plus-ungood"... :-)

And, yes, there is a movie. I seem to recall someone telling me it wasn't as good as the book. But maybe that was Fahrenheit 451... I don't remember. I think I heard one movie was good and the other wasn't. *shrug* Just read the books. They're both good. ;-)

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Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :

Don't watch the movie at night. Don't watch it alone. And don't watch it with anyone you don't trust. They might turn you over to Big Brother and attach the rats to your face...

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"A gathering of Angels appeared above my head. They sang to me this song of hope, and this is what they said..." -Styx

Aban's Illustration www.thespeakeasy.com/alanfore

Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

I saw the 1984 movie, or at least part of it...it was pretty good, IIRC.

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

I don't think the Borg as Big Brother analogy works too well. Oceania's focus is inward. Control the populace, etc. They pretend to fight wars, but not with any intention of winning. The Borg are focused almost entirely outward. I guess I don't see why one worldview would give birth to the other.

Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :

Well, what do you think BB would do once it finally GOT complete control of the population?

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Er...continue to play their power games, just like in the book? 1984 strongly implies that Oceania has already won. It doesn't have any grand scheme to remake the planet. It just wants to control you. It doesn't want to use you to do anything constructive. Totalitarian governments are usually far more concerned with controlling their own populations than expanding.