Sure i know in the episold it was said Hugh himself gained a sense of individuality and spread it to his ship and hopefully the entire collective[which never happend]and they all said hey where individuals....LOL
comon this can't happend on a borg ship
its not like those drones were never individuals and never experienced it...their identities been suppressed.
And wheres the vinculum?--isn't it suppose to prevent things like this from happening or is that the Queen's job? You can't just remember your indivuality on a borg ship and even if you did-won't it just quickly get filtered out?
btw---what kind of ship was Hugh's ship---it's not really a mine is it as hinted in "Scorpion"?
[ June 14, 2001: Message edited by: TheF0rce ]
Now, it's been a while since I've seen "I, Borg," but I think it was mentioned that Hugh's connection to the Borg Collective was severed for some reason. Again, I repeat that I think this was mentioned but I'm not for certain.
Through the efforts of Geordi babying Hugh, he regained his sense of individuality. He was returned to a Borg vessel that was sent to investigate the disappearance of their scout ship. His individuality spread through his portion of the collective and that lead to the events seen and described in "Descent" parts one and two.
Now, if the Collective connection was severed or disrupted, Hugh would be able to regain some of his individuality. We've seen this before in Picard and various episodes of Voyager (the Borg children, Seven of Nine, the Planet of Freed Borg, etc). It would seem that the connection with the Collective is an integral part of keeping individuality repressed in the drones.
but the ship that retrieved him never got disconnected,
Hugh sent his new found individuality for a breif moment when he was relinked---that shouldn't have effected the ship since everyone on the ship was connected to the hive mind---which as you've said repress those emotions through a number of safety protocols.
However, there is a rather gaping plot hole leading up to "Descent," yes. If assimilating an individual somehow infects the Borg with individuality, then they could never assimilate anyone at all.
So far, so good. But what about your main argument - that the Borg already are built to suppress individuality, and reassimilating Hugh should thus pose no greater threat than assimilating a typical resisting individual for the first time and suppressing his independence? I can only think of two things.
One, perhaps the key here is that Hugh did not resist. He accepted assimilation, and was rubber-stamped as "reliable" without further inspection. The auto-suppression system might only be turned on when the assimilee is deemed unreliable to begin with.
Two, and this sounds a little more plausible: perhaps Hugh's individualistic desires were something the Collective was *curious* about? In "Dark Frontier", the ruling Queen claims 7 of 9 is the first Drone to regain individuality (and then return to be analyzed). Hugh would have been another precedent, and possibly something the Collective would very much want to analyze carefully before erasing his individuality. Too bad the analysis backfired badly, and ruined a whole Cubeful of Borg before the limiters cut in...
This was supposed to be the mechanism of the "visual weapon" Geordi and Data devised, too. The weapon would not try to propagate aggressively - instead, it would arouse the curiosity of the Borg, who would then fall deeper and deeper into its clutches due to their desire to find out more about the weapon. They would not see it as a threat until it was too late.
Timo Saloniemi
In other words, the writers figured that drones were born into the Collective and had never experienced individuality, therefore it would come as a shock to them.
The Borg just weren't very fleshed out at this point, IMHO
We've seen numerous cases of individuality in the Collective in VOY. The Unamatrix Zero, the stranded ex-borg, Seven of Nine, the children, etc.
It seems like the Collective is still far from perfect.
http://morrison.easynet.fr/~scifiart/_upload_/vincp_1.jpg
http://morrison.easynet.fr/~scifiart/_upload_/vincp_2.jpg
i think the vinculum is the stand in for a borg queen on a local ship level---and it should have been responsible for bringing some order back to chaos that Hugh might have cuased.
[ June 15, 2001: Message edited by: TheF0rce ]
[ June 16, 2001: Message edited by: Charles Capps ]
i hope its not a spoiler too you...oh my god.