Borg Inconsistencies

[Dalton]

OK, what the hell happened?

Just the other day I watched Q Who. Guinan mentions that the Borg are not interested in the people, merely the ship and the technology, and that new Borg are made in the usual fashion. No mention of assimilating humans at all, no "Resistance is Futile".

And suddenly they completely fucking change! What the hell? How do we rationalize this rather gaping YATI?

[Superman]

Yeah, I once listed about 10 Borg changes. "They Borg don't investige, they learn by assimilation," according to Voyager's DR. Well, if you watch "Q WHO," the drone DID investigate.

We can't fix the Borg. When the Queen showed up, they were fucked beyond repair.

[Sokar]

Actually , I think the change comes when the writers realized that they has written themselves into a corner with the Borg. As they appeared in 'Q Who' they were literally unstoppable, a juggernaught that the Federation could never deal with, which in the context of the single episode worked. However they didn't count on the fan response to this new super menace. With wussified Klingons, pussed out Feringi and Romulans no one knew what the hell to do with, the Borg seemed cool and fresh. more Borg episodes were clamored for.

When confronted with writing the season two cliffhanger in 'Best of Both Worlds' they had to give the Achillies his heel, so they introduced the idea of Picard being assimilated, which planted the assimilation bug in the story line. Other writers, the most criminal of which were Pillar and Braga, then expanded this assimilation idea and steadilty diluted the entire concept of the Borg Collective and its unstoppable unity and perfection.

[Superman]

Maybe it would have been better to never see them again after BOBW.

[Gandalf]

Maybe it would have been better to never see them again after BOBW.

Whilst that would leave them as quite possibly the coolest villains in ST history, the clamour for more Borg was just too much.

[Jawawithagun]

so, does that mean in an all-out Original Borg vs. Braga-Borg it would be an easy victory for the original crew?

[Peregrin Toker]

Maybe it would have been better to never see them again after BOBW.

Whilst that would leave them as quite possibly the coolest villains in ST history, the clamour for more Borg was just too much.

A danish proverb says:
"Sometimes, it is good to stop while the game is fun."

It has rarely been more true.

[Stormbringer]

OK, what the hell happened?

Just the other day I watched Q Who. Guinan mentions that the Borg are not interested in the people, merely the ship and the technology, and that new Borg are made in the usual fashion. No mention of assimilating humans at all, no "Resistance is Futile".

And suddenly they completely fucking change! What the hell? How do we rationalize this rather gaping YATI?

Maybe Guinan was just wrong. After all, she's fallible. It's possible that she simply made a mistake.

[apocolypse]

I haven't seen Q Who or BOBW in a while, but what did the original Borg message say? I thought they started off saying "your biological and technological distinctiveness etc" but that may have been changed to fit as well?

[Lord Poe]

OK, what the hell happened?

Just the other day I watched Q Who. Guinan mentions that the Borg are not interested in the people, merely the ship and the technology, and that new Borg are made in the usual fashion. No mention of assimilating humans at all, no "Resistance is Futile".

And suddenly they completely fucking change! What the hell? How do we rationalize this rather gaping YATI?

Think that's bad? In the same episode, Q said they're sexless. There's no male or female borg.

[neoolong]

OK, what the hell happened?

Just the other day I watched Q Who. Guinan mentions that the Borg are not interested in the people, merely the ship and the technology, and that new Borg are made in the usual fashion. No mention of assimilating humans at all, no "Resistance is Futile".

And suddenly they completely fucking change! What the hell? How do we rationalize this rather gaping YATI?

Think that's bad? In the same episode, Q said they're sexless. There's no male or female borg.

I thought that just referred to the way the drones are "psychologically." They are really just appendages to the Collective so there really isn't the concept of the indvidual male or female drone.

[Gandalf]

Maybe it would have been better to never see them again after BOBW.

Whilst that would leave them as quite possibly the coolest villains in ST history, the clamour for more Borg was just too much.

A danish proverb says:
"Sometimes, it is good to stop while the game is fun."

It has rarely been more true.

I don't argue with you there, but

More Borg= More ratings= More money

[Wrath]

"we are the borg we will add your technological and biological distictiveness to our own."

seems to be there interested in the people...

[Gandalf]

"we are the borg we will add your technological and biological distictiveness to our own."

seems to be there interested in the people...

Was that in Q Who though?

[NecronLord]

We have analysed your defences as being unable to witstand us. If you defend yourselves you will be punished.

It might have been technological capabilities.

[Wrath]

Was that in Q Who though?

I can't honestly remeber but I believe it was because the borg did hail the enterprise didn't they?

[Lord Poe]

And why do Borg still have teeth?

[Alyeska]

And why do Borg still have teeth?

Because its difficult to find actors willing to have their teeth knocked out just to play a bit part for 30 seconds.

[apocolypse]

And why do Borg still have teeth?

*shrugs shoulders* Why wouldn't they? If the majority of their population is assimilated, they should have teeth. They might not need them, but the Borg probably would view it as inefficient or wasteful to pull them all out or whatever.

[Superman]

Is the Queen some assimilated woman? Why does SHE have teeth? Now there is a thinker...

[seanrobertson]

Is the Queen some assimilated woman? Why does SHE have teeth? Now there is a thinker...

Because she talks alot, and people without teeth tend to sound rather...well, weird.

Imagine if thousands of drones on a cube warned your ship, "You will be assimilated" without teeth You'd be like, "Wha? What the fuck did they say? Something about gumming us to death?"

And yes, she is an assimilated woman. The one in "Dark Frontier" is, anyway: "We all originated from lesser species. I myself come from Species One Two Five, but that's irrelevant now."

[Ted C]

"we are the borg we will add your technological and biological distictiveness to our own."

First heard in BOBW, not "Q Who".

[Gil Hamilton]

Maybe Guinan was just wrong. After all, she's fallible. It's possible that she simply made a mistake.

Aside from the fact that Guinan seems to know everything about everything, assuming someone asks her first, Guinan would know a bit about the Borg even from reports of the destruction of her homeworld. If her race did have extended contact with the Borg (which lead to the Borg attack), she would be in a position to know that the Borg don't care about people, just new technology, and that the Borg never do anything alone, but always in overwhelming force.

Besides, even if Guinan was wrong, chances are Q wouldn't be, since the whole point of his little demonstration was to give a taste of what was out there to Picard, and it kind of defeats the purpose of his antics if he lied about the Borg.



Those are two inconsistancies about the Borg that I don't understand. One is that Guinan deliberately tells Picard and gang that when the Borg come, they will come in overwhelming numbers and force (something she'd be in a position to know, at the very least) and they'd never stop. What do the Borg do? Send a single ship and followed by another single ship, sort of like they were entering Federation space single file.

The other is that it's clear that the El Aurians (Guinan's folk) got whipped by the Borg and that they crushed them utterly. But when Q shows up and runs into Guinan, he shits himself and the two of them look like they are going to bust out in Mortal Kombat, this after Q cleared Ten Forward of it's inhabitants, but failed to move Guinan. Q made it clear that she was very very dangerous, and this is Mr. Arrogant "I'm am Almighty" Q saying it. So it leads to this question. If El Aurians are dangerous to Q, and Q could snap his fingers and make the Borg "civilization" vanish... how did the Borg beat the El Aurians in the first place?

[Alyeska]

I think the conflict between Guinan and Q stems from Guinan being smarter and having more wit then Q does. After all, when Q was Human Guinan took advantage and stabbed him with a fork.

[seanrobertson]

OK, what the hell happened?

Just the other day I watched Q Who. Guinan mentions that the Borg are not interested in the people, merely the ship and the technology, and that new Borg are made in the usual fashion. No mention of assimilating humans at all, no "Resistance is Futile".

And suddenly they completely fucking change! What the hell? How do we rationalize this rather gaping YATI?

Did Guinan say that? I have the episode on tape, somewhere in a big mess, and I've got the LD, but finding the former and getting the latter to work would be a big task

This is what I found:


PICARD: Guinan -- what else can you tell us about these creatures?
GUINAN: I only know bits and pieces.
PICARD: Anything would be helpful.
GUINAN: They are a mixture of organic and artificial life that has been developed over a thousand centuries.
...
Q: The Borg is the ultimate user, with the result that they are unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced. They have no interest in political conquest -- or wealth or power as you know it. They simply want your ship -- its technology. They have identified it as something they can consume.

I didn't see Guinan say anything about how they were strictly limited in technology, though I agree with you Dalton--that was the obvious implication.

As far as Riker's observation that the "Borg appear to be born 'human'," from later information we can say he was just making a hasty generalization...he'd opened a Borg "maturation chamber" and found a newly assimilated baby inside. Borg put all children in these things, even Seven when she was 6-7 years old. Not knowing that, Riker just guessed drones had gotten jiggy with it and made some babies.

Now, what Q said is a bit puzzling...we can easily explain away his "not a he, not a she" line as how gender identity is irrelevant in the context of the Borg Collective itself. But the bit about "only interested in your ship" is a little harder to rationalize.

What he could've meant is that the Borg do usually seek technology first. IF it's worth a damn, then the people who pilot it might also be worthwhile--a conditional concern. If it's not technologically "worthy," they'll most likely ignore you AND your ship unless you have something really special to offer; e.g., knowledge concerning the Omega particle.

That might fit Q's arrogant posturing where humanity itself is concerned, he thinking that we're little more than "savages" and talking monkeys. Though he knew differently--that is, that the Borg WOULD want to assimilate us--he put on airs and acted as if we're the bunch of clods he'd always said we were.

But the Borg are truly riddled with all kinds of inconsistencies. I've tried to rationalize them all just for fun, but it's tough. Take a look at all this:

1--Guinan says the Borg have "been evolving for thousands of centuries." 1,000 centuries is 100,000 years.

Yet, in "Dragon's Teeth," one of the Vaadwaur comments that, 900 years beforehand, the Borg only occupied a handful of systems. Evidently he'd encountered them first-hand. Seven responds that she doesn't remember Vaadwauri; "records from that period are fragmentary," whatever that means.

This isn't actually a contradiction, but it's not REAL consistent with what Guinan said...it would've meant that the Borg spent almost all of their time in a couple of star systems, and only within the past thousand or so years started to expand slowly. It explains a good bit about why they're not spread throughout the entire galaxy, though...like Darth Mike once said in his fanfic, the Borg seem content to sit in the DQ and polish their little jewel of an organization.

2--First Contact with the Borg was...when? Picard thought that, in 2365, his ship was the first to encounter the Borg. Later we learn the Hansens encountered them earlier, in the mid 2350s.

But hold on a second. If Borg species' nos. are chronological, humans are species 5618. Ktarians are 6961, Vulcans are 3259, and the Ferengi are 180!!!!!

The Hansens identified a Ktarian as Species 6961 in "Dark Frontier," IIRC. This itself might be an inconsistency...I'm not sure the Federation knew of Ktarians until Riker ran into them and picked up that cheesy videogame.

Anyway, I digress. If humans have a lower no. than Ktarians and the Borg hadn't even yet noticed the Hansens, then the Hansens weren't the first humans assimilated. First Contact therefore happened earlier than the 2350's.

3--Ferengi, Species 180? Wha? We know from ENT that the Ferengi evidently had high-warp capable ships. In "Little Green Men," Quark said that the Ferengi Alliance bought warp drives from somebody...so it's vaguely possible that an intrepid Ferengi caught a Borg ship's attention hundreds of years ago.

Damn, I have to run. I hate to leave that thought half-formed but I'll come back to it. Lots more inconsistencies after this commercial!