A Random Star Trek question about the borg

[Toxicity]

I'm not sure if this should go in general or M&T, but here goes.

I was watching Voyager the other day, one of the countless episodes involving the borg, and something occurred to me:

In Star Trek the motion picture, in the very end when Deckard and the Ilia clone thing fuse together, Kirk says something about witnessing the birth of a new species. Could that be a very early reference to the borg, who wouldn't show up until the second season of TNG many years later?

[wing zero alpha]

Not really. I might have misunderstood this, but if Star Trek First Contact is any indication, the Borg have existed at least as far back as 2063, as the Borg were modifying the Enterprise-E's deflector dish to send out a long-range signal to the Collective of that time, essentially calling reinforcements to assimilate Earth.

On the other hand, William Shatner does reference V'Ger as an early Borg scout in his novel The Return, and that the Enterprise's contact with it had alerted the Borg to Earth and mankind's existance, even though it wouldn't be until TNG when direct contact would be established thanks to Q. Naturally like all Star Trek literature it's "unofficial", but I always thought it made sense.

Wow, this is the first time in a while I had to go through this much information on Star Trek.

[Toxicity]

Okay, so the Deckard + Ilia thing wasn't the beginnings of the borg, so could the machine planet that V'ger got all it's knowledge and the big ass cloud from be a borg homeworld or something?

[wing zero alpha]

Okay, so the Deckard + Ilia thing wasn't the beginnings of the borg, so could the machine planet that V'ger got all it's knowledge and the big ass cloud from be a borg homeworld or something?

Not sure there either. Going back to The Return, it was claimed that V'Ger was assimilated by a different sect of the Borg which assimilated machines through a sort of telepathic interface (like a mind meld) rather than direct contact, which would explain why V'Ger wasn't turned into a cube or something. But apocrypha aside, regular Borg technology doesn't generate nebulas, and V'Ger probe is a helluva lot bigger than anything the Borg put out years later (and that says a lot considering how big Borg ships are), so either way I doubt V'Ger got its stuff from the Borg homeworld.

[Skippy438]

I remember reading something about the Decker+Ilia thing a few months ago but am struggling to find it now. It basically said something about how Roddenberry actually liked the idea of it being the start of the borg but it was never implemented. Plus by the time we meet them they look a lot older than a few hundred years old.

[ZeonfromHell]

I don't see Decker and Ilia as being the start of the Borg. Like it was said before, they were all the over in the Delta Qaudrant in the 2060s. And I imagine that it would take longer than three hundred years to get to Earth without warp drive (I don't imagine Zefram Cochrane's marvelous new discovery was implemented by everybody else so quickly.)

One more thing to point out is a few details from The Next Generation. In the Episode "Q Who?" our heroes make (canon) first contact with the Borg. This was after Q threw them way out to the middle of nowhere. According to Worf, "At maximum warp, it would take 53 years and eight months" to reach the nearest starbase. Galaxy class starships have a maximum warp of about 9.6. If they were that far away, do you think they could travel that far to earth in three hundred years (give or take, 1977-Star Trek: the Motion Picture 2270s)? (Also thats not factoring in the amount of time it took for V'ger to become self-aware and make its return flight as a big blue cloud) I don't think anybody developed warp drive in the 1970s. There are just too many "coincidences" to consider with other cultures of the Star Trek universe to put V'ger and Borg together. Besides, I don't think Decker and Ilia have the right degree of character to go around and assimilating life and technology in the mindless, emotionless, yet greedy fashion the way Borg do.

[artmaster079]

I always assumed that the Decker-Illia thing may have played a role in the Borg's development, but not creation. First Contact and Voyager somewhat elaborate that the Borg have been around for a long time.

A for V'ger, it could originate from the Borg, but probably an earlier, more "primitive" version of the Borg (pre-Decker-Illia thinge???).

[Jynx]

In Voyager, a society that was placed in suspended animation for 800 years knew the Borg, but at the time they were just a minor nuisance and had just a few colonies in the Delta quadrant. This would mean the Borg have been around at least since the 15th or 16th century.

[artmaster079]

Well, like most Star Trek races, they usually have small, humble, or insignificant beginnings and depending on how they develop, can become powerful..i suppose like the Federation itself, or the Q Continuum

[wing zero alpha]

Well, like most Star Trek races, they usually have small, humble, or insignificant beginnings and depending on how they develop, can become powerful..i suppose like the Federation itself, or the Q Continuum

For some reason I have a hard time picturing the words "Q Continuum", "small", "humble" and "insignificant" in the same word line, especially the latter two.

[ZeonfromHell]

For some reason I have a hard time picturing the words "Q Continuum", "small", "humble" and "insignificant" in the same word line, especially the latter two.

Right, I don't see the Q Continuum to be anything apart from omnipotent, all powerful gods, some of which (like Q in TNG) like to throw their weight around and make lives miserable.

[Heretic]

Too add a few things to what has already been pointed out.

Ginan (sp?) the bar tender in Ten Forward, has lived a very long time. Her race was primarily refugees running from the Borg.

Also, in Enterprise, there was an episode where a handful of drones frozen from First Contact, they steal a ship and try to contact the collective. Without making direct contact with the Borg, the NX01 Enterprise stops the Borg from escaping, but not before a signal was sent out on conventional subspace. They said that it would take something around three hundred years for the Borg to receive the message and start heading for earth.

In which case, the cube that the enterprise first encountered in TNG, was already on its way.

Ultimately, Q did them a favor by introducing them to the Borg when he did, because it gave them a glimpse of what was to come, and a chance to prepare. Wolf 359 was a military disaster for the federation when they knew what was coming. Just imagine how screwed they would have been if they had been oblivious about the Borg to begin with?

[artmaster079]

Mmm... okay, I think I was trying to explain that almost all races developed in some way or form. Enterprise showed how humans were at the beginning while future stories of the TNG- era show how they've evolved.

I don't remember where, but I belive it was mentioned by Q that the Continuum originally existed as mortal being like humans who (i'm just taking a guess here) over a LONG period of time evolved to another plane of existence.

And to keep it somewhat on topic, I think Q sent them to meet the Borg for exactly that reason. He saw that the humans were acting too arogantly about space travel and their place in nature. He wanted Picard to realize that there are huge obstacle to overcome before they can act all high-and-mighty. That, and he saw some hope for them. Typical to his character, he probably would never admit he was helping them lol.

[ZeonfromHell]

And to keep it somewhat on topic, I think Q sent them to meet the Borg for exactly that reason. He saw that the humans were acting too arogantly about space travel and their place in nature. He wanted Picard to realize that there are huge obstacle to overcome before they can act all high-and-mighty. That, and he saw some hope for them. Typical to his character, he probably would never admit he was helping them lol.

I'll agree with that. It's feasible to say that Q was teaching them through "cruel tutelage."

Now that you mention it, the first couple of battles with them were very costly. And in First Contact, it showed the Borg's real potential of assimilating entire civilizations. Even when their ship got PWN'D after Picard flew in and destroyed the Cube (by delivering the crushing blow via four quantum torpedoes (=epic win)), they escaped with a "sphere." Using their stolen knowledge about the dawn of the Star Trek universe, they went back in time to destroy Zefram Cochrane's warp vehicle. In doing that, they would have been able to alter history and altogether screw humanity...and then assimilate it. However, with Q's "help," which essentially led to Picard's assimilation and recovery, they were allowed to learn and prepare enough to avert their machine-implanted, enslaved fate.

For those who are interested in Trek sites, or just want to cite their information:The Computer Core Dump and Memory Alpha are what I find to be two very good Star Trek websites for information.