Star Trek (TNG): Q Who

[Deledrius]

Retconning in the queen completely undid what made the Borg a unique and formidable. It's like they missed the entire point of what the Borg were in order to give Picard a villain to play off of, and it got even worse when it became Janeway vs. the queen. It's kind of like how Abrams Trek missed the point of what made Spock alien and interesting by having him lose his shit constantly.

I'd like to think of the Queens as an inevitable outcome of a hive mind: That enough like-minds coalesce becoming sub-personalities with some occasionally taking over and leading with moments of unity that are what we saw when the Collective was stable in Q Who.

This results in changes in behaviour as the Borg go from purely interested in tech and scouring planets like they once did to assimilating species, which is a manifestation of the outlook on those personalities we saw in the Queens.

From that I'd think a neat way of finally ending the Borg as a galaxy threatening plague would be to introduce something that manifests all personalities at once effectively breaking the Borg into factions based on their psychological temperament, that way they can remain a threat, but are now no longer simply weaker but actively fighting one another to reunify the Collective.

It wouldn't be hard to say this was all the result of letting Hugh return to the collective. He brought back something much more insidious and far less direct than a brain-teaser.

[turbo_sailor67]

I think it was Best of Both Worlds Part 2 actually with the whole Data can hack into the collective via Capt. Picard and just mouse over to the "sleep" menu and click on that.

It works because it was a long-shot solution which was so inane that it was left unprotected, and was never going to be viable a second time.

It's basically the Death Star trench run, without the exciting action sequence.

The reason this is a decline problem is that you can't keep pulling that kind of trick around the Borg (and to be fair, they never used exactly the same trick), but if you keep managing to pull a different rabbit out of the hat every time it's still going to be progressively less impressive; it stretches credulity so far that it stops being a convincing illusion and just reminds us that the hat is an infinite source of deus ex machina solutions. The Borg are not scary when we know that no matter how they improve or adapt, the crew will make up a magical solution to defeat them or escape. It's boring from both ends.

Yeah, you're right that sums it up nicely. I guess I just thought the whole resolution to this happens a little too soon for my tastes.

[APlotdevice]

Retconning in the queen completely undid what made the Borg a unique and formidable. It's like they missed the entire point of what the Borg were in order to give Picard a villain to play off of, and it got even worse when it became Janeway vs. the queen. It's kind of like how Abrams Trek missed the point of what made Spock alien and interesting by having him lose his shit constantly.

I'd like to think of the Queens as an inevitable outcome of a hive mind: That enough like-minds coalesce becoming sub-personalities with some occasionally taking over and leading with moments of unity that are what we saw when the Collective was stable in Q Who.

This results in changes in behaviour as the Borg go from purely interested in tech and scouring planets like they once did to assimilating species, which is a manifestation of the outlook on those personalities we saw in the Queens.

From that I'd think a neat way of finally ending the Borg as a galaxy threatening plague would be to introduce something that manifests all personalities at once effectively breaking the Borg into factions based on their psychological temperament, that way they can remain a threat, but are now no longer simply weaker but actively fighting one another to reunify the Collective.

It wouldn't be hard to say this was all the result of letting Hugh return to the collective. He brought back something much more insidious and far less direct than a brain-teaser.

That could have been a good plot twist, but unfortunately the movie made it clear that the Queen already existed when Picard was assimilated.

[Deledrius]

That could have been a good plot twist, but unfortunately the movie made it clear that the Queen already existed when Picard was assimilated.

Maybe, maybe not: "You think in such three-dimensional terms. How small you've become."

Yeah, it's something they seem to want to play with but not commit to in either direction. Ugh.