The Borg vs. The Culture

[Yukaphile]

A bit of a fun science-fiction debate for fans who are interested in it, but I'm going with two versions of the Borg here - the Borg seen prior to First Contact, that is, in their original conception from "Q Who" all the way through "Best of Both Worlds" - and then the scaled-down, nerfed Borg we get in First Contact and Voyager and Enterprise and beyond.

Who do you think would win in both battles?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah nerfed down but also their most threatening encounter with Enterprise.

[Eishtmo]

This isn't a fight, this is pest control. Either version.

Seriously, there is a special group within the Culture that basically just deals with these things all the time. (More or less, Surface Tension mostly deals with von numan machine type spreads, which the Borg kind of are. Also war between heaven and hell. It's a fun book.). And they're always in Contact (diplomatic corps) and Special Circumstances (dirty tricks department) collective shadow.

The Borg are NOT a threat to the Culture. Like at all. I could see some Culture minds toying with the Borg for giggles. Culture citizens getting assimilated for shits and giggles. All gets undone later with no problems.

[Yukaphile]

Yeah, I kind of assumed that given how OP I've read they are. So I've only read 113 pages of "Matter," so my experience is still growing.

[Jonathan101]

The Borg via time travel shenanigans.

[Yukaphile]

The Culture has no defense against that, do they?

[Jonathan101]

Don't think so no.

I'm also not sure which of the two civilisations are bigger; I don't think the size of the Culture was ever made explicit, but I think the Borg are about the size of the Klingons, Romulans and Federation combined.

Both are set in the Milky Way, but the Borg are on the opposite side of it to Earth, while the Culture exist in our vicinity at the very least, so it would be a long-distance conflict. Regardless, the Borg could win if they assimilate just one member of the Culture, realise what they are up against, and decide that the most straightforward course of action is to go back in time and assimilate them when they are vulnerable (so long as the Culture members they assimilate possess that knowledge at least).

Then again, the Culture don't seem to recognise "borders" so possibly they are dotted all over the galaxy, which means the Borg would have to pick them off one by one but might not have to worry so much about them bringing their full might right away.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I say that Borg time travel is highly circumstantial.

[Yukaphile]

Seems like they could choose to do it however they wanted in First Contact. Still, given what I've read, that would be the ONLY way they could prevail against Gridfire, picosecond reaction time for their ships, and so on and so forth.

[Jonathan101]

The circumstances being, "if they use it, they will win".

Obviously the Culture represent a serious threat to the Borg if their only real chance of victory is to go all Terminator on them, but the fact remains that they will always have that option and the Culture...well, won't.

Of course, the Borg and time-travel have never really worked out for them in the past, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that they can actually use it intelligently for once- in FC they really should have just used it while still in Borg space (or at least outside Federation space, or AT THE VERY LEAST not while they are crashing through a Federation fleet on their way to Earth) and then they could have rewrote history without the Enterprise or anyone else ever being made aware of it.

If they attack a Culture colony and resort to time-travel right in front of them after getting their backsides handed to them then they are just repeating the mistakes they made in the movie. If they find out where the Culture first originated (whether a single world or several), go back in time in secret and just assimilate or destroy it then, it's an easy win for the Collective.

I do think in FC it might have been Plan B and they were honestly trying to assimilate 24th century Earth first, in which case I could say that even the Borg don't like to abuse the space-time continuum, but that doesn't have to apply in a fight like this- whether they are going all-out from the beginning, or if they just pushed to their breaking point, time-travel is still their trump card to win the unwinnable.