A Borg insignium, designed by Rick Sternbach
(first appeared in the episode Q Who) | |
| Founded | A localized humanoid race for hundreds of thousands of years, evolved cybernetic existence and started space travel before 1492 |
|---|---|
| Base of operations | Delta Quadrant |
The Borg are a fictional alien group that appear as recurring antagonists in the Star Trek franchise. The Borg are cybernetic organisms, linked in a hive mind called "the Collective". The Borg co-opt the technology and knowledge of other alien species to the Collective through the process of "assimilation": forcibly transforming individual beings into "drones" by injecting nanoprobes into their bodies and surgically augmenting them with cybernetic components. The Borg's ultimate goal is "achieving perfection". Aside from being recurring antagonists in the Next Generation television series, they are depicted as the main threat in the film Star Trek: First Contact. In addition, they played major roles in the Voyager series and serve as the way home to the Alpha Quadrant for the isolated Federation starship USS Voyager. The first encounter between humans and the Borg is depicted in the 2nd season of the series Enterprise in the episode "Regeneration" in which the phrase "you will be assimilated; resistance is futile" is heard by the crew of the Enterprise for the first time.
The Borg have become a symbol in popular culture for any juggernaut against which "resistance is futile".
Depiction
The
Borg are cyborgs, having outward appearances showing both mechanical
and biological body parts. Individual Borg are referred to as drones and
move in a robotic, purposeful style ignoring most of their environment,
including beings not deemed a threat. Borg commonly have one eye
replaced with a sophisticated ocular implant. Borg usually have one arm
replaced with a prosthetic one, bearing one of a variety of multipurpose
tools in place of a humanoid hand. Since different drones have
different roles, the arm may be specialized for a myriad of purposes
such as medical devices, scanners, and weapons. Borg have flat, white
skin, giving them an almost zombie-like appearance.
Some Borg have been shown to be far stronger than humans; able to
easily overpower most humans and similar species. Typical Borg have
never been seen to run. Borg are resistant to phaser fire, many having
personal shielding which adapts to phaser fire. In various episodes,
phasers tend to become ineffective after time as the Borg is able to
adapt to the phaser frequency. Later attempts to modulate
phaser frequencies have limited success. Borg shields have not been
seen to protect against non-energy weapons such as projectile or melee
weapons.
Borg possess a "cortical node" which controls other implanted
cybernetic devices within a Borg's body, and is most often implanted in
the forehead above the retained organic eye. If the cortical node fails,
the Borg eventually dies. Successful replacement of the node can be
carried out on a Borg vessel.
Borg Collective
An occupied Borg "alcove" prop on display at the Hollywood Entertainment Museum
Borg civilization is based on a hive or group mind known as the Collective. Each Borg drone is linked to the collective by a sophisticated subspace
network that ensures each member is given constant supervision and
guidance. The mental energy of the group consciousness can help an
injured or damaged drone heal or regenerate damaged body parts or
technology. The collective consciousness not only gives them the ability
to "share the same thoughts", but also to adapt with great speed to
tactics used against them. Drones in the Collective are never seen speaking, but a collective "voice" is sometimes transmitted to ships.
"Resistance is futile"
Individual
Borg rarely speak, though they do send a collective audio message to
their targets, stating that "resistance is futile", generally followed
by a declaration that the target in question will be assimilated
and its "biological and technological distinctiveness" will be added to
their own. The exact phrasing varies and evolves over the various
series episodes and film.
The complete phrase used in Star Trek: First Contact is:
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
Nanoprobes
Nanoprobes are microscopic machines
that inhabit a Borg's body, bloodstream, and many cybernetic implants.
The probes perform the function of maintaining the Borg cybernetic
systems, as well as repairing damage to the organic parts of a Borg.
They generate new technology inside a Borg when needed, as well as
protecting them from many forms of disease. Borg nanoprobes, each about
the size of a human red blood cell, travel through the victim's bloodstream and latch on to individual cells. The nanoprobes rewrite the cellular DNA,
altering the victim's biochemistry, and eventually form larger, more
complicated structures and networks within the body such as electrical
pathways, processing and data-storage nodes, and ultimately prosthetic
devices that spring forth from the skin. In "Mortal Coil",
Seven of Nine states that the Borg assimilated the nanoprobe technology
from "Species 149". In addition, the nanoprobes work to maintain and
repair their host's mechanical and biological components on a
microscopic level, allowing regenerative capabilities.
Though used by the Borg to exert control over another being, reprogrammed nanoprobes were used by the crew of the starship Voyager in many instances as medical aids.
The capability of nanoprobes to absorb improved technologies they find into the Borg collective is shown in the Voyager episode "Drone", where Seven of Nine's
nanoprobes are fused with the Doctor's mobile emitter which uses
technology from the 29th century, creating a 29th-century drone existing
outside the Collective, with capabilities far surpassing that of the
24th-century drones.
The Borg do not try to immediately assimilate any being with
which it comes to contact; in fact, Borg drones tend to completely
ignore beings that are identified as too weak to be a threat and too
inferior to be worth assimilating. Captain Picard and his team walk
safely past a group of Borg drones in a scene from the film Star Trek: First Contact while the drones fulfill a programmed mission. In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Mortal Coil",
Seven of Nine told Neelix that the Kazon were "unworthy" of
assimilation and would only detract from the Borg's quest for perceived
perfection.
Travel
The Borg are a spacefaring race, and their primary interstellar transport is known as a "Borg Cube" due to its shape. A cube was first seen in the Next Generation episode "Q Who?" in 2365. Common capabilities of cubes include high speed warp and transwarp drives, self-regeneration and multiple-redundant systems, adaptability in combat, and various energy weapons as well as tractor beams
and cutting beams. Additionally, different types and sizes of Cubes have
been observed as well as Borg Spheres and some smaller craft.
As with most other Star Trek races, the Borg also have transporter capability.
Assimilation
Assimilation
is the process by which the Borg integrate beings, cultures, and
technology into the Collective. "You will be assimilated" is one of the
few on-screen phrases employed by the Borg when communicating with other
species. The Borg are portrayed as having found and assimilated
thousands of species and billions to trillions of individual life-forms
throughout the galaxy. The Borg designate each species with a number assigned to them upon first contact; humanity being 'Species 5618'.
When first introduced, the Borg are said to be more interested in
assimilating technology than people, roaming the universe as
single-minded marauders that have assimilated starships, planets, and
entire societies to collect new technology. They are discriminating in
this area, finding certain races, for example the Kazon,
to be technologically inferior and not worthy of assimilation. A Borg
infant found aboard a Borg Cube in "Q Who?" shows that the Borg will
even assimilate children. The Borg then place the assimilated children
into maturation chambers to quickly and fully grow them into mature
drones.
Patrick Stewart as Locutus, the assimilated Jean-Luc Picard
In their second appearance, "The Best of Both Worlds", they capture and assimilate Captain Jean-Luc Picard into the Collective, creating Locutus of Borg (meaning "he who speaks", in Latin).
The method of assimilating individual life-forms into the
Collective has been represented differently over time. When we see the
Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation, assimilation is through abduction and then surgical procedure. In Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Voyager, assimilation is through injection of nanoprobes into an individual's bloodstream
via a pair of tubules that spring forth from a drone's hand.
Assimilation by tubules is depicted on-screen as being a fast-acting
process, with the victim's skin pigmentation turning gray and mottled
with visible dark tracks forming within moments of contact. After
assimilation, a drone's race and gender become "irrelevant". After
initial assimilation through injection, Borg are surgically fitted with
cybernetic devices. In Star Trek: First Contact an assimilated crew member is shown to have a forearm and an eye physically removed and replaced with cybernetic implants.
The Borg also assimilate, interface, and reconfigure technology using these tubules and nanoprobes. However, in Q Who?
we see a Borg apparently trying to assimilate, probe or reconfigure a
control panel in engineering using an energy interface instead of
nanoprobes.
Some species, for various stated reasons, are able to resist assimilation by nanoprobe. Species 8472 is the only race shown to be capable of completely rejecting assimilation attempts. Other species, such as the Hirogen, have demonstrated resistance to assimilation as well as Dr Phlox who was able to partially resist the assimilation process in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Regeneration".
Concept
The Borg represented a new antagonist and regular enemy that was lacking during the first season of TNG; the Klingons were allies and the Romulans mostly absent. The Ferengi were originally intended as the new enemy for the United Federation of Planets, but their comical appearance and devotion to capitalist accumulation by free enterprise
failed to portray them as a convincing threat. The Borg, however, with
their frightening appearance, their immense power, and their sinister
motive, became the signature villains for the TNG and Voyager eras of Star Trek. In Voyager episode "Q2", even Q tells his son "don't provoke the Borg."
Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) writers began to develop the idea of the Borg as early as the Season 1 episode, "Conspiracy", which introduced a coercive, symbiotic
life form that took over key Federation personnel. Plans to feature the
Borg as an increasingly menacing threat were subsequently scrapped in
favor of a more subtle introduction, beginning with the mystery of
missing colonies on both sides of the Neutral Zone in "The Neutral Zone" and culminating in the encounter between Borg and the Enterprise crew in "Q Who?".
Borg Queen
Alice Krige as the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact
Before the film Star Trek: First Contact (1996), the Borg exhibited no hierarchical command structure. First Contact
introduced the Borg Queen, who is not named as such in the film
(referring to herself as “I am the Borg. I am the Collective.") but is
named Borg Queen in the closing credits. The Queen is played by Alice Krige in this film and in the 2001 finale of Star Trek: Voyager, "Endgame". The character also appeared in Voyager's two-part episodes "Dark Frontier" (1999) and "Unimatrix Zero" (2000), but was portrayed by Susanna Thompson. Whether or not all of these appearances represent exactly the same Queen is never confirmed. In First Contact,
the Borg Queen is heard during a flashback of Picard's former
assimilation, implying that she was present during the events of "Best
of Both Worlds".
The Borg Queen is the focal point within the Borg collective
consciousness and a unique drone within the Collective, who brings
"order to chaos", referring to herself as "we" and "I" interchangeably.
In First Contact, the Queen's dialogue suggests she is an
expression of the Borg Collective's overall intelligence, not a
controller but the avatar of the entire Collective as an individual.
This sentiment is contradicted by Star Trek: Voyager, where she
is seen explicitly directing, commanding, and in one instance even
overriding the Collective. The introduction of the Queen radically
changed the canonical understanding of the Borg function, with the
authors of The Computers of Star Trek noting "It was a lot easier
for viewers to focus on a villain rather than a hive-mind that made
decisions based on the input of all its members." First Contact writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore
have defended the introduction of the Queen as a dramatic necessity,
noting on the film's DVD audio commentary that they had initially
written the film with drones, but then found that it was essential for
the main characters to have someone to interact with beyond mindless
drones.
Borg appearances
The Next Generation
The Borg first appear in the Star Trek: The Next Generation second-season episode "Q Who?", when the omnipotent life-form Q hurls the Enterprise-D across the galaxy to challenge Jean-Luc Picard's assertion that his crew is ready to face the galaxy's dangers and mysteries. The Enterprise crew is overwhelmed by the Borg, and Picard begs for and receives Q's help in returning the ship to its previous coordinates.
The Borg next appear in The Next Generation's third-season finale and fourth-season premiere, "The Best of Both Worlds". Picard is abducted and assimilated by the Borg and transformed into Locutus,
the Latin for "he who speaks". Picard's knowledge of Starfleet's
strengths and strategies is gained by the Collective, and the single
cube destroys the entire Starfleet armada at Wolf 359. The Enterprise
crew manages to capture Locutus, gain information through him which
allows them to destroy the cube, and then reverse the assimilation
process.
In the fifth-season episode "I, Borg", the Enterprise crew rescues an adolescent Borg they name "Hugh".
The crew faces the moral decision of whether or not to use Hugh (who
begins to develop a sense of independence as a result of a severed link
to the Collective) as a means of delivering a devastating computer virus
to the Borg, or return to the Borg with his individuality intact. They decide to return him without the virus, but in the sixth-season episode "Descent", a group of rogue Borg who had "assimilated" individuality through Hugh fall under the control of the android Lore,
the "older brother" of Data. Lore also corrupts Data through the use of
an "emotion chip", but in the end, Data's ethical subroutines are
restored and he manages to deactivate Lore. Data recovers the emotion
chip and the surviving Borg fall under the leadership of Hugh.
First Contact
The Borg return as the antagonists in the Next Generation film, Star Trek: First Contact.
After again failing to assimilate Earth by a direct assault in the year
2373, the Borg travel back in time to the year 2063 to try to stop Zefram Cochrane's first contact with the Vulcans, change the timeline, and erase Starfleet from existence. The Enterprise-E crew follows the Borg back in time and restores the original timeline. First Contact introduces the Borg Queen.
Deep Space Nine
The only screen appearance made on this series was in the premiere episode Emissary. Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) was an officer on the USS Saratoga, one of the ships in the Starfleet armada dispatched to confront the Borg at Wolf 359. The Saratoga
is destroyed by the Borg, killing Sisko's wife, Jennifer. During that
episode, Sisko's meeting with Picard is tense as he blames Picard for
the actions of Locutus. Throughout the remainder of the series,
references to the Borg are made occasionally, including the design of
their ship, USS Defiant, and the battle from Star Trek: First Contact being used as a plot point in Season 5 when Starfleet is spread too thin to deal with a Dominion incursion.
Voyager
The Borg make frequent appearances in Star Trek: Voyager, which takes place in the Delta Quadrant. The Borg are first seen by Voyager in the third-season episode "Blood Fever" in which Chakotay discovers the body of what the local humanoids refer to as "the Invaders"; which turns out to be the Borg. In "Scorpion", the Borg are engaged in a war of attrition against Species 8472,
whose biological defenses are a match for the Borg's nanoprobes. In one
of the few instances of the Borg negotiating, in exchange for safe
passage through Borg space, the Voyager crew devises a way to destroy the otherwise invulnerable Species 8472. A Borg drone, Seven of Nine, is dispatched to Voyager
to facilitate this arrangement. After successfully driving Species 8472
back into their fluidic space, Seven of Nine is severed from the
Collective and becomes a member of Voyager's crew. Seven of Nine's rediscovery of her individuality becomes a recurring theme throughout the series.
In the fifth season, we see the Borg in "Drone", where an advanced Borg drone is created when Seven of Nine's nanoprobes are fused with the Doctor's mobile emitter in a transporter accident, "Infinite Regress", and "Dark Frontier", where Voyager steals and uses a transwarp coil to travel 20,000 light-years before it burns out.
In the sixth season episode, "Collective", the crew of Voyager
encounter a damaged cube that is holding Tom Paris, Neelix, Harry Kim
and Chakotay hostage. With all the adult drones dead, the ship is run by
five Borg children who are saved by Voyager and deassimilated.
In the seventh season we see the Borg in "Q2", where Q's son brings Borg onto Voyager and in the series finale, "Endgame", where Admiral Janeway from the future tries to bring Voyager back to Earth using a Borg transwarp hub. During this episode, Janeway infects the Borg with a neurolytic pathogen which infects the collective and kills the Queen.
Enterprise
In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Regeneration", the remnants of the destroyed sphere from Star Trek: First Contact are discovered in the Arctic
along with two frozen drones. The Borg steal a research ship and send a
transmission toward the Delta Quadrant before they are destroyed.
Origin
The
origin of the Borg is never made clear, though they are portrayed as
having existed for hundreds of thousands of years (as attested by Guinan and the Borg Queen). In Star Trek: First Contact,
the Borg Queen merely states that the Borg were once much like
humanity, "flawed and weak", but gradually developed into a partially
synthetic species in an ongoing attempt to evolve and perfect
themselves.
In TNG's "Q Who?", Guinan mentions that the Borg are "made
up of organic and artificial life [...] which has been developing for
[...] thousands of centuries." In the later episode of Star Trek: Voyager, "Dragon's Teeth",
Gedrin, of the race the Vaadwaur, says that before he and his people
were put into suspended animation 892 years earlier (1482), the Borg had
assimilated only a few colonies in the Delta Quadrant and were
considered essentially a minor nuisance. Now awake in the 24th century,
he is amazed to see that the Borg control a vast area of the Delta
Quadrant. Seven of Nine comments that the Borg's collective memories of that time period are fragmentary, though it is never established why that is.
Non-canon origin stories
The Star Trek Encyclopedia speculates that a connection could exist between the Borg and V'ger, the vessel encountered in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This idea of a connection is advanced in William Shatner's novel The Return. The connection was also suggested in a letter included in Starlog
no. 160 (November 1990). The letter writer, Christopher Haviland, also
speculated that the original Borg drones were members of a race called
"the Preservers", which Spock had suggested in the original series episode "The Paradise Syndrome" might be responsible for why so many humanoids populate the galaxy. It was confirmed in the TNG episode "The Chase"
that an ancient species seeded hundreds, if not thousands of planets
with their DNA, creating the Humans, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and many more.
The extra section of the game Star Trek: Legacy contains the supposed "Origin of the Borg", which tells the story of V'ger being sucked into a black hole. V'ger
was found by a race of living machines which gave it a form suitable to
fulfilling its simplistic programming. Unable to determine who its
creator could be, the probe declared all carbon-based life an infestation of the creator's universe, leading to assimilation. From this, the Borg were created, as extensions of V'ger's purpose. Drones were made from those assimilated and merged into a collective consciousness.
The Borg Queen was created out of the necessity for a single unifying
voice. With thoughts and desires of her own, she was no longer bound to
serve V'ger.
In the graphic novel Star Trek: The Manga, the Borg
resulted from an experiment in medical nanotechnology gone wrong. An
alien species under threat of extinction by an incurable disease created
a repository satellite containing test subjects infused with body parts, organs, and DNA
of multiple species along with cybernetic enhancements put in place by
advanced medical technology. The satellite was maintained by
nanomachines, which also maintained the medical equipment on board. The
medical facility is parked in orbit by a black hole, and along with the relativistic
state of time around the black hole, allows long-term research to
continue at an accelerated time scale rather than in real-time speed. As
the medical facility deteriorates, so does the programming of the
nanomachines. The nanomachines began infusing themselves into the
patients, interpreting them as part of the satellite in need of repair.
Among the patients is the daughter of the head medical researcher of the
satellite. The satellite eventually falls apart in an encounter with an
away team from the Enterprise under the command of James T. Kirk. In the final moments of the satellite's destruction and the escape of the crew members of the Enterprise
with the patients, the subjects display qualities inherently resembling
the Borg: injection of nanomachines in a fashion similar to
assimilation, rapid adaptation to weaponry, and a hive mind
consciousness, as all the subjects begin following the whim of the
daughter. As succumbing to the disease was inevitable, and the corrupt
nanomachine programming infused itself into the bodies, the final image
of the page of the manga Borg origin is left with the daughter turned Borg Queen, stating, "Resistance is futile."
In the novel Lost Souls (the third book in the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy), the Borg are revealed to be the survivors of the Caeliar city Mantilis. Thrown across the galaxy in the Delta Quadrant and back in time to about 4500 BC by the destruction of Erigol at the climax of Gods of Night, the first book in the trilogy, a group of human survivors from the starship Columbia (NX-02)
and Caeliar scientists try to survive in a harsh arctic climate. Most
of the human survivors die of exposure, while several Caeliar are
absorbed into their race's gestalt to give life to the others in their
group mind. The Caeliar offer the remaining humans a merging of human
and Caeliar, to allow both groups to survive. The human survivors are
resistant and as time goes on, the Caeliar called Sedin becomes the sole
survivor of her group, her mental processes and her form both degrading
as time goes on. When the humans return to Sedin for help, she forces
them to merge with her, unwilling to allow herself to die when a union
can save her life. The forced merging of the humans and the mostly
decayed Caeliar results in the creation of the first Borg. The gestalt
group mind is perverted to become the collective, driven by Sedin's
desperate hunger and need to add the strength, technology, and
life-force of others to her own. Ironically, while the Caeliar
were–albeit accidentally–involved in the creation of the Borg, they also
provide the means to end it; in the 24th century, the Caeliar absorb
the entire Borg collective back into themselves, ending the cyborgs'
centuries-long reign of terror.
Other Non-canon media appearances
In the Star Trek novel Probe, which takes place following the events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,
the Borg are mentioned obliquely in communication with the whale-probe
as spacefaring "mites" (the whale-probe's term for humanoid races) who
traveled in cubical and spherical spacefaring vessels; the Borg
apparently attacked the whale-probe and damaged its memory in some
fashion before the events of the film.
In the Star Trek Game Star Trek: Legacy, the Borg are featured prominently throughout the Enterprise and TOS era's before becoming a major threat in the TNG
era. In unlockable motion-comics that are unlocked after completing
each era, it is revealed that the Vulcan T'Uerell experimented on Borg
corpses left behind from the Enterprise episode "Regeneration", and became assimilated. It wasn't until the end of the TOS
era that she made contact with the main Borg force and became a queen
before she was finally killed in a fleet of Starfleet, Romulan, and
Klingon ships led by Picard.
The Peter David novel Vendetta reveals that the planet killer weapon from the Original Series episode "The Doomsday Machine" is a prototype for a weapon against the Borg. David revisited this concept in a 2007 sequel novel, Before Dishonor, which features the Enterprise-E working with Spock and Seven of Nine to reactivate the original planet killer to stop the Borg.
In William Shatner's novel The Return, Spock is nearly assimilated by the Borg, but is saved because he mind-melded with V'ger,
an earlier form of the Borg, and they assume that he is already a Borg.
Using the information he subconsciously acquired in the meld, Spock is
able to lead a crew of Enterprise officers (consisting of the Enterprise-D crew, himself, Admiral McCoy, and the resurrected Kirk) in a Defiant-class
ship to destroy the Borg central node, severing all branches of the
Collective from each other and limiting their future threat.
In David Mack's novel trilogy Star Trek: Destiny, set over a year after Star Trek: Nemesis, the Borg stage a massive invasion of local space. Due to Kathryn Janeway crippling their infrastructure in "Endgame",
the Borg fear for their survival and attempt to exterminate the
Federation and its neighbors. They destroy the populations of numerous
Federation worlds before being dismantled by the Caeliar, the advanced
species that spawned them. The crews of the Enterprise-E, the Titan, and the Aventine
had made contact with the Caeliar, learned of their role in the
creation of the Borg, and convinced them to end the Borg once and for
all.
In the Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover comic, Assimilation2, the Borg join forces with the Cybermen. When the Cybermen subvert the Collective, the Enterprise-D crew work with the Eleventh Doctor and the Borg, restoring the Borg to full strength and erasing the Borg/Cyberman alliance from existence.
Writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens developed an unproduced idea for an episode which would have featured Alice Krige as a Starfleet medical technician who encounters the Borg and is assimilated – thereby becoming the Borg Queen.
In the video game Star Trek: Armada, the Borg invades a Dominion cloning facility to create a clone of Jean-Luc Picard to create a new Locutus.
In video games
The Borg appear as antagonists to the player in the following Star Trek videogame titles:
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Birth of the Federation
- Star Trek: A Final Unity
- Star Trek: Armada
- Star Trek: Armada II
- Star Trek: Away Team
- Star Trek: Borg
- Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force
- Star Trek: Elite Force II
- Star Trek: Starfleet Command III
- Star Trek: Encounters
- Star Trek: Invasion
- Star Trek: Legacy
- Star Trek: Conquest
- Star Trek Online
- Star Trek: Borg Contact
Activision planned to release Star Trek: Borg Assimilator, in which the player would play a Borg, but later canceled the game.
Critical reception and popular culture
The depiction of the Borg cube in "Q Who" garnered the episode an Emmy Award nomination.
TV Guide named the Borg #4 in their 2013 list of the 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time.
The phrase "resistance is futile" became prevalent in popular culture from its use in the television show TNG.
The Borg uttered the phrase in several Star Trek episodes and the film Star Trek: First Contact (which used the phrase as the tagline for the 1996 film). Patrick Stewart's delivery of the line, as Locutus, in "The Best of Both Worlds" was ranked no. 93 in TV Land's list of "The 100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catchphrases". It was used as the title for an episode of the TV series Dexter.
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