A History of the Borg

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ever find yourself wondering about the Star Trek multiverse its concepts and characters do you spend your time thinking about how deep science fiction goes hi this is Chex parties where we discuss all things sci-fi through the lens of Star Trek 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 the Borg hands down the most frightening adversary the Federation has ever faced they are a transhumanist nightmare that swarms to the galaxy disassembling entire cultures and civilizations in a quest for perfection perhaps they scare us like no other Trek villain can because they are a perverse representation of the worst aspects of humanity's relationship with technology a relationship that has always been critical to humanity's continued existence the Borg are an inverse reflection of ourselves there is little that can be done to discern the board's motivations and despite nearly 50 years of Star Trek very little is known of their origins or history however even noting the absence of a birthday and a hometown there is much that we can infer about Borg history by coming through Trek Canon get ready this episode deals entirely with the history of the Borg we don't know how the board started exactly whether they emerged through a willing exploration of the promise of technology or if the machines simply took over or some third option however we can infer that the board is a spacefaring civilization are about a thousand years old at least by the time species five six one eight becomes fully aware of them in case you're wondering species five six one eight is you buddy so how do we arrive at this age there are several lines of reasoning for this let's start from the beginning of what we know they're made up of organic and artificial life which has been developing for thousands of centuries guidance statement implies the Borg themselves are very old but what she's technically stating is that the board components are very old we can assume that the board might be a more recent combination of older previously existing machine and organic life a second more data-driven way to conclude that the Borg have a relatively recent origin is to rely on their species designation numbers which they use to label the different species they assimilate or contact we know just from these numbers that they've assimilated only thousands of species not tens or hundreds of thousands as their unrelenting drive might suggest in fact the highest designation number we've seen mentioned is species one zero zero to 6 which was encountered by the USS Voyager in the year twenty three seventy five easily assuming that the board would label their inductees in numerical order we can conclude that the Borg have assimilated at least 10,000 26 different species if the Borg were much older we would expect much higher species designation numbers perhaps numbering can be hundreds of thousands or even millions we'll return to these designation numbers in a moment a Borg age of about a thousand years also has a third more precise line of evidence your Borg how do you know that don't you recognize my people the vaadwaur the collective's memory from nine hundred years ago was fragmentary in this 24th century conversation Geron expresses a familiarity with the Borg that suggests a relatively lengthy relationship with this species yet suggests the Borg collective is not much older than 900 years allowing for the development of interstellar travel we round out the age of the Borg interstellar civilization at about a thousand years this places the vaadwaur contact with the Borg at around the late 1400s earth time how else can we infer this time period is the right one for the origin of the board my century they'd only assimilated a handful of systems it looks like they spread through the quadrant like a plague from the sound of it the Borg were really just starting out when they began encountering the vaadwaur so it is a rough estimate but 1000 years prior to the 23:00 70s or during Earth's 14th century seee seems to be about right for a Borg origin period now that we've established a relative birth date what else do we know about these delicate early years of the board well they were a minor power in the Delta Quadrant for a few centuries contending with the boudoir and the Turei and other local powers the Turei and an alliance of several species took down the dominant vaadwaur in the earth here 1484 which suggests the Borg were starting out in a hostile politically dynamic neighborhood of the Delta Quadrant the Borg fragmentary memory from 900 years ago reinforces the violent nature of this time and space for the board when a drone is damaged beyond repair it is discarded but if memories continue to exist in the collective consciousness to use a human term the Borg are immortal considering how Borg so-called immortality works in order to cause fragmentary memory within the collective you have to kill an awful lot of drones so this being the case the Borges early years appear to be quite traumatic one would assume it was a period of slow expansion and perhaps more than a few setbacks interestingly we can further infer a rate of early Borg expansion based on the species designation numbers we mentioned earlier note this conversation from the Voyager episode the Omega directive when did the Borg discover Omega 229 years ago it began with species 262 they were primitive but their oral history referred to a powerful substance which could burn the sky the Borg were intrigued which led them to species 263 so we know from this conversation that species 2 6 2 and 263 were assimilated in the Year 21:45 if species 1 0 0 to 6 represents the latest Borg and D in the 23 70s then we can calculate that in the 229 years between 21:45 and 2374 the Borg assimilated approximately 42 species per year for a total of about 9,000 751 species the board rate of expansion from the 14th century through to 21:45 was about 2 to 3 species per year so the Borg started out slowly gained speed through the centuries and exploded in the 22nd century it is also in the 700 year timeframe after the fall of the vaadwaur and 1484 and before the Borg discovery of the Omega particle and 21:45 that the Borg managed to gain access to transwarp conduits this was a huge deal for the Borg as it allowed them to appear on the doorstep of many civilizations that weren't necessarily adjacent to Borg space considering the drastic increase in assimilation rates Borg acquisition of transwarp conduits may have occurred closer to the 21:45 date the next point that we see the Borg on our timeline is in the Year 2063 as they travel back in time from the Year 23 73 to assimilate the earth they fail thanks to some heroic Starfleet personnel wreckage from this failed time travel assimilation plot lands in Earth's Arctic region where humans discover it in 2153 90 years later revived drones attempt to take advantage of the situation but are again stopped by Starfleet personnel sometime around 20 to 65 the Borg assimilate the el orion homeworld al orion refugees like Guinan Martis mazor and dr. tolian soren scatter out into the surrounding galaxies reaching Federation worlds like Earth around 2293 it is a injury from which the lrn race may never recover as a response to the allure and assimilation Starfleet must have begun a more formal probably classified investigation into the Borg around 2293 and very likely took note of the Borg drones discovered on earth back in 2153 in 23:53 human EXO biologists aaron and magnus hanson began a years long study of board behavior they carry their young daughter Annika with them aboard the USS Raven a small science vessel a few years into the study the Borg assimilated the entire family little Annika would go on to become seven of nine I do not enjoy crowds a junior in the collective wasn't that like a big crap in 2362 the USS Tom Baz assimilated near the border with the Romulan Empire indicating that the Borg were making incursions around the edges of Federation space other ships and outposts in this area of space are destroyed or assimilated through the year 23 64 in 2365 the USS enterprise-d courtesy of QED encounters the board formerly commander Shelby is brought aboard as a Borg expert in 23 66 and 67 during the next generations the best of both worlds indicating that Starfleet already had some prior information on the existence of the board thanks to the Arctic discovery of 2153 the L Orion refugee situation in 2293 and bold scientists like the Hansen's in 23 66 and 67 the Borg attempt their first invasion of Earth they fail but not before destroying 39 Federation starships this is known as the Battle of Wolf 359 in 2369 we learn that for various reasons the Borg can splinter into different groups the enterprise-d encounters one such group of disconnected Borg led for a short time by the Android lore another group of quasi X Borg are discovered by the USS Voyager in 20 373 disconnected from the hive mind also in 23 73 the Borg attempt their second invasion of Earth starting with the destruction of a colony on Ivor prime this attempt as you already know makes use of time travel back to 2000 63 in 23 73 74 a war breaks out between the Borg and species 8472 which nearly cripples the collective despite years of being defeated by Starfleet this is the first time we see a serious threat to Borg existence in 2377 Yuna matrix is zero a sort of collective unconscious that some Borg drones find that can visit mentally while regenerating is discovered and subsequently destroyed the you know matrix incident results in an active uprising from within the board which continues through the late 23 70s in 2378 a time-traveling Admiral Janeway appears from the Year 24:04 to save the USS Voyager from its original tragic timeline in the process Voyager destroys one of the board's primary population centers the Admirals plan also knocks out a major transwarp hub and infects the collective with a neurolytic pathogen which breaks down hive mind communication little is known of the Borg after this incident given how serious a threat the collective is to Federation existence this cannot be the end of the collective the Borg are resourceful if anything the Borg work while is a trek villain because they play on how intimately human existence depends on technology the collective is also a perfect opposite to the values the Federation holds most dear freedom diversity and individuality so you can certainly expect to see the Borg again at some point in the future of the Star Trek franchise they are a rich source of material allowing for a great discussion of the Star Trek philosophy until then thank you for watching please feel free to leave comments below and subscribe to the channel for future episodes in fact you have to 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Channel: Trekspertise

Views: 3,019,915

Rating: 4.8404803 out of 5

Keywords: Star Trek, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, Voyager, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, The original Series, Science Fiction, Film, Filmmaking, Borg (Character Species), Star Trek (Film), Seven Of Nine (Fictional Character), Locutus of Borg, scifi, USS Voyager (Fictional Setting), Enterprise (NX-01) (Fictional Setting), Short, Popular Culture (Media Genre), Trailer, Collective Consciousness, Hive Mind, History, Star Trek (Fictional Universe), Star Trek History, Documentary, Technology

Id: hNxPTk9gR54

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Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2015

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