The Rise, Fall, and Decay of the Borg (Lore Supercut)

in order to properly break down the board we need to understand the foil that is presented to them namely the United Federation of Planets when you break down these two factions they both have similar goals especially in later Trek well John Luke says humanity I think it's reasonable to assume that this was for the benefit of Lillie while contamination of the timeline has already occurred he doesn't need to go too far in depth and I think if you look in previous episodes you'll see that this stands true where he'll go so far but no farther ultimately what he's saying here is that the United Federation of Planets is trying to better itself to become superior the Borg have the exact same goal both entities are just going about it differently the Federation in theory at least is built on ideas and exploring what you think that everyone is free to pursue whatever they want to pursue that the height of humanity and the height of the Federation makes them want to make their lives better for the next generation the board similarly do want to improve they do this by assimilation to gain perfection to enslave and utilize the collective to attain what they want their entire culture is geared towards the same goals as the Federation they just do it in a different way ironically I think that we see initially that the boar's culture the way they do things is far superior to that of the Federation before we get into that dough let's break down the Federation up to the point of meeting the bore I've discussed this before but we know that the United Federation of Planets was founded by four core members the Tellarites and Dorian's Vulcans and humans of these core four worlds I don't think it's a stretch to say that at least three of them were conceited and arrogant and possibly it was probably all for though their superior attitudes would of course vary by degrees the progenitor organization that ultimately would form the Federation would not be without its own controversies but even with these issues from that a proliferation would occur it would turn into the Federation and this Federation would expand in all directions new species and worlds would join and create new technologies it would be a time of exploration and scientific endeavor the Federation and by extension Starfleet would look at the galaxy as something to be marveled at to be studied people would begin to focus solely on their own pursuits and then the ideals of the Federation would be challenged and that ideal would bill though ultimately Starfleet would win due to we'll go with improbable circumstances and after this victory it would move into an era of a Federation Klingon cold war though even with this cold war this would be the beginning of a quote unquote utopia species of all kinds would again come together to begin exploring again to search out new life and new civilizations to not just find answers to the questions they had but to find new questions and then the Federation would effectively win the Cold War I've talked about it quite a bit but the time after would see the United Federation of Planets entering into a very pacifistic stage now lor runner has called this time the golden age and that's not inaccurate in fact the reason that Starfleet stopped leaving itself a military it started having families on their ships and they were so pompous twas because they really had no true enemies the Klingons were now allies the Cardassians were a regional threat at best and the Romulans hadn't really poked their heads out and it's really easy to see an alliance ultimately forged in combat challenged and beaten to near annihilation to only come back and defeat that enemy that was going to destroy them would become apathetic after hundreds of years of having won they were sitting on their laurels and enjoying the good life you can even see such a pompous attitude with Picard challenging Q and this is ultimately where the Federation would meet its foil unlike the Federation the Borg consumed everything it came across effectively they were bred from war in conflict and we're in a constant state of fighting they didn't fall into any apathetic stage so where the Federation utilized its freedoms to become soft the board didn't I tell you what let's get into at least a little bit the encounter between the Borg and the enterprise the encounter between the enterprise and the board would change the Federation forever but here's a question did Q send the enterprise to an older board cube that the enterprise would have an easier time with so they could survive and go back and tell the rest of the Federation bonus question do you think the confrontation changed the board when the enterprise first meets the cube the board began dissecting the galaxy-class ship for information and causing damage to it they learn about the Federation and what it has achieved and according to Q at least they only want the ship this opens up some interesting questions and I intend to break down this cube specifically in the next video however I do question how the board operated beforehand did humanity and the Federation change them we do know that they did already have assimilation technology and transwarp gates and were able to travel via a transwarp but it seems like this ship was different or at least the way they operated was different I don't know what do you guys think let me know in the comments below [Music] in the last episode we discussed how the Federation and the board were basically foils of each other both factions wanted to be more than the sum of their parts to improve and help make the universe a better place they just had drastically different ways of going about it well the Borg were constantly in the midst of conflict attempting to assimilate and change everyone they meet or at least their technology well we'll get into that in a minute the Federation wanted to explore and analyze their own individuality unfortunately for the Federation when Starfleet had finally pushed back all of its enemies those within Starfleet and the ufp became apathetic they began exploring further into the galaxy but not preparing for what was out there for what was to come in short Starfleet was woefully unprepared for what they would bump up against the fact that the Federation had become unchallenged meant that they would become pompous and arrogant Starfleet would continue to expand but again not prepare for what they were expanding into they would move too far too fast however in the TNG episode Q who all of that would change thanks to Q the enterprise-d would be pushed well beyond the borders of the Federation well past where Starfleet had already explored this would ensure that the first well quote-unquote first interaction between the Federation and the board would occur the conflict between the enterprise-d and the Borg cube would be interesting to say the least the cube that the enterprise would come across would not act entirely consistent with what we see in future iterations of the Borg it's very important to note that we do have some indication that the Borg were already aware of both the Federation and the Romulans long before this encounter as I had stated q had pushed the enterprise-d so far that it would take over two years for them to return back to Federation territory deciding to do some exploring first because Picard opted to be an idiot instead of get his people home the enterprise comes across a planet that appeared to have some form of civilization however most of this civilization structures have been consumed in patterns consistent with what was happening along the Romulan neutral zone it's possible that Borg had begun scouting Federation space after receiving the signal they would have gotten in Star Trek enterprises regeneration given that there wasn't more of a push against either government at this it's likely that the board had not found neither the Federation nor the Romulans worthy of assimilation or again at least their technology worthy of assimilation similar to how the board felt about the Kazon initially however after scouting the Federation finding them lacking all of a sudden a Starfleet vessel is seven thousand light-years away from where it should be this would be an amazing jump in propulsion technology it was also something that the board weren't aware of the Federation having capabilities of when they were scouting the territory so after detecting the Starfleet ship a cube is assigned to investigate why it was so far away from Federation space this would also explain why the Borg which beam onto the enterprise while it shields are up by the by seemed to only focus on the engines of the enterprise they are attempting to figure out how the galaxy-class starship would have gotten so far from home after scanning the ship and its computer systems the Borg still aren't able to determine how the vessel had got there so the collective decides they will assimilate the ship in an attempt to try to better understand how this could have occurred as stated the differences in firepower are astronomical while the initial attack by the enterprise D is highly effective against the Borg the ship would ultimately begin to repair itself after this we see no weapon utilized by the enterprise deed that is effective against the Borg cube it's clear that Starfleet was absolutely no match for the Borg collective and then when the board were about to completely assimilate the ship Q saves the enterprise and it disappears again not only does this vessel appear to have technology that the board can't detect but seems to be far superior to that of what the board can do themselves in short the Borg had already known about Starfleet and now we had a ship in technology that was completely counter to everything they knew in my last episode I asked if Starfleet had changed the Borg I wonder if the answer to that question is yes the anti tracker who has his own series on the Borg it'll be in the description below you should check it out basically agrees with this assumption that the Borg didn't really assimilate people until the interaction with the enterprise-d this would make some amount of sense when you think about it even if we take regeneration into account the Borg receive a message from an unknown ship our given coordinates to an unknown world for some reason and begin investigating that area of space they start scooping up several different colonies the Romulans and the Federation and don't find any technology really worthy of their time and then the enterprise-d appears out of nowhere not only do they now see a propulsion system that they didn't know existed but also somehow the Federation had kept it a secret from them so the board get curious obviously they aren't able to gain the knowledge they need from the tech itself so they do something that they rarely did they begin assimilating the people of the civilizations they capture Picard and assimilate him utilizing more antiquated techniques of the time and discovered that the Federation doesn't possess the propulsion systems they thought this would mean that they either find out about the queue at this time or learn more about the species however even though they didn't find the propulsion systems they wanted the mentality of the Borg was already forever changed they now see the advantages to not only assimilating technology but the people in mass this is where we begin to see them use the more advanced nano probe technology which I still hold may have been something they got from Federation citizens as I stated before the discussions have always centered around the Federation how this changed them and how Wolf 359 was a wake-up call but I'm beginning to think that the interactions went both ways that it changed the Borg forever as well [Music] in the last video we discussed how the Borg collective might have been fundamentally changed by the Federation whether you believe in this theory or not it's undeniable that we see a change in the Borg from their presence in the next generation to that of Voyager the change can be so drastic that many will just pick and choose what board behavior type they like and get upset when you bring up other instances of them acting contradictory I personally think that these changes can be explained simply by the assimilation process it would make sense that if the Borg rarely assimilated and then began to assimilate in mass that they would change drastically if we assume that they always assimilated in Mass then these changes still makes sense as they move towards quote-unquote perfection change would take place additionally the differences in the board that we see could also be attributed to the inadequacy of Starfleet technology when the enterprise-d first encounters the Borg they detect no weapons and no life-forms however this could either be due to this specific Borg cube or Starfleet Tech unable to distinguish anything at that point the first few encounters with the Borg would show them to be a type of cybernetic life-form that acted in tandem one mind one voice they appeared to be interconnected with the ship not on the ship but a part of the ship this would allow several advantages including instantaneous decision-making and quick ship movement as a couple of examples the board would also be able to adapt to most any type of technology they encountered including weapons that once used would become ineffective the Borg cube at least the one they first encounter would also be able to repair itself the Borg in the beginning were very alien to anything the Federation had encountered the collective didn't care about diplomacy nor did they really care about any one thing specifically they just consumed as discussed in the last episode the Borg became very intrigued with the Federation after a Starfleet ship somehow was able to appear out of nowhere and then escaped after being captured with no explanation how they possessed such advanced technology this led the board to decide the assimilation of the Federation was necessary before they would assimilate earth and ultimately the Federation the Borg opted to do something very peculiar they would chase the enterprise to assimilate it nor to destroy it but to capture one person jean-luc Picard for anyone who doesn't like my theory that the Federation changed the Borg rewatched best of both worlds in this episode they specifically state that the board do not assimilate individuals that they assimilate civilizations that this was something new now again I could be wrong but this is a strong piece of evidence that they did not go after or assimilate specific people again the board are acting inconsistent with everything we've seen before and even what we would see in the future in some instances now it's possible that the Borg identified Captain Picard of the enterprise and theorized he above all else would be able to explain how the enterprise-d was able to escape like it did once Picard was assimilated they determined that it was Q that did it and thus decided just to continue on into the Federation which would lead to the encounter at Wolf 359 the Battle of Wolf 359 was one of the most terrifying points for the Federation even more perplexing as the Borg mindset when you look at how the collective acts in the battle again it's truly alien it's truly terrifying it's scary how much the Borg lack any concern or care the collective in this scenario were simply following a computerized objective assimilate earth and then the Federation they didn't care about the individual past Picard just the whole it was a math equation when you look at the Battle of Wolf 359 itself it's terrifying the board just attacked the ships to get them out of the way they don't care about the people that they're hurting the extreme emotion of the Federation officers juxtaposed at the callousness of the board is really good writing and then when we look at other instances when the enterprise personnel or others beam aboard the Borg cube they are found by a computer program to be insignificant and thus ignored they only become a threat and the board only care when they begin attacking systems on the board cube causing damage to the ship the board don't care about you they only care about the whole their laser focused and they only care about what some algorithm tells them to everything else is insignificant the loss of life and the destruction of everything you hold dear home your family your friends isn't a part of their program and thus ignored however confusingly they still collect their dead and still seem to care on some superficial level about their own if one of the drones at the board cube was hurt or in distress they would either stop what they are doing or travel around the universe to find them it mattered what happened to the individual even if the individual didn't matter the board was a collective a-hole what was impacted - one impacted them all somehow the Borg lacked any humanity but seemed to be human when it came to their own drones at least from what can be seen from the standpoint of the Federation during this period which again makes them both confusing and scary in my opinion however I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the various retcons that we observed from the movie first contact and that a Voyager while we never see her the Queen would be a part of the board queue playing a vital role in attempting to assimilate earth even though Picard talks to the collective and not her in the actual episode we also have assimilated crew from Wolf 359 even though the enterprise-d comes in and their sensors say that everyone is dead because that makes sense now I guess if I want to be fair it's possible that there were Borg survivors that had been assimilated on various ships at this point we know that the Federation sensors had problems - turning board live signs at this stage additionally it's possible that right after the Battle of Wolf 359 the Borg launched a sphere with the Queen on it making sense why she wasn't on the queue even if Jean Luc Picard says she's on the cube in the movie we know at least one ship wasn't destroyed on Starfleet side so it's also possible that this ship was assimilated and sent back to the Delta Quadrant for study as stated the Borg cube would be defeated by the enterprise when jean-luc Picard is captured and thus the Borg cube cares about what's happening to one of their own after the collective was defeated by the enterprise-d the next time we see the Borg is an interaction with a drone named Hugh after finding a downed Borg ship there was one survivor this survivors name would be known as wait for it Hugh if you're interested in giving your opinion on whether Picard should have sent a virus back with you or not click in the top right hand corner where we put him on trial anyway back to the at Han he was sit back with his individuality intact now here's an interesting problem when Hugh returned he caused issues within the bore even causing a schism he brought disorder to unity however what's interesting about this well why didn't a card bring disorder to unity as well so the Borg have certain measures in place to remove individuality from a newly assimilated Borg but not a previous one if that's true why didn't we see this issue in the Voyager episode survival instinct this is where seven and three other Borg were freed they started having their own individuality again seven being only a little girl when she was assimilated only ever knew the Borg and so she utilized Borg tech to force the others back into the collective which by the way is just Savage seven but still we never see any issues when it comes to that now it's possible that after hue measures were taken but that just seems weird unless you take my theory where the Federation changed them and they began assimilating and mass again and thus had to worry about these measures I don't know what are your guys's thoughts [Music] in the last few episodes I discussed how the board may have been changed by the Federation Borg interactions the Battle of wool 359 and a little bit about you this video will be more focused on Hugh and his rebellion for those who don't remember he was a survivor from a crash of a Borg vessel that was found by the Enterprise crew thanks to the power of stupidity Picard decided not to send Hugh back with a virus that would have saved millions of lives he thought that sending Hugh back as an individual might have been enough we catch up with you in the TNG episode descent part 2 as Picard predicted the dialogue of the episode does indicate that the individuality of Hugh did indeed impact the Borg that his individuality was like a virus that spread viciously though if I'm honest dialogue is confusing as we aren't really sure if it was the entirety of the collective or just his cube at least not in the beginning Hugh discusses how the Borg were all one voice smooth and flowing but with his return the voices began to have disunity again it's interesting that when they assimilate Picard this doesn't happen but a reintegrated Borg comes back and all of a sudden it's an issue this discordance would allow lore not me but this one to dominate a small amount of Borg turn them into slaves once again ironically at the beginning the dialogue would make you think that it was most all of the board even though it doesn't seem to be the case with how many Borg we see on screen an ultimately dialogue will lead us to believe that was only a few board however looking at the ones that were impacted the Borg at least the ones with Hugh were completely lost after his return Borg would fight bore some starving to death as they shut themselves down completely and then when lore that one not me offered a single voice for them to obey they followed his hope of salvation also for anyone who hasn't I would suggest re watching the entire TNG two-parter descent and descent part two it's curious to see how the board act in these episodes and several scenes you can see the Borg interacting with each other talking to each other and doing tasks we would expect to see other species doing they've been completely individualized and again during these scenes a lot of the dialogue would seem to indicate that it was the Borg in their entirety that was impacted that is until the end when it's made clear it was just the specific Borg if I had to guess I would probably think that the cube that Hugh was on was corrupting the collective realizing what was going on cut them off those that survived were found by lure him not me and they assimilated a different ship this would explain why the vessel encountered by Enterprise was so different and didn't match known configurations of the collective and is never seen again it's also possible that the individuality perhaps spread to the Borg in this specific quadrant this would explain why the Borg don't have any major presence within the Alpha and Beta quadrants after this episode the Borg stopped the spread of individuality into the Delta Quadrant by cutting off the alpha and beta quadrants honestly I think they really missed an opportunity here if you're going to have a Borg Queen and honestly why God why but if you were going to have one you could have had her come or appear as a part of what happened to Hugh don't ever always exist like we see in first contact the way you bring in some continuity and a callback to that episode is to make her a requirement to bring unity back to disunity order back to chaos it would have been fun to see how cute intricately changed the Borg but I don't know I just break the stuff down I don't write for CBS however focusing back on Hugh and the stragglers lure him not me would bring order to chaos unfortunately it would be at a cost as he began to experiment on the Borg who trusts him Hugh and many of the others would ultimately rebel and break free of Moore's mecha nations in doing so they would also help the USS enterprise-d and liberating their captured crew after we see the enterprise-d leaving there is no alpha Canon on what occurred to Hugh and his Borg though I can already hear the typing for those who have played Star Trek online or have read several book explains as I speak again it's never really been addressed but some of the popular beta Canon includes Hugh and company joining the cooperative in the Delta Quadrant and other of lore has him even forming his own nation and helping to heal those who are terminally ill turning them into independent Borg if they wanted to and waging a war against the collective all interesting ways for them to go that I would love to see an alpha canon but again from an alpha canon perspective what I find curious is that Starfleet didn't take advantage of this monumental opportunity you have an end borge that can't go back to the collective and need help you're telling me that Starfleet wouldn't reach out in hopes of learning about board technology and trade for helping these new people become a nation this was a definitive way that Starfleet could have ensured that they knew how to defend against a Borg attack but alas they just left them to their fate no other communications that we are aware of as the next video will lead into the first contact movie I'm going to take a moment to address a theory that's interesting blood has some contradictions in it there is a theory that the Borg are farming the Federation basically they send a Cuban attempting to assimilate earth Starfleet destroys it and then the Federation massively innovates to create even better technology the Borg then come in and assimilate the new tech rents repeat when you look at the face of it it makes some sense it would certainly explain why the Borg only send one bored Cuban at a time and why they don't just go all in to win this war somewhat theorized that since the Borg don't know how to research that they would allow the Federation to do the work for them putting aside that we see the Borg innovate and research before that diggable Voyager episode that says they don't the inability to do research seems like a major flaw for an entity that wants to become perfect and bring unity to the galaxy but that's another conversation for another video so as I was saying the theory that the Borg send in ships to make the Federation freak out and create a better technology is interesting but faulty if it were true what's being done with the Federation is never observed with other species you can't tell me there aren't other species like the Federation they could be doing this too in the Delta Quadrant now you could say that we don't see the whole of the Borg and that's fair enough but by that logic we also don't see the Borg Queen riding a unicorn as she conquers middle-earth only to be stopped by gal rod in theory farming technology could be something that is done to sufficiently advanced enough species until they reach a specific point that the Borg feel that they might become a threat I think this is folly and the board would notice it as it does give the species a chance to evolve to a point they can defeat the Borg but again it's possible another hole in the series is when you consider time travel and first contact the board utilized time travel to go back in time and assimilate earth changing the whole of history the only counter to this is basically a paradox so you're telling me the board go back in time knowing the enterprise-e will follow them so again they go back in time so that they are followed are defeated by the Enterprise crew to have a few of the Borg survive the enterprising returns with the time travel technology giving Starfleet the ability to travel through time with no issue and the board now know this because the Borg that survives in a message to the cube in the past that the enterprise-d hasn't met yet letting them know that the Federation exists and they will have time travel technology even though they don't have it right now and so you need to go forward and pretend to assimilate them even though you haven't because you need first contact happen in order for them to get time travel technology which we know the Borg do gain time travel technology in a Voyager episode I mean it's so simple and definitely not convoluted ultimately as stated I don't think the board farming theory holds weight additionally think we had a missed opportunity with Hugh and his boar but those are my thoughts what are yours let me know in the comments below [Music] the first contact encounter with the collective is probably the most stunning visualization that we see of the Borg and definitely the most terrifying unfortunately I do feel the story elements of the Borg here bring them down to below the story-writing standards of best of both worlds but it's still a good piece of lore and a great movie it's interesting to look at the Battle of sector 0:01 we learn a lot more about both the board and Starfleet technology at the Battle of Wolf 359 Starfleet was absolutely no threat to the Borg Starfleet ships were tossed aside and destroyed like they were nothing we see a significant change during the Battle of sector 0:01 however during the battle we see that Starfleet weaponry is very effective against the Borg causing extreme damage to the board cube itself this is not to say that the collective is not still superior indeed the cube is able to break through at least one if not two to three blockades made by Starfleet however the Federation has had time to prepare for just this encounter we know that Starfleet has increased their weapon capabilities by dialogue found and best of both worlds as well as dialogue found in the Voyager episode dreadnought which did air and occur in continuity before the events of the Battle of sector 0:01 in the Voyager episode it is stated that there has been significant increases in torpedo technology additionally we know that during this time the federation has been building up for their confrontation with the Dominion when the Dominion is first encountered their ships easily bypassed the shielding of both space stations and galaxy-class starships however by the time of the Dominion War the weapons and defenses have been upgraded to at least be able to withstand an initial attack by the Dominion themselves another example can be seen in the ds9 episode Paradise Lost again this episode occurs before the Battle of sector 0:01 and includes an Excelsior class ship that is significantly upgraded with advanced weapons and defenses so we see that Starfleet is now at least at this juncture able to upgrade its ships and weapons to a point where they cause significant damage to Borg ships at least in large numbers in later episodes of Voyager we also find out that an intrepid class vessel is the match of a Borg sphere so while taking all of that into account and looking at the battle the Borg cube is ultimately heavily damaged and a Borg sphere is launched to escape the impending destruction here's a thought a lot of people assume that the use of the sphere was plan eight that they wanted to get close enough to earth to launch and then assimilate earth in the past some theorize that it was a back-up plan that it was just in case the first failed just a run-of-the-mill plan B however what if instead of just normal operations it was a desperate ploy by the Borg after realizing that Starfleet had been able to gain significantly in technology far more than they thought it was decided to attempt to assimilate earth in the past in order to stop this level of technology from being gained another explanation which is far more plausible in my opinion is that the board did this to complete the loop that they were in and ensure that the Borg would ultimately find the Federation the attack on sector 0:01 was never to actually assimilate earth nor the enterprise they needed to send a signal back to the collective in the past to begin making its way to earth in the Alpha Quadrant this would explain them stopping at Dec 11 on Enterprise II now in theory you could argue that this would be accomplished by assimilating the entirety of the enterprise II however it is possible that the Borg are aware at some level at least of the future Starfleet like entity that monitors time as well as Q and thus are very selective when they use time travel and how far they'll go once in the past doing this to prevent any type of temporal war they would not be able to win against entities far superior than they are honestly I don't feel that this explanation is their tide it does leave some lingering questions but it is a possibility it would appear to explain how the Borg were sloppy and their assimilation of the enterprise however regardless of what the real reasoning is the battle for the enterprise e would occur during this battle the crew of the enterprise er largely assimilated and utilized to attack and either kill or assimilate their fellow crewmates though I'll be honest the battle for the enterprise e can be pretty lackluster ultimately the Borg would assimilate from engineering up to Dec 11 and stop they would utilize the technology to begin an attempt to sabotage that of first contact with the Vulcans and contact the Borg in the Alpha Quadrant even though I describe this as a battle the Borg interactions are consistent with what we've seen in the past the drones do not attack and once they perceive an imminent threat or need a use for those that are present the largest addition to the lore would be that of the Queen I've spoke before but this would be where she had her debut based on the information we gather the Queen has always existed as a part of the collective as far as humanity is concerned including being on the board cube at the Battle of Wolf 359 the entire dialogue of the Queen is so abstract that you can really make it out to be whatever you want it to be she never really answers a question in a way that has anything substantive from what we see in first contact it would appear that she has some presence on every ship or at least the cubes there are a lot of discussions and theories on whether she controls the Borg or is just a part of the collective to some degree in the Star Trek Voyager series we see her have substantial power over the board there are even interactions with her and the Borg as a collective where they are about to do an action and she counter man's it again whether this is due to her being a different processor working in tandem or a controlling hierarch in some form is unknown to be fair there are a lot of beta cannon resources including what we see on Star Trek online and novels and film shorts now these are interesting theories and I would love for Star Trek Canon to pick one of them up and go with it if they will is a different story of course but looking at the battle for the enterprise-e itself the board would ultimately fail and the enterprise II would return back to their timeline with advanced information on the Borg and more technology I'll discuss the implications of that in a future video but ultimately first contact added a lot of visual deadliness to the Borg and open up some interesting conspiracy theories but failed to really deliver on anything substantial for lore of the board it honestly added more questions than it answered but those are my thoughts what are yours [Music] my main problem with the Borg in the Star Trek Enterprise regeneration episode is that it felt like they tried to really shoehorn the collective in I get why execs would want to but unfortunately as with any prequels when you try to explain something happening before it logically could or would happen you have issues the premise of the Borg being on earth that this time is pretty simple the debris from the Borg sphere landed on earth after it was destroyed by the enterprise-e I honestly have a few issues with this from what we know of Picard he has always been very meticulous about preserving the timeline we specifically see him giving orders for his crew to stay out of history's way in the very movie that the spheres destroyed additionally in yesterday's Enterprise Picard is not willing to give advanced technology to the enterprise see in a timeline where Starfleet is losing a war and it is a bleak outcome for the Federation it seems baffling to me that Picard would not attempt to recover or destroy all of the Borg sphere the centres of the enterprise still work we see this when the Queen attempts to destroy the Phoenix there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to detect and either recover or destroy the vessel however for whatever reason Picard would fail to ensure that all of the Borg components are removed and Borg technology would survive into the events of Star Trek Enterprise I've already talked about this in a video but it does bring up some pretty stout questions including why was the wreckage site forgotten by Starfleet if it wasn't forgotten then what happened to all of the technology beyond just the Borg drones present there was a ton of metal alloys and computer components left over all from the 24th century we know via dialog that a lot of this analysis was sent back to Starfleet Command however even with this advantage we see no indication that this tech was utilized or even improved upon some have tried to theorize that the Borg destroyed the wreckage but we have no real indication of that they appeared to just want to get the hell out of Dodge it's possible that section 31 was able to recover the wreckage and keep the advanced technology to themselves as I've stated before I talked about this in another video and it would explain how section 31 seems to be ahead of even Starfleet but that's still convenient to me and yes before anyone talks about section 31 they were a part of the original United Earth Star Fleet they didn't come after Ari watched the series another issue that I just find funny would be that the scientists attempted to carbon date the metal and successfully determine that the metal is over a hundred years old problem is carbon dating is specific to organic materials and related to earth specifically in the way we use it thus the materials would have had to be made of some kind of organic material and then that material would have had to consume animals on earth at some point so unless the Borg started scooping up animals from Earth in the 24th century created the sphere with it then crash-landed that sphere back on earth there's no way the scientists could have utilized carbon dating specifically to determine how old the ship was honestly it's probably no wonder that these people were assigned to the Antarctic to take care of this hellhole mission another problem would be that a lot of the data was sent back to Starfleet they specifically say that they sent some of it already back to Starfleet this again could be explained by section 31 or perhaps the data being over 100 years old by the time of the events of q.who it's somehow forgotten but I'll talk about that a little bit later the main issue I have with the episode is that it's dealing with the Borg this means in order for the board to be there and to make sense they have to choose between it making sense within the series or making sense within the franchise they chose the series I honestly don't mind the actions of Archer and think the crew of the NX no.1 Enterprise make reasonable decisions and assumptions it's just that we're dealing with the Borg specifically where continuity problems come in had they been dealing with another organism like the Borg everything would have been fine I honestly think it's a good episode on that topic in the episode the scientists that think you can use carbon dating on things that weren't present on earth are assimilated and their ship is additionally captured the in EXO one Enterprise is dispatched to save the crew and high jinks are abound ultimately the board do act similar to how they're seen and best of both worlds and first contact with only a few minor issues namely the Borg assimilation process is much slower than what is generally seen in other episodes and movies well it's generally slower SF debris breaks down why the assimilation process might be so slow in his review of the episode but there are some plausible theories the most reasonable is that the Borg were isolated in frozen for over 100 years the fact that they had to regenerate themselves into life would mean that probably weakened in their ability to assimilate is thus impact though this is highly inconsistent sometimes they can assimilate quickly sometimes not so much honestly the most interesting part of this entire episode is the assimilation of the United earth vessel every time we see it it has enhanced systems including additions such as weapons and the warp engines these systems are constantly being upgraded even pushed to what the United Earth thinks is possible additionally a theory that I discussed in earlier episodes is that most Ford vessels originally started out as assimilated ships this episode seems to suggest that that theory has some merit every time this vessel is seen again it becomes more modular moving into a specific shape it's possible that the ship would have become a sphere or even a board cube had it been allowed to continue ultimately the crew of the in xo1 Enterprise would defeat ie destroy the Borg vessel the Borg on the ship would be able to send a signal giving the location of Earth before this occurs however again I've discussed this in previous episodes but it does tie in to the theory that the Borg did all of this on purpose in order to ensure that the Borg are aware of the Federation and start moving to where earth is to encounter the enterprise-d they attack sector zero zero one fail in that attack go back in time allow the enterprise to destroy the sphere which ensures that the board will then be able to send a message back to themselves in the past some have tried to theorize that this event creates a new timeline and that's everything we see isn't prime and utilize some flimsy arguments which is ironic because in other videos they'll say that they shouldn't add to what's not in Canon to discuss our points when we're having a debate it's really quite simple what's shown on screen is the prime timeline the events that occur before or after ensure that the timeline we encounter is prime yes dear Timmy the enterprise-d and the enterprise-e exists in the exact same prime timeline the Borg sending the message and regeneration doesn't change the timeline because they always would send it in the prime timeline in those events the Borg were already on their way towards Earth because they were alerted and always would be alerted again time travel has been inconsistent at best on track but this is clearly what is portrayed on screen Meadows always feel free to argue with and headcanon would ever you prefer the last piece of discussion is lack of knowledge the Federation and Starfleet appear to have on the Borg at least when they first quote-unquote meet aboard cube this is further complicated with the series Voyager that has scientists with a small child following a Borg cube well the explanation for this is sketchy the best one I think I found that fits together is that the Borg were considered a one-off experience that occurred only to the United Earth and wasn't something that most other species had to deal with you then add the experiences of other species like the bynarr that will remove parts of the brain and put in technology in small babies and it's something that wouldn't be on the forefront of everyone's mind while it would be in the periphery with even scientists theorizing about the Borg perhaps even some crazies going off with their children as we discussed they probably didn't take it seriously and then you would have the events of QED who the United Earth and Starfleet realized that they were aware of this species for over a hundred years and have done nothing to defend against them it's possible if not likely that Starfleet we classify this information and only allow those who were working on fighting them to know directly about the attack that occurred in the past this would explain why Picard had no idea who they were why they were so unprepared and how they didn't know how to counteract what the Borg were doing and it is also possible that there were already attempts to counteract the nanotechnology but given how ill-prepared the ships were they wouldn't be able to use it because everyone else would be killed due to the fact that the ships could not defend against a board cube given the amount of outrage the populace would have if it was ever known that Starfleet knew about this before the war this would explain why we have our cover-up like anything else this doesn't answer all of the questions but it's an interesting thought I don't know what are your ideas let me know in the comments below [Music] in this discussion there will be three elements involving the war three integral parts you have the Borg collective species 8472 and Starfleet in the form of USS Voyager I won't be breaking down the play-by-play of the Voyager episodes scorpion 1 and 2 though no worries I intend to come back and open up that jar of pickles at some point for now though if you want to see a bit of a synopsis of that entire ordeal I have an older video you can click in the top right hand corner or look at it in the description below it's a bit of an older video and I intend to redo it at some point but it's a good primer ultimately the Borg species 8472 war began with a Borg incursion into what is deemed fluidic space the Borg had become aware of species 8472 and additionally had found a way to penetrate their space the Borg deciding they were Starfleet for a moment swarmed fluidic space like they own the place and again showing that they have more in common with Starfleet than either side really realized they got the living hell beat out of them the Borg collective was pushed all the way back into the Delta Quadrant while the board may have started the war species 8472 was determined to end it the collective was being utterly destroyed Borg weapons weren't wholly ineffective being able to disable or destroy a species 8472 ship with enough time but ultimately the collective was outmatched this does raise a question though I make jokes and I do find the Borg to be egotistical but they have never come across as just utterly stupid when the Borg first encountered the enterprise-d they investigate it scan it try to understand it first they look at his technology however when dealing with a species they know a fraction about and consider that species to be some form of evolutionary perfection they just try to Zerg it depending on which Borg mythos you want to go with the Borg either study the problem themselves or assimilate species to study anything that they don't understand an outright attack against the species they clearly had very little idea of doesn't seem to fit their mo and I get it some say they simply didn't understand the magnitude of the species they were attacking which is fair enough but remember that they considered this species to be perfect it seems like they wouldn't underestimate them to the degree that we see they do they're way underestimate them they would there have been some interesting theories that this war is what precipitated both the events of first contact and regeneration that with the war with species 8472 the assimilation of the Alpha Quadrant and earth would be vital to winning that war it would make sense that only one Borg cube would be sent the rest focused on trying to slow down species 8472 however I find it unlikely if they truly need to assimilate the Alpha Quadrant it would make more sense to send at least two or three cubes while this would be a loss of ships to the collective during the war it certainly wouldn't be substantial additionally the gaining cubes in personnel would more than make up for it either way back to the Delta Quadrant it would appear this would be the end for the Borg if not for Starfleet to the rescue well the Borg species 8472 war was raging the USS discovery entered the edges of Borg space however they identified a swath of territory and Borg space that had no Borg activity and went all the way through the Borg collective space being scientists with a mission to ask the question why and explore they of course wouldn't inquire even internally that's why the Borg wouldn't be in this area of space thinking things through is for the weak after all while making an approach to the passageway 15 board cubes will come out of transwarp and completely bypassed them this of course would confuse the Voyager crew at this point they should all be bored finding this interesting they would begin to explore and finally ask questions and would come across these same cubes utterly destroyed and identify an alien ship all right now for all of those of you who believe that Janeway was right in interfering and siding with the Borg I want you to consider this very first interaction species 8472 is minding their own business and then all of a sudden their space is invaded by this hostile species species 8472 pushes them back and then invades the space of that species in a counter-attack in one of these battles a species 8472 scout is looking into a board cubed for whatever purpose all of a sudden another starship of unidentified origin shows up a ship by the name of USS Voyager this ship doesn't attack the board doesn't keep going about its own business know it it stops and begins scanning they beam aboard the Borg vessel that species 8472 is on what do they do from there do they begin salvaging Borg tech or killing Borg no in fact they leave the Borg alone they even lower their weapons when they see a Borg drone this new possible threat even begins to download information from a Borg node showing a knowledge of the Borg and possible kinship at the same time soldiers board the vessel of species 8472 they take scans from the inside to gain knowledge of the ship and get information when the soldiers see a Borg drone that has been killed or is being hurt they retreat so again put yourself in their mind space you're fighting the Borg collective a Starfleet ship shows up and by all appearances seems to either be neutral or helping the Borg additionally they're more interested in gaining information on you than your enemy what's that look like to you and then these soldiers leave your ship and of course you attack them because why the hell wouldn't you this is all hostile actions you're at war and it appears that these people are allies and then when we look at what happens next Voyager attempts to get the hell out of Dodge and what does species 8472 do they power their weapons sure fire once and miss and then get a direct hit a direct hit and while damaging Voyager do not destroy it these ships eat Borg cubes for lunch every piece of dialogue in everything in this episode says that a species 8472 ship is far more advanced than that of Voyager and the Borg and you're telling me that Voyager could survive a direct shot it makes more sense that species 8472 wasn't sure who this new contender was and just wanted to scare them off which would make sense if you're at war with one species and wanted to destroy that species and then just be about your business scare off anyone else who wants to get in the middle of something they have no business being in the middle of but then if we looked at all of this and took it in context you'd have to admit that Janeway and her crew did something wrong and God knows we can't do that which is probably why the person who disagrees with me watches discovery isn't it snowflake okay picking unnecessary fights aside there's no connection there I was just making a joke this seriously makes no sense if you assume eight four seven two to destroy the entire galaxy from everything I can see in the battle itself species 8472 didn't know the intent of Voyager saw that they seemed to ignore the Borg and only focus on the ships of 8472 so 8472 acted overtly hostile angry and gave a stern warning shot test states that the pilot was trying to get a hold of her as she states that the pilot says that the weak will perish if species 8472 was trying to scare them off this is exactly what you would do if you are in an argument with another person and a dog comes up and starts trying to sniff around or trying to figure out what's going on what do you do do you just ignore it what if it starts getting into your stuff do you try to talk with it and explain the intricacies of why it shouldn't get involved or do you tell you to go away scare it off if you're trying to scare it off when you use verbal and physical cues to ensure it goes away I know it's insulting but Voyager is so less advanced than both the Borg and species 8472 this is something they might consider reasonable the next time we see species 8472 surprise surprise they are in the corridor Voyager wants to use due to a lack of Borg again we have cast who is sensing them telepathically and she feels there is malevolence coldness from all of these aliens she can sense that they are an invasion force again context look at what's happening here let me ask you this if a telepathic species had entered into orbit above the beaches of Normandy on June 6th 1944 they had seen all of the humans on the beaches of Utah Omaha gold Juno sword do you think they would have sensed love coming from the Americans Canadians British and other troops storming those beaches do you think those people were apathetic when they raced up the beaches themselves by that time in world war ii hundreds of thousands if not millions if not tens of millions of people were dead if I had to bet a telepathic race that arrived above Earth orbit on d-day would fill nothing but hatred would fill fear would feel cold and they would feel a need to destroy everything that was on that beach that wasn't them from both sides remember species 8472 was isolated they only knew what came through their space maybe at that they did want to destroy everything but it's likely that they only thought of the Borg in that equation certainly future Voyager episodes including hope and fear and in the flesh indicate that species 8472 is willing to talk and only initially wanted to destroy everything when they were looking at the Borg and then let's look at a final piece species 8472 had been investigating a board cube or whatever the hell they were doing on it and the USS Voyager showed up and then the next time species 8472 sees Voyager they find the ship in concert with a Borg cube both of these ships flying in formation towards an unknown destination but clearly working together but yeah species 8472 they're the bad guys you know I don't even know why I'm trying those who disagree I've already commented thumb down and kept it moving not even watching at this point I'm just preaching to the choir so let's just keep it moving unfortunately there is not a ton of information when it comes to the war between the Borg and species 8472 understandably the focus is on the USS Voyager what we do know is that dozens if not hundreds of worlds would fall to species 8472 with hundreds of millions of drones being killed in fact in one instance alone the Borg lost 312 Borg ships and eight planets totalling up to four million drones Voyager would ultimately help the Borg develop a weapon that would be able to destroy species 8472 after the weapon was successful the ships would be in full retreat now it is at this point there is some confusion we can't tell via the dialogue if the technology to defeat species 8472 was transferred to the Borg this would leave the Borg without the ability to make the nanoprobes immediately and would explain why the collective didn't attempt an all-out attack on species 8472 additionally species 8472 didn't attack back because they didn't know the Borg didn't have this technology so both sides were at a stalemate not realizing that the other side didn't have an advantage at the end of the day this would show the Borg in a way we had never seen them before desperate we can now understand that the board could be negotiated with as was stated in the best of both worlds the Borg collective once thought to be a juggernaut that could not be talked to was just like anyone else when they were about to be exterminated but those are my thoughts what are yours let me know in the comments below [Music] when looking at the Voyager episode drone it's hard to not instantly see how much it doesn't make a lot of sense luckily the series you're watching right now is based on Borg lore so I won't be going much into the episode itself long story short the doctors mobile emitter becomes infected with seven of nines nanoprobes when an issue with the transporter briefly merges everyone being transported of course these nanoprobes didn't get into the systems of anyone else and they aren't assimilated but let's just gloss over that for right now as stated the mobile emitter would become infected and assimilated unfortunately the crew of Widger would not know when something is being assimilated or what it would look like you know having all the knowledge from the Battle of Bull 359 having a Borg on their ship and even being in Borg space for a small amount of time this means that they wouldn't have any idea what was going on when looking at a tech that has Borg nanites in it so without even realizing it they would leave the mobile emitter alone and have the computer scan it to try to determine the damage that has occurred due to the transporter accident and lo and behold the emitter would begin assimilating the computer station it's on now here's a question we know the mobile emitter assimilates this specific station to make a maturation unit but why did it stop there the station is hooked into the computer and attached to Voyager so why not continue assimilation of the entire ship why did it stop I mean if I wanted to I could try to theorize that this entire episode was based around giving birth and letting a child grow up and learn who it is perhaps the nanites were a part of seven of nine and realized that she secretly and subconsciously wants to now have a child thus they create a maturation chamber and birth a new Borg perhaps this entire episode is an allegory on how it's okay for women to want to become mothers and how the life of a child inside of you is precious or it's just bad writing I mean I mean either/or in any case create a maturation chamber it does and 7 of 9 would be alerted to the presence of another Borg she moves to alert to cote and the bridge deciding that this information is so important so vital she's just going to walk to the bridge versus utilizing her combat Chakotay of course realizing they are still near Borg space and relatively at least given transwarp and that a board presence presents a massive threat to the ship checks that the scanners haven't picked up any pork and tells them to double those scans then send seven of nine to medbay like she's having a tummy ache look I get that it's very possible that seven is having issues with their implants but the Borg are a really big deal this is red alert territory until they can be absolutely sure that nothing is going on it would be better to be at red alert and be wrong than to be caught off guard by a Borg cube additionally I know that their security measures would alert them of intrusion but they aren't even going to run an internal scan just to be sure we know that board tech will randomly activate and start assimilating things this episode being a prime example so why not just run an internal check to be sure the fact this crew gets home even with Admiral insane way of racing children from the timeline to make it happen is proof of God exists and that he hates all of us so while the crew don't seem to really take the possible incursion of the board all that seriously a Borg incursion occurs an engineer walks into the science lab and checks on the mobile emitter to find that part of it has been transformed into some form of Borg alcove he would instantly contact the bridge he would contact security he would grab a phaser and fire on it he would do some [ __ ] thing to save the ship instead of the dumbest action possible he pull out a tricorder and begin scanning the extreme threat to the ship without alerting anyone while scanning it tubules would come out and attack the engineer unfortunately he wouldn't be killed which is exactly what this guy deserves the board tech would take his DNA and begin making a baby which finally leads us up to the entire point of this episode with the DNA the board begin a cloning process again creating a baby seven of nine would comment that this is not what Borg generally do they don't create people they don't have babies now some people have tried to say that this is a retcon or a mistake stating that in earlier episodes it does show the Borg have maturation chambers however I do feel like this can be pretty easily explained it's likely that the babies found on the board cube in the encounter with the enterprise-d were from a culture that had been assimilated by the Borg that they didn't begin some cloning process until sometime in the future as this suggests this would mean that seven of nine is that this form of Technology this way of creating clones isn't how the Borg operates it would suggest that perhaps cloning technology hasn't been perfected enough at this time this is also assuming that this Borg is what the current collective will become given our knowledge of how evolution works within governments and ecosystems it's honestly near impossible to ever really predict how the Borg will progress or how any species will progress it's more likely than not that the Borg of the future will not resemble anything like this Borg given all the integers that are present that forces change moving on though the option to kill the Borg as a baby is presented and ultimately denied interestingly Janeway refers to the baby as a whom a person she also states she doesn't want to kill or murder the child honestly I think this is worthy of a conversation at a different time but I do think this shows some intriguing ideals but again that's a conversation for another time there is a vital piece of information that I think is generally glossed over when people watching this episode the advanced Borg will eventually become ready to be integrated into the collective but has not yet received commands this means that the board after the maturation process have the ability to be individuals to become whatever they want to be think on that a moment this process isn't wholly unknown to the board seven of nine recognizes it which means that babies that are assimilated probably go through a similar result just sans the cloning the implication is that the collective has the ability to have a generation of board drones that are born and become independent this opens up a possibility that the Borg collective could one day stop being a quote unquote collective and ultimately turn into a government a nation of people one that might be apt to discuss and barter with other governments it's honestly not as far-fetched as you might think the Borg collective expands assimilates and evolves as necessary we see them make drastic changes from the best of both worlds to this episode who's to say that they wouldn't attempt the cloning process in order to save themselves in fact let's say perhaps after a virus is uploaded that destroyed most of the collective due to a reckless admiral in captain who are the same person and with the collective so hurt the uplink to the new drones is damaged and you start having individuality brought back into the fold just a thought after information would be uploaded to the drone begin to have its own individuality as we've discussed and generally allowed to do whatever it wants I mean we do see security follow it around but ultimately the drone is allowed to walk around look hostile towards other people including Neelix and access panels additionally most security personnel only have hand phasers versus the powerful rifles they could use they really didn't take the drone all that seriously when you break it down the drone would ultimately inadvertently contact the collective and of course the board would dispatch a ship to investigate a board sphere would arrive and attempt to capture Voyager curiously there is a piece here that will be important at a later episode we see the drone improve the shielding and weaponry of Voyager this has been used as an argument in future episodes and it's something worth noting the intrepid class vessel has now been enhanced as far as the limitations of its technology will allow unfortunately this wouldn't be powerful enough to defeat the sphere the drone would be mova to the sphere itself and co-opt the controls of the Borg destroying it again something that I think we need to consider the Borg directly interfaces with the collective what's amazing is that he is able to resist the call of the board which again makes me wonder could the board become so advanced that they can not be forced to listen that could be an interesting evolution into the Borg themselves when you think about it after destroying the sphere the Borg would basically commit suicide so that the collective wouldn't chase them even though the collective has no way of knowing he was dead and additionally Voyager would not strip him for parts and utilize what they gained from the technology to defeat future Borg or get home I mean it not be sporting after all to use advanced Borg technology against the Borg I know that I stated in the past I would only be talking about the Borg collective in its history in this breakdown however I feel that this episode and discussion was necessary the Borg drone would improve the intrepid class and add what the board could be which is to say they could be free in the future but those are my thoughts what are yours let me know in the comments below [Music] we'll be starting this conversation out with well quite a bit of controversy as I've stated that is to say the discussion will revolve around a board probe versus that of an intrepid class vessel before we get into the battle proper it behooves me to point out that the Borg and the probe act extremely odd compared to previous interactions we see with them we know from best of both worlds that the Borg act as one mind and yet we have a singular Borg here walking along and hitting a ton of buttons to see the intrepid on a screen which isn't consistent with how they operate again just peculiar previously in a starship lore breakdown of a Borg probe I'll include it in the top right right now I specifically stated that an intrepid class ship was the match of a probe itself this is largely due to dialogue in this specific episode dark frontier however when rewatching the battle in this episode which again shows the Borg to be largely ineffective I do take note that during the battle Janeway specifically states that we can match your firepower not this vessel can match your firepower and the board never note that the firepower can be matched because it's an intrepid class vessel now many sources including memory alpha a while back took this to mean that an intrepid could take on a board probe again it was something that I believed as well so I'm not putting down those resources but rewatching the battle after doing my review of drone it's as likely if not more likely that the upgrades done by the 29th century Borg and other sources is probably why Voyager was now on an even playing field with this board vessel additionally it would explain why the Borg probe engaged in the first place believing that the intrepid class vessel would be easily overwhelmed and generally we've never seen Borg technology be overcome by that of the Federation the Federation is more powerful in this era true and can do actual damage by this point we see this at the Battle of sector 0:01 but to win one on one is still unheard of again I guess you could argue that's why the probes are never sent but it seems to make more sense that the enhancements of Voyager would be wide the intrepid class vessel one not that it was an intrepid class or that the intrepid class is on par with a pro but I'm really curious let me know what your thoughts are said this is a Borg lore series so I won't be reviewing the actual episode I mean who would call something a Borg lore series that basically just reviews episodes with the Borg in it it's not actually a Borg lore series it's just reviewing episodes that have the Borg so doesn't make a lot of sense but even though this is focusing on the board collective I will take a moment to point out how inapt the Voyager crew are in the scenes after the fight with the probe the Voyager crew is analyzing Borg technology and this port technology still can run around and some of it can still assimilate things none of it is in cryo none of it is in isolation so I can't get out so the Voyager crew are just continuing to be top notch just way to go however the actual breakdown for the video starts when the Borg Queen contacts seven the collective is able to access her neural transceiver and their minds become one interestingly the Queen states that she knows what seven knows and is aware of the incoming attack on the Borg sphere this would also mean that she probably now has the information about the nanites that could defeat species 8472 though this is after the peace agreement and the information on the nanites being shared with species 8472 by Janeway which probably makes the nanites at this point useless you know off-topic it's interesting that species 8472 wanted to destroy all life and now they couldn't be stopped again they've probably found a counter to these nanites however they decide still not to invade huh back to the episode of hand the Queen advises that she is aware of the attack as I've stated and offers to let Voyager go if seven gives herself up curiously even with this offer seven continues to go along with voyagers plan she doesn't warn them you think she would advise them and let them know so that they could counter this or at least not even do the plan so no one gets hurt but whatever the crew discussed is hiding from the board by utilizing a bio dampener which had been created by sevens parents I've discussed the Voyager crew using this outdated technology in the past the fact that the Borg are aware of it and honestly there were some interesting theories brought up in the comments about these devices we know that once assimilated all of the knowledge of the individual becomes the knowledge of the collective the collective would naturally know about the dampeners which makes its usage sketchy at best but a more interesting piece of this topic is the discussion on the board utilizing the dampeners themselves invest of both worlds we know that the enterprise deed could not detect any individual board hell for most of the TNG series this stays true what if the Borg assimilated the bio dampener and utilized it on their ships this would then bring everything more into a cohesive understanding Starfleet would ultimately figure out how to bypass the technology but it does seem like something the Borg would do to hide their numbers what do you guys think ultimately Voyager would enact its plan to steal the transwarp coil and do this by attempting to bait the Borg with a shuttle the thought is to entice the collective to capture the shuttle to assimilate it this would require the board to lower their shields again we see an inefficiency where the Borg are looking at consoles but ultimately they take the bait I might be wrong but this seems like the first time we hear the board having shields at least in Voyager again I think I might be wrong in that but it is at least most important for the Voyager series in this episode you see this is a substantial change because the Borg didn't generally utilize shields when first encountered they utilize subspace fields that were much more powerful shields can ultimately be beaten down the fields would adapt to make any other attempts at an attack useless now if I were to theorize why this happened I would say that it's probably due to the war with species 8472 the subspace fields would be unable to adapt and the board began utilizing shields which gave a modicum of protection just a thought once captured the interaction between the Borg Queen and seven of nine is very telling of the collective at this point the Queen while observing seven states that seven has been quote-unquote remade in the image of humanity that she's been disassembled and given back things such as her hair she then states that 7 is still hers there's two things to this first that the board believed that the natural state is to be bored that in and of itself is something very interesting something I'd love to delve more into the other piece is that this dialogue is crazy frustrating because on the face of it it would seem to prove that the collective has a leader and that leader is the queen but many will try to say that the collective is sent talking through an avatar except we only ever see them talk as one cohesive unit until the Kudus of course at which point they did have a single entity then seven of nine was to be similar to the Kudus and now we have the Queen the problem is as the Queen has always been there even before Luke cutis as we see in first contact so why wasn't she always utilized as an avatar why did the Borg think the cutest or even seven were worthy when she could have done the job the Queen honestly seems to be able to effectively communicate with humans and if you think her safety was a concern why do you think in such three-dimensional ways they say that like you dissin seven of nine are needed to understand humanity but again the Queen seems to do this just fine the fact that they utilize lacunae since seven of nine doesn't appear to do them any favors either it's just that the Queen causes more problems than she solves which is to say she solves no problems at all I am really not the hugest fan of her introduction if I'm being honest I will say one thing about dark frontier though it does clear up a huge plot hole that a lot of people have brought up in the next generation we know that the board will go to any lengths to recover their own so why didn't they come after seven the answer is found when it's discovered that she was allowed to be captured the board knew they would still be able to catch up to Voyager so allowing her to stay with Voyager to gain information on humanity and regain her own individualism might have been something they decided to do that it would be worthwhile with sevens experiences the collective or more likely the Queen chooses not to make her a drone now that she is back though she is modified to make her more efficient the collective or again the Queen wish for her to stay an individual so that they can better assimilate earth stating that she was the only board to ever regain her individuality so basically seven of nine would become the Messiah of the Borg at least for Earth like Luke yudice but way more attractive to most people as a part of this long game that the Borg collective is playing seven of nine is taken to the assimilation of another species during this time the species is able to utilize their phasers to bypass the board's shields the Queen asks seven of nine what they need to do or their ships will be destroyed seven of nine is resistant at first but then gives a tech tech answer the Queen's response I was thinking the same thing think about that I was thinking the same thing not we not the collective not the Borg I again and this is frustrating because more and more the Queen appears to be some autonomous entity within the Borg but then there are times when she is not it's just simply not true regardless ultimately the tech tech change is successful and they are able to conquer the species during the assimilation process seven encounters individuals of the species while they are being assimilated I'll take a moment to say this the music is not conducive to the mood but the screams are the people as they are being assimilated in seeing docile beings walking with the board for final assimilation is very scary it's filmed very well and would have had a major impact if not for some better choices again with the music after the assimilation of most of the species 7 would be indignant that over 300,000 people were assimilated she would be countered by the queen who states that 7 can feel their distinctiveness being added to the board that this species wasn't just 300,000 anymore but their essence everything that was good in them was now being added to billions upon billions look I'm not justifying the board nor am I a fan of what they do but there is a certain quality to that that the species this species is now known across the Delta Quadrant and they have made the lives of far more than they can count better when 7 speaks of the species individuality being stripped the Queen points out that there is no we or me anymore there is only quote-unquote us one mind one voice which is counter to earlier parts of the episode with the Queen using I but whatever during the conversation the Queen realizes that four life forms on a beating ship have been able to escape she asks if the Borg collective should assimilate the ship or if it should be destroyed 7 suggests but they let them go of course this is after her having been the person to help them escape in the first place and telling them how they could escape 7 argues that it would be inefficient to either stop the ship or to destroy it and after all it's only for individuals the Queen argues that if the ship is allowed to escape the species would continue to his them this type of paranoia is kind of interesting to me it's also counter to everything we see in TNG the Borg don't assimilate everything in sight because they fear reprisal they do it to make everyone's life better this doesn't make a lot of sense the only reasonable reason to give this type of response here would be to somehow trick or confuse 7 but to what purpose why would the Queen lie here the Queen moves to assimilate them and 7 bags for their lives 7 even uses the word please the Queen allows the species to survive and 7 looks shocked stating that the board never had compassion the Queen just walks off that's something that we're gonna have to delve into a little deeper in the next episode ultimately the story of dark frontier isn't uninteresting it's extremely intriguing I just hate that they decided to utilize the Borg I think it might have been better if perhaps instead of the Borg they made it an offshoot of the Borg or another species altogether perhaps making the season about this powerful species that was similar to the Borg but never seen until this episode and then you have 7 being captured I mean I'm not sure but it just doesn't feel like the Borg act appropriately here but what are your thoughts did it get the Borg or add to their mythos let me know in the comments below [Music] in the last video I discussed how 7 is captured by the board Queen and the Queen's duality when interacting with the Voyager crewman I also discussed how the dialogue of the Queen doesn't make a ton of sense sometimes she seems to be an individual sometimes she's a part of the collective we left off the last video with the Queen stating that she feared reprisal from a species that's why she was going to assimilate or destroy them stating that when that was never the goal of the collective the collective never feared reprisal and then she would show compassion by letting some survivors go this was intriguing because compassion is something that we've never seen in the board before when she's called out on it by 7 the Queen never actually addresses it and of course it's going to be forgotten for the rest of the episode after this the next interaction we see is a discussion between 7 of 9 and the Queen the Queen needs assistance for a new type of assimilation against a highly resistant species at first the dialogue makes you think that it is specific to physiological resistance that the nanoprobes just can't assimilate the species which by the by nanoprobes are interchangeably called nanoprobes and man Knights depending on the episode and series you're watching I know some people have had an issue with that but again they use both terminologies when asked to change the technology so that it can assimilate other species 7 notes that it's changed so much that she wouldn't recognize it this honestly is great continuity when you consider the technology of the Borg would be changing and upgrading at a near hourly rate every assimilation would mean a possible change to all technologies involved however the Queen wants 7 for her innate knowledge about the first target of this new type of assimilation the Queen intends to assimilate species 5 6 1 8 humans confusingly the Borg Queen describes humanity with an inefficient physiology below average cranial capacity minimal redundant systems and limited regenerative abilities but it is work capable my question if humans are so inadequate why are you assimilating them I mean it only makes sense if you want to bring cohesion and perfection to the universe but it doesn't sound like humanity as far as the Queen is aware will make the collective any better additionally the Borg collective is extremely short-sighted here in Maia the Federation is more than just humanity while earth falling would be a massive blow after two different Borg assaults and the Dominion war either occurring at this time or about to occur you would think the United Federation of Planets would have redundant worlds that are able to take up the mantle if earth would fall which means that assembling earth would be devastating but not destroy the Federation at this point I also questioned why the board don't consider a different strategy of hitting other targets rather than earth specifically this all would make sense that they hyper focus on earth if the collective was a computer which they may be but the dialogue and portrayal doesn't make it appear to be so the Queen also states that their assaults on the Federation failed as I've noted and I'm just gonna say this you should probably consider sending more than one cube but regardless of these issues the Queen advises seven she will need to assist in making a biogenic weapon that will disperse into the atmosphere and will take years to assimilate the planet this weapon is so insidious that half of the population would become drones before they could even react I'm also going to question this methodology they have assimilated Starfleet personnel by this time we know that so they have to be aware of the advanced medical capabilities of the Federation it's not unlikely that the Federation would figure out what they're trying to do though to be fair Starfleet can't tell between Vulcan ancestry and Romulan ancestry even though today I can pay a hundred bucks and see my bloodline back to Africa so maybe the Queen's on to something there seven points out that this weapon is inefficient and the Queen states that they have waited this long to assimilate earth so what's a few more years she's not wrong but this is a shift from taking what you want to having patience again the argument between seven and the queen is pretty interesting into how the collective operates seven states that she won't help destroy humanity that she is an individual the Queen points out that she sounds like an automaton just talking points the Queen isn't exactly wrong here either seven of nine is telling the Queen what Janeway and the crew have told her and honestly from the perspective of the collective it makes no sense to want to be separate and imperfect when you can share your knowledge and make the galaxy better both sides think the other is just spouting propaganda with no value added huh [Music] and then we have yet more evidence the queen is somehow different the queen tries to talk 7 into assisting in this process and states quote-unquote we all originate it from lesser species I myself came from species one to five but that's irrelevant now we are Borg unfortunately this Senate shows that the Queen has some level of self-awareness she isn't Borg not one cohesive unit she is a part of the board if I was assuming that the objective was to keep the Borg static then I would probably throw this too poor word choice a better way to phrase this dialogue might be every life-form within the collective originated from a lesser species this vessel itself the one you're talking to came from species one to five but that's irrelevant now we are Borg but honestly I'm starting to have doubts that this was ever the intent of what the writers were doing I don't know that the Queen was a meant to be a part of the collective but I guess I could just sit here and drone huh on about all of these inconsistencies but let's just assume for now that they meant it in a way of my rephrasing ultimately seven would continue to argue with the Queen stating that she will not help assimilate humanity 7 tells the Queen that she should just go ahead and assimilate her and the Queen honestly calls her Bluff once seven shows that she does fear assimilation at this point the Queen summons sevens father well the Borg drone of him at least and with his help forces her into the alcove though before seven can begin assisting the Queen it is discovered that Janeway is using multi adaptive shielding to try to save seven Voyager in an attempt to save seven of nine is utilizing the technology of her father to hide from the Borg Janeway tries to contact 7 through her implant and was discovered by the Queen as I noted the Queen then utilized the information from the bohr defied father of seven of nine to adapt and see the shuttle here's a question why didn't the Borg immediately adapt after assimilating the Hansen's the technology was something that the board had never seen before it's the frakking reason they followed and assimilated the Hansen's in the first place and if the Borg still couldn't see through it why didn't the shielding block the Borg cube when it went back online on the Hansen ship remember the shielding of the was off just shy of 14 seconds and because of that the board chased them to the ends of the galaxy but if the Borg hadn't adapted yet when the shields came back online the ship should have been invisible Borg idiocy aside the Queen does ensure the adapt ations can be seen and now the shuttle is intercepted Janeway modulates the shields which somehow helps again why did the Hansen's not remodulate their tech you know what [ __ ] it while the collective still chases Janeway the Queen lies to seven again I'm not sure to what purpose perhaps it's Tim sure seven doesn't try to escape but lying feels like it's far off from perfection Janeway and her away team beam on to the Borg vessel with bio dampeners you remember those things the same device is worn by the crew in part one when the board could see them but now apparently they can't but could before finally the Queen is able to find the shuttle again however it remodulate sand goes invisible the Borg begin to fire blindly into space to find the shuttle and ultimately they do they capture it with a beam and the Queen advises seven that she was a failure that she was not going to be the asset that the Queen hopes that she would be during what I assume is about to be the assimilation of seven Janeway comes in to save the day she tells the Queen that she should stand down or Janeway will destroy her the Queen tells Janeway that her weapon won't kill her she asked Janeway why she thinks in three dimensional ways she assimilate seven and after being hit the Borg assimilate Janeway and she returns she stands down like it actually matters if she's hit with the [ __ ] weapon and even seems scared that the shuttle will fire on her location even though the shuttle is caught and everyone on it should be assimilated at this point the Queen then points out that they would all die together and Janeway responds better dead than bore the Queen seeing Janeway isn't lying orders the board to release the tractor beam though for some reason won't let them be mout cuz this all is making a ton of sense right now Janeway orders seven to disable the fill because if there's anything that says individuality it's listening to the command of a person and following them because you have to the Queen gives her point of view to seven saying that's only one voice one command insignificant compared to the Borg which apparently have a queen that only has one voice and gives commands but let's just go past that seven deciding who's she's going to be on tells Janeway to fire on a piece of for tech and then smugly tells the Queen our minds are one indicating Janeway and seven minds are one as they beam out now as my tone probably infers that entire sequence is completely stupid but I'm going to pause a moment because there's something we need to discuss when Janeway destroys the interface it disrupts the Queen's commands to quote seven it will disrupt her command interface as I continue to break down of the Borg I realize more and more the Queen is not a part of the collective but the head of it there are just far too many inconsistencies for it to be a continuity issue I'm not going to be delving into this in this breakdown but don't worry we're gonna come back to it there have been comments that the Queen is a virus or perhaps some species that found a way to fight back I'd love to know your thoughts because it seems clear to me now that this is probably the case the queen is the head and the border her subjects but give me your thoughts back at the topic at hand while I stated I'm not going to be doing a breakdown of the episode dark frontier I do want to note the ending from what we can tell the standoff between the Queen Janeway and seven happened on what we know to be the queen ship that ship began chase of the shuttle that Janeway and seven were on and was ultimately destroyed when Chakotay fired on it remember sevens parents or at least her father was on that ship Chakotay killed her father the Queen did specifically point out that the board never killed her parents they made them perfect the board saved her parents versus killing them something we never see Voyager do food for thought as stated I think that a deep dive into the episode and part of the Borg lore has turned me around on the Queen I sincerely don't believe she is now a part of the collective like we thought before she's some form of leader at some level but those are my thoughts what are yours let me know in the comments below [Music] as I've stated previously this is not a breakdown of individual episodes that involve the board but an intricate breakdown on the board collective and its lore it's ironic that in the Voyager episode collective we learn more about the collective in what they don't do versus what they do in this episode spoilers for those who haven't seen it by the by a Borg cube runs across a pathogen that specifically destroys and kills cybernetic life-forms which is highly specific imagine if a species were to infect someone and then send that person to the Borg I mean that would be insanely effective but nah no one would ever think to do that just insane anyway back to the breakdown at hand the pathogen just devastates the Borg cube and all the Borg drones on it well all except the drones that are in the maturation unit because as anyone knows babies in the womb have extra protection biologically so it only makes sense that we have the exact same cliche we're in a maturation chamber defends the life of the baby just like a mother's womb would cuz what's the point of doing this entire thing if you can't do it like every other science fiction show Stark aside this does present some very specific and interesting details on how the Borg deal with children and adolescents from other cultures the dialogue between seven and the children seems to indicate that any individual who has not reached adulthood is put into a maturation chamber as that drone grows their Borg implant grows with them this means that the cybernetic components are not added all at the same time but are kind of grown with the person depending on that person's age additionally these Borg are conditioned the collective brain order to the minds throughout the years like some form of brainwashing it really is an interesting addition to the Borg lore however what is more frustrating than interesting is the way the collective handles the derelict cube in the episode the Borg collective deems that the drones are irrelevant in the Borg cube not worth salvaging now let's pause a minute here the dialogue is extremely clear for those who want to argue that the cube was to be destroyed seven states specifically that normally when Borg are determined to be irrelevant they deactivate they don't destroy themselves they don't self distraught they just flip a switch and go offline in previous videos many have argued that the board collect their dead to prevent the technology from getting into the wrong hands however this seems to be an extreme shift from what we've seen historically as I've stated in the past the Borg were all one unit one organism they no more would lose a drone than there's a finger but now they are willing to just toss drones aside as if they were nothing some have theorized that this change occurred due to Hue that once he was reassimilated and caused discord within the board cube if not the collective that a policy of simply disconnecting drones was adopted now this is possible sure but you'd have to convince me that a human would be okay with chopping off an arm that may or may not have gangrene no guarantee if it does or not but they're just gonna chop it off I suppose we can assume that the board go the route of better safe than sorry there is some logic to it but it's somewhat of a stretch but even with that in mind you're telling me that the collective are now so scared of what happened with hue that they would leave a board cube hold we have no reason to believe that the board cube doesn't still have all of the major technologies that the board utilize subspace adaptation fields Borg armor transwarp advanced weaponry and information on the collective in its entirety the Borg collective are so scared that they will get infected they won't at least find a way to blow that thing the hell and back man thank God for the collective that the crew of Voyager are so stupid that Voyager doesn't find a way to steal all the technology from the cube you know like a transwarp Drive that thing that nearly got some of voyagers crew killed when they were attacking a sphere but it's just here for the taking on the cube and before anyone says it I know that the vessel was damaged I get that but we have no reason to believe that the components couldn't be reused fixed or just weren't operational because you had only children running the ship and don't even get me started on how the collective now decides not to bring unity to the galaxy like they've always wanted to do but worry about quote-unquote perfection and if something is going to hurt them becoming the ultimate species honestly is it much more to add when it comes to the collective lore from this episode however since people accuse me of only pointing out errors without offering fixes let's take a stab at it now I'm going to assume that it's the Borg that has to be encountered additionally we have to have kids and it has to be a pathogen as we know this ties into the next episode so here's what I would have done instead of the Borg cube being found I would have had Voyager trying to make its way home as it always is and all of a sudden they receive an emergency SOS but SOS would have been from a ship that is currently being assimilated and is a requesting health since her shows that no other Borg vessels are in the area and after some debate it's determined that they will try to save the crew and gain any Borg tech that they can given the upgrades that we've discussed that have been done to the intrepid vessel the partially assimilated ship is no match for Voyager Voyager disables the ship quite handily and they beam aboard to find all of the completely assimilated adult individuals dead there are children aboard only half assimilated but now knocked out they determined that the Borg adults were killed by some form of pathogen but for some reason the children also have that pathogen in them but it's not impacting them as quickly the children are secured and put into stasis aboard Voyager under guard of course and while an away team is trying to get the Borg tech the children awaken they barely hear the Borg collectives call and they try to resist they overpower the guards and beam back aboard the other ship off of Voyager and then these children Borg send an SOS to the collective since her show a Borg cube is thirty minutes away and thanks to tech tech Voyager is able to hide and isn't identified by the collective yet the way team is captured by the Borg children and now we have a ticking time bomb dilemma and the children now have captured people so we're off to the races in the end the crew save the kids destroy the ship without being able to get any of the tech and get the hell out of Dodge before the Borg are able to identify that Voyager was ever there and then in the end you tie the fact that the pathogen was going so slow because it had been put in there by scientists in the next episode and that would be my fix ultimately this episode collective fundamentally changes how the Borg operate when it comes to errant drones while this is most likely a lack of concern for the continuity issues it presents the shifted treatment of drones can be explained by the hue phenomenon [Music] quick side note in this breakdown I will be analyzing obvious inconsistencies with the Queen and her interactions with the Borg collective however right now I won't be going too deeply into that discussion due to these drastic changes we have to assume that there has been some shift within the collective itself or nothing's going to make sense so for the moment we're going to assume that this isn't any kind of continuity issue or bad writing but something massive that has changed within the board we'll get down to the writing and continuity issues at a different time get into the episode proper when analyzing the board collective in the Voyager episode Yuna matrix 0 it's very engaging and eye-opening to see this aspect of the board and if I'm going to be honest it's something that I never considered but I think makes a lot of sense once watching the episode again namely that mutations could occur within the collective and impact the drones specifically when you think of the board they are indeed their own type of culture that ultimately becomes some type of organism however all of these species that are brought together would be augmented and likely genetically changed if bringing both perfection and order to the galaxy is important to the Borg then changing any deficiencies in a species would make sense it also explains why the skin of every species assimilated ultimately turns white to one range or another with these changes it would be logical then that some unforeseen mutation would occur one of these mutations would be the creation of you know matrix 0 a construct that allows individuality for board drones when they are in their regeneration cycle though here's a fun fact this episode aired nearly a year after the Matrix movie launched and was a massive success we can't be sure how long the you know matrix 0 construct existed however dialogue indicates that it was probably around for at least a few decades this is derived from multiple sources but the main one being that 7 of 9 was a part of it for a lot of her life and we have reason to believe that the construct existed before she even joined it after all this time though for one reason or another the collective ultimately became aware of the existence of you know matrix 0 as we all know the Borg absolutely do not investigate research or use the scientific method to fix problems they only assimilate so of course it's no surprise when we see them in this episode start investigate researching and utilizing the scientific method in an attempt to figure out how to stop people from joining you know matrix zero as I've already discussed the interactions we see with the Borg seem to delineate heavily between the Queen herself and the Borg collective in almost every interaction she uses words such as I and you now I'll grant she utilizes we sometimes but that only makes it confusing as she doesn't use it a lot and it seems really hit or miss and she is very big on seeming like an individual when interacting with other board as an example in the first scene we see her the queen is discussing the quote-unquote sickness that has impacted one of the Borg drones allowing him to have individuality in you know matrix 0 the Borg drone doesn't respond to her specifically so the Queen removes him from the collective note she states that she has disconnected him from the collective now some might say that she's just being the avatar of the collective but still it's odd she states you're alone I know how uncomfortable that can be this all seems specific to an individual she then gives orders to other drones think about that as well again many will state that the queen is some avatar and yet she has to tell these drones what to do it's just curious that this entire interaction occurs after the scene we see the board definitely not continuing to do research to try to find those who can access Yuna matrix zero the mutation itself is something that's really interesting that was added I do like it as a storytelling instrument occurring only in one in every 1 million drones it is apparently also extremely difficult for the collective determine what drone is infected we're never given why this is but it does make some sense first the mutation is stated to be recessive which can be harder to find and to given the vast territories of the collective and how many drones that exist it may be hard to diagnose each individually additionally the trone's have no idea they have this ability when they awaken and so the collective is not made aware with their thoughts I do have one question though while it is consistently stated that the Borg drones within you know matrix 0 1 have wave impacting the outside world they are somehow able to contact 7m9 this is of course explained due to her Borg implants however if they can contact seven why not drones who wake up after being in you know matrix zero who are still a part of the collective you'd have to be careful true you wouldn't want the collective to know about you but would it be possible to somehow fashion a virus or something and send it to a drone that is awake within the collective that way you can hide yourself and not put Voyager in danger presumably they all have similar implants to that of seven now in theory this might have been discussed and dismissed as any attempt to contact a connected Borg might have been too great a risk but it would have been nice to at least see them disgusted in the episode looking at you know matrix zero we'll get into its breakdown after this when analyzing what drones have the mutation we see Klingons erosion and even officers who state they were assimilated at the Battle of all 359 which how honestly the only explanation that I can think of is that one of the ships survived the Battle of Wolf 359 though this is tenuous we do know that one ship did survive that battle but we don't know anything about the ship itself it's possible that it wasn't destroyed it was assimilated and then sent back to the Delta Quadrant why the Borg would do this and not assimilate all of the ships I don't know but it's the best explanation we got also just as an aside for those who want to try to point it out there's no evidence that the Klingons ever joined the Battle of Wolf 359 and in fact the official Star Trek website states that they didn't we have no more reason to believe that the Klingons were there than we do that the Breen decided to get into the party we know that the Klingons and the Romulans were possibly invited to fight the board but none of them made it in time that aside back to inconsistency central the collective continues to investigate the mutation we get even more odd dialogue from the Queen while talking to a dead Borg she states it's a shame you aren't alive for the disembodiment it's the epitome of perfection so do the board not feel what she feels are they not all one hive mind or is this just her own personal pleasure if the collective isn't aware of what disembodiment is like if they aren't connected to the Queen in that way why additionally while trying to figure out how to stop the signal that keeps Yuna matrix zero running she says you are making this very difficult and she seems frustrated while the rest of the Borg seem like zombies as I've alluded to ultimately the free drones within Yuna matrix zero reach out to seven of nines convinced her and the crew to help them keep Yuna matrix zero hidden those on Voyager ultimately agree to help and it is discussed how to introduce nanites into the Borg collective to hide the drones when it is questioned how they would get this to the entire collective seven of nine notes that the central plexus within the board cube is connected to the entire collective now let's pause right here many have claimed that hew in Eyeborg only impacted one cube I even talked about how that may have been a possibility however this directly contradicts that argument if every board cube or vessel has a central plexus then this would mean that everything is shared this is also an amazing weakness for the Borg any species that realizes a nexus exists could in theory upload a virus through that means and defeat the Borg just something to think about the last piece of this video I want to discuss is how the collective contacts Voyager through transwarp tech tech the collective accesses the computer core of Voyager and discusses the situation with Jane way through comms the Queen offers to get them home early if Janeway stays out of this quote-unquote Civil War so let me get this straight the Borg have the ability to utilize transwarp to access the computer core of Voyager and to talk to Janeway but can't disable the ship to assimilate it let's assume that they can only talk to them can't do anything else why the hell wouldn't a collective just access to calm and play Klingon opera at ear destroying levels this ability is severely underused by the collective and shows how Voyager defeats them so easily and while I was tempted to take swipes at the board for negotiating this is actually not outside of the bounds of what we see with them doing even in TNG there was discussion that the board may be open to negotiate we just have never seen it because of how inferior Starfleet was [Music] when analyzing the beginning of the quote-unquote board Civil War it's curious to see how inefficient the collective is they literally kill thousands of drones to take down one or two while you could make the argument that there are millions to spare if you ask me such inefficiencies are far from perfection while I've stated that I won't discuss the episode itself but more just the board's interactions in it there is a piece of Yuna matrix zero part two that fascinates me specifically in the episode when Janeway to Tuvok and B'Elanna are assimilated they somehow keep their individuality so you're telling me that after assimilation the Borg simply wouldn't notice that these new drones haven't been added to their own now some might argue that it's a ploy that the Queen clearly is aware of them but was trying to hide the fact but we know that isn't true because they're using a suppressant that allows them to stay unnoticed and it's only after the suppressant begins to wear off with Tuvok that the Queen is able to notice them and even states I heard the Vulcan why can't I hear all of them it is possible that given assimilation probably occurs every minute of every day the collective simply wouldn't notice three voices but these aren't exactly random NPCs from the planet Hoth Janeway a woman that has forwarded the collective and specifically the Queen quite a few times has been captured and then after assimilation they just don't notice that her and her crewmen can't be heard they don't see that at all additionally we know that a queen can identify when a single voice on a cube has gone silent so when she heard Tuvok how did she not exactly find the cube that Tuvok was on and if she already knew why didn't she send other Borg after them you're telling me the Borg don't know how to search for rogue Borg on their own ships but regardless no one noticed they would until the collective overwhelmed Tuvok but not before Janeway was able to get the virus that allows the three drones and Yuna matrix zero to stay individuals when they wake up from the regeneration cycle let's talk about that for a moment when I was challenged about the central plexus and it transmitting to the entire collective minnie theorized that there are firewalls or perhaps a mini collective that everything is tested at first while this is possible there is no dialog or reason to believe that it's true in any of the episodes unfortunately like many things we may just never know back to the analysis Tuvok ultimately succumbs to the collective and betrays as friends as I've noted another interesting point here though the Queen specifically thinks Tuvok once Janeway is captured she thinks him hmm however even with the capture of Janeway the virus ensures that all of the Borg that were a part of Yuna matrix zero are freed this would be unfortunately for one of the freed Borg too since he was right next to the Queen when it happened but we'll get back to that in a second the Queen wanted to talk to Janeway and thus had the Borg forced the captain into an alcove to have her image transmitted to where the Queen is located before the image got there the Queen modified the transmission so Janeway's image didn't look like a Borg drone but herself again this seems extremely inefficient to me every time the Borg interacted with the crew of Voyager they tried to assimilate or utilize technology that would make the discussion easier why didn't they do this with Janeway Janeway already has Borg implants so why not just connect her directly Janeway is using a suppressant to keep her freedom true but just neutralize it and then board a fire this would make her thoughts the thoughts of the Queen how is that not any more efficient than what she actually does here however it may be that all of this is for the benefit of Janeway though I still don't understand why we care about what Janeway wants the Queen even states how vain Janeway is thus utilizing her image maybe she's doing this as an attempt to get Janeway to can pitch elate of her own free will because that has always worked out every time they tried to get a human to capitulate of their own free will looking at this continued manipulation the Queen shows Janeway the Friedberg that I had discussed before and that she had killed in the dialogue the Queen stated that she she had to because of what Janeway did the Queen demands an antidote and Janeway states that they didn't make one the Queen threatens to assimilate Voyager to get to the doctor and like we've seen before Janeway states that she had given orders to delete the doctor before assimilation could occur it's interesting this is the second or third time that Janeway has given orders to delete the doctor it's not exactly a new trick you would think that the Queen or the collective would have come up with a plan to counteract this tactic but counter it they wouldn't so we would see Janeway and the Queen swap barbs which again the Queen is being drastically inefficient here assimilate Janeway and then have her pretend to not be assimilated to get the jump on Voyager but instead of using my incredibly thought-out idea the Queen would have to endure Janeway relishing in the fact that a lot of damage will be done to the collective now for all of the issues I have with this episode and its impact on Borg lore there is a pretty good play by the Queen here she agrees with Janeway that the collective will have a tremendous amount of damage and so she decides to show Janeway the damage it will do she starts exploding the vessels on ships where as little as one voice has gone quiet that she can't find on a vessel that has tens of thousands now this would be good for a regular Starfleet officer and we'll get back to that in a minute but ultimately even with this play being impactful to someone who cares about life it's ridiculous again I've discussed it but she can't identify which Borg are not a part of the collective are the Borg like Cylons where they can't see or harm other board does the Queen personally have to identify them when you think about it and you watch the episode it's only when the Queen sees the Borg that they realize that this isn't one with the collective the other Borg don't seem to notice so if she can't individually look at them the Borg are screwed so instead of doing the arduous process of linking into another Borg drone and finding them she just starts blowing ships to hell now again I don't like this writing when it comes to the Borg but I do like the manipulation tactics of the Queen with most Starfleet officers this would have an impact she begins killing board by tens of thousands in front of Janeway and all because of what Janeway did pointing out that these deaths are on Janeway's hands you can even see the pain on Janeway's face it's really well done really well acted of course ultimately she is dealing with insane way so she should know that even though she's appealing to the Starfleet officer within Janeway which is just a fraction of a percent that exists and are still killing people by the thousands Janeway will go back in time and change the entire timeline of the Alpha Delta gamma and beta quadrants ultimately the Queen is a noob when it comes to destroying people's lives but Janeway Laura side we see that the Queen is her own person Janeway challenges the Queen to go to Unimogs 0 and when there is hesitation Janeway asks if the Queen is afraid that she'll get a taste of individuality here the thing if the queen is just an avatar of the collective and she goes isn't the collective going as well so technically none of this is logical because any Borg drone of the collective would see the same thing when that Borg drone is sent to kill the free drones so visit you know matrix zero the Queen would and ultimately come back unimpressed as I stated in the last episode the board cannot investigate research and come up with conclusions on their own so naturally they retrofit the nanovirus that freed all the Borg to make it so it would kill them because why the hell should they or we care about continuity at this point so with that out of the way the Queen attempts to negotiate with Janeway telling her to go in and convince the drones to return to the collective before they are killed and to be honest there is some continuity here it seems like the Queen and the collective care about these drones when you think about it it was only one drone in a million or somesuch like that so you're not losing that many in the long run but she's willing to go out of her way even negotiate with an inferior species to get the drones back it's a nice little piece of continuity given that the rest of this episode didn't care Janeway pretends like she's agreeing with the Queen and contacts Voyager to disrupt and destroy you know matrix zero she uses double entendre to ensure that you know matrix zero is destroyed but allows the board to stay freed Chakotay understands the order that was given and with Yuna matrix zero destroyed ultimately Voyager would be joined by a sphere that has been taken over by Borg rebels of course they wouldn't get any board technology because why the hell would they but Voyager in the Borg sphere attacked the tactical cube to get their people back I ultimately have mixed feelings about this attack a tactical cube can take down a Borg sphere no question however do you think that now that we have similar TAC it's more even and it would take some time to destroy the sphere additionally Voyager is updated with advanced tech including from 31st centuries so this might be more of an even fight than people let on so the fact that Voyager and the sphere are able to destroy or at least weaken the cube doesn't surprise me the Queen would move to destroy the cube and thanks to the help of B'Elanna Voyager would be able to get all of their crew back the sphere and Voyager would part ways for Voyager to begin its track on home the only other piece here I don't like and it's not connected to the collective specifically is the recovery rate of B'Elanna Janeway and Tuvok while Tuvok would take a couple of weeks Janeway and B'Elanna seemed to be fixed almost instantly when we look at what happened to other people including seven of nine jean-luc Picard and even others in Voyager it takes a long time what occurred to them is a dramatic thing it's not something that I think that you can get over in just a couple of hours or with a cup of tea but of course this is Voyager and that's what they do [Music] before I get into the last episode we see the board as of the upload of this video at least I'm going to front-load my complaints by pointing out that all of the inconsistencies we see in the episode before this one and indeed in most of Voyager continues with this episode as well the board Queen acts very individualistic in fact even taunting seven by saying that 7 was her favorite that she was there to see an old friend she even says Voyager was left alone because of 7 of 9 which for those who continually state the Queen is an avatar of the collective you're telling me the entire collective has a favorite Borg the entire collective wouldn't that negate the Borg being a collective to have favorite individuals anyway this consistent inconsistency is all throughout the episode and I don't intend to be a broken record so I'm just pointing it out here when analyzing the Borg at this stage it's hard to tell what abilities they now do and do not have as an example in this episode specifically voyagers in game part 1 & 2 Admiral Janeway travels back in time in order to save roughly 200 or less people wiping out entire generations in the process when she arrives the entire interaction and the communications between Admiral Janeway and Voyager are observed by the Borg Queen we can't be exactly sure how but it's likely one of two reasons first it could be the case that board censors are so powerful they are able to observe the event involving Voyager from so far away or the Borg enhancements completed on Voyager allow the collective to tap into certain subsystems without the crew of Voyager being aware this seems the most likely and would explain both this episode and voyagers episode Yuna matrix 0 it also explains how the Borg Queen could override the regeneration node and nearly kill 7 anyway regardless of how the Queen does it the Borg Queen does contact 7 through her alcove after seeing Admiral Janeway arrive and advises 7 that the collective will assimilate Voyager if they attempt to re-enter the nebula that the Admiral wants them to while initially this is a good deterrent the psychopath pretending to be an admiral convinces Captain Janeway and her crew to enter into the nebula however luckily for Voyager the Admirals new armor makes it so the Borg weapon and assimilation attempts are ineffective this presents a problem for the board because in the past as we know they aren't able to identify an issue determine the problem research that problem and find a solution so with this new obstacle regarding Voyager the board start identifying the issue determining the problem and researching ways to find a solution as Ward cubes begin scanning the intrepid class vessel to figure this out Voyager attacks them with trans phasic torpedoes utterly annihilated the vessels interestingly when the Borg are unable to assimilate in destroy Voyager and Voyager shows to be a substantial threat the Queen orders that the Borg back off this is actually very consistent with board tactics if they can't beat something they pull back it's odd and feels wrong on screen given that the Borg always have been a powerhouse but they would not instantly fight something that they couldn't understand or couldn't beat now for those who want to point out the war with 8472 the board really only got serious really only started going balls to the wall when they didn't have a choice as stated most of the lore really comes between the interactions of the Queen and Admiral Janeway Admiral Janeway is utilizing technology from the future to speak inside the mind of the Queen being able to have a discussion without physically being there ultimately Admiral Janeway has asked the Queen to get Voyager home by force Admiral Janeway stating that our counterpart Captain Janeway is refusing to get her people home because Captain Janeway wants to destroy the board it's a long story you really need to watch the episode to understand ultimately the Queen does offer to get Voyager home by force if necessary if the Admiral gives up her ship in all its technology oh yeah future Janeway came back with advanced technology to the nines and that is something of course the board of one Admiral Janeway agrees that she will ultimately give all of the tech after Voyager is forced to return to the Alpha Quadrant however the Queen reveals that they already found the ship of the good Admiral so that won't be necessary the Borg collective of course captures the ship and the Admiral who is then assimilated this is where a lot of the controversy about if the Borg still exist today or were completely annihilated come from the Queen was infected with a virus by assimilating Janeway that begins to utterly obliterate most of the Borg that we see the question is did this happen to the entire elective and the truth is we don't know there is evidence to show that there was catastrophic damage done to the board however to what extent remains a mystery as evidence supports both their being destroyed and their survival the evidence of them being destroyed is fairly obvious you see the Queen literally fall apart the destruction of at least one transwarp gate and the annihilation of Yuna matrix zero however Admiral Janeway states that she has done just enough to bring chaos to order she specifically says just enough we also see at least one board ship the sphere appear to still be in operation it could be argued that there is a delay for the pathogen to reach all of the collective and that's fair enough but then that would give the board the ability to counter and shut off some of the collective to protect itself and if we're being honest that isn't consistent with what's said in previous episodes with the central plexus which was stated to instantly spread something to all of the Borg collective if I had to guess given what I know of track in the Trek universe and the phrasing that was utilized this was probably a crippling blow to the Borg but not fatal it is likely that a substantial part of the board network is destroyed but they aren't gone completely as of the upload of this video at least the Picard series could change all of that ironically this specific episode doesn't add a ton of lore as you're noticing I don't really have a lot to work with here it's telling to me that the series ending episodes don't help at all [Music] even after seeing the Borg in one movie and three different series and understanding of how the collective operates and indeed their overall goal is still somewhat a mystery we do know that originally the Borg were non cybernetic beings that continued to augment themselves until they became the Borg collective while we don't know when these life-forms officially became cybernetic zombies of doom it is clear that the Borg were a regional power in the Delta Quadrant during the 15th and 16th centuries as they have simulated only a few systems they continue to expand and in the 22nd century became a dominant presence in the Delta Quadrant there is a lot of information on the Borg in the 23rd century either unfortunately except they either destroyed or assimilated or both the L or Ian's L Orion survivors would spread across the galaxy ultimately making it to the Alpha Quadrant and Starfleet who would then officially become aware of the presence of the Borg interestingly what was considered new and frightening in the Alpha Quadrant was commonplace in the Delta Quadrant by the 24th century the Borg would have become the central power of the quadrant itself it would be at this time that we know the collective began to take an interest in the Alpha Quadrant utilizing their transwarp technology to investigate at least the United Federation of Planets Romulan Star Empire and Klingon Empire though it's likely they spread further than just these three during the events of the TNG episode Q who we're not really sure how the collective deals with other species there is evidence that suggests the Borg initially only care about technology they were capture entire colonies and ships with little regard to the organics however it's possible that this perception could be due to the limited knowledge at the time of Starfleet assimilation might have been common practice at the time and we really wouldn't know it just depends on which series you want to believe regardless all this leads the primer of the Borg Queen while the Queen herself has many theories on who she is and what she stands for it's very hard to definitively say which is accurate in Canon her dialogue and first contact is annoyingly vague and she doesn't do much better in Voyager until she becomes the ultimate Bond villain what we can say without delving into theory is that the Queen has been a representative of the Borg and included as early as the Battle of sector 0:01 though she would claim that she's existed for far longer she has been at very least a mouthpiece for the Borg and what appear to work as some form of processor in one way or the other for the collective she also appears to work both as the collective and an individual on behalf of the collective depending on the interaction needed with other specific species and that's about it so with all that out of the way let's get into some of the theories that could make sense but aren't exactly Canon before I go too far into this it's very important to remember that some of these theories assume that the Queen was lying and somehow manipulated both the Borg and Picard which honestly isn't out of the realm of possibility we know that Picard can still be influenced by the Borg so with that in mind let's take a look the first theory to discuss is that Hughes independent spurred the creation of the Borg Queen again this would require deception on the Queen's part but it's not insane we know that when you was returned to the board that there was mass chaos I stated in a previous video that it really could be linked to just the board cube but we know that every cube has a central plexus that is connected to all of the collective now it is possible that this nexus is somewhat shielded but we don't really have enough evidence one way or the other so if it did spread past the cube and you have the board near annihilation the creation of the board Queen to bring order back to chaos makes sense we could even have the collective lying to itself saying that is still one entity when it is clearly not this would explain the extreme differences that we see in TNG all the way to Voyager another theory is that this was some form of resistance from a specific race we know that the Queen apparently has either a preference or requirement to be a specific species this can be garnered by just looking at the Queen models noticing that they all have similar characteristics it's possible that the assimilation of a certain race of females overwhelm the Borg and they were unable to cope causing the board to be circumvented by the aliens and ultimately taken over whether this was the plan all along of the species or a plan to stop the board that backfired remains to be seen another theory comes from the licensed but not Canon game called Star Trek legacy the idea is that the Borg was created by VG the impression given is that this is VG from the Star Trek movies the one that was lost repaired by Cynthia and machines and ultimately would consider all organic life to be an infestation though this is somewhat confusing as the board do not consider data to be worth any but let's ignore that for a second it would seem to be the most popular idea as it ties in with continuity and explains what ever happened to Vijay after the movie itself this could also tie in to the Queen where they needed a singular voice they found this in a species of females that could sift through thousands of thoughts at once bringing order to chaos as I've stated the last piece has already been discussed but it's still technically a theory that she is as she said always been a part of the collective perhaps she was the queen or some hierarch when right before the Organix lost all of their individuality while not the most sexy this is likely the best explanation at this point but if we're being honest right now we simply don't have enough information to know who the borg queen is or what she is or how she came about in these cases I generally just fall back on what's implied and the dialogue given that she's always existed however this creates massive inconsistencies and it doesn't make a lot of sense in this video I will be discussing two conversations I had one with previous Voyager writer Lisa clink and another an anonymous person associated with the actual discovery show I hate to Midnight's edge this but I gave my word that they would be anonymous if they were able to conclusively prove that they were affiliated with the show in a major way since they were able to do this I will include their thoughts to a limited capacity though to be fair their opinions largely mirror that of Lisa so you can choose to take my word for it or only listen to the parts that I include with Lisa the questions I asked Lisa will be included in the description below as has been stated Star Trek Voyager was one of the least liked series in the entire franchise this was probably due to a lot of reasons looking at the Nielsen ratings we can't completely blame it on the writing of Voyager breaking it down the next generation would ironically be the highest-rated Trek series followed by the original series Deep Space nine Voyager and then Enterprise from the research I could gather the dip began during the time that the writers of ds9 decided to differentiate themselves from TNG because they wanted to be different they took a stand of not your Grandpa's Star Trek they would have characters that broke the prime directive and still portrayed it as being okay and the officers as the good guys Starfleet would be more militaristic and if the writers had to bend continuity a bit they would they also wouldn't necessarily respect original works this is most blatant in how the mirror universe was treated in Voyager this mentality carried over but there was also the pressure of having lower ratings both from ds9 and from Voyager they were also on a network that was outright dishonest with the advertising just trust me the wager advertising makes discovery look like it actually cares and was being true to the original series representation at least in some instances so before I get into it let me say this both the person with discovery and Lisa clink appear in always to care a lot about Star Trek telling stories of the universe and even as continuity a lot of you will scoff at this but I sincerely believe it to be the case I hold these opinions not only due to the conversations I've just had but interactions that I've had with people who work within the industry and I truly believe that any extreme continuity issues or outright disdain for what came before can be thrown directly at the feet of show runners and some of the executives especially in the case of discovery and it's unfortunate because people will forget that in show business business is a part of it the entire point from the original series to discovery is to make money however you have to so if executives and showrunners have to bend continuity or don't care in some instances I'm not surprised writers while not being as focused on the bottom line will state that they care more about the story over continuity in fact least a challenge to me when I asked her about what she thought of my criticisms of Discovery she asked me how I liked the show if we remove the words Star Trek this was also basically echoed by the contact that works for discovery and to answer that question both Discovery and Voyager would be mediocre space operas with interesting dynamics that they never realized and ultimately they were just held back by themselves they could have achieved greatness and didn't Voyager showed that it could rival Battlestar Galactica when it came to how it handled some topics just with a trek spin but most of it was never fully realized discovery is the expanse if you remove the grittiness and ability to bring plot lines together cohesively both aren't really that great and if you add the Star Trek name to it they just missed the mark they do no favours to the franchise all that to say I think that the writers of the various Star Trek series probably fell into a similar specific mentality all of them that I've spoke to generally tell me the same thing that they wanted to honor Star Trek but weren't above writing inconsistent things they wanted to write good stories first and in their opinion a good story is better than continuity and looking at it from a cynical point of view that would hopefully lead to better ratings and more money for everyone this last piece being my words Thurs this is in my opinion why discovery is the way is because those who create trek now can't do the storytelling of old I sincerely believe that no one would watch TNG right now if it was to air like it did back then and storytelling itself has changed drastically hell to be honest I am not convinced there is any show that is comparable to TNG ds9 or Voyager in the quote-unquote light-hearted mannerisms and the way that it works today a lot of people will say Orville is the new Star Trek but that's a comedy Trek fans would not be open to a comedy just look at how open people are to the newest animation that is going to be a Star Trek series its basically a comedy so all that to say I don't know that Star Trek in the way that we all remember it could work today so how does all of this tie into the board because that's probably why you clicked on the video and I've included this episode as a part of that series obviously the board of all three five nine are nothing like that of the Borg and the Voyager series finality and definitively they are not the Borg and discovery if indeed that is the board the board of Voyager are villains of the week with a centralized power structure and a hierarchy that is defeated by one ship and one captain in a very very contrived way while it was executives in the first contact movie that insisted on a queen the flushing out of the concept was done in Voyager because the writers thought that the storytelling of the past couldn't work that to get people to watch they had to change it up whether you think that's a good idea or not is up to you individually but take into account the last episode of Voyager matches the lowest ever episode of Star Trek Enterprise so ultimately in voyagers case - I blame the writers for the destruction of the boors continuity absolutely according to Lisa there was guidance but they were never overruled by the executives and the writers had more freedom than what we see in Discovery is that bad maybe for me someone who lives eats and breathes Star Trek I think that it took a great story and enemy and watered them down but I have to consider that I'm not the average viewer and I want to challenge you if you're watching this are you really the average viewer as well it's possible that the average popcorn eating person would have you this and as far as discovery do I blame the writers for what has occurred not really according to my source what I've read independently and the general consensus the showrunners and the executives are far more authoritarian on Star Trek writers than they have been historically it's really too bad the network's don't trust the writers like they used to so all of this writing to say it is clear that there was a destruction of what the Borg were their very essence and it would be because of money but honestly we can only blame the writers to the extent that we are willing to blame ourselves how many of us would stick to continuity if it meant our families couldn't eat when the show got canceled and the same is even worse for discovery so I can't really be sure I may ask Felisa to come on and maybe have a hangout where her and I can talk but people try to use the critique that if Discovery didn't exist there would be no Trek and if this is what it takes this is the story writing to have what we remember track B B track and I don't know my counter is is if Trek has to be this then maybe there shouldn't be Trek has a wonderful legacy there are some problems and there are some greatness but overall it's really good and if it had to end with Star Trek Enterprise I don't think that would have been a bad thing but what are your thoughts [Music]

Channel: Lore Reloaded

Views: 813,960

Keywords: Lore, Lore Reloaded, Lore Master, Memory Alpha, star trek borg battle, star trek borg assimilation, star trek borg queen, star trek borg first appearance, star trek borg first contact, star trek borg queen death, borg lore, borg vs starfleet, starfleet vs borg, star trek the next generation, star trek best of both worlds ending, star trek best of both worlds cliffhanger, star trek best of both worlds review, star trek best of both worlds reaction

Id: iArPNc-ml3I

Length: 128min 17sec (7697 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2019