What Are the Borg's TRUE Origins?

hey guys what's up tyler here and welcome to another episode of star trek's ancient civilizations after the release of the last episode about the early vulcans i released a poll on twitter and my community tab asking you guys who you want to see in the next video it was a close race but ultimately between the results of the polls on both platforms borg went out the borg are one of the most recognizable races in star trek both in name and in appearance the name borg has become synonymous in popular culture with a hive mind society and it serves well to connote the nature of their collective we're given hints throughout the franchise as to the rough time frames of their origins although the true depth of their history at least in canon is still a mystery in this video i'll examine various accounts of the borg's ancient past an attempt to construct a rough timeline of the collective and its expansion throughout the milky way for this video i'm actually going to document each theoretical stage of work history and reverse chronological order and then at the end we'll recap by going forward in time and i'm going to be including both canon and non-canon sources so as to not limit our scope but i'll be sure to make it clear what i'm referencing the most recent hard date so to speak for the formation in canon of the board collective is given as the 15th century a.d specifically the year 1484. according to the voyager episode dragon's teeth around this time the board controlled only a handful of solar systems in the delta quadrant a species with a deep connection to every region of the quadrant the vadoir considered them a minor nuisance but as we know by the 24th century the board collective had assimilated thousands of worlds technically speaking this 15th century date is not necessarily the origin of the borg per se but the extent of their reach nearly a millennium before voyager takes place the destiny novel series suggests that they arose from a colony of the celiar species around 4527 bc according to this account the borg collective was created by the forcible merging of the celiar with temporally displaced human starfleet officers and makos from the 22nd century the celiar subsequently assimilated the planet era has where the merging took place and expanded from there but according to gainen in the next generation episode cue hoo and expounded upon in star trek first contact the borg have been developing for thousands of centuries dating back to at least the pleistocene epoch geinan and the borg queen indicate that the borg evolved into a mixture of organic and artificial life with cybernetic enhancements during this phase of their existence according to william shatner and judith and garfield reeve stevens 1996 trek novel the return and michael jan friedman's 1999 trek story the hunted the borg assimilated worlds throughout the delta quadrant including the home of the heroine the namesake for a massive communications relay network later discovered by voyager but wait i hear you say eagerly didn't you just get through talking about how the borg only controlled a handful of systems in the 15th century why are you including non-canon information that directly contradicts the shows and movies well this gets at the heart of one of the most interesting phenomena that i encountered when doing the research about the borg in fact you could say that this is one of the things that inspired me to make this episode in the first place not many are familiar with this hypothesis but as various star trek fans and novelists have speculated it's possible that there were multiple incarnations of the borg with multiple waves of expansion and contraction of their territory defining their true history this is how the borg could have been a minor nuisance at a much more recent date in the past and a major galactic player thousands of years before that the borg that our starfleet heroes encounter on screen is merely the latest incarnation of the borg this is a theory that admittedly is highly speculative as it incorporates story elements outside of the canon that were shown on screen but for the sake of this timeline i think it's at least interesting to ponder the implications of multiple borg incarnations these incarnations could be defined either as different tribes with different approaches to managing the collective or completely separate species entirely recurring periodically like a universal constant when examined in this fashion it becomes clear that the borg are like a virus in my century they'd only assimilated a handful of systems it looks like they've spread through the quadrant like a plague from a singular origin point they can spread out and infect other beings in the galaxy mostly concentrated in the delta quadrant after their decline due to some hypothetical unforeseen disaster a mutation can resurge and repeat the process all over again this contextualizes a lot of borg encounters documented in various novels short stories and video games in gene duise's 1992 novel probe it said that the borg attempted to assimilate the cetacean probe seen in star trek for the voyage home around 307 000 years ago the assimilation failed although the borg did succeed in damaging the probe's computer core and this is given as an explanation for why the probe tried to damage earth's atmosphere in the voyage home the borg subsequently attempted to assimilate the homeworld of the probe's creators but the creators fought back eventually escaping from the borg threat in a manner similar to the el orions gainen species if we keep going back even further we eventually run into supposed interactions between the borg and the preservers the preservers are of course another ancient race who are responsible for transplanting various endangered cultures from one place to another throughout the galaxy their canon activities date to just a few thousand years ago according to the original series episode the paradise syndrome but tng writer ronald d moore has given credence to the idea that the preservers are the same race as the ancient humanoids featured in the chase despite the age difference as the ancient humanoids lived four and a half billion years ago this connection is confirmed in star trek online and various other non-canon sources as far as the preserver's encounters with the board go peter david's 1991 novel vendetta and the 2001 voyager comic planet killer suggests that borg fleets threatened the preservers and may have even driven them close to extinction this could have resulted in a long period of galactic history without the preserver's influence before the resurgence far down the line furthermore it suggested that the preservers in a last-ditch effort created neutronium-powered doomsday devices or planet killers such as the one featured in the original series episode the doomsday machine pretty damn cool these doomsday devices would have been created to keep the borg in check but none were ever activated being left to wander the galaxy for eons in all these accounts though one thing remains consistent across interpretations even given a plain simple reading of the borg queen's dialogue first contact the borg most likely started out as a normal regular civilization where it seems that experiments with artificial intelligence and cybernetic enhancement went awry this may be what happened multiple times to cause resurgences of the borg with a new species zero starting the chain reaction each time in fact in three separate star trek short stories and comics 2003's the beginning by annie reed 2004's forgotten light by frederick kim and the 2006 tos manga side effects by chris daos three distinct separate species originally from the delta quadrant become the borg as an unintended side effect of medical experimentation with nanotechnology the 2006 video game star trek legacy even makes a connection between the borg and veger from the motion picture asserting that the borg are the inhabitants of the machine planet that veger encountered before his death gene roddenberry remarked that this could be the case but it was never explicitly said anywhere else can or not and many dismiss the borg vidr connection as unnecessary as it makes the universe smaller and creates a narrative simply out of the human need for structure and order another reason this connection is dubious is because veger's path to the soul system runs through klingon territory which is in the opposite direction from the core of the federation than the delta quadrant even if veger had traveled through a black hole to get back home which is very possible one could argue that the connection is still forced although we can't know for sure in any case the fact that all these incarnations as far as we're aware arose in the delta quadrant is curious it is somewhat indicative of the fact that the borg and cannon may have always been intended to be the same singular species starting out in the pleistocene and culminating in the board that we're familiar with on screen but even given the lack of canon evidence for some of these earlier incarnations the truth is that the galaxy is a big place and there's a lot of time that one can cover when delving into the depths of galactic history if season one of star trek picard is any indication then the cyclical waves of artificial intelligence rising and falling throughout the galaxy may be the norm and the borg though distinct from androids to their more explicit mixing of organic tissue may simply be a variation on this pattern side note i like how the borg storyline in season one of star trek picard was kind of dropped and didn't directly tie in with the admonition at least as far as we're aware currently but you know maybe in future seasons we'll learn more so let's recap because there's a lot here as far back as billions of years ago one of the earliest incarnations of the borg may have arisen presumably one of the child races of the progenitors aka the preservers these cybernetic beings fought with their creators eventually destroying them like the klingons would slay their gods hundreds of thousands of years ago an incarnation of the borg having assimilated numerous systems throughout the delta quadrant supposedly had encounters with the creators of the cetacean probe as well as the heroine and more another distinct incarnation of the borg one of many in fact would arise on a planet in the delta quadrant as a technologically advanced scientifically curious race experiments with nanotechnology and things don't get was planned towards the end of the pleistocene and beginning of the hollow scene yet another distinct incarnation of the board would arise and begin to assimilate systems in the delta quadrant according to the last unicorn rpg module all are yesterdays the time travel source book another origin point of the borg would arise just 5 800 years later on the planet era has when temporally displaced celiar and starfleet officers are assimilated finally the current incarnation of the borg would arise in the delta quadrant around the late 15th century controlling a few systems at first and eventually becoming the dominant power in the quadrant so as i mentioned before most of this information should be taken with a grain of salt and much of it taken together can come off as frankly quite contradictory that's because it is and as some have pointed out having an air of mystery around the borg's true origins is quite enticing but i think that the general idea of a board collective uh that comes in waves rising falling over millennia and recurring like a virus is at least interesting to consider it would actually tie together the two seemingly disparate pieces of dialogue from both the next generation and voyager regarding the borg's distant origins their evolution and their territorial expansion of course i would also be remiss if i didn't mention uh the very real connection that the borg share with the federation and humanity as we see in star trek first contact the borg's attempt to disrupt the timeline by preventing zephan cochran's warp flight in 2063 backfires as the uss enterprisee intervenes thereby resulting in the restoration of the timeline and creation of a pogo paradox the consequences of this are further demonstrated in the enterprise episode regeneration in which leftover board groans frozen in the arctic are reactivated in 2153 and send a signal with earth's coordinates to the delta quadrant this is what likely led the board to start making their way towards federation space by the 24th century with their first face-to-face encounter being facilitated by q and 2365 see it's all connected i won't go in depth uh into borg history as it pertains to what we see in the various shows and films as this is distinctly current history as opposed to their ancient origins trexpertise has an excellent video where he details borg history in full and that video also served as another inspiration for my deep dive into the borg's origins i hope that this video has been informative it certainly was for me thank you all so much for watching if you enjoyed this video be sure to leave a like and comment and don't forget to share it i'm really interested to hear your thoughts in the comments and as always if you haven't subscribed be sure to do that and click the bell icon so you'll receive all notifications if you want to support my work even further you can become a patron or a youtube member links to those as well as my social media and merch store are in the description below last but not least be sure to let me know in the comments what species you would like to see me feature in a future episode of star trek's ancient civilizations that's all i have for today and yeah i'll see you next time live long and prosper so [Music] you

Channel: OrangeRiver

Views: 266,494

Keywords: orange river, orange river productions, anim8orkid, tyler pilkinton, borg, star trek, tng, the next generation, voyager, seven of nine, 7 of 9, q who, first contact, borg queen, locutus of borg, locutus, picard, trek, delta quadrant, v'ger

Id: xyj6xOGXm1s

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SlowX]

It was me. I made 'em with my Erector set as a kid. Even gave them that "resistance is futile" thing. But in my defence, I just used that when talking about ice cream...

[u/Stock-Wolf]

When I played Star Trek: Legacy, I accepted their origin that the Borg were created by V’ger to assist in its mission of gathering knowledge. However, as I watch most of the series in the franchise I can no longer accept that as canon. I watched “Dragon’s Teeth” from VOY and the main characters from that episode mentioned that the Borg inhabited a mere handful of star systems from a time period 900 years ago.

Will we know the Borg’s origin? I’m sure I don’t know but if CBS does decide to pick it up, it better be good.

[u/CTBthanatos]

My head Canon says that the borg started as an AI developed by some unknown species that the AI then overthrew and consumed and then began expanding to assimilate other species.