This week on Star Trek, we teach the Borg some basic English grammar. First lesson:
introduction to the first person singular pronoun.
This is a review of the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “I, Borg.” If
you have not seen this episode, and you don’t want to know what happens in it, be warned:
spoilers beyond this point!
So, you’re on the creative team of a successful sci-fi action/adventure show. You’ve created a
formidable, frightening villain for your heroes to face off against. The only problem is, the appeal
of this villain lies in what an unstoppable force they are. You want to continue to feature them
on the show, but you know the more your heroes confront them and either defeat or escape them,
the more you diminish the credibility of the threat they pose and therefore also diminish
their appeal. To quote one of my childhood’s most beloved racists: “What’cha gonna do?”
The creators of TNG were smart enough to recognize this problem
and figure out a way around it, at least for one episode. So,
let’s take a look at what they did and talk about what happens in “I, Borg”:
The Enterprise responds to what seems to be a distress call from a nearby moon while surveying
an uncharted star system. When the away team beams down to investigate, they discover a
crashed Borg scout ship, including one Borg drone who is still alive, but seriously injured. At
first Captain Picard is like, “Sorry about that Borg’s luck” and orders the away team to return,
but Dr. Crusher gets all up on her “I’m a healer, I’m meant to help people” high horse and wants to
bring the Borg back to the Enterprise for medical treatment. Worf is like, “I say we kill it.”
Picard’s like, “Well, I never take Worf’s suggestions, so I guess we should do what
Beverly says.” They beam the unconscious Borg aboard and place it in a holding
cell. While Crusher examines him, Picard pulls Geordi aside and says, “Hey, listen,
I got a wonderful grinchy idea — what if we installed an invasive program in this Borg and
then patched him up and sent him back to the other Borg? Then, the invasive program would
spread through the collective and eventually kill all of the Borg, everywhere. Sound good?”
They have a meeting about it later, and yeah, it does sound good — to everyone but you-know-who,
Dr. Let’s-Not-Do-a-Genocide over there. Crusher is literally the only person in the
room who objects to the plan at this point — even Counselor Troi is like, “Hey, it’s us or them!”
After his injuries have been treated, the Borg regains consciousness. Geordi fixes
up a custom power conduit so the Borg can recharge, and eventually they move him to a
science lab so Geordi and Beverly can give him a series of tests that will help them
design the invasive program. Meanwhile, Guinan — whose entire civilization was
destroyed by the Borg — is pissed that there’s even a Borg on the ship at all,
and feigns injury in order to score a touch in a fencing match with Picard,
warning him that his compassion for the injured Borg could be dangerous. Picard’s like, “I’ve
moved beyond the compassion phase — we’re turning him into a weapon of mass destruction now.”
Geordi and Beverly continue working with the Borg. First, they learn that his designation
is Third of Five, then they give him a more human name — Hugh. He accepts the name, though he still
only refers to himself in a plural sense, as though he represents the entire Borg collective:
“We are Hugh.” It’s not just Geordi and Beverly who are learning about Hugh — he’s
curious about them, as well. He asks questions, like “What’s a doctor?” And, “Why don’t you want
to be assimilated?” At one point, Hugh asks why Geordi is scanning his arm, and Geordi answers
“I’m trying to learn more about you. That’s part of what we do, we learn about other species.”
To which Hugh replies, “The Borg assimilate species — then we know everything about them.”
The Borg know everything about the species they assimilate, but you’ve never heard of a doctor?
Geordi tells Hugh that he doesn’t want to be assimilated, that he likes being
an individual who can make his own choices about what to do with his life. He says,
“When I talk about myself, I use ‘I’ — ‘I am Geordi.’ You can’t even refer
to yourself as an individual — you say ‘We are Hugh.’” I mean,
I don’t think it’s cool to make fun of his speech impediment like that, but whatever . . .
As a bond grows between them, Geordi starts to share Beverly’s apprehension about giving Hugh
the invasive program. He goes for a drink in Ten Forward, and Guinan’s like “If it makes you feel
any better about using this Borg to destroy the other Borg, if the other Borg come to get him
they’ll probably kill us all.” Geordi says “Maybe you’d feel differently if you talked to him.”
So, Guinan’s like “Challenge accepted!” She goes to Hugh’s holding cell, tells him about
what the Borg did to her people, but also tells him that even though they lost their homeworld
and were scattered across the galaxy, they survived. Resistance is not futile. Hugh seems
surprised by this. More than that, he responds to Guinan’s story with compassion. “You are saying
that you are lonely,” he tells her. “You have no others. You have no home. We are also lonely.”
Guinan drops in on Picard. It’s late, so he’s changed out of his work pajamas and
into his sleep pajamas. She says, “Hey, before you use that Borg to annihilate his entire race,
you should talk to him.” Picard’s like, “Ugh, first Beverly, then Geordi, now you.”
“Hugh.”
“What?”
“No, What’s on second. Are you gonna go talk to the Borg?”
“I don’t know.”
“Third base!”
Picard does talk to Hugh. When Hugh recognizes Picard as Locutus, Picard goes
with it and tells Hugh that the Enterprise, including Hugh’s new best friend Geordi,
is going to be assimilated and that Hugh will assist. Hugh refuses. “I will not,” he says.
Picard is stunned. “But, you are Borg,” he says. “No,” Hugh replies. “I am Hugh.”
So, the invasive program plan is off. Having seen for himself that Hugh has regained his
individuality and is a fully realized person, Picard can no longer justify using him as an agent
of genocide. Instead, they come up with a new plan: return Hugh to the crash site, where another
Borg ship will be along shortly to pick him up. When those other Borg scan his memory, they’ll
integrate his experiences into the collective, including his sense of individuality — and
if the Borg remember what it’s like to be individuals, that might change them forever.
Hugh agrees to return to the crash site. Geordi accompanies him. The other Borg show up, they plug
into Hugh, downloading and seemingly erasing his memory, turning him back into just another drone.
But then, as they beam away, Hugh casts one final glance toward his friend Geordi. He does remember.
What does that mean? That will have to wait for another episode, because this one is over!
“I, Borg” is an example of Star Trek: TNG at its very best. The writing, on multiple levels,
is smart and incredibly effective. Firstly, since I mentioned it before the episode summary,
let’s talk about how they address the problem of over-exposing the Borg. Instead of creating
a scenario where the crew of the Enterprise find themselves in another head-on conflict
with the Borg, the writers — primarily Rene Echevarria, this episode’s sole credited
writer — craft a story about one Borg, isolated from the collective. That way,
there’s no need to have the supposedly unstoppable enemy take yet another L from the good-guys,
and we still get a Borg episode. That aspect alone is very clever.
But, “I, Borg” has so much more going for it than cleverness. It deepens our understanding of the
Borg without fundamentally changing anything about them or weakening them as a threat. If anything,
it only emphasizes how dangerous the Borg are by keeping them off-screen, except for Hugh, for most
of the episode. While Hugh is experiencing his personal re-awakening on the Enterprise,
his fellow Borg are lurking at the far edges of the story, an enemy our heroes dare not confront.
At the heart of the episode is the inherently compelling question of what happens when you
have a collective consciousness made up of billions of minds all interconnected,
working together, functioning as a single being, and then you pull one of them out? “I, Borg” uses
that question as the jumping off point for an exploration of identity, and recovery,
and the importance of being able to overcome prejudice, even prejudice born of painful personal
experience, and see people as individuals, not as faceless representatives of their group.
That’s an aspect of the episode that really stood out to me as I watched it this morning. Yes, it’s
about Hugh regaining his individuality, yes it’s about his touching connection with Geordi — as
always, the Enterprise’s Designated Friend — yes, it’s about how the greatest threat to
totalitarianism is individual liberty — and that’s all great, and important. But, it’s also about the
effect that Hugh has on the other characters. It’s about Guinan, who has known about the Borg longer
than anyone else on the ship, whose people were victims of a genocide at the hands of the Borg,
realizing that it’s not fair to judge Hugh for the crimes of his people. It’s about Picard, who was
personally victimized by the Borg — Counselor Troi describes Picard’s assimilation as an
assault — realizing that it’s wrong to use Hugh as an instrument to punish the Borg for their crimes.
The implication — and it’s never more than that, at least in this episode — is that it’s
unjustifiable to wipe out the Borg, despite the existential threat they pose to every
other species, because every Borg is a former individual, and has the potential to become an
individual again if separated from the collective. They aren’t a swarm of soulless drones — they’re
people. It isn’t stated explicitly until the first season of Star Trek: Picard,
but the idea originates here, in this episode: Borg drones are not only part of the collective,
they are victims of it — Picard himself is a victim of the collective, as is Hugh,
as is everyone else who has been assimilated.
It’s a very Star Trek idea — perhaps the most Star Trek idea — and something we can
all stand to be reminded of, living as we do in a world where groups, sometimes entire nations,
of people are routinely blamed for our problems or painted as threats to our way
of life. Even when the group in question does represent a legitimate threat — when
it’s an aggressive military dictatorship, for example — it’s important to remember
that not every member of a group is equally responsible for its offenses,
and that the first victims of totalitarianism are always those who are forced to live under it.
Jonathan Del Arco, the featured guest star of the episode, turns in a great performance as Hugh.
He plays Hugh’s fear, confusion, curiosity, and finally determination very effectively.
There are times when he comes perilously close to making Hugh too cute, too much of a lost puppy,
but he never quite crosses the line into mawkishness. He’s vulnerable. He’s
sympathetic. And he’s brave — he chooses to return to the Borg, even if it might cost him
his newly gained individual identity, rather than stay and endanger his friends on the Enterprise.
The regular cast does a great job, too, and reminds us of how important it is to the success
of the series that we know who these characters are. The characterization of the regulars in TNG
isn’t all that dynamic, but it is strong, and everyone in this story behaves the way they
ought to behave: Beverly insists on compassion, even if she’s the only one who sees this Borg
as a person; Geordi forms a friendship with Hugh that forces him to question the creation of the
invasive program, but also responds strongly, almost indignantly, when Hugh suggests that
assimilation is better than exploration; Guinan is the pragmatist who understands the nature of
the Borg and the threat they pose more than almost anyone, but who is also willing to listen to what
Hugh has to say and change her mind; and Picard is the man of principle who first acts to protect his
civilization from an enemy that wants to destroy it, an enemy that has personally victimized him,
but then sees beyond his trauma and embraces the humanity of his enemy.
“I, Borg” is not the last time we would see the Borg on TV, but it would be more
than ten years before we got another Borg episode that was anywhere near this good,
and I don’t think we’ve gotten one since that was good in this same way. “I, Borg” finds a
way to add dimension to the Borg without diluting their power and menace, and tells a story which
calls us to empathy and understanding. It does what Star Trek at its best does.
Those are my thoughts on “I, Borg.” What do you think of this episode? Please share your
thoughts with me in the comments. If you’d like to support this channel — and I sure wish you would,
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Please join me next week for another retro review. Next time,
we continue on with our batch of reviews of Borg episodes and jump to another series,
Star Trek: Voyager to take a look at the first major appearance of the Borg in that series,
the two-parter that bridges seasons three and four and introduced the character of Seven of Nine:
“Scorpion.” I’ll see you next week for that. Thanks for watching and take care, everybody!