What's up Lore Masters? I'm on vacation this week. So shout out to Fancy Teeth
for helping me get this content (that you love) out on time. Today we'll be taking a
look at The Borg and more specifically if they were destroyed in the events of
Voyagers' End Game, the series finale. This topic appears to be one that both sides
are deeply and passionate about and can get pretty frustrated pretty easily. I
mean if you're like the anti trekker you'll be more prone to say that the
virus used by Janeway was a game ender for the Borg, that it completely
annihilated them. However I remain unconvinced. Let's try to break down both
sides. The primary evidence for the destruction of the Borg is the mass
amount of devastation we see at Unimatrix 01. We see a large portion of
the Borg fleet randomly exploding along with the destruction of the transwarp hubs.
And again Unimatrix 01 is just completely gone. Inside the unimatrix
the borg react to the destruction of the Queen. She falls on the ground
stating that everything Admiral Janeway has done will be undone once she kills
Captain Janeway and everything we see from the inside, the way she reacts, the
way the Borg are reacting, the explosions just everything that's going on. Looks
like this would be the end of the Borg themselves. However there are a few
things to note: not all the ships are destroyed we see several cubes actually
survived along with a specific sphere and this sphere was operational enough
to not only continue the attack on Voyager but arguably capture Voyager.
And if that seems confusing I'll take a moment here to discuss it. A common
argument for the series finale of Voyager is that the ship was actually
inside the sphere at the end of endgame. Personally, I always assumed that Voyager
somehow got behind the sphere and attacked from that angle, though I'm not
sure how I would have come to that conclusion. When I re-watch the end it
makes more sense that Janeway would have allowed the sphere to capture them,
pull them inside and then destroy the sphere from the inside out. That theory is
probably a video for another time though, but when you think about it, it really
comes down to how stupid you think the Borg are, the importance of the Queen and
her influence on the Borg. I honestly hate the Borg Queen. She breaks the Borg
for me. She makes them weaker and has several *several* inconsistencies she
comes off as separate entity in a lot of respects. In
First Contact she quite clearly has a separate identity.
She has goals, she has motivations with the Borg and the Borg act on her whims.
She does try to say that she's the beginning and the end and she tries to
justify her existence, but it's just not logical. There's no reason for her to be
there and she is obviously separate from the Borg collective.
We also observed that she can impress her will upon the collective. Again in
the episode endgame the collective is about to assimilate Voyager. When the
Queen steps in and countermands them. She even states that I'll.... keyword I'll... I WILL
watch over them. As in a separate entity from the Borg collective will
watch over them. So while yeah she is clearly a part of the Borg, she is
definitively also separate from them. In First Contact we also know that killing
her is not as simple as it seems. When Picard points out that the Queen was the
same queen that was killed on the original Borg cube, the one that attacked
Wolf 359, she simply counters that Picard was weak that he only thinks in
three dimensional terms... and honestly that's what those who assume the Borg are
destroyed are doing and in End Game. They're looking at this from a three dimensional
point of view. We see all this devastation, so they must all be gone.
Right? But let's sit down and think about this for just a minute. It doesn't make a
ton of sense that a species that would claim to seek perfection wouldn't have
contingencies for what happened. Specifically in End Game.
I mean honestly, you would think that they would have some form of plan like
when we see the destruction of the Queen, her death and first contact,
there was a plan there there was another Queen she was able to upload or she
existed in another form. So by that logic, the destruction of Unimatrix 01
wouldn't be the only hub that existed. Nor would it make sense that all the
hubs would be interconnected with no safeguards. And I know some will try to
argue the point that in Best of Both worlds it showed that they were all one
consciousness, but that could be argued to be a singular cube. And again the
Queen proves that there is some level of disconnection between the Borg and the
Queen herself. It's just a matter of what degree. Consider, how do we test new
equipment and new programs today? You generally don't
hook up a new piece of equipment to your entire mainframe but you test it out
locally. Are we smarter than the Borg? I mean would they not think this through?
It honestly just makes more sense to me. At least that the Borg would have
limitations on the range of the assimilation for this exact reason. We
also know that there are different Borg models when it comes to the Queen. Well
this is probably just real-world issues dealing with getting the same actress.
It does open up some interesting theories for cannon. Honestly it's my
theory that this is due to function and requirement. The Borg acts differently
based on the model that is present. Indeed I would argue that the Borg Queen
we seen First Contact and in End Game is far, far more aggressive and sexual than the
other models that we observe in Voyager. It honestly would make sense from a
computer standpoint. You have a separate program that deals with situations far
better than others. So you just plug and play what is required. Additionally, if we
believe some beta-cannon, it states that an entire species of females were found
and assimilated that became the queen. So it's possible that different
Unimatrix and different sectors different, Borg cubes, would have different Queens
that would have different functions. So let's consider the evidence before us we
have separate Queens. We have some Borg ships that did survive. The Borg don't
work in three dimensional thinking. It really all gives heavy credibility to
the fact that they did survive. Now this is going to be beta cannon, and let's
take it with a grain of salt, but another piece of conjecture for the existence of
Borg technology is the Narada. The Narada, in the JJ films, was a mining ship that
was able to single-handedly take a military Starfleet ship. Now I will grant
that the Narada is a 24th century ship, while the Kelvin was a 23rd century
vessel. However the looks of the Narada, its weapon systems and its abilities are
all above what you would consider that of a normal mining ship. In fact just
think how devastatingly crippled it was... and then it was able to fully repair and
become even more powerful. It's just kind of odd, if you took a WWI
battleship and put it up against a modern aged mining ship right now, I
don't think we would see these similar results. It is possible, based on what we
see, that the Narada had Borg technology on it and was a testbed for
the Tal Shiar. The evidence, as stated, would be the weapon systems and repair
capabilities. This is all confirmed in a comic series, and let me go ahead and
address that too, I believe the comic series to be beta
cannon, but let me go ahead and address this controversy. We do see the Borg, in
the future, in a Star Trek comic series with the Narada, as I discussed, in a
different novelization. In Star Trek Comics Countdown, the Borg are seen
existing after End Game. You also have Roberto Orci, or or Orci, or however you
say his last name, stating that his comics and games are licensed and completely
canon. This would be a prime example of why I don't really look to screenwriters,
producers or designers for what is (and isn't) canon. Roberto would later recant
his word, saying that he was pressured by the writer to say those things. And
honestly, whether he says it or not, it's all moot because we have the CBS
executive (who is in charge of licensing and has a say in deciding what is and
isn't canon) stating quite clearly that something licensed is not canon. Just
because it's licensed, doesn't make it canon. It has to be on screen. So while I
do think there is some evidence that the Narada may have had Borg tech, we don't
know and, honestly, that evidence is pretty weak. But all of that aside, I do
think that the Borg persevered and that's based on what we see and what we
know of the Borg themselves. The evidence seems more for them surviving
than not, but those are just my thoughts. What are yours? Let me know in the
comments below.
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