Questionable Trek vol. 10

Probably the coolest thing Star Trek: TNG did was invent the Borg. They are truly one of the best villains of all time. But then they had to go and ruin it with "I Borg". At least, so says Andrew.

Question from Scott: “What's the problem with ‘I Borg’?”

Andrew’s Answer: Let me say up front that as episodes go, “I Borg” was entertaining. It was well-written and as a stand-alone episode, it was pretty good. BUT there are huge problems with this episode.

For one thing, the Borg is terrifying because it is a collective. Its members cannot be individually influenced and it lacks the motives that are common to normal individuals. Thus, you can’t “deal” with it. You must defeat it or die. Moreover, since being assimilated means being absorbed into the collective, this is a form of identity/soul death -- you cease to be forever. "I Borg" wipes that out. Suddenly, being assimilated into the Borg is no longer the death of the identity/soul, it is now simply being put to sleep until you die or can be freed. In other words, the Borg as originally presented represented a type of immortal death, but the “I Borg” version reduces this to just a life sentence with the possibility of parole. That reduces the terror factor significantly.

Further, "I Borg" changes the nature of the Borg itself. Rather than being a collective which desires to absorb all, it instead becomes an entity which suppresses its members. In real terms, this is like the difference between an army of devout Islamic terrorists v. a conscript army led by a dictator. The first is relentless because each part shares the goal and you can’t kill it by just killing the head. The second is a thing of pity because it only stays together under threat and it will fall apart once you undermine the key member.

"I Borg" also displays daffy liberalism. Liberals have always maintained that given the chance, everyone in the world would think like a liberal. So if someone is running around raping, pillaging and murdering, it must be because some horrible force has made them do it. Liberals simply cannot conceive of “true believers.” This idiocy is on display in “I Borg” (and with 7 of 9), because once these drones are released from the collective, they instantly accept Starfleet philosophy as true and go about becoming just like Picard and the crew. Even 7 of 9, who supposedly didn’t fit in, only had problems with the chain of command, not the fundamental beliefs.

If they wanted to do an episode like “I Borg” more honestly, then they should have acknowledged that these people likely would have very different views than those of Picard et al. and not all of them will be nice people. But they didn’t do that because the point to the episode was, “if we free people from evil political systems, they will become good liberals and it will be a great world.”

Finally, as an aside, the follow up to “I Borg” is rather stupid if you think about it. Supposedly, Hue brings back “knowledge of individuality” to the Borg like a virus and causes chaos. Really? How is it the Borg has no knowledge of this? They absorbed millions of people and none of them ever mentioned this? How can the collective be so fragile that one person enjoying freedom would catch the whole system by surprise and destroy it? That was nothing more than an attempt to hide Picard’s stupid decision in "I Borq" to let the Borg destroy trillions of lives rather than make Hue feel bad.

Scott’s Response: I definitely can't argue with your last point! Having said that, while I'm neither praising nor blaming any one person, from a TV writer's point of view, it's incredibly difficult to successful pull off an enemy of this nature. There is no one to relate with, no one person with whom to communicate, and Picard and Co. seem to have no trouble defeating the Borg. The more that happens, the more the Borg are diminished as a threat. "Don't worry. We beat them before, we'll just do it again." I agree it would've been nice to present different viewpoints, or at least explore the consequences of Picard's actions... but this is what happens when the writer who creates the alien race leaves the series, with other (newer) writers filling in the details later.