“Listen. Strange women, hanging from the ceiling, distributing skin, is no basis for a system of government.”
I didn't know we had a queen - I thought we were an anarcho-syndicalist collective?
You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working drones...
HELP! HELP! I'M BEING UNASSIMILATED!!
When they added the Borg "queen", I was really bummed - because I had definitely thought of them as an autonomous collective.
I kind of hope they retcon that at some point.
In my head the justification for all of that is that the queen arose as a necessity to have a single individual for the crew of the Enterprise to interact with. This required her to have a certain amount of autonomy from the collective consciousness, the end result was that she turned into a bit of a dictator and because she had control over the collective she essentially took over without much fight. This would have been obvious to anyone else that this was a possibility, but the Borg had no experience of individuality in the collective before that, so the concern never occurred to them.
Eventually she died and the collective were released from her, and now they are back to being a hive mind. A hive mind that has learned not to do that again.
The reason seven of nine did not become like that was because the queen knew that that was a possibility, and so kept her largely connected so she could to a large extent control her.
What is the point of the Queen then?
Personification that changed the original concept for the sake of the story.
More importantly, it's just a comic.
Yes, but it works best with the original BORG concept, before they introduced the queen.
The BORG was originally described as a collective, and a collective doesn't have rulers like a queen.
So I must admit I was a bit disappointed in the introduction of a BORG queen.
Still the BORG remain a very cool part of Star Trek.
Do we even know: does the Borg queen truly control the collective, or is she rather a manifestation of something still more deeply hidden?
Perhaps at the core of the core, it really is a collective? I suppose this ~~like~~ (edit: level) of argumentation is useless, like that thought experiment of glass mountains on the moon, but still I wonder.
It depends on who's writing the episode. In First Contact she was implied to be an avatar of the Collective rather than an individual that controls it. Or possibly a gestalt consciousness formed as a byproduct of the Collective's structure of interlinking minds. The VOY writers didn't really get it, though, so she became a true individual on that show and in her future appearances.
In First Contact, when she died, all of the regular Borg immediately dropped dead.
She is very much in control. In unimatrix zero double episode, she commands self destruct of whole cubes just because one drone was not under her complete control, that's how much she is afraid of any independent thought.
And how much control she has over the rest.
Right, so she is like a program running with sudo permissions on a Unix machine. She holds the hidden, backdoor keys to control the thoughts of the mere "drones" below her, even as each ship itself had a singular authority (iirc?) who could do similarly for those "below" them. But what I mean is, what above moving back "up" that chain - does she likewise have hidden backdoor keys to control her thoughts, which she would not necessarily (or even likely) be aware of herself?
That, and even if she has sudo perms so to speak, that doesn't necessarily make it impossible for her to be a manifestation or byproduct of the borg collective consciousness.
Exactly - this conspiracy theory could go all the way to the core, and beyond! Or not, but it's fun to think about anyway:-).
There is/was no cube hierarchy. You have the Borg queen and then everything else. Ship sizing wasn't an indication of anything there than use case iirc.
Plus, a collective, as well as one ran by a leader, has no use case for a tiered authority structure. Unless compromised, Borg already always know the current plan. Thats why any ship could destroy every other ship.
I dunno, that seems like a ginormous gaping security hole, if any ship containing mere drones could be compromised - even the tiniest ones with the least powerful engines (& thus shields, etc.) - and then it in turn could decide to blow up the queen... and/or literally all other ships. Any collective with such a feature baked-in sounds like it would not remain in existence for all that long, unless there were literally no other species nearby it that were even remotely close to their level of technological development.
Each drone is a brain-cell of the collective brain, the Queen is the personality that eventually formed.
Still sucks, Borg were better as unpersonal
In order to interact with other groups they evolved a figure head
Oh... that's very interesting. Is that from the lore? Was it on purpose? It doesn't matter bc either way it's fascinating to think about how the "corruption" of the original purpose lead to the masses being controlled by a central figure with absolute authority.
Or another way to say that is that their society itself evolved and adapted to face their external circumstances, but anyway somehow it always ends up with an elite cadre of illuminati-like figures on top, and everyone else is just an entirely disposable peon.
Which makes me wonder now about whether the ocean of changelings themselves has things like "rulers".
To show that hack writers didn't get what made the borg cool and scary. They turned then into normal boring bad guys.
Scrum master
That actually makes sense. Thanks!
Exploiting the workers.
central database
Also, someone's gotta handle all those supply requisitions.
You may have noticed there is more than one Borg queen. They take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major decisions.
'We're the Borg of the Round Table"
And this is the Holy Hand Grenade of Andorra
I'm 37.
Well I can't just call you "Borg."
You could say 3 of 7.
I didn't know you were called 3 of 7!
Well you didn't ask, did you?
I did say 'sorry' about the 'old robot', but from the behind you looked--
What I object to is that you automatically treat me like an individual.
Well I am captain!
Bjorn?
The borg dystopia is the best dystopia.
Have to say I prefer the Queen over Trump/Vance.
At least she admits she's evil.
"Must be a king!"
"Why do you say that?"
"Well, he doesn't have shit all over him."
The workers actually think they're in charge... even while they are not allowed by the GroupThink to have a single thought that runs counter to the collective will.
Meanwhile, the Romulans:
"I FART IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION!!!"
Silly federation kniggits.
Aquatic ceremonies are irrelevant.
/c/TenFoward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags. This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ 8. No Political Upheaval. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Honorary Badbitch:
@jawa21@startrek.website for realizing that the line used to be "want to be added to the sidebar?" and capitalized on it. Congratulations and welcome to the sidebar. Stamets is both ashamed and proud.
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
