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A Complete Timeline of the Borg in Star Trek

The Borg are among Star Trek's most terrifying villains, having assimilated Captain Picard and Seven of Nine, but what is their timeline of events?

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The creation of the borg through star trek: enterprise, star trek: the next generation is when starfleet engaged the borg, star trek: voyager traveled through borg space and almost destroyed them, the borg returned in star trek: picard for one last battle.

Throughout the six-decade history of Star Trek , there have been many iconic villains, but perhaps none more so than the Borg. Created by Maurice Hurley, the head writer for Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2, the Borg began as an organic species looking attain perfection. They achieved this by merging their organic bodies with cybernetic components. Individuality was erased, creating a hivemind culture of beings that sought only to assimilate more species and their technology in the search for perfection. They are led by a queen, a singular consciousness that can occupy multiple bodies.

The Borg are incredibly powerful and are known to travel via transwarp. They are even capable of time travel, though they don't do it very often. Given all that the Borg have going for them, it's no surprise that they were meant to be the ultimate villains Starfleet could never reason with. Over time, these villains became more complex and some even became Federation allies. Yet, the Borg have a long history in the Star Trek timeline, predating the earliest human space travel.

How Did Star Trek: Enterprise Become a TV Series?

The Borg have existed in their modern form since at least the time of the 15th Century on Earth. During the USS Voyager's travels in the Delta Quadrant, they met members of the Vaduwaur species who had been in stasis for more than 900 years. They had "many encounters" with the Borg who, by this time, had assimilated a few star systems in the Delta Quadrant. However, given the Vaduwaur didn't see them as their worst nemesis, they weren't as advanced as the Borg in the 24th Century.

In 2063, a Borg Sphere emerged from a temporal rift to prevent the Humans from making first contact with the Vulcans. The USS Enterprise-E followed them and destroyed the sphere, though a number of drones beamed aboard their vessel. Captain Picard defeated them, and Zefram Cochrane made his first warp flight . Some 90 years later, in Star Trek: Enterprise , remnants of the sphere were found in the North Pole. A handful of drones were revived and escaped in a space vessel. They were pursued and destroyed by the NX-01 Enterprise, but not before sending a message about Earth's location to the collective in the Delta Quadrant.

10 Star Trek Time Travel Stories That Changed Canon

The El-Aurian Guinan was saved by the USS Enterprise-B in 2293, along with fellow survivors of her people. Her planet had been assimilated by the Borg, and this was when Starfleet learned the species' name. Erin and Magnus Hansen, tried to study them in the late 2340s before they and their daughter Annika, Seven of Nine, were assimilated. In The Next Generation Season 2's "Q Who," the omnipotent being sent the USS Enterprise-D thousands of lightyears away from Federation space where it encountered a Borg Cube. They were only concerned about technology at the time, but this meeting led them to Federation space.

One year later, in 2366, the Borg sent a single cube to assimilate Earth. They captured Captain Jean-Luc Picard and assimilated him, giving him the name "Locutus." He was meant to demoralized Starfleet to prevent humans and the rest of the Federation from fighting back. He was freed of their control, but not before the Battle of Wolf 359 which destroyed 39 ships and killed 11,000 people. Among those were the wife of Commander Benjamin Sisko and the crew of the USS Constance of which Captain Liam Shaw was one of ten survivors. Commander Data briefly connected himself to the collective, ordering the Borg drones to enter regeneration and initiating the self-destruct sequence.

In 2368, the USS Enterprise-D encountered the Borg again, discovering a crashed scout ship. The drone Third of Five survived . Picard wanted to use the drone to implant a deadly virus into the collective. However, separated from the collective, the drone became an individual named "Hugh." He was returned unchanged to the collective, though Hugh's individuality caused a meltdown in the collective. A year later, Data's brother Lore found the cube and became their leader. He tried to replace their organic minds with positronic brains like his. The rogue Borg eventually overthrew him with help from the Enterprise. Five years later, another Borg cube was sent to Earth and was eventually destroyed, but not before sending the Sphere holding the Queen back to 2063.

How Did Star Trek: Voyager Become a TV Series?

In 2373, the USS Voyager entered Borg space on their journey home from the Delta Quadrant. At the same time, the Borg tried to assimilate Species 8472, which hailed from a dimension of "fluidic space." The assimilation didn't work and war broke out. Because 8472 was so hostile, Captain Janeway was able to enter into an alliance with the Borg to help defeat them, specifically with the help of the ship's holographic Doctor. The Borg betrayed them, which Janeway anticipated. The drone Seven of Nine was freed from the collective and became a member of the crew. Though she wished to rejoin the collective and tried to do so twice, she eventually chose to stay with Voyager .

In 2375, a transporter accident involving the Doctor's mobile emitter (based on 29th Century technology) and Seven of Nine's Borg nanoprobes. A drone was "grown" in the tank and designated One. The Borg tried to assimilate him and he willingly ended his own life. Later that year, the USS Voyager salvaged a transwarp coil from a destroyed Borg vessel. This led the Borg to enact a trap meant to bring Seven of Nine back into the collective as a replacement for Locutus. Janeway and the crew rescued her. A year later, while trading with the Brunali, Voyager was attacked by Borg vessel. However, they hid a photon torpedo in a captured Brunali vessel that destroyed the Borg ship, allowing Voyager to escape.

In 2377, Seven of Nine was reunited with other Borg in "Unimatrix Zero," a digital plane where drones retained their individuality. Captain Janeway used this opportunity to plan an attack on the collective and start a resistance movement. Captured by the Borg, many of Voyager's crew were assimilated. Thanks to the Doctor, they retained their individuality freeing thousands of drones and starting a Borg civil war. In 2378, a time-traveling Admiral Janeway showed up on Voyager with a plan to get the ship home. The plan succeeded, but the Admiral was assimilated. She carried a virus that decimated the collective to nearly the point of destruction. Five years after the return of the USS Voyager, the rag-tag crew of the USS Protostar found a Borg Cube, but they let sleeping Borg lie .

The Picard Blu-ray Underscores Why Each Season Needed the Borg

A Borg Cube that assimilated a Romulan vessel suffered a submatrix collapse, and it was captured by the Romulan Star Empire. In 2399, the ex-Borg Hugh led the Borg Reclamation Project on a ship dubbed "the Artifact." To stop a plan by a cult of anti-synthetic Romulans in the Tal Shiar, Seven of Nine created her own mini-collective and led the Artifact to crash on a planet populated by synthetics. It's presumed the surviving xBs (as they were called) joined the society on that planet. Hugh, however, was killed in the attempt.

In 2401, a Borg vessel of unknown origin appeared and asked to speak with Admiral Jen-Luc Picard. The Queen of this collective was Agnes Jurati, who was assimilated by the Borg Queen of an alternate timeline who took Picard and his allies into the past to save the future they knew. Jurati convinced the Queen to create a new kind of collective in which individuality was maintained and assimilation was voluntary. This new collective applied for provisional Federation membership to stand guard at a rift in space through which a still-unknown threat would emerge.

Also that year, the near-dying Borg Queen allied with Changeling terrorists angry with the Federation after the Dominion War. They infiltrated Starfleet, adding a DNA sequence to Starfleet transporters that would assimilate anyone under the age of 25 once they received a coded message. That message was sent by Jack Crusher , the son of Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher. He was assimilated by the dying Borg Queen and named Võx. New technology added to modern Starfleet vessels allowed these new Borg to assimilate the ships in moments. Using a rebuilt USS Enterprise-D, the command crew of that vessel saved Jack and destroyed the remaining Borg, seemingly defeating them once and for all.

The Star Trek universe encompasses multiple series, each offering a unique lens through which to experience the wonders and perils of space travel. Join Captain Kirk and his crew on the Original Series' voyages of discovery, encounter the utopian vision of the Federation in The Next Generation, or delve into the darker corners of galactic politics in Deep Space Nine. No matter your preference, there's a Star Trek adventure waiting to ignite your imagination.

• Subspace Link: Established
• Starfleet Database: Connected
• Quantum Memory Field: stable
• Optical Data Network: rerouting

ODN RELAYS UNDER HEAVY LOAD

Welcome to 'Star Trek: Borg - Remastered', cadet. Pay attention to this training - it might ensure your survival.

What is 'Star Trek: Borg'?

'Star Trek: Borg' was a single-player 1996 FMV game developed and published by Simon & Schuster (published by Virgin Interactive in some regions) for PC and Macintosh.

'Star Trek: Borg - Remastered' is a fan project attempting to recreate the game in-browser, using AI to remaster the original game footage to HD quality using a rare Japanese DVD release of the game.

How to play

You can control the game from this LCARS interface. On desktop and tablet, you'll see the 'Holonovel commands' on a panel to the left. On mobile, you'll see the control buttons above.

• START/RESTART PROGRAM: Launches a new game.
• HELP/CONTINUE: Hides current game and shows this help screen (and vice-versa).
• FREEZE/RESUME PROGRAM: Pauses and unpauses gameplay.
• SCAN: Pauses gameplay and allows you to use Q's tricorder to scan in-game items.
• CHAPTERS: Allows you to jump between chapters.
• SETTINGS: Brings up the settings screen, allowing you to select options such as video quality.
• TRICORDER: When using the tricorder, sometimes there will be related entries to read which will give you more information that may be vital to your mission. You can access these by clicking or tapping the buttons to the left of the currently-displayed entry.

PLEASE NOTE: The game will run with the highest video quality by default. If you're playing on mobile data, this will use roughly a megabyte of your data allowance per second. It will also cause choppy playback on slower connections. If you face either of these issues, it is highly recommended you visit SETTINGS first and lower the video quality.

UPDATE: This project has gained far more attention than I was expecting! As such, the load on my server is higher than anticipated. My apologies if you encounter frequent pauses to video playback or lag when switching scenes, even if you've lowered the video quality. This is usually caused by many users playing the game simultaneously. I've patched in a "buffering" message which triggers when this occurs.

Bonus hint - if you find yourself constantly running out of time with puzzles like the turbolift panel, Borg panel and hypospray, note that you can still click buttons if you freeze the program...

Also note - on puzzles that require you to input a sequence, you get one chance per try. If you hit the wrong buttons or get the sequence wrong, you've already failed until the next try.

The original box art for 'Star Trek: Borg'

• IS THIS OFFICIAL? No, not it any way. This is a fan project. Please see the legal disclaimer below for more details.
• HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU? Please feel free to comment on the trailer video on YouTube .
• IS THIS LEGAL? That's a grey area. It isn't possible to play the original Borg game on any modern PC or Mac, and it isn't possible to purchase it anywhere any more. Technically, the game is "abandonware" (although that term holds no official legal status). That said, the legal rights holders of Star Trek would be well within their rights to issue me with a C&D order - and should that happen I will, of course, comply and take this site offline. My advice would be to enjoy this while you can, because it might go away.
• CAN I DOWNLOAD THIS GAME? I'm sorry, but I'm not going to make an offline version available. As noted above, I will comply if I'm issued with a C&D order. If I made the project easily downloadable and distributable, I would likely find myself the subject of far more serious legal action.
• I FOUND A BUG - CAN YOU FIX IT? Yes, please let me know by commenting on the trailer . I did this in my spare time and, although I did my best to bugtest, I probably haven't caught everything.
• I'M EXPERIENCING A LOT OF LAG/BUFFERING. CAN YOU UPGRADE YOUR SERVER? I'm sorry about that, but I'm afraid not. This is a purely not-for-profit fan project, so I don't have a budget for such things. I'm a freelance web developer, so I have my own dedicated server and that's what I used. But that leads us nicely onto...
• DO YOU HAVE A PATREON, GOFUNDME, INDIEGOGO ETC.? It's very kind of you to ask, but no. I have no intention or desire to profit from this project in any way. It's just a personal passion project that I put together for my own entertainment, experimentation and experience.
• HOW DID YOU MAKE THIS AWESOME LCARS INTERFACE? Actually, I didn't - I just slightly modified an amazing one I found online. All credit to www.TheLCARS.com , where I found it. It's a genuinely excellent responsive LCARS HTML template that incorporates various styles from the shows and movies.

Select your video quality

1440p - Highest quality. Recommended for 4K+ desktop devices. Uses ~1MB of data per second. Not recommended for mobile data or use on phones.

1080p - Good quality. Recommended for desktops, laptops and high-end tablet devices. Uses ~0.5MB of data per second. Not recommended for mobile.

720p - Medium quality. Recommended for mid-low-range laptops and tablet devices. Uses ~0.2MB of data per second.

480p - Low quality. Recommended for devices using mobile data on limited contracts. Uses ~0.05MB of data per second.

CD-ROM - Nostalgia quality. Recreates the appearance of the original CD-ROM release. Uses ~0.02MB of data per second.

Toggle fullscreen

Toggle cheat mode.

Turn on cheat mode to display clickable hotspots on screen. Hotspots appear as semi-transparent red rectangles. Be warned, this is ugly as hell and was originally used for debugging during development - but some users may find it helpful when stuck.

Physiology [ ]

The physiology of each Borg drone varied according to the species which it was assimilated from. ( Star Trek: First Contact ) Drones were typically humanoid, although the Collective demonstrated a willingness to assimilate non-humanoid lifeforms. ( VOY : " Scorpion ")

A set of Borg implants after removal

Upon assimilation, a drone would cease to grow body hair and would develop a pallid skin coloration, differing from its original skin pigmentation. Cybernetic implants were either surgically attached to the body or grown internally by nanoprobes injected into the bloodstream; in certain cases these implants could cause severe skin irritation. ( TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds "; Star Trek: First Contact ) The nature of these implants varied from drone to drone depending on the drone's intended function, but the basic nodes of interlink for communications with the Collective and a myo-neural cortical array to control movements were implemented in every drone. In most cases, an eye would be replaced with an eyepiece that improved its vision and an arm would be amputated altogether to make room for a functional prosthetic; in tactical drones, a weapon would be included, and some drones had medical tools built in to heal drones who had minor injuries. ( VOY : " The Gift ", " Dark Frontier ") The implants of a fully assimilated drone allowed it to function for extended periods without shelter, food, water, or even air. A drone could even survive in the vacuum of outer space. Lily Sloane , a human observer local to the Earth of the 21st century , characterized Borg drones as "bionic zombies " after hearing a description of them, albeit before observing them directly. ( Star Trek: First Contact )

A drone's only requirement was a supply of energy to maintain the implants that in turn maintained its biological functions. This energy was supplied during regeneration cycles within a Borg alcove . Upon receiving damage, a drone would return to the alcove for assessment of the damage. Severely damaged drones were disassembled and scavenged for reusable parts. ( TNG : " Q Who ", " I Borg ")

Infant Borg

The Borg did not procreate; they would add to the Collective's population only by assimilation. ( VOY : " Drone ") Borg infants were not accepted to the collective until they matured to a certain age. Until reaching this age, assimilated infants and youths were placed inside maturation chambers . ( TNG : " Q Who "; VOY : " Collective ")

Borg drones were equipped with myriad technologies integrated into their bodies which enabled them to perform their duties within the Collective, several of which were universal to all drones. A neural transceiver kept them connected to the hive mind . ( VOY : " Scorpion, Part II ") A personal force field protected each drone from most energy-based attacks. ( TNG : " Q Who ") A drone was able to communicate with their ship by signals across a subspace domain, the basis of their hive mind, which Data likened to a transporter beam . ( TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II ") Each drone possessed a pair of assimilation tubules embedded in one hand for the purpose of instantly injecting individuals with Borg nanoprobes. ( Star Trek: First Contact ) A cortical processor allowed a drone to rapidly assimilate visual information. Borg drones were also equipped with a neural processor, which kept a record of every instruction that particular Borg receives from the collective hive mind. Captain Picard used one such processor to discover that the Borg were attempting to use the deflector dish of the USS Enterprise as an interplexing beacon to contact the Borg in 2063. ( Star Trek: First Contact )

Drones also contained fail-safe mechanisms designed to deactivate and even vaporize their own bodies, thereby allowing the Collective to eliminate damaged or dead drones without leaving their remains to be exploited by outsiders. ( TNG : " Q Who ") The captured drone Third of Five also made comments indicating that this vaporization may have been a form of resource re-absorption. ( TNG : " I Borg ") One of these fail-safes was also intended to deactivate drones automatically if they experienced strong emotional states, which the Borg interpreted as a sign of disconnection from the hive mind. ( VOY : " Human Error ")

The Borg typically operated in an atmosphere with a constant temperature of 39.1 °C (102.38 °F ), 92% relative humidity, an atmospheric pressure of approximately 102 kPa , and trace amounts of tetryon particles. According to Amina Ramsey , the Borg smelled like old trash bags . ( LD : " Much Ado About Boimler ").

History [ ]

A Borg skeleton on a ruined planet

The precise origins of the Borg were unclear. As of 1484 , they were reported as controlling only a handful of systems in the Delta Quadrant , but by 2373 , they had assimilated thousands of worlds. In addition to this stronghold in the Delta Quadrant, the Borg also dispatched vessels throughout the galaxy via transwarp conduits . ( VOY : " Dragon's Teeth ", " Scorpion ", " Endgame ")

A Borg vessel traveled back in time from 2373 in an unsuccessful attack on Earth in 2063 . ( Star Trek: First Contact ) Drones which survived this defeat were discovered and reactivated by Human scientists in 2153 , and transmitted a subspace message to Borg space before being destroyed by Enterprise NX-01 . ( ENT : " Regeneration ")

The Borg entered the home system of the El-Aurians at some point in their mutual history, swarming through it, scattering its native inhabitants and leaving little to nothing of the El-Aurians in their wake. ( TNG : " Q Who ", " I Borg ") In 2293 , the Federation offered aid to the El-Aurian refugees fleeing the Borg. ( Star Trek Generations ) These refugees included Guinan , who would later provide secondhand knowledge of the Borg invasion of the El-Aurian system to the crew of the USS Enterprise -D during an encounter in the 24th century. ( TNG : " Q Who ", Star Trek Generations ) However, these earlier incidents contributed almost nothing to the Alpha Quadrant 's awareness or understanding of the Borg Collective.

By the 2340s , rumors of an alien race called "The Borg" had reached the Alpha Quadrant, inspiring exobiologists Magnus and Erin Hansen to set out in search of them. Their research took them all the way to the Delta Quadrant, before they and their daughter Annika were assimilated in 2350 . ( VOY : " The Gift ", " The Raven ", " Dark Frontier ") Borg activity in the Alpha Quadrant, including the assimilation of the USS Tombaugh in 2362 and assimilation of outposts along the Romulan Neutral Zone in 2364 , were complete mysteries to Starfleet. ( VOY : " Infinite Regress "; TNG : " The Neutral Zone ")

The Collective's true nature was finally revealed to the Federation in 2365 when Q took the USS Enterprise -D to meet a Borg cube near the J-25 system . ( TNG : " Q Who ")

In late 2366 , a Borg cube invaded Federation space and assimilated Jean-Luc Picard , whose tactical information contributed, along with the Borg's own vastly superior power, to Starfleet 's disastrously one-sided engagement with the cube, the Battle of Wolf 359 . A fleet of forty starships assembled to combat the cube. All but one of these Federation ships were destroyed, while the cube itself remained intact, damaged but healing rapidly. ( TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds ", " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II "; DS9 : " Emissary ") The Enterprise -D recovered Picard and used his connection to the hive-mind to disable the cube before it could attack Earth. ( TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II ")

During the 2370s , the Borg were beset by several major setbacks in the Delta Quadrant, as witnessed by the crew of the USS Voyager .

The Borg-Species 8472 War decimated the Collective from 2373 - 2374 . ( VOY : " Scorpion ", " Scorpion, Part II ") Voyager 's liberation of Seven of Nine allowed Unimatrix Zero to create an active resistance movement in 2377 . ( VOY : " Unimatrix Zero ", " Unimatrix Zero, Part II ")

In 2378 , a crippling blow was delivered to the Borg when Voyager discovered one of their transwarp hubs and destroyed it, killing the Borg Queen (again) and devastating the Unicomplex in the process. During this battle, the Borg were infected with a neurolytic pathogen , which was carried by an alternate future version of Admiral Janeway and designed to disrupt the hive mind, to 'bring chaos to order'. It was this pathogen that killed the Borg Queen and allowed Voyager to destroy the transwarp hub. ( VOY : " Endgame ") The pathogen decimated the Borg Collective, leaving them reduced a handful of drones slowly cannibalized to sustain the Queen's last remaining body by 2401 . ( PIC : " The Last Generation ")

In 2384 , a Borg cube rendered dormant by the neurolytic pathogen was encountered by the USS Protostar . The crew proceeded to venture into the cube in order to access the vinculum to gain information on how to remove a weapon called the living construct from their ship. When the Medusan Zero volunteered to be assimilated to get the information, this act caused the cube and the drones aboard to wake up. The crew barely managed to escape as they helped Zero to break free from the Collective, who then managed to put the Borg back to sleep. ( PRO : " Let Sleeping Borg Lie ")

The Borg emerge from Jupiter on Frontier Day, 2401

The Borg Collective was still believed to operate as late as 2399 , ( PIC : " Maps and Legends ") although in 2401 Dr. Agnes Jurati referred to the Borg as "effectively decimated, functionally hobbled." ( PIC : " The Star Gazer ")

On Frontier Day in 2401, this was confirmed after discovery that the main faction of the Borg were working with the rogue Changelings in a plot to assimilate the Federation via a different means than normal. With the Changelings infiltrating the Federation and spreading Picard's Borg-altered DNA through the transporter system, the Borg were able to quickly gain control over 339 starships, and their crews with only those over 25 years old being immune to their takeover. ( PIC : " Võx ") This proved to be the last stand for the original Borg with the Cube, the Queen and all of her remaining drones being destroyed by the rebuilt USS Enterprise -D , presumably bringing an end to the Borg threat. ( PIC : " The Last Generation ")

In the far future , extant Borg assimilated into galactic society, with Borg children learning side-by-side with children of other species. ( LD : " Temporal Edict ")

Alternate timelines [ ]

Confederation of earth [ ].

Borg Singularity in 2401

In 2401 , an atypical Borg Queen reached out to Admiral Jean-Luc Picard seeking membership in the Federation. Much to the Federation's confusion, this Borg Queen was vastly different to the Queen that had been encountered before and her Collective wasn't nearly as outwardly hostile. However, once aboard the USS Stargazer , the Queen began assimilating the ship and through it, the Stargazer's fleet. In response, Picard activated the ship's auto-destruct , stopping the assimilation. ( PIC : " The Star Gazer ")

In that moment, Q had removed Picard, Agnes Jurati, Seven, Raffaela Musiker, Cristóbal Rios, and Elnor from this timeline, and placed them in an alternate 2401. In this timeline, the Borg had been hunted to extinction by the Confederation of Earth , leaving only the Borg Queen . ( PIC : " Penance ")

The Singularity and Federation vessels deflecting the energy burst

After being returned from 2024 to 2401 by Q , Picard deactivates the auto-destruct, having deduced that the strange Borg Queen was actually the Queen from this timeline that had merged with Dr. Agnes Jurati in 2024 and had set out to create a different Collective, one based on mercy and choice. These Borg had sought out the Federation's help to stop an energy wave that threatened countless lives and by combining the shields of the Federation fleet and the Borg ship, the two former mortal enemies were able to stop it. However, the Borg didn't know the source of the energy wave or the massive transwarp conduit that emerged from it, only that it was a threat to everyone. Picard granted the Borg Queen's request to grant the Borg provisional membership in the Federation so that the Borg could be "the Guardian at the Gates" watching out for whatever this new threat was. ( PIC : " Farewell ")

Parallel universes [ ]

Picard's death [ ].

In one alternate quantum reality , Captain Jean-Luc Picard was lost in the Battle of Wolf 359 and William T. Riker succeeded him as the captain of the Enterprise -D with Worf as his first officer . ( TNG : " Parallels ")

Victory over the Federation [ ]

A disheveled Riker of a Borg controlled quantum reality

In another alternate quantum reality, the Borg, after emerging victorious at Wolf 359, successfully conquered the Federation. A battered Enterprise -D, which was likewise under Riker's command, was one of the few remaining Starfleet ships by 2370 . The Riker from that reality was desperate not to return to his universe once all of the Enterprises began spilling into a single universe from a quantum fissure .

After the present reality's Enterprise -D fired lightly upon the other ship to draw the alternate reality crew's attention away from that crew's attempt to prevent the closing of the fissure, the heavily damaged ship was accidentally destroyed when its shields collapsed and their warp core overloaded , due to having a weakened warp containment field , as Riker presumed, from fighting with the Borg. ( TNG : " Parallels ")

Borg-Earth [ ]

Borg-assimilated Earth

In another alternate timeline, the Borg were successful at preventing First Contact in 2063 and had assimilated the Earth. In 2373 , the assimilated Earth had an atmosphere containing high concentrations of methane , carbon monoxide , and fluorine . It had a population of approximately nine billion Borg drones . ( Star Trek: First Contact )

Culture [ ]

A trio of Borg drones, including one of Klingon origin

The Borg Collective was made up of, at the very least, trillions of humanoids referred to as drones. ( VOY : " Dark Frontier ") Through the use of their cybernetic implants, the Borg interacted by sharing one another's thoughts in a hive mind . Upon assimilation, these trillions of "voices" would overwhelm the drone, stifling individual thought and resistance to the Collective's will. ( TNG : " Family ") To some drones these voices could eventually become a source of comfort, and their absence a source of pain. ( TNG : " I Borg "; VOY : " The Gift ")

Borg philosophy was governed by a primary directive to add the biological and technological distinctiveness of other species to that of the Borg. In this manner, the Collective sought to achieve its definition of perfection; all other pursuits were deemed irrelevant including commerce and trade. Accordingly, Borg drones did not engage in any activities except their duties and regeneration . ( TNG : " Q Who ", " The Best of Both Worlds "; VOY : " Scorpion, Part II ") Individual drones have demonstrated puzzlement at other species' unwillingness to be assimilated, the drones believing in the superiority of their way of life.

Having no regard for individuality, Borg drones were identified with designations rather than names. A drone's designation typically described its position within a group, e.g. " Third of Five ." To identify a drone more specifically, its function could be appended to this designation, for example " Seven of Nine , Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01 ." In the same manner, the Borg referred to alien species by number rather than by name. ( TNG : " I Borg "; VOY : " Scorpion ")

If a drone was sufficiently injured or otherwise in distress, other drones would offer assistance. ( TNG : " I Borg "; VOY : " Dark Frontier ") However, if a drone was deemed irreparable by the hive-mind, the Borg would deactivate it and redistribute any salvageable components throughout the Collective. ( TNG : " Q Who ")

Borg drones ignored alien species until they demonstrated the potential to be a threat, or to be a suitable candidate for assimilation. This indifference even extended to their attitude to people boarding their vessels; the drones went about their business as long as the intruders did not interfere. When addressing a small number of individuals, drones would simply attempt to assimilate them without comment. Before assimilating a larger population, such as a starship or an entire culture, the Borg would collectively transmit a standard announcement of their purpose and the futility of resistance. ( TNG : " Q Who "; VOY : " Dark Frontier "; Star Trek: First Contact ) Species which the Borg found unremarkable or detrimental would be deemed unworthy of assimilation. As of 2374 , the Borg considered the Kazon beneath their notice, and by 2376 , they only took interest in the Brunali if they detected sufficiently relevant technology. ( VOY : " Mortal Coil ", " Child's Play ")

Even examples of civilizations which had previously been targeted for assimilation could be passed over; while moving to engage the dire threat to the Borg presented by Species 8472 , a group of Borg ships encountered Voyager , but, while one ship did pause momentarily to scan the Federation vessel, the Borg ship and its companion ships quickly moved on without attempting to attack or assimilate the interloper in their space. ( VOY : " Scorpion ")

Representatives of the Collective: Locutus with the Borg Queen

On the rare occasions that the Borg were willing to open any dialogue with individuals, they would choose a single drone to speak for the Collective. Jean-Luc Picard was assimilated and given the name Locutus in the misguided assumption that such a representative would lower the Federation's resistance to assimilation. ( TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds ")

Seven of Nine speaks for the Collective

The Omega molecule

When Kathryn Janeway successfully negotiated a truce with the Borg and refused to discuss the terms via a neuro-transceiver , the Collective agreed to communicate via Seven of Nine. ( VOY : " Scorpion, Part II ")

The Borg Queen also spoke for the Collective, acting not as a mere liaison, but as a physical manifestation of the hive mind. The exact nature of her role is unclear. ( Star Trek: First Contact )

The Borg possessed a near-reverence for particle 010 , which they considered to be an expression of perfection. The Collective's fascination with assimilating this molecule has been compared to a religion. ( VOY : " The Omega Directive ")

Tactics [ ]

The Borg had a tendency to "scoop" all machine elements from a planet, leaving great rips in the surface where remaining sections of the road system suggested a city had once been. ( TNG : " The Neutral Zone ", " Q Who "; VOY : " Child's Play ")

The Borg were known to retrieve their own damaged technology, including nonfunctional Borg cubes. However, when a cube underwent submatrix collapse , the collective would immediately sever its link to the afflicted population, considering it dead. ( VOY : " Unity "; PIC : " Maps and Legends ")

Technology [ ]

Borg technology was a combination of technologies assimilated from other cultures, and technology developed within the Collective itself, in order to overcome obstacles to its goals. When confronted by a problem it could not solve with its existing resources and/or configuration, the entire Collective would work in concert to consider all possible solutions, and implement the one determined to be the most efficient. By applying the unique skills of each drone to a task, the hive mind could engineer new technologies and solutions at a pace that would astound an individual. ( TNG : " Q Who ", " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II ")

The Borg were usually exceedingly quick to adapt; their shields would often nullify nearly any energy weapon, and their weapons could usually penetrate nearly any shield or defense, within minutes. ( Star Trek: First Contact )

Spacecraft [ ]

Borg cubes, arguably their most iconic ship design

Borg vessels were highly decentralized, with no distinct bridge , living quarters, or engineering section. Each ship was collectively operated by its complement of drones, under the general direction of the hive mind. Owing to the Collective's disregard for aesthetic considerations, the architecture of Borg ships took the form of basic shapes such as cubes and spheres and were made from a tritanium alloy. Borg ships were capable of regenerating from damage. ( TNG : " Q Who "; VOY : " Endgame ")

Each Borg spacecraft was equipped with a vinculum to interconnect its crew, which was in turn connected to a central plexus that linked the ship to the Collective. ( VOY : " Infinite Regress ", " Unimatrix Zero ") In addition to warp drive , vessels were fitted with transwarp coils that could achieve even greater speed by opening transwarp conduits . ( TNG : " Descent "; VOY : " Dark Frontier ") When critically damaged or otherwise compromised, a Borg ship would self-destruct to prevent outsiders from studying Borg technology. ( TNG : " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II ") In other situations, only the valuable technology would self-destruct, such as the case of the crew of Voyager's first attempt to steal a transwarp coil. USS Voyager encountered several damaged Borg vessels, notably including the cube carrying Icheb , Mezoti , Azan , and Rebi , and a sphere carrying a transwarp coil, which Voyager stole. ( VOY : " Collective ", " Dark Frontier ")

Infrastructure [ ]

Borg structures were located in deep space, in planetary systems, or on planets themselves. Each planet that the Borg modified showed a typical climate and assimilated infrastructure adapted from the previous inhabitants. ( Star Trek: First Contact ; VOY : " Dark Frontier ", " Dragon's Teeth ")

Their buildings consisted of simple shapes, similar to their geometrical ships, and rather than being single structures they were annexed together and added to when needed. By joining the new structures to existing ones, they would form a uniform complex. These buildings were gargantuan in scale, with structures so big that they could house Borg spheres which would dock inside. ( VOY : " Dark Frontier ")

The Borg also constructed structures that had specific functions, such as the transwarp hub . There were six such known hub locations in the galaxy that allowed Borg vessels to deploy rapidly to almost everywhere within it. These transwarp hubs had many structures for opening portals on them, and inside their corridors were interspatial manifolds which supported the transwarp conduits . Several of these manifolds that led to the Alpha quadrant were destroyed by Voyager via transphasic torpedos and collapse of the conduit itself on the vessel's return to the Alpha Quadrant . ( VOY : " Endgame ")

Appendices [ ]

See also [ ].

• Borg Collective
• Borg language
• Borg philosophy
• Borg spatial designations
• Borg species
• Borg species designations
• Borg starships

Appearances [ ]

A Borg in the database of Voyager

• " The Best of Both Worlds "
• " The Best of Both Worlds, Part II "
• " Descent "
• " Descent, Part II "
• DS9 : " Emissary "
• Star Trek: First Contact
• " Blood Fever "
• " Scorpion "
• " Scorpion, Part II "
• " The Raven "
• " The Killing Game "
• " Living Witness "
• " Hope and Fear "
• " Infinite Regress "
• " Dark Frontier "
• " Survival Instinct "
• " Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy "
• " Collective "
• " Child's Play "
• " Unimatrix Zero "
• " Unimatrix Zero, Part II "
• " Imperfection "
• " Flesh and Blood "
• " Shattered "
• " Endgame "
• ENT : " Regeneration "
• " Remembrance "
• " Maps and Legends "
• " The Impossible Box "
• " Broken Pieces "
• " The Star Gazer "
• " Penance "
• " Assimilation "
• " Watcher "
• " Fly Me to the Moon "
• " Hide and Seek "
• " Farewell "
• " The Last Generation "
• " Envoys " (holograms)
• " Temporal Edict "
• " Crisis Point " (hologram)
• " I, Excretus " (holograms)
• " wej Duj "
• PRO : " Let Sleeping Borg Lie "

Background information [ ]

Concept and development [ ].

The conceptual genesis of the Borg, who were intended to replace the Ferengi as Star Trek: The Next Generation ' s main villains in its second season, was as a race of insectoids , an idea that would ultimately require modification due to the series' budgetary constraints. As Maurice Hurley explained in the March 1990 issue of Starlog (#152, p. 33): " What we really wanted to do, but couldn't because of money, was create a race of insects...insect mentality is great because it is relentless. The Borg are a variation of an insect mentality. They don't care. They have no mercy, no feelings toward you. They have their own imperative, their own agenda and that's it. If all of them die getting there, they don't care. We needed a villain who could make you dance, and the Borg could do it! "

Hurley made it a plot point in " The Neutral Zone " that Federation and Romulan starbases along the Romulan Neutral Zone had been mysteriously wiped out, having been "scooped off" the face of the planet in the same way that would later be referenced in " Q Who " and shown in " The Best of Both Worlds ". Intentions to lay more extensive groundwork for the Borg's introduction were frustrated by the Writer's Guild strike of 1988 . By the time of their first appearance in "Q Who", the species had been changed from insects to their more budget-friendly cyborg form. ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , pp. 169 & 180)

The Star Trek Encyclopedia  (3rd ed., p. 52) stated: " Writer Maurice Hurley derived the name Borg from the term cyborg (cybernetic organism), although it seems unlikely that a people living on the other side of the galaxy would know of the term. "

According to Michael and Denise Okuda in their Star Trek Chronology  (2nd ed., p. 290), there had been plans to connect the parasitic beings from " Conspiracy " to the Borg, but these were ultimately abandoned: " At the time the episode was written, this was apparently intended to lead to the introduction of the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation' s second season. The Borg connection was dropped before 'Q Who?' (TNG) was written, and the truth about the parasites remains a mystery. " They also noted that, following production of the latter episode, it was "half jokingly speculated" by Gene Roddenberry that the machine planet encountered by Voyager 6 , leading to its transformation into V'ger , "might have been the Borg homeworld." ( Star Trek Chronology  (2nd ed., p. 23))

A Borg insignia

The Borg insignia, which first appeared in "Q Who", was described on its own Star Trek: The Next Generation - Inaugural Edition trading card (82-A) as " Resembling a great red claw over a background of circuitry, the symbol of the Borg is as mysterious as the race it represents. The Borg symbol may possibly define an amalgam of living tissue with computer circuits... " [2]

Westmore's Borg make-up is reviewed for "Q Who"

Michael Westmore revealed that the Borg actors were glued into their suits, and had to be unglued if they needed to use the bathroom. [3]

The idea for the sound of the Borg's multiple voices speaking in unison was thought up by sound editor Bill Wistrom and co-producer Merri Howard . After experimenting with different techniques, they discovered a way to lay multiple voices over one another and "make it sound like it was 8 million people," explained Wistrom. ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 147 , p. 32)

Chronologically, the first known in-universe appearance of the Borg to Humanity was in the 1996 motion picture Star Trek: First Contact , in which the Borg traveled back to the year 2063 to enslave the Human race. The writers of the Star Trek: Enterprise episode " Regeneration ", Michael Sussman and Phyllis Strong , stated, in the audio commentary on the ENT Season 2 DVD release, that it was their explicit intent to have the episode deal with the consequences of events depicted in Star Trek: First Contact , the Borg wreckage encountered in that episode being the debris of the Borg sphere destroyed by the Enterprise -E in that movie.

While it is not explicitly stated in "Q Who", Q implies that the sole focus of the Borg is on the technology of the USS Enterprise -D, and the Borg show no interest, in that episode, in the crew (although the segment of hull that the Borg remove from the ship apparently contained several crew members). By their next appearance, "The Best of Both Worlds", the Borg's objectives had changed to the assimilation of lifeforms, and this change of premise was referenced in dialogue. Subsequent episodes ignored the change in premise entirely.

Director Cliff Bole , who directed the "Best of Both Worlds" two-parter, thought highly of the Borg. He enthused, " The Borg are like Klingons. You can do anything you want with them. They're fun and a real expensive thing to play with. With them, you can do a big production value [...] The Borg allow you to have fun with the camera, the lighting and everything else. They challenge the imagination. " ("Cliff Bole – Of Redemption & Unification", The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine  issue 17 , p. 31)

Through the course of Star Trek history, further retroactive continuity changes appear to have been made in respect of the Borg. As of "Q Who" and "The Best of Both Worlds", it appeared that Starfleet had never heard of the Borg. Subsequently, Star Trek: Voyager s " Dark Frontier " and Star Trek: Enterprise s " Regeneration " showed that not only was Starfleet previously aware of the existence of the Borg, Federation scientists actually pursued them – even if they were considered mere rumor. Further, although Guinan indicates in "Q Who" that her people were attacked by the Borg, it is implied that Starfleet was not aware of the threat. However, it was later revealed in Star Trek Generations that Starfleet, in fact, rescued the El-Aurian survivors of the Borg attack including Guinan, and it seems unlikely that Starfleet would not inquire as to the cause of their plight.

The existence of the Borg Queen was a controversial change made to the Borg during the writing of Star Trek: First Contact . While the writers had intended to stay true to the original concept of the Borg as a collective hive, they found it difficult to maintain the dramatic impact of villains without having a central face. Thus, they created the Queen. In the film, she claimed to have been present during the events of " The Best of Both Worlds ", which in retrospect would appear to have negated the reason for Picard's assimilation in that episode (it was claimed that the Borg needed a single representative to speak for them). While the Queen appeared to be killed at the climax of First Contact , she apparently survived unaffected by the Borg's next appearance in Voyager 's " Scorpion ". While many fans have attempted to reconcile this, there has never been an official explanation for her survival (save for an enigmatic comment by the Queen), and the appearance of relatively identical Borg Queens in later episodes. Some, though, have theorized that the Borg Collective contained many queens that served as focal points to different branches of their society. Still another explanation is that the Borg were in possession of innumerable copies of their Borg Queen, and that the superficial death of one version simply resulted in the activation of a similar version to take her place, in a similar fashion to the Vorta . The latter theory was corroborated by Rick Berman in an interview in Star Trek: Communicator . ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 121 )

Impact and legacy [ ]

The Borg were considered as an enemy for the Deep Space 9 crew (along with the Klingons , Cardassians , and the Romulans ) when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was in development. Rick Berman later commented, " The Borg are not the kind of bad guys that are practical to use on a regular basis. " Whereas the Cardassians were eventually chosen for the main villain role, the Borg made no further appearances in Deep Space Nine after " Emissary ", although they were mentioned in episodes such as " The Storyteller ", " Playing God ", " The Search, Part I ", " The Way of the Warrior ", " For the Cause ", " Let He Who Is Without Sin... ", and " In Purgatory's Shadow ". ( Star Trek - Where No One Has Gone Before ) According to Robert Hewitt Wolfe in a tweet dated 28 January 2019, following the premiere of Star Trek: Voyager , a mandate was passed to the writing staffs of both Deep Space Nine and Voyager that the Borg (along with Q, following his single appearance on Deep Space Nine ) were only to be used on Voyager while Deep Space Nine retained creative control over the Alpha , Beta , and Gamma Quadrants , which Wolfe called "a fair trade." [4]

The Borg were considered by some commentators to be the greatest villains of Star Trek: The Next Generation . However, they were featured in only six episodes throughout its seven-year run. The creators have stated that this was due to the fact that the Borg were so powerful, and so it was not easy to come up with solutions for beating them. However, as time passed and future series went into production, the concept of the Borg evolved to include inherent flaws that could be exploited in many different ways – leading them to appearing in nineteen episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (although in only a fraction of these appearances were the Borg the primary villains; many episodes had them in supporting or otherwise non-antagonistic roles). This generous use caused many fans to complain that the Borg were being used too often on Voyager . TNG, DS9, and one-time VOY writer Ronald D. Moore once said of their perceived overuse, the Borg had been defeated so many times, that they had "lost their teeth." ( citation needed • edit )

Following "Regeneration" and the season it was in, ENT Season 2 , Brannon Braga stated, " We have no plans to see the Borg ever again. " ( Star Trek: Communicator  issue 145 , p. 30)

In 2006 , the Borg were honored with their own DVD box set Star Trek: Fan Collective - Borg , featuring a number of their more memorable appearances in the Star Trek universe.

In an interview with StarTrek.com published on 1 April 2019, the actor Alan van Sprang , who played Leland in Star Trek: Discovery , echoed fan speculation regarding a potential connection between Control and the origins of the Borg: "I think it's very intriguing. When I first read the script I thought, 'Oh, is this the making of the Borg? Is that how it happens?' We're as much in the dark as anybody else, but as soon as I saw that, I thought, 'This is like The Borg.' The Next Generation' s Borg episode just blew my mind [when I watched it originally], let alone when Picard became Locutus . That's the first thing I thought of, which kind of tickled me to no end. 'Wow, I'm just going to milk this for all it’s worth.'" [5]

In an interview with TrekCore.com published on 19 April 2019, Michelle Paradise , then writer and co-executive producer of Discovery , clarified: "It's interesting — we weren't thinking Borg at all. I mean, we talked about all sorts of different things in the room, but there was never any intent on our part to parallel that in any way. I can certainly understand why people started to think we were going in that direction, but it was never where we intended to go with it." [6]

In an Instagram story dated 12 March 2020, Michael Chabon , then showrunner of Star Trek: Picard , opined of the same theory: "It has the virtue of making sense. But I don't think it's much fun." [7]

Apocrypha [ ]

The absence of the Borg from Deep Space Nine was explained in the novel The Siege , when a Borg cube tries to pass through the Bajoran wormhole and is destroyed by subspace compression; Sisko concludes that this event will cause the entire Collective to believe that the wormhole is unstable and would now avoid it.

In the alternate timeline seen in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine book series Millennium , the Borg forged an alliance with the Federation to defeat Weyoun . The entire Borg Collective was destroyed along with the universe. This entire timeline was later reset thanks to Benjamin Sisko.

In an alternate timeline in the game Star Trek: Armada , the Borg succeed in conquering the Alpha Quadrant. Using a clone of Locutus, the Borg manage to assimilate Spock , kill Worf, and assimilate Earth. The timeline was reset thanks to Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise -E, who travel back in time with the aid of a ship from the future to prevent Spock's capture.

In the game Star Trek: Legacy , an alternate explanation was given to the creation of the Borg which states that the probe V'ger created the Collective to serve as its heralds in its search for knowledge. However, the creation of the Borg Queen resulted in the creation of an entity that abandoned the original intent of V'ger . This is also similar to the Shatnerverse version of events.

In the current volumes of the Next Generation Relaunch series of novels, the Borg have been driven to near extinction as a result of the Starship Voyager 's destruction of the Queen and the transwarp conduit network. However, they begin to reconstruct the Collective by building a massive cube in the Alpha Quadrant, in order to launch a vengeful new offensive against the Federation; their first strike results in the assimilation of Admiral Janeway and the destruction of Pluto before the Enterprise -E manages to destroy the cube with the original Doomsday Machine .

In Star Trek: Destiny a history of the Borg was presented. They were survivors of the Caeliar Gestalt and the crew of the Earth ship Columbia NX-02 thrown back in time and into the Delta Quadrant following an attack on a Caeliar city ship. The Caeliar forced the Humans into a perverted form of their Gestalt (a mental linking of the Caeliar) based upon the will of the last surviving Caeliar and not the whole. They launched a final attack of Federation space with over 7,000 cubes at their disposal; however, they were stopped after the Caeliar were made aware of their responsibility for the Borg's actions. The Collective was dismantled, and the assimilated Borg drones were accepted into the Caeliar's gestalt. Former drones fully regained their individuality (as evidenced by Seven of Nine's remaining implants dematerializing). This was followed up in the novel Full Circle . Q later noted that this timeline's invasion was provoked by Admiral Janeway's trip to the past in " Endgame ", reflecting that, if she had done nothing, the Borg would have eventually launched a massive assault on the Milky Way galaxy centuries in the future that would have completely assimilated all other life. The Voyager relaunch novel Unworthy explores the aftermath of the destruction of the Borg, including some Federation scientists trying to harness remaining Borg technology and Voyager encountering a vast fleet called the "Indign" consisting of species who actually wanted to be assimilated but were considered unworthy of that "honor" by the Borg.

In the Star Trek: The Original Series short story "The Trouble with Borg Tribbles" from the anthology book Strange New Worlds V , a Borg cube encountered a pod full of Tribbles which had traveled through a micro-wormhole from the Alpha Quadrant in early 2268 . This was the Borg's first contact with life from that part of the galaxy. The Borg assimilated the surviving Tribbles, only to find that their instinctive drive to eat and procreate was starting to overwhelm the hive mind, causing a widespread series of malfunctions.

The comic book series Star Trek: Countdown shows that Nero 's ship, the Narada , was enhanced with a mixture of Romulan and Borg technology. The sequel miniseries Star Trek: Nero has the Borg, the Narada and V'ger originating from an unknown civilization on the " machine planet " that was seen inside V'ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture .

The Star Trek: The Manga story "Side Effects" in Shinsei Shinsei provided a different story to the creation of the Borg, with an experiment gone wrong to save a race through the daughter of one of the 1,000 or so survivors. Cybernetic implants, along with DNA from nine different species designed to keep a disease from spreading caused the girl to go insane and gain a twisted idea of saving her people. However, the intervention of Captain James T. Kirk made the situation even worse, as the laboratory where she was augmented collapsed and was sucked into a black hole . But an escape pod with the girl was launched, and apparently catapulted far into the past by the slingshot effect , where her cybernetic implants and DNA evolved to where she became the very first Borg Queen.

In the game Star Trek Online , the Borg have resurfaced after thirty years and are the main antagonists of several missions. The Borg of 2409 initially looked much more like zombies, with some of their cybernetic implants looking like bones coming out of their bodies, but were visually overhauled to more resemble their TV show versions by "Season Thirty: Incursion". "Incursion" also introduced the mirror counterpart of the Collective, named the "Borg Kingdom", as major antagonists of the "Kings & Queens" story arc.

The Cybermen and the Borg

The comic book crossover series Star Trek: The Next Generation - Doctor Who: Assimilation² involves a plotline in which the Cybermen of the Doctor Who universe alter time and space in order to form an alliance with the Borg. The united cyborg force proves to be a devastating threat to the Federation, but the two races end up turning against each other, with the Cybermen going to war with the Borg and forcing the crew of the Enterprise -D and the Eleventh Doctor and his companions to ally with the Borg to restore the Collective and vanquish the Cybermen. At the end of the series, the Borg start to investigate time travel in order to find a way to assimilate the Doctor.

In The Delta Anomaly , a book set in the alternate reality created by the Romulan Nero 's attack on the USS Kelvin , the serial killer known as The Doctor ( β ) is suggested to be related to the Borg. This therefore establishes an earlier contact with Earth than in the prime reality.

The Borg of the alternate reality

In Star Trek: Boldly Go , a comic series also set in the alternate reality and after the events of Star Trek Beyond , the Borg make an appearance as the villain in the first arc of the series, seeking the Narada due to their awareness of its ties to the Borg. They attempt to assimilate Spock , but the primitive assimilation of this era is unable to cope with his hybrid DNA. The shock of his escape and the retrieval of other near-assimilated officers enables the Federation and the Romulans to destroy the Borg.

External links [ ]

• Borg at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Borg at Wikipedia

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Which Star Trek Shows & Movies Do The Borg Appear In?

Everyone in star trek who beat the borg, what happened to star trek: picard's other borg queen explained by showrunner.

• Borg's evolution from mindless drones to formidable villains led to their various versions in the Star Trek universe.
• The Borg Queen introduced in Star Trek: First Contact brought deeper lore, adaptability, and persistence to the Borg Collective.
• Star Trek: Picard continued the Borg legacy, showcasing their adaptability and the potential for new versions to emerge.

The ever-changing Borg have had several different versions throughout Star Trek history. Sparsely used as a mindless force of nature in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the cybernetic Borg, with unison voices proclaiming, "Resistance is futile," became breakout villains in TNG . The Borg were formidable enough to become the villains of the second Star Trek: The Next Generation movie, Star Trek: First Contact , which introduced the Borg Queen (Alice Krige). With its Delta Quadrant setting, Star Trek: Voyager made the Borg a primary enemy of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), as Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) provided an insider's perspective on the Borg Collective.

Even after their apparent destruction, the Borg still played a major role in Star Trek: Picard , which addressed the trauma that Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) sustained after being transformed into Locutus, the voice of the Borg. Echoes of the Battle of Wolf 359 , Starfleet's Pyrrhic victory against Locutus and the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation , rippled through the backstories of several Star Trek characters, making the battle a defining moment in the Star Trek timeline. The Borg, however, are highly adaptable, so instead of being haunted by trauma, the Borg respond by constantly evolving. Let's take a look at the Borg evolution, starting at the beginning.

As one of Star Trek's most iconic villains, the Borg have made many appearances in various franchise projects over the years since their introduction.

9 Original Borg Collective

Star trek: the next generation.

Initially conceived as a purely technological species, the original Borg Collective was first introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 2, episode 16, "Q Who", when Q (John de Lancie) showed Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the USS Enterprise-D crew the horrors that waited at the far reaches of space. The original Borg Collective had pallid, indifferent drones who were unified in one mind and only interested in assimilating alien technology , but as the Borg proved to be a fascinating foil for the plurality of the Federation, they did what the Borg would come to do best: the Borg adapted.

Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3, episode 26, and TNG season 4, episode 1, "The Best of Both Worlds", was a turning point for the Borg, for Picard, and for Star Trek as a whole. Picard's capture and transformation into Locutus of Borg haunted Jean-Luc for the rest of his life. "The Best of Both Worlds" also introduced the concept of the Borg assimilating people, not just technology, that would come to be a hallmark of the Borg.

8 Lore’s Borg Collective

Star trek: the next generation - season 6, episode 26 & season 7, episode 1, "descent".

The roots of Lore's (Brent Spiner) Borg Collective can be found in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 5, episode 23, "I, Borg". A year before "Descent", the USS Enterprise-D discovers and rescues an abandoned Borg drone who chooses the name Hugh (Jonathan del Arco) after being rehabilitated by Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton). Hugh takes the concept of individuality back to the Collective , but instead of liberating the Borg, it backfires.

An unusual faction of the Borg Collective with individual names and personalities appears in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 6, episode 26 & season 7, episode 1, "Descent". These individual Borg still require direction, so Lore graciously steps in to fill the power vacuum. Lore uses the Borg under his banner as a personal army to capture the USS Enterprise , making them seem relatively toothless compared to the Borg's earlier TNG appearances, but thankfully, there are far more versions of the Borg in Star Trek .

7 The Borg Queen's Collective

Star trek: first contact & star trek: voyager.

While technically the same Collective as the original Borg seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the cosmetic changes and the deeper lore in Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Voyager warrant recognition as a new version. Perhaps the most significant change to the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact is introducing the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) as the physical embodiment of the Borg Collective, but these Borg are more adaptable and more persistent, stopping at nothing short of complete assimilation of all intelligent organic life.

In Star Trek: Voyager , Seven of Nine becomes the Borg's new voice, and after being liberated from the Collective, provides insight as to the Borg's true motives. Seven explains that the ultimate goal of the Borg is perfection, not conquest , and assimilation is the means by which the Borg learn about other cultures. Adding the biological and technological distinctiveness of other species only refines the Borg Collective.

6 The Borg Cooperative of Former Drones

Star trek: voyager - season 3, episode 15, "unity".

Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) encounters the Borg Cooperative in Star Trek: Voyager season 3, episode 15, "Unity". During a scouting mission, Chakotay crash lands on a planet and is rescued by Riley Frazier (Lori Hallier), a human woman. Frazier and members of several other Alpha Quadrant species were assimilated by the Borg at Wolf 359 and brought to the Delta Quadrant as drones , until an electro-kinetic storm severed them from the Collective.

Although separated from the Borg hive mind, members of Frazier's Borg Cooperative are still neurally linked like drones in the Collective, and share thoughts and memories with one another. The Borg Cooperative proves that there are some benefits to the unity experienced as a Collective , like a lack of conflict, common goals, instant communication, and rapid healing. Frazier, however, exploited the neural link technology to force Chakotay to act against his will, so the Borg Cooperative still wasn't perfect by any means.

The Borg were the deadliest enemy to face Starfleet and the Federation in a century, but many Star Trek heroes have defeated them to save the universe

5 Unimatrix Zero

Star trek: voyager - season 6, episode 26 & season 7, episode 1, "unimatrix zero".

In Star Trek: Voyager season 6, episode 26 & season 7, episode 1, "Unimatrix Zero", some Borg drones experience a virtual reality called Unimatrix Zero during regeneration cycles. In Unimatrix Zero, drones are able to remember their former lives prior to being assimilated, and live out entire lives with each other, creating friendships, romances, and organized resistance against the Borg Collective. Memories of Unimatrix Zero fade when the drones wake up and go about their business.

Unimatrix Zero is a weakness that exists within the Collective, so, of course, the Borg's greatest adversary, Captain Kathryn Janeway , wants to use it as a means to destroy the Borg, but the dream-world is important to nearly every drone who is able to access it, because Unimatrix Zero makes the drones' lives bearable to some extent. Unimatrix Zero is destroyed, but the drones who experienced it become severed from the Collective, and form their own resistance movement.

Star Trek: Voyager

4 the borg in the confederation of earth alternate reality, star trek: picard season 2.

In Star Trek: Picard season 2, Q takes Admiral Jean-Luc Picard to an alternate reality where the Confederation of Earth arises in place of Earth's position in the United Federation of Planets, and the Borg are all but wiped out. Only the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) remains, a seemingly impotent remnant of the Collective's former power and glory, and the people of Confederate Earth look to General Picard, the Borg Slayer , to deal the final blow against the Borg Collective by killing the imprisoned Borg Queen.

Instead of giving in to xenophobic demands, however, Admiral Picard recognizes that the La Sirena crew needs the Borg Queen's computational power and multidimensional awareness in order to go back in time and undo the damage to the timeline that created the unrecognizable, hostile present. The Borg Queen cooperates, perhaps as a means of self-preservation.

3 The Borg Soldiers Serving Adam Soong

Adam Soong's (Brent Spiner) Borg Soldiers in 2024 Los Angeles are the work of the Borg Queen, in the body of Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), seeking to recreate the sweet bliss of the Borg Collective's connection. The Borg Queen convinces Adam Soong that Soong's work will be rendered obsolete by Renée Picard's (Penelope Mitchell) Europa Mission, but the Queen will help Soong prevent that, if Soong agrees to help the Queen in return by providing the bodies of mercenaries from Spearhead Operations .

The Borg Queen uses Soong's 2024 Mercenary Borg to lead an assault on the crew of La Sirena in Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 9, "Hide and Seek", keeping Admiral Jean-Luc Picard from protecting Picard's own future by surrounding Château Picard. Many die in the ensuing battle, with the remainder accompanying the Borg Queen and Agnes Jurati in La Sirena, as they escape to the Delta Quadrant.

2 Agnes Jurati's Borg Collective

In Star Trek: Picard season 2, Dr. Agnes Jurati merges with the Borg Queen from the Confederation of Earth reality, and together Jurati and the Borg Queen create a new Borg Collective that seeks entry into the United Federation of Planets . With a specialty in synthetic life forms that was curtailed by Earth's ban on synth production, Jurati is fascinated by the concept of the Borg as a species that combines the best traits of organic and synthetic life, so it's not hard for the Borg Queen to quite literally get under Agnes' skin.

Agnes Jurati considers assimilation more of a promise than a threat.

As someone who longs for personal connection and rarely finds it, Agnes Jurati considers assimilation more of a promise than a threat, and willingly accepts being merged with the Queen. The nature of the Borg Collective changes under the auspices of Borg Queen Jurati, and it operates much more like the Borg Cooperative in Star Trek: Voyager . Jurati's Borg Cooperative only assimilates those who consent to being part of the community, and uses its combined power to protect others, rather than destroy them.

Terry Matalas considered having Agnes Jurati's Borg Queen make a surprise return in Star Trek: Picard season 3. Here's why it didn't happen.

1 Assimilated Starfleet Borg

Star trek: picard season 3.

The Borg Queen is again reduced to a dying echo of what she once was at the end of Star Trek: Picard season 3 , as the Queen supposedly killed by Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager is revealed to survive by leeching off of the trickles of power in the husks of dead drones. The Queen has just enough power to make promises to the last surviving dregs of another powerful Star Trek enemy: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's Changelings. Working with the Changelings, the Borg Queen orchestrates a plot to create more Borg drones.

At the behest of the Borg Queen, the Changelings create the new Starfleet Borg drones in Star Trek: Picard by contaminating Starfleet's transporters with Borg DNA extracted from Admiral Jean-Luc Picard's corpse. The Assimilated Starfleet Borg are sleeper drones under the age of 25 who are completely unaware of their assimilation until Frontier Day , when the Borg Queen activates the Borg DNA throughout Starfleet with a signal from the Queen's Borg Cube, creating a new Collective.

Star Trek: Picard

Star Trek: Picard season 3 seems to be the end of the Borg, for real this time, but the same could have been said of Star Trek: First Contact , when Picard and Data killed the Borg Queen in 2063, or Star Trek: Voyager season 7, episode 26, "Endgame", when Admiral Janeway killed the Borg Queen again. As long as some remnant of the Borg remains active in Star Trek , there's no guarantee that the Borg will ever actually be permanently defeated. A new Borg Queen always rises to take the place of the previous one, so another new version of the Borg can always potentially return to Star Trek , deadlier -- or at least more interesting -- than before.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Picard are streaming on Paramount+.

Star Trek: First Contact is streaming on Max.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Star Trek: Borg

The player is a Starfleet cadet whose father was killed during the Battle of Wolf 359 fought against the Borg 10 years ago. Impish Q shows up and offers him to go back in time to his father'... Read all The player is a Starfleet cadet whose father was killed during the Battle of Wolf 359 fought against the Borg 10 years ago. Impish Q shows up and offers him to go back in time to his father's ship during the battle and try to save him. The player is a Starfleet cadet whose father was killed during the Battle of Wolf 359 fought against the Borg 10 years ago. Impish Q shows up and offers him to go back in time to his father's ship during the battle and try to save him.

• James L. Conway
• Hilary Bader
• Keith Blanchard
• Gene Roddenberry
• John de Lancie
• Barry Lynch
• John Cothran
• 8 User reviews
• 1 Critic review

• Nikolai Andropov

• Dr. Bennington Biraka
• (as John Cothran Jr.)

• Anastastia Targus

• Ralph Furlong
• Dr. Thaddeus Quint

• (as Juli Donald)

• Federation Computer

• Starfleet Science Officer
• (uncredited)

• Second of Four

• Lieutenant Coris Sprint
• Gene Roddenberry (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia The game actually requires the player to occasionally intentionally make the wrong choice and die in order to gather information about the puzzle he/she needs to solve.
• Goofs "Teleprompter" is misspelled in the credits.

Q : Why do I do this? Because I can!

• Connections Featured in Gamesmaster: Episode #6.11 (1997)

User reviews 8

• Dec 14, 1998
• November 18, 1996 (United States)
• United States
• Simon & Schuster Interactive
• Touchscreen Media Group
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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Download Star Trek: Borg (Windows)

• My Abandonware

Star Trek: Borg

Windows - 1996

Description of Star Trek: Borg

User thisguyyouknow created a combined ISO file for easier use:

I converted BIN to ISO format and attempted to install the game on a Windows 95 VM, but it would not work. I managed to patch it and get it running. The game requires that you swap CD's during game play, however I tried combining the contents of all 3 ISO files into one and it works fine. It seamlessly transitions from Main_1.avi, Main_2.avi & Main_3.avi without any issue. I tested the single ISO version and completed the game successfully on my Windows 95 Virtual Machine.

Should be easier to run now!

External links

How to play star trek: borg windows.

Teravus remade the game engine for Star Trek: Borg from scratch and put it on Github: https://github.com/Teravus/BorgWin10WPF

Follow the instructions on his Github page to get the game running on your modern Windows. You'll need the disc images to run the game. Awesome contribution!

Captures and Snapshots

Comments and reviews

cc 2022-06-20 0 point

Giant Bomb East has a fun playthrough: https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/gbe-playdate-star-trek-borg-100617/2970-11801

Admiral Kirby 2020-08-13 0 point

Ive been trying to install this game but it keeps giving me a Windows 95 is Missing. Even on an emulator. Help?

BobRoss 2020-07-24 0 point

Got this game to run using PCem and Windows 95 RTM. I think there's a bug on disc 2. I can't click the circle part on the under side of the phaser, and the Borg kills me every time.

Chaapaaiguy 2020-05-20 0 point

Install game, download patch ( https://www.moddb.com/downloads/borg-v11-patch ), set compatibility settings to 16 bit video

midy 2020-02-20 4 points

To anyone wondering how to install/use bin and cue files - you mount them, just like iso files (the bin and cue files are pairs). go google "mount bin file" for guides on how to do so.

brian 2020-02-19 -4 points

I had to play some old star trek game just to wash out the stench of ST Picard from my mind. game is 5/5

Chad0013 2019-11-05 -5 points

Downloaded the game and unzipped. Bin files. How do I install?

Retro Pixel Lizard 2019-08-27 2 points

You get to punch Q in his Continuum, what is not to love about this?

Cattlebaron 2019-03-24 0 point

I had this game and played it growing up. Very well worth the hunt. Extremely fun.

B0b 2019-03-13 4 points

Incompatible with 64 bit systems

BenjB83 2019-02-09 -4 points

Not working. This is apparently the Mac Version. No .exe or other form of installer. Too bad. This is the only Trek Game I do not own and which I have never played.

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Share your gamer memories, help others to run the game or comment anything you'd like. If you have trouble to run Star Trek: Borg (Windows), read the abandonware guide first!

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Star Trek: Voyagers First Borg Episode Set Up Species 8472

• The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Unity" subtly hinted at the existence of Species 8472 through a B'Elanna Torres line.
• Producer Brannon Braga later confirmed the intentional setup of Species 8472 in "Unity."
• Voyager's subtly serialized storytelling connected "Unity" to Species 8472 in "Scorpion," showing that the show's reputation for purely episodic storylines is untrue.

Star Trek: Voyager 's first Borg episode in season 3 foreshadowed the introduction of Species 8472. Although the Borg were established as originating from the Delta Quadrant, Voyager 's cast of characters didn't encounter the classic franchise villains until season 3, episode 17, "Unity." Even then, the crew only ran into a disabled cube and a group of ex-Borg living as a cooperative on a nearby planet. Voyager 's first encounter with the Borg in the Delta Quadrant was less than menacing, but "Unity" did provide a setup for the introduction of the Borg's greatest enemy, Species 8472 .

Species 8472 were introduced in Voyager 's season 3 finale, "Scorpion, Part 1." An insectoid race from an alternate dimension called Fluidic Space, Species 8472 proved to be a formidable enemy for not only the Borg but Voyager 's crew as well. They outmatched the Borg in terms of technological capabilities, and their defensive measures made them so deadly that Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) formed the first Federation-Borg alliance to try and defeat them . Although Voyager would eventually come to a somewhat friendly truce with Species 8472, the crew's initial encounters with the race were truly terrifying.

Every Voyager Character Who Has Returned In Star Trek (& How)

Star Trek: Voyager's beloved characters have returned in Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and especially Star Trek: Prodigy.

Star Trek: Voyagers First Borg Episode Subtly Foreshadowed Species 8472

"unity" alluded to species 8472's existence.

Although Species 8472 didn't make their first appearance until the end of season 3, one scene in "Unity" set up their future introduction. While speculating about what could have disabled the Borg Cube, B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) delivered an eerie line about the Borg having possibly been defeated " by an enemy even more powerful than they were ." In retrospect, B'Elanna's line is clearly talking about Species 8472 , given that one of their defining characteristics was their ability to defeat the Borg. The foreshadowing in B'Elanna's line was subtle, but its connection to Species 8472 was later confirmed by a member of Voyager 's creative team.

Star Trek: Voyager Producer Brannon Braga Confirmed BElannas Unity Line Set Up Species 8472

Braga a definitive link between voyager seasons 3 and 4.

In an interview with Star Trek Monthy around the time of "Scorpion's" initial release, Voyager Executive Producer Brannon Braga revealed that the show's creative team had intentionally tied the episode to "Unity" using B'Elanna's line . Braga discussed the fact that "Unity" never made it entirely clear how the abandoned Borg Cube had been disabled, and revealed that Species 8472 had always been meant to be the cause. Read Braga's full quote about the "Scorpion" and "Unity" connection below:

"Scorpion definitely ties in with an event in Unity but not such that you would have to have seen that episode to understand it. In Unity, we find a disabled cube. It was really never made clear how the cube was destroyed, and now, in Scorpion, you'll find out. So Unity was only a hint of things to come."

Although Voyager has garnered a reputation for badly-used episodic storytelling over the years, clever bits of serialized storytelling like the connection between "Unity" and Species 8472 in "Scorpion" demonstrate that the show sometimes used serialization to its advantage. This is especially clear in an era when all of Voyager can be binge-watched on streaming, allowing for easier recognition of the show's smaller connected moments. Star Trek: Voyager 's subtle hints at future storylines turned out to be innovative touches that were employed well by the creative team.

Source: Star Trek Monthly issue 28

Star Trek: Voyager is available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Voyager

The fifth entry in the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek: Voyager, is a sci-fi series that sees the crew of the USS Voyager on a long journey back to their home after finding themselves stranded at the far ends of the Milky Way Galaxy. Led by Captain Kathryn Janeway, the series follows the crew as they embark through truly uncharted areas of space, with new species, friends, foes, and mysteries to solve as they wrestle with the politics of a crew in a situation they've never faced before.

Cast Jennifer Lien, Garrett Wang, Tim Russ, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson, Robert Beltran, Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo

Release Date May 23, 1995

Genres Sci-Fi, Adventure

Network UPN

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Showrunner Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Rating TV-PG

Where To Watch Paramount+

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/StarTrekBorg

Video Game / Star Trek: Borg

Edit locked.

Star Trek: Borg is an interactive movie/computer game and audiobook set in the Star Trek universe. It was written by Hilary Bader, was directed by James L. Conway, and featured an original score by Dennis McCarthy. It was released in 1996 by Simon and Schuster for Mac OS and Windows 95.

Plot and Gameplay

In the midst of a new Borg incursion 10 years after the Battle of Wolf 359, Starfleet Cadet Qaylan Furlong is given an opportunity by Q (John de Lancie) to go back in time and prevent his father's death in the historic battle.

Q sends Qaylan to the USS Righteous , his father's Excelsior-class starship, just before the Battle of Wolf 359. Originally, the ship's security officer Coris Sprint was killed by a Borg intruder over four hours before the battle. Q gives Qaylan control of Sprint's body at this point, allowing him to change history. Since Sprint is Bijani (a heretofore unseen alien race) he has the ability to go into a "Bijani Pain Trance" which allows him to complete jobs even when feeling immense pain. This later becomes an important plot point in allowing the character to complete the game.

Meanwhile, Q takes over the role of Dr. Thaddeus Quint, whose personality is similar to Q's.

At several points throughout the game, the player [Qaylan] is given multiple choices about what actions should be taken in various situations. The results vary based on whatever actions are chosen. If the player chooses poorly, Q will reset time and allow him to try again. If the player makes too many mistakes, however, Q becomes bored and the game ends.

• Cadet Qaylan Furlong / Lt. Coris Sprint: The game's player character. Because the story is seen through this character's point of view, he never appears on camera. It is implied that he is male, is approximately 19 years old, and bears a physical resemblance to his father. Q gives Qaylan control of Bijani security officer Coris Sprint (briefly portrayed by Tarik Ergin), which allows him to interact with the crew of the Righteous .
• Q / Doctor Thaddeus Quint ( John de Lancie ): A seemingly-omnipotent being who has taken an interest in the welfare of Cadet Qaylan Furlong. Q gives the cadet a special hand phaser and tricorder to aid him on his mission. Occasionally he will also mock the player if he's not succeeding. For purposes of the story, he takes the body and role of the ship's chief medical officer, Dr. Thaddeus Quint (also played by Murray Rubinstein), but Qaylan continues to see Q in his true form.
• Lt. Ralph Furlong (Jeff Allin): Conn officer and father of Qaylan. He has an easy-going personality which contrasts greatly to that of Captain Andropov.
• Captain Nikolai Andropov (Barry Lynch): Commanding officer of the USS Righteous . He's stern and gruff, he's also very professional and by-the-book. But he's not without a reasonable and understanding side.
• Ensign Anastasia Targus (Marnie McPhail): Operations officer. She has an outgoing personality and deep-seated emotional issues stemming from her time as a Cardassian prisoner of war. She has a cybernetic implant on her forehead to counteract the effects of the torture she endured at their hands.
• Commander Bennington Biraka (John Cothran Jr.): Ship's counselor. Biraka likes everyone and does his best to keep the crew together. He offers both encouragement and pearls of wisdom during difficult situations.

Star Trek: Borg provides examples of the following tropes:

• Admiring the Abomination : After a death that comes from tampering with Borg technology, Q notes that he really hates human hubris, and notes that the Borg may be boring but at least they don't fiddle with things they don't understand.
• All-Loving Hero : Counselor Biraka is one of these. He's even fond of Quint , and sees his abrasiveness as a need to be liked.
• And the Adventure Continues : After Q transports the Righteous ten years in the future to avoid rewriting history, another Borg ship appears on sensors. Captain Andropov soon orders an intercept course.
• One timeline involves losing your father's rigged game and you letting him go off alone, where he gets Borgified. Another involves you taking too long to guess and getting fully Borgified when you're surprised from behind.
• Part of the "correct" timeline revolves around allowing Qaylen-as-Sprint to be temporarily turned into a Borg, in order to get an important code. And then permanently so that his species' mental compartmentalization can let him keep his free will.
• Averted in Q's case. He only takes on the appearance of a Borg without actually being converted, and thus John (de Lancie) does not become a zombie.
• The Big Guy : As a Bijani, Quint is described by the others as an "ox" who doesn't feel pain or fear. Makes for a good security officer, though a Borg can still kill him.
• Bittersweet Ending : The Righteous and (almost) all its hands are saved, but Qaylen's father has still missed ten years of Qaylen and his mother's lives, and Coris Sprint, a hero and dear friend to Targus, Furlong and others is dead again for the first time , for some reason. Also, this ship may have been saved, but nearly forty more were lost in Wolf 359, with eleven thousand dead or assimilated.
• Dr. Quint has the same dark sense of humor, even before Q takes his role. Dr. Quint: ( scans a dead ensign ) Death in battle...if he were a Klingon he'd be ecstatic. Q: Oooh! I like this guy!
• Black Dude Dies First : Averted. In fact, the only bad ending where Biraka dies is the one where the Borgified player and another drone assassinate the entire bridge crew.
• Blind Obedience : When a Borg gets Targus by the throat, Q's first reaction is to tell you to shoot her. If you do so, everyone on the bridge will stare at you like you're an idiot (including Targus before she goes down). Q freezes time with them making this expression and calls you out on this, telling you to use your head.
• Body Snatcher : Q transfers Cadet Furlong into Lt. Sprint's body while he takes over Dr. Quint's. The cadet still sees him as Q in a blue uniform.
• During the first decision in the game (Go with Q or run away like a coward), if you sit there and don't make a choice after 2 loops, Q will teleport to the white void and talk to the player directly, mocking them for not understanding how the game works. "What is this? The first time you've used a computer? You see this!? It's a cursor! Use it to click on objects on the screen...here, click on me!" ( After you fail to make even this choice ) "You've had your chance!" ( Gives the player a game over ) ( After clicking the choice ) "Good, okay, lets try again!" ( Takes you back to the first decision )

• Dead All Along : For some bizarre reason, Sprint is treated this way when it's time for Q to reveal that you're really Cadet Furlong (though at least the real Dr. Quint gets to live).
• Deadpan Snarker : It's a Star Trek game featuring Q.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? : At different points in the game, you can punch Q in the face or kick him in the joy department .
• Death as Game Mechanic : you need to make the right sequence of choices. If you don't already know them, you have to die over and over again until the right choice is made. However, at one point you have to choose the "wrong" path so you can learn important information from the Borg before you die, information that will be necessary to succeed later on in your next chance at life.
• Disappointed in You : If you refuse to come with him and avenge your father, Q contemptuously accuses you of only wanting to save your own skin.
• Dope Slap : If you use the tricorder to try to scan the Borg confronting you on the bridge, Q snatches it, asks what you're doing and smacks you with said tricorder.
• Dr. Jerk : What little we see of the real Doctor Quint is not endearing. That Q can take over his body and act like his usual pompous-ass self without anyone thinking Quint is acting oddly speaks volumes .
• Early-Installment Weirdness : As was the case on TNG, assimilation is still shown to be a relatively slow and drawn-out process that requires extensive physical modifications to a person before they become a Borg drone. It wouldn't be until Star Trek: First Contact later that year that the process started being depicted as only requiring a person to be injected with assimilation tubules, after which they're transformed into a drone within minutes (albeit with more extensive surgical modifications usually being done after the fact).
• Feel No Pain : Even when not in a trance Bijani apparently don't feel pain, at least not the way most humanoids do. At one point (while being assimilated during a bad ending) Q has to explain that the unfamiliar sensation Qaylen is experiencing is in fact pain.
• Fission Mailed : The first time the player goes into the "Bijani Pain Trance" it looks like it's sending him to the typical white death screen, before Q explains what's really going on.
• Q invokes it by name. The nail is Lt. Sprint. If he had lived during the initial attack, the Righteous would not have been destroyed and the player character's father would have lived.
• Strictly speaking, the "nail" is Quint not thinking to try a hypospray on the Borg while it's fighting Sprint.
• Freak Out : In one bad timeline, Targus suffers a hard relapse of her addiction when exposed to a Borg guidance implant for the second time, losing control of herself and trying to jam it in her head. While she's restrained and recovers control of herself, the delay allows the device the Borg had placed upon the ship earlier to take over and the ship is destroyed .
• Functional Addict : The Cardassians addicted Targus to neural stimulation as a form of torture. She's a functional officer now thanks to her implant, but interfering with its normal operation can bring her addiction roaring back.
• Fun Personified : Hit the wrong code into the turbolift manual control, and you might get treated to Q's idea of fun while you're running around doing boring things; Turning deck eleven into his own personal party deck. Complete with nice hat. Q: Why? Because I can! Nya ha ha ha ha ha hah!
• Heroic Mime : Sprint never speaks beyond grunts and groans, but his fellow crewmembers don't seem to expect him to. This being the Star Trek universe, it could be a characteristic of the Bijani culture or species.
• Hollywood Psych : Averted. Counselor Biraka's reasonably accurate Phenomenological analysis of Quint and, by extension, Q himself, is so bang on that it shuts him up completely. Q: Spare me the psychology, counselor. You don't have the tools to analyze me! Biraka: Your problem is very straightforward, doctor. You desperately want to be... liked. Q: If I wanted to be liked, all I'd have to do is snap my fingers, and I'd be liked! I'm an omnipotent being masquerading as Dr. Quint. Whatever I want to happen, happens. Biraka: ( laughs ) Interesting fantasy... Alright, let's play that through. Then why don't you? Q: Why don't I what? Biraka: Make everyone like you. Q: Because I don't want to! Biraka: No! Because you want them to like you of their own free will and, phenomenologically speaking, you can't force them to do something of their own free will! Q: Sophistry, Biraka. Biraka: Truth, Quint. Let me give you some free advice: If you want to be liked, try making yourself likable. ( pats Q on the shoulder, walking away ) Q: Ahhh! ( makes a strangling motion with his hands in frustration before dropping them, suddenly at a loss for words as a contemplative look crosses his face )
• At one point you've got to hook a Borg Guidance Implant into Targus's head. It starts assimilating her and she begins writhing and crying out in agony/ecstasy due to her addiction. Q-as-Quint tells you that any more sedative would leave her a vegetable. If you give her a hypospray anyway, she relaxes, smiles...and then her face goes slack, her eyes empty. Q curtly tells you she'd be better off dead.
• Later on, it seems for a moment that she can resist the urge to reconnect another implant to her head long enough to to connect it to the Borg-thingy in the computer core and save the ship...nope. Freak Out . Ka-boom.
• When Furlong puts the implant on the Borg-thingy everything seems fine...until the thingy realizes the Guidance Implant comes from a dead Borg rather than a live one. Ka-boom.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder : Subverted in that it's used to describe someone else. When Thaddeus Quint is introduced, Q describes how he tried (and failed) to save the life of Lt. Sprint, and adds, "Well, what do you expect? He's a doctor, not a security officer!"
• Implacable Man : The Bijani Pain Trance, activated by adrenaline, allows members of the race to perform actions without pain or fear while their brain is out to lunch.
• Q doesn't seem that concerned about potentially rewriting his history. At the end, he admits that he didn't think you'd actually manage it, and he invokes a Time Travel Escape to preserve the course of events.
• In spite of the fact that you explicitly intervene to save Sprint's life so you can inhabit his living body, Q still says he's dead when the ship is transported into the future. Just why he has to die when everyone else's life is saved is unclear, unless they didn't feel like paying his actor more money to show up in the end sequence or something .
• Prior to the game, Sprint rescued Targus from captivity and torture at the hands of the Cardassians.
• After Qaylen-as-Sprint saves her from the Borg implant she mentions that she owes him her life twice over.
• It's Up to You : Initially averted. Your ship is about to face the Borg, but as you're a new, low-ranking member of the crew, you're going to be sent out of danger. Then Q appears, and everything else is on your watch.
• Irony : If you let your dad get Borgified, you have to kill him yourself , where Q will comment: Q: Well, didn't you want to kill Borg?
• Starfleet Command is portrayed as unjust for not allowing Qaylan to participate in the defense against the Borg attack. However, considering he's still a cadet with zero field experience it makes sense.
• Q, virtually every time he makes a criticism, has some valid points.
• Large Ham : Q, in spades.
• Let's Split Up, Gang! : At one point, your father and you-as-Sprint are patrolling the ship, looking for Borg. When he suggests splitting up, doing so leaves him alone a a corridor with a waiting, shield-adapted Borg. At least you get to work out your abandonment issues by blowing his Borgified self away.
• Mercy Kill : In one failed loop, a partially-Borgified Furlong pleads for this.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body : Thanks to Q, Qaylen has enough of Sprint's memories and skills to pass as him to his friends and do his job while in his body.
• Non-Standard Game Over : The first choice in the game. If you choose the bag of Furlong's belongings twice, Q will make the game program close without letting you save. This forces you to watch the opening cutscenes again, which also serves as a lesson to the player to save often.
• What makes it funnier is that there's an almost identical scene later with a piece of captured Borg tech, and the correct answer is Don't Touch It, You Idiot! .
• Not Quite Dead : The Borg Q-as-Quint hyposprays wakes up unexpectedly quickly, gets Targus by the throat, and hacks the ship unless "Sprint" shoots the console, which fries him for good.
• A rather nonsensical example. Furlong and Andropov note a weird Borg device twiddling away on one of the consoles in their computer core and ask Qaylan-as-Sprint what they should do. Sure, as Security Officer, Sprint deals with threats to the ship, but wouldn't consulting, say, a qualified engineer make more sense? And, of course, all of "Sprint's" limited options besides ignoring it lead to disaster.
• At another point he's asked to figure out security lock programs on a Borg computer, and this time they say it's explicitly because he's a security officer. Perhaps the term "security officer" encompasses things like malware/firewalls in the future?
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist : In addition to his medical degree, Counselor Bennington Biraka has command-line qualifications in security, operations, navigation and tactical.
• One-Letter Name : Q mentions that his name is "short for Q."
• Our Time Travel Is Different : All it takes is the snap of Q's fingers. It helps that he is Q.
• Patricide : After you're Borgified in a couple of timelines, you can shoot your Dad.
• Pensieve Flashback : Before Q and Qaylan step in to alter the timeline, we see a flashback of the destruction of the Righteous , with them invisibly observing.
• Percussive Prevention : This is the only way to keep Lt. Furlong from being assimilated.
• Postmodernism : Making a particular mistake late in the game (using the wrong hypospray setting on yourself) causes Q to groan that he needs to take a break in an alternate reality; "Come on everybody, let's go. He's such an amateur!" The soundtrack stops abruptly, and the Starfleet officers and Borg wander off, chatting together like actors taking five.
• Quickly-Demoted Woman : Ensign Anastasia Targus was a Lieutenant like her academy buddies Furlong and Sprint, but after being captured and tortured by the Cardassians she was demoted to Ensign due to her lingering mental issues (namely an addiction to neural stimulation), and spent a year and a half on medical leave before being reinstated.
• The Quiet One : This, going into trances, and being physically and emotionally durant seem to be the Bijani "hats". It's unclear whether or not they're mute or just quiet, but no one thinks it's weird when Qaylan-as-Sprint never, ever says anything .
• Reality Warper : As Q says himself, whatever he wants to happen happens.
• Recovered Addict : Averted with Targus. She's recovering , and has another year, tops before she can be totally free of her implant. Events force her to hook a Borg Guidance implant to herself and the sensations reawaken her addiction.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens : Bijani apparently look somewhat like Kobliad, with a ridge in the middle of their faces.
• Refusal of the Call : At the start, you can refuse Q's offer to go back to the Righteous and fight the Borg. He takes a bit of convincing and expresses his disappointment in you, but you can turn him down. Of course, that means it's game over.
• Save Scumming / Trial-and-Error Gameplay : Many of the "puzzles" rely on doing something fatal, then letting Q bring you back to the decision point so you can try again. In a creative twist, one "puzzle" calls for the player to deliberately become Borgified so he can learn their access codes, then get killed and have Q bring him back to where he would have needed those access codes.
• Series Continuity Error : The uniforms, tricorders, and phasers; during Wolf 359 everybody should be have TNG -style ones but instead have Voyager -style versions. The Borg however still maintain their TNG appearance as opposed to their First Contact makeover. On top of that, the opening framing sequence takes place about ten years after the Battle of Wolf 359, which places this game somewhere during Voyager's sixth season, well after the point that the grey-shouldered uniform was introduced in Star Trek: First Contact , while the Lieutenant in charge of Cadet Furlong's unit is wearing the TNG-style uniform...
• Sketchy Successor : Mercurius Singletary, the Security Officer who takes the place of Sprint after his death, wastes precious time shooting the Borg that infiltrates the bridge instead of isolating the Ops console from his hacking, and can't work quickly enough afterward to stop the hack from going through. Q notes that the officer is barely older than Qaylan, and implies that Sprint's experienced actions would have saved the ship. And then the guy tries to rush the Borg ... Though it's ultimately averted, as it turns out only a very specific and unlikely set of circumstances would have saved the day. Singletary's inexperienced actions just hastened the ship's destruction.
• Stock Footage : Most of the exterior shots of the Righteous are taken from either Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country or " Emissary ", the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine .
• At one point, the Borg stick some weird device upon one of your consoles. If you do anything besides ignore it and let it have its way with your ship, it'll activate the self-destruct.
• You also have to put yourself into a Pain Trance and get Borgified at one point.
• Take Our Word for It : Using the tricorder on Lt. Counselor Biraka informs you that, among other things as a general badass, he won a silver medal for low-gravity Equestrian jumping at the Federation Olympics.
• Technology Uplift : Q gives you one at the start of the game by handing you an extremely advanced version of the tricorder with cosmic qualities, information on the Borg, and also his delightful personality built in.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself : Subverted. Targus volunteers to place a Borg Guidance Implant upon a piece of Borg technology. It's played up as her being able to resist the urge to connect it to herself due to Heroic Willpower and finally overcoming her addiction for good...but no, her addiction is back full force, and she'll screw things up.
• Thousand-Yard Stare : At first Qaylen can't stop staring at his father, though as Q notes, it's not as if the guy can recognize who he really is. As a result, at one point the slightly weirded-out elder Furlong believes him to have gone into one of the trances endemic to Sprint's species.
• Time Travel Escape : Used at the end when the Righteous is saved when it should have been destroyed by the Borg.
• Grab the wrong power module towards the beginning and Q pretty much says this.
• Some of the choices you need to proceed are the dumbest possible options you could take (such as starting a fight on a Borg cube or knocking out your own father) that result in either your death or assimilated by the Borg to get pieces of information you couldn't get otherwise. The fact Q keeps bringing you back to life by turning back time makes things a lot more clever.
• You can attempt to link the Borg implant to the ship's mainframe . Q doesn't even let you attempt this option, in one of the only times he'll stop you before you do something monumentally stupid. This one's free. Don't do it.
• Tricked Out Time : History records the Righteous as having been being hit by an unknown Borg weapon and vaporized during the Battle of Wolf 359. Your actions during the game not only save it, but also you to collect important data about the Borg that Starfleet never learned in the "proper" timeline. Q solves the obvious canon issues this would cause by sending the ship forward ten years at the moment it's hit .
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight : When your character returns to the Righteous after being partially assimilated, the crew almost kills you until your teammates assure them that you are still yourself , after which nobody seems even slightly uncomfortable about the situation, even when you punch or kick the nads of your ship's chief medical officer.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom : Since in the original timeline it didn't occur to Quint to use a hypospray to knock out the Borg fighting Sprint, the security officer was killed and thus couldn't save the Righteous four hours later. Q fixes that.
• What Happened to the Mouse? : Does Qaylen get to keep his Q-enhanced tricorder?
• You Killed My Father : Cadet Furlong's father was killed by the Borg when he was only nine, and when the Cheyenne , the ship he's training on is preparing to battle them, he wants to stay and help out. Q frames this as a desire to kill Borg out of vengeance, and considering the choice to do something besides leave involves grabbing a phaser from Q, it seems Qaylan agrees.
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Den of Geek

“We’ve Got to Visit Them”: A Doctor Who/Star Trek Crossover Would Be Unforgettable TV

That "Space Babies" nod is just the latest in Russell T Davies' campaign to get these two sci-fi shows together

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“We’ve got to visit them one day!”

It is, among everything else happening in “ Space Babies “, a pretty throwaway line. Ruby Sunday notices the TARDIS has landed indoors, and says “Is that like a matter transporter, like in Star Trek?” And the Doctor answers, “We’ve got to visit them one day!”

Blowing that one line up into an entire article may seem excessive (although it’s not like the pipeline from “ throwaway gag ” to “entire episode” is a long one – the premise of “ Mummy on the Orient Express ” started out as a comedy phone call the Eleventh Doctor had at the end of Season Five’s finale, “ The Big Bang ”).

But the thing is, when Russell T Davies announced he’d be getting back on his throne as the King of Doctor Who, he had lots of new ideas, but also, some that he never got around to. We already know that episode five of this series is based on an idea that was too expensive to film last time.

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And one of the Great White Whales of Davies’s last tenure, ever since the Eccleston days, was a Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover episode.

Russell T Davies Wants the Doctor on the Enterprise

In his memoir/stack of emails that got turned into a book, The Writer’s Tale , written with Benjamin Cook, Davies writes “I would so love to see the Doctor on board the Starship Enterprise , puncturing all that Starfleet pomposity with his sheer Doctor-ness.”

He goes on to say that “When we began in 2004, Star Trek: Enterprise was still on air, and I told [producer] Julie [Gardner], in all seriousness, that I wanted to do a Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover. It was on our list of plans, until Star Trek: Enterprise was axed.”

It was an idea that Davies loved so much he went back to it for the Easter special that would eventually become Planet of the Dead , in an episode that would have potentially seen the TARDIS land on a starship Endeavour , with crinkly forehead aliens and all the Trek tropes. But eventually Davies discarded the idea as too much like parody – if you can’t land on the real, actual Enterprise , what’s the point?

But sadly, for Davies’ tenure, there was no real, actual Star Trek anymore. Let’s be honest, even Star Trek: Enterprise wasn’t proper Trek, with its faintly industrial looking, submarine-esque sets and its NASA jumpsuit-inspired costumes, the prequel never really managed to be the iconic Trek show of our imaginations.

But now Davies is back, and so is Star Trek, and not just any Star Trek .

Strange New Worlds

If (and that is a massive “if”) that TARDIS were going to land on a Federation starship, there’s no prizes for guessing which one it would be. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is begging for the chance.

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Strange New Worlds is an episodic show whose tone is a mix of drama, comedy, and high science fiction concepts that would gel well with new Doctor Who , and has already demonstrated that it is not above a little bit of crossover horseplay with last season’s Lower Decks overlap.

Strange New Worlds also offers the Enterprise. With all due respect to all other Trek iterations, if  you are bringing the actual TARDIS into the world of Trek, you don’t want the Doctor getting to know Saru, or Boimler, or even having a drink in Quark’s Bar, as great as any of those things would be to see. You want the Doctor on the actual Enterprise 1701 no-bloody-A,-B,-C-or-D. You want him meeting Spock, and Uhura, and more-often-than-seems-statistically-likely Kirk. And that is what Strange New Worlds has to offer.

So, before we all run off and start writing our fan fiction of what that episode might be, the question is “Could it actually happen?”

Davies is the first to admit such a crossover, between multiple huge media franchises and everybody’s lawyers and writing teams, would be a logistical nightmare. Talking about it to The Times in 2009, he said “Can you imagine what their script department would have wanted, and what I would have wanted? It would have been the biggest battle.”

And that was before Doctor Who fell under the Disney umbrella.

Why Not Star Wars?

In fact, a Star Wars crossover might be a good deal more plausible under the circumstances (the Star Wars alphabet “Aurebesh” has already appeared in alien graffiti in the Who episode “Face the Raven” and the current TARDIS art team reportedly hid an R2D2 Easter Egg in the design), but while that might seem an easier fit, it is nowhere near as satisfying.

Despite Davies’s recent flirtations with the fantasy genre , Trek and Who are pure sci-fi at heart, with values of exploration, empathy and a willingness to shift your own perspective that doesn’t sit so well with Star Wars ’ epic battles of good and evil.

The fact that Davies is still saying in interviews that “I love that show… I wish we could [cross over with Trek.] I’m a huge fan of the new franchise” is, counter-intuitively, probably a sign that there are no secret talks going on behind closed doors.

But it has been managed before – just not on telly

The Comic Book Crossover: Assimilation

As many people have no-doubt skipped reading the article to write in the comments already, there has already been a Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover, the IDW comic mini-series “Assimilation 2 ”. It’s a good demonstration of the potential rewards and pitfalls of a TARDIS/Enterprise team-up.

This saw the TARDIS team of Eleven, Amy and Rory land on the Enterprise 1701-D, getting together with Picard and co to take on a Cyberman/Borg super-army. It had some good fan servicey bits in, and some neat ideas (the TARDIS landing in a historical holodeck program and not realising they were in the future was nice), but it also showed the challenges of doing this well.

First and foremost – Doctor Who and Star Trek both span half a century of various media, with entire wikis full of lore. For instance, if the Star Trek: Enterprise crossover had taken place, the Doctor might have wondered why Starfleet wasn’t busy trying to repel the Dalek invasion of Earth.

And it would have to do this while also dealing with the fact that Doctor Who has mentioned Star Trek, the television show, quite a few times in continuity. The comic mini-series spends a lot of time dealing with this, concocting an elaborate plot about the merging of universes, but it’s all just a little bit unwieldy for 45 minutes of family entertainment.

But even beyond those logistics, which can be pretty efficiently handwaved away, the big issue with the comic series was that the Doctor and the Enterprise crew quickly become just too damn chummy .

Natural Enemies: The Doctor vs Starfleet

Back in The Writer’s Tale , Davies acknowledges that “In an official crossover, the Doctor would have had to learn that Starfleet is wonderful, but that’s a small price to pay.”

But the big issue that any crossover would have to contend with (and also, frankly, the big reason for doing the crossover in the first place) is that the Doctor and Starfleet are natural enemies.

You want to see how Starfleet would handle the Doctor? There’s plenty of Trek episodes to give you a clue. We don’t just mean the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “ A Matter of Time ” sees a time-travelling historian turn up on the Enterprise and generate no end of trouble, or the Enterprise episode, “Future Tense” that sees it find a time machine that’s bigger on the inside.

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The character that most resembles the Doctor in Star Trek is Q – a (sometimes) exiled member of a stuffy order of beings that transcend space and time who turns up in Star Trek at random times to flirt with the Captain and generally cause trouble.

Meanwhile, if you want to see what Starfleet looks like through a Doctor Who lens, one need only look at the legions of generic space explorers who turn down the Doctor’s help with a curt “Thank you, funnily-dressed weirdo, but as a highly trained team of professionals, I think we can handle this ourselves” before they all get horribly murdered or eaten.

As we’ve already said, the fundamental values of Trek and Who are the same. Exploration, empathy, communication before combat, a desire to learn and enjoy the wonder of the universe. But at its very heart, Star Trek has always been a workplace drama, about professionals who are doing a job. Just as intrinsically, the Doctor is a tourist on a gap year that never ends.

Starfleet’s Prime Directive, for better or worse , is to never interfere. The Doctor’s prime directive is to never interfere unless he feels like it (which is all the time ).

And that’s why it would be good! Watching the Strange New Worlds Enterprise crew scanning stuff with their tricorders while the Doctor wanders around licking things and pushing random buttons, and seeing Pike agonise about the Prime Directive while the Doctor just casually overturns a system of government he dislikes, sounds like real fun.

Moreover, Strange New Worlds and the current incarnation of Who are both franchises operating not only at their peak, but also almost in their most platonic forms. Seeing that come together would make an unforgettable hour of TV.

Doctor Who airs on BBC One, iPlayer and Disney+. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds airs on Paramount+.

Chris Farnell

Chris Farnell is a freelance writer and the author of a novel, an anthology, a Doctor Who themed joke book and some supplementary RPG material. He…

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