Borg Lore: Borg Callousness and Wolf 359 

The Borg's greatest strength is the ability to adapt to different forms of attack. It stands to reason they would also adapt their behaviour when needed.

I wonder if war between Borg and 8472 was truly the first disastrous war for the Borg. Things make a lot more sense if you presume that Borg was in a similar war at this time. It would explain why Borg suddenly starts assimilating. They need numbers and fast. It would explain why Borg suddenly has queens in more prevalent roles. They are needed to keep assimilated drones under Borg Collective's mind control. (I make here a difference between those who have born as Borg (Collective) and those who have been assimilated (drones)).

Regarding the Hugh vs Seven comparison, I have thought about this in the past, and I can only come up with one explanation: When Hugh was re-connected to the Collective, he wasn't assimilated in the traditional sense, where they wipe out all individuality before connecting the individual to the hive mind. He was simply added back into the fold without any extra steps being taken, the Borg likely not considering that anything of significance took place during the time Hugh had been separated. After all, the Enterprise had hid itself from Borg sensors, and Geordi had placed himself a safe distance away so that the Borg wouldn't notice him while looking for surviving drones (remember, unless you're considered a threat or of value, you're ignored by the Collective. Plus, they were on a search and retrieval mission, and thus would focus only on those parameters). His addition back to the Collective without any sort of individuality wipe would allow the "virus" to spread through the Collective unknowingly, causing the schism. As for Seven, she did not re-connect herself and her compatriots to the Collective, but instead created a miniature collective between the four of them. This would be an anomaly that the Borg would have to attempt to correct upon reclaiming the survivors, and thus they would do a full checkup on the drones in question, catching and wiping out any individuality they may have gained in the process. Obviously the Borg couldn't completely undo what Seven had done, and simply suppressed it instead, using the greater hive mind to override the lesser one Seven had created. That would be my explanation for the differences between Hugh's reclamation and Seven's.

I agree that the Borg were fundamentally changed by contact with the Federation. That said. their actions of recovering their dead or injured are more logical than emotional as they are irreplaceable components to the collective. Various species and individuals bring a varied perspective with their experience. If you have 10 dollars in dimes you would want to collect them all if you dropped them. Each drone has a specific value to the Borg. Decisions made based on the total collective with no remorse or emotions but still utilizing all the drones of the hives' experience. Makes them even more terrifying to me now that I've typed that. Hope you have a wonderful New Year!!!

You don´t care for the cells that died, when you are scratched. BUT you don´t want to be scratched, because it hurts the entire being, you.

As they assimilate individuals from various civilizations they're going to take on the knowledge of those civilizations, and not just scientific knowledge, but cultural as well. When drones are first introduced they all seem multipurpose, self-same units that all do the same things. Interchangeable. Locutus was the first we saw that wasn't that way. And after Locutus we saw more and more deviation from that template. They became specialized, like humans. An individual had a purpose that was separate from the other drones because they had different implants. When we get to Voyager we see how many different types of specialization spread through the collective? The ships now have several different types (cubes, speheres, tactical cubes, scout ships) and they have a home base of sorts where the Queen (specialization at its finest) usually resides in some kind of larger structure that isn't a sphere, cube, or anything else. They have different methods of travel between their high efficiency warp engines and the trans-warp network they had built up over who knows how long. When Hugh was able to manifest individuality outside of the collective, it may have been some leftover influence from Picard/Locutus exerting itself. The Borg had been attacking outlying colonies and absorbing human minds, not to mention the various other sentient species who were both allies and enemies of the Federation. The Borg could have easily seen the advantage in specialization the human way after assessing all of that. What is individuality other than specialization of identity? Over the years we see a lot of examples of what could be remnants of control methods that went awry. Unimatrix 0 seems like it could have been an early attempt at a Matrix-style locking away of the mind while making use of the body. Lore's leadership of the rogue Borg is obviously very similar to the way the Queen is portrayed controlling the collective, though not as authoritarian. The Borg designate drones to be leaders or interfaces with other races, as Seven was originally when she came to Voyager with the other drones, meaning she had to have some level of independence from the Queen, some individuality left in place on purpose to serve other goals. They temporarily link minds with the Voyager crew to make work proceed more smoothly without removing any individuality from the crew members. The Queen even tries to convince Seven that she's a double agent for the Borg who was sent to Voyager on a long-term infiltration mission. The Borg the Enterprise-D met would never have been able to consider such a possibility. Their inability to conquer Earth, humanity, and the Federation caused a death spiral of adaptation that drastically altered the Borg. Humanity is one of the most individualistic and least one-note species we seen on screen. Each officer in Starfleet is part warrior, part scientist, part tactician, part engineer. Compare that to what we see of the Klingons, Cardassians, Breen, Romulan, etc. The Borg were trying to copy the influence of individuality while removing individuality. They managed to make some kind of ersatz individuality through selecting which parts they liked, but in the end just couldn't make it work.

Happy new year!

A theory I have about the borg's collection of their dead and recovery of lost and damaged drones could be that it's felt through their shared consciousness. I don't think this is ever fully explored in trek and is mostly a headcanon theory, but I think that borg are still capable of feeling, just on a wavelength that's completely alien to people who aren't part of their hivemind. They don't necessarily feel empathy the way we do, probably feeling pity for the people at wolf 359 the way an exterminator might pity a wasp's nest he was spraying with insecticide, but they FEEL the death of a drone as though, for a moment, briefly experiencing their own life being snuffed out. Their quick response in adapting their defences to absorb an enemy's specific weapons could be almost reflexive for the collective as they might all share the pain of a disruptor burn or having phased nadions disintegrating you. They could try to reintegrate lost or wounded drones with such urgency because they could possibly all feel the pain, the distress, or an empty void in their minds where that voice once was. They're possibly operating on a wavelength we cannot fathom, and never will truly be able to. Just a thought, though.

I think the Borg queen is just sort of like Siri or something - an output that is easier to communicate with than the entire collective - she probably has different settings too - like -say..... if she was dealing with a Klingon or a Vulcan - or - a good question(?) - what happens if the Borg try to assimilate the species from Darmok?? - I would guess the Borg queen would have to start speaking in metaphors.......anyways - in the movie/Voyager - she seems all nefarious and emotional - but- I think its just a distilled version of humanity.....the program just says "act all emotional and backhanded because that is how humans act..."

Bye the time the Borg had gotten to Voyager. they became basically no threat to anyone. I mean don’t get me wrong they were still scary in “Scorpion”. after that they lost something basic.

I don't think she was ever on the cube, she "was there all the time". She is the collective, the one underlying voice making decisions and directives. Once picard was assimilated she "interfaced" with him and he with the collective making him feel as though she was there.

Thought that said "Worf 359" and wondered how the hell i missed the borg-Worf story arc.

I think that when Hugh was sent back to the Borg with his own individuality that alone became the catalyst, the virus that disrupted the Borg. Picard's plan would have wiped them out a bit faster but I think some would have survived, Hugh's individuality would disrupt and possibly disconnect the collective on a grand scale - Confusion and Rebellion. The former Borg Chakotay encountered and Borg that toured Voyager could have been affected by Hugh or by other factors as well. Interesting show, Good work as always and Happy New Year to All!!

Just had a thought- what if the Borg didnt stop to assimilate the crews of the federation ships at Wolf 359 *because* Picard was influencing them? Better left for dead then assimilated like him?

Yesterday, I watched the Best of Both Worlds I, II and Family all of which are brilliant episodes. So this is indeed proof that Lore Reloaded is a Jedi and he is using the Force. FRAK!

I'm glad you referenced "Q" as the source of the Enterprises appearance and especially its disappearance, Surprise! Recovering Borg drones could be a default process to secure their tech and/or recovery of any last intelligence not sent to the hive. I believe the BORG expected Picard's (everyone's) inherent individuality but not from Hugh (He's BORG).

I always viewed the individual drone's relationship to the Borg as being similar to a body part on a person. If someone, for instance, accidentally cut off their right ring finger on a band saw, you would do what you could to salvage the finger and take it back to attempt to surgically reattach it to the body. I think there was a TNG episode which brought this point out. The Borg could no more remove a drone than remove a foot or an arm, and would do what it could to restore the limb cut off.

Perhaps the Borg were already at war with Species 8472 at the time, this would explain away why they only ever sent one ship at a time to the Federation, This would also explain why the Borg were suddenly starting to assimilate en mass. It's also possible that the borg only assimilated en mass when they had secured the space and sent in specialized ships designed just to assimilate populations. But think for a moment about the 8472 theory, you have an enemy that you cannot beat, you have knowledge that there is a species with incredible adaptability and resources as well as wide spread levels of high education, The Federation suddenly gets a target painted on their back, especially since the borg know after their first encounter that the Federation wants to prevent the borg from dominating them, they would fear that the Federation being peaceful would try to make an alliance with species 8472, something they know might be possible. The solution is to take earth before the Federation can become involved. Ultimately it worked out in he end as the Borg won against 8472 with help from Voyager, but at the time they couldn't have known that. Plus the borg have the signal from the ENT era borg by this point, probably containing information like "These primitive 22nd century humans defeated these 24th century borg."

Couple reasons for the Borg reclaiming their dead: 1) Reclamation of parts. The Borg prefer to be as efficient as possible, and one way to maximize efficiency is through recycling. Drones that have been killed, or that have reached a point of irreparable status, are taken back by the Borg and stripped of all useful technology, then the rest is discarded. 2) As another user pointed out, preventing other species from getting access to Borg technology would be a smart maneuver on the Borg's part. If a civilization managed to reverse-engineer Borg tech, they would become a sizable threat to the Collective. We've seen this happen on numerous occasions in TNG and Voyager, leading to the Borg considering the Federation an increasingly serious threat each time. Thus, reclamation of any and all useful technology benefits the Borg on two fronts as opposed to just one.

I'm fairly certain that one drone that was damaged during the capture of Picard was vaporized. The transport field around the still functional Borg drones was a mix of blue and green, while the downed drone was a hazy white. Even the sound effects were different, most likely to signify that the drone was being destroyed, rather than beamed out.

Out of universe explanation: the Borg in the beginning were just too powerful, our heroes needing deus ex machinas to just get away. In short: completely unsustainable villains. They would have been great this way if they were never reused again, but this way, it was either "dumbing" them down or keeping the deus ex machina aspect to defeating them, which would have made them boring, and would have turned Trek into a purely fantasy show. My in-universe explanation (headcanon) is that the Krenim f##ked with the timeline enough times to see all these different Borg "types", with the last "type" being the one where the timeship never existed and where the queen is just a petty turd.

I think I've mentioned this once before. But I think the reason why Hue screwed up the collective and Seven didn't was for two reasons, first Hue should have come before Seven by a few years. They both got disconnected the same way (good on Voyager writers) but Hue caused chaos, and I think the collective probably not only had to fix the situation, but it discharged (or otherwise isolated) what it thought were damaged drones which we would see latter being controlled by Lore. When Seven came around (and the reason why a Queen would be so necessary when you assume to scope of a species like the Borg) it was pretty clear the Borg had a way around this, a way of re-assimilating Borg. Also, it appears that their assimilation techniques changed as well. The people who were assimilated appeared to all be Alpha Quadrant species. So when their minds were restored, they actually regained their personalities, something Hue did not do. So their were probably some sort of safe guard put into place, and that episode showed us a more Jerry rigged version of it. However, for how lousy it was...well Seven felt like crap that entire episode after those 3 showed up. Now that I think about it, its also possible, that the collective fell into disrepair completely after Hue. But then they ended up in that Seven scenario, where too many had been attached to the collective for so long, they couldn't bear to live without it, so they reasserted themselves like seven did and restored the collective on as many ships as possible. The ones Lore had were just the ones who got away.

I realize this is an older video, but i do have a theory for Hugh. If you consider the Borg Collective as a computer NETWORK rather than a program where each cube is therefore a "server", then drones are no more than system processes. each process contains a certain amount of resources. therefore, when a process dies, the system needs to free those resources (in this case the drones and any data they hold, remember the first dead drone we see has something taken OFF his head before that drone self destructs). When a program becomes corrupted, it can corrupt the entire system. This is what I believe Hugh was, a corrupted program that damaged all other programs he linked to. As for why his individuality was allowed to continue upon connection, since he was already part of the system, he only got a cursory glance by the security. whereas a new drone needs to be vetted by said security before it can gain the appropriate access. I dont know if you will see this, but I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this theory.

I think the Sphere is the bridge of the Cube. As the Borg continued to evolve, they became more centralized for efficient processing, thus requiring the need for a Queen. The best place to put the bridge of a warship is as deep as possible inside an ejectable escape pod or smaller ship, so even if the ship is destroyed, the highest value members of the crew are most likely to survive.

The Best of Both worlds did it best. “Send a message to Star Fleet we have engaged the Borg.” you felt that dread.

In the episode "I Borg", Picardx stated he was assimilated as an individual, as the Borg wanted a spokesman.

I was watching anti-treker's Borg v dominion video when I got the notification for this

The more they assimilate, the more they learn and change and "grow." The further they travel, the more advanced ships they send there. Makes perfect sense to me, its what I would do

I think the episode where q sent the enterprise back was also back in time. This would also explain how the raven interacted with voyager type borg. The borg they interact with in TNG could have been ships dispatched in response to that meeting in the past.

I have a theory on the Borg Queen that people might find interesting. Essentially I think the Queen serves as the Borg equivalent of the conscious mind. Much like when something goes wrong for a human the pain or discomfort draws the attention of the conscious mind so that the situation can be resolved, when the Collective encounters something that it's standard responses cannot deal with (like a technologically inferior ship suddenly jumping across hundreds of light years to escape a borg cube) the Queen becomes involved in order solve the problem. Much like how our conscious mind can override our instincts she can override the standard responses of the collective

I never really considered the relationship or lack thereof between the Q and the Borg. It would be pretty interesting to have seen the Q continuum and the Borg have words with each other.

Yeah, I believe that the original idea with the Borg being in alcoves in the original, the idea was that they spent most of their existence in the alcove as a semi-organic super-computer and only come out of those alcoves when they need to do something, such as repairs, or assimilating civilisations. The main reason we see Borg out and about in later issues is mostly because of 2 things. Seeing Born in motion is more engaging, and then writers forgot, or just didn't know the original point.

The queen was either not on the cube with Picard but just a prominent thought in his head through the collective, or every cube has a stargate thing that allows for the queen to move wherever she wants physically -- and would explain why alpha quadrant species from the battle of Wolf 359 were in the Delta quadrant to assimilate Chakotay years later.

The changes in the Borg were due to...Jean Luc Picard HIMSELF. Admiral Nechayev had a valid point but as usual for a Starfleet Admiral did not see the forest for the trees. It was Picard who was the infecting virus- he was the agent of change. We are kinda shown this in TNG. When Q flings the Enterprise in the way of the Borg scout ship (oh, and remember: the Borg have been up to no good already within the Neutral Zone) it's Picard who announces himself as a leader. This intrigues them, so much so that they specifically go for Picard. The Borg literally tell him that they chose HIM to be THEIR VOICE. That is key. Assimilation does not go in one way; it can't for the Borg collective. So Picard's sense of duty to his own people seems to have carried over to the Borg, as well as a need for a symbol, a voice, a organizing unit that would have all knowledge of the collective (thus, in my mind, a near simultaneous creation of a Queen as a counterpart to Picard). It's Picard - not the Federation- who changes and infects the Borg, even all the way into the Delta Quadrant.

I think that the ship that recovered Hue didn't know that he had had interactions with the federation, and Hue was able to hide it from them. He perhaps was able to 'sneak' back into the collective, which is why he got further then others. Once plugged back into the collective (ie past their firewalls) then his changes were manifest. Having infected his current ship completely it is cut off from the whole. I'm sure the Borg has had to deal with people who where disconnected before and gained individuality, but their algorithms said Hue had no outside contact, and was only disconnected for x days, he should be fine.

The Borg stated, "your archaic culture is authority driven" in their first hail. They intended to seize pichard for multiple reasons: 1. To learn everything he knew being a senior fleet captain (obvious reasons), 2. In order to communicate with a culture to, "ease transition", it's typically for conquers to bastardize an important figure in that culture to influence the transition. 3. Organic creatures respond better to other organic creatures, (just thing about calling your insurance company and getting a computer). In terms of recovering their, "dead" it's reasonable to assume that you don't want an enemy to capture any of your technology. That, and it's reasonable to assume that each Borg is a, "cog in a gear". You loose enough, you start to loose some of what you are. Also, when they remove key pieces of dead Borg, it's not too dissimilar when a rifle platoon looses a soldier. If you loose your machine Gunner, you're not going to leave you most casualty producing weapon, you're going to recover it at all costs and re-issue it to another troop. Those key pieces of equipment they remove must be similar in importance to key pieces of equipment for any tactical unit. Recover the most important items and re-issue to fresh troops. I doubt there's any emotional attachment to dead drones, it's just a practical matter.

I'm not a fan of the Queen, but she explains pretty readily (if vaguely) how she survived the loss of the cube. (The bit about 3 dimensional thinking.) That wasn't a reference to time travel, it was basically that she doesn't have to physically move from place to place: she's an uploadable software AI that operates in a Borg-enhanced organic brain. Thus, her physical body can be destroyed, but as long as she can access the Borg datalink, she can be put in a new body immediately. Hell, logically there's probably dozens or hudnreds of her at any given moment, which would definitely be more Borg-like than is depicted on-screen.

Course, since it was Q that sent the Enterprise out to meet that cube, and Q who pulled the Enterprise away from the cube, it wasn't really Starfleet that changed the Borg so much as it was Q.

Fantastic episode!

In Q-Who, the Borg didn't assimilate individuals, but assimilated technology. I always figured that if they had assimilated ships, they would have assimilated the crew as well, considering it to be part of the ship. Sort of like V'Ger considered the crew carbon based infestations. I think they assimilated Picard because they thought he'd be able to control the whole federation. The pursuit of perfection was a joke, considering that I'd never consider klingons, romulans, or even Andorians as a conduit to perfection.

Recall that Q got his jollies by baiting and demeaning the Federation -- and Humans in particular. So, his entire intro to the Borg was almost certainly only a half-truth, at best. Given Voyager, it would appear that when the Borg decided to assimilate a species, they were rarely held at bay, and even more rarely defeated. Thus, it would be logical to assume that a random ship, appearing from nowhere, but bearing similar technologies to a previously-encountered lifeform (i.e., 7's human-family's ship), and not simply escaping, but causing appreciable damage to a Cube, would cause the Borg to desire to investigate this group, which would appear "Borg-like" -- because, STO notwithstanding -- it doesn't appear that there were very many other groups exactly like the Federation, which (to borrow a phrase) is a (more or less) "voluntary collective" of many disparate species. The closest I could think of, would be the Dominion, but the Borg, AFAIK, never encountered them. Since their first real encounter was with a ship commanded by JLP, the Borg would have regarded him as a type of "coordinating unit/sub-assembly node", that would likely have significant information about this odd group, that called itself "The Federation". The "reconnaissance assimilation's" of Federation border colonies would have yielded additional data, but that data would likely have been confusingly incomplete. This would cause the Borg to focus even more on JLP as a critical information source, leading directly to his capture. Assimilating JLP would be pro-forma, because that would be how they accessed his memories and psychology. Doing so would lead -- because JLP was one of Starfleet's senior commanders -- to the Collective determining that a) Earth/Sol System was one of the anchors of the Federation, b) one of its primary centers of military strength, and thus a major node of resistance, which would be beneficial to knock out early on, c) that Starfleet was the main underpinning to Federation morale, which - if broken quickly - should lead to a federation surrender, because d) the Federation tends to be casualty-averse... So -- strike directly at Earth, win, and the Federation would likely collapse in panic. That's a logical thought-sequence. Wolf 359? There was nothing special about those Federation (and one Klingon) ships, from the Borg perspective, beyond allowing the Collective a test of whether their theories about JLP's knowledge was correct. If the Collective needed the resources, the wrecks weren't going anywhere.

My opinion on borg assimilation practices shifting is based largely on what was said by locutus in best of both worlds :" we are the borg. Your life as you knew it is over. You will be made to service....us." Also, the borg also talk about "your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own". I think that originally, the borg practiced their pre-nano probe assimilation on an as-needed basis, preserving the majority of conquered species as stock for assimilation to replace lost/damaged drones, only directly assimilating those of whose biological distinctiveness pushed the collective toward perfection (best and brightest, those possessing unique abilities). From what we know from Seven of Nine, the borg were essentially unchallenged in the delta quadrant by the time of "Q Who?". Now, all of a sudden the federation suddenly seems to make a major tech jump (and thus potentially being able to pose a threat to borg interests) probting the borg to enter a "borg-style state of wartime readiness" as the assimilation of Picard had shown the borg that a similar collective of collabarative species existed and (as the borg saw it) were rapidly advancing; which the borg recognised (and probably ran the math to prove) as the only real threat to borg perfection in the known galaxy. The Hugh virus also probably played a large part in change, as the individualality plague likely caused a significant amount of drones to be lost (either through rebellion, accidents caused by a sudden lack of cohesion, possible fights breaking out as drones suddenly beckme aware of the drone next to them being from a species they were at war with pre-assimilation) forcing the collectivebto recoup their losses and also neccessitating the borg Queens. According the memory alpha the queens all came from a species the collectove had conquered that saw the females to possess incredible organisational and managerial mental abilities. These females would be retroactovely made into queens to sort out the individuality plague brought by Hugh and prevent it from happening by changing the collective from a true hive mind to a mental network where all drones work is monitored and managed by a mental hub of sorts, a central point of decision-making to prevent a relapse if individuality-infected drones were reintegrated. Drones could be disconnected, like seven and the community they find in voyeger, but the collective would be largely unaffected as the drones function as a physical and mental extension of the Queen. Also, if the queen is used as a hub, a focus point, and not a a dominating individual personality (meaning she can only act within the limits of the borg programing and is still techically an equal part of the collective) she could essily be replaced by another female from the species as needed.

The Borg Queen was more of an embodiment of the collective, a host for it. If the body dies the Collective just activates another Queen somewhere else, granted as we saw in First Contact all the local drones short circuit but the collective as a whole survives.

I would say that the Borg still do not care about the individual, but they do care about their resources and assets. Usually when a drone is damaged they will seek it out, but if its beyond repair they wont hesitate to jerk its boots off its feet before the body is cold so to speak. Plus it makes a degree of sense because even without the drone the memory core as it were is likely one of the key components they salvage. That way the damaged drones memories and experiences continue to live on within the collective, once the data from those recovered parts is reintegrated. That would be a logical tactical action. If a group of drones were defeated, they would be retrieving valuable data on what defeated them so they could adapt and be prepared in advance for that species tactics.

The biggest unanswered question about hugh is, was he assimilated as a child like 7, or was he born Borg IE; one of those borg babies seen in maturation chambers. If he was indeed always borg, removed from his mother as a fetus during her assimilation, it might make sense that being given individually was an alien concept that changed the borg drastically since if he had always been a Borg only knowing commands dictated to him his memories returning of being an individual could be seen as contaminating the Borg, those assimilated having their individuality repressed to fit into the structure of the collective would make sense to keep the collective in unity, but a baby who was always borg, would there be any need to repress individuality that wouldn't have existed? But, again this theory heavily relies on Hugh always being Borg from fetus to adult and never knowing anything but his directives.

The borg collected their dead to pervent any tech from falling into non borg hands. I seem to remember a voyager edisode where the crew loots alot of borg tech from a destroyed borg ship. No plot really ever comes up where the borg are in a position to destroy their own ships.

Hey lore..happy New Year to you and family...as always shieldssss

Before anyone ask about why the Borg do not send more than one Cube at time to invade the Federation please consider the following; 1st) Of around the time of the first two cubes the Borg were dealing with other Delta Quadrant species still and species 8472 and other more immediate concerns than a civilization half a galaxy away. 2nd) They adapt to technology but they do not innovate especially with ideals and only change their strategy when absolutely necessary (which according to the theory has happen at least once) a flaw that Starfleet is able to use in doing both by the time of the battle of Sector 001. 3rd) If you are willing to accept Beta Cannon, either read the Star Trek Destiny Novel Series or play the MMORPG Star Trek Online. Both of which have after the events of Voyager and Nemesis have literally THOUSANDS of Cubes among other ships to go a few bee line invasion of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, however they lead to different outcomes due to different geopolitical differences in the two Galactic timelines as a whole and how much time there is from Voyager and Nemesis until the invasion begins. I apologize for this comment being as long as it is, if you have anything to add I would be okay with hearing it whether it adds on to what I say or it is a fair criticism. Live long a prosper.

of course after Hue measures would be taken! If someone hacks into your computer and destroys the project you're currently working on, of course you're going to plug the hole that let him in! Also, this might be the reason behind recovering their dead/incapacitated: They've GOT TO be aware that scattering defenceless entrypoints to their collective-wide subspace network all around the galaxy is a security risk by default, even if they expect/assume the actual network to be impenetrable.

Here's a question was the dead Borg decommissioned? If we take the enterprise episode, when the Borg sphere crashed into the ice and those two dead Borg were frozen over, they come back to life.

Personal opinion: It is not care about individual Borg that die why the Collective retrives them, but simply a matter of efficiency. It is more efficient to recycle Borg implants than to manufacture new ones.

We are the borg. Resistance is futile. Prepare for assimilation.

5:50 - I mean maybe they just don't want their tech to be picked apart. Look what happened when the federation got their hands on borg info, they made weapons that could fend them off or even kill/destroy borg and their ship.

Just a quote about First Contact and the Queen; Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Yes, I... I remember you. You were there all the time. But... that ship... and all the Borg on it were destroyed... Borg Queen : You think in such three-dimensional terms. How small you've become. So she might have not been physically ON the ship, but was *there* in the Collective.

Maybe Picard did infect Hugh with the virus with out his Crew knowing, and that led to the episode "descent".

borg assimilate leaders to study the defenses of theirs targets, Federation was out of the limits of normal operations of Borg because they concentrate to their quadrant and consume civilisations one by one following a plan , Federation caught their attention so first they investigate to see if their technology is interesting enough to divert some ships to take it

I cannot help but wonder if what happened with Hugh was an effect of him already being behind the firewall. Think of it, instead of a new assimilation, which undergoes all sorts of awful personality overrides, this is an already assimilated drone. They recover it (and it comes willingly, with no indication that forceful re-integration is necessary), link it to the collective, and immediately disseminate its knowledge and experiences to the whole. Hugh is the only surviving witness as to what caused the loss of one of their ships, after all, and the Borg would probably place a high priority on learning how to prevent that from happening again. However, he's *changed* in the intervening time. Along with the knowledge of the crash comes the thought algorithm "I am unique," complete with a full information set as to what it means, and why it is *important* to be unique. Every drone has this downloaded directly into its head (possibly even the Cube's victual), and starts obeying the new directive to be unique. We have no way of knowing how far this spread, but perhaps this kind of malfunction is why they have the Queen administrator in the first place, a *part* of the Borg but also *above* them in hierarchy. It may be that she was able to purge the larger network, but Hugh's ship was so scrambled that it was unrecoverable by remote, or perhaps she even had to re-assimilate the entire collective the hard way, drone-to-drone. This would take quite some time, and would explain why the Borg didn't recover the lost ship. By the time they could even try to get around to it, it had picked up Lore, been remodeled (and I imagine Lore would make sure the connection to the larger Collective was firmly cut), and then destroyed by the Enterprise. This could also explain how the rogue drone colony got set up - their ship may have been crippled during the time of chaos, and with no active communications it was just considered destroyed, and thus passed over for re-assimilation into the whole. In the case of Seven's crash (which also may have occurred during the Hughpocolypse, as this would help explain why they reverted to individuals so quickly), the other survivors did not willingly rejoin the collective. She had to re-assimilate them by force. This would mean that, to make them part of the network again, their individuality had to be suppressed via standard assimilation procedures. By the time they were behind the firewall, there was either no "individuality virus" to spread, or it had been overridden by subjugation to Seven's individual mind in this new micro-collective.

The Borg collected their dead, not because they had feelings for the individual drone, but concern that Borg technology would fall into the hands of whom they were trying to assimilate, and potentially used against them, also the humans were the first civilization (as far as we know), to have beaten them.

So one Borg cube attacks Wolf 359, and then proceeds to Sector 001, where it is destroyed. So how does Voyager encounter drones that were assimilated at that battle? How did they get off a ship that was being tracked the entire time. Another change in the Borg. ST8 and Voyager claim that that thing in the hand/wrist is used for assimilation. But when it is used on Picard in Best of Both Worlds Part 1, it does not begin assimilation, it acts like a hypospray to pacify the subject, or a phaser on light stun.

All I can say is “constant assimilation means constant change in Borg behaviour”. That’s just my opinion your results may vary

Borg going to Earth the first time: One Cube will be enough Borg going to Earth the second time: We failed the last time, we did the math and... therefore one cube will be more than enough

WRT the 'survivors' of the Wolf 359 cube, I'm of the idea that since the cube was destroyed by the drone Locutus and not an external force, it would've remained in contact with and a 'normal' part of the collective up until the moment of its destruction with the bodies of those assimilated Starfleet personnel just being used as drones by the collective since there was no reason for the collective to cut them off. We know the Borg Queen's 'consciousness' isn't tied to her physical form such that she dies when it is destroyed and neither is Locutus 'dead' even though Picard had all the Borg tech scrubbed from his body. So if that is true, it would honestly make sense for the collective to withdraw anything it holds of 'value' from the cube before it self destructs as Picard/Locutus willed... which also means recovering the portion of the collective whose 'original' physical bodies were on the cube. The Borg could then easily build / replicate / grow / etc... new bodies for that portion of the collective. Seven of Nine herself is good evidence of literally any 'individual' of the collective being able to be sent from one end of the galaxy to another as the collective deems fit when things are going 'normally' since outside of a literally astronomical coincidence, there is no way she, the drone the collective would find the most useful to conducting business with Janeway, would be on that specific cube. How much easier for the borg to instead take Seven's consciousness out of one drone body that could be literally anywhere and upload it to a newly created drone body? Of course normally and internally are key words here. If a drone is destroyed by an outside source, such as from a crash landing, they seem to be dead to the collective and if they are glitched out, as with Unamatrix Zero, they are also dead to the collective.

They were just making Patrick Stewart as fully functional as Mr. Data - that legend precedes him.. Muahahahhaa. Happy New Year!!

You got a like (because i all ready subscribed). Resistance is futile unless the plot demands it.

The best way for the board to make new drones would be to simply grow them from recombinant dna. They could then be designed to interface perfectly with Borg technology. Individual lissome wouldn't be a factor because these drones would have never been individuals not even at birth.

They wanted Picard in order to unlock the secret power of Earl Grey.

I don’t think the Borg pick up their dead out of a sense of caring for the individual, rather it is the technology that the body contains which they seek to collect for two reasons, they don’t want it to fall into the hands of anyone else and secondly it can be reused

Once again, I understand not liking Voyager, but Raven was canonically 'first contact' with the Borg before the time travel in the movie.

The dead Borg are beamed back/vaporized by the ship, if possible. As mentioned in TNG, Decent p.1

I think The ship Hugh was on was full of drones assimilated at very young age or grown from embryos and that they were operating on a preprogrammed orders this way the collective can sent ships into areas of the galaxy were they'll lose communication. The drones would still follow their orders if man by drone assimilated from adults they'd regain their individually and abandon the collective. We saw this on the planet with seven 3 of the drone regained their individually and wanted to run. So I think Hugh ship was not in contact with the rest of the hive that's why his individually infected the ship no drone on that ship had been an individual before. And by the time they did recontacted the collective saw them as damaged and unworthy of reassimilation. This explains why the individually "virus" didn't spread to the whole collective.

The audio went out on me so you may have said this but too me q was actually helping the federation. If you look at it the q are exist outside of our concept of time and space.so they may have seen the federations eventual contact with not only the Borg but also the dominion war and choose to help bye scaring the federation and bye extension star fleet. Into military advancements which saved the entire alpha quadrant.

Here's a question: if the writers simply don't care about continuity, is it better for fans to create a story for them to explain their inadequacies or is it better to force them to create better stories?

You know this brings up three questions. If the borg only began mass assimilation after the events of TNG, then does that mean the borg were clones? And if so, how were they created, through the DNA of their original species or a blend of several species they deemed perfect? Third, does that mean they still exist, but in the heart of their Collective while the newly assimilated and old clones are sent to their border territory as disposable troops since they are less perfect than new perfect clones?

but the borg should have known after the first contact with Enterprise D that it might have been "staged" by a demi god being like a Q since both sides know each other. btw happy new year!

Brilliant logic! You must be part Vulcan.

It would be tough to coordinate the individual stories written by different writers who may have never met. I wish there was better continuity but even Marvel has had revisions of characters who were locked into canon.

If you look at the borg as computers. You can take the Cube as a server. Each drone is a computer connected to the command server. The server tells the drones what to do and they can communicate to each other. Remove one of the computers and insert a virus on it. This is Hugh. He is a computer with a virus that virus being individuality. The borg never having this virus show up had no precautions installed to deal with it. So drone is reconnected to the hive so computer reconnected to the server. He operates as a drone he does his job. Only that he is a virus infected computer and once apart of the server starts to spread the virus to others. Again the virus being individuality. As we get more infected drones. Which spreads more and more. Which causes a problem. When bring in new drone into the collective there are precautions in place. They make sure the individuality doesn't spread and is dominated. They're not prepared for a drone to show these things after being assimilated. So yeah that is that. As for collecting their own. This can easily be seen as recycling and keeping things out of the hands of inferior species. You take the organic matter and get rid of it keeping the mechanical parts. You also keep it out of inferior species that could learn to adapt the tech and thus rival the Borg. The Borg only care if you can be added to the collective to improve. They don't want to force improvement on species that aren't ready to be apart of the collective. They want advanced tech natural development so they can add to their own to keep progressing towards their achievement of perfection.

I think it'd be reasonable to assume the Borg may have historical periods of mass assimilation, and periods where they keep to themselves as the Collective's needs dictate. Their encounter and subsequent defeats with the Federation may have triggered another mass event, as the Collective sought new technology and knowledge to help them counter this new, seemingly inferior threat.

Kia ora from New Zealand Happy New Year

"This is a long lasting series" Anti treker: HOLD MY BEER

I had alleys thought that the borg queen was created after placard be cane aslmalated and the queen was his replacement

1:27 Part of the crew, part of the ship.

Pity Hugh wasn't part of the Q

First off the Borg did not really recollect they're dead they simply took pieces off of their dead to be reused and then it was disintegrated or teleported away to be recycled. The Borg do not care about their dead they only care about reclaiming the tech that was on the Borg at the time of its demise so that way they can find out how this Borg died and then make proper preparations. And second when it comes to Huge and why the Borg had problems when they try to reintegrate him into the collective you must also understand that when the Borg found Huge the Borg simply assumed there was nothing wrong with him and attempted to reabsorb him into the collective which is why the problem happened within the board collective. Simply put they had no reason to think that Hughes individuality would cause them any problems because they assumed that they could just override it. What the Borg didn't count on was that because Huge had already been a Borg he knew how to protect his individuality from the collective which causes the problem.

I thought the Borg disintegrate their dead and will go after a Drone because of the sheer damage that can be done with a captured drone (time and time again). I never got a feeling they cared that much. That said, they did say they're like an arm/leg you can't disconnect voluntarily.

OK, so you comment in the video about the borg going to ends of the universe to retrieve individual drones; it is not contradictory if a cube has the psyche of parts of a whole and a cube as a person; if I lost a fingertip in an accident I'd make all sorts of effort to get it reattached, even though it is an insignificant part I didn't need to survive or function

Is it possible that once the Borg assimilate Picard & become aware of the Q & their abilities that they press into federation territory simply because they see humans interacting with the Q and that is of interest to them, after gaining knowledge of the Q they begin experiments to enter other dimensions in an attempt to study & assimilate the Q themself, eventually leading them to discovering fluidic space in an attempt to reach the Q continuum??

7 forced the other drones into a mini collective, so they are no longer indivduals thus they can't infect the collective. The borg doesn't about extra connecction those drones had they just didn't care.

Question: how is Data or Lore NOT the most perfect reflection of life the Borg are striving for? And also; did Section 31's AI allow the deaths across the Federation for the betterment of the Federation?

The Borg were a great foe for the alpha/beta quadrant powers. I hated that they eventually overused them and made them less than what they were.

Ummm. 7 of 9's parents? They were assimilated prior to the start of TNG. I think the Borg were already assimilating other species long before that.

I always thought they were recycling their dead for parts. In battle this would not matter. They would expect to win and could recycle later.

Compare & Contrast: " Hugh's " individuality & thr individuality required to create " Uni - Matrix Zero ".

Just wondering could the borg be broken up into sections, all 1 group but divided up. each part of the borg may have a borg queen or no borg queen. A part of the borg only assimilates technology another part may only want spices. If so it could explain if the borg survived the unimatrix 001 destruction and why there may be more then 1 borg queen and some borg that may be scouts with no borg queen. All this is probly a load of bull but may just be something to think about.

No other enemy in any of Star Trek ever did that.

Two stupid ideas, one; borg queen, two; borg queen have the hots for Picard!

I'm so early the video ain't even live yet. Kinda reminds me of how my sex life's doing

7of9's mom, dad and the ship raven were assimilated does that change anything.

Why did they not give Locutus an eyepiece???

The uprising of the.... Hugh!!!!