Trek Thread

[uraniun235]

I'm not sure there was an ideology in mind when the Borg were created or written. I think you could as easily make the argument that the Borg represent the American Consumer(tm).

[Veef]

no they're just Cybermen without the swanky outfits

[Stofsk]

I'm not sure there was an ideology in mind when the Borg were created or written. I think you could as easily make the argument that the Borg represent the American Consumer(tm).

'The borg is the ultimate user. They are unlike anything your Federation has ever encountered. They're not interested in political conquest, wealth, or power as you know it. They're only interested in your ship. It's technology. They've identified it as something they can consume.'

Q, in 'QWho'

I don't think the borg are supposed to represent direct democracy, because even then you will get a multitude of people who will disagree or vote no when the other half vote yes etc. The borg as depicted vote unanimous, all the time, on any given action. They think nothing of themselves as individuals.

I suppose Zod's notion that they represent some kind of extreme form of communism might work. But even in communism people are still people. The borg are so unlike anything related to a 'typical' bad guy that I don't feel comfortable simplifying them and their motives down to 'oh they're just like x political ideology just taken to ridiculous extremes'. Communism also has a strong 'workers rights' motivation, stuff relating to who owns capital and how resources get redistributed - which is entirely absent in any of the borg's motivations. You don't see that in the borg. But you do see echoes of the individual having his rights and identity subsumed for the 'state', or whatever passes as such for the borg. The borg are called a collective, and that term does have certain connotations.

But the quote above sort of shines a different light on them. It's like the writers were thinking of something else when they were first designing the borg as an enemy. I think Bill is right, especially if you take the quote above literal - but even if you did, it wouldn't explain the whole picture.

no they're just Cybermen without the swanky outfits

man is this the 'lets talk about motherfucking doctor who' thread

[Nietzslime]

i always assumed that the borg were a warped mirror of the federation

the federation is communitarian so the borg are all part of the same hivemind

the federation is pro-science and technology and the borg have merged themselves with that and seek it out above all else

the enterprise is on a five-year mission to seek out new knowledge and civilisations and the borg seek out new information and civilisations to pry information from (by force)... forever. that is their only imperative

[Stofsk]

i always assumed that the borg were a warped mirror of the federation

the federation is communitarian so the borg are all part of the same hivemind

the federation is pro-science and technology and the borg have merged themselves with that and seek it out above all else

the enterprise is on a five-year mission to seek out new knowledge and civilisations and the borg seek out new information and civilisations to pry information from (by force)... forever. that is their only imperative

shit i always thought that too

have you been stealing my thoughts again

[adr-admin]

the beauty of great literature is you can find relevant interpretations of it beyond what the author originally had in mind


or i might be bullshitting but whatever it's all for fun. I was just thinking about how assimilation doesn't really produce drones alone - it makes their attributes a part of the collective conscuiousness. How would you do that physically? If you network a bunch of human brains, that's kinda what we do with our governments... say each individual assimilated has his say in the collective which makes all decisions, and that sounds like direct democracy.

From "I Borg", Hugh, when released, said he missed the voices. Did he mean that literally? Is the Borg actually still somewhat individual while at the same time being the collective - people can come out of it, after all - and they just communicate incredibly well?

Picard says he was "forced" to help them as Locutus, and remembers it all. He had his input into the process his brain was still functioning, but was still a slave to the collective. So I figure "the collective" doesn't physically exist (some infrastructure for it might though), and it's just an emergent property of all the individuals being able to collaborate in the group so quickly, and exerts so much power over the drones that when there's a majority opinion, that's the end of it - you follow through with it. Thoughts are a symphony of voices, but actions are all as a single being (although executed through the drones as single units).


I don't remember who, maybe Beverly, but one of them said "a single commander can make mistakes, but that's less likely with everyone's input", ironically, the opposite might be true - the individuals can make mistakes, yes, but they can also make a stand on their own without having broad agreement. The collective can't do that, so it takes out some mistakes while opening up a whole new class of bad decisions that arise from the consensus system.

[Zod]

On the other hand there doesn't seem to be much room for disagreement in the collective. . . democracy bickers too much to actually get anything done.

[adr-admin]

Eh, maybe, but take a look at Congress. They disagree, fight, bitch and so on in the process, but once they make a decision, we say "Congress passed a law", even if it was passed by just one vote.

Once the law is passed, it's executed throughout the country. Still through individual actors - judges, police officers, and so on - but they act pretty uniformly. They can't say "my representative (or I) voted no, so I'm going to do my own thing"; the debate doesn't matter once it comes down to the actions.


In fact, I kinda wonder if bickering is why the drones just stand there so often. Maybe some of the drones want to attack the away team, but they can't build a consensus, so can't act. They just keep doing their own thing. Logically, they know there's a threat here, but good luck convincing that to the parts of the collective that aren't feeling it themselves.

When one of them gets shot, the pain and fear from that individual is then pumped through the whole collective, and they instinctually want to act, thus forming a quick consensus to fight back. Once the fight or flight chemistry wears off though, they go back to looking apathetic, because the majority of the collective simply isn't interested enough to agree anymore.

[Stofsk]

I don't know how it's all supposed to work, but when Picard got assimilated he did things that would suggest he had no individual conscious control over what he said or did. And we know he tried to resist but we also know that resistance is futile :V

[artemas]

Yeah, the personal, physical forms are clearly controlled, but adam raises a good point re consciousness. Picard may have felt controlled in much the same way someone is 'controlled' when trying to fight your way through a stampede of a million men.

[Civil War Man]

I'm going to go ahead and subscribe to adr's interpretation of the Borg because I find that a lot more interesting than robot space zombies.

The Queens may have been added due to military setbacks against the Borg's various enemies. The Collective gets together in a time of crisis and votes members to a special position that allows them to coordinate pieces of the collective against immediate threats. The word of the Queen overrides what would have been the normal behavior of the drones, but there is that delay because the Queen still has to issue the order.

Alternatively, the Queen may have no actual power, but was simply elected to serve as a spokesperson when the Collective needed to communicate with Picard and Data.

[Nietzslime]

shit i always thought that too

have you been stealing my thoughts again

well it makes sense in the context of the episode

which is about Q teaching Picard that he should maybe fear what's beyond the horizon, and there is a danger out in the unknown, and there are risks in their mission

and that's true both literally, of space, and the enterprise's quest

but i think by the nature of the borg it's also about questioning the ideals of the federation

that sometimes technology can be perverted, and sometimes the collective can drown out the individual, and sometimes exploration and avarice are two sides of the same coin

sort of Q leading Man out of Eden, showing him that he can't be wholly innocent, and naive, but has to be aware of how precipitous life is, and honestly confront all the doubts and challenges and hidden dangers contained in it

fuck i love q who

[Veef]

help geordie see

[Stofsk]

how the fuck do you find this shit

[Veef]

just a little veef magic

[uraniun235]

just a little reefer magic

[Zod]

just a little reefer madness

[Veef]

stop block quoting me ;-;

[Civil War Man]

just a little ronaldus magnus

Balls

[Zod]

Balls said leftenant ronaldus

[uraniun235]

don't bring that shit into the hallowed trek thread

[Stofsk]

so fuck y'all i am steering this shit back on topic

so i was thinking of 'what would make an interesting new star trek show' and i remembered that fanfic idea i posted on x-ray blues

(crossposted from TEO)

What I'd really like to see, but realize I almost certainly won't, as a Star Trek TV series is some kind of anthology with a few different rotating casts on different kinds of ships, stations, maybe even civilian situations. I'd love to see that kind of broadening of Star Trek. If I really had my druthers, this dream show would be set during the TOS time frame.

The only way you could do the kind of thing Istyer wants is if you had the kind of production values and hour-long format that cable shows get nowadays.

If I could create a new series that's how I'd want the format to be- hour long episodes, with a shortened season run. Maybe at most a dozen episodes. I wouldn't have anything so garish as depicting the Earth/Romulan War, or any other war. This is Star Trek after all. I'd love the focus to be on surveying alien worlds for possible colonisation, with that as a kind of huge meta-plot that goes throughout the series run. You'd have the starfleet guys who beam down and explore the planets looking for someplace suitable, to civilians who are both part of that mission and who are also training/preparing for the eventual colonisation. If you want politics and intrigue then set the show in an 'unexplored sector' that's a stone's throw away from some antagonist (if this were TOS then I'd say the klingons, if this were TNG the romulans and DS9 the cardassians etc) while at the same time, hinting that there could be alien civilisations nearby that haven't been contacted and thus represent an unknown. So you'd also have high-level admirals and politicians from the Federation council as characters who make decisions on this particular matter as well as the 'grunts' who go down to a planet and do scientific surveys or whatever. And you'd have guys like independent merchants who can be alternative suppliers to a colony that eventually gets set up.

It would be Star Trek without the kind of format people would expect, keeping in mind the maxim of going places nobody has gone before (both literally and figuratively, because nobody has ever done this kind of thing in a Trek show before). It has the same familiar things we've seen before paired with it too so it's not too far out the comfort zone. This would cost a lot more money than anything else as well, which is why I'd go the cable route for it. It just seems to me that you'd want high production values for something like this.

[uraniun235]

If I could create a new series that's how I'd want the format to be- hour long episodes, with a shortened season run. Maybe at most a dozen episodes.

In the US that kind of run would be called a miniseries. Sounds like a good candidate for a premium cable channel, like HBO. They've done some stellar miniseries and with very good production values too.

The biggest obstacle to my mind would be getting the starship sets paid for, but if you can convince the studio that the DVD and BD sales will be stellar if they make a really good-looking show, maybe it could be doable. That would actually be a good question for Kanastrous. It probably becomes more doable if you can get additional seasons lined up - then the set costs can be spread out over the whole series.

[Zod]

If I could create a new series that's how I'd want the format to be- hour long episodes, with a shortened season run. Maybe at most a dozen episodes.

In the US that kind of run would be called a miniseries. Sounds like a good candidate for a premium cable channel, like HBO. They've done some stellar miniseries and with very good production values too.

The biggest obstacle to my mind would be getting the starship sets paid for, but if you can convince the studio that the DVD and BD sales will be stellar if they make a really good-looking show, maybe it could be doable. That would actually be a good question for Kanastrous. It probably becomes more doable if you can get additional seasons lined up - then the set costs can be spread out over the whole series.

Unfortunately the budget's been responsible for killing off more than one great show. (Carnivale comes to mind.)

[Veef]

what if you made it animooted so you wouldn't have to spend money on sets

or right Peter Chung and Todd McFarlene poisoned that well a long time ago