Difference between revisions of "Borg"
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[[Image:Locutus_of_Borg.jpg|thumb|right|Jean-Luc Picard as a Borg drone]]''' | [[Image:Locutus_of_Borg.jpg|thumb|right|Jean-Luc Picard as a Borg drone]]The '''Borg''' are a society of [[cyborg]]s that control a large volume of space in the [[Delta Quadrant]] of the [[Milky Way]] galaxy in ''[[Star Trek]]''. Originally conceived as a collective of "ultimate users" who would consume any useful technology they encountered, they were later [[retcon|re-invented]] as an expansionist regime that "assimilates" other species to acquire their technology, knowledge, and genetic material. | ||
==Organization== | ==Organization== | ||
Revision as of 17:50, 27 February 2008
The Borg are a society of cyborgs that control a large volume of space in the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy in Star Trek. Originally conceived as a collective of "ultimate users" who would consume any useful technology they encountered, they were later re-invented as an expansionist regime that "assimilates" other species to acquire their technology, knowledge, and genetic material.
Organization
The Borg exist as a Collective in which all individuals are directly connected to a massive computer network via cybernetic implants. Individual "drones" in the Collective can have varying levels of authority, with the Borg Queen operating as the highest-ranking member and directing Borg policy. In this way, the Borg Collective resembles an insect hive, albeit one with problem-solving intelligence, advanced technology, and enormous resources.
Attributes
The Borg population consists primarily of "drones" captured from other civilizations and forced to serve the Collective through a process called "assimilation". Fitted with cybernetic implants, these drones are physically much stronger than normal humans and have a variety of special abilities, such as replicating nutrients to sustain their organic components. Borg drones communicate with each other via a constant stream of subspace transmissions, allowing the Collective to rapidly re-allocate resources in response to changing situations.
While the Borg have acquired vast stores of knowledge from civilizations they have assimilated, they seem to have lost the ability to innovate. They now learn solely by assimilating knowledge from other races, doing no research or inventing of their own. This proved to be a devastating disadvantage when they faced a species that resisted their assimilation technology[1].
Borg drones and starships include shielding technology that allows them to resist attack from energy weapons. These defenses rely heavily on the ability to identify the frequencies of incident beams and adapt the shield to block those frequencies.
Territory
As of Star Trek: Voyager, Borg territory reportedly includes thousands of star systems. It would take an Intrepid-class Federation starship approximately two months to pass through their territory, presumably traveling the shortest available route at its best speed while avoiding contact.
Threat Assessment
The Borg are a significant power in the Milky Way galaxy. The thousands of worlds under their control give them resources at least an order of magnitude greater than those of any of the major powers in the Alpha Quadrant, and their technology exceeds that of the vast majority of other Star Trek civilizations. Their interconnected nature allows the entire civilization to rapidly mobilize in response to a threat or opportunity. Borg vessels can sustain very high warp speeds for years, which enabled them to send a Borg Cube from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant in just a couple of years[2]. This cube easily defeated a fleet of nearly 40 Federation starships in battle.
The interconnected nature of the Collective can be a weakness, however; after Captain Picard was assimilated, the crew of the Enterprise was able to recapture him and use his connection to the cube to send its entire crew into "sleep" mode, triggering a self-destruct mechanism that destroyed the cube[3]. Similarly, the crew of the Enterprise developed an "invasive program" that, if deployed, might have crashed the Collective's entire computer network, effectively destroying their entire civilization[4].
The Borg can be rated as a very low threat to anyone with a functioning brain. For example, in First Contact, the Enterprise-E's on-board sensor systems did not detect the Borg beaming aboard, nor did they detect the significant alterations the Borg were making to areas they occupied, such as increasing temperature and humidity in the Engineering levels. In the end, it took the deaths of several Red Shirts to alert the crew to the Borg presence. Compare this with the Enterprise-A in The Undiscovered Country, which was capable of detecting on board weapons fire.
Note that there was no mention at any time of the Borg hacking the ship's computers to hide their presence, yet only Picard's lingering Borg implants detected the Borg intrusion and 'infection' of the ship.