Borg
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 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.
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 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 several Red Shirts dying before the Borg threat was detected. Compare this with the Enterprise-A in The Undiscovered Country, which was capable of detecting on board weapons fire.
Note there was no mention at any time of Borg hacking or rootkits on the computer systems to acheive total surprise. Only Picard's implants detected the Borg intrusion and 'infection' of the ship.
There were a number of tactics that the Enterprise-E crew could have utilized to significantly hamper the Borg's spread through the ship, such as:
- Depressurizing affected areas; the Borg's organic parts would suffer from the complete lack of a pressure suit of any kind.
- Cutting all power off to the affected areas; preventing the Borg from using shipboard power to run their own devices.