Thinking About: The Borg

I’ve just finished watching a fan nominated DVD box-set collection of Star Trek episodes featuring The Borg, running (in Star Date order of course) from the episode of Enterprise – where they discovered the remains of the Borg ship destroyed in the movie ST: First Contact – up to the episode where Voyager returned from the Delta Quadrant via a Borg Trans-Warp conduit with a little help from future Admiral Janeway. Yes, I’m a Star Trek Geek – deal with it.

Anyway, I can’t help thinking what a superb invention the Borg really are. They’re implacable, almost unstoppable, relentless and completely unemotional. You can’t argue with them (argument being irrelevant), threaten them or, after they quickly adapt to your weapons, even kill them. Apparently one Captain (I sadly forget his name) said that they were ‘as close to pure evil as it was possible to imagine’. That’s quite an accolade. Funnily, during some of the monologues from the Borg Queen (an interesting idea in itself), explaining their way of life that I couldn’t help nodding in agreement. They were, on the whole, very persuasive arguments for assimilation – though I do wonder about the apparently universal need for baddies to monologue (I’m sure there’s another PhD thesis in there). Whilst it’s true that individualism has its many attractions – I’m a big fan of it myself – the idea of being part of the Collective does have its upside. For one thing there is a definitely advantage in numbers. Just think of all of that parallel processing for one thing. As Stalin is reputed to have said (regarding tank manufacture) quantity has a quality all its own. Of course the Collective is never in ‘two minds’ about things, it doesn’t debate (at least not for long) and once a decision is made that’s basically it. No factionalism, no back-biting and no politics. From someone who works in an environment of all three of the aforementioned traits assimilation sounds damned good.

But as with any organisation the Borg does have its downside. If the Collective all decide (for whatever reason) to jump off a (metaphorical) cliff then they all jump off the cliff. Also my skin is bad enough without it going mottled grey – but I suppose drones don’t really worry about such things. It’s not as if they have any opportunity or need to get laid, so no downside for me anyway. Then there’s the interior design element. I’m all for functionality but they take it just a bit too far and they should really do something about the green lighting. It makes everyone look half dead. The implants sound pretty cool although most of them certainly don’t look cool at all. I wonder what it would be like seeing in IR or UV. Interesting if nothing else I guess. Then there’s the fact that you’d never be alone. I mean all your friends would probably have been assimilated around the same time. But then the girl in the office you’ve always fancied would know you checked out her butt every time she walked by your desk – but at least she’d no longer care.

All in all assimilation doesn’t sound all bad. You get to fly around the Galaxy scaring the crap out of people whilst working towards a genuine goal of species perfection. It hardly gets more satisfying than that. Also so much we think of as important would be instantly irrelevant – the mortgage, the fact that The Sarah Conner Chronicles have been cancelled, the fact that I’ll be 50 soon…. All irrelevant. Sign me up… Now where’s the nearest Cube so I can flag that sucker down.