By Chris Snellgrove
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Few Star Trek creators are fairly as controversial as Rick Berman, who has been accused of every thing from persistent on-set misogyny to operating the franchise’s Golden Age into the bottom with Enterprise and Nemesis. Nonetheless, for all of his alleged faults, Berman really predicted very early on what would develop into the worst a part of the franchise: its overreliance on the Borg. Furthermore, he implied that if Star Trek couldn’t discover something unique to do with these iconic unhealthy guys, they need to merely cease being included in future tales.
Berman’s ideas on this matter are quoted extensively in Captain’s Logs: The Unauthorized Full Trek Voyages. He was discussing “Descent,” the two-part Star Trek: The Subsequent Technology episode that explored what occurred to the Borg after the Enterprise crew returned a Borg with a character (Hugh) again to the Collective. The manager producer appreciated how the present used the villains on this formidable episode, however he particularly loved how they had been written so very in another way from their earlier appearances.
Star Trek’s Most Two-Dimensional Villains
“I discover (the Borg) very two-dimensional in a manner,” Berman stated. “They’re faceless characters with out character and with out particular character traits.” Whereas many followers would say that is what makes them so scary (they’re principally the closest factor Star Trek has to zombies), Berman thought that their collective nature made them “form of a one-beat group of unhealthy guys.”
Berman did acknowledge that these “one-beat” villains could possibly be used nicely in sure circumstances. For instance, he famous that “In ‘Better of Each Worlds’ they represented a risk versus characters, and that was an awesome episode.” It is a pretty astute evaluation, actually: being a Collective, the Borg had been all the time going to fail at being attention-grabbing characters, however they labored astoundingly nicely as TNG’s first actual existential risk to the Federation’s complete lifestyle.
Borg Of A Completely different “Hugh”
For Berman, the episode “I, Borg” (the place a captured Borg develops a character earlier than being returned to the Collective) was one thing of a revelation. He loved how this story reworked the Borg “into a personality” who was “given a character and one thing to be sympathetic in the direction of.” He then made a daring assertion that may show weirdly prophetic: “My solely curiosity within the Borg is once they’re used off-center in aside from the best way they had been initially conceived.”
Whereas Berman could have liked how totally different the Borg in “Descent” had been, that sentiment wasn’t shared by a lot of the fandom. Many missed the cybernetic zombies that had first scared them in episodes like “The Better of Each Worlds,” discovering them way more scary than the group of indignant, screaming cyborgs in “Descent.” Accordingly, Star Trek: First Contact introduced the Borg again kind of as they had been, with one twist: the addition of a Queen.
The Worst Of Each Worlds
Sadly, this ended up being “the worst of each worlds” from a artistic standpoint. The Queen was (as confirmed by Brannon Braga and different Star Trek creatives) primarily added to present the Borg a recognizable determine who may each communicate and be spoken to; that made for extra compelling filmmaking than having characters like Picard and Knowledge speak to the formless voice of the Collective. However the very thought of a person queen went towards the Borg’s entire deal, irking followers who wished these villains had stayed constant.
Talking of consistency, Star Trek by no means actually made any main adjustments with the Borg as an entire after this. Certain, the Queen nonetheless popped up, however for probably the most half, the Borg had been again to being robotic zombies. As Rick Berman predicted, continually utilizing the Borg with out making any substantive adjustments ultimately supplied diminishing storytelling returns.
Kissing The Borg Goodbye?
For instance, they popped up a lot in Voyager (a present that ultimately added a Borg officer) that their appearances stopped feeling particular. They popped up in Enterprise and, considerably inexplicably, each single season of Star Trek: Picard. Heck, that present even made the Borg (full with their unkillable Queen) the ultimate Large Unhealthy, signifying to followers that the writers had actually and really run out of concepts.
Rick Berman’s prophecy got here to go: the Borg remained one-note unhealthy guys till the very finish, by no means once more receiving a personality change as vital as what we noticed in “Descent.” They had been reworked again right into a dependable unhealthy man, however one which in the end grew to become reliably boring. Now that the franchise has moved into the thirty second century, we are able to solely hope the Borg by no means pop up in Starfleet Academy; in any other case, the long-lasting race might need to get a number of passionate lectures on the evils of cultural assimilation, punctuated by quippy phrases like “Resistance ain’t futile, bruh” and “assimilate this, b*tch!”
Can the Collective be defeated by pure, undiluted cringe? Right here’s hoping we don’t have to seek out out!