My apologies for being a day late with this rewatch. I just hope I’m not a dollar short as well…
“Q Who”
Written by Maurice Hurley
Directed by Rob Bowman
Season 2, Episode 16
Production episode 40272-142
Original air date: May 8, 1989
Stardate: 42761.3
Captain’s log: After a trip to engineering results in hot chocolate being spilled all over his uniform by Ensign Sonya Gomez, an eager, motor-mouthed recent Academy graduate, Picard is on his way to change his uniform, when he finds himself suddenly in a shuttlecraft that is very far from the Enterprise. On the shuttle with Picard is Q.
Picard angrily points out that Q promised not to interfere with his ship again, which is a complete misremembering of the ending of “Hide and Q,” when Q promised to stay out of humanity’s path forever. Instead, both Picard and Q remember it as him not interfering with the Enterprise, which Q gets around by kidnapping him to the shuttle far from the ship. (What makes this funnier is that Maurice Hurley wrote both scripts.) But leaving that minor inconsistency aside, we are treated to Q having a proposal for Picard—which Picard refuses to listen to. Q points out that he’s ageless and can wait as long as he needs to, to which Picard blandly says that the Enterprise will continue with Riker as captain.
Back on the ship, Guinan has a feeling that something is wrong and contacts the bridge. Troi has a similar feeling and anxiously comes onto the bridge asking where the captain is. Riker soon realizes that Picard is missing and engages in a search.
That search is cut off when Picard finally agrees to listen to Q’s proposal in return for being returned to the ship. Q brings them to a Ten-Forward that is empty of all save Guinan—who, it turns out, has had dealings with Q in the past.
Q’s proposal is simple: he wants to join the crew. After the events of “Hide and Q,” the Q-Continuum kicked him out. Remembering all the good times he had on the Enterprise in that episode and “Encounter at Farpoint,” he decided to come on board—already the home of the “indigent, the unwanted, the unworthy.” Ultimately, however, Picard doesn’t trust him. Q is willing to concede that point—but he does insist that they do need him, that they’re not ready for what’s waiting for them in the parts of the galaxy they’re heading toward. Q also comments that they’re moving faster than expected or than they should—to which Picard tartly asks by whose calculation, a question for which Q has no answer.
Picard and Riker continue to refuse to let Q join them. They insist that they are ready for whatever comes next. Q angrily decides to test that hypothesis: he sends the Enterprise seven thousand light-years away to the system J25 and then disappears. Guinan, whose people are from this part of the galaxy, tells them to start running now.
But because they’re Starfleet officers who don’t listen to good advice (and, to be fair, weren’t really trained to take tactical advice from bartenders), they decide to stick around for a bit. There’s a planet nearby that has a system of roads that indicate there was once civilized life, but all the cities have been seemingly scooped off the planet.
Then they encounter a cube-shaped ship. Data’s scan reveals an uncentralized design: no bridge, no engineering section, no living quarters. Guinan identifies the ship as belonging to the Borg, a species who killed several members of Guinan’s people and destroyed their cities.
An advance scout appears in engineering. Worf is able to kill the scout, but another one appears, and this one has a force field that protects him from the phaser blast. He scavenges parts off his dead comrade and transports away, while the first scout disintegrates.
The Borg don’t have a single leader, but are a collective consciousness. They contact the Enterprise long enough to threaten them, then hit the ship with a tractor beam. They carve out a section of the saucer that has eighteen people in it and take it on board. Worf manages to damage twenty percent of the ship, which releases the tractor beam. The cube now reading as all but inactive, Riker, Data, and Worf beam over.
Although no life form readings are detected, there are thousands of Borg on the ship, most in a form of stasis. One Borg walks past the away team, completely ignoring them. They even find a nursery, with children who are mostly organic, unlike the adult Borg who are as much machine as biological.
Q describes them as the ultimate user—they don’t care about political conquest, they just want technology they can consume.
Data realizes that the ship is engaged in self-repair. Picard immediately orders the away team beamed back and they run away very fast. However, as fast as they go, the Borg continues to gain on them. Photon torpedoes from the Enterprise have no effect on the Borg, but a Borg weapon succeeds in wiping out their shields.
Helpless, facing destruction, Picard asks Q to end this, admitting that, yes, he does need Q’s help. At this admission, Q smiles and sends the Enterprise back to where they were when Q showed up, safe and sound—except, of course, for the eighteen members of the crew who didn’t make it.
They limp toward a starbase to fix the damage, and in conversation with Guinan, Picard realizes that the Borg knows about the Federation now, and they will be coming.
Thank you, Counselor Obvious: Troi senses that Picard is missing even as Guinan senses Q’s presence, and she is the one who realizes that the Borg has a single collective consciousness rather than being individual, separate entities.
There is no honor in being pummeled: Q once again calls Worf “micro-brain,” and Worf’s response is to snarl and move forward menacingly before Picard asks him to leave the room. Worf also gets to prove the Borg’s resiliency by killing one of them and destroying twenty percent of their ship, only to have both events rendered pointless.
Syntheholics Anonymous: Guinan and Q have a past that is left unexplained, and which would unfortunately remain so (though it will come up again in “Déjà Q”), but Guinan does appear to have at least some ability to resist Q’s powers. Also, while it’s not made explicit, Guinan certainly appears to be the one who clears Ten-Forward, since just one phrase from her gets La Forge and Gomez to leave the lounge in a hurry.
Welcome aboard: John deLancie makes his triumphant return as Q, while Whoopi Goldberg adds to Guinan’s mystery, and Colm Meaney returns as the rock-steady O’Brien. Lycia Naff makes the first of two appearances as Ensign Sonya Gomez, a role that was originally intended to be recurring, but never went beyond her second appearance in “Samaritan Snare.”
I believe I said that: “You can’t outrun them, you can’t destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually, you will weaken—your reserves will be gone. They are relentless.”
Q, describing the Borg.
Trivial matters: This is, of course, the first appearance of the Borg, who would become one of Trek‘s biggest villains. The Borg continue to appear on TNG (on the small and big screens), as well as the future spinoffs Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise.
Technically, it’s their second appearance, after a fashion: dialogue from Data makes it clear that what happened on the planets in the J25 system is exactly the same as what happened to the planets in “The Neutral Zone.” Writer Hurley’s original plan was for the Borg to be part of a trilogy that would introduce them across the first and second seasons, but it was skoshed by the writers strike. The first part of the trilogy was to be “Conspiracy,” as Hurley’s original conception was that the Borg would be insectoid—which proved impractical on a TV show budget—and that the alien parasites were part of what would be established as the Borg Collective.
While the Borg themselves won’t return until “The Best of Both Worlds” at the end of the third season, Starfleet’s concern about their eventual arrival will remain in the background in the interim, most notably in “Peak Performance.”
The Borg have also appeared in several novels and comic books, most notably the Destiny trilogy by David Mack, which establishes the origin of the Borg, involving time travel, a species known as the Caeliar, and the Earth starship Columbia (established on Star Trek: Enterprise).
Guinan plays three-dimensional chess with Picard at the end of the episode, a game played often by Kirk and Spock in the original series.
While Gomez never became a recurring character on screen, she did become a regular in prose: Commander Sonya Gomez was one of the two leads in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series that was published monthly in eBook form from 2000-2007, and most of which has been released in print form since 2002. Gomez was established in the series—which takes place eleven years after this episode—as being first officer on the U.S.S. da Vinci, and also head of that ship’s S.C.E. team. She’d go through quite a bit over the course of the series, including her fiancée being killed. In the aforementioned Destiny trilogy and the novel A Singular Destiny by your humble rewatcher, taking place five years after the S.C.E. series ended, she’s established as being captain of the da Vinci after Captain Gold retired. Some of the other stories that focused on Gomez included Invincible (by Mack and myself), Enigma Ship (by J. Steven York & Christina F. York), Wildfire and Failsafe (by Mack), Identity Crisis (by John J. Ordover), War Stories, Breakdowns, and Many Splendors (all by me)—that last being a flashback to her time on the Enterprise, including a more detailed look at her part in this episode. (Oh, and the Corps of Engineers series establishes that, following this episode, Gomez swore off hot chocolate, drinking only Earl Grey Tea as penance for spilling the beverage on Picard.)
The novels Q & A by me and Greater than the Sum by Christopher L. Bennett both established that all eighteen crew members were assimilated by the Borg, and several of them were named in Q & A: Lieutenant Rebekah Grabowski, Ensign Franco Garcia, Lieutenant Jean-Claude Mbuto, Lieutenant T’Sora, Ensign Gldrnksrb, and Ensign Soon-Tek Han. Han also appeared in both Many Splendors and A Singular Destiny.
Make it so: “I need you!” It’s funny, every other one of Maurice Hurley’s writing credits are collaborations or rewrites of other people’s stories, and some of the other scripts from the past year or so had uncredited rewrites by him in his capacity as co-executive prodcuer. None of them particularly stood out as great episodes, particularly not his last time writing Q in “Hide and Q,” which Hurley actually took the pseudonym of “C.J. Holland” for.
But this is his first solo script, and it’s one of the best hours of TNG.
This is pretty much a flawless episode. The dialogue crackles, with some wonderful lines. Rob Bowman’s direction is superb, creating tremendous tension and suspense.
John deLancie gives one of his best performances as Q, modulating seamlessly from smarmy to silly to menacing at the blink of an eye. LeVar Burton does an excellent job as kindly supervisor and mentor figure for Gomez. Whoopi Goldberg brings mystery and depth to Guinan. And Sir Patrick Stewart, as always, just kills: his stubbornness with Q in the shuttle, his arrogance and smugness (and it’s very much that, despite his protestations that it’s resolve) with Q in Ten-Forward, his frustration at his inability to negotiate with the Borg, and his desperation in asking Q for help at the end.
The Borg would become the subject of some of the best and worst Trek episodes (and one excellent movie), but there’s no denying that they became one of the most important Trek villains, and their introduction in this episode is phenomenal. They are menacing, frightening, and so very different from the other Trek villains (as Q himself spells out early on). Their introduction is TNG at its finest.
Warp factor rating: 10
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written a ton of Star Trek fiction, but has never written the Borg. Go fig’. He did write Q, though, in the novel Q & A, which explained why Q felt it was important to introduce humans to the Borg this soon. His most recent novels are Guilt in Innocence, part of “Tales from the Scattered Earth,” a shared-world science fiction concept, and the fantastical police procedurals SCPD: The Case of the Claw and Unicorn Precinct. Find out more about Keith at his web site, which is a portal to (among many other things) his Facebook page, his Twitter feed, his blog, and his podcasts, Dead Kitchen Radio, The Chronic Rift, and the Parsec Award-winning HG World.
Can anyone explain how the existence of a Borg Queen makes any sense at all? To downgrade the Borg from their TNG incarnation to simply “space techno killer bees” seemed so very wrong.
The Geth in Mass Effect 2 are the best interpretation of this basic idea that i’ve ever seen, even if Legion are just a little too passive in letting Shepard decide the fate of their species.
This video has an EXCELLENT theory regarding this very subject. I love it and have adopted it into my own head canon… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJyNPsluyRI
So did Maurice Hurley invent the Borg? If so, I applaud him… a great villian that took this series to the next level IMHO
actually, i want to know how the borg make any sense without a queen. a collective consciousness? how do decisions get made? there is a will overriding every single member’s own will. the collective is not made up of all their voices or they’d pretty much all be thinking ‘let me go! give me back my eye! get this crap off of me!’ when the queen states that her people used to be just like humans and basically implies that they became cyborgs in their quest for perfection… it makes sense. their is someone at the end of all those implants, with a point of view and purpose, who makes these decisions to add other species technological and biological distinctiveness to their own.
it has to be either a being/species or a computer program, but something is the borg.
and “first contact” is one of my favorite movies. i saw it in the theater seven times before repeat viewings became a trend. alice krige owned it.
best borg quotes ever:
the one quoted above
seven of nine refusing to sing for the herogens on voyager: “i will not comply. …one day the borg will assimmilate your species, despite your arrogance. when that moment arrives, remember me.”
the queen to data: “we, too, are on a quest to better ourselves.”
It’s worth noting that Q does Star Fleet a huge favor in this episode (with a certain disregard for human life). As it was pointed out the Borg already knew about the existence of the Federation (and the Romulans too). Q let’s them know about this and about the Borg themselves. It’s pretty clear they would have been completely wiped out if he hadn’t done that.
I really like Gomez and wish she stuck around.
Whoopee!
Marvellous episode. One thing that is not mentioned above is the brilliant score – full of nuance and poise, especially at the end of the Ten Forward scene.
Just looked up Lycia Naff on Wikipedia – it looks like ST:TNG and a bit part in Total Recall were more or less her only forays into sci-fi. I agree with #5; a pity she didn’t become a recurring character. I’m glad Sonya Gomez forgotten by the ST novel authors.
@@.-@ I’ve had that thought too. I kind of like to think that, despite all the crazy theater, Q was in it to save humanity from the very first episode, and he was willing to be expelled from the continuum to do it. He just liked having some fun at their expense for his trouble. Or maybe i’m crazy.
Thanks for all the fun rewatches.
@3. sofrina
I imagine the Borg started with some people all agreeing that they would be better off if they worked together and used these cybernetics to enhance that cooperation. And then this rudimentary system notices that some of its members are behaving erratically and inefficiently and tweaks a few settings to improve efficiency, and centuries later you have a civilization-absorbing monoculture with no sense of individuality.
There is no need for a will overriding the individuals’ – there’s just a suppression of individuals’ ego and the sense of self, most plausibly an electrochemical interference in the parts of the brain that would normally cover that. Think of an individual Borg as a single processor in a network of computers. You want some processors devoted to polling and synchronising those efforts, but those wouldn’t be Queens – they’d be more like census-takers/traffic conductors. There is no need for an overarching sentience behind the Borg – it’s emergent behavior from a self-sustaining system.
The queen as she’s presented is like a whole different species – very un-Borg-like and completely unnecessary. If they had told me that she was some sort of parasite that had exploited a weakness in the Borg’s network to empower herself, i could accept that, but despite the strength of Alice Krige’s performance, to suddenly have an “I” in charge of the “We” and just say it’s always been like that but we didn’t know about it, is just hand-waving a retcon. It fundamentally changes the nature of the Borg and makes them far less interesting and scary.
I agree with MatthewB. From my (admittedly layman’s) knowledge of cognitive science, the idea that we consciously make decisions is more an illusion than not. For example, I remember reading about an experiment in which people were hooked up to brain sensors, and told to occasionally stretch out their arms, and to press a button right when they decided to do so. The sensors reported that the nerve impulses to the arms consistently started out before the button was pressed — indicating that it was the unconscious parts of the brain that made that decision, which was then reported to the conscious mind. The Borg Collective would work similarly, at a larger scale, possibly even without any need for a larger-scale analog of consciousness.
Agreed, MathewB. I’d also note that insect colonies don’t have queens that go around issuing orders left and right. Their queens serve a particular role in the colony, that of producing more workers and other offspring. There’s no central command at all. Hives and colonies acting as one is also emergent behavior.
One could similarly consider the brain. There’s no one neuron in charge of everything. Neurons, due to their location and connections, have specialized roles, but there’s no “boss.” The neurons dedicated to decision-making are wholly ignorant of their role and don’t have any special status among other neurons (obviously, since neurons aren’t intelligent).
One oculd similarly imagine a Borg collective like this. Bits of the decision-making circuitry of each drone helps the collective in small ways with decision making. Analytical parts of each drone help break up and analyze information. There’s certainly some specialized roles in all this, judging by the different cybernetics, but you don’t need any one Borg or group of Borgs in charge. It is totally alien to how we think about things, but that’s what made the Borg so interesting…they were really alien and in a way that was more or less realistic.
We also had the neat aspect where, kind of like massive swarms of ants, the Borg were like a force of nature. You couldn’t reason with them anymore than you could a hurricane. There was the added fact that it wasn’t because they weren’t smart or rational, but instead because they just didn’t view other cultures as having any right to exist.
The only part of the review where I disagree with Mr. DeCandido is in his rating of First Contact. While it was a fun romp, the movie does some pretty horrible things. The Time Travel makes no sense within the context of the movie itself (e.g. the Borg had tons of options after traveling back in time, and they picked a stupid one). The Borg are ruined by the addition of the Queen. Picard also already had to deal with his Borg issues more than once (such as with Hugh). There are a few other small problems. Unlike some of my favorite movies, it really falls apart if you think about it.
Yay!! Finally a 10 and a very deserving one at that! :)
I agree with the notion of how truly alien the Borg are…like Drachasor said you get the feeling that there’s no reasoning, negotiating with them…they’re exactly like a force of nature. That is why they were such good villains!
The ending is sooo good, having a man like Picard admitting defeat basically, and having to admit he needed Q…wonderful acting by Sir Patrick Stewart, his face just seems to say: “Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself”!! =)
Superb episode! My only regret (not specific to this episode) is that we did never get to know more about Guinan…*sigh*
A wonderful episode; it’s great to see a 10. Picards hubris was quite striking, and it was good to see him take a hit from it. But it did always rub me a little wrong how tactically poor a decision it was for him to rebuf Q in that way. You don’t want to get sent to the cornfield.
I agree with Matthew B, David_Goldfarb, and Drachasor about the Borg Queen. That ruined the Borg — and First Contact — for me, as did many of the Borg episodes in other series. There were many more interesting things they could still have done with the collective consciousness idea.
I love @8 Mathew B’s idea of the parasite as queen. There are beetles and other insects that fool the ants into accepting them and taking care of them. Spinning off that idea in the movie could have been very interesting. And of course, despite the name, the queen in ant and bee colonies does not in any way run the show — she’s just a breeding machine. (Like the queen in Aliens, for instance.)
My interpretation of the Borg Queen was that she was the minimum unit needed to establish a new collective. One Borg could not know everything that the collective does, and it was established that the Borg are in constant subspace contact with each other. A Borg Queen contains the minimum necessary information to establish a new node of the collective–nanites for assimilation, instructions on how to build a subspace communicator, basic directives from the collective, etc. And enough free will to act independently if cut off from the rest of the Borg (unlike Hugh or Seven, who were lost and directionless without the collective).
But, there should not have been only one Borg Queen, there would be many–several at least on a large ship. Maybe they are clones or maybe they share a constantly updated subspace link on a differnt channel so that all queens are the same, at least until they are cut off.
It’s not the best answer but I think it makes more sense than anything put on air.
Not much to say here, other then the fact that this is by far my favorite episode of Season 2.
“Yesterday’s Enterprise” always gets the credit for this (and I love that show as much as anyone), but to me, this is the episode that started to set TNG apart from it’s predecessor. It firmly established Q and the Borg as recurring villans (Q had been gone awhile, and it seemed like he would never return after “Hide and Q”), presented the deadliest of enemies, and doesn’t really have a “happy” or “victory” ending (a concept that was the norm on DS9, but was understandbly hit-and-miss on TNG). None of this had been done on TNG to this point, or on the original series ever (with the exception of Wrath of Khan, but that’s a movie).
Perfect all around, IMO, and just out of my top 6 all-time TNG shows.
The concept of the Queen always struck me as necessary and a decent twist. If the Borg were always intended to be insectoid, then there would need to be a Queen, and the Queen always refers to the rest of the Borg as “drones.” In order for the Borg to have come into being at all, there had to be some sort of biological consciousness behind it at the beginning, so the very first Borg would have to have been a Queen of sorts.
A question about canon: I remember reading a novel that suggested that V’Ger from the first movie was altered into what it became by the Borg. Is that canonical or an off-shoot?
JasonD@15
iirc, V’Ger meeting the Borg was a joky suggestion made by Gene Roddenberry.
Doctor Who of course did something similar with the cybermen, but TNG does it better imho. The introduction of the queen, which weakens the Borg for me, was presumably done for narrative purposes, to have a central character for the heroes to fight against. Again, Doctor Who did something similar with the daleks when it introduced Davros.
Interesting … so the Borg were originally meant to be insectoid. Sounds like someone intended to rip off the Bugs from Starship Troopers. Glad they didn’t … assimilating is a much scarier concept.
I didn’t realise that the Borg queen was a later invention — but given the likely origins in Heinlein, it would make sense that she would exist as a counterpart to the “brain caste” of the Bugs.
15: “A question about canon: I remember reading a novel that suggested that V’Ger from the first movie was altered into what it became by the Borg. Is that canonical or an off-shoot?”
It’s a fannish conjecture that makes absolutely no sense. The two have nothing meaningful in common. V’Ger was so advanced that it was on the cusp of evolving to a higher plane of existence; the Borg are primitive in comparison. And yet V’Ger was somehow unaware that organic beings constituted life forms or were useful in any way, which is irreconcilable with the Borg’s complete symbiosis between the biological and cybernetic.
As for “Q Who,” yes, the Borg were pretty effective here as a one-shot threat, but by their very nature, they were a pretty lousy idea for a recurring antagonist. They were so impersonal here that they weren’t villains so much as a force of nature, and you can’t tell many distinct stories about fighting a force of nature. Stories are about people and interpersonal conflict, so subsequent Borg stories had to abandon the completely impersonal Borg of “Q Who” and find ways to make them more personalized — first by having them suddenly acquire an interest in assimilating individuals in BOBW, then by telling stories about liberating individual drones, then by adding the Queen to give them a face and voice.
And I always felt the makeup/costume design for the Borg in TNG was ridiculous. Even by 1980s standards, it was rather outdated to think of advanced cyborgs as just people with big, clunky machine parts stuck on their bodies. The concept of nanotechnology already existed at the time, and real-life prosthetic limbs and organs were starting to get fairly sophisticated, so even then it should’ve been possible to give them a sleeker design, something that suggested a more profound union/merger between the organic and the technological on a cellular level, rather than this cartoony, clunky, piecemeal thing we got. First Contact managed to refine the Borg design a certain amount, making it more Gigeresquely biomechanical, but still, I never cared for it.
Anyway, it is a real shame that Sonya Gomez never appeared beyond this one and the lame “Samaritan Snare.” She was adorable.
@18: true, the look of the Borg has not dated at all well – they look to my mind like 1980s Dr. Who on a bad day – but it was still enough to send a shudder through my young self!
BTW, does anyone else think that the jump cut from the shuttle to Ten-Forward is the best one in sci-fi since 2001? It’s not just a visual jump cut, but a sonic one too – the noisy, confined sonic environment of the shuttle is replaced by the quiet of Ten Forward in a trice. Lovely. Anyone who says TNG is just tarted-up TV should watch this episode.
@18: V’Ger being created by the Borg is actually from William Shatner’s series of Trek novels. (I think it was in Avenger.) Spock (in the TNG era) recognizes the Borg from his mind meld with V’Ger. Whether you want to call that “fannish” or not, the idea was (IIRC) that the Borg jumpstarted V’Ger’s evolution, not necessarily that they were responsible for all of it.
#19: “true, the look of the Borg has not dated at all well – they look to my mind like 1980s Dr. Who on a bad day – but it was still enough to send a shudder through my young self!”
Whereas what I’m saying is that I thought they looked like a crude and outdated design even when I first saw them in 1989. But then, I was nearly 21 at the time, not very young.
@20: That’s not the origin of the idea, that’s just an expression of it. The idea was a fan theory that had been tossed around for years before “Return” (not “Avenger”).
I wouldn’t give this episode a 10 out of 10, but it is very good for TNG up to this point — only “Where No One Has Gone Before” and “The Measure of a Man” are in the same league. It was a great introduction for the Borg. Having Q involved was a perfect way to do it because it gave the Enterprise a way out without finding a weakness in the Borg.
I’m definitely in the camp that liked the Borg better when they had a collective consciousness with no leader, just the networked minds of all of them functioning in harmony. This episode points out that the strength of the Borg was based on the fact that a single leader can make mistakes — when they introduce the Queen, she bears out this prediction by making mistakes quite frequently. The Borg were much more frightening without the Queen, but they were harder to fit into standard storytelling formulas. The Borg definitely aren’t the only promising idea in Star Trek: TNG that was ruined after Gene Roddenberry died.
The reason the Borg make such a great villain is because they are absolutely the opposite of the Federation. They have no concept of freedom, morality, culture, art, diplomacy, respect for life. Other villains on Star Trek disagree with some of these core values, but to the Borg the ideas aren’t wrong, they’re simply irrelevant. Their motivation isn’t hate, anger or aggression — that, at least, would have a trace of humanity. They’re pure consumers, gorging themselves on technology, and there’s no hope of placating them because there is absolutely no common ground. Terrifying.
The original idea that V’Ger came from the Borg was from Gene Roddenberry, who halfways jokingly suggested it once. I think the fandom bits and even Shatner’s thoughts of it came well afterward.
thanks for the responses. i’ve enjoyed the borg pretty thoroughly without any of those points of view, but now at least i see where you’re coming from. the borg terrify me simply because they enslave people, body and soul. once in, you can’t even dream of escape.
Okay, I’m pulling a complete blank here… when did the Borg ever show up in Deep Space Nine? They were all over every other series, but I honestly can’t remember them ever showing up in a DS9 episode.
aerathi18: the Borg were in the very first scene of the very first episode of DS9, the dramatization of the Battle of Wolf 359, with Sisko on the Saratoga.
General comment to all: I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the comments, and I want to thank you all. The Prime Directive discussion in the “Pen Pals” comments and the Borg/hivemind talk here is wonderful. Again, thank you.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Oh, duh… I guess that did kind of drive Sisko’s character arc for a good chunk of the series. So the influence was definitely there, although I don’t beleive they made an appearance beyond that. Thanks!
I was thinking, when I watched this episode, that this was the first and only time we saw baby Borg – or am I mis-remembering? Was that idea not discarded? I thought the Borg increased their numbers only through assimilation of other species.
Ok first of all, I think this is a fantastic episode. I love the Borg. To be more specific, I love this iteration of the Borg, with a collective conciousness that I had always pictured to be a network of computers that were linked together. I also love the references to Aliens (and I am counting gigeresque as an Aliens reference) which is one of my favorite sci-fi movies.
I am quite surprised that no one mentioned this before, but the addition of the Queen to the Borg (I thought) had an in-story justification. I was under the impression that the Borg were completely interconnected with no need for a queen when they were first introduced. Then in season 4, Hugh came along. Once he had been modified by the Enterprise crew and sent back, the Borg were crippled by the individuality he learned. They were no longer able to survive or function without a leader. They had been fundamentally changed by the crew of the Enterprise. I base this theory on what we here from Hugh in Descent, Part II, the first Season 7 episode. Obviously, Hugh is too placid and the “Borg Queen” steps in just in time for a great movie. I have not read any of the novels, nor have I seen any of the series after TNG, so if this is completely false, please let me know.
I also wish more could have been found out about Guinen and Q’s past encounters…
Maybe Q and Picard misrembered Q’s original promise. Or maybe Q gave Picard’s brain a tiny helping nudge so that he’d remember what Q really promised. Q could sense how much Picard missed him deep down, so he felt intervention was warranted.
There’s no reason for Borg assimilants to retain free will in the collective. There are probably free will overrides built into the cyborg implants so that all their mental functions remain geared toward the good of the collective. If I remember correctly, blocking the network link doesn’t instantly liberate a drone.
Clunky Borg machinery could be a throwback to their original aspirations of mechanizing themselves. Maybe they approve of the anti-aesthetics of it in their collective subconscious. Maybe it’s the most economical way to mass cyborgize so many people and species, since they’ll all end up as disposable drones anyway. Ants don’t have dragonfly capabilities, for example. Borg drones spend most of their time plugged into their ships, and their personal deflectors normally make up for lack of speed.
Another possible explanation for a queen is that the unexpected success of human resistance forced the collective to reexamine its decision structure in an attempt to counter. The Borg are good at selfless group thought, but that doesn’t mean they always draw correct conclusions.
Borg were scary precisely because they lacked identity. Billions of minds all working in unison with no regard for individuality. Locutus demonstrated that they could present a face and objectives without giving the spokesman controlling authority. But Trek movies always have to have a charismatic villain, so…
Am I allowed to point to the obvious that they need some sort of relatable , communicable “thing” to stand for the Borg for the movie.
Putting aside whatever function she performed, the scenes when she’s around are the best scenes in the movie IMHO. And how else would the manipulation of Data’s craving for real skin have been explored with no one to speak of it?
I did find the sudden memory that Locutist had met her to be obviously contrived. but that’s movies for you.
That Borg nursery still creeps me out…
euphbass: A baby Borg would later appear in Voyager‘s “Collective”, rescued from the damaged Cube along with Icheb and the other Borg kids. It was given a clean bill of health by the Doctor, then was never seen again.
sofrina@3, the Borg make decisions in exactly the same way social insects do: via distributed algorithms. The Borg individually wanting to get free matters as little as individual worker bees wanting to become fertile queens do: they cannot, the system constrains them (indeed both bees and ants have a sort of internal police force). Equally, the thoughts of the Borg do not matter: only the thoughts of the distributed overmind matter.
These things are really quite fascinating, and it’s amazing how little is required of the individual entities in the composite mind. A classic and particularly wonderful example is the waggle dance, used by bees both to signal the location of food and to signal the location of a new hive when swarming. Everyone knows how this is normally described: one bee starts moving in a line, back and forth, turning at each end and waggling in the linear part in the middle, with the direction and distance of the waggling part indicating the desirability and distance of the food: more bees copy it until eventually they all fly off if the food is desirable enough.
But beehives are dark and crammed places — the bees can’t *look* at each other to figure out what the other bees are doing. Instead, it’s a distributed algorithm. If a bee crosses the path of a waggling bee, this bee is likely to turn in the same direction as the waggling bee and start waggling as well. A waggling bee has some chance of randomly stopping: if it is waggling when it stops, it flies off towards the food, otherwise it goes back to do something else. That is enough to do it all. Note that the bees don’t need to know any of that stuff about length of waggle indicating desirability: a bee with more desirable food is simply going to spend more of its time in the waggling part of its dance, and thus will sweep out more space, cross the paths of more bees (which will themselves start waggling in the same way), and will be more likely to fly off to the food itself after a while.
If bees can do that sort of thing with no need to individually understand what they are doing at all, so too can the Borg implement a terrifying and rapacious overmind out of possibly much less rapacious components (although it is clear that the overmind has optimized the components for rapacity as well: all those cyborg implants doubtless help, I’m sure a lot of the overmind is running on those). The ‘Borg Queen’ was doubly annoying because it showed a complete lack of understanding of the Borg’s social-insect inspiration: it’s a volitional entity with command authority, while all a social insect queen does once the colony is up and running is reproduce like mad and suppress formation of other queens. She doesn’t even decide what castes to produce herself after the first few in the formation of a new colony: that too is a distributed decision. She herself only needs enough gumption to get started: after that, the hivemind takes over.
Does anyone know if any of the novels explore the connection between Q and Guinan? If there isn’t one it’s a topic begging for a book or series of books.
Also one thing not mentioned in the rewatch or any of the comments was Guinan’s cobra kai kung-fu stance she uses when she first sees Q. Does she have a martial arts background of some sort? Again this is another topic begging for a novel to be written about it.
2ndTenor: Nobody’s explored in depth the connection between Q and Guinan, no. As for the kung-fu stance, I doubt that Guinan actually has a martial arts background. More likely they were going for something that looked cool…..
—KRAD
2ndTenor and KRAD: I’ve long thought that the writers missed a great opportunity in not providing a further exploration of the history between Guinan and Q.
What I thought was fascinating was not only the degree of historical hostility between the two, but the grudging admiration (and more than a little caution) expressed by Q ( a cosmic level entity) with regards to Guinan.
Clearly there’s a LOT more to Guinan that meets the eye. As far as her ‘stance’ was concerned…I saw that as her raising a type of ‘Dr. Strange’ type force field to protect her against the elemental rays with which Q was attacking her. Notice that as soon as Q dropped his hand, Guinan ‘dropped’ her shield. Very cool scene.
Shout out to Tor and the blogger for this site. Much appreciated!
The re watch of this episode had a much deeper punch for me. I think it was seeing the crew approach the Borg and being so naive to what, of course, we know later to be such hard hitters in the show. The Borg babies still creep me out.
I agree with a lot of people here that the concept of the Queen really took some impact out of the Borg as an enemy because suddenly you could put a ‘face’ on what is ‘the bad guy’. She was head to strike down and take away the threat. Before they were a faceless mass of one motivation. I hate to make the comparison but it’s like everyone saying Hitler was the end all and be of evil of the Holocaust when he wasn’t. Others thought the final solution was a great and idea and helped implement it! One guy with ideas of genocide is a crazy person, a whole group following him is just downright scary as hell. Human nature seems to need to put a face on ‘bad’ and say “This.. this is the reason it all went wrong! If we take out this it all falls apart!” That’s not possible with the Borg and it made them that much more terrifying.
“You can’t outrun them, you can’t destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually, you will weaken—your reserves will be gone. They are relentless.”
This was a great intro of the Borg but really just the tip of the ice berg as to what made them so horrifying.
On a personal level this is a ‘race’ that is void of anything but technology and strips away all personality, individuality , culture and/or spirituality so I find them just downright abhorrent and frightening a concept. But, when you get right down to it they were basically space zombies. On the other hand I’m not a fan of ravenous walking compost either so really just touched on what would be a personal nightmare for me.
Wow, Sonya Díaz is the three-boobied alien from Total Recall?! Talk about connections I never made…
Sorry to be so late posting to this, but I’m surprised that Sonya wasn’t one of the eighteen. Maybe it would be overly TV-manipulative, but seeing such an appealing and driven ensign die so young at the hands of the Borg would have paid off some of the first act exposition better, especially given they didn’t really develop the character in later episodes.
justinf: The intent was to develop her in later episodes — she was supposed to come back, and she did for at least one episode (“Samaritan Snare”). It just didn’t work out….
(Although the character got tons of development in the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series………………….)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
One of my absolute favorite episodes of any of the Trek series. This and the “The Best of Both Worlds” two-parter are really the only two Borg episodes of TNG where the race actually feels alien and menacing. “I, Borg”, while not a bad episode, humanizes the race with the baby Borg character (okay, I know he’s actually a teenager) and the Borg in the “Descent” two-parter aren’t really true Borg, at least in my mind. But here, in the beginning, they are a creepy racy of mechanized zombies that you can’t reason with and no silly Borg Queen around acting all emotional and seductive. I love the dark tone of this episode, the Ron Jones score, and Michael Bowman’s direction among other things. If I were to nitpick one thing it would be the conference room scene where Worf announces from the bridge that the Borg ship has locked onto the Enterprise with a tractor beam yet the visual of the Borg ship on the conference room monitor shows no tractor beam being emitted. One could argue that the conference room monitor is on a several second delay but that would be kind of silly! Apparently this wasn’t fixed in the blu-ray restoration project. Oh well!
Yes, #1, I can explain the existence of the Borg Queen. She was not created until the sphere lost contact with the Cube and the entire Collective. I assume she existed to keep the newly Borgified human minds from taking over the collective. We see in Voyager that just hooking up minds doesn’t necessarily create the Borg consciousness. She’s the individual who keeps the system running until it can take care of itself.
Subsequently, she is created in situations where the Borg realize having an individual is useful. Decision making is thus centralized instead of being spread out to every mind. She can act as a liason to other individualistic species.
Now, yes, she’s also a huge liability, and it seems stupid that the Borg make her such a weakness, but I think that comes from thinking of every part of the whole as just being non-essential.
Even Janeway destroying a very strategic Queen that was apparently keeping track of a hub doesn’t destroy the Borg. She’s just not that important.
—-
In First Contact, they also needed an individual to seduce Data, and then they needed one in Voyager for a while to seduce Seven of Nine as a maternal figure. I still put this under “interacting with individuals.”
I also wonder if they started reinvigorating the idea of using the Queen when they encountered humans. Think about it from their perspective. They don’t know Q exists. They’ve studied this ship, and yet there’s no way its technology brought it there. So they’ve encountered something they don’t understand. This is why they are so diplomatic with Locutus–even if they do then learn what Picard knew about Q. (I assume they didn’t learn about him from the 18 crewmen, as only the regulars ever seem to interact with Q. Telling the entire how they got where they were was not a priority at the time.)
Point is, the Queen is not unexplainable. They just left it vague enough so that we could fill in the gaps–by thinking “fourth dimensionally.”
Since this 4 year old conversation just popped up again, let me clarify. I now understand the diagetic explanation for her existence, but i still find her to be detrimental to the Borg as a villain and to the overall lore of the series.
I rewatched this recently and was surprised that in this early episode, there’s no mention of assimilation. The Borg here seem to be a single species, interested in technology and either ignoring or killing living beings.
I always wondered why Guinan’s advice was so unspecific. “If I were you, I’d start back now.” Why doesn’t she tell them about the Borg? Is this some kind of El-Aurian non-interference directive?
Obviously Q doesn’t really want to join the crew, because it never comes up again at the end of the episode, after he has won. I imagine that Picard knew that all along. Still, I would have liked it if he had taken him at his word and said something like: “You want to join my crew? Sure, you can do that. Here’s how: You apply to Starfleet Academy. You train for a couple of years. If you’re really good you can try to get posted to the Enterprise afterwards. Good luck and goodbye!”
I love it that Guinan and Picard play a three-dimensional board game, but I don’t think that it’s chess. The board looks different, and all the pieces are identical.
Great episode. I do have to say, though, that I think they didn’t do a great job of getting across the true threat of the Borg in an emotional way. Yes, the Enterprise was pursued and was doomed if not for Q pinballing them away. That works, but everything up to that point seemed oddly bloodless. A drone beams over; is killed. Another beams over; resists the blast, then leaves. It feels quite flat. I don’t know if it’s the direction, the music, the acting, the I’m-kind-of-attached-to-it-but-I-can’t-deny-it-looks-terrible Borg costumery… It just feels almost like they’ve discovered their bike chain has come off again and now they have to repair it. It doesn’t feel ominous, let alone terrifying. It’s almost like a cerebral recognition that these people are dangerous rather than a visceral reaction. Like a simple, regular sign that says “Danger! Do Not Enter!” and so you decide not to enter. As opposed to seeing some mind-warping horror in the room and finding yourself bolting away on a gust of raw instinct.
Well, I suppose many would say that that’s TNG (maybe even Star Trek) all over. This just seems to be more disappointing because I get the impression the Borg are meant to convey profound dread and terror rather than just an understanding that you’re in checkmate in a game of chess.
@50/Matroska: “I suppose many would say that that’s TNG (maybe even Star Trek) all over.”
I wouldn’t say that, but I’d say it’s typical for early TNG.
I just discovered this blog; I wasn’t going to bump this old thread myself but now that it’s active again, I’ll weigh in.
I haven’t come across any Q hate in the comments so far. Am I alone in absolutely despising Q from day one?
I don’t find his petulant scene-chewing entertaining. He’s just one of those not-fun-to-hate unlikeable characters that I just never enjoy watching. (Neelix is #2 on my list of those.)
Don’t get me wrong – JdL’s a good actor, he’s perfect for the role and he absolutely nails the character, but the character is written to be profoundly irritating, and gee, he sure is.
More critically, though, Q’s presence sabotages any possibility of a meaningful plot, because he’s in league with the author. He has veto power over anything anyone else tries to do. This episode is the perfect example. Q snaps his fingers and the Enterprise is suddenly faced with an impossible foe. No real reason, just Q’s whim. Q snaps his fingers again and this horrifying threat is a thousand light years away again. A profoundly pointless deus ex machina ending to a threat he pulled out of thin air in the first place. The whole adventure is totally arbitrary and he can switch it on and off anytime. It might as well have been on the holodeck.
Really, it’s only Guinan’s corroboration (and fear) that convinced me Q wasn’t just simulating the Borg from whole cloth. Can’t he basically just make up experiences for his victims? That would be the easier way to scare Picard. But Guinan’s panic is pretty spooky.
It’s also irritatingly convenient. “Oh, by the way, this scary foe you’ve never heard of because it’s too far away? Don’t worry, the mysterious bartender happens to have the exposition dump on that!” Guinan’s more “convenient” than “mysterious” pretty often, especially right here. But I do love her reaction to Q.
Q loves to interrupt the Enterprise crew at their work. But I was tuning in to watch them at work! This whiny brat who’s already read the script, can nullify any meaningful consequences, and delights in deus ex machina meddling? And is constantly, pedantically, cringingly child-curious about humanity’s so-called virtues, even though his questions aren’t really that interesting? He does nothing for me and I was always disappointed when he showed up. Another hour wasted.
I thought it was a huge gamble to open TNG with a pilot focused on Q. He’s basically The Great Gazoo, the kind of character you bring in when you’ve already jumped the shark and run out of real story ideas. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Q show up for the first time in season 6 or 7, but for the pilot to lean on an adversary with authorial powers seemed like an admission of failure out of the gate. I nearly gave up on TNG right then and there! (But I was desperate for science fiction shows and it was clear the ensemble cast had sufficient chemistry and potential, which was the huge first hurdle for the first Trek show trying to repeat the phenomenon of TOS.)
Dragging him back (you promised he’d leave us alone!) seems like the lamest possible way to introduce the Borg. They’re introduced by fiat because hey, Q has that power! Not good writing! There are a dozen cooler ways they could have encountered the Borg, surely. And maybe a clever way to escape that they could figure out for themselves. Needing Q’s help to escape makes the Borg seem very strong and fast, but it simultaneously lowers the stakes back to zero because, indeed, it’s no problem for Q and he’s right there.
Loved all the actual stuff with the Borg, though. Especially how they tend to ignore intruders on their ships. Very spooky. I just wish that wonderful, important sequence had been framed with a setup besides “Q is bored again”. To me this episode was another great concept dragged down by lazy writing. (Like so many, many episodes throughout TNG’s run.) Still pretty great, but not as great as it should have been.
Dan Efran: Glad to see you here, and I hope you’re enjoying the rewatches! We’ve got complete rewatches of TNG and DS9, as well as a seasonal rewatch of the Stargate franchise, and I’m currently doing the original Trek as well as the 1966 Batman.
I see your point regarding Q, but I don’t agree with your negative assessment (obviously, given that I wrote an entire novel that not only featured Q but explained the rationale behind pretty much all his appearances over the years).
Honestly, what I liked best about Q — and this was one of the things I liked about TNG from jump — was that here we had yet another all-powerful being who tested the Enterprise, just like we got on the original series, but this one isn’t ethereal or mysterious or alien, he’s actually a spectacularly obnoxious asshole. I kinda liked that in a perverse way.
Plus truly? He is fun to write……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
(Also, feel free to comment on any thread, regardless of when the last comment was. The conversation never needs to end………..)
—KRAD
@52
I know what you mean, Dan. I like Q but I think there’s one way of looking at it where he basically turns whatever episode he’s in into a kind of game show. He’s the host, the magics up challenges for the contestants, they try to win, then at the end it’s all cleared away. Have you ever seen the Generation Game? Not sure if it’s UK only, or if other countries’ versions are different, but it reminds me of that. He also has a kind of fan fiction kind of feel to him, like he’s the self-insert of the author. I think overall, he can have a feeling of deconstructing the episode down, of making it actually feel like what it is: a load of people playing roles to tell a story. It can also feel like a quite “artificial” way (I use speech marks there because this is all artificial, of course, perhaps “forced” is a better word) to put Picard into debate mode, and then for them to dialogue through Big Issues.
At the same time, I really enjoy the performances and how he brings out the contrast in the various crewmembers. The idea of these omnipotent beings is interesting, especially how they seem quite human rather than really distant, emotionless entities. It reminds me of the 4D beings from Star Ocean 3 on PS2 (who many people hated, come to think of it…) So overall I do like him but I think I can see your angle on it too. I also know what you mean about how it could seem like he magicked up the Borg just to screw with Picard. It’s a shame, I think that was part of the reason this episode, while good, still felt quite flat and by the numbers to me, as I talk about in my previous post.
I don’t like Q much myself. He feels more like a plot driver than like a character. He’s probably supposed to be erratic and unpredictable, or unfathomable, but IMO his behaviour is just arbitrary. Then there’s the whole “put humanity on trial” thing which is much more serious, and which suddenly reappears in the last episode… It doesn’t match.
@53/krad: “Honestly, what I liked best about Q […] was that here we had yet another all-powerful being who tested the Enterprise, just like we got on the original series, but this one isn’t ethereal or mysterious or alien, he’s actually a spectacularly obnoxious asshole.”
Which makes him a lot like Trelane (I know that this is not a new insight).
I really like Q, and I’m glad he wasn’t over used (imho).
This episode is not a 10. Maybe it feels like a 10 b/c it’s been one of the best of a bad lot in the first two seasons but not an overall 10. 7 or 8 at most. The irritating thing to me is not in the episode but the hand waves and blatant contraindications to this episode in future episodes. The Borg beam on the ship through the shields; even in “BoBW” that never happened. Riker’s contention that “The Borg are born a biological life form and then transformed” is never heard of again; they assimilate what they want. The Borg aren’t interested in humanoid lifeforms, only technology; then they started assimilating whomever they find of “interest,” with interest being subjective depending on the plot. The “shield draining” device was never utilized again, though it would have made future battles last all of about ten seconds. And Guinan’s “Protect yourself or they’ll come after you,” sounds misleading. Picard didn’t go to a defensive posture until after the Borg beamed aboard. So if he had come out guns blazing, the Borg would have buggered off? Uh, no.
On the subject of the Borg babies: It may be that these babies were taken from a world that was assimilated recently. I would think beings of all ages would be candidates for assimilation, including animal life forms if their body shapes were considered useful in some way to a task. The babies would basically get plugged into the collective and receive training while their bodies matured, only receiving full cybernetic conversion as they approach maturity.
Then again, another creepy possibility exists: What if the Borg kept breeding pens somewhere in their cubes with beings just converted enough to make them obey, and whenever a need for more Borg was anticipated, they would breed children who promptly began the process of assimilation, as we saw in the nursery? They do overrun and assimilate worlds, but that may not be their only means of increasing numbers or replacing units lost in war or disasters.
@59/Lisa Conner: Couldn’t they simply be Borg babies, from whatever species the cube is inhabited by? They probably have artificial wombs and stuff.
SethC: I don’t hold future retcons against this episode. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@60: Yes, that could be so as well. I was just speculating on various reasons why a nursery of partially assimilated babies would exist.
BTW, why are all Borg so human-like? From the vast regions of their territories there should be a huge variety of beings that have been made drones. The actors were already getting covered with makeup and props, so why not a bit to show they came from many different species? And Borg animals would have served many purposes as well. Seems like I vaguely remember reading a book years ago in which there were Borg dogs….
@62/Lisa Conner: That’s true, they all look like humans.
On the other hand, so many species do. Perhaps some of them are El-Aurians. Since assimilation removes skin pigmentation, we don’t even know what they would look like in their natural state. Some of them could be green or blue, like Orions.
I never understood Guinan’s ‘kung fu’ stance towards Q. Q is basically God and could send Guinan into oblivion any moment he wished. Strange that a mysterious bartender would be any kind of match to Q.
Also Q was necessary here. His motivation was to get Picard to admit his arrogance(and ignorance). Knock Picard down a few pegs. Mission accomplished.
@64 – Didn’t Q once say something about Guinan like “there’s far more to her than can be imagined?” I don’t know the Trek bible very well, as I’m a casual watcher of the tv shows and movies at best, but it seems to me Guinan is one of those ambiguous characters who can be used to conveniently close loopholes in loose plotlines when necessary. I love the character, but she’s kind of a cheat for the writers, IMO.
@65/fullyfunctional: “This creature is not what it appears to be”, in this episode.
And I agree with you about Guinan.
According to Memory Alpha, Guinan’s stance was supposed to echo Whoopi Goldberg’s character’s stance in “The Color Purple” when she stands up to her abusive husband. “Star Trek” did exposition dump a lot; especially the original series but also the others fairly often. It’s annoying by today’s TV standards. Many things the characters do in this episode (and get carried over to other episodes) annoy me. For someone who could wink him out of existence with a literal hand wave or snap of his fingers, Picard is always remarkably pompous and disrespectful to Q. However annoying Q is, you shouldn’t piss off someone who can literally make you never exist with a twitch; I know Q’s supposed to be an annoying imp but if someone has virtually unlimited power over you, you don’t constantly lecture them like a school teacher, as Picard does. It’s annoying how much of an Ignored Expert Guinan was in this episode and how weak Picard is. When they are flung across the galaxy, Picard ASKS for Guinan’s advice; she says “If I were you, I’d start back now.” He says “No let’s explore this area. We’re only 7,000 light years from home, it will only take us 124 years to get home at maximum warp, we’ll take a few days to poke around here and see who we can provoke.” Then they encounter the Borg cube. Riker says “Keep the shields down, we don’t want to appear hostile.” Oh yeah, sure, because the Klingons, the Romulans, the Tholians, the Ferengi, none of those species have EVER been hostile to the Federation, so let’s meet a completely unknown species entirely unprotected. Picard again asks his Expert: “They’re called the Borg. Protect yourself Captain or they’ll destroy you.” She TELLS them the Borg will destroy them. To anyone who isn’t a completely incompetent idiot, that means go to a battle alert status immediately and get the hell out of there. To Picard, he wants to extend the warm hand of Federation friendship to them. Then the Borg beam in a drone; a scout, the first of many, THROUGH THE SHIELDS. Anyone who isn’t an idiot would know immediately that anything that can beam through deflector shields is a hostile force and should be repelled. But no, Picard tries to reason with the damn thing and only after it tries to tap into the ship’s computer, does he order Worf to take action, who delegates it to an ensign. Getting a crew member tossed across the room and having to use full force to neutralize it, doesn’t yet convince Picard that this is a threat. He holds a CONFERENCE so Gunian can give more bleeding exposition; hearing that the Borg committed genocide against Gunian people (a person Picard considers closer than a friend or family) means Picard still wants to try to reason with them, despite Gunian TELLING him AGAIN that the Borg don’t negotiate and they should get out of there. Picard only fights when the Borg attack, and then after the attack, HOLDS ANOTHER CONFERENCE. For the love of Shakespeare, Earl Grey tea and Latin (all that Picard holds dear), get the HELL out of there! No, let’s talk some more and then send people over to explore. Only when the ship regenerates, does Picard get out of there. The ship can fire half a dozen torpedoes at once; they fire 2. The first phaser blasts took chunks out of the cube; why not use the phasers? And then he blames Q for the loss of 18 members of the crew. Uh, no, that was the Borg, first of all and second of all, if you had LISTENED to Gunian, who told you at the beginning to head back NOW or third of all if you hadn’t had a charming expository conference all morning, maybe those 18 crew members would still be alive. It was Picard’s incompetence, not Q, that killed those crew members. God I hate the namby pamby “TNG” approach to everything.
@67/SethC: Doesn’t it annoy you that Guinan’s initial warning is so unspecific? If she had told Picard about the Borg and the genocide right away, perhaps he would have reacted differently.
@67– enjoyable and interesting rant about Picard. Yes sometimes he plays a bit too fast and loose with the “palms upward in welcome” attitude, although I disagree with you in suggesting that Picard’s antagonistic way with Q is the wrong approach. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Q respects Picard, because I don’t think Q is capable of respecting anyone. But he does find Picard’s insufferable sense of morality to be compelling and interesting in a way that earns Picard some deference. Go back to Encounter at Farpoint and think about how things might have turned out if Kirk had been captain of the Enterprise. My guess is Kirk may have tried to get a bit cutesy and outsmart Q, rather than merely pass the test (Kobayashi Maru,, anyone?) which would have proved Q’s point to begin with…
@69/fullyfunctional: Ah, but Kirk passed similar tests time and again – in “The Corbomite Maneuver”, “Arena”, “Spectre of the Gun”, and “Bem”. My guess is that he would have done the same thing as Picard: suggest being tested, because he knew from experience that this was something they were good at, then go on with the mission. It would have been a very Kirkish thing to do: get back the initiative, talk himself out of trouble, change the playing field into something he could handle, then fulfil the task he had originally been assigned to.
The Kobayashi Maru was a test that couldn’t be passed. That’s a different situation.
I thought the Borg queen was an evolution of Locutus. A development of their assimilated knowledge of humanity?
I also wish we could have learned more about the backstory between Guinan and Q, and why he was so rattled by her.
Technically, the Borg aren’t a species-they’re machines, nanite parasites that were according to some sources created as part of a botched experiment in the Delta Quadrant.
mspence: No, the Borg Queen explicitly speaks in First Contact of Locutus having been a part of her.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I suppose the Borg Queen might be an unreliable narrator. Of course, that allows almost unrestrained fan speculation as to what she really is. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.
I was so startled by her flashback to Locutus that I felt like SHE was delusional. I’ve always liked the fan theories that she’s some kind of interloper or anomaly within the Borg Collective, not truly as timeless as she would like her victims to believe (or as she believes herself to be, possibly). But I’ll admit I mostly go down that road because I prefer the idea of a queenless Collective.
Another misuse of the transporter here, and it really stands out in my mind. If the Borg can invade a ship by transporting on, and likewise an away team can invade the Borg ship, why couldn’t Worf just ask O’Brien to beam up the Borg invaders where they stood and send them back to their ship, or at least into the brig?
I’ve missed this thread for years since I wasn’t a registered user yet when I posted, so I wasn’t alerted to comments. So I’ll be responding to some very old messages.
In response to the comments about the Queen, the people suggesting that she was only created after Hugh liberated his cube were forgetting that First Contact established that the Queen had been there at Wolf 359, which is how Picard remembered her. Also, despite appearances, the Queen is not an individual. She’s just the drone that the Collective mind uses as a coordinating node (like the frontal lobe of the brain) and as a “face and voice” when needed (sort of like Locutus). She said in the movie that she was the Collective. “Her” mind was the entire Collective, all drones inclusive; the particular body it was speaking through was just a specialized type of drone. This is proven by the fact that we saw multiple Queens destroyed (including the one at Wolf 359 whose destruction was retconned into BOBW) and yet the same consciousness continued to return in new bodies (perhaps cloned from two different individuals, one of whom looked like Alice Krige, the other like Susanna Thompson).
@49/Jana: “I rewatched this recently and was surprised that in this early episode, there’s no mention of assimilation. The Borg here seem to be a single species, interested in technology and either ignoring or killing living beings.”
Exactly. Assimilation was a later retcon to make the Borg a more personal threat. The original concept was too impersonal to get more than one story out of. Adding the Queen was also done to personalize them more.
“I always wondered why Guinan’s advice was so unspecific. “If I were you, I’d start back now.” Why doesn’t she tell them about the Borg? Is this some kind of El-Aurian non-interference directive?”
Guinan didn’t have firsthand experience with the Borg. She just heard about them destroying her homeworld while she was away. Maybe she didn’t feel her knowledge was direct or provable enough to go into specifics until she had to.
@52/Dan Efran: “I thought it was a huge gamble to open TNG with a pilot focused on Q. He’s basically The Great Gazoo, the kind of character you bring in when you’ve already jumped the shark and run out of real story ideas. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Q show up for the first time in season 6 or 7, but for the pilot to lean on an adversary with authorial powers seemed like an admission of failure out of the gate.”
To be fair, the original version of “Farpoint” written by D.C. Fontana was purely about the Farpoint Station mystery and the character introductions. The Q subplot was added by Gene Roddenberry when the decision was made to expand the pilot from 90 minutes to 2 hours (counting commercials). So in fact, the pilot’s plot doesn’t lean on Q; you could remove Q entirely and still have a complete story, because all he really does after the initial chase/trial sequence is to pop up and heckle the crew occasionally.
@62/Lisa Conner: “BTW, why are all Borg so human-like? From the vast regions of their territories there should be a huge variety of beings that have been made drones. The actors were already getting covered with makeup and props, so why not a bit to show they came from many different species?”
They eventually did in Voyager, once they embraced the retcon that all drones were assimilated. But in “Q Who,” the Borg were treated as a single species. As for why that species looked human, presumably they decided that the half-robotic appearance made them alien-looking enough in itself, so they didn’t consider what was underneath, or more likely just didn’t have the time or budget to design and apply both “cyborg” and “alien” prosthetics at the same time, at least not until a few years later once they’d gotten the hang of creating Borg and streamlined the makeup process.
“And Borg animals would have served many purposes as well. Seems like I vaguely remember reading a book years ago in which there were Borg dogs….”
I believe that was The Return by William Shatner with Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens.
@71/mspence: “Technically, the Borg aren’t a species-they’re machines, nanite parasites that were according to some sources created as part of a botched experiment in the Delta Quadrant.”
There is no canonical explanation for the Borg’s origin. There have been several contradictory origins offered for them in novels, comics, and short fiction, including that one.
@74/BeeGee: Trek has a long history of ignoring the weapons potential of the transporter. I mean, it’s basically the ultimate disintegrator ray, if you just leave out the rematerialization step. They eventually showed that even entire shuttlecraft can be beamed up, which means the beam can easily disintegrate even the densest components of spacecraft hulls as long as they’re unshielded.
I posited in my novel The Captain’s Oath last year that most powers avoid using transporters as weapons for just this reason — like biological or chemical weapons, they’re just too deadly and it would create too harmful a precedent if anyone used them on an enemy and invited retaliation in kind. So it’s an agreed-upon convention of warfare not to weaponize transporters.
00 / KRAD:
The dialogue crackles, with some wonderful lines.
Yeah, I was re-watching the episode for the first time in about a decade the other night. And I’d forgotten it had one of my favorite Q lines in all of TNG:
“Con permiso, Capitán? The hall is rented, the orchestra engaged. It’s now time to see if you can dance.”
Continuity glitch? “No life form readings” were detected on the Borg ship, but weren’t those infants living beings? Or am I missing something here?
jazzmanchgo: the sensors can only detect what they were designed to detect. The Borg are a life form they’ve never encountered before, plus the Cube probably blocks sensors to a degree.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@77/jazzmanchgo &78/krad: As Data said, “this ship was scanned for individual life signs. Apparently when they are in these slots, they become part of the whole and no longer read as separate life forms.” It’s basically the same rationale behind their inability to identify any distinct shield or weapon systems even though the cube definitely had those. The cube is all a single uniform, undifferentiated techno-organism where every part is indistinguishable from the whole, and so sensors designed to scan for discrete components or individuals won’t register any.
It’s like if you melt red crayons and white crayons together into a uniform pink soup — you won’t be able to see any discrete bits of red or white anymore. You just see the uniform whole, not the constituent parts.
@77/jazzmanchgo: It doesn’t matter that there were infants on the Borg cube or any other sentient life: when they are plugged into the hive mind, individual life signs are not registered on at least the sensors of the Enterprise.
I thought Gomez was a great and interesting character: the archetype of the lower decks officer. It’s too bad she disappeared after only one more appearance. Since the alternate future of “All Good Things” didn’t come to pass, maybe she can show up on Star Trek: Picard as Geordi‘s wife!
One thing that’s always bugged me about this episode, and it’s a very minor nitpick, is when O’Brien beams our heroes into the “least damaged section of the Borg ship”. After their initial examination, the away team moves further on into the cube and after the nursery scene, Data is examining some damage and comes to the conclusion that the Borg are rapidly repairing their ship. I’m not sure it’s ever been established canonically, but supposedly Borg cubes are 3km on a side. We see the damage the Enterprise does to the cube and it’s all on one side. Our heroes sure had quite a hike to the damaged section if they were as far away from the damage as possible! The timeframe shown in the episode is unclear, but a 3ish km walk is fairly lengthy and it’s unlikely they would venture that far, regardless. I think this nitpick could have been easily averted if the line was written: “I’ve set coordinates for the closest non-damaged section of the Borg ship.” Anyway, as I said, it’s a minor nitpick; this is still a phenomenal episode.
@81/Thierafhal: Three kilometers isn’t that long a walk. That’s about a walk to the post office and back for me. It’s easy for anyone in decent shape, and Starfleet officers would surely be in excellent shape.
@82/CLB: Sure, if it’s a relative bee line to your destination. If you factor in the twists and turns likely to be found in the Borg ship and the potential for other interesting things to scan on the way from “the least damaged part of the ship” to the point where there is damage… In that sense, 3 km is a long way.
@83/Thierafhal: Which is surely a good thing if your objective is to find out as much as you can about the ship.
@85/CLB: Indeed. It’s just that it seemed a very short time from when they beamed in and were examining the alcoves to when they reached the nursery. I’m not debating any of the investigative activities they might have partaken. I’m debating the time frame they needed to do all they needed to do and find time to navigate an unfamiliar ship that’s 3km long. I guess my real point is that the episode could have done a better job of indicating how long they were aboard the cube. Sorry, I have OCD, I dwell on trivial things, haha!
I’m glad to get the explanation for having Gomez in this episode, that she was supposed to be recurring. She’s the one flaw otherwise, randomly inserted and with no link to the Borg story that’s happening … unless you want to compare her unsteadiness with the Federation unreadiness for the Borg.
Gomez seemed out of place, a weird filler, so I’m glad for that explanation that she was meant to become regular.
I have to disagree with the 10 rating. This episode annoys me. Before I start though, is it me or is Q engaging in (gay?) flirting with Picard on the shuttlecraft? He does seem to enjoy Picard’s company on a rather intimate level.
To begin, Q says Picard and the Enterprise need his help. This is only true because Q moved the Enterprise into an area where the Borg were, over two years at maximum warp from the nearest star base. His help is only required because he effectively manufactured a situation where it was needed. Admittedly we should be thankful, the Borg, with some ‘retconning’ became excellent villains (for a while) and although the Borg were made aware of the Federation, the Federation also was made aware of the Borg.
Guinan tells Picard to get moving and fast. Picard ignores her. Stupid. Perhaps he learned his lesson, Yesterday’s Enterprise would suggest so.
The Borg start carving up the Enterprise ‘like a roast’. They manage to terminate the Borg tractor beam. What does Picard do? He calls a conference. He could have had Worf continue attacking the Borg vessel until nothing was left, after all he’s been given ample warning from Guinan and Q and examples of what the Borg are capable of. I know, we will visit the Borg ship, and we will set phasers to stun. You do remember what happened in engineering, don’t you? I know none of this makes for good television, but what plays out, for me, makes for bad television. Picard finally decides to move, and the Borg follow; even ‘maximum warp’ isn’t fast enough. Photon torpedoes are useless against them now. Picard concedes he needs Q. Everything returns to normal, apart from the 18 crew members who are presumably now members of the Borg.
The best thing about the episode? I don’t recall Pulaski appearing even for a moment.
@86/cecrow: I don’t think of Gomez as a flaw of the episode. Why should the introduction of a new character have to link directly to that particular episode’s story? I found her to be interesting and endearing and it’s disappointing to me she didn’t last longer. But she does help in a small way to make this episode even more notable.
@88/Growly: Q in its true form is a non-corporeal entity. It has no gender and just assumes the human avatar that we see as a means of interacting with the show’s characters. And even if he were male, I’ve never seen his behavior towards Picard as “gay” or “flirting.” His mannerisms are just how he needles Picard and amuses himself. The shuttlecraft set also necessitated the two characters getting up in each other’s faces in those tight quarters.
Also, the whole point of this story wasn’t really about Picard needing Q. Of course Q manufactured the trouble that occurred. The point was he was proving that Picard was being arrogant in his attitude in that the latter character and his crew was ready for whatever was out there which proved rather spectacularly not to be the case. It gave this series a big shot in the arm and an exciting new villain in the process.
@86/cecrow: I don’t think of Gomez as a flaw of the episode. Why should the introduction of a new character have to link directly to that particular episode’s story? I found her to be interesting and endearing and it’s disappointing to me she didn’t last longer. But she does help in a small way to make this episode even more notable.
@88/Growly: Q in its true form is a non-corporeal entity. It has no gender and just assumes the human avatar that we see as a means of interacting with the show’s characters. And even if he were male, I’ve never seen his behavior towards Picard as “gay” or “flirting.” His mannerisms are just how he needles Picard and amuses himself. The shuttlecraft set also necessitated the two characters getting up in each other’s faces in those tight quarters.
Also, the whole point of this story wasn’t really about Picard needing Q. Of course Q manufactured the trouble that occurred. The point was he was proving that Picard was being arrogant in his attitude in that he and his crew were ready for whatever was out there which proved rather spectacularly not to be the case. It gave this series a big shot in the arm and an exciting new villain in the process.
Great stuff, yes, but I’d like to humbly notice that the plot isn’t particularly strong, and the episode serves as a prologue to the Borg storyline only.
I have also three nits to pick:
1) What exactly is the deal with Guinan? If the crew knew about her alien background, then she should have told them about Borg who apparently hit her race hard. If the crew didn’t know who she is, because she was masquerading as someone else, does it mean that Starfleet does not screen people before hiring them on their flagships?
2) The Q’s proposed deal was to join the crew in exchange for his help, but in the end he helped without claiming his reward. Hm.
3) Couldn’t the minimal away team take with them a fourth member, Mr. Portable Nuclear Bomb, and leave it in the Borg ship? That would solve the Borg problem right there, right then. I know, I know, Enterprise do not carry such devices on board, but still, Captain Hiller and Mr. Levinson had to work so much harder in order to get inside the alien mothership in “Independence Day”…
@91/Borys: Why would Guinan have needed to tell anyone about the Borg? The whole point here was that the territory she and the Borg came from was very, very far from the Federation, remote enough that they wouldn’t have come into contact for a long yet if not for Q’s intervention (at least as far as anyone knew, since they hadn’t yet identified the Borg as the ones behind the missing outposts in “The Neutral Zone”). And it happened to Guinan’s people decades before — more than 70 years before, as we’d find out in Generations — so it was hardly urgent. Plus it was very traumatic for her people. It’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to talk about it.
And where do you get “masquerading” from? Guinan has been traveling the galaxy for centuries. Just because she was quiet about one specific part of her remote past doesn’t mean she was concealing her entire identity. Many of us have traumatic things in our past that we don’t like to share with people, but that doesn’t make us impostors.
As for point 3, a photon torpedo is theoretically much more powerful than a nuclear bomb (despite the tendency of many Trek episodes and movies to treat them as little more than cannonballs), and we would later see Voyager defeat a small Borg sphere by beaming a torpedo aboard it. But the away team’s mission here was to gather information. Starfleet doesn’t default to violence.
I’ve been rewatching TNG and enjoying the recaps here. Unfortunately, the only legal way to stream TNG is through Paramount Plus and they do not have “Q Who”. I called and asked and they said it was a rights issues, which is odd because they pulled all Star Trek off every other streaming service and, you know, Paramount owns the franchise. Even odder, the episode is available on the Amazon edition of P+, but of course only if I pay for a second subscription. I honestly believe it is not a rights issue, or it would not be on the Amazon version of the same service.
It’s a shame Paramount has so little regard for the franchise, especially when I read the wonderful, insightful comments on forums like this one, from real fans who are being disserved by Paramount’s awful excuse for a streaming service.
@93: That’s so weird. It’s literally been on Paramount+/CBS All Access since the service first debuted. I wonder why they suddenly pulled it?
I bet it’s just a technical snafu and it’ll be back. That “rights issue” is their boilerplate response to any inquiries about why something isn’t available.
The Next Generation series, including this episode, remains available on Netflix until 4/1, at least in my market.
This episode has one of my favorite quotes from TNG: “It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid”
I like Q a lot, he’s one of the best recurring characters in ST. :)
What i was surprised by here is actually Picard’s arrogance. OK, Q didn’t start out well, but by this time, i would have at least considered to work with him and see what he would show. Because – no matter what people tell him, he can still do whatever he wants, anyway…so why not try to cooperate when there’s a chance for it? of course on a low trust level, totally understandable, but still probably better then just trying to send him away – as he’s also an arrogant jerk, it would never work anyway. :)
I watched “Q Who?” on Paramount+ a few nights ago, in the States, so it’s (back) there now.
A fairly regular question/complaint of mine is How does the away team not have a device for video recording or transmission? Riker shouldn’t have to merely describe what he sees on the cube to Picard on the Enterprise bridge. Even the early S1 episode with Geordi’s VISOR sending his visual feed back to the main viewer kind-of skips right over the concept of a standard instrument of that nature. Body cams may have been in their infancy then, and of course SF has often failed to anticipate future (or futuristic) societies enjoying certain innovations that later came to pass in real life, but Starfleet majorly whiffed on imbuing tricorders with so much as Polaroid technology.
I’m not sure whether sending Data to the Borg vessel makes sense due to his unique nature or is the worst idea possible (after, you know, not just hightailing it outta there, as KRAD noted) for roughly the same reasons.
@99/Arben: To address your second point first: Yes, Data is very unique and of course much valued (this point is made in both “The Measure of a Man” and “The Most Toys”), but he’s first and foremost a Starfleet officer. Picard can’t allow Data’s uniqueness from having him go on dangerous missions when Data is the most qualified person to be there and it’s literally his job. It’s what Data signed up for and he and his commanding officers know the inherent risks.
To your first point: While it would make sense for Starfleet officers to always be carrying around visual recording devices on Away Missions instead of just recording non-video data on their tricorders and/or describing orally what’s going on to everyone back on the starship, it was probably just a budget-saving thing for The Original Series and carried on for the spin-offs. I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to create a body-cam for the uniform (it could be practically invisible for all intents and purposes) but then the director of a given episode may feel obligated to include the visual perspective from an officer’s video recorder and that would slow down the story-telling process. Plus, as in this episode, it was just more dramatically effective to have Riker and Data reporting back to Picard by audio only to ratchet up the tension-level and see the bridge crew be creeped out and terrified.
We did see a video recording device worn by an officer in “Identity Crisis” and that scene pre-dated the Enterprise-D because it was when Geordi was younger and served on another starship. So the technology obviously exists and can be used if wanted during the TNG era, it just depends on whether the commanding officer thinks it’s called for in a given situation.
@100. garreth: “Picard can’t allow Data’s uniqueness from having him go on dangerous missions when Data is the most qualified person to be there and it’s literally his job.”
I meant that in this situation, given the nature of the Borg, Data could be particularly useful but also particularly vulnerable.
@101/Arben: Sure, I get that but Data is also the science officer and just one of the best officers period so it would have been a disservice to pull him off the away mission. If that happened and Data had feelings he would probably feel offended!