The greatest threat to the galaxy has returned to the Star Trek universe! The struggle is pointless, it’s time to submit to Control and wear some black leather and talk like a robot, just like the Borg. But wait—is the rogue A.I. on Star Trek: Discovery really going to turn into the Borg? At this point, the show has not made this connection explicit, but nearly every fan and critic who has been writing about the show across the internet has breathlessly mentioned the return of the Borg. So what’s the deal? Is Discovery doing a Borg homage or is Control a real-deal Borg origin story?
Here are five reasons why Control is totally the Borg, plus three reasons why it totally isn’t.
Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery, season 2, episode 11, “Perpetual Infinity.”
1. Control talks like the Borg
In “Perpetual Infinity” Control refers to itself in the plural using, referring to “our mission.” In The Next Generation and Voyager, the Borg always say “we” and “our.” The idea of Control existing as a collective intelligence that thinks like this seems to predict the Borg Collective itself. Plus, the Borg’s biggest and baddest catchphrase, “Resistance is futile,” is neatly paraphrased when Control tells Leland that “struggle is pointless.”
2. Control looks like the Borg.
In the same scene in which Control says “struggle is pointless,” Leland is injected with what looks like a ton of little nanoprobes. Visually this is nearly identical to the nanoprobe injections we see in Star Trek: First Contact and throughout Star Trek: Voyager. In First Contact, Picard even has a nightmare in which one of these nanoprobes is jumping out of his skin. Later, in that same movie, when Picard phasers a crew member who has been injected with the nanoprobes, the veiny effect on that guy’s skin looks exactly like what is happening to Leland in “Perpetual Infinity”.
3. This explains why most Borg look human.
One aspect of the Borg that never really made sense is that most of the drones look like human cyborgs, even though they live 60,000 light years away from humans. In fact, in “Q Who?” Riker and Data find little Borg babies on the Borg ship, who appear, for the most part, to be human. Obviously, Star Trek canon has played fast and loose with “aliens” who look human—most notably with Guinan’s species, the El-Aurians. So are all the Borg that look human prior to the Borg meeting humans just El-Aurians? Maybe. But if Discovery is telling a Borg origin story, establishing Leland as the earliest Borg Drone could set the precedent for their human appearance.
Plus, Star Trek canon has tried to do this before. Before Star Trek: Enterprise was canceled in 2005, writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens had pitched a story that would have explained the origin of the Borg Queen. In their pitch, Alice Krige (the actress who portrayed the Borg Queen in First Contact) would have appeared as a Starfleet Officer who was assimilated by the Borg. This could be similar to what Discovery is doing with Leland.
4. The Borg and Control share an obsession with data/technology.
In The Next Generation, the Borg are initially interested only in the technology the Enterprise has to offer. This checks with Control in Discovery, too. So far, it doesn’t really care about organic life and is only interested in obtaining the Sphere data to achieve ultimate self-awareness. If Control never gets the Sphere data, it’s possible that this objective could morph into an obsession to add all existing technology to its database. In other words, when the Borg say: “We will add your technological distinctiveness to our own,” maybe they’re still just searching for that last scrap of Sphere data.
5. A Borg-Control connection could set up events for the upcoming Picard series.
Though Discovery could simply hint at a Borg connection, rather than tell an explicit origin story, there’s one compelling real-world reason it could happen: Picard. Discovery producer and showrunner Alex Kurtzman has already promised the Picard show will be beaming into our eyeballs in December. Other than being the Captain of the Enterprise-D, Picard’s biggest claim to fame is easily the fact that he was assimilated by the Borg and nearly destroyed all of humanity as “Locutus.” What if there’s a connection between this Control storyline and what is happening with the Picard show? And, even if there’s not a huge connection, it seems possible that Picard could reference events in Discovery, especially if it turns out there is a big link between the Borg and Control.
But then again, maybe all this Borg stuff is a little too neat. Here are three equally compelling reasons that Control is totally not the Borg, and just a random A.I. that is messing up everyone’s life.
1. It just won’t work without some rowdy retconning.
In order for Control to become the Borg, it has to travel back in time several hundred years. Star Trek: Voyager established that the Borg had been around since the 14th century. Plus according to Trek canon, the Borg originate in the Delta Quadrant, which is really, really far away for conventional starships, even in Picard and Janeway’s time. Famously, Voyager was stuck in the Delta Quadrant and ran into the Borg a lot. So Control has to not only be sent back in time several centuries, but also moved halfway across the galaxy.
Sure. This is all doable because Discovery has the Spore Drive. So it’s possible they could jump Control to the Delta Quadrant, thinking they are leaving it alone, and then it evolves into the Borg. But if Discovery jumps to the Delta Quadrant with Control, the Borg will already be there, because in the current timeline that’s where they live. Bottom line: you need both the Spore Drive and the wonky time travel from this season to get Control in the right place and the right time to become patient zero for the Borg. That seems like a lot of retcon. Even for Discovery.
2. Starfleet doesn’t know about the Borg in the future.
When Q Brings the Enterprise-D to the J-25 system in the TNG episode “Q Who?” Picard is like, the Borg whaaat? This is the year 2365, which is 108 years in Discovery’s future. In theory, this is literally the first time anyone in Starfleet has heard about the Borg. Of course Guinan, who is like a gillion years old, knows about the Borg because they destroyed her homeworld. This is where things get tricky. In Star Trek Generations, Guinan is an El-Aurian refugee and is rescued by the Enterprise-B in 2293. Which is weird. Did the El-Aurians just not tell anyone in Starfleet about who exactly destroyed their home planet? Now, 2293 is only 36 years in Discovery’s future, meaning, if Control does become the Borg at this point in time, there needs to be a good reason why Starfleet doesn’t put two and two together, twice.
There’s a wrinkle here of course. In the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Dark Frontier,” it’s made 100 percent clear that people in the Federation, specifically Seven of Nine’s parents, had heard rumors of the Borg in 2356, roughly ten years before The Next Generation. The point? People in Star Trek seem to have canonical amnesia about the Borg.
3. Those aren’t Borg ships in Spock’s vision.
This one is easy. The ships in Spock’s apocalyptic vision aren’t Borg cubes, spheres, or even that funky hodgepodge Borg ship from “Descent.” Instead, the ships look more like something like the Vorlon cruisers in Babylon 5. As of this writing, Babylon 5 ships totally aren’t part of Star Trek canon, even in the strangest corners of the minds of Benny Russell, conspiracy theorists, or the author of this article.
Star Trek: Discovery season 2 has just three episodes left to wrap up all this Control business…and for someone on screen to maybe say the word “Borg.”
Ryan Britt is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and an editor at Fatherly. He is a longtime contributor to Tor.com.
Clearly Discovery is part of KAOS. Chief founded the Department of Temporal Investigations, and 99 was actually a tortoiseshell cat working for Gary 7.
Probably, it seems that DCS has two aims:
1. To jam itself so far into canon that people who preferred the previous Trek incarnations simply cannot ignore it and just go about their fandoms without thinking about it. Because, I dunno, the showrunners seem to be aware that there are people not loving it and wanting it to go away, and just want to drive those people out of Trek fandom forever so nobody can contradict their own vision.
2. Hating me on a personal level.
Things I never want to see in Star Trek again because they were just so overdone, which I was already never wanting to see again even before this show aired, were Prequels (ENT and JJTrek), The Mirror Universe (DS9), Time Travel and the Borg (Voyager and ENT). Really, they’ve only got the Borg left. Okay, the Borg and Neelix; so no doubt S3 will have a time travelling Borgified Neelix from the Mirror Universe and they’ll have the full bingo card.
@22
Time-traveling Borg go back to the Jurassic and bring back a collectivized tyrannosaur with really tiny arms.
@3. Okay, that I would watch.
If they make that the next Jurassic World movie as a crossover event then I am in that cinema.
Just about every alien in Trekland looks humanoid (it’s the universal translator effect; they all look human and they all speak English) but it would be nice to have some different looking Borg every so often.
Like the Borg Horta. “WE ASSIMILATE YOU”
I don’t even know what the Borg is supposed to be anymore. It was supposed to be a fully distributed species but then we introduced some weird hive structure in First Contact (with a queen as a single point of failure, fully contradicting the entire point of the Borg). It stopped being interesting or even making sense long ago.
Information is one thing, putting it all together is another
After the Enterprise D encounter, a connection may have been made
If so, I’m really looking forward to an Enterprise-style ending.
OK, I have read a lot about this on many sites. I think they are all missing some very important parts of this idea. So here goes:
1)airiam. What are the borg? Augmented species. What was airiam? Augmented human.
2)control and airiam. Control effectively took over airiam, discovery deleted her data, but we have all accidently deleted something and had to use recovery software and recovered it.
3)we also have both time travel and virtually instant space travel so it is potentially possible airiam could have ended up anywhere, control could even have captured her body.
4)why do the borg, mainly heavily armed males, have an unarmed queen? Airiam!
5)actor change, maybe Sara mitich didn’t want to play the borg and hannah chesman wants to. It was a little tongue in cheek and odd the way they bought lt. Nilsson onto the bridge. (if you missed it go back and have a look).
Im sure I’ve missed load as well.
Matt
These are all my ideas, if I’ve missed similar elsewhere I can only apologise. Please don’t steal without a name check. Thanks
Oh Damme. It’s going to be the Borg. The only thing against it is problems with continuity and we know how little those matter..
Don’t forget the magic Red Angel suit that can leapfrog across the galaxy and transport church-sized structures 50,000 LY. Locating the Borg in the Delta Quadrant is a picnic. Same for relocating them in time. That’s what happens when you make a MacGuffin that’s too powerful.
Where the hell is Terralysium located again? The New Terrans may be the seed for the New Borg, especially after Starfleet denied them access to tech because… Prime Directive. This show is so small sometimes it may as well have all the known planets in the same star system.
But really, it’s the origin story of the Cylons.
As a one or two time apocalyptic foe the Borg were great. As a recurring villain they became pretty uninteresting and the attempts to make them more interesting only made them even less interesting. Hey, how about bringing back the Sheliak!?
Sigh… again with the Borg…
But, you know, it’s been over a decade since we last saw them in Star Trek, just before smartphones, Facebook, and Twitter assimilated so many humans. If Discovery and the Picard series absolutely must bring back the Borg in some fashion, please let it be done smartly. I mean, sure, we’ve got Alex Kurtzman running this particular collective of Hollywood creatives, so it’ll probably devolve into yet more melodramatic schlock. I only wish something intelligent might be said about our current relationship with technology.
Food for thought, Star Trek? Please, I’m starving…
Of course they’ll bring in the Borg. They’ve shown little care for canon and continuity thus far, so the Borg is merely the next check box. Next they’ll bring in Cardassians and Ferengi.
@13. Spike: “I only wish something intelligent might be said about our current relationship with technology.”
That’s the inherent problem and limitation of doing a prequel series which they are trying hard to sync up with another series made way before our current level of tech. They don’t even need a rogue AI. They could go with the World Wide Web becoming sentient and call it the first Sentient Artificial Intelligence (SI or SAI).
But because it must match up with TOS, we are headed in the direction of RI (Restricted Intelligence).
(nod to Peter F Hamilton)
Instead of BECOMING the Borg, it is possible that Control becomes assimilated by the Borg. That would give them access to handy dandy nanoprobe technology and knowledge of a fresh new species out there to asssimilate.
@15. Yep, they could’ve saved themselves a lot of grief, plus opened up more possibilities, if they had set the show after Voyager. But Fuller had some obsession with Sarek and Amanda, I seem to recall. So we’re stuck with that time period.
@16/ta2025:
I could get on board with that. Pre-STFC (1996), we didn’t see use of nanoprobes and injection tubules by individual drones in the field. The only assimilation we did see was Picard (in BoBW, 1990), that was in an operating bay, and Crusher diagnosed his recovery to be “simple microsurgery”. (When the not-yet-called-drones shanghaied him off the bridge of the Enterprise they stuck something in his neck, but it had none of the later VFX, so until the show says otherwise we’re free to interpret it as a simple knockout drug or neural paralyzer.) At that point in the saga we believed the Borg ate cities and reproduced via creches, and Picard’s assimilation seemed to be a new or specialized tactic.
Possible, but it would go on the Collective’s “to do” list. It/they was/were presumably still occupied by the ample distinctiveness of the Delta Quadrant … depending on what kind of timey-wimey shenanigans CONTROL goes through, such that its assimilation happens in some year other than DIS’s 2257, and/or the injectable nanites aren’t immediately or widely deployed.
Please, no. Not the Borg.
You have to remember that the OS was made in the 1960s before the first “modern” computer so what they were doing was so detach from reality. So much of their future tech has already been surpassed in the real world.
Even tng was early 90s, ie before we all had mobiles and pcs in the home, the lucky ones of us had a basic home games computer like a spectrum or commodore.
Star trek is “only” a fictional story that had no concept originally of different itinerations. If it was kept to Canon we wouldn’t watch it because it would all be bs.
I’m not too bothered about Discovery playing fast and loose with timelines and canon. But there would be one glaring plot hole that would ruin it for me if Control did turn out to be the Borg.
If the Borg originated from a Federation AI, why in the beginning of First Contact would they go back in time to assimilate Earth a century or two before that AI would be developed? Pretty much textbook grandfather paradox. Mind you, I still haven’t managed to wrap my head around the timey-wimey shenanigans that led to future-Control travelling backwards in time to give present-Control a sentience jumpstart. That’s enough of a paradox as is.
What I have in mind, the Control not the Borg origin.
It would be Dr.Burnham assimilated with the suit become the first Borg, the coalision in time tavel did it. That’s one big reason there is queen borg, the reason why borg have human appearance and that’s what make the different between the Borg and The Control. The Borg clearly want to assimilate as to survive not destroying life existence as Control. Borg build upon human consciousness from Dr. Burnham.
I want real Borg. Not human lookalikes.
So… Here is a thought. (A terribly rambling thought) What if Section 31 built control (among other things) from the Borg tech from the Antarctic that was discovered during the Enterprise Era? Let’s say Discovery’s crew stop scontrol but it somehow hides itself nn federation tech once it gets defeated (but not destroyed). Fast forward to Next Gen era, the Borg encounter this new evolutionary offshoot of it’s own self when they encounter the Enterprise D. And when they take some data they get, for lack of a better term, infected by control and thus they change rapidly. And because Control came from Borg Tech that utilized a queen, the pre-first contact Borg now have a queen just in time for them to assimilate locutus a year later.
Or maybe I’m stretching.
@24. Brian: Not convoluted enough…
@25 I can go deeper. I only referenced the shows. I could also pull out the games… That’s a rabbit hole and a half.
Reminds me of an anecdote Michael Piller told about pitching a story idea to Gene Roddenberry.
“What’s the story about?” Roddenberry asked.
Piller began describing a long, convoluted plot involving Romulans and Klingons and struggle for power between this and that and the other, then Roddenberry interrupted him.
“No, what’s the story ABOUT?”
Control is not nor has it ever been the Borg . Let me explain. Control is actually an AI created by humans in the year 2031 and is later after the 3rd world war put into the NX class ships. However by then the AI or control is now a sentient free thinking intelligence and has become the head of the coalition of planets and later the federations top secret covert operations division of starfleet codenamed section 31 which they justify their existence in section 31 of the starfleet charter in that they believe they are protecting the federation at all costs . So u see control cannot be the Borg and I honestly believe that star trek discovery is going to be bringing in section 31 at some point soon.
Well the Borg were an homage to the cybermen of Dr Who so sending them back in time and space just makes them come full circle
@28 – Ryan: This whole season of Discovery has included Section 31. And what you say about Control sounds like the stuff from David Mack’s S31 novel “Control”. They may have taken some inspiration from it, but they’re not actually adapting it.
In the novels, control was developed to protect the federation. It is built into every piece of federation technology. The novel series that deals with Control is the Section 31 series involving Dr. Bashir. Control is not what becomes the Borg, so it will be interesting to see what Discovery does with Control.
They might not of heard of the Borg in TNG era which is good because Discovery does not call them, The Borg. That way TNG might still know of the Borgs early history but only them by a different name. Never making the connection because of the Borgs vast distance from Earth and their first incarnation was not visably Borgish.
The Star Trek Destiny trilogy should be canon. If you’re a fan of the borg it’s a must read.
@24/Brian:
Counter-proposal: CONTROL (I’m sticking with all-caps, because it’s distinctive and thematic for a spy organization) is of fully human (or joint UFP) software design, but it’s using Borg-derived tech recovered from Earth’s Arctic during ENT. (Not Antarctic. Apparently Earth still has/again has snow-covered Russian-Alaskan-Canadian-etc. regions between 2061 and 2170.) Section 31 is the sort of agency to use illegal, suppressed, ill-gotten or bleeding-edge tech.
FWIW, as depicted in microscopy scenes, both Borg nanoprobes and CONTROL’s injection are black and glowing-green — but Borg devices are angular, and CONTROL’s are ovoid.
I wouldn’t mind if it’s adapted some of that tech leftover from the Enterprise episode. Just not actual Borg.
This is the best Star Trek series since TNG and everyone I know loves it. Getting really dull hearing the basement dwellers harping on about the canon. It’s Sci fi. It doesn’t have to fit. Just enjoy it for what it is rather than keep shooting it down until it gets pulled by the network and then we have no Star Treks again.
@37. Pulled by the network? There are two or three other Star Treks in the pipeline right now. I think we’re gonna be Trekking for a while.
There is time travel in ST cannon, and data, software, is easier to copy and distribute than most physical matter. Though with teleporters and replicators and spore travel and time travel, really, anything or anyone could be fairly easily duplicated en masse and distributed wildly across the universe. So why couldn’t some slighty corrupted but still sentient version of Control end up in the Delta quad in the 14th century, and on the doorstep of some low tech or early space fairing species; possibly in one of many copies of Airiam.
The whole point of Star Trek is the speculation of what could be possible in our future, therefore it was created in an imaginary universe where really everything can be possible. So, don’t rule anything out.
Who in God’s name sits around and comes up with this? This isn’t news, itsi speculation based on what if, what abouts and remember whens. Its not just Star Trek its also Star Wars, the Avengers and others. Speculation, sensationalism and theories is ALL this is. I mean really? Who comes up with this junk?
No one knows when the Borg were created. They first appeared in STTNG and subsequently in Voyager. There was an appearance in Enterprise that was connected to First Contact which took place before Enterprise. A few Borg were “ejected” for lack of a better term and were discovered during the Enterprise series. There should be no other Borg appearances until STTNG. Simple. Trying to create a connection between Control and the Borg is both artificial and contrived and (I believe at least) takes creditability from the series.
Speculation. SMH!
In the episode of Yoyager where they meet the Vaadwaur, Janeway brings that Vaadwaur they saved from the underground caverns aboard and when he sees Seven of Nine, he asks her is she is Borg. She replies, yes she was, he asked her if she remembers their race, she responds no because the Borg memory from 900 years ago is fragmented and hard to determine. He said that the Borg then was not a true threat then. So if you are to follow canon, the Borg existed 900 years prior to the events of that episode, or 700 years prior to the events of this past episode of Discovery. So either Leland gets sent to the past Delta quadrant and becomes the Borg, none this would make sense. The Vaadwaur were in those caverns for 900 years in stasis in the Delta Quadrant. If the trans warp corridors existed back then, I suppose they could have scooped up Leland an assimilated him. Guess we will find out soon.
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I hope it’s not the Borg. This series has given us some really good episodes, so I’ve been forgiving of the continuity errors. But I can only take so much. Faster than light travel and Panspermia I can suspend my disbelief for, but spore drives and sisters that never get mentioned? My credibility is already at the breaking point, so if it is the Borg, I’m afraid I may just throw up my hands and walk away.
Please, Star Trek Discovery, show us something NEW, not another iteration of an already over-used species.
P. S. — This applies to the Klingons, too. :-)
@44, their record says they won’t.
Control isn’t the Borg we know from the Vudwaar episode of Voyager that the Borg were assimilating planets 400 years before that race was woken from stasis. We also know from First Contact that the Borg were a species on April 5th.
Control is first mentioned in the Section 31 novels and is an AI defense network which predates the Federation and Starfleet. Humanity in Trek has sent several AI probes into space before including Nomad in 2002.
@46. Amos: April 5th? Like, tomorrow? That means we see the origin of the Borg in tonight’s episode…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the version of Control that infected Leland the one from the distant future? If so, it comes from a time when Federation scientists will presumably have analyzed and replicated Borg technology. Control uses Borg-derived nanotechnology because that it can, and because it knows that 23rd century Starfleet will not be able to resist it.
This isn’t the origin of the Borg, it’s an AI from the future using Borg tech.
@9 Sara Mitch is both LCdr. Ariam and Lt. Nilsson. A demotion in rank but she gets to ditch the makeup and prosthetics, and the show doesn’t have to go through the process of finding and hiring a new person, nor do they have to ‘break in’ a new person to do what’s essentially the same role. She already knows everything about that bridge station. They also have less sound work to do since there’s no longer the post processing on her voice.
I wonder how much money the show saves with this one character but not actor change?
Seems to be a lot of hate for the show. Makes me wonder why people have read this article then feel the need to contradict their interest by stating a lack of interest Me, I’m just enjoying the ride, Borg or no Borg
Borg and Borg ! What is Borg ? It is Control, is it not ?
I’ve not really been bothered with Discovery’s out-of-kilterness with TOS, but I’m not convinced about Control becoming the Borg.
To me, the disparagy is that Control is set on eliminating all biological life in the galaxy, whereas the Borg are biological lifeforms, but enhanced with cybernetic tech and effectively networked to a hive mind. Borg “citizens” can be de-Borged, but those taken by control, are dead. It’s just their physical forms that were used in order to have some covert interaction with humans et al.
Unless after being sent several hundred years back, Control has a change of heart…
No I don’t think Control is the Borg, the whole idea is misleading and they played us good. The fact is Control is simply a first look at sentient AI designed by Starfleet I’m thinking along the lines of early holo technology that lead to the conception of the Voyager doctor. Although this point is mute, what we basically have is a botched military experiment. What I’m more interested in is the future the Red Angel is supposedly from and what sort of threat the future Federation faces, as it was kind of hinted at considering the technology. So far we don’t know if Control is the same Control from the far future sent back to destroy all life. Something could have easily manipulated with the timeline, perhaps there is Romulan interference what ultimately builds on the Picard series.
Don’t forget in first contact the borgs mission is to contact borg who already existed at the time of first contact which is before control and discovery.
@Archimedes
Great Spock’s Brain callback.
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The problem with Star Trek over the years is that the producers and networks don’t hire trekkies to write these shows. They hire skilled writers, who may be familiar and do their homework, but have not seen all 750 episodes of trek multiple times like we, as fans, have. Therefore, errors in cannon exist. If they hired me (us) to write these shows, there would be no errors. However, the writers they hire, don’t take the cannon as biblical as us fans do.
Not sure if the previous comment is sarcasm or not…
who even cares anymore?
It’s all moot- Discovery sucks.
To introduce the Borg would have to explain the Caeliar. At least non canonically speaking. Novels explain the origins.
They don’t care about the novels, they might pick and choose one or two things here and there (like Control for Section 31), but even that will change. They can, and probably go in a different direction than the novels for the Borg origins. If they even look into that.
You know, at this point, the only good news for Trek would be redoing it entirely. Sooo….
How about a series taking place in the future time period that occasionally popped up in Voyager? Make the Borg the bizarrely changed descendents of members of a colony ship, sent into the Delta Quadrant through an artificial wormhole. Get rid of the Borg Queen and the Borg habit of assimilating people. Show corruption in the Federation, and revolution brewing among the Borg.
Have characters, for once, who wouldn’t be all goodie-goodie or completely evil – somewhere in the gray areas in between. Sometimes the Federation would be the good guys; sometimes the Borg; sometimes no one would have what’s right and just in their mind, and sometimes the choices would all look bad, no matter how well-meaning one was.
Perhaps bring back a few old characters. Picard, more machine than man, letting his Borg side creep back to ward off death; a disgraced hero, a coward in his own eyes, regretting his decision every hour of every day, and forced to live with it. Janeway, a withered corpse barely kept alive by the machines tending her, telling her story to her children and grandchildren and wishing for the light of better days. Worf: Klingon ex-admiral, white-haired and world-weary, no longer able to deal with the Federation’s web of lies, disenchanted with his life and his race. Seven of Nine, machine once more, a lonely aging starship with a human brain, roving the vast empty spaces in search of some answer and unable to decide which side she’s on, which path to choose. Spock, another brain in a tank, unwilling prophet to a people who have at long last, and against all hope, abandoned all pretense of reason.
Redo the ships. No more smooth-ugly hulls and crazy Christmas-tree lights; smooth dull metal now, vast ominous dark shapes that slide through space like silent birds, sensors turning, sifting the emptiness.
Try to hire Greg Egan and Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds for writing the scripts, perhaps. Get some serious science consultation. Do time-travel stories without the damn reset button. No more noise in space, no more stupid technobabble. Have new characters that people actually care about, new alien races that are scientifically pluasible without having to resort to hokey genetic seeding hypotheses, genuinely interesting and innovative plots.
But then it wouldn’t be Trek, would it? The essence of Trek, after all, is and always has been pure and unadulterated cheese. If you make it worthy of serious viewing, it’s not Trek any more.
Enquiry:
Was there not a “Borg” storyline in “ENTERPRISE”?
That would mean that knowledge of the Borg existed since the time of Jonathan Archer. Sooooooo:
Why then, would Pike, Kirk, and Picard not know of them?