Borg

:This article is about the fictional race of aliens. For other uses, see Borg (disambiguation).

Origin of the Borg

"Borg from V'ger" theory

It has also been speculated that there could be a connection between the origin of the Borg and V'ger, the vessel encountered in ', as is asserted in William Shatner's novel, The Return. The two organisms are similar in philosophy:

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• The Borg are born as wholly organic beings, and melded with hardware to become part machine. They idolize a totally machine state, which is what allows Lore to conquer them in 'Descent'.
• V'ger is originally a machine, but it wanted to see and touch its creator in order to proceed to the next level of life.

The final form of V'ger is the machine somehow "melded" with the two persons. With reasonable conjecture, the Borg, a cybernetic organism, a mixture between man and the machine, is born.

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Following ', the "Borg from V'Ger" origin theory has a few obstacles.

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• The Borg attempt to use the Enterprise's deflector dish as a subspace transmitter to contact the Borg existing in their time. Voyagers 3-6 have not been launched as of 2005. Assuming V'Ger (Voyager 6) was launched some time in 2005, by 2063 a spacecraft traveling at Warp .99 would be no more than a short trip from Earth at maximum warp, hardly a distance which would require a subspace transmitter to contact anybody.
• V'Ger has not merged with its creator prior to this date, and thus would not yet be part human.
• Even before the film was released, Guinan mentioned (in an episode of ') that the Borg had been in existence for thousands of centuries, so they would already have been around long before V'Ger was ever created.
• This is also supported by the story of the Vaadwaur who reported contact with the Borg 900 years ago – that episode took place in the 2370s, so contact between the Borg and Vaadwaur would be in the 1400s.

One possible solution to these problems arises from the fact mentioned in Star Trek: The Motion Picture that Voyager 6 disappeared when it fell into a wormhole. One of the known properties of wormholes is that due to the effects of special relativity, they can not only be holes through space, but through time as well. Therefore, the wormhole that Voyager 6 (V'Ger) fell into could very well have taken it across the galaxy and backwards in time thousands of years.

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"V'ger from Borg" theory

The V'ger origin story could be reversed into a "V'Ger from Borg" origin theory – V'Ger could have been aided by Borg. V'Ger mentions in a visual presentation of its origin that it was once a smaller machine, one of NASA's Voyager space probes. It was then rescued and augmented by a race of machines. The name or nature of this machine planet, however, is never elaborated upon, and could well belong to the Borg. A piece of supporting evidence can be found in the novelisation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture written by Gene Roddenberry. In the novel, the V'Ger entity notes that the Ilia probe is resisting the programming given to it because of the residual memories and feelings for Decker. When V'Ger becomes aware of this, it is aware that "the resistance was futile, of course", which is almost identical to the Borg phrase, "Resistance is futile".. The Star Trek novels aren't considered canonical, but it can be considered as at least circumstantial evidence, especially as the novel was written by Star Trek's creator.

Related Topics:
NASA - Voyager

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One could go even further and pose the question "Why, if they have been around for thousands of years, have the Borg not succeeded in dominating the galaxy?" There are few examples of effective resistance against the Borg, and the two battles of Sector 001, both of which ended in a Borg defeat (though the second outcome is perhaps not so clear-cut), must surely be the exception. Human beings will not make contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life until 2063, and Species 8472, the other race on the short list of those who have defended territory against the Borg, does not enter space as we know it until about 400 years later. Again, however, the Vaadwaur might provide an answer by stating the species had several encounters with the Borg, and "lived to tell the tale". This would suggest that the Borg were not the overwhelming force of the 24th century for most of their existence. Further, it may also be the case that the Borg simply tried to assimilate species that it found sufficiently interesting and add to their "perfection"; Seven of Nine once stated to Neelix that the Kazons were not worth assimilating because they would not add to the Borg's perfection.

Related Topics:
Species 8472 - Seven of Nine - Neelix - Kazon

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Another explanation may lie in the particulars of the evolution of the Borg. V'Ger's mission is "to learn all that is learnable" – perhaps to an intelligent machine all that is learnable is abstraction. Were V'Ger to join, perhaps become an emissary for a race (or collective) of computers whose purpose is to collect all of the information in the universe – to dominate the Platonic realm, one could view the Borg as having more machine history than cybernetic and see the mission of the Borg as it is more commonly understood – one of acquisition and integration of all of the life, culture, and technology in the universe – as having been born the day V'Ger "joined" with Captain Decker. The purpose of this joining was to enable V'Ger to understand "the rest of the picture" – could this terrible menace be machine though sparked by a glimpse of human understanding?

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The obstacle to a "V'Ger from Borg" theory is the apparently great distance between Earth and the space dominated by Borg. Possible rationalizations to address this include:

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• Since the Borg obviously were able to travel back into time in the film, it is conceivable that they travelled back at another point to establish a hive in the 21st century.
• V'Ger mentions in its visual presentation of its origin that it passed through a kind of disturbance, possibly a wormhole, on its trip to the machine world.

Nanobot theory

Though not in the formal continuity, a speculative story in the recent short story anthology Strange New Worlds VI offered a theory of their creation. It stated that the Borg came about on a world suffering from a devastating plague. One of the victims was the granddaughter of the planet's ruler, and she forced the scientists treating the plague to attempt a new treatment upon her. Nanotech was introduced into her body, which eliminated the virus and restored her. However, the nanotech was programmed not to make her as she had been before, but to make her perfect. Since she was naturally imperfect, they changed her body and brain, augmenting them with technology and creating the first Borg Queen. The scientists who changed her were put to death by her grandfather, who tried to kill her with gas. Her body adapted to this, removing the need to breathe and allowing her to introduce her nanobots into the wall of the room holding her, melting it, and allowing her to escape. While fighting her guards, she accidentally put the nanotech into one of them, thereby creating a link and changing him. In this way, the first Borg were born. Assimilating their homeworld, the Borg began to assimilate other planets.

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This seems to conflict with canonical reference from the show for two reasons: In Star Trek: Voyager episode "Dragon's Teeth", aliens (known as the Vaadwaur) in the Delta Quadrant (where Borg controlled space resides) who had been in suspended animation for centuries said that 900 years ago (Earth's 15th century) the Borg were only a minor nuisance and did not control the vast swaths of territory they later would. Also, in the Voyager episode "Unimatrix Zero" the Borg Queen stated that she was not a member of the original Borg race, but she and her family were assimilated when she was a child (of course, the Queen appearing in the episode might not have been the original Borg Queen).-->

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