this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

“Listen. Strange women, hanging from the ceiling, distributing skin, is no basis for a system of government.”

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I didn't know we had a queen - I thought we were an anarcho-syndicalist collective?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working drones...

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

HELP! HELP! I'M BEING UNASSIMILATED!!

[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When they added the Borg "queen", I was really bummed - because I had definitely thought of them as an autonomous collective.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

I kind of hope they retcon that at some point.

In my head the justification for all of that is that the queen arose as a necessity to have a single individual for the crew of the Enterprise to interact with. This required her to have a certain amount of autonomy from the collective consciousness, the end result was that she turned into a bit of a dictator and because she had control over the collective she essentially took over without much fight. This would have been obvious to anyone else that this was a possibility, but the Borg had no experience of individuality in the collective before that, so the concern never occurred to them.

Eventually she died and the collective were released from her, and now they are back to being a hive mind. A hive mind that has learned not to do that again.

The reason seven of nine did not become like that was because the queen knew that that was a possibility, and so kept her largely connected so she could to a large extent control her.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (7 children)

What is the point of the Queen then?

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Personification that changed the original concept for the sake of the story.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

More importantly, it's just a comic.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, but it works best with the original BORG concept, before they introduced the queen.
The BORG was originally described as a collective, and a collective doesn't have rulers like a queen.
So I must admit I was a bit disappointed in the introduction of a BORG queen.
Still the BORG remain a very cool part of Star Trek.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

Do we even know: does the Borg queen truly control the collective, or is she rather a manifestation of something still more deeply hidden?

Perhaps at the core of the core, it really is a collective? I suppose this ~~like~~ (edit: level) of argumentation is useless, like that thought experiment of glass mountains on the moon, but still I wonder.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It depends on who's writing the episode. In First Contact she was implied to be an avatar of the Collective rather than an individual that controls it. Or possibly a gestalt consciousness formed as a byproduct of the Collective's structure of interlinking minds. The VOY writers didn't really get it, though, so she became a true individual on that show and in her future appearances.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Blah blah it's a special case done b/c of the time travel blah - maybe something along those lines? :-)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

In First Contact, when she died, all of the regular Borg immediately dropped dead.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

She is very much in control. In unimatrix zero double episode, she commands self destruct of whole cubes just because one drone was not under her complete control, that's how much she is afraid of any independent thought.

And how much control she has over the rest.

  • "Suicide, now!"
  • "Yes, mah queen"
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Right, so she is like a program running with sudo permissions on a Unix machine. She holds the hidden, backdoor keys to control the thoughts of the mere "drones" below her, even as each ship itself had a singular authority (iirc?) who could do similarly for those "below" them. But what I mean is, what above moving back "up" that chain - does she likewise have hidden backdoor keys to control her thoughts, which she would not necessarily (or even likely) be aware of herself?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That, and even if she has sudo perms so to speak, that doesn't necessarily make it impossible for her to be a manifestation or byproduct of the borg collective consciousness.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Exactly - this conspiracy theory could go all the way to the core, and beyond! Or not, but it's fun to think about anyway:-).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There is/was no cube hierarchy. You have the Borg queen and then everything else. Ship sizing wasn't an indication of anything there than use case iirc.

Plus, a collective, as well as one ran by a leader, has no use case for a tiered authority structure. Unless compromised, Borg already always know the current plan. Thats why any ship could destroy every other ship.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I dunno, that seems like a ginormous gaping security hole, if any ship containing mere drones could be compromised - even the tiniest ones with the least powerful engines (& thus shields, etc.) - and then it in turn could decide to blow up the queen... and/or literally all other ships. Any collective with such a feature baked-in sounds like it would not remain in existence for all that long, unless there were literally no other species nearby it that were even remotely close to their level of technological development.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Each drone is a brain-cell of the collective brain, the Queen is the personality that eventually formed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Still sucks, Borg were better as unpersonal

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

In order to interact with other groups they evolved a figure head

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Oh... that's very interesting. Is that from the lore? Was it on purpose? It doesn't matter bc either way it's fascinating to think about how the "corruption" of the original purpose lead to the masses being controlled by a central figure with absolute authority.

Or another way to say that is that their society itself evolved and adapted to face their external circumstances, but anyway somehow it always ends up with an elite cadre of illuminati-like figures on top, and everyone else is just an entirely disposable peon.

Which makes me wonder now about whether the ocean of changelings themselves has things like "rulers".

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago

To show that hack writers didn't get what made the borg cool and scary. They turned then into normal boring bad guys.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

That actually makes sense. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Exploiting the workers.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Also, someone's gotta handle all those supply requisitions.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

You may have noticed there is more than one Borg queen. They take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major decisions.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

'We're the Borg of the Round Table"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

And this is the Holy Hand Grenade of Andorra

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Well I can't just call you "Borg."

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I didn't know you were called 3 of 7!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well you didn't ask, did you?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I did say 'sorry' about the 'old robot', but from the behind you looked--

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What I object to is that you automatically treat me like an individual.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Well I am captain!

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[–] dudinax 9 points 3 months ago

The borg dystopia is the best dystopia.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Have to say I prefer the Queen over Trump/Vance.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

At least she admits she's evil.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

"Must be a king!"

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, he doesn't have shit all over him."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

The workers actually think they're in charge... even while they are not allowed by the GroupThink to have a single thought that runs counter to the collective will.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, the Romulans:
"I FART IN YOUR GENERAL DIRECTION!!!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Silly federation kniggits.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Aquatic ceremonies are irrelevant.

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