The Borg in ‘Star Trek,’ explained

Described by Captain Jean-Luc Picard as “utterly without mercy,” and “driven by one will alone: the will to conquer,” the Borg are a cybernetic hivemind with devastating technological superiority to the Federation, and one of the most feared factions in all of Star Trek. Their goal is to “assimilate” other races and civilizations into their own Borg Collective, and in doing so attain “perfection.” Picard concluded that any Borg Drone still connected to the Collective was “beyond redemption, beyond reason.”

Early encounters

First introduced in the season 2 Next Generation episode “Q Who?,” the Borg’s initial encounter with Starfleet was terrifying. The Enterprise, under Captain Jean-Luc Picard, was thrown into the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy by the powerful being known as Q. Here, they encountered Borg Cubes, giant cube-shaped ships. All attempts at peaceful communication failed, and the Enterprise crew watched helplessly as part of the ship’s hull was cut away and taken over to the Cube, resulting in the loss of eighteen crewmembers.

The Enterprise’s best efforts to resist were fruitless. A boarding party led by Commander William Riker was able to enter the Cube on foot, but the horrors they saw forced them to retreat. The situation became dire, and the Enterprise was only saved when Picard begged Q for mercy, who agreed and returned the ship to its home quadrant.

But the Borg, having now encountered a Federation vessel, set their sights on Earth. A full-scale invasion was soon launched, during which the Borg carved through some of Starfleet’s best ships at the infamous Battle of Wolf-359, in which a single Cube destroyed 39 starships, resulting in the loss of approximately 11,000 lives (one of whom was Jennifer Sisko, wife of future Deep Space Nine Commander Benjamin Sisko). During the invasion, Picard was abducted by Borg drones and assimilated into the Borg Collective.

The invasion was narrowly thwarted only by the quick thinking of the android Data, who was able to turn the Borg’s assimilation of Picard against them by using him to send a command which neutralized the Cube. Picard would physically recover, but go on to have lifelong PTSD from the experience.

Moral dilemmas

For a time after this, the Borg made no reappearance in the Alpha Quadrant until some years later the Enterprise again encountered the Collective, discovering a crashed Borg ship surrounded by dead drones with only one survivor. Picard ordered that the drone be brought aboard the Enterprise, and that research begin into a way to use the drone as a living weapon so that he could be returned to the Borg fleet with a virus that would destroy them all.

Several of the Enterprise crew ordered to work on the mission began to doubt the ethics of their assignment, especially when the drone began to exhibit signs of sentience and independence after being severed from the Collective. Picard’s past experience with the Borg made him hardened against these objections, but the interjection of his trusted friend Guinan – herself a victim of the Borg – forced him to reconsider. It was determined that the drone, named Hugh by the crew, was now an independent lifeform and that the original plan could not go ahead. Hugh ultimately volunteered to sacrifice himself by returning to the Collective in order to protect the Enterprise.

The Borg would be encountered once or twice more, but largely remained at home in the Delta Quadrant, where they were an immense force. In the year 2371, the USS Voyager, commanded by Captain Kathryn Janeway, was unexpectedly thrown 70,000 lightyears away into the Delta Quadrant during its very first mission. Despite the danger posed by the Borg and the impossibility of ever getting home, Janeway decided to voluntarily strand Voyager and its crew in this distant region of space in order to save a helpless alien species from destruction. Voyager thus began its journey home, which would eventually take them deep into Borg space.

Voyager’s saga

After some terrifying initial encounters, Voyager eventually fully entered Borg space. The Borg, however, were already at war: Species 8472, a near-immortal alien species from a completely separate region of space, were invading Borg space and proving more than a match. As it seemed the only way through, Janeway made the incredibly high-risk decision to forge a temporary alliance with the Borg, with the full expectation of being betrayed. When this betrayal came, Voyager was ready, and managed to extricate itself from the battleground. One Borg drone, who had been sent to oversee the alliance, was left behind on Voyager during the confusion. Severed from the Collective, she began to redevelop her personality just as Hugh had, and took the name Seven of Nine.

Seven proved invaluable during Voyager’s subsequent skirmishes with the Borg, her knowledge of their technology and tactics allowing the crew to remain one step ahead of the omnipresent Borg threat. During their adventures, the Voyager crew came to realize that the Borg may not be “beyond redemption,” as Picard had believed, and that de-assimilation was in some cases possible. The crew were even able to liberate a small group of children who had been assimilated.

Around this time, the Borg attempted another invasion of Earth, this time by rewriting Earth’s history. The invasion was once again thwarted by the Enterprise, who followed the Borg to the past to ensure that history would remain unaltered. During this, the crew encountered the Borg’s apparent leader, named the Borg Queen.

Final defeat and future of the Borg

Later, Voyager was offered an unexpected shortcut home – another Kathryn Janeway arrived from decades into the future. Her plan was to allow herself to be assimilated, as she carried a custom-made neurolytic pathogen in her blood. Upon assimilation, the virus caused anarchy among the Borg drones, while Voyager hijacked the Borg’s transportation network to shoot themselves home. In the process, the hub was destroyed in an explosive chain reaction, cutting the Borg off from the Alpha Quadrant and stranding them 70,000 light years from Earth.

But the saga did not end with the heroic exploits of Janeway and her crew. Star Trek: Picard‘s third season saw the Borg return with a vengeance. This time, under the direction of the Borg Queen, their plan was more subtle. They sought to covertly assimilate all younger Starfleet personnel at once, and have them turn on their older colleagues. Fortunately, Picard and his old Next Gen shipmates were unaffected. They managed to steal the Enterprise-D (by then sitting as a relic in a fleet museum), and foil her sadistic plan.

An enemy as well-crafted as the Borg will always have a chance of returning in future iterations of Trek. As a hive mind, they appeared to be a monster of unspeakable menace. Yet, as episodes like “I Borg” and “Survival Instinct” showed, inside each drone was an individual screaming to get out. This left Captains who confronted the Borg with a serious moral dilemma, and a level of nuance which future writers would do well to explore.