Borg queen

[Teaos]

Many people hate her for just existing and other for the way that she was used.

I personally see a valid point to her. The Borg assimilates any species they think will add something to them. They use techniques that are best suited to the situation to achieve their goals.

The first time we see the Borg we get a generic attack. The Enterprise attacksthe borg, the Borg adapt and attack with a standard attack plan they have probably found works best for first encounters.

Latter after the Borg has had experience with us they decide that humanity may be more susceptible to a more "Emotional" enemy than a faceless one. They analyzed us and thought the best way to proceed would be on a emotion and psychological front as well as physical.

Then the adventures of Voyager comes along. Through there many dealings with the Borg the Borg may have decided that the use of the "Queen" would be of great help since conventional means didn't seem to work or were not appropriate.

I imagine the Borg have a lot of knowledge and have fought many battles and fought many species. Over this time they would come up with many ways to face different types of opponents. Maybe they decided the use of a more personal figure would help with the assimilation of a particularly irrational and tenacious species called humans.

The queen is used more and more as time goes on and she becomes more and more "human" this may just show the Borgs changing tactics when dealing with us as there old tactics didn't work.

[I Am Spartacus]

I don't like it. The Borg are not innovators. They are not capable of devising new tactics. That is part of their weakness. Their lack of creativity is not limited to technology. They launch steamroller attacks and are willing to take huge losses just to assimilate that one piece of technology that they think they need.

They're just not creative enough to develop a Borg Queen specifically to adapt to humanity's weaknesses.

Their adaptiveness applies pretty much only to weaponry. When Seven or whoever is faced with a situation and loudly declares "we will adapt," it's essentially just a catchphrase, Borg for "we're going to try the same thing over and over again and eventually we will win through because we have superior numbers and the will to take heavy casualties."

[Teaos]

But they didn't invent the queen. They have seen races rally around and fall before a single powerful figure. They assimilated the "Hero" complex many species have. It is just like them assimilating a new technology only this time it was a tactic.

[I Am Spartacus]

That doesn't fit in line with anything else the Borg do. Where's the specialised ships? Aside from the Queen's Yacht nonsense, for the most part we've only seen standard cubes.

They can't assimilate tactics. When they assimilate a being, they don't assimilate it's thoughts. They can take control of the hardware but not the software. They're aware of the memories, to a certain extent, of the individuals they assimilate, but they can't make use of them as the person's individuality is purged. The line goes "your biological and technological distinctiveness..." not "your art, culture, and military strategies shall be used by us, because we need to assimilate you to use them rather than just observe you for a while..."

But then again, they have completely trashed what the Borg should be. I'm not talking from a canonical perspective, rather from a perspective of what the Borg should be according to their spirit and philosophy.

[Teaos]

I agree the Borg are no longer as they were intended to be but I am saying I still like the way they are.

And why would they not addapt there tactics according to knowledge they get? Federation tactics are stored in there computers I imagin other species are similar thus the knowledge is easy to get for the borg.

The Borg addapted quickly in First contact by going back in time. A whole new strategy for them as far as we know.

It only makes sense they would do there best to attack and assimilate what they wanted. If they had a knowledge to finght someone better wouldn't they use it? And if that strategy was giving a personification of themselves wouldnt they do that to?

[I Am Spartacus]

If you're saying as they are rather than as they should or originally were intended to be, you may very well be correct.

[Teaos]

Yes. I agree with Graham that originally they were more or less a natural disaster. You may be able to fight it a bit or slow it down but usually you get the hell out of its way.

They way they are portrayed now though is different but in my opinion not bad.

[Tiberius]

Here's my take on it....

Let's work on the basis that the entire Borg Collective is made up of all the drones connected together. This would mean that each drone is like a cell in a brain.

By itself, a single brain cell is pretty much useless. But when you connect them together, they are able to form a wonderful working brain.

Likewise, a single drone by itself is pretty much useless. This matches what we've seen. Hugh was disconnected from the collective and he turned into a scared little boy. Seven was disconnected, and she hardly fared better. Both had to rediscover who they were - as disconnected Borg drones, they were pretty much useless. Only after they had rediscovered their identities were they able to function again.

So, this indicates to me that the Borg Collective is a single giant mind. And this mind is made up of all the drones functioning together, just as your brain is made up of all your brain cells working in unison.

Once we see the Borg Collective as a giant brain like this, it is easy to realise that this brain is actually a single mind. That is, the Borg Collective is one being - a single individual mind. Just as how the countless cells in a Human brain working together create just one mind, all the drones connected together in the Borg Collective form a single mind as well.

This mind is the Borg Queen.

I don't mean the physical body, of course. But the intelligence controlling the Queen's Body is in fact the Borg Collective, which is made up of all the drones throughout the Collective working together.

So once we have this intelligence, this single mind formed from the Borg Collective, it is easy to see that this single mind would be an individual, even though the drones are not individuals. It's just the same way that your mind is an individual, even though one of your brain cells by itself isn't.

This intelligence is able to control a single body like a puppet. This gives us the physical manifestation of the Borg Queen. The Queen's body is a puppet, controlled by an intelligence that is spread throughout the Borg Collective.

This matches very well with what we have seen on the screen.

We know the Queen was on the Cube that was destroyed in The Best of Both Worlds, yet she was able to survive. How? Because even though the physical body was destroyed, the mind controlling it was spread throughout the entire Collective. So even though the puppet was destroyed, the mind controlling it survived, and merely needed to take a new body.

The Queen in First Contact, however, was in a slightly different situation. When the Sphere travelled back in time, the Collective in the "present" (that is, the 24th century) was divided. The majority of the Collective remained in the 24th century, and this collective would have needed only to take a new body for the Queen.

Meanwhile, the small part of the Collective that came back in time was isolated. They were not able to communicate with the Borg of the 21st century (as indicated by the fact that they needed to create the beacon from the Enterprise's deflector dish), so the Borg that were on the Enterprise were their own miniature Collective. This greatly weakened the Queen that we saw - the Queen of the miniature Collective. The strength of the Queen is the fact that her mind is distributed throughout the entire Borg Collective. The larger the Collective, the safer she is, because the only way to destroy the Queen's mind is to destroy the entire Collective. A huge Collective is harder to destroy than a small one - a classic case of not putting all your eggs in one basket.

However, the Queen one the Enterprise did have all her eggs in one basket. The miniature Collective, cut off from the rest of the 21st century Borg, meant that the mind of the Queen that we saw on the Enterprise could only be made up of the drones on the Enterprise. Thus, when the drones were destroyed - there were some blown up by Worf on the deflector dish ("Assimilate THIS!!") and others destroyed when Data smashed the coolant tubes and liquified all organic material - the Queen's mind was no longer spread throughout the Drones and was instead confined entirely to the body of the Queen. Thus, when she fell into the coolant and her organic components were destroyed, the Queen was killed.

And because the Queen on the Enterprise had left the vast majority of the Collective behind in the 24th century, the Queen was able to survive, because the Collective was able to simply take a new body to be controlled by the Collective that had remained in the 24th century.

It was this Queen that was encountered by Voyager. When Seven was rescued from the Collective in Dark Frontier, the Queen was chasing the Delta Flyer, only to have her ship destroyed by the imploding transwarp conduit. But, as before, while the body of the Queen was destroyed, the intelligence controlling it was spread throughout the entire Collective, and was able to survive.

What happened to the Queen in Endgame isn't as clear, because we don't know how much damage was done to the Collective. If the virus introduced by Admiral Janeway spread throughout the Collective, it would almost certainly deal a fatal blow to the Borg, because it would attack the Queen's entire mind rather than just a part of it. However, if the Queen was able to isolate the affected parts of the Collective, the damage could be contained. This would effectively split the Collective into two parts, one part contaminated by the virus and doomed to destruction, but the other part remaining untouched and thus safe. This would be like amputating an infected limb to prevent the infection from spreading. For the foreseeable future, this will remain unknown.

This model of the Borg - the Collective being a single mind formed from all the drones functioning together and the Queen being the mind formed by that - explains just about everything we have seen on the screen (when viewed in this way, the Queen's cryptic remarks to Data in First Contact are easily understood) and it also explains how the Borg Queen is not just a good idea, but also a required part of the Borg Collective.

[Teaos]

That is a good idea and very plausable. We won't "Know" for sure until it is made canon but that seems as plausable as anything.

But while it does explain how she continues to live it doesn't really say Why she lives. Couldn't the collective mind control the Borg with out a physical manifistation? My summary was trying to explain why she exists not how.

[Tiberius]

Very true, Teaos, the Borg Collective doesn't need to provide the Queen with the "puppet" that we see as the Queen. The actual Queen herself is just a mind that exists spread throughout all the drones.

And I think that the Queen exists because once enough of the drones existed, they would have to form a mind, just as how the brain cells in your head have no choice but to function together.

I can see the early Collective being something like a population that used the implants to connect themselves together to share information, and as the number of drones that were interconnected grew larger and larger, the Collective came ever closer to acheiving sentience. And once it did, it became a conscious mind - a mind which we know as the Queen, and the mind that controls the physical body we know as the Queen (remembering that the mind of the Queen is separate from the body, that body being little more than a puppet).

So, to answer your question, the Borg Queen is the Collective, and she doesn't require a body at all really. But, being an individual mind, it's quite possible that she simply prefers to use a body sometimes, when she wants to communicate on a more personal level

[I Am Spartacus]

A Borg Hive mind would be a massive planet-sized computer bank, not a person. The human brain isn't capable of controlling the functions of trillions of individuals, and billions of ships and other associated gadgets. If the hive mind wanted to communicate on a "more personal level" (which makes no sense in and of itself), it would just use a drone.

[Tiberius]

As I said, the "Hive Mind" is formed from all the drones being connected together. It's not stored in a single massive computer bank, and I made it clear that the hive mind was NOT stored within the Queen's body.

[Teaos]

The reason for the personification of the Borg is what I have already theorised. That when dealing with certain species a more personal front may prove more effective.

[I Am Spartacus]

As I said, the "Hive Mind" is formed from all the drones being connected together. It's not stored in a single massive computer bank, and I made it clear that the hive mind was NOT stored within the Queen's body.

The human brain isn't capable of controlling the functions of trillions of individuals, and billions of ships and other associated gadgets.

The trillions of drones are all connected, but there still needs to be some kind of central control, ie. a massive computer bank hidden away somewhere in the Delta Quadrant.

The reason for the personification of the Borg is what I have already theorised. That when dealing with certain species a more personal front may prove more effective.

If the hive mind wanted to communicate on a "more personal level" (which makes no sense in and of itself), it would just use a drone.

They why have they failed spectacularly whenever they tried this "personal approach" that they're not even capable of in the first place? Why not instead say to themselves "hrm, let's just send two cubes instead of one!"

Not that there's any reason to assimilate mankind anyways, as we (in Trek) offer no biological or technological distinctiveness that they don't already possess. Remember when the Borg queen described us as something along the lines of "minimal brainpower, no redundant organs, weak technology"?

[Teaos]

The trillions of drones are all connected, but there still needs to be some kind of central control, ie. a massive computer bank hidden away somewhere in the Delta Quadrant.

Why?