Talk:Borg

I don't think we really need a disambig page here. We don't title pages for people with their last name, and referring to the Star Trek Borg as The Borg complicates linking unnecessarily.

I therefore suggest restoring the original state of Borg being about the Star Trek Borg only, with a possible link at the bottom to Bjorn Borg. --Eloquence

fine-Sv

What was the excuse that Q gave to Picard for why he caused the contact between Humans and the Borg? We are in dispute here. I recall that he said something like, "If I did not do it, by the time you would have had contact with the Borg their empire would have been too strong for the Federation to defeat it." The other view is that Q was just trying to teach Picard a lesson and was not trying to help the Federation.

I am no trekkie, but that whole Borg/Regeneration multi-paragraph near the end surely belongs on a separate page, and not as part of an episode title. How about putting it on Star_Trek_Anomalies or something?

I don't really know anything about Star Trek, but thought I'd comment on the cultural allusion paragraph, which I find quite interesting. Is the part about the Borg representing no real world state universally accepted? The whole 'hive mind' and man-machine concept seems to me like a (strongly hostile) take on the ideals of socialism(the hive mind representing the fear that collectivism will eliminate individual thought) - such as one could expect to find in American Cold War culture. In other words, though the Klingons/Romulans may already have represented the Soviet Union and China, to the untrained eye the Borg sure looks like another take on communism. If anyone knows anything about this, it'd be interesting if they'd care to expand on it.

Furthermore, perhaps the sentence about the Ferengi could be improved - as it stands it could be taken to imply that Japanese people are "annoying, but cute comic relief characters", which surely wasn't intended. -83.109.21.112

Guinan is certainly present on Earth in the 19th century, but as a refugee? She is seen as one of a whole bunch of refugees in ST: Generations. In "Time's Arrow" she is implied to have run away from home. --Tarquin 20:11, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That's why I pulled the following section out of the main article;

1. Guinan (played by Whoopi Goldberg) is over 600 years old, and tells Captain Picard that her planet was destroyed by Borg. As she is apparently already a refugee in the 19th century on Earth, this would place Borg within travelling distance at that time. This places Borg far too close to have overlooked Earth, and given their totalitarian expansion philosophy it seems unlikely they would have (although they may still have decided not to, since at least one species (Kazon) has been derided as "unworthy of assimilation" by the Borg)

The reason I did that was because Guinan was not a refugee during her 19th century visit to Earth. In this episode it's implied that she either ran away from home, or she had gone to Earth with the knowledge and permission of her family, in order to listen to the people of Earth. I'm leaning towards she went with the knowledge of her family. I would think if she ran away from home that either her father himself would have come to Earth for her, or a close family member would have gone to Earth for her. That to me makes more sense than sending a complete stranger to Earth for her.

Also, the El Aurian homeworld was not destroyed until just after the events in the sixth Star Trek movie, and the Lakul and her sister ship were near Earth at the same time the Enterprise-B went on what was supposed to be a run around the solar system. They were still fairly close to the Terran solar system when the Nexus hit the Lakul and her sister ship.

JesseG 03:56, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just as a note, the events of the "Endgame" episode occurred in 2378, a date which had been set up in a previous episode. -- MiChaos 17:05, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC).

I have to take issue with the comparison of the Klingons to the Japanese empire and the Romulans to the Soviet Union. It doesn't track with the history of the show that I've read. In 1973 a book came out called The World of Star Trek. I know that Gene contributed to it, and it was written by David Gerrold who has been intimately involved in the show through most of its incarnations. It had a lot of insider info in it.

One of the things that was covered was what the Klingon and Romulans represented. The Klingons were clearly a cold war era reference to the Soviet Union. In the book it was specifically stated that The Federation and The Klingon empire could never go to war, as they both had enough weapons to wipe out the other's civilization. Specifically this was the reason the Organian Peace Treaty was arranged and the two parties were forced to accept in "Errand of Mercy". The Organians even said that one day the two would live in peace and cooperate. By the time of TNG had come to pass... for the most part. In an idealized view one could say that this was an analogy that one day the cold war would end.

As I recall the book said the Klingons had "no redeeming social value". "Klingons pick on old ladies. Klingons fart in airlocks." are a couple of lines I remember from the book.

The Romulans were used in the series as a plot device to allow the Federation to have all-out battles with a strong enemy without actually ending civilization. The Romulans were strong enough to be scary, but not strong enough to actually win. They were kind of like a state hostile to the Federation, but not strong enough to do much damage. Much like... North Korea is today.

Cleary an analogy was being made to the Soviet/Chinese support of North Vietnam when Spock points out that "Romulans now using Klingon design" after three "Romulan" D-7 battle cruisers appear in "The Enterprise Incident". As Rodenberry later confessed, this too was a plot device because they couldn't afford any more model construction or matte shots for a new Romulan ship. Since the Warbirds introduced in "Balance of Terror" were only capable of impulse power, a warp-capable Romulan ship would require new models, they decided to fudge it so existing matte shots could be used.

StarGazer9 16:28, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)