Borg facts for kids
Quick facts for kids The Borg |
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| Star Trek race | |
Borg insignia designed by Rick Sternbach.
It first appeared in the episode "Q Who". |
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| Created by | Maurice Hurley |
| Information | |
| Base of operations | Delta Quadrant |
| Leader | Borg Queen |
The Borg are a scary group of aliens in the Star Trek universe. They are like robots mixed with living beings, called cyborgs. All Borg are connected in a huge shared mind called "the Collective." The Borg take technology and knowledge from other alien species by a process called "assimilation." This means they force other beings to become "drones" by putting tiny machines (nanoprobes) into their bodies and adding robot parts. The Borg's main goal is to become "perfect."
The Borg are major enemies in the Next Generation TV show and the movie Star Trek: First Contact. They also play big roles in the Voyager and Picard series.
Many people know the Borg for their famous phrase, "Resistance is futile," which means it's useless to fight them. They have become a symbol for any powerful force that cannot be stopped.
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Who Are the Borg?
The Borg were created to be a new, strong enemy for the Star Trek: The Next Generation show. Before them, the Klingons became allies, and the Romulans were not around much. The Ferengi were supposed to be the new bad guys, but they looked too funny to be a real threat.
The Borg, with their scary look and huge power, became the main villains for the Next Generation and Voyager shows. In one episode, even the super-powerful alien Q tells his son, "Don't provoke the Borg!"
Writers for Star Trek: The Next Generation started thinking about the Borg early on. They wanted to introduce them slowly. First, there were mysteries about missing colonies. Then, the Enterprise crew finally met the Borg in the episode "Q Who".
What Borg Drones Look Like
The Borg are cyborgs, meaning they are part machine and part living creature. Individual Borg are called drones. They move like robots and often ignore things around them unless they are a threat.
- Many Borg have one eye replaced with a special eye implant.
- One arm is often replaced with a robot arm that has different tools, like medical devices, scanners, or weapons.
- Borg usually have flat, grayish skin, which makes them look a bit like zombies.
Borg Defenses and Weaknesses
Borg drones are very hard to defeat with energy weapons like phasers. They have personal shields that quickly learn to block the energy. If you shoot a Borg with a phaser, its shield adapts, and the phaser becomes useless. Changing the phaser's settings sometimes works, but not always.
However, Borg shields do not protect against regular weapons like bullets or hand-to-hand fighting. This is how some Borg have been defeated.
Each Borg has a "cortical node," which is like a main computer chip for its robot parts. It's usually in their forehead. If this node breaks, the Borg drone will eventually die.
The Borg Collective
The Borg society is based on a group mind called the Collective. Every Borg drone is connected to this Collective by a special network. This network gives each drone constant guidance and supervision.
The shared mind of the Collective can help injured Borg drones heal or fix damaged body parts and technology. This group consciousness also lets them "share the same thoughts" and quickly learn new ways to fight. Individual Borg drones rarely speak. Instead, a collective "voice" is sometimes sent to ships they are attacking.
"Resistance is futile"
Borg drones usually do not speak on their own. But they often send a group message to their targets, saying, "Resistance is futile." This is usually followed by a warning that the target will be assimilated. This means their unique biological and technological features will be added to the Borg. The exact words change a bit in different shows and movies.
In the movie Star Trek: First Contact, the Borg's warning is:
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.
Nanoprobes
Nanoprobes are tiny machines, like microscopic robots, that live inside a Borg's body, blood, and robot parts. These probes keep the Borg's cybernetic systems working and repair damage to their living parts. They can also create new technology inside a Borg and protect them from many diseases.
When Borg assimilate someone, nanoprobes travel through the victim's blood. They change the victim's DNA and biochemistry. Eventually, they form larger structures and networks inside the body, like electrical pathways and computer parts. These can even make robot devices grow out of the skin.
The Borg use nanoprobes to control others. But the crew of the starship Voyager sometimes reprogrammed nanoprobes to use them as medical tools to help people.
The Borg do not try to assimilate everyone they meet. They often ignore individuals who are too weak to be a threat or too "inferior" to be worth assimilating. For example, Captain Picard and his team walked safely past Borg drones in Star Trek: First Contact because the drones were busy with a mission. In Star Trek: Voyager, Seven of Nine said the Kazon species was "unworthy" of assimilation because their technology was not advanced enough.
Borg Travel and Ships
The Borg travel through space in large ships called "Borg Cubes" because of their shape. The first cube was seen in the Next Generation episode "Q Who". This episode showed that a Borg Cube was much more powerful than the Enterprise, the main Starfleet ship.
Borg Cubes can travel very fast using warp and transwarp drives. They can also repair themselves and have many backup systems. They are good at adapting in fights and have various energy weapons, tractor beams, and cutting beams. Like most Star Trek races, the Borg can use transporters. Cubes are also known for being huge and not having a smooth, fancy design.
Different types and sizes of cubes have appeared, as well as Borg spheres and smaller ships.
Assimilation Process
Assimilation is how the Borg take in other beings, cultures, and technology into the Collective. "You will be assimilated" is one of the few phrases the Borg use when talking to other species. The Borg have assimilated thousands of species and billions of life-forms across the galaxy. They give each species a number when they first meet them. Humans are "Species 5618."
When the Borg first appeared, they seemed more interested in taking technology than people. They would travel the universe, taking over starships, planets, and societies to get new tech. But they were picky. They thought some races, like the Kazon, were not advanced enough to be worth assimilating. However, a Borg baby found on a Borg Cube showed that the Borg will even assimilate children. These children are then put into special chambers to quickly grow into adult drones.
In their second big appearance, Captain Jean-Luc Picard was captured and assimilated into the Collective. He became Locutus of Borg, which means "he who has spoken" in Latin.
The way Borg assimilate people has been shown differently over time. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, they would kidnap people and perform surgery. In Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Voyager, assimilation happens when a drone injects nanoprobes into a person's blood using tubes from its hand. This process is very fast. The victim's skin quickly turns gray and blotchy. After this first injection, Borg drones are surgically given more robot parts. In Star Trek: First Contact, an assimilated crew member had an arm and an eye removed and replaced with cybernetic implants.
The Borg also use these tubes and nanoprobes to connect with and change technology.
Some species can resist assimilation by nanoprobes. Species 8472 is the only race shown to completely reject assimilation. Other species, like the Hirogen and Dr Phlox, have also shown some resistance.
The Borg Queen
Before the movie Star Trek: First Contact (1996), the Borg did not have a leader. They were just a collective mind. But First Contact introduced the Borg Queen. She calls herself "I am the Borg. I am the Collective... I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many."
The Borg Queen has been played by different actresses, including Alice Krige and Susanna Thompson. She seems to be killed in First Contact and in the Voyager finale, so there might be different Queens over time. In First Contact, a flashback shows she was present when Picard was assimilated.
The Borg Queen is the main focus point of the Borg's shared mind. She brings "order to chaos." In First Contact, she seems to be an expression of the Collective's intelligence, not a boss. But in Star Trek: Voyager, she is clearly seen giving orders and even overriding the Collective. The writers of First Contact said they added the Queen because it was easier for the main characters to have someone to talk to, instead of just mindless drones.
The Borg Queen returned in the second season of Star Trek: Picard. This Queen was from a different timeline and merged with a human doctor named Agnes Jurati. She was convinced to create a Collective based on free will, not force. In the third season of Star Trek: Picard, the main Borg Queen returns. She had allied with the Changelings to secretly take over Starfleet. She used a part of Picard's brain, which had been changed when he was Locutus, to spread Borg genes through Starfleet's transporters. This would assimilate anyone under 25 when the Borg sent a signal.
The Borg Queen also showed interest in Jack Crusher, Picard's son, because he also had Borg DNA from his father. This made Jack a "transmitter" for the Collective, allowing him to hear them. He was also assimilated.
The Borg Queen revealed that her Collective was almost destroyed after the events of Star Trek: Voyager. She had to cannibalize her own drones to survive. She no longer wanted just assimilation, but to evolve and destroy all other life in the galaxy. However, Picard helped Jack break free from the Queen's control. The Enterprise-D then destroyed the Borg Cube, killing the Borg Queen and the remaining drones. This ended the Borg's control over Starfleet.
Borg Appearances in Star Trek
The Borg first appeared on TV on May 8, 1989, in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Q Who". They became even more famous in the two-part episode "Best of Both Worlds." In the Star Trek timeline, the earliest the Borg are shown is in the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact.
The Borg appear in many Star Trek episodes. If you count episodes featuring Seven of Nine (a former Borg drone), they appear in about a hundred episodes. Without Seven of Nine, the Borg appear in six episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, one episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 23 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, and one episode of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
The Borg first appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Q Who". The powerful alien Q sends the Enterprise-D far across the galaxy to show Captain Jean-Luc Picard that his crew is not ready for all the dangers of space. The Borg easily overpower the Enterprise crew. Picard asks Q for help, and Q sends them back home.
The Borg returned in "The Best of Both Worlds." Picard is captured and assimilated by the Borg, becoming Locutus. The Borg gain all of Picard's knowledge about Starfleet. A single Borg cube destroys an entire Starfleet fleet at Wolf 359. The Enterprise crew manages to capture Locutus, use him to get information to destroy the cube, and then turn Picard back to normal.
In the episode "I, Borg", the Enterprise crew rescues a young Borg drone they name "Hugh." The crew has to decide if they should use Hugh to give the Borg a computer virus or return him with his new sense of individuality. They decide to return him without the virus. Later, in "Descent", a group of Borg who gained individuality through Hugh fall under the control of Lore, Data's evil "older brother."
Star Trek: First Contact
The Borg are the main enemies in the Next Generation movie Star Trek: First Contact. After failing to assimilate Earth in the year 2373, the Borg travel back in time to 2063. They try to stop Zefram Cochrane's first contact with the Vulcans. This would change history and erase Starfleet. The Enterprise-E crew follows the Borg back in time and fixes the timeline. First Contact is where the Borg Queen is first introduced, played by Alice Krige.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
The Borg only appear once in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in the first episode "Emissary." The beginning of the episode shows Benjamin Sisko as an officer on the USS Saratoga during the battle against the Borg at Wolf 359. The Saratoga is destroyed, and Sisko's wife dies. Later, Sisko blames Picard for what happened because Picard was Locutus.
Star Trek: Voyager
The Borg appear often in Star Trek: Voyager, which takes place in the Delta Quadrant. Voyager first sees the Borg in the episode "Blood Fever." In "Scorpion", the Borg are fighting a tough war against Species 8472, whose biological defenses can defeat the Borg's nanoprobes. The Borg make a rare deal with Voyager: if Voyager helps them defeat Species 8472, the Borg will let them pass safely through Borg space. A Borg drone named Seven of Nine is sent to Voyager to help. After Species 8472 is defeated, Seven of Nine is separated from the Collective and joins Voyager's crew. Her journey to rediscover her individuality becomes a big part of the show.
In the episode "Drone", an advanced Borg drone is created when Seven of Nine's nanoprobes mix with the Doctor's mobile emitter in a transporter accident. In "Dark Frontier", Voyager steals a special Borg coil to rescue Seven of Nine from the Borg Queen and shorten their trip home.
In the episode "Collective", Voyager finds a damaged Borg cube run by five Borg children. The Voyager crew saves these children and helps them become individuals again. In the series finale, "Endgame", a future Admiral Janeway tries to bring Voyager back to Earth using a Borg transwarp hub. She infects the Borg with a special disease that kills the Collective and the Queen.
Star Trek: Enterprise
In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Regeneration", parts of a destroyed Borg sphere from Star Trek: First Contact are found in the Arctic. Two frozen Borg drones are also found. These Borg steal a research ship and send a message towards the Delta Quadrant before they are destroyed.
Star Trek: Picard
The first season of Star Trek: Picard showed four characters who used to be Borg: Picard, Seven of Nine, Hugh, and Icheb. The Borg are described as "crippled" and "decimated," with many drones becoming individuals again and Borg ships being taken apart for their technology. However, they are still a threat.
In the second season, a damaged Borg Queen is recruited by Picard to help him and his crew travel to the past. The Queen takes over the body of Agnes Jurati. She plans to assimilate the galaxy before the Federation is born. But Agnes convinces the Queen that the Borg will always lose because their Collective is based on fear, not trust. The Queen leaves Earth to test Agnes's idea.
Later, in the 24th century, the same Queen appears. She wants the Borg to join Starfleet and help protect the galaxy from a new threat. Picard allows her to proceed after realizing she is the Queen who merged with Agnes.
In the third season, it is revealed that the original Borg had teamed up with Changelings to secretly take over Starfleet. They stole Picard's original body and took a part of his brain that had been changed when he was Locutus. This change made Picard a "receiver" for the Collective, allowing him to hear them. The Changelings then put Borg genes into Starfleet's transporter systems. This would assimilate anyone under 25 when the Borg sent a signal.
The Borg took over during a special event called Frontier Day. They wanted to kill everyone who had not been assimilated. The Borg were also interested in Jack Crusher, Picard's son, because he also had Borg DNA from his father. This made Jack a "transmitter" for the Collective. He was also assimilated, becoming Vox.
With Starfleet taken over, the crew of The Next Generation used their rebuilt ship, the Enterprise-D, which was immune to the Borg takeover. They found the Queen's ship above Jupiter. Picard confronted her. The Borg Queen explained that after Endgame, the Borg were almost completely destroyed. Only the Queen, a few drones, and one Borg Cube were left. She had gone crazy from loneliness and had to eat her own drones to survive. She no longer wanted to assimilate, but to evolve and destroy all other life in the galaxy. However, Picard helped Jack break free from the Queen's control. The Enterprise then destroyed the Borg Cube, killing the Borg Queen and all remaining Borg drones. This ended the Borg's control over Starfleet.
Where Did the Borg Come From?
The exact origin of the Borg is never fully explained in the Star Trek shows. However, they are shown to have existed for hundreds of thousands of years. In Star Trek: First Contact, the Borg Queen only says that the Borg were once like humans, "flawed and weak." But they slowly became a mix of machine and living being to try and become perfect.
In TNG's "Q Who", Guinan says the Borg are "made up of organic and artificial life... which has been developing for... thousands of centuries." However, in a Star Trek: Voyager episode, a character from 892 years ago says the Borg were just a small problem in the Delta Quadrant. When he wakes up in the 24th century, he is shocked to see the Borg control a huge area. Seven of Nine says the Borg's memories from that time are incomplete.
Other Ideas for Borg Origins (Non-Canon)
Some books and games have offered their own ideas about where the Borg came from. These are not part of the official Star Trek story.
- One idea connects the Borg to V'ger, a powerful probe from the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In this story, V'ger was found by living machines that helped it fulfill its purpose. From this, the Borg were created as extensions of V'ger's goal. The Borg Queen was created to be a single voice for the Collective.
- A comic book story suggests the Borg came from a medical experiment with tiny machines (nanotechnology) that went wrong. An alien species was trying to cure a disease. The nanomachines started to fix the patients by turning them into part of the machine, leading to the first Borg.
- A novel series called Star Trek: Destiny suggests the Borg were created from human survivors and alien scientists who were forced to merge. This forced merging created the first Borg, driven by a desperate need to add others' strength and technology.
Other Appearances in Media
The Borg have appeared in many Star Trek novels and video games.
- In the novel Probe, the Borg are mentioned as "mites" who attacked a giant whale-probe.
- In the game Star Trek: Legacy, the Borg are a threat in different Star Trek eras.
- The novel Vendetta suggests that a planet-destroying weapon from the Original Series was a prototype weapon against the Borg.
- In William Shatner's novel The Return, Spock almost gets assimilated by the Borg. He uses knowledge from a mind-meld with V'ger to help destroy the Borg's central node.
- In the Doctor Who/Star Trek comic crossover Assimilation2, the Borg team up with the Cybermen.
In Video Games
The Borg are featured in many Star Trek video games, including:
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: Birth of the Federation
- Star Trek: Armada
- Star Trek: Borg
- Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force
- Star Trek: Legacy
- Star Trek Online
- Star Trek: Bridge Crew
A game called Star Trek: Borg Assimilator was planned where players would play as a Borg, but it was cancelled.
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See also
- Cybermen
- Group mind (science fiction)
- Replicator (Stargate)
