by Veronica Beaudry

Created on: April 19, 2008   Last Updated: July 10, 2008

In the television/movie franchise, Star Trek, the Borg are a group of technologically-enhanced humanoids. They are one of the most dangerous and powerful villains in the Star Trek Universe.

The Borg were first introduced in a second season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST: TNG). In the episode entitled "Q-Who", the omnipotent being known as Q, sent the Starship Enterprise to a section of the galaxy known as the Delta Quadrant. Here, the crew of the Enterprise D met The Borg for the first time.

In this episode, we learn that the Borg are humanoid beings that have been fitted with cybernetic implants. They are capable of adapting to new situations very quickly, as seen by their becoming immune to phaser fire after only a few shots. The Borg also tend to ignore other people unless they feel they are threatened or they mean to assimilate those people. The Borg travel in massive cube-shaped vessels filled with Borg drones. The drones are all linked to each other through a sophisticated subspace communications network. They share a collective consciousness where individual minds are replaced by a collective mind. The Borg always refer to themselves in the second person and often speak using a cacophony of mechanical sounding voices.

In the ST: TNG two part episode, "The Best of Both Worlds", the Borg reach our solar system with the intent to assimilate Earth into their collective. As part of their plan, they abduct Captain Picard and turn him into a Borg. The assimilated Picard is now called Locutus of Borg and serves as a strange liaison between The Borg and The Federation. The crew of the Enterprise manages to rescue Picard and get him back to the Enterprise. They then use Picard's link to the Borg to help them destroy the cube and nullify the threat.

Other Next Generation episodes about the Borg were "I Borg" and the two-part story "Descent". These stories showed the Borg as weaker and less menacing. The collective mind of one group of Borg drones was replaced by individuality, which caused the drones to be a bit neurotic. These episodes were a bit disappointing since they took a great villain and made them weak and less interesting.

The eighth Star Trek movie, "First Contact," featured the Borg. While they were no longer portrayed as weak and neurotic, some people feel that these Borg were not quite as menacing as the ones seen in the earlier seasons of Next Generation. In this story, the Borg went to Earth again in another attempt to assimilate the planet. The Borg cube is destroyed early on but a smaller sphere-shaped vessel manages to escape. This ship goes back in time with the newly commissioned Enterprise-E on its tail.

This smaller Borg ship has the Borg Queen onboard. Her plan is to go back to a time when Earth had been ravaged by war and was in no position to defend itself from the Borg threat. Had the crew of the Enterprise not managed to stop the Borg, the entire planet would have been transformed into a Borg collective.

Through out the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series, and the subsequent movies, the Borg were portrayed as evil beings with no redeeming qualities. They were said to have destroyed countless worlds as they assimilated the people and technology of those planets. They had no qualms about taking a baby or a small child and turning it into a Borg drone. The Borg seemed to have no idea that their way of "procreating" and "evolving" is, in reality, morally reprehensible.

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