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Locutus, you never call, you never write....
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Sep 17, 2022 21:56
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There are a lot of screamers in I, Borg but IMO the least-appreciated one is that Data is sure that hiding in the star's corona will hide them from the Borg's sensors. That's an incredible risk to take.
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Sep 17, 2022 22:06
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Arglebargle III posted:Remember that time the borg showed up and were like "oh hi Locutus" and Picard spent about 5 seconds dying inside The best part of that in Picard was the tone it was said in. Some random Borg walks by Picard and cheerfully and confusedly says "Locutus?" like the guy in Groundhog Day who says "Phil? Phil Conners?!"
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Sep 18, 2022 01:38
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Astroman posted:The best part of that in Picard was the tone it was said in. Some random Borg walks by Picard and cheerfully and confusedly says "Locutus?" like the guy in Groundhog Day who says "Phil? Phil Conners?!" It was the same kind of reaction you'd have if like Brad Pitt just went running past you in a panicked hurry for some reason. Just a double take and a quick "Wait, was that Brad Pitt?"
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Sep 18, 2022 01:51
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Astroman posted:The best part of that in Picard was the tone it was said in. Some random Borg walks by Picard and cheerfully and confusedly says "Locutus?" like the guy in Groundhog Day who says "Phil? Phil Conners?!" No it was in TNG
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Sep 18, 2022 03:29
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Arglebargle III posted:No it was in TNG There's literally a gag in Season 1 of Picard where Hugh and Jean-Luc have to run through the halls of a semi-de-Borg-ified Borg cube and one of the ex-drones working on the cleanup crew spots Picard, does a double take, and goes "...Locutus?" in the background of the shot. It's one of the few legitimately funny moments of the show.
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Sep 18, 2022 03:33
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I never got the why of the borg needing(?) a whatever the gently caress a locutus is? like how different was the federation from any number of interstellar civilizations assimilated thus far that necessitated it.
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Sep 18, 2022 03:42
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The name “locutus” implies “speaker” to me. (Actually “spoken” in proper Latin, but whatever). Locutus is a communicator, a means of bridging the gap between the mostly uncommunicative collective and its soon-to-be-members. His purpose is to speak to the Feds and tell them what is going to happen to them. It’s reasonable to assume that this forms a general pattern in how the Borg assimilate societies: a prominent member is absorbed into the collective and then used against its people as psychological warfare/propaganda. We just usually don’t see it happen.
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Sep 18, 2022 03:51
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nine-gear crow posted:There's literally a gag in Season 1 of Picard where Hugh and Jean-Luc have to run through the halls of a semi-de-Borg-ified Borg cube and one of the ex-drones working on the cleanup crew spots Picard, does a double take, and goes "...Locutus?" in the background of the shot. It's one of the few legitimately funny moments of the show. well, it's in TNG
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Sep 18, 2022 03:54
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:I never got the why of the borg needing(?) a whatever the gently caress a locutus is? like how different was the federation from any number of interstellar civilizations assimilated thus far that necessitated it. They did arrive in the delta quadrant by unknown means and were able to escape the same way.
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Sep 18, 2022 04:13
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Locutus makes way more sense if it's just a thing the Borg do when they run into a particularly difficult civilization and there's nothing in BoBW that goes against that. It only got weird when writers for later episodes turned Locutus into a Borg rockstar.
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Sep 18, 2022 04:20
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skasion posted:The name “locutus” implies “speaker” to me. (Actually “spoken” in proper Latin, but whatever). Locutus is a communicator, a means of bridging the gap between the mostly uncommunicative collective and its soon-to-be-members. His purpose is to speak to the Feds and tell them what is going to happen to them. It’s reasonable to assume that this forms a general pattern in how the Borg assimilate societies: a prominent member is absorbed into the collective and then used against its people as psychological warfare/propaganda. We just usually don’t see it happen. That makes sense. IShallRiseAgain posted:They did arrive in the delta quadrant by unknown means and were able to escape the same way. This also does. Also explains why they beelined to fed space as a race that could do that is distinct distinctiveness.
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Sep 18, 2022 04:23
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Yeah, Locutus is literally the Borg's designated interlocutor for the Federation.
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Sep 18, 2022 05:18
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MikeJF posted:Yeah, Locutus is literally the Borg's designated interlocutor for the Federation. They pull this same stunt again with Seven of Nine. They give her a modicum of her individuality back so she can interface with the Voyager crew because Janeway straight up said "gently caress off, I'm not negotiating with shouting hallway" and the Borg Queen wasn't cleared for TV consumption by Berman and Moonves yet. The Borg do this poo poo on the reg, apparently.
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Sep 18, 2022 05:27
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I always wish all of the Borg were just in the cube. Like all of them.
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Sep 18, 2022 06:27
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nine-gear crow posted:They pull this same stunt again with Seven of Nine. They give her a modicum of her individuality back so she can interface with the Voyager crew because Janeway straight up said "gently caress off, I'm not negotiating with shouting hallway" and the Borg Queen wasn't cleared for TV consumption by Berman and Moonves yet. Also handily explains why a human was used in this specific case.
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Sep 18, 2022 13:57
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jeeves posted:I always wish all of the Borg were just in the cube. Like all of them. Like, a cube made of Borg? Just all of them holding hands.
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Sep 18, 2022 14:04
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Basically Locutus is an idea that made sense until the Borg queen came around and just hosed up the Borg forever. 
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Sep 18, 2022 15:09
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skasion posted:The name “locutus” implies “speaker” to me. (Actually “spoken” in proper Latin, but whatever). Locutus is a communicator, a means of bridging the gap between the mostly uncommunicative collective and its soon-to-be-members. His purpose is to speak to the Feds and tell them what is going to happen to them. It’s reasonable to assume that this forms a general pattern in how the Borg assimilate societies: a prominent member is absorbed into the collective and then used against its people as psychological warfare/propaganda. We just usually don’t see it happen. This is the explanation I remember from the Star Trek CCG.
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Sep 18, 2022 16:06
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davidspackage posted:Like, a cube made of Borg? Just all of them holding hands. Yeah and that they died with the two parter because everything Borg ever since has been terrible.
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Sep 18, 2022 16:22
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The Borg giving enough of a poo poo to communicate with their victims is more or less the first step in transforming them from sophisticated grey goo to another sentient species with understandable motives and psychology, which is ultimately what made the Borg uninteresting. But also it's hard to write interesting stories beyond first contact with the Borg, since their entire thing is just doing their assimilation without explaining or negotiation, which leaves only tech based plans, which is boring, or sneaky horror stories where you have to avoid them, which is hard to write.
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Sep 18, 2022 18:21
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Eimi posted:Basically Locutus is an idea that made sense until the Borg queen came around and just hosed up the Borg forever. I always liked the idea that the queen is just an avatar of the overall Borg consciousness, generated on the fly when needed, out of whichever drone on the ship most strongly resembles Alice Krige. It would explain why she can get blown up and then come back in a future episode -- the queen's body which the characters can see and interact with is really just an input/output device, so she isn't really "in" there; her mind is distributed throughout the entire collective. As she says, she IS the Borg. Of course, then the Picard show went and completely hosed up that explanation in like three different ways, so, yeah, grain of salt.
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Sep 18, 2022 18:47
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I think the Borg tripped when they introduced assimilation in The Best of Both Worlds, prior to that they were meant to be their own race who willingly became cyborgs rather than a hegemonising swarm. Once the show established they would eat anyone and make more Borg it raised very important questions about what should be their exponential growth and existential danger to every developed species that it was unequiped and unwilling to answer
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Sep 18, 2022 18:54
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jeeves posted:I always wish all of the Borg were just in the cube. Like all of them. That's definitely how it felt when I first saw "Q Who?" for the first time. Just this lonesome ship of cyborgs whipping through space, absorbing whoever they became aware of. I remember also getting the sense that they would literally just take the genetic codes of those worlds they assimilated and stick them into the nursery vats or whatever, then just killed everyone who was alive. Borg babies honestly made their whole deal way more insidious.
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Sep 18, 2022 18:58
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I will argue that the Borg were still threatening even after the Queen was introduced. The problem is that on Voyager they trivialize the Borg too often. In one episode Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok all get purposely assimilated to infiltrate the Collective and there are no consequences to that beyond that episode. The Picard assimilation stuff has continued to be a consistent part of the character since BoBW. There are also several times that the Queen leaves Voyager alone because the plot demands it. Or even in the series finale, she is basically like 'look, we'll leave you alone if you stay away from this nebula that is hiding the transwarp gateway'. It's only when Future Janeway shows up with the future tech that she gets involved.
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Sep 18, 2022 20:10
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They are always (at least described as) a real threat on account of being far superior technologically. It's not that they get less dangerous by becoming more human, it's that they become on par with the other antagonist species and thus less unique and interesting. Later Voyager Borg could essentially be replaced with the Breen without much trouble, early Borg could absolutely not.
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Sep 18, 2022 20:32
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What Voyager did to the Borg is basically the Dalek problem from Dr. Who: hard to make a villain seem dangerous when the bumbling idiot hero constantly pulls the wool over the villain’s head again and again, season after season. Even before that shows current modern run of absolutely terrible writing. Farscape handled this almost perfectly in season 3 of their show: the villain got to be in almost every single episode due to being a neural clone of the villain character stuck inside the main character’s head. The villain could pop up in every episode, remind the audience of who they were, but vanish consequence free without the heroes having ~saved the day~ from the villain time and time again.
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Sep 18, 2022 20:33
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BonHair posted:The Borg giving enough of a poo poo to communicate with their victims is more or less the first step in transforming them from sophisticated grey goo to another sentient species with understandable motives and psychology, which is ultimately what made the Borg uninteresting. Eh, the initial presentation of the Borg in Q Who was less that they were grey goo and more that their collective consciousness and power was on a level beyond ours: the drones we interacted with were basically just like individual cells of our body (and akin to grey goo in the same way our body's cells are), and their motivations were incomprehensible for the same reason that a human's is incomprehensible to a chicken. They could speak to us while they used us as basically technological food to eat, but us truly understanding them in a meaningful way wasn't on the table. The part where the Borg go backwards in my head is when they start getting zombie-like and just automatically repeating 'resistance is futile' as their catchphrase as if it's a recording. The first time we heard them say that, it was part of a conversation, with the entire Borg cube speaking as one. quote:BORG: Captain Jean Luc Picard, you lead the strongest ship of the Federation fleet. You speak for your people. The collective voice being an intelligence seemed to go away later and they became more like a bee hive where there was no conscious decision making mind, just a bunch of actions and reactions. And then the depiction of the Queen in Voyager built in top of that and the Borg became a dumb hive directed by a single very fallible person who verbally gives them orders. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 20:42
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I don't think the Borg were very intelligent even in their early depictions, like if they were meant to like cells of a single large organism where were the white blood cells when the Enterprise sent over boarding parties and why did they have so little in the way of network security measures that Data could just get them all to self-destruct with a virus? Honestly bees are better at defending their hives than these guys
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Sep 18, 2022 20:48
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Data taking them down was like a novel virus or parasite killing a human. He was something they'd never encountered before, their intelligence wasn't paying attention to what was happening there because it was so minor, and he managed to hit them on a low-level attack in their basic body functions by hooking into their autonomous systems network. (Remember, he didn't actively initiate self destruct, systems like that were behind too much security. He executed what the network considered 'safe' commands that had lower level security, but used them in an unsafe manner) Their immune system is primed now, that won't work again.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 20:50
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idk the disconnect between the Borg talking to Picard and saying they're going to wreck them and then the team beaming over and every drone which is part of that same intelligence going 'ehhhh not my problem' until they start causing trouble is really glaring to me, they're like beepity boop 50s robots only programmed to do two things, even more so than the actual beepity boop robots in TOS
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Sep 18, 2022 20:54
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The Borg just have to learn to live with Data until he becomes endemic
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Sep 18, 2022 20:54
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No Dignity posted:idk the disconnect between the Borg talking to Picard and saying they're going to wreck them and then the team beaming over and every drone which is part of that same intelligence going 'ehhhh not my problem' until they start causing trouble is really glaring to me, they're like beepity boop 50s robots only programmed to do two things, even more so than the actual beepity boop robots in TOS Well individual drones are kind of beep bop, unless something is out of the ordinary enough to get the collective's local attention, most of them are just running tasks with 0.1% of their brain while the rest is tasked to be an element in the superconsciousness that directs things on a higher level. The fact that the nature of the Borg means they can't pay strong attention to every drone's individual activities is an established weakness. Much like how we don't pay attention to our bodily functions unless something is off enough to trigger a big enough chemical or nervous system signal to alert our brain. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 20:58
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I feel like the aliens in Conspiracy which were basically the proto-borg might have been a much more menacing threat, and harder to mess up. I guess the body horror might have been unfeasible for network TV at the time though. I'm imagining they'd basically be Zergs/Tyranids except with more intelligence. I know one of the lame books have them just be evil trills, but that is just a Expanded Universe thing. IShallRiseAgain fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Sep 18, 2022 |
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Sep 18, 2022 21:00
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Sep 18, 2022 21:25
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The borg collective as a whole, as one cube, is far beyond the Enterprise and its crew, They've been absorbing technology and distinctiveness across the galaxy and they have things they can't even imagine. Individually, a borg drone is far, far less than any member of the Enterprise crew. Presumably whatever processing power there is inside of the brains of the "blood cell borgs" is being rerouted into the central borg brain. It's not necessary to process the visual stimuli of a drone going through interior borg passageways. And I think there's some idea of the Borg having less creativity because that needs multiple perspectives working together. IShallRiseAgain posted:I feel like the aliens in Conspiracy which were basically the proto-borg might have been a much more menacing threat, and harder to mess up. I guess the body horror might have been unfeasible for network TV at the time though. I'm imagining they'd basically be Zergs/Tyranids except with more intelligence. Either they couldn't get more actors to eat bugs, or they just weren't ready for that sort of thing yet. It seems like the sort of thing that would clash with Gene Roddenberry's weird vision. It's like how they did the big reveal of Romulans! They're back! And then there's a long while before there's any followup.
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Sep 18, 2022 22:27
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BonHair posted:The Borg giving enough of a poo poo to communicate with their victims is more or less the first step in transforming them from sophisticated grey goo to another sentient species with understandable motives and psychology, which is ultimately what made the Borg uninteresting. But also it's hard to write interesting stories beyond first contact with the Borg, since their entire thing is just doing their assimilation without explaining or negotiation, which leaves only tech based plans, which is boring, or sneaky horror stories where you have to avoid them, which is hard to write. Ensigns of Command B plot could've been about daring delay tactics against the Borg instead of rules lawyering the Sheliak. I think they could've done some more good Borg stories.
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Sep 18, 2022 22:27
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To me the important part of the Borg was always that they were the dark mirror of the Federation. They are a powerful synthesis of their member cultures, but they disregard consent and destroy individuality - as opposed to the consensual IDIC philosophy of the Federation. They aren't grey goo, assimilating 'cultural distinctiveness' was in there from the start. They believe alien perspectives are valuable.... as an expert system submind. The Queen kinda kicks this in the balls by making them supervillain minions, but it's not unsalvageable. Picard just, uh, chose otherwise.
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Sep 18, 2022 23:06
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No Dignity posted:I don't think the Borg were very intelligent even in their early depictions, like if they were meant to like cells of a single large organism where were the white blood cells when the Enterprise sent over boarding parties and why did they have so little in the way of network security measures that Data could just get them all to self-destruct with a virus? Honestly bees are better at defending their hives than these guys When the Borg say resistance is futile and keep talking back to Picard that his statements are irrelevant they aren't trying to psych him out or scare him, they are simply stating a fact as they see it. The Enterprise crewmembers weren't perceived as a threat, so they left them alone until ready to start assimilating.
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Sep 19, 2022 01:12
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jeeves posted:What Voyager did to the Borg is basically the Dalek problem from Dr. Who: hard to make a villain seem dangerous when the bumbling idiot hero constantly pulls the wool over the villain’s head again and again, season after season. Even before that shows current modern run of absolutely terrible writing. Picard S2 tried that a little bit at least.
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Sep 19, 2022 01:13
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