Borg Watershed. :heart:
This is the episode where Johnathan Del Arco worked his way into our hearts, bringing with him what would become a recurring theme of ex-Borg individuality that would see the changing face (literally and figuratively) of a species integral to the success of the Star Trek franchise.
I don't think this episode had much impact on me as a kid, but watching it now I realised what a wonderful piece of work it is. I've often had a problem with the Borg, in that they just aren't very interesting. Certainly they've managed to give them a cold sort of sense of dread, but mostly they are incredibly bland. 'I, Borg' finally gives them a new angle and it was much needed.
It's also surprising just how little they featured in the show, with this only being their third appearance. We get a brilliant character piece here for Picard, but also for Guinan and even Geordi. It's especially unnerving to Guinan, usually the poster child for serenity and good sense, to clearly be angry and unwilling to let go of her hate. Picard's responses are more expected and the episode allows us to go on a wonderful journey with him. I was particularly impressed by his mental transition back to being Locutus.
The real reason the episode works as a whole though is because the great performance by the young actor playing Hugh. He presents vulnerability and confusion well, without breaking into anything overly emotional or melodramatic.
It does seem that this episode would be completely ignored by the time of the First Contact movie, notably in regard to Picard's state of mind, and there are inconsistencies which aren't really addressed. I think at this point the idea was that Borg were still born and grown instead of being made up of all the species that they had assimilated.
Wonderful episode. Seeing Hugh developing an identity is interesting and I hoped that he would have chosen staying on the Enterprise. But somehow it's a wonderful thought that he went back to kinda "protect" the crew of the Enterprise from the Borg. He became a bit of an empathic human. Seeing him turning his head to Geordi the moment he beamed up to the Borg ship leaves the good feeling that he seems to remember what happend. I don't think that the Borg will turn into feeling creatures like Picard imagined but maybe we will come back to this episode sometime in the future – mentioning again, I'm a first time watcher and don't know much about the upcoming story, so I still can hope. :) 10/10
[8.4/10] When I think about the larger project of Star Trek, I think of it as one of empathy and understanding. Over the course of 50+ years and hundreds upon hundreds of installments, Trekkies have seen loads of different perspectives and types of stories. But if there’s something that unifies them, a broader worldview at play across eras of the franchise, it’s the notion that even cultures and beings far different from our own can be as worth of respect and self-determination and our care as ourselves.
“I, Borg” is, if not the pinnacle of that, than certainly one of Star Trek’s best examples. Up to this point in the franchise, the Borg have been nothing but an indiscriminate enemy, one without feelings or reason or hesitation. They exist as a single-minded collective, one whose mission is simple to consume or destroy, without emotion or reluctance. Based on what the audience knows about them through three episodes of introduction, there’s no reason to see them as anything other than a lifeless threat, a mechanical id with no more right to self-preservation than hurricane.
But “I, Borg” sends a teenager-sized monkey wrench into that conception of Starfleet’s most dangerous enemy. A random distress call sees our heroes encounter a crashed Borg ship, and with it, one barely living drone. Everyone’s inclination is to leave it be and get the hell out of there, except for Dr. Crusher. Spurred by her hippocratic oath, she convinces Picard to beam it aboard.
That’s the first mini-test of a show founded on a series of moral conundrums. If you see an enemy, one who could give away your position to its allies no less, do you stay to help it our your commitment to this errand of mercy, or do you let it suffer and die rather than put others at risk. This is the Federation (and network television) so, inevitably, at the end of the day sympathy bears out and the lone Borg drone is brought aboard the Enterprise to be treated.
The most interesting thing about that choice is the implication that it may not be a pure one. As always, Patrick Stewart plays the layers of Captain Picard: the part of him that is bound to respect all life, the part that is still scarred from his own experience with the Borg, and the part that sees a potential strategy unfolding. Given the knowledge from his own experience with the collective, Picard realizes that this drone could be a trojan horse, one who could carry a computer virus back to the Borg collective and neutralize this enemy once and for all. (Using a math bomb no less!)
All of the senior staff seems on board with this plan -- all except Dr. Crusher. She lodges the objection that this is the annihilation of a species. The larger theme of this episode is an epiphany that this would be wrong, that these drones, however interchangeable and soulless they may seem in the throes of the collective, are nonetheless sentient beings, who deserve more respect and decency and understanding that if they were mere walking, talking “arms and legs.”
Battlestar Galactica makes a similar argument against a similar tactic, and I’ll raise the same point here that I did there -- they’re freaking trying to destroy you! It would be one thing if Crusher and others had this hesitancy merely after the crew’s first, Q-assisted encounter with the Borg. But after “The Best of Both Worlds”, the men and women of the Enterprise all know the devastation that the Borg can cause, the path of destruction they cut through the Federation, and the likelihood that the Earth itself would have been consumed and humanity along with it were it not for a near-miraculous save from our heroes.
When you’re facing an existential threat, the ethical leeway changes. Knowing the individuality that this Borg is capable of makes it harder to sacrifice him as part of this plan. But knowing the harms the Borg cause later in the franchise make this seem like Picard and company allowing a single life to put billions of others at risk. As another great Starfleet officer once put, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
Despite the resonance of that quote, such utilitarian calculations are not the stock and trade of Star Trek (at least when applied outside of self-sacrifice). Despite my objections, there’s something extraordinary about the transformation, the epiphanies, that take place over the course of “I, Borg.” Not only does the titular drone slowly but surely reassert his humanity, but the people with the best reason to doubt that rediscovery come to believe it wholesale. That realization, that acceptance that someone can change and that life and sentience can come from surprising places in myriad forms, is the heart of this franchise.
What follows is a transfer of ideas, a recognition that starts with Dr. Crusher and her duty to do no harm, that eventually changes the hearts and minds of all who follow. She persuades Geordi, who’s apt to see the drone as nothing but another mechanical problem to solve, as a lost little boy. Geordi persuades Guinan, who saw her people decimated by the Borg, to listen to this being they’ve dubbed “Hugh” and see that he is more than an avatar of destruction. And she, who so strongly advised the captain against even treating this drone, convinces Picard to look Hugh in the eye before condemning him and his people to death.
It is a series of souls moved in the presence of another. Amid these key members of the crew shifting their thoughts on what they once viewed only as a walking threat, the audience also gets to see that there’s more to the Borg that mindless assimilation. While it happens awfully fast compared to what Seven undergoes on Voyager, we see Hugh’s individuality and arguably even his soul, reemerge once he’s cut off from the collective.
We see him experience loneliness. We see him understand the notion of friendship. We see him comprehend the idea that others have wants and needs that may supersede those programmed into him. We see him willing to sacrifice his own wishes (budding though they may be) to save the people he’s come to care about.
And we see all of these things come to fruition in a single, powerful scene that puts him opposite the Captain. Picard again assumes the mantle of Locutus, as a tool to challenge the supposed change this drone has undergone. He challenges Hugh again and again: as to what his name is, as to what is relevant to a Borg, as to who must be assimilated and die. And it culminates in Hugh refusing to do the bidding of what he thinks is the Collective, using the pronoun “I” to express a desire separate and apart from that of the grand Borg mission, a desire born of empathy for the people who’ve helped him.
“I, Borg” gets a bit highfalutin about the results and implications of that. Picard’s speech about individuality potentially being the greatest Borg virus of all is a little corny. (Though we’ll eventually see that he wasn’t entirely off-base.) But the bigger reason this episode provides to spare Hugh, to treat his return to the Collective differently, is the realization that the others may be just like him, people who could be saved, souls trapped in iron and steel, that the Federation could try to free rather than destroy. The one here represents the many, the many who could, given the chance, be just like him.
That doesn't justify ignoring an existential threat, necessarily, but it does uphold the spirit of Star Trek. That spirit is one of greater appreciation and understanding writ large. It’s rooted in the idea that even the ones who seem lost and dangerous are owed a certain measure of understanding and moral protection, because the lives that exist beneath what we find so frightening and so different may ultimately be the same as what we recognize in ourselves. That is the soul of this franchise -- the idea that the souls of others take many forms, but are just as real, just as worthy, and just as pure as our own.
totally love this episode! great to see that there is still in individual inside the borg
One of my favorite TNG episodes from the first viewing to this day. Still, though, some of the writing! Georgi: “[The Borg implants] contain relatively straightforward programming.” Twenty seconds later: “The subroutines are pretty complicated.” :rolling_eyes:
Such a greatly written episode. It may have come a little bit out of nessessity because they needed an angle into the Borg. Because otherwise, short of Q, I didn't see how anyone could stop them.
In best Star Trek fashion this also deals with contemporary problems through sci-fi. It's about the perception of one's enemy. Luckily I've never experienced war but I understand where the hatred against an opponent might stem from. Hate does lead to more hate but once you take the time to look at your enemy you may find out he is also a human with fears of his own. He may have been told things why he has to fight by his superiors he believed without question. It's the soldier who fights in wars, but it's their leaders who start them.
Shout by gergefilBlockedParent2017-08-17T21:00:30Z
One of the best episodes.