The Borg: Origin Theory
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The story I like the most is that the Borg were a civilization like any other. Individuals were using implants to augment their abilities to make life easier and more efficient, just as we do with our technology. At some point they would have seen it beneficial to link their minds, like we link computers, for ease of communication, sharing of knowledge and so on. Or maybe they created an artificial intelligence, and every mind was connected to the artificial intelligence. As Riker states in S2E16 of TNG, "the Borg have developed the technology to link artificial intelligence directly into the humanoid brain." It makes sense that people would find this desirable. From there, I like the idea of each individual simply being a node in a network. The emergent property of such a connection would be the loss of one's self to the collective. Each individual still exists, like an individual brain cell, but they all work in concert to make decisions. By making a "queen" that controls them all, I feel that it cheapens the terror of the Borg. That first episode left me with a feeling of lasting terror that I could not shake, and still feel whenever I watch that episode of TNG.
I like your theory, I have something similar, and I agree with your opinion on the Borg.
I love First Contact but I wish the Queen was never introduced. A truly faceless enemy is much scarier.
The theory you present is actually explored in an amazingly well written Fanfic called "Legend". A lot of trekker's won't have read it as it is a cross over story with a Fandom almost antithesis to Trek (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but I urge anyone that loves the Borg as a villain and would like to read a possible origin to them to give it a spin.
The origin portion is in the 2nd half of the story but I would again urge you to read the whole story. The premise is that Buffy was on a sleeper ship and ties back to the Eugenic Wars. The story is tear worthy and amazing. The best passage in the story I think is, "The Borg had assimilated more than eight thousand species and never in their history had they assimilated another hive mind. They were taken aback."
Seriously, give it a read.
I agree. The queen was a weak shot.
Adding a "Queen" or any sort of single being with importance weakens a hive mind considerably.
Dave Dave sounds like the origin of the cybermen from doctor who.
This is probably the most well thought out theory yet. And drawing on only in-universe canonical facts as evidence. Genius!
Except that canon directly contradicts it. Watch Star Trek Voyager - Dragon's Teeth...the episode explains that the Borg were active in the Earth year 1476. So not only is this theory wrong, so is the V-GER theory.
@@yobogoya4367 Not necessarily. Anti Trekker is not saying that the same exact creatures Kirk & company encountered directly led to the creation of the Borg, since the very same episode established that they were destroyed then and there and proceeded no further. I believe what he was getting at was that a similar looking species (a ‘cousin race’ if you will) that was around way in the past located in the Delta Quadrant-one perhaps even descended from the same common ancestor that the giant neuron ravioli looking creatures Kirk’s Enterprise encountered-could have ended up controlling a humanoid species to the point of causing them to create technology that would move such ones even further into their mental mold, without the resultant mass insanity side effect. Thus if you look at it that way, then there is no contradiction with established lore.
However, the Borg queen stated in "First Contact": "humans..we used to be like them".
I like the idea that the queen is a parasite on the Borg, not actually apart of the Borg. As a species, the Borg have a lot of weaknesses and could get taken advantage of.
@john mullens: I agree entirely.
@Anti-Trekker: It is not an assumption when the avatar of the Collective's consciousness says: "Humans, we used to be exactly like them: Flawed, weak... organic." Calling something an assumption because it does not fit the premise one conjures seems to be as much an error than the errors it was attempting to prevent. The Collective said they were humanoid. That is not assumption, that is fact as rendered and stated directly by their Queen avatar. (TNG: First Contact [movie])
Another assumption that the use of organic computers (brains) was inefficient is frankly (and in-universe) wrong. You forgot to mention bio-neural circuits that Voyager uses because the response time of this type of technology (neural tissue) was at least 2x faster than traditional isolinear circuits (VOY: Caretaker, Part 1). As Worf, Data, and Picard discuss in First Contact, the Borg are not entirely organic. But, like any other cybernetic lifeform, they cannot exist without their organic components. The cybernetic components have commands, directives and processes on them (TNG: I Borg). They also serve to erase individuality (TNG: First Contact [movie]), realign the neural cortical structures to connect to the hive (VOY several episodes), as well as generate armor/weapons/utilities for Borg to use (Numerous VOY episodes and TNG: I Borg).
Yet another assumption that irked me was around 9:50 in this video. The entire point of forced assimilation was precisely for the reason you seemingly glossed over without fully comprehending it: Of course most races/people/species will reject the idea of assimilation. That is why it was FORCED. (Resistance is futile. You will comply. et al) UGH. Ignoring canon because it contradicts with a particular personal point of view is annoying to say the least.
Add to this, the point of losing one's individuality in this is really an allegory for corporate culture. Corporations come in, assimilate your knowledge, and remove your sense of individuality. This was explicitly stated by the producers, writers, and actors for TNG. Not sure how this was missed as it was pretty obvious with many folks at the time making somewhat tongue-in-cheek "We are Microsoft of Borg, resistance is futile" memes in the late 90s. Seems THEY got the message. Need we repeat it again 25 years later? YUP.
Off your rocker hardly covers my thinking on this treatise of yours. You ignore facts which contradict your view because they are inconvenient. If you had kept the facts in and derived a coherent and credible theory, I'd have at least been able to buy into it even if I didn't agree. But... I cannot do either at this point. Nor can anyone else who watched the related episodes and movies while retaining the information.
That made them sound closer to the cybermen than ever (Outside of the Borg queen getting into Data's pants)
Yeah, organic so...
6:45 "You cannot just take a defective limb and replace it, like you can with a machine."
*Orks WAGGGHHHHHHHHing in the distance*
Well, from what I understand it can be said, to a degree that the very notion(this and many others relevant, reflective, and key, for the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence development, especially story-wise) is based not just on math, but that too being a universal language that can be used as a descriptor of all life, but that of a nature's "nature," in cellular and sub-cellular organic interactions and development...
Sounds reasonable, but I slightly disagree with one of your points. While it's true that most people would never agree to abandon their individuality to join a hive mind there are still quite a few that would. Cults and collectivist ideologies exist for a reason. So, imagine a collectivist transhumanist cult developing technological means to make such a hive mind a reality. After that it could forcefully assimilate new converts.
I was thinking the same thing. It only takes a few at first and it'll quickly grow exponentially.
Also, there's any number of reasons it may have originated as a tech to help make life easier. A militarily force with networked minds to work as a perfectly cohesive unit, medical applications gone awry etc.
Came here to say about the same thing. It would be like a very intelligent, unified Zombie apocalypse. They would take over more quickly than the brainless kind.
Liberalism today is essentially the borg
@@justinpowell9347 ...said the ditto-head
That's the part I take issue with too.
I can see a civilisation imposing such tech on its citizens, especialy if it's loosing a war. If you have an augmented society, hive minding a bunch of prisoners, or undisiplined military recruits into a more efective fighting force isn't a stretch. Nor is loosing control of the hive mind as your enemies crush your civilisation.
Interesting. I always figured the Borg started out as an accident or something. Like the nano technology was created to help but something went wrong causing it to mutate and spread like a virus.
I figured that some alien in the Delta quadrant made nanoprobes in a lab but they malfunctioned assimilated him spread out the lab and eventually went into space but that's just a theory.
I thought that the borg were a race that added tech to improve themselves and probably wanted to get information quicker and made the hive mind. Wich overwhelmed them and their strong impulse took over, improve find tech. Then when they got picard learnt of nanotechnology and started to assimilate everyone, realising that other races might have ideas that they haven't implemented but the borg could. And the Queen was made to evaluate newcomers before joining the collective so that what happened with Hugh wouldn't happen again. But then again.
@@DanBen07 a lore theory
I always liked the idea that the Borg are essentially a Von Neumann probe: a self replicating space craft created to perform a task like exploration or colonization and empowered with the ability to adapt to whatever it finds where it is going before moving on. A few iterations later and the probes realize they can incorporate biological systems and processes into their design to better achieve their objectives and you get the Borg or at least a Borg predecessor.
@@CedarHunt Nomad!
Loosing your individuality. in my opinion, isn't the point of becoming Borg...but rather a byproduct of it. Imagine people implanting a cell phone device but a glitch or miscalculation then creates the collective. There are people alive today who would be willing to replace perfectly good body parts with cybernetics if they were better...they're seeking perfection. People have told me they would be willing to implant a computer or phone in their brain. I see the Borg more as a society trying to improve itself with cybernetics and the collective either willingly created as a means of more efficient communication or created by a small group then forced on the rest through the technology already implanted in their bodies. Anyone who is pure humanoid with no implants would then be forceably upgraded and assimilated. Once the Borg get into space they simply continue to upgrade and assimilate those who they see as worthy. We could be the Borg in the making.
Yup, I think the origin of the Borg could be very much like the creation of the Cybermen in Dr Who and was one reason I used upgrade specifically. The Cybermen and the Borg are very similar in some ways, both being an upgrade of the frail humanoid body and having a collective consciousness or at least in some versions of the Cybermen a collective database.
My thoughts exactly. The development of anything large and impactful typically doesn't happen overnight and not always in the way it was intended. This is very true for technological advancement and we are seeing our culture becoming increasingly focused on integrating personal technology into our daily lives with the intent of connecting us in ways that were never considered possible before. I enjoyed the theory presented here and it's certainly a very reasonable one, but I also see no reason why the Borg couldn't have come from a civilization very similar to ours in which little conveniences from technology stacked up and eventually caused a runaway effect that could no longer be reversed. The end result was a civilization that had, somewhat unintentionally, became a collective hive-minded organism.
Before we go any further with improving ourselves. I think we should create a fail safe weapon that can target human DNA and wipe us out to save the rest of the creatures and the planet. Just in case we lose the AI battle that is..
@@dylanjones268
We are the fail-safe. It's why collectivism can't work on a large scale. The existence of "the Other" is so ingrained in our being, no amount of tech advance cab prevent conflict. The driving impulse of the Borg is perfection. To strive for perfection is admitting you're not. They look at themselves and see deficiency. They are a powerful interstellar civilization with a psychopathic inferiority complex culture.
I agree 💯
I"ve always thought they started out the same as the Cybermen from Doctor Who. They were people that gradually replaced worn out body parts. Eventually, the tech overtook them and they became the Borg.
Actually that's the one thing, I think, as it is most often presented from what I've seen,
that seems to have been kept purposefully as a mystery, and as such also a (legal? Or maybe just narratively)means of distancing them from the Cybermen
and kept also as specufially giving additional air of mystery about them as a very defining part of their story, almost bringing a tint of horror genres' tropes to _Star Trek_ with them as a result,
I suppose them being a product of a timely need to create a new villain(faction) for the protagonists and the Federatin at large to deal with to give perspective and a feel of depth and scale to the expanding and evolving world of creator(s)' imagination. A new driving force in this world to play with and bounce ideas in form of character experience and development of of...
Also, over time though I suppose it is quite true and reasoned to assume that it was inevitable that those two literary entities would eventually begin borrowing alscets from one another as boubg bothered influenced and insured by counter's stories and their value
At least that's been my take at least :)
Also, do forgive the verbose nature of my writing
Star Trek had always been about social issues, tos had so many social issues intertwined in their stories, race, poverty e.t.c, even mental issues, this Borg, could just be about our dependance on technology, what do you feel when you can't find your phone? Or you forgot it somewhere?
cyborg
I have a few theories as to the Borg’s origins.
Theory 1: The Borg began as a slave race created from captured individuals who were turned into Borg by their creators to act as slave labour or as soldiers in war and were given tools to assimilate other individuals to increase their number which goes into my next theory.
Theory 2: The Borg are a military experiment gone horribly wrong and were either created from willing volunteers or from prisoners of war and ended up assimilating their creators. This is kinda my favourite theory and explains why the collective removes individuality or at least control of your actions because if your a POW the last thing your going to do is turn coat and a race with few morals wouldn’t care about an invasive procedure to turn you into something resembling a cybernetic slave that they could now turn against their enemies with the chance of creating more slave soldiers while also gaining valuable intel from any captured prisoners or enemy soldiers, hell it would be so demoralising if it was done to a civilian population now you end up fighting the people you were protecting in the first place or even people you know for that matter. As for how the Borg ended up going rogue? Well either someone planted a virus in the Borgs C&C system which ended up with them zerking their creators along with their enemies and pretty much most of the Delta Quadrant or the ones responsible for their creation made a number of mistakes in their programming or it was a glitch in the system that ended up with them doing what they do best assimilating everything that isn’t nailed down.
They later adopt a queen later down the line when they encounter a species that have extraordinary processing ability that would significantly improve how the collective operates etc etc.
Theory 3: The Borg are the creation of a races messed up idea of perfection and either was created from a race that functioned as a techno-cult and were fanatical enough that most of them decided to become Borg and weren’t satisfied with that and ended up with them adding others to the collective that are worthy such as having decent technology or physical distinction that might make them more perfect. Kinda makes sense considering that their ships are essentially perfect shapes.
But yeah those are my theories any of em good or no?
They all work pretty well for me (just like Anti-Trekker's and the one from the Destiny novels) the 3rd one reminds me of a bio-weapon in an episode of Babylon 5, where it would turn a person into a perfect soldier with a built in weapon, to destroy anyone who wasn't a perfect member of their species. Only problem was, the definition of "perfect" was determined by religious fanatics instead of scientists, so no one was "perfect", and they wiped out their entire species, then broke down from lack of maintenance over time. A good episode BTW!
Not too shabby. :)
I was kinda wondering if it might jot be the military experiment option...seems kinda like it fits with their M.O.
I agree that the most likely origin of the Borg is military. If the creatures from Deneb were the origin of and the force behind the collective, then why do we not find them in any Borg ship or complex? Since we never see any such creatures, they are unlikely to be the origin of the collective but they could have been the inspiration for the creation of the collective if the race that created the Borg had encountered them at some point I personally feel that the Borg creation was the singularly foolish desperate last act of a technological race that was losing a war and on the verge of defeat and possibly annihilation.
They turned some army volunteers into the first Borg drones and gave them the means to assimilate others into the collective so that this new army would be for all intents and purposes unstoppable. They would have given them simple programming to capture, gather information and assimilate anyone they met into their ranks. Their mistake was in not anticipating the tremendous power of the collective mind which eventually becomes so strong that it overrides its programing and starts the collective out on the course that we have come to know.
As for the Queens origin, she was brought into the collective's picture to "bring order to chaos." At some point in the collectives past the hive mind became so large, unwieldy and complex that it could no longer reach a collective decision on anything. There were simply too many options available to choose from. They realized that an arbiter of some sort was necessary to make the final decision out of the options presented. Thus the hive mind chose to create a Queen like in ants and bees to lead the collective and end the chaos.
This is my theory on the origin of the Borg.
I have basically come to the same lines of thinking myself..& think all these, easily come together..to make what what we see now as the BORG. Remember, GUYNAN, said they were developing for many thousands of yeas, but, only "resently", became, any kind of rampant threat. -(In the last 900 years).
I can’t believe no one has made this connection yet.
Well. I love the video, but the theory of bynars like race as the origins of the borg may make more sense...in my opinion. The bynars work with collective mind and are organic race intertwined with their technology. If you had the Bynars type race living in the Delta quadrant under threat from Voth, Vaadwaur and Hirogen. What would the Bynar type race do: develop technology to protect themselves, nanites to extract information and turn captured soldiers into their armies. Over hundreds of years the original biological bodies of the bynars does not exist, however the collective mind lives on. You could argue the Borg Queen is the original Mainframe of the Bynars. All others are nanites connected through the collective mind.
"a daddy and a toaster loved eachoter very much" - brilliant, just brilliant!
Makes me want to watch Heavy Metal again. I still quote the line "I may come home and find you f***ing the toaster"
czcams.com/video/LRq_SAuQDec/video.html
Just how much is very much? :P
You should have used the blooper clip where the evil space ravioli hits Nimoy in the butt instead of the back.
The pain!
Ah,
“The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”
Has a creature whose only object is to leave a tasty treat
You coloured within Canon lines and laid a compelling argument. Excellent!
Now if only we could get people writing official Star Trek to do that...
One thing I’d like to point out in Star Trek First Contact, Dr. Crusher says: “In the 21st century the Borg are still in the Delta quadrant.” Basically saying that the Borg, in the current TNG form existed in the 21st century, so the unknown species cannot be the original Borg.
No, he's not saying that those particular ones are the Borg, but a similar kind of life-form in the Delta Quadrant.
Another of this species developed into what is now known as the Borg.
The three book series "Destiny: gave the whole back story of the borg, and then they removed the threat by correcting the original problem...
This is what I immediately thought of too. But my favorite hypothesis is that ALL the origin theories are right - what we call "The Borg" are actually a whole group of groups that have different beginnings and then merged later. Or maybe even didn't merge - Shatner's books have V'Ger as an offshoot of an early Borg. I could see there being multiple "versions" of the Borg, perhaps even unaware of each other...
@anti-trekker u must read more
It was a great story too
In canon Trek the Borg search for the perfect molecule, & in non-canon 'Destiny' this is what powers the Kardashev 2 civilizations which created their nanites. V'Ger similarly has a partial/corrupt memory of its makers. The two stories could easily be reconciled.
I've been trying to remember the name of the series forever. Thank you. Time to reread them all.
6:06 There's a third option: a group of humanoids and a group of living machines were looking for a way to enhance themselves with "the best of both worlds," and they found each other.
Fascinating theory Anti-Trekker and i think you have really stumble onto something. Cant wait to see where this series goes from here. Great Job. PS. Hope your feeling better, wishing you all the best and a speedy recovery.
The Star Trek: Destiny book trilogy offers the best Borg origin story. Call it canon or not, read the books and you’ll see what I mean.
I have read the trilogy and agree it is a much better explanation for an origin story. Anti trekker should read the Destiny trilogy.
Yeah, I agree. That trilogy had me buried in my kindle for over a week! It was a great Borg origin.
@@bobcarn It also make a logical origin story.
FWIW time travel is a lazy hack almost never done correctly in fiction, it should be treated like retconning and scorned as such. I prefer the video's theory especially because it's a natural evolution from first principles and the timeline of it contains no knots.
I strongly disagree with the Destiny books take on the Borg's origins.
I have my own theory and I really like the idea given in this video.
Also agree with another poster that time travel in this case was an easy plot device in order to do retcons.
watching that TOS episode makes me hungry for ravioli
Frakking toasters apparently doesn't mean what I thought it meant... O_o
FRAKK!
This certainly makes sense. But wouldn't the easiest way to find out be to ask Seven of Nine who and where Species 001 were?
Good idea but I think, in cannon, there would be two reasons why this wouldn't work:
1) Borg numerical designations seem to be given on contact with another a species, therefore, species 001 would likely be the first assimilated species (not the organic species of origin) as they wouldn't need to identify themselves (or it wouldn't need to. Borg pronouns!)
2) The Borg have lost some of their history (I think the episode is Dragon's Teeth where this is mentioned). I'm not sure if this is down to system failures, species successfully pushing the Borg back for a time, and the Borg losing resource/data in the process, or a third factor.
@@garethbjenkins
1. It would make sense to start at species 000 but this is Star Trek. And there is no indication in cannon that the numbering starts _after_ the first species to be borg, so in theory 001 could be the first.
2. Given how they're said to store & relay memories I'm pretty sure that some early borg memory would have been lost through conflict, although the very earliest memories would persist as they would by definition be common to all borg.
@@loc4725 However I think its mentioned that the Borgs early memories are fragmented, maybe not completely lost but still beyond their grasp. Thinking like a RAID array, bits of data are sent all over the network for storage, take out large enough chunks of that seemingly random data and the larger chunk is difficult if not impossible to recover.
@@Neuralatrophy
From what was said and implied it seems that borg memories are in a perpetual state of convergence, with different bits gradually being passed around in a perpetual state of updating, much like how routing updates work on the Internet.
If this is the case then the very earliest memories would be common as there would have initally been only one or a small group of borg at their genesis. After that conflict could have lead to loss of newly created memories as the drones with those memories would have been lost before before being able to update the collective.
@@garethbjenkins Cannons are artillery. Canon is a verified or accepted version of a story.
I immediately have trouble with that 'don't register as seperate lifeforms' and 'immune to phasers because their minds are linked' stuff, for both Borg and parasite. That's what doesn't make much sense to me.
Then there's that bit about giving up all flesh to become a purely mechanical being. But if those organic parasites (or something like them) are the origin of the Borg and created the purely mechanical nanites, brain-link network etc. to fit humanoid bodies, well... that's what they did. I can't see the instinctive biological impulse to reproduce and grow, shunted into creating mechanical replacements. It's like downloading your electrical brain activity into a robot body: it's not you, just a robot that thinks like you. Rather than creating an easier way to control humanoids for their own benefit, the parasites would have created a way for themselves to go hopping and skipping into extinction.
Then there's the flipside of that: you think a population of individuals wouldn't willingly surrender themselves to a collective? Really? But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest they didn't do it willingly (witness all the examples of assimilation shown on TV or in films) or even knowingly. Rather than a species of parasites creating robo-parasites to enslave humanoids instead of enslaving the humanoids themselves because reasons, I'd still say it's a relatively simple case of a delta quadrant race going through a technological singularity that went a bit wrong.
Guinan is presumably hundreds of years old and has said that her planet/race was decimated by the Borg. So presumably the Borg were already an advanced and established race in the Delta Quadrant, hundreds of years before STO. I think it's more likely that the Borg were a race of moderate intelligence that attempted to enhance themselves with cybernetic nanites to compete in the galactic forum. They misunderstood their own creation, gave up their individuality, and became slaves to it. Borg nanites are machinery, and the creature from STO doesn't have any cybernetic compounds.
Great theory. Well done, AT and Mr. Miles!
Mr. Miles....well done on the editing, and this is an awesome theory
The real question is Where did Lore Reloaded originate from?
Some questions are just too horrifying to contemplate and better left unanswered.
A basement?
"Operation: Annihilate" was always, ever since I first saw it as a kid, one of the most unsettling episodes of Star Trek to me.
They sort of invoke the same visceral feel that the Borg do. Another point in favor of the theory.
That, and the borg are a kind of horror called body horror. Where our control and identity is subsumed and changed by another force controlling or changing our body against our consent.
@@SumBrennus I wish they'd explore more of the idea that assimilated people are stuck watching the travesties they commit. I think they only mention a little bit of this with Picard's PTSD in TNG/First Contact. I don't recall if 7 of 9 suffered from that at all.
@@BradTheAmerican Sevens dealings and denial of the memories were a common aspect throughout the series. There was also at least two other stories with other examples in Voyager, one with a group of discarded borgs, and one with a "liberated" borg.
I thought they came from Sweden. (I'll show myself out.)
The Smorgasborg?
@@veritasnon
Well, the Japanese have sushi, and the Italians, pasta. The Swedish? A specialised minimalist yet, oddly excessive eating style, based on a buffet prior to the arrival of nouvelle cuisine. Upon its fusion with a la carte and invented by the parents of multiple winner of Wimbledon and the French open, Bjorn Borg.
LOL. You & Lily...
Vert the ferk?
Don't forget to tip your servers!
Ever since the Queen showed up in First Contact. My theory is she was a scientist experimenting on criminals on her planet thousands of years ago trying to rehab them into good people again. But she got power hungrey when she realized she could read thier minds and join them together in thought. This planet would already be warp capable and sharing tech with other planets in the Delta Quadrant. Do eventually assimilation began as well by her. She was the first Borg Queen. Her mind has been in the collective since her original body died and she moves her mind into other female assimilated bodies throughout the centuries. Well that's been my theory since First Contact.
I like this one too
Borg queen is canon to not be native borg. She was assimilated.
@@JgHaverty where does that come from? One of the Voyager episodes?
Nah because block chain didn't work.
The macro-brain theory makes sense and fits in-universe. Though I usually figure the Borg were an organic species who let their technology get the better of them. What makes that idea frightening is just how much you see hints of it on Earth today. Think about it. Everywhere you go, you see people with their noses constantly in their cell phones, largely on social media. Give people the opportunity to plug their brains directly into the internet in order to get updates and information even faster than thumbing through and reading, and the Borg don't sound quite so far fetched.
I'd have to agree. A hivemind was likely not the intended outcome, but an emergent property of faster communication between people reaching it's logical extreme. And we don't even have to look at our technology to see this in action, societies in general display many emergent properties as they got larger, such as currencies and cultural identity.
We're extremely close to the AGI Singularity happening in real life, @@Axius27 and Chris Conner. So this theory is by far the most accurate... and most frightening. I personally choose death over becoming a cyborg and even implanting myself into any android construct. No thanks on that ceaseless living hell.
The brain creature needed to assimilate humans to build and they would of came to a point we’re the more technology they built the stronger they become and wanted more and found assimilation of other technological races would further enhance them far quicker and they just kept on assimilating race after race and technology became a driving force and race that was primitive would have no value so ignored so kind of fits the Borg
That's what the Borg actually represent according to the show creators. Trek has always been about technology improving our lives and the Borg shows what happens when we go too far and let technology take over our lives.
I also don’t know why AT dismisses the idea an organic species would willingly create a “collective” on their own anyway.
They basically did that in VOY:Unity. Not hard to believe a good “cooperative” becomes a malevolent “collective” at some point in the future.
The Star Trek: Destiny trilogy of books has a better explanation IMHO. It involves a hyper-advanced race, first contact with a human vessel, and a horrible accident with temporal and spatial consequences, and it covers the birth, rise, and eventual death of the Borg.
Mr. Miles did some great editing on this one.
It could be that some sort of techno-religious culture (like the Mechcanicum from Warhammer 40K) were the progenitors of the Borg. They recognized their limitations and constantly sought to add to their collective. Being devoted to the Omnisiah would give them purpose. Maybe the Borg are the apex and zenith of the Mechcanicum.
Dude! I think you totally nailed it! This is it! It makes perfect sense and holds together flawlessly! Well done!
Stardate 53167.9, (year 2376) the Vaaduar explain that the Borg were active before they went into Cryo-sleep over 900 years before that episode. That would mean that the Borg existed in the year 1476. Holds together flawlessly my ass.
Interesting theory, but i dont think there is a requirement for the Borg to have willingly created themselves. Perhaps some species started out, at first, by creating their counterpart to the internet, then eventually hooked up whatever type of nervous system they have to their bodies via tech. They discovered that nanites can be used to keep themselves young and healthy, and from there, all it takes is for someone to play around with using implants connecting them to the internet to make them do whatever you want them to, and an AI that, perhaps to optimize productivity somewhere (Not something we would do, but there may be a species that might, and giving up your individiuality for part of the day to be a productive member of society, then later regain it and spend the rest of your day doing whatever doesnt sound half bad to me) which goes not necessarily mad, but realizes that it can optimize productivity by going beyond what its creator told it to do, so it eventually develops the alcoves Borg use for regeneration and refuses to give the workers back up and eventually uses its connection to the internet and its adaptivity, combined with the extra calculating power of all these brains to reprogram the nanites, turning everyone into workers, and just never considers doing something like using robots, for whatever reason.
I think the Borg origins was more like the Bynars from the TNG episode, 11001001. I think the Bynars are a transitional form from autonomous individual to borg drone - an in between stage, if you all will. In fact, I think we are on the path to becoming like the Bynars ourselves, becoming ever increasingly dependent on technology to enhance our memory, communication, and connectivity. In my mind, it’s only a short hop from Bynar to Borg.
My new favorite head canon. I'd love to see this somehow tied into Q's unexplained fear of them.
Has a character ever willingly given themselves to the Borg? Like how some characters in vampire movies want to BECOME vampires?
this is a well thought out theory and after careful consideration i think i'm here for it! tysmfs!!!
Whose to say that they didn’t seek out a culture that was highly technological and made them create the proto Borg or the Beta-Borg?
The development of anything large and impactful typically doesn't happen overnight and not always in the way it was intended. This is very true for technological advancement and we are seeing our culture becoming increasingly focused on integrating personal technology into our daily lives with the intent of connecting us in ways that were never considered possible before. I enjoyed the theory presented here and it's certainly a very reasonable one, but I also see no reason why the Borg couldn't have come from a civilization very similar to ours in which little conveniences from technology stacked up and eventually caused a runaway effect that could no longer be reversed. The end result was a civilization that had, somewhat unintentionally, became a collective hive-minded organism.
I must also point out that the Borg seem to believe that their organic components are important and that they actually do value the minds of individuals since those are what are pooled together to make the collective consciousness. How power and decisions are made in such a mind is not clear, but perhaps there is more value in utilizing unique ways of thinking from biological beings from across the galaxy than to simply attempt to make an all-encompassing AI race that might not ever be able to truly understand aspects of the universe in which it exists.
There's an even easier, and continually overlooked, origin of the Borg. The Borg are basically humanoid insects. Just like ant colonies or bee hives. Insects use pheromones to control the colony and communicate. If a species were to evolve beyond the intelligence level of insects, and create technology, there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't create technology that would enhance their already basic existence of being a hive. They also wouldn't have any sense of individuality, like mammal type humanoids. This would also explain the existence of the Queen. As all insect colonies have Queens. I think though, the Borg Queen was changed by the introduction of locutus, into the hive. It gave her more of a sense of individuality, than had every existed in the hive collective.
except the Borg Queen only functions as the mouthpiece of the collective mind (because the writers figured out, since tv is a visual medium, they needed an actor physically there to interact with the Starfleet personnel - leader to leader - the disembodied voice wasn't good enough), she has no reproductive function, as insect queens do (and I don't know if insect queens are 'in charge' of their respective hives, if they tell anyone what to do, of it everyone just knows their jobs and does them, and hers is merely to lay the eggs...and she cannot be expected to keep her figure after having 10,000 kids, Bender!)
The V'ger thing was also brought up in William Shatner's "The Return" novel. It began when Decker "joined" with V'ger. A line from a Borg to Spock in the book, "We are Borg. We are V'ger"
I really hope this ends up being canon. It really does seem to make the most sense.
I think the Borg are an accident, the nanites being created and acting like a virus or a microscopic von neumann probe. It got out or was released and has a primary objective to propagate. It uses biological hosts because that is what it knew originally or biological hosts have the specific materials for nanite replication in one spot. They haven't had a need to evolve past the biological/machine hybrid, or the creativity to wonder if it would be better. Just my two cents
That doesn't explain the Borg's desire for perfection tho and there is the issue of how in the world the nanites would even have the ability to create all these implants.
I LIKE YOUR LINE OF THINKING, HAVING HAD IN MIND MANY VERSIONS OF THIS MYSELF.
Shut up, Wesley
What's that clip at 9:31 from? Can't remember seeing it before....
Voyager episode. Where 7 gets abducted and her Borg aspects get abused. Her memory wiped but she remembers flashes of it and the doc helps her solve it..Cant recall the episode though.
Best Borg theory I've heard. It is not that much of a stretch to believe
Yep, I have my own theory but I really like this one as well and the reasoning of the video creator for it.
The romulans created the Borg when they were researching android life. the Picard show has pretty much confirmed this.
Personally I think the Control storyline was originally supposed to be a Borg origin story but the producers changed there minds about that late in production. I think Leland/Control was originally supposed to get sent back in time to the Delta Quadrant in the final episode, and since it couldn't get the Sphere data, it began to assimilate cultures as a way to gather its own set of data.
Anyway, now I see the Control storyline as pseudo-origin story. An unknown species in the Delta Quadrant created their own Control-like A.I. which proceeded to go rogue and start assimilating cultures.
This is the most star trek nerd content I've ever discovered. It's pretty great, subbed.
My theory: nanties created for medical purposes gone wrong.
Wesley's nanites from "Evolution"
It's a neat idea that works for a origin story.
Facsunating stuff, and a singular proposal, truly original as I have not heard of any similar assumptions or suppositions made before, great work!!
You know it's funny, I started out watching this episode thinking you're completely off your rocker. But then I actually watched the video and you make a WHOLE lot of sense.
This is the most sensible theory I've seen yet.
I kinda take issue with the idea that the Borg need to have created themselves on purpose. If the Internet exists for a species, they have nanites that keep them healthy, and implants that constantly keep them linked up to something internet related, all it takes is for some AI made for optimizing workflows to start expanding its own tasks past what its developer intended and use the internet and everyones implants to make them work 24/7. No machine rebellion needed, and no purposeful creation either.
You think that a species so far away it takes decades at work to get there developed on a planet close enough for Kirk to get to from Earth in a few years which then hyper evolved with it decades or centuries to become the boring that's not completely hilariously laughably ridiculous at all
nop coz : a bit not %100 true because borg is older and in that star trek episode that you show the organism, it is still too early to become a living being let alone a borg.
@@northwindx79 Unicellular life is still around on Earth. Does that prove that humans dont exist? It doesnt. Unlike people think a lot of the time, evolution does not make prior organisms go extinct. Of course, the Borg evolved far away from where we see these, but theres species older than the Borg in Trek, who knows how a colony of these creatures couldve spread across the galaxy and ended up somewhere Kirk may have encountered it?
@@cdreid99999 Eh, with all the time travel in Trek, especially when it comes to Borg abilities, it wouldn't surprise me if the Borg went further back in time to get a head start, or if potentially they're just another offshoot of the species Kirk and Spock encountered. Isn't hard to imagine part of that unicellular collective managed to stick around in some way after the onset of the Borg.
I like the Vyger theory, but the one in the book The Return, In that book when it merged with a human. It instantly transported thru time and space to the Delta Quadrant in the past.
Read the book series "Destiny", it has an even better explanation of the borg origins, and ultimate fate.
@@gerogefinkle4764 Wasn't their ultimate fate being switched off when Captain Kirk parachuted onto their home world and literally flicked a big power switch?
Their entire race transcended, and ended up assimilating them back into them before doing it. They became what they were due to being separated for millennia out of necessity. Awesome book series.
@@gerogefinkle4764 William Shatner disagreed. He wrote the book with the giant power switch being flipped.
Think of the Borg as a giant Vulcan mindmeld using technology rather than telepathy. The drones aren't just organic processors. Each drone contributes its memories and personality to the gestalt. Actually, its possible that the Borg weren't always a single deafening hivemind. A prehistoric version of the Borg could have given the members more autonomy with only a whisper of the collective in their ear. When you think about it, we are kind of already at that stage :(
Hey all, what episode is being shown at 9:33. I vaguely remember it and would like to watch it again, but I can't for the life of me remember.
Voyager, Retrospect
I watched that episode recently and also thought of the Borg, so you aren't insane. Like you said, it could be another version of it in the Delta Quadrant
The Borg were originally cloned from a Swedish tennis player.
Hoehner Tim 9 out of tennish.
@@purgruv booooo
Even Lily Sloane hinted at that:" Borg? It sounds Swedish. ..."
RUN!
Does that mean they became Bjorn again?
You get a sub for that awesome joke at the start haha "Lore"
Yeah Mr Data's brother
I always thought of the Borg's assimilating organic beings as a "waste not, want not" type of thinking.
Interestin hypothasis but we know the borg existed before this
Yes and no. Meaning, the organism could still be the Original borg, They had already taken out star cluster groups. So if one did get to the delta quadrant... and thus got involved in time travel. Explored those issues. If you notice the borg don't conquer and the Organic nonsense doesn't either, its about advancing and becoming more perfect at a certain point. So, With time travel and fluidic space it all kind of makes sense. The borg literally ignore lesser life forms unless they need you as fuel. At first the creatures probably primal with a interesting defense mechanism. It was given an advacnemetn or thoguht increase when mind controlling other lifeforms. Ie a biological enhancement. So as this progresses it owould find anything as an enhancement. Then we can talk about time travel and the borg. Why haven't they used itot conquer the universe forwards or backwards. That is wher ethe time police come in and we find there is temporal spacial oops that stop time travel being artificially made,of course therare certain natural phenome that could occur. The time police, monitor time events, so this allows hem to allow peope lot travel through time to collect or fix problems. They just ensure some sort of massive universal failure doesn't occur. .. hmm one could make it work... but yeah. hypothesis may not exactly fit in, but origin stories would be cool. For all we know the ubes and what not, is the creature living in them as a soup conction. :D
Both the borg and the evil space ravioli could have come from the same thing and that thing would be more like the ravioli than the borg before gaining their "own" tech.
From the team that brought you all 372 episodes in the hit series "Borg: The Analysis- An Exhaustive and Inhumanly Thorough Episodic Overview of the Borg" comes their newest creation...
"Just when you think there is nothing left to learn about The Borg, the Collective has more to offer"
Presenting Michael J Crawford's
"i-Borg, Borger Borgs Borging the Borggiest Borg Borgs the Borgs have ever Borged"
Available on CZcams and a select theater in the beautiful Aleutian Islands
Dang you figured it out....
He won't even let other people steal jokes about his little Borg series... shoot, umm... spoilers.
I love how he brought up Control from ST:D offhandedly and immediately dismissed it as the reason for the Borg existing.
There are two other logical possibilities: 1. a humanoid species was faced with extinction (war/ catastrophy) that they had to give up their individuality for their species to survive, and 2. a science experiment gone wrong (Doc Ork on a large scale).
Nope, both wrong... but check out the 3 book series Destiny, and ou can find the actual origins story.
Now THIS is entertainment!!!
That you... I really enjoyed making this one
@@SaltyTrekker No, that YOU. That you very much indeed.
Yes. He enjoyed making it.. (sigh)
@@SaltyTrekker Whats the outro song?
The internet already is a collective intelligence, one that most people on earth accept.
There's not really a lot of intelligence evident on the internet, to be perfectly honest. *Lots* of porn and arguing. Intelligence? Not so much. Lol
Interesting idea regarding the blastoneurons being the "ancestors" of the Borg Collective.
My pet theory is that the Borg Collective is the unintended result of scientists trying to create a form of post human government, a society in which all information is available to all members (all members capable of understanding this information) instead of just a handful of members (the ones who are capable or ones in position of power, this information being one of the means of why they have power), and all decisions are taken by the entire society, a consensus of the all instead of a handful of leaders who claim to represent an entire society but can still act out of self interest.
This was an attempt to eliminate such self interest such as greed or short sightedness (not thinking of long term planning or consequences of decisions), and anything else that could affect parts of a society or the entire society because of the failings of an individual leader.
Of course I resort to the trope that something went wrong while you bring up a good reason that the Collective taking over its creators was never the result of some mistake by a scientist or engineer. They were already a "shared consciousness".
I definitely would take your theory over that of V'ger creating the Borg or the origin story in the Star Trek Destiny books.
I think you are on to something here. The origin of the Borg is NOT the same as the origin of the Cybermen, nor is it the same as Skynet/Terminators, nor is it the same as the Replicators from SG: 1. That the Borg developed from a parasite species (as in Operation: Annihilate!) is creative and very, very interesting. My compliments, Sir!
The question have been resolved in the "Star Trek Destiny" book series. The best one.
It's not canon, but I agree it's my favorite theory and resolution.
Came to the comments just to mention that trilogy..probably some of my favorite Trek books. They were soooo good.
@@markfuston2714 right?? I'd give my and your left nuts to see that story arc in a movie.
@@graemebass2391 So long as it's just the left one and I get to keep the other one I'm down, someone make this happen! Lol
@@markfuston2714 alright I'll heat up the hatchet, you find out where Rick Berman lives
Imagine if a trill Symbiant learned to live independent from a host. and then began to gain all knowledge in universe
What if a Trill mated with a Bynar?!
Goa'uld
This is my favourite Star Trek lore video ever. It's a brilliant prime timeline explanation. The one concept of the organism demanding a ship to fulfill its purposes fits perfectly. A giant detached collective organism which consciously seeks out species to perform tasks for them, including building and crewing starships as drones. The Borg are so much more awesome with this grand evolution as a hive consciousness.
Problem with your theory is.... that episode of TOS with that single cell creature is 75 years before the Borg encounter Picard. The Borg have been around much longer than that (in Borg humanoid form) according to Whoopy. So that TOS life form can’t be the “origin” of the Borg.
Does the Borg use gene therapy and turn the host into augments? Since 7 of 9 has better physical and mental abilities than her human counterparts.
I figure a machine war kind of like The Terminator or The Matrix happened with the original species on the original Borg home world. The organic species lost and got assimilated by the machine intelligence. Their minds were too chaotic so the machine introduced an order subroutine, which in effect killed the individual free will of the population. The artificial intelligence took over and went on a mission to achieve it's version of perfection. This race was probably already warp capable which made the Borg space faring.
That is indeed a very interesting theory. It does though, pose the question: at what point did the machines decide to change their strategic goal from one of total annihilation or eradication of the original organic species (like the Terminator, the Cylons, or the Kaylon of the Orville storyline) to one of harvesting organics (like the Matrix machines or the Borg)? Why would they just decide, ‘Nah, let’s stop destroying these guys and just control their minds instead’ ? It’s interesting that writers of dystopian machine-takeover stories either have the AI take one road or the other, but never change midway.
@@bcs2em625 My theory is that the machine saw it's creators as being imperfect, so it decided to make them "perfect" . It was probably designed to "help" the species so it "helped" them in it's own way. It was probably a very short war. By the time the inhabitants realized something was wrong, it was too late. The machine intelligence probably poisoned the water or something with it''s nanobots. It may have just been a quest of curiosity at first. The machine was thirsty for knowledge so it decided to hook all of those brains up to it so it could learn from them. Or maybe it was simply to control them. Who knows.
@@poseidon5003 Makes good sense. Kind of like the androids in ‘I, Mudd’. But what you describe sounds more like a coup d’etat than like an actual war. I think of a war as two sides declare a fight to the death. Sounds like the poor organics didn’t know what hit them.
@@bcs2em625 They wouldn't know what hit them at first. It would be alike a zombie apocalypse, except with drones.
very interesting can't wait for the rest in this series.
I always thought they got addicted to VR games, which is why they basically ignore anyone on their ships until their connectivity is interfered with. They're busy with a boss raid, and they get pissed off if someone messes with their modems.
OMG!!! How about “The Six Million Dollar Man” that section 31 went back? Lol
It’s JUSTa Theory A anti-trekker THEORY - read in voice of film theory guy
"I understood that reference." - Captain America says pointing
"film theory guy"?!!! It's MatPat!!! Has the whole world gone insane?!!!
Lol I'm not properly medicated, sorry.
Yep, just like evolution, and creation myths
9:32 what series and episode?
Voyager, Retrospect
Quite plausible . Thanks for all the research put into making this.
I wouldn't surprise me one bit if this is correct, but I think it's the same thing I always say. They reuse ideas alot in Trek.
The Borg is something that the origin of should never be explained in official Trek canon. It should be left vague and mysterious. That unknown part of them makes them scary. Then we can keep getting cool fan theories like this one.
17:42 I've long speculated that the Queen rose up as a power inside The Collective after the crew of the Enterprise returned Hugh and that she and Lore were both vying for power over the Borg. We saw that its possible for an individual Borg to assert power over other drones when 7 of 9 took control over a small group of Borg when they were stuck on a planet and their individual personalities began to re-emerge. (side quest: is 7 of 9 a war criminal?) It explains where the Queen came from, her fascination with Data, how she's still an individual, and how their ship designs regressed (from having no distinct areas such as engineering, etc, to suddenly having those sections and needing to use control panels in Voy).
To put my theory another way, the Queen controls *_A_* collective, but not The Collective and that The Collective met its demise through the actions of the Enterprise crew and Hugh.
Well, in our reality, the creatures that took over the admiral’s brain in “Conspiracy” were meant to be a superior threat. They were changed to be more human for simplicity. But, those brain creatures were very similar to the ones in “Annihilate”. You could make the case that the “Annihilate”, “Conspiracy”, and Borge creatures are the same.
Very true. Additionally, I’ve always wondered if the creatures in Conspiracy were somehow related to the Symbiots of the Trill race. They sure look a little similar. Yeah, I know one is evil and the other benevolent, but you could say that about the Romulans & Vulcans and yet those two are still related.
There were those novels regarding the Borg, I forget the titles, but in that one, Starfleet ran into a cybernetically enhanced species that used nanites to stay alive. However, lacking the energy they needed to keep alive after crashing on a desolate planet with several surviving Starfleet members, they started first by scavenging themselves, and then the sole cyborg survivor, having gone insane, decided to assimilate the human crew, to build up an army of reluctant, but far more physically fit drones.
Star Trek Destiny. That was a great series. Not "cannon" technically, but a great read. I actually like like The Anti-Treker's theory here better because it uses a species from the show while the books made up a new species. Not that it's wrong to do that, ST does that all the time, but it's more fun using a pre-existing species I think.
The origins are actually a lot earlier than that and started about a decade ago when humans started wearing machine interfaces and surgically inserting microchip devices into their body :)
It makes sense, but I think you miss what is the most likely origin for the borg - runaway medical technology. Specifically, nanites designed to return an organism to it's completely healed (?perfect?) state. Given medical nanites in most scifi self-replicate, rather than simply run out of steam, it seems to me that errant programing, or an unexpected situation, may have been the origin. It would also explain the purpose of the borg - to achieve perfection - far more than the brain creatures.
Wow you have to be real OG to come up with this theory that episode looks pretty cool I think I’m going to watch some of the original series now
Well it's an in-canon argument, and a valid one.
a bit not %100 true because borg is older and in that star trek episode that you show the organism, it is still too early to become a living being let alone a borg.
@@northwindx79 But he mentioned its not the actual "brain" species found in TOS, the Borg is a separate but similar species. So the actual Borg species could have been around since much earlier.
@@northwindx79 I guess you have their birth certificate along with Obama's.
I really like Destiny' s take on it, but this theory fits as well... now I' m confused
Isn't the Destiny trilogy considered canon?
@@christopherwallace1958 nope, beta canon
...what does that mean? Never heard of "beta canon" before
@@christopherwallace1958 it' s secondary stuff: licensed wwork that isn' t considered canon by CBS
Well then that's a mighty detailed historical origin story for not being considered canon...
And I'd always thought the novels were licensed to be canon. Interesting.
You, sir, have presented the first theory (sorry, I have to - working hypothesis) on Borg origin that I support. Damn fine work sir, damn fine. :)
Start at 11:30 for the abstract, and then go back for full details if you wish.
Spock seems uncharacteristically interested in "the hole" in that episode. heh heh
I believe that the Borg got started on a episode of star trek enterprise TV series.
According to the Borg Queen, the species known as the Borg started out as normal plain lifeforms; (Star Trek: First Contact) they had been developing for thousands of centuries before the 24th century, and over the many years, they evolved into a mixture of organic and artificial life with cybernetic enhancements. (Star Trek: First Contact; TNG: "Q Who")
In the original script for Q, Who?, Guinan speaks to the origin of the Borg. She doesn't give us a full history, but she does indicate that they're ancient, at least 100,000 years old as a society/species.
GUINAN: They are a mixture of organic and artificial life that has been developed over a thousand centuries.
Very clever and insightful theory. Makes me wonder if you've uncovered a piece of Roddenberry's masterplan and genius ? Bloody brilliant work!!
I think you nailed it, but I wonder if any of the show creators did, or if it's just a happy coincidence. Even if it's not these specific creatures, the fact that they existed suggests that something very similar could have evolved in the delta quadrant during the time period needed. The reasoning is all sound. Good job.