May 11th, 1992, "I, Borg"
Fiver by Marc
The Episode
DATA: Readings are still inconclusive, however the moon's atmosphere is capable of supporting life.
I hate it when Trek implies that the only thing that matters for Class M conditions is the atmosphere. They ignore gravity, air pressure, temperature, on and on...
TROI: I would have thought having a Borg on the ship would stir some feelings.
PICARD: I'm quite recovered from my experience, thank you.
Talk about a blatant lie. Even if you don't count First Contact we have the events of "Drumhead" and other episodes.
LAFORGE: If this works the way I think it will, once the invasive programme starts spreading, it'll only be a matter of months before the Borg suffer total systems failure.
Months? I don't think that the Borg would allow that much delay between updates. Isn't that what the transwarp conduits are for?
CRUSHER: I just think we should be plain about that. We're talking about annihilating an entire race.
What race? The Borg have no culture, even if you consider the Voyager retcons. They exist to consume, nothing more. The concept of genocide doesn't apply to the Borg.
RIKER: I agree. We're at war.
CRUSHER: There's been no formal declaration of war.
TROI: Not from us, but certainly from them. They've attacked us in every encounter.
PICARD: They've declared war on our way of life. We are to be assimilated.
CRUSHER: But even in war there are rules. You don't kill civilians indiscriminately.
RIKER: There are no civilians among the Borg.
The Borg are at war with every other sentient race. And Riker is right, there are no Borg civilians. There is no Borg culture. While you could argue that Hugh is a drafted soldier, he's still a soldier.
CRUSHER: When I look at my patient, I don't see a collective consciousness. I don't see a hive. I see a living, breathing boy who's been hurt and who needs our help. And we're talking about sending him back to his people as an instrument of destruction.
Being alive is not the same as being sentient. And while Hugh will eventually become sentient, at this point he isn't. Crusher is short-sighted. You could also argue that Borg drones aren't "alive" in the same way as humanoid, every single function is being supported by machinery.
CRUSHER: He must be hungry. The Borg don't ingest food. Their implants can synthesise any organic molecules the biological tissues require. What they need is energy.
There's another screed here. Does regeneration really consist of just a power socket and ethernet connection? It could be argued that regeneration alcoves also cultivate base biological material that can be transferred to drones. There has to be a limit to how much biological repair a drone can do by itself, after that the implants expand to replace the flesh.
LAFORGE: Yeah, but there's only one of you. Do you have a name? A means of identification?
BORG: Third of five.
I can't help but feel that a unimatrix or cube number should be attached to this designation.
LAFORGE: I've been rationing his portions of energy. I think he understands. When he cooperates, he gets fed. If not.
CRUSHER: Like a rat in a cage.
Alive does not mean sentient, etc.
LAFORGE: Look, if I'm going to figure out his command pathways, I need to learn how he processes information, and the only way I know to do that is by giving him perceptual tests. And for that, I need his cooperation.
CRUSHER: So he can participate in the destruction of his entire species.
The Borg are not a species! They're a virus that only wants to exist and gather information for no particular reason. The writer is really hammering in the foreshadowing, we didn't need this much!
BORG: What is a doctor?
If Data has a built-in dictionary, there's no reason why Borg can't. Stupid line...
LAFORGE: Anyway, I'm having second thoughts about what we're doing here. I mean, programming him like some sort of walking bomb. Sending him back to destroy the others.
Even IF we accept that Borg drones are sentient, THEY ARE AT WAR! Sabotage and Trojan Horses are an accepted part of war. I hate it when Trek writers rewrite reality to convey a message in a hamfisted manner.
PICARD: How can a geometric form disable a computer system?
DATA: The shape is a paradox, sir. It cannot exist in real space or time.
LAFORGE: When Hugh's imaging apparatus imprints this on his biochips, he'll try to analyse it.
DATA: He will be unsuccessful, and will store the shape in his memory banks. It will be shunted to a subroutine for further analysis.
LAFORGE: Then when the Borg download his memory, it'll be incorporated it into their network, then they'll try to analyse it.
DATA: It is designed so that each approach they take will spawn an anomalous solution. The anomalies are designed to interact with each other, linking together to form an endless and unsolvable puzzle.
The Borg have been around long enough to debug themselves to avoid logic loops. Furthermore, this seems like a plan that some other race would've tried a long time ago.
BORG: Locutus.
PICARD: Yes. I am Locutus of Borg.
BORG: Why are you here?
You'd think the Collective would've told all the drones that Locutus doesn't exist anymore.
The Fiver
Data: Sir, I am picking up an automated signal from the moon ahead of us.
Picard: What does it say?
Data: It is a single repeating word. I cannot decipher it, but it resembles the pseudo-Swedish dialect used by a certain culinary artist once featured on twentieth-century Earth television.
Ah yes, the Swedish Chef. "Borg" is a name used in various Nordic and Germanic cultures. There are multiple people with the last name of Borg.
Riker: I'd better take down an Away Team. I've always wanted to have a chef aboard the Enterprise.
Picard: Aren't replicators good enough for you anymore, Will?
Riker: It's the one in my quarters that's the problem. I once called it an overgrown toaster and it never forgave me.
Painful Enterprise joke. The Voyager joke is better by comparison.
Riker: Okay...definitely not Swedish.
Crusher: Why definitely? There's no reason the Borg couldn't have assimilated a few Scandinavians during the Battle of Wolf 359.
Riker: True. I just have trouble imagining what a blonde Borg would look like.
While we don't know Seven's ethnicity, Jeri Ryan is German.
Riker: Doctor, we have to get out of here. The Borg always come back to collect their dead.
Crusher: But he's not dead! He's just resting!
Worf: He looks dead to me.
Crusher: It's probably because he's pining for the Collective.
The Parrot Sketch is a classic. I would've included a few more lines from it, though.
Picard: The Collective is vulnerable because it's so interconnected. Can you devise an invasive program that we could load into this Borg before we return him to the hive?
La Forge: That depends on how good their security protocols are. Do you think they could be fooled into opening an unsolicited message attachment?
Picard: If we make the subject line enticing enough, yes.
Ah, early email gags. Spam filtering has certainly advanced since 2004, hasn't it?
Picard: The plan is to infect the Collective's great link with a logical paradox virus. Within months, the Borg will become so obsessed with solving it that they'll be powerless to do anything else
La Forge: In other words, think of it as a weapon of mass distraction.
I'm reminded of a gag from the movie "You've Got Mail"...
Listen to this, the entire work force of the state of Virginia had to have solitaire removed from their computers because they hadn't done any work in six weeks.
Data: This is the final design for the paradox virus.
Picard: It looks harmless enough. How does it work?
La Forge: I disguised it as an election-year campaign leaflet. It promises to cut taxes and balance the budget while eliminating the national debt and increasing public spending.
There are some politics jokes that never get old.
Guinan: Hugh has feelings. Before you use him as a genocidal weapon, you should at least look him in the eye.
Picard: It is not a he, it is an it, and it deserves no consideration whatsoever!
Guinan: That's not how you felt when Commander Maddox said the same thing about Data.
Picard: That was an entirely different case! My android second officer was being denied his fundamental human righ-- uh, what I mean to say is, um....
Comparisons to "Measure of a Man" are a bit of a stretch.
Memory Alpha
* There's a blooper in Borg designations here. Hugh uses "Third of Five" instead of "Three of Five" as Voyager would establish.
Nitpicker's Guide
* Why is Geordi writing the computer virus instead of Data?
* Phil also thinks that Borg would be able to escape logic loops.
* If Picard fighting to keep his individuality didn't affect the Borg, why would Hugh's?
* Hugh hears that the Enterprise will hide from the Borg cube behind the star. Why didn't the Borg assimilate this knowledge and attack the Enterprise?
* Back in "The Best of Both Worlds" Beverly wanted to program nanites to attack the Borg. Why is she against this computer virus?
* BOBW also established that cutting a drone off from Borg transmissions will kill them, yet they do it in this episode without problems. Oops.
* Why does Hugh think that "doctor" is an occupation and not a name? Phil specifically brings up Judge Reinhold.