Greed Corp. Giveaway (CLOSED)

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We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

The Borg. The ultimate expression of both capitalism and communism. Unrelenting, vicious, unstoppable, strip-mining entire worlds of their populations and resources with a single mind and a single goal. And therefore our mascots for Greed Corp., a game where people destroy the planet to get resources (that they're destroying).

So, to win a copy of the game, answer me this. The above quote is the Borg's standard hail. In "Regeneration", however, the one episode of Star Trek: Enterprise the Borg appeared in, their hail was simply "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." This change makes no sense and, while continunity is maintained, it comes only at the cost of making the Borg look ridiculous. Why does that change make the Borg sound stupid?

The best nerd answer (or the exact one I'm looking for) wins the key. In 24 hours, a clue will be posted to send you a little closer in the right direction. 24 hours after that, I'll make the clue even easier.

Clue: Search for Chuck in the field of debris that spans many galaxies.

Winner: SrgColman and MalekTaktak, for getting the closest answers first.

Answer (there's also a video if this is tl;dr (skip to 8:49, but Chuck is awesome and funny and smart and you really should watch this show)):

"The Borg then send the following transmission in its entirety: "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile." That's the point where I call foul. Yeah, I've heard the excuses, but I don't buy any of them:
1) The Borg were instructed not to identify themselves in the past. So why say anything then?
2) The Borg never identified themselves in Q who or Best of Both Worlds. Right, but their statements were also given substance in those episodes.

See, the reason the phrase is what it is is because of the Borg's nature: they do not recognize the illogic of resisting them. When they first met the Enterprise, all they stated was that they knew the Enterprise's defenses were incapable of stopping them, so they shouldn't resist. In the second, Picard as Locutus was serving to make clear that Borg victory was inevitable; if the head of the best the Federation could bring could be made into the Borg's voice, then his words have all the more meaning. Look back on his remarks, and there is a genuine puzzlement in their question to Worf: "Why do you resist us?" They cannot comprehend that anyone could engage in such clearly pointless behavior, that they would rather throw their lives away than join in the unity and marvel that the collective is. The Borg introduction from First Contact was: "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." To break this down, the Borg's first statement is to make it clear that defeat is the only possible outcome in the most clear and direct manner possible, by making it clear who they're dealing with. "We are the Borg, you've already lost." Then instructions on what to do, then an explanation of what awaits them. Finally, the Borg add "See point one: we are Borg, don't waste our time." When it became it's final form (which was used throughout Voyager), it was the same idea condensed: We Borg, that means you're toast, don't bother fighting. What this one does instead is take all that away and goes with the catch phrase - I could almost buy that, if they hadn't chopped out the first part. It's the crux of it all, it's their "I'm Rick James, bitch!" If you don't make it clear you're Rick James, nobodies gonna give a shit what meaningless comments come out of your mouth. "You and your friend are coming back to my place," doesn't go over well as an intro, you'll just get maced, trust me. People forget that the Borg think, and so they say things that are relevant. This is a conversation fragment; the Borg might as well have just said "Neaner-neaner-neaner! Gotcha!" It's a sign of just how bad it is when this announcement, rather than inducing dread or fear, leads to Archer's expression of puzzlement, as if the Borg had just spat netspeak at him."

13 years ago*

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chronicdiscord

This initial view of the Borg placed them as too frightening, in spite of that being part of the actual goal of their creation.

The executives overseeing the Star Trek property after Gene Roddenberry did not want to keep the series on it's overly goody-goody path, they wanted to go someplace dark with the series, however, this rapid departure from where Roddenberry was leading the series ended up causing a little strain within the Star Trek fanbase - in short, the Trekkies didn't like people doing something Gene Roddenberry wouldn't have wanted.

They lightened the mood a little from how faceless and horrifying the initial Borg presence was presented, making them almost comically weak both intellectually and physically as a way of countering this - almost saying, "see? These guys are nothing the Federation can't handle." When in reality, if a techno-organic hybrid lifeform similar to the Borg ever arose, it's ruthless and persistent nature would quickly and easily wipe out such a disjointed and fragile system as the Federation.

The goal of weakening the Borg was to ease tensions, and it worked, some of the more militant fanboys gave the Next Generation another chance, and when the Borg were revisited, it was always in a position of weakness, to demonstrate the superiourity of the human side, with it's many voices, rather than admitting to the obvious truth that the singular hive-mind concept was the obvious pinnacle of where a species could go.

The hive mind would never treat any lifeforms it encountered differently, it's message would never waver, it would be persistent from the Alpha Quadrant to the Delta, it would be used in every language, always the same message, with equal lack of emotive punctuation or feeling. Cold, direct and persistent, the message would always be, "we are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." Anything less is a sign of the Borg being less than the ruthless, single-minded super organism that they are introduced as.

13 years ago