Does The Borg actually want to assimilate the UFP?

[Mr. Oragahn]

After writing up the OP I remembered this Blog article.

A civilization knows that the Borg will assimilate them eventually. They know that the Borg's goal is to add their biological and technological distinctiveness to the Borg. They come up with a plan. Assemble a ship containing the latest technology. Put on that ship their most advanced computer containing all the collected knowledge they are able to including a complete digital version of their genetic data. Fill the ship with biological samples (blood samples, skin samples, etc..) of all species with in the civilization including a large collection of plant and animal life and make sure that the genetic material is from multiple different beings so that it contains a diverse and more accurate sampling of the genetics. Then send the ship to the Borg.

Would the Borg leave the civilization alone? The Borg were given exactly what they wanted the collected knowledge of the species as well as the biological data of the species which the Borg could be incorporated into the Borg.

In many ways it seems like the UFP has done what the article suggests.

It's quite a ham fisted plot, but it could be very interesting with Section 31 coming up with such a deal. Well, not them, but most of the movie's intrigue would make them be the perfect scapegoat, while the real guys behind that plan may be far more sinister: in the complete databank, they'd have added what would look like erased data, traces going back to an effective prototype weapon which itself would also be related to anti-Borg warfare, a weapon developed by some forces of the Dominion. Such would be an attempt to get the Borg eat the Dominion once and for all, while no such weapon would exist, while hoping at the same time that this move of good faith would definitely protect the UFP. Ta da dum.

[KSW]

After writing up the OP I remembered this Blog article.

A civilization knows that the Borg will assimilate them eventually. They know that the Borg's goal is to add their biological and technological distinctiveness to the Borg. They come up with a plan. Assemble a ship containing the latest technology. Put on that ship their most advanced computer containing all the collected knowledge they are able to including a complete digital version of their genetic data. Fill the ship with biological samples (blood samples, skin samples, etc..) of all species with in the civilization including a large collection of plant and animal life and make sure that the genetic material is from multiple different beings so that it contains a diverse and more accurate sampling of the genetics. Then send the ship to the Borg.

Would the Borg leave the civilization alone? The Borg were given exactly what they wanted the collected knowledge of the species as well as the biological data of the species which the Borg could be incorporated into the Borg.

Obviously the Borg don't just want to study, they want to CONQUER. They think they're doing everyone else a favor by rescuing them from their inferior existence, and their "narrow view" to the contrary is irrelevant.

If they just wanted to study, they could just scan everything rather than assimilate it

[Mike DiCenso]

The Borg numerous times in ST:FC and throughout VOY stated that they assmiliate not only to add to their own perfection, but to bring other species up to a more perfect state; i.e. being in the Borg Collective.
-Mike

[KSW]

The Borg numerous times in ST:FC and throughout VOY stated that they assmiliate not only to add to their own perfection, but to bring other species up to a more perfect state; i.e. being in the Borg Collective.
-Mike

Do the Borg ever actually create anything? That could be a slight hole in their "perfect plan."
They seem just like a galactic empire, i.e. grabbing up everything until they inevitably collapse from stagnation. In fact that seems to be the plot, i.e. just some weird symbolic hive-mentality trope.

[Admiral Breetai]

And would tolerate a few incursions and massacres, until they'd think the Borg need a slap on the hand?[

they may not even be members but protectorates or whatever the UFP expanded into and all around territories of aliens that were ancient and very advanced during TOS by the 24 century these entities may be more interested sitting back and seeing how the naked apes evolve and see the borg as part of that unless they go on a genocidal rampage

They're certainly letting the humans maximizing such chances by not assimilating them.

they aren't very intelligent and the Queen even seems to be very egotistical

As for most of Lucky's points', it's been clear that they don't care about UFP tech. They don't seem to consider the UFP that important.

they consider homo sapiens to be such a threat that they have tried to stomp them out via multiple means..including a method not tried on other races

[Lucky]

Um, no. The Borg already knew of the Federation and its technology, but were very interested in the Enterprise-D showing up on their frontier. Remember, they'd already assimilated multiple Starfleet ships and installations even at this point.

The E-D was the latest and best everything the UFP had to offer as apposed to the outdated stuff it had studied, and not suppose to be there.

To then have Voyager rolling up in their 'hood ought to have been very intriguing by default. But again, when Voyager arrived the Borg had 8,472 higher-priority items on their list.

The Borg easily found out how Voyager got there, took scans of it, and had drones partly assimilate it. The Borg seems to have better things to do with it's time then obsess over a single ship. Voyager had to pretty much attack the Borg to get noticed

What?

The idea is that the Borg is after something in the Alpha quadrant that it can't gain through assimilation, or at least believes it can't gain it through its standard tactics.. When it would likely take less then 5 cubes to defeat and assimilate the entire Federation there must be something actively keeping the Borg from doing so.

Huh?

Locutus of Borg, 7of9(before being disconnected from the Borg), and the so called queen are nothing but mouth peaces intended to be used as phycological weapons.

Locutus was a facilitator . . . a rather unusual Borg tactic when compared to their usual unstoppable juggernaut approach as is commonly imagined, again based on Guinan's statement.

Locutus, the queen, and 7of9 all served the same roll

Come to think of it, it's rather unfortunate that Voyager made reference (and appearance) of a swarm of cubes, or in the case of Species 10026 (IIRC) showing a good assimilation event, because beyond that we've never actually seen an assimilation swarm. Without that, we could actually hypothesize that the Borg really don't come with brute force in that way (losing their own drones and frequently destroying potential drones), but that instead they prefer to try to be at least a little more suave.

Does it matter? All it would takes is possibly as few cubes as 2 to defeat the UFP since one can almost do it even with the UFP pulling a rabbit out of it's hat.

What?

My mistake, that is suppose to be R.N.O.B., or Random Nigh Omnipotent Beings.

Perhaps I wasn't talking about the same thing you want to talk about.

There are a lot more RNOB then just the Q, and a lot of races who could likely give the Borg a bad day at least with their psychic powers alone. You survive in Star Trek by not annoying the big fish which the Borg is not yet.

What?

The Borg knew about human since Archer's era at least, but doesn't bother to show up until hundreds of years later when Q pokes it. If the Borg really cared about assimilating humans then it would have sent a whopping 2 cubes to be sure it sent enough firepower to do the job.

Perhaps, but not with my skill. Seriously, why post a mew topic on a discussion board if the first response is dismissed with multiple statements of "oh, we've been over that already".

???

In any case, I see no evidence of a UFP-wide interest by the Borg. If anything, they seem far more interested in humans than, say, Vulcans. Remember, after all, that the Queen was all about some human assimilation when planning the airborne Borg nanoprobe virus thingy.

Earth is the capital of the United Federation of Planets. Why wouldn't Earth be a primary target for the Borg?

Humans have never defeated the Borg without help from other races. The Borg should logically know this. Heck, no one race seems to be able to defeat the Borg

[Mike DiCenso]

The Borg numerous times in ST:FC and throughout VOY stated that they assmiliate not only to add to their own perfection, but to bring other species up to a more perfect state; i.e. being in the Borg Collective.
-Mike

Do the Borg ever actually create anything? That could be a slight hole in their "perfect plan."
They seem just like a galactic empire, i.e. grabbing up everything until they inevitably collapse from stagnation. In fact that seems to be the plot, i.e. just some weird symbolic hive-mentality trope.

They're not stagnate, not the way the GAFFA Republic and Empire were since they do have some innovation once a species is assimilated. The fact is that the Borg as originally shown in TNG could innovate as shown by their rapid adaptation to the E-D's weapons and shields on numerous occasions. VOY retconned it by saying that the Borg need to assimilate or they can't invent anything, which is clearly contradicted, even i the series, since the Borg come up with a delivery system for the EMH's modified nanoprobes, and the Borg Queen in "Dark Frontier" shows Seven the plan to assimilate Humanity with the nano-contagion system.
-Mike

[Lucky]

Logistics is another possible answer. Humanity is too far away to send more than a few ships at a time. The first cube is one that happened to be relatively near that area of space. This explains why the transwarp hub was under construction in "Endgame", as it would have allowed hundreds, or even thousands of Borg vessels to attack the Alpha and Beta quadrants in appropriate force, rather than coming at it piecemeal.

With species in the Delta quadrant, like Arturis' from "Hope and Fear" where after the Borg had repelled the Species 8472 incursion, they went with hundreds of cubeships against his people and assimilated them. But Arturis' people were practically "next door neighbors" to the Borg.

So effectively they were making probing, long-distance attacks. If they happened to succeed, great. Now there's a foothold in that area of space, but if they fail, there will be another time, and in the meantime, the infrastructure that allows very fast transwarp conduit travel will be constructed.
-Mike

Logistics can't be argued to be a problem in this case because it would take a whopping 2 cubes to create a force the Federation could not stop, and the cubes can resupply on the way.

THis ignores the likely hood of the Borg being able to build more cubes along the way.

[Lucky]

Do the Borg want to assimulate the UFP? Lock stock and barrel? I'd say no. As others have stated they Borg could send dozens, hundreds of Borg cubes which the total naval strenght of Starfleet would be all but impotent against. But why would they? The Federation is nothing compared to the Borg, at best its a long term problem, and the resources expended taking the whole thing by sheer force of arms could be better expended in "local" matters. Instead, in my opinon, the Borg are attempting to destroy the Federation with the least amount of "investment", by assimulating Earth which nets them a foothold in the Alpha quadrent to expand operations, in the BOBW era Borg drives were apparently slower than they later obtained making it more important to have assets Alpha side, and removes the lynchpin which binds the UFP togather. With it gone the other races will began to bicker amongst themselves once again as they did in the 22nd century or will scramble to unit behind a new central leader in either event hampering thier abilities and prospects while granting the Borg more time to deal with the "UFP problem".

One problem is that humans have moved to thousands of planets by the time the Borg shows up, and destroying the capital will only have a minimal effect on military operations because such a thing will be planned for.

Earth is also not the center of scientific research. It's simply a figurehead.

Well if all the Borg truly wanted was raw data and genetic code they'd have no need to assimulate or carve up worlds like turkeys. Just a few little nicks and a computer download would suffice. While fancy tech or unique biology may bump you up the list in the end I think we're all just meat to be industrilized to the Collective's whim.

The Borg can't honestly care about culture given it seemingly does nothing with it. It wants rare materials, data, and samples of technology and life-forms.

It almost seems like the Borg has flawed programing, and can not behave in a logical fashion.

I'm not following, if the Borg were afraid of ROBs why persist in attacking the Federation? Assimulating Earth your still playing russian roulette about not enraging an Omnipotent being.

If the Borg seriously wanted to assimilate Earth they would send more then one Cube at a time from the start. 2 cubes will not strain the Borg's capabilities.

It's almost as if something is making sure the Borg fail.

[Lucky]

no she was very much her own person or women..assuming there was more than one and did have a great deal of control

her fetish for Picard...her disturbing molesty squick for seven

The Borg is a hive mind of sorts. One mind and lots of bodies. The collective has an odd fetish for Picard and 7of9. No one ever claimed the Borg was sane by human standards, but I can't blame it when it comes to 7 of 9.

The Borg also claims to be all about efficiency, then uses inefficient designs for it's ships, and seems to delete combat data after every battle.

and this requires that you functionally ignore word of god that humanity is the unifying force, that humanity is special that humanity will surpass the Q that humanity was a such a threat to their existence they needed to try and retcon punch it away

The Q have never tried to destroy humans, and have gone to extreme lengths to help the federation, and humans.

without homo sapiens the UFP would not exist at all this has been shown as absolute fact multiple times

By TOS and certainly TNG humans are nothing more then just another race. Humans were instrumental in the creation of the United Federation of Planets, but once the UFP got going it took on a life of it's own. Heck, Vulcans might be more importent to the UFP by TOS and TNG eras because they seem to be the diplomats, and seem to do a large amount of scientific research.

[Lucky]

one of the possibilities is that the federation seemed to have "ancient" races as members and the Borg feared an all out attack would cause said old farts to get to high tech stomping?

And would tolerate a few incursions and massacres, until they'd think the Borg need a slap on the hand?
That's not really UFPish at all.

The R.N.O.B. tend to just live near or in the UFP, but tend to not be actual members. I believe one such race stopped a Klingon/UFP war because it was getting annoying or something like that.

They're certainly letting the humans maximizing such chances by not assimilating them.

As for most of Lucky's points', it's been clear that they don't care about UFP tech. They don't seem to consider the UFP that important. It's possible the Borg focused on something much more important, even requiring plenty of Cubes.
Who knows? Like, say, creatures capable of making simple stars produce supernovas that threaten several star systems for example? :)
Creatures that may literally nova stars as a kickstart reaction to produce entire geysers of omega particles which in return amplify the supernova. Dunno, just speculating.

If the Borg was seriously gunning for the UFP it would have sent more then one cube from the start.

[Lucky]

After writing up the OP I remembered this Blog article.

A civilization knows that the Borg will assimilate them eventually. They know that the Borg's goal is to add their biological and technological distinctiveness to the Borg. They come up with a plan. Assemble a ship containing the latest technology. Put on that ship their most advanced computer containing all the collected knowledge they are able to including a complete digital version of their genetic data. Fill the ship with biological samples (blood samples, skin samples, etc..) of all species with in the civilization including a large collection of plant and animal life and make sure that the genetic material is from multiple different beings so that it contains a diverse and more accurate sampling of the genetics. Then send the ship to the Borg.
Would the Borg leave the civilization alone? The Borg were given exactly what they wanted the collected knowledge of the species as well as the biological data of the species which the Borg could be incorporated into the Borg.

In many ways it seems like the UFP has done what the article suggests.

It's quite a ham fisted plot, but it could be very interesting with Section 31 coming up with such a deal. Well, not them, but most of the movie's intrigue would make them be the perfect scapegoat, while the real guys behind that plan may be far more sinister: in the complete databank, they'd have added what would look like erased data, traces going back to an effective prototype weapon which itself would also be related to anti-Borg warfare, a weapon developed by some forces of the Dominion. Such would be an attempt to get the Borg eat the Dominion once and for all, while no such weapon would exist, while hoping at the same time that this move of good faith would definitely protect the UFP. Ta da dum.

Which, the idea, or the fact that the Borg got away with technological and biological data on nearly everything the UFP has in canon?

i didn't mean that the UFP planned it. The Borg gets nearly everything it wants from the UFP in BOBW

[Lucky]

The Borg numerous times in ST:FC and throughout VOY stated that they assmiliate not only to add to their own perfection, but to bring other species up to a more perfect state; i.e. being in the Borg Collective.
-Mike

If the Borg cared about up lifting lesser races then they would likely be doing things to up lift races like the Kazon. That sounds like spin doctoring to me.

I doubt adding random people to the collective really improves it. It would seem more practical to engineer drones from scratch.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually, at one point in VOY Seven stated that assimilating the Kazon would actually detract from the Collective's perfection, indicating that the Borg at least have some standards.
-Mike

[Admiral Breetai]

The Borg is a hive mind of sorts. One mind and lots of bodies. The collective has an odd fetish for Picard and 7of9. No one ever claimed the Borg was sane by human standards, but I can't blame it when it comes to 7 of 9.

..because it's completely constructive for the Collective to be a quasi lesbian pedophile that get's all frustrated and butthurt when their little "kept girl" grows up becomes human and gives them the middle finger?

I'm sorry but no that's reaching...or how the Queen was still visibly "hurt" by Jean Luc dumping her ass? So much so an entire sub plot was devoted to Data "taking his place" in a way that seemed a great deal more about a scorned women getting back at her lover then..actually obtaining the data to unlock the vessel (pun intended)


it makes logical sense that a rapacious horde of what amounts to a sentient virus would allow such thoughts to continue when they clearly affect the Queens judgement?

you're arguing against the portrayal in canon my friend

The Q have never tried to destroy humans,

why would they? unlike the Borg they seem happy about this and go out of their way to encourage it

By TOS and certainly TNG humans are nothing more then just another race. Humans were instrumental in the creation of the United Federation of Planets, but once the UFP got going it took on a life of it's own.

and the entire series and numerous exposition by numerous character many of them mid tier cosmic entities disagree vehemently with your interpretation

for my part: I'll go with that over the dismissive speculation in this thread

Actually, at one point in VOY Seven stated that assimilating the Kazon would actually detract from the Collective's perfection, indicating that the Borg at least have some standards.
-Mike

...That's just painful

I mean they'll assimilate Cardassians who are pretty fail in and of themselves but wont go after the Kazon? just damn..I mean damn