Created by Star Trek: The Next Generation writer/producer Maurice Hurley, the Borg made their debut in his second season TNG episode Q Who? where Q (John De Lancie), who is rebuffed by Captain Picard when he offers to join the Enterprise crew, decides to teach the overly confident Starfleet team a lesson by introducing them to the Borg. When Picard and the Enterprise crew first encounter the Borg cube, they hail it via communications and prepare to meet new life forms. But this turns out to be far more than a mere first contact situation, as the crew of the Enterprise are quickly humbled by this unrelenting enemy with superior firepower. The Borg can not be rationalized with via diplomacy, nor can they be intimidated with advanced Starfleet might; they just keep coming, and the Borg’s only agenda is a simple one: to assimilate everything before them and kill the ones who dare to defy them. Eventually, with his ship and crew facing the brink of destruction, Picard digs deep into his plate of humble pie and asks Q for his help.

In the TNG third season finale and the fourth season premiere, The Best Of Both Worlds Parts 1 & 2, the Borg return for an all-out assault on not only the Enterprise, but the very Federation itself, in an epic two-part tale that is considered the definitive Borg story. The following episode, I, Borg, is more of a disappointment, as the Enterprise crew discover a crashed Borg ship with one surviving drone. Nursing the drone back to health aboard the Enterprise, the crew give it the name Hugh and the story quickly degrades into a sappy, lame debate about what the Enterprise crew should do with their new "friend". The final TNG story, the two part Descent, starts off very strongly, and with much promise, with a Starfleet admiral raking Picard over the coals for his incredibly stupid decision of not seizing the chance to rid the Federation of a mortal enemy back in I, Borg. The first episode even ends with a chilling--and really cool--revelation, that the Borg are now under the control of an old enemy of the Enterprise crew. Yet in its second hour, Descent very quickly lapses into a muddled mess (and what was Picard thinking when he left Dr. Crusher, the Chief Medical Officer, in charge of the Enterprise?).

With the two-part Scorpion, Star Trek: Voyager takes over the Borg stories from this point on in the set. If you’re unfamiliar with it (and you should consider yourself lucky!) Star Trek: Voyager was a pretty lame excuse for an SF TV show with a Federation Starship--The U.S.S. Voyager, under the command of Captain Kathryn Janeway--becoming lost in the vast expanse known as the Delta Quadrant. Essentially, it was a remake of Lost In Space, only without the excitement and fun of that 1960s TV classic, and I personally consider it to be the worst of all the Star Trek Sequel Series. Scorpion is the perfect example of everything that was wrong with Voyager, when Janeway and her crew--who are ever set on a course for home--enter Borg-dominated space, and find the cybernetic beings locked in deadly combat with another alien race who are more than a match for them. Trying to see if they should go forward or retreat, Janeway has a sit down with her second in command, Commander Choky, and they talk, and talk, and talk…and talk some more…Choky tells Janeway a cute little parable about the fox and the scorpion, and then, when Janeway finally confronts the Borg, she talks to them, and they talk…and talk…and talk…and talk some more. *YAWN*

What’s amazing is that as bad as the Next Generation Borg episodes I, Borg and Descent were, they’re Citizen Kane in comparison to the horrors that Star Trek: Voyager inflicts on the poor Borg in their episodes. Under Voyager’s influence the Borg have become watered-down, wimpy villains who never truly meet the potential set for them in The Best of Both Worlds. Where only one Borg cube ship could bring the entire Federation to its knees in Best Of Both Worlds, ST: Voyager has the entire Borg Collective being vexed by the single, rinky-dink Voyager, a ship far smaller and less powerful than Picard’s Enterprise, with a crew complement that barely reaches 200 personnel overall. With the creative drought on display here, it’s no surprise that the next Voyager episode, Drone, is basically a bad remake of I, Borg. The Borg Queen from the movie Star Trek: First Contact is brought back as the central villain in the remaining Voyager episodes Dark Frontier, Unimatrix Zero and the Voyager finale Endgame. And in each and every one of these so-called adventures, I was actually rooting for the Borg Queen to win. Janeway and her Voyager crew are a bunch of weenies.

But lest you think that The Best of Both Worlds is the only reason to pick up this DVD set, there’s also Regeneration, a superb episode from Star Trek: Enterprise that takes place two hundred years before the events of the 24th century, where the Borg threaten the Earth of the 22nd century. Although Regeneration was the last Borg episode to be shot, it’s presented first on the DVD set because of the chronological order in which they take place. There are also many fine special features available, such as the commentary by Mike Sussman and Phyllis Strong, the writers, on Regeneration, as well as the engaging and informative text commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda on Best Of Both Worlds Parts 1 & 2 and Unimatrix Zero Part Two. Despite my quibbles with certain episodes, Star Trek: Borg Fan Collective is still the perfect solution for Borg fans looking to collect the episodes of their favorite Star Trek cybernetic villains without having their wallets assimilated. --SF

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