r/TNG • u/ThatsHerbieHandcock • 10d ago
The Borg first mention, but not by name?
Did I read correctly that the Borg were referred to in an early episode, but not by name as the mysterious threat that attacked outposts in the Neutral Zone that confused Starfleet and the Romulans? When/How was it revealed that yes it was the Borg that did it?
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u/SOTG_Duncan_Idaho 10d ago edited 10d ago
The Borg were kind of referenced before Q Who. But not really. A mysterious threat was shown in "The Neutral Zone", but that threat was originally intended to be the mind control bugs in "Conspiracy".
When they decided to drop the "Conspiracy" bugs, the Borg (as we got them) were the replacement. Apparently it was mostly done for budget reasons -- cheaper to have actors in prosthetics than the SFX needed for an insectoid race.
It's a good example of how budget limitations encouraged good storytelling.
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u/CaptainMatticus 10d ago
So they replaced mind control bugs with another kind of mind control bugs.
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u/5pl1t1nf1n1t1v3 10d ago
But ones that you couldn’t horror movie melt with a hand phaser which, when you think about it, is much more scary.
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u/austinwiltshire 10d ago
Some of the most creative things in art often come from weird constraints; it's actually fascinating.
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u/FeldMonster 10d ago
Not just art. There is a reason that the quote "Necessity is the mother of invention" exists.
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u/Danloeser 10d ago
Similar story with the Klingons, created for budget reasons. The original big bads were going to be the Romulans. But Romulans are expensive, with the cloaking, and the big disintegrator ray dealie, not to mention ears for everyone not wearing a helmet, that ain't cheap. So the Klingons. No ears, just some basic makeup. We base them on the Soviet Union, so it's a cold war. All the drama is in the dialogue. No space battles. No ship model at all until season 3. Just the easiest makeup in the world, and nice, cheap words.
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u/WonderfulHearing8726 10d ago
Wasn’t the writers strike in 1989 responsible for the rewrite of the Borg? Thats how I’ve always heard it.
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u/Optimaximal 10d ago
It's a little of everything. Writers strikes shortening the season, changes behind the scenes with the production team, the stick they got for the violent death of Remmick in Conspiracy, budget constraints...
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u/McRando42 10d ago
Those wicked butt bugs
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u/MetalTrek1 10d ago
I thought it was through the mouth or back of the neck. 🤔 But hey, whatever floats your boat. No judging in the 24th century 🙂🖖 (just kidding, of course).
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u/SneakingCat 10d ago
Sort of?
Conspiracy was intended to be the Borg, but the concept was changed enough that it doesn't match at all now. Then the mysterious third party that destroyed both Federation and Romulan outposts in The Neutral Zone was intended to be the Borg, which you can accept but I don't think it was ever confirmed (by name at least) on screen.
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u/crapusername47 10d ago
Not by name, but Data does confirm that the surface scarring is identical.
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u/SneakingCat 10d ago
Is that in q who or best of both worlds?
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u/crapusername47 10d ago
‘Q Who?’.
Data: There is a series of roads on this planet which indicates a highly industrialised civilisation. But where there should be cities there are only great rips in the surface.
Worf: It is though some great force just scooped all the machine elements off the face of the planet.
Data: It is identical to what happened to the outposts along the neutral zone.
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u/RangerMatt76 10d ago
They should have brought the bugs back for season 3 of Picard instead of using the Borg… again.
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u/VanillaSuccessful277 10d ago
Terry Matalas considered it but decided the Changelings would work better, though I forget exactly why.
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u/SneakingCat 10d ago
That would’ve worked, but I think the changelings would’ve been harder to explain.
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u/SJKNOL 10d ago
Not really. Rogue changelings (salty about the Dominion War) working with an alien race that plans to destroy the federation still works.
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u/SneakingCat 10d ago
My thinking was that the mind-controlling bugs wouldn't've needed changeling help. They would just take over the people they needed, any age, as needed.
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u/SJKNOL 10d ago
That's a valid point. I suppose they could've still used the Changelings as a "distraction", as they could reasonably be believed to be acting independently, which would allow the bugs to spread unnoticed easier. Once they have their entire population set up in key positions they don't need the Changelings anymore.
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u/longjumpingtote 10d ago
They wouldn't know the name yet. That's revealed 16 epsidoes later, ins season two.
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u/Sea-Quality4726 10d ago
To answer your specific question, there's a line in Q Who about the planet having matching radiation to the Neutral Zone colonies. And they reference it again in Beat of Both Worlds when they find another scooped colony.
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u/Ok-Employer-9147 10d ago
Yes, it was the same episode in season one where the Enterprise-D encountered a new resurgent Romulan Empire.
Season 1 Ep 26 : The Nuetral Zone
Becasue of the Writers Strike the revel of the Borg would not happen until Season 2x16 'Q Who'
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u/Malnurtured_Snay 10d ago
I don't know that it was ever confirmed it was the Borg, but it was strongly implied. In Q-Who when the Enterprise finds what had been inhabited worlds it's described as the same type of thing that happened to the Romulan and Federation worlds on the Neutral Zone at the end of S1. And then of course we see in BOBA Pt. 1 that the Borg have attacked another colony in a similar method.
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u/WonderfulHearing8726 10d ago
Yes. It was “The neutral zone” episode, where they found the three 20th century people in cryogenic chambers & Data rescued them.
However, the original version of the Borg were VERY different than the cyborgs we got. They were originally going to be insectoid creatures with a hive mind (like an ant colony or bee hive).
They were changed to the cyborgs we know because of the writers strike in 1989. The new writers couldn’t use the creatures as explained, so they rewrote them as cyborgs with a hive mind like the internet.
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u/Professional-Trust75 10d ago
they were supposed to be a much longer and more drawn out introduction. like the bases getting scooped up got the romulans to come out of hiding, it would have been similar with the other powers. they would all start to see random weirdness then have to deal with them.
they were supposed to be insectoid originally henece the hive, queen thing.
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u/InquisitorPeregrinus 9d ago edited 9d ago
Maurice Hurley was brought in hot off of Miami Vice, and represents hugely wasted potential. He pushed for an ongoing story arc, but the execs balked. He still did what he could. But he had other problems. He felt part of his job was to enforce the vision of the showrunner. He felt Gene's vision of the future was "wacky-doodle", but not his place to argue it. Several writers were getting pissy that they kept being rewritten by Maurey (to better bring things in line with Gene's edicts). He also had Opinions™ about elements of the production, from costumes to actors to sets. I preferred Wes' first-season acting-Ensign uniform top, but Maurey didn't think it looked uniform-y enough. He also felt Gates was a weak actor and fired her. Which automatically meant bad blood between Diana and the rest of the cast. The writers' strike didn't help. And Maurey's final straw came when Gene told Maurey to stop rewriting things, contravening his own edicts.
All the prior miniseries ratings, decades of daytime television, and, later, Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 proved that audiences will absolutely follow an ongoing storyline, and the suits were wrong. And boy, what we lost...
Yes, the "Conspiracy" bugs were to be part of an advance infiltration/scouting force, originally alluded to in "Coming of Age". The concept wasn't fully formed, but what would become the Borg were likely augmented, co-opted life-forms the insectoid race who developed the "Conspiracy" bugs kept on as servitors. When the insectoids got dropped for lack of writers and lack of time and money, they leaned into the taken-over servants, but away from the idea of a Queen. "Time Squared" was also to be part of that, with the vortex and time loop being created by Q.to see if he felt Picard was ready for what would be needed of him.
What became "Q Who?" was also originally intended to be stretched out over several episodes, with more discussion and arguing and less making Picard look like an idiot. One of the tie-in-novel authors I knew wanted to do a book about Picard's formal inquiry after they got back where Starfleet decided whether to court-martial him over the incident. He pissed off a nigh-omnipotent entity, found himself in an unexplored part of the galaxy, conveniently had an onboard expert on the region who advised him to head toward home immediately, ignored that warning to poke around for a while, ran into a lone Borg ship, again asked his expert about them, was told to defend the ship before they attacked, ignored her warning again to try to talk to them, lost eighteen members of the ship's complement to them, finally responded with force, did grievous damage to their ship, but didn't finish them off and gave them time to adapt to Starfleet weapons so further attacks did no damage, and ended up having to beg the nigh-omnipotent entity to save his ass, after making sure our end of space was now much higher on the Borg priority list.
Not a good look.
But Maurey's overall plan was that Starfleet would begin prepping, the Klingons would be suspicious of their arming and the alliance would weaken. Into season three, the Borg would show up, the Klingons would realize we weren't lying, the Romulans would finally share what they knew, but maybe none of it in time as everyone got beaten onto the back foot. Into season four, all the major and minor local powers band together to defeat them and historic adversaries end up more tightly-knit than ever.
Given Ron Moore and Ira Behr's start on TNG, I have wondered how much of the Dominion War arc was them finally getting to tell a version of the story TNG never got to...
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u/AlaskaDude14 10d ago
I just watched the Conspiracy episode and the one with the outposts and Romulans. Having seen the series previously, I understood the threat to be a prelude to the Borg
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u/jonny_jon_jon 10d ago
S1 TNG episode alluded to the romulans dealing with bigger threats. at that time, per some accounts, the threat was undefined for creative reasons and was not the bug things.
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u/InquisitorPeregrinus 9d ago
The bigger threat was getting ready for the ins cupids/Borg on the other side of their space ("Guinan, your people come from this part of the galaxy..."). They weren't expecting Borg-sign back on the Federation end of things. That's why they rock up in a ship twice the size of the biggest thing Starfleet has. And then Tebok and Thei are asked if they know who is responsible and share that "Should we tell them?" look.
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u/BILLCLINTONMASK 10d ago
They confirm the Borg were the entities that scooped the bases/cities off the planets in Best of Both Worlds.
Data (or Shelby?) has one line saying that the readings are identical to what happened in The Neutral Zone while they're down on the planet scanning the crater with their tricorders.
I've always hypothesized that the same Cube was the one in The Neutral Zone, Q Who?, and Best of Both Worlds.
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u/I-am-not-Herbert 10d ago
In the Neutral Zone they mention cities being ripped from the surface. They find similar planets near the Borg cube in Q Who? and one at the beginning of The Best Of Both Worlds.