The Borg Queen was the name of the entity that existed within and served as the queen of the Borg Collective. An ancient being, the Queen has existed for many hundreds of years. (Star Trek: First Contact; PIC: "Surrender") In the event of her body's destruction, she would appear to be reincarnated with her personality and memories intact. (Star Trek: First Contact; VOY: "Dark Frontier", "Unimatrix Zero", "Unimatrix Zero, Part II", "Endgame")
Two decades after suffering catastrophic defeat at the hands of Admiral Janeway, the Borg Queen collaborated with a rogue faction of Changelings to rebuild her collective and take revenge upon the Federation. Her final scheme was thwarted by her old enemy, Jean-Luc Picard, and she was killed once and for all by the USS Enterprise-D, bringing an end to the threat of the Borg. (PIC: "Võx", "The Last Generation")
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Role and personality[]
The Queen defined herself as: "I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many. I am the Borg." As the queen of the Borg Collective and the lone individual within it, the Borg Queen provided direction and purpose for the hive mind. (Star Trek: First Contact; VOY: "Unimatrix Zero", "Unimatrix Zero, Part II", "Endgame"; PIC: "Watcher", "Hide and Seek")
It was thought by Federation exobiologist Erin Hansen that the Borg Queen functioned like the queen of an insect hive, to coordinate the drones. Evidence of this was later seen when the Queen countermanded the Collective's judgment about assimilating Voyager in 2378. While the Collective felt that assimilation was warranted, the Borg Queen countermanded them and justified the decision due to the fact that Voyager didn't compromise their security. (VOY: "Endgame")
The Queen, while providing coordination for the drones she commanded, also provided other functions such as regulation of the Collective's transwarp hubs and interspatial manifolds. She effectively brought "order to chaos" for all things. (VOY: "Endgame")
According to Seven of Nine, "The Borg Queen has a kind of trans-temporal awareness. It bridges into adjacent times, realities. They hear echoes of themselves, of— of each other." (PIC: "Penance")
The death of the Borg Queen, while traumatic to drones in the immediate vicinity, did not seem to permanently affect the Collective or its hive mind as a whole. The Queen was subsequently replicated after each death, although the exact mechanism of her reincarnations remains unclear. Borg drones were capable of functioning without a Queen for any length of time by forming a Hive mind of their own. (Star Trek: First Contact; VOY: "Unity", "Dark Frontier")
The disembodied Borg Queen aboard the partially-assimilated Enterprise-E
In accordance with the Borg pursuit of perfection, a blending of the organic and synthetic, very little of her original humanoid form remained. Her face and upper torso were organic while the rest of her body, including her skull and spinal cord, were synthetic. Because of her disembodiment she saw herself as the epitome of perfection. The Queen had her own chambers within the Borg Unicomplex from which she could oversee and control the Borg via the command interface. Whether she had her own ship or not is unknown, but she used different Borg vessels to travel, such as a Borg cube, sphere, or octahedron. When her physical presence was not necessary, her organic head above her chamber while her synthetic torso was stored below it, under the floor. If she desired, the two could be combined, creating a humanoid form for herself.
The Borg Queen assembled in 2377
Where her drones showed no emotions, the Queen herself did. She was ruthless, vindictive, petty, and selfish. She would do anything to expand the Borg Collective, employing psychological tactics like extortion, manipulation, plain intimidation or even seduction to further her goals. The Queen placed her own self-preservation over that of the Collective, cannibalizing the bodies of her last remaining drones to keep herself alive after the collapse of the hive. On a personal level, she considered Seven of Nine her favorite drone, because the Queen considered her to be unique. (VOY: "Unimatrix Zero", "Dark Frontier")
Despite being one with the minds of billions, the Queen felt a sense of profound isolation and loneliness. Her inexorable drive to assimilate was partially motivated by a desire for connection. With millions of species not enough to sate her, she attempted to fill this void by grooming potential counterparts that were more than mere drones. Jean-Luc Picard, Data, Seven of Nine, and Agnes Jurati were all such candidates. (Star Trek: First Contact; VOY: "Dark Frontier"; PIC: "Hide and Seek")
Following the decimation of the Borg Collective, the Borg Queen succumbed to desperation and insanity from the isolation she endured. Nevertheless, she retained her intellect and tactical mind, working with the rogue Changelings from behind the scenes to execute her plans for a Borg resurgence. (PIC: "Võx", "The Last Generation")
History[]
Origin[]
The Borg Queen (or perhaps merely one of her bodies) was assimilated to the Collective from Species 125 around the age of 7-8, along with her parents, and was already active in the Delta Quadrant in 2354. (VOY: "Unimatrix Zero, Part II")
Attacks on Earth[]
The existence of the Borg Queen was documented sometime prior to 2365 by the exobiologists Erin and Magnus Hansen. However, because the Hansens were assimilated, their discovery never reached the Federation. (VOY: "The Raven")
It was not until 2373, that the Federation became aware of her when the Federation starship USS Enterprise-E prevented the assimilation of Earth. This was the second attempt by the Borg, also known as the Battle of Sector 001. The Borg Queen, along with a contingent of drones, traveled back to Earth's past to prevent First Contact, and by doing so, hoped to be able to assimilate Earth.
The Borg Queen with Locutus in 2366
During this conflict, while Captain Jean-Luc Picard was trying to destroy the Borg, the Queen claimed to have been present during the Battle of Wolf 359, and even admitted that Locutus of Borg – the assimilated Picard – was intended to be a singular intelligence – a counterpart that was intended to ease the burden of loneliness. However, when Picard continued to resist, even when he could not control Locutus' body, she was regretfully forced to turn him into the form in which Starfleet encountered him—a glorified drone. Whether or not she physically took part in the Battle of Wolf 359 was unknown.
Picard and Data killed the Borg Queen after she tried to persuade Data to give her the encryption code by which he had locked the Enterprise's computer. She ordered Data to destroy the Phoenix spaceship with quantum torpedoes, and taunted Picard that she would rule Earth without Humans or the Federation in it, when the torpedoes missed. Data told her, "Resistance is futile!" and vented the warp core plasma coolant, which destroyed her organic parts. Picard then broke her cybernetic spinal cord, which ensured that she could no longer function. (Star Trek: First Contact)
In 2399, Picard mentally recalled the image of the Borg Queen and Locutus while aboard The Artifact. (PIC: "The Impossible Box")
As of 2401, the remains of this incarnation of the Queen were stored at Daystrom Station. (PIC: "The Bounty")
Conflicts with Voyager[]
Starfleet's second documented encounter with the Borg Queen was in 2375 in the Delta Quadrant. Here, the lost Federation starship USS Voyager, tried to rescue the former Borg Drone, Seven of Nine, who was then part of Voyager's crew, when the plan to steal a transwarp coil from a Borg sphere did not work out as planned. The Queen also revealed that Seven of Nine was not really freed by Voyager from the Collective, but was allowed to leave by the Borg. During this encounter, the Borg Queen hoped to assimilate Seven of Nine again, who experienced life as an individual for two years, and by doing so, add to her own perfection. However, Seven rejected the Queen and fled with a rescue mission sent by Voyager in the Delta Flyer. The Borg Queen's octahedron was sent by the Queen to intercept the shuttle, but it was destroyed in the attempt. (VOY: "Dark Frontier")
The Borg Queen was one of several real people who was adapted into a character in Kelis' play, based on descriptions from B'Elanna Torres. (VOY: "Muse")
In 2376 and 2377, the Borg Queen was again encountered by Voyager. This time the Queen wanted to destroy Unimatrix Zero, a virtual world that was populated by regenerating Borg with a genetic mutation. This world was discovered by Seven of Nine and posed a threat to the Borg. During Voyager's efforts to rescue this virtual world, the Borg Queen demonstrated her powers by destroying a Borg sphere because she could no longer "hear" only one drone. When a nanovirus was released to prevent the detection of Unimatrix Zero, the Queen destroyed several Borg vessels, and killed 75,000 Borg Drones in the process, in the hope of persuading the captured Captain Janeway to give her the antidote. (VOY: "Unimatrix Zero", "Unimatrix Zero, Part II")
The Borg Queen in 2378
Admiral Janeway confronts the Borg Queen in 2378
The last encounter between Voyager and the Borg Queen was in 2378. Voyager accidentally discovered a Borg transwarp hub within a nebula and were helped by Admiral Kathryn Janeway, who came from an alternate timeline around twenty-six years in the future, to use the Borg transwarp network to get back to the Alpha Quadrant. Because the Borg guarded their transwarp hub closely, Admiral Janeway devised a plan by which she would infect the Borg Queen with a neurolytic pathogen and in doing so make her lose control over the force fields which protected the interspatial manifolds. When the admiral was captured by the Borg, near the Unicomplex, she was assimilated by the Borg Queen herself. Soon after, the Queen began to lose control over her drones.
The end of the Borg Queen
The pathogen even made her lose control over her own synthetic parts, as her body literally fell apart. Her death caused the destruction of the Unicomplex and despite her efforts, Voyager reached Earth safely. The Borg sphere that was sent after them by the Queen was destroyed by Voyager's transphasic torpedoes, which were given to them by Admiral Janeway from the future. (VOY: "Endgame")
Alliance with the Changelings []
Despite the peace brokered between Jurati's Borg and Starfleet, the original Collective remained hostile, and set in motion a plan to assimilate Starfleet from within. The Collective had slowly dwindled following the neurolytic pathogen infection from Admiral Janeway. The Queen managed to survive by cannibalizing parts of her drones, though without the ability to assimilate new drones into the Collective, the Queen was eventually left alone as her drones died of starvation and old age which apparently drove her insane.
While Borg are unlikely to grow old like typical fully-organic beings due to the regenerative and restorative capabilities of nanoprobes, the Borg are reliant on their organic components to function, so "old age" was likely used as a euphemism for deterioration of their organic components beyond the capability of their nanoprobes to repair.
As those voices fell silent, the Queen began to hear a new voice - that of Jack Crusher, the son of Jean-Luc Picard and carrier of a transmitter protein inherited from his father's Borg-altered DNA. She realized that the future of the Borg no longer lay in assimilation, but in evolution, propagation, and the annihilation of all other life forms in the galaxy. Over the years, the Queen communicated with Jack, intending to lure him to her. Jack believed the voice was that of his mother.
The Borg Queen communicating with Vadic as "The Face"
In order to enact her plan, the Borg Queen made a deal with rogue Changelings, lead by Vadic sometime leading up to 2401. The Changelings, who were vengeful themselves for what had happened to them in the Dominion War, agreed to help by stealing Jean-Luc Picard's body from Daystrom Station in order to extract his Borg DNA and spread it through Starfleet's transporter system as common biology. They would also hunt Jack Crusher with the intent of bringing him to the Borg Queen. (PIC: "The Last Generation")
She communicated with Vadic via Vadic's severed hand, with which the Borg Queen formed a simulacrum of a face in mid-air.
Vadic reported that the USS Titan-A, carrying their "asset" Jack Crusher, had fallen into the gravity well at the center of the Ryton Nebula, where her ship the Shrike could not follow due to its portal weapon. The Borg Queen ordered Vadic to pursue regardless, stating that everything, including her and her crew, was expendable. (PIC: "No Win Scenario")
After capturing and interrogating William T. Riker and Deanna Troi but failing to gain any information, Vadic contacted the Borg Queen again to report that they would not break. The Borg Queen demanded that she try harder to break them, and noted that Vadic's physiology was not as special or complex as she believed. She stated that the Changelings' nature was to be malleable, while the enemy's kind were "beholden to a singular flesh." The Borg Queen then reiterated that Starfleet's fallure was near and she needed Jack Crusher, but warned that should Vadic fail, the Changelings' existence would become "meaningless." (PIC: "Dominion")
After Jack became aware of his true nature, he sought out the Borg Queen, with the intention of killing her. Arriving aboard her makeshift mega-cube in the atmosphere of Jupiter, the Queen welcomed Jack, telling him that she had "thought of so many names" for him – "Regenerati. Peur Dei." Jack rejected these names, and the Borg Queen responded that he was Võx, not Locutus, "the one that speaks". Jack was "the voice itself". Boarding the cube to confront her, Jack raised his phaser but was unable to kill the Borg Queen, who mocked him for his inability. She then assimilated Jack and used him to broadcast a signal to all affected Starfleet personnel, triggering the last stage of their assimilation. (PIC: "Võx")
The crew of the USS Enterprise-D tracked a Borg signal to Jupiter. Picard, William T. Riker and Worf beamed aboard the Borg vessel to find both Jack and the origin of the signal. Picard separated from Riker and Worf to find Jack, who had already been transformed completely into Võx.
Picard's confrontation with the Queen escalated until Picard reconnected with Jack and convinced Jack to reject the Borg. The Enterprise flew in overhead, and was able to beam them to safety as the Cube exploded from the Enterprise's attack, killing the Queen and ending the Collective once and for all.
Following the Borg Queen's death and the destruction of her Cube, the signal to Starfleet was cut ending the Borg control over it. Admiral Beverly Crusher was subsequently able to find a way to remove the Borg DNA from everyone, ending the Borg Queen's plan permanently. (PIC: "The Last Generation")
Alternate timeline[]
The Borg Queen from an alternate 2401
In 2401, an atypical version of the Borg Queen beckoned Jean-Luc Picard to a region of space, where she expressed a desire to join the Federation. After it seemingly appeared to take over the USS Stargazer, Picard destroyed the ship, rather than to allow it to be assimilated.
Following the destruction of the Stargazer, Picard and other members of the Stargazer crew found themselves in an alternate timeline, created through the intervention of Q. Xenophobic Humans dominated parts of the galaxy, and even managed to defeat the Borg; their immobilized Queen was held by the Confederation of Earth. This Borg Queen, who possessed an awareness of the split in the timeline, was set to be executed by Picard. With her species having been wiped out in this timeline, the Borg Queen agreed to help Picard and his crew travel back in time and correct the timeline.
Though killed by a shotgun blast from Jurati, after arriving in 2024, this Queen had managed to assimilate Dr. Agnes Jurati and live on through Jurati. (PIC: "The Star Gazer", "Penance", "Mercy", "Farewell")
Hologram []
A hologram of the Borg Queen
A hologram of the Borg Queen appeared in Starfleet's Borg Encounter holographic training drill, in use by 2381. In the simulation, it was possible for the user to beat the Queen at chess and teach her empathy to improve their score. (LD: "I, Excretus")
Appendices[]
Appearances[]
- Star Trek: First Contact
- VOY:
- PIC:
- "The Impossible Box" (archive footage)
- "The Star Gazer" (alternate timeline)
- "Penance" (alternate timeline)
- "Assimilation" (alternate timeline)
- "Watcher" (alternate timeline)
- "Fly Me to the Moon" (alternate timeline)
- "Two of One" (illusion)
- "No Win Scenario" (as "The Face")
- "Dominion" (as "The Face")
- "Võx"
- "The Last Generation"
- LD: "I, Excretus" (hologram)
Background information[]
The Borg Queen was played by Alice Krige in Star Trek: First Contact, VOY: "Endgame", PIC: "Võx", "The Last Generation" (voice only) and (as a holographic duplicate) LD: "I, Excretus". The character was played by Susanna Thompson in the Star Trek: Voyager episodes "Dark Frontier", "Unimatrix Zero", and "Unimatrix Zero, Part II". In Star Trek: Picard season 2, the Borg Queen was played by Annie Wersching. The Borg Queen's Changeling simulacrum, identified in end credits as "The Face", was voiced by Garth Kemp. The body of the Queen in season 3 of Picard was portrayed by Jane Edwina Seymour, credited as "Borg Queen Body Double".
In an early design meeting for the Borg Queen, the movie Captain EO was mentioned, regarding Anjelica Huston's performance as a villainous woman who lived in the ceiling and would descend on cables. [1]
The appearance of the Borg Queen in First Contact was a controversial one in the Star Trek universe. Though the Borg provided for a threatening and intriguing alien enemy, their lack of a single villain presented a challenge for the writers. To counter this, and to expand some on the original notion of the Borg as an insect-hive type of race, they created the Borg Queen as a focal point for their story. Writer Brannon Braga has stated in this respect, "I think some people liked the Borg Queen and some didn't, but to us the Borg Queen was the thing that made it all work. We realized very quickly that the Borg aren't that interesting for a feature film for two hours because they don't say anything. They're robot zombies. So, to me, the Borg Queen was the coolest new thing about that movie." [2]
Later in First Contact, when asked by Picard how she had survived when the cube that was sent to Earth in 2367 was destroyed, the Queen only replied that Picard had become small, and thought in three-dimensional terms.
Alice Krige purposely limited the ways in which she prepared for "Endgame", reviewing neither her own work on First Contact nor any of Susanna Thompson's portrayal of the same character. This choice was not motivated out of any sort of disrespect for Thompson, and had nothing at all to do with the actress. (Star Trek Magazine issue 169, p. 52; [3]) Krige speculated, "Whoever had played the role, I would have made the same decision." [4] Explaining why she made the choice, Krige conceded, "I thought to see someone else's performance would throw me off course. It was already going to be fairly different because it was the Borg Queen with two females, as opposed to the Borg Queen with two males [...] I just felt it wouldn't help the process." (Star Trek Magazine issue 169, p. 52) She also related, "I didn't want something in my head, in my imagination. I needed my performance to happen in the moment." [5] Krige did, however, request to receive and read all the Voyager scripts featuring the Borg Queen, including the new teleplay for "Endgame". She indeed read the scripts, despite not watching any of the episodes. (Star Trek Magazine issue 169, p. 52; [6])
In 2002, the Borg Queen was placed second in TV Zone's list of the top twenty science fiction television villains. Dukat was fourth, Weyoun was eighth, Q was eleventh, and Seska was nineteenth. (citation needed • edit) In an early version of the script of Star Trek: First Contact (a script very different from the movie), Geordi La Forge tells Data that he is sending the Borg Queen's remains to the Daystrom Institute for study. [7]
When asked whether the Queen was a "virtual entity; the personification of the collective", Braga's writing partner, Ronald D. Moore, said, "This was not the intention. We saw her as a literal person." (AOL chat, 1997)
According to Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, they pitched a story for an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise where Alice Krige would play a Starfleet medical technician who made contact with the Borg from "Regeneration". The encounter would have been the birth of the Borg Queen. [8]
An undersuit that was worn by Krige in First Contact was sold off as lot 9677(X) in the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay.
The Borg Queen, Dimitri Valtane, Lojur, Admiral Hayes, B-4, and the punk on the bus are the only characters to debut in a Star Trek film before appearing in a Star Trek television series.
Apocrypha[]
According to the Pocket VOY novel, The Farther Shore published after the television series concluded, a Borg Queen could be replaced in mere seconds by using the Royal Protocol. Seven of Nine was specifically mentioned in the Royal Protocol and was most likely to become the next Queen.
The Pocket TNG novel Resistance showed the creation of another Queen, who was destroyed by the crew of the Enterprise-E. Subsequently, in the Pocket TNG novel Before Dishonor, Admiral Janeway was assimilated by the Borg and became a Queen who was eventually defeated by Seven of Nine.
In the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy, a newly installed Queen oversaw a massive Borg invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. It was later revealed that the Borg Queen was merely an avatar for the true power behind the Collective. The Destiny trilogy also mentioned that multiple Queens have been known to exist simultaneously in the Collective, but they all possessed the same agenda.
One theory regarding the creation of a Queen is that "queens" are members of a specific race, one that was chosen because its females exhibited superior higher-order brain processing-speed, and were therefore assimilated and bred for that purpose. (Star Trek: Elite Force II; Star Trek: Legacy)
The extra section of the game Star Trek: Legacy contained the "Origin of the Borg", which told the story of V'ger being sucked into a black hole. V'ger was found by a race of living machines which gave it a form suitable to fulfilling its simplistic programming. Unable to determine who its creator could be, the probe declared all carbon-based life an infestation of the creator's universe, leading to assimilation. From this, the Borg were created, as extensions of V'ger's purpose. Drones were made from those assimilated and merged into a collective consciousness. The Borg Queen was created out of the necessity for a single unifying voice. However, with thoughts and desires of her own, she was no longer bound to serve V'ger. This explanation, however, was not canon.
In Star Trek Online, a new Borg Queen of Romulan origins had emerged before 2409 and led the Collective in an invasion of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, her main targets being the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
According to "Shinsei Shinsei", the Borg Queen's name was Danzek.
In the miniseries The Q Conflict, as part of a contest between various omnipotent beings organised by Q, Trelane challenges the four competing crews to capture a Borg Queen for his menagerie. After being transported to a unimatrix, the Queen is captured by a team consisting of Captain Picard, Spock, Odo and Seven of Nine.
The Borg Queen appears as a boss in Star Trek: Voyager - The Arcade Game.
Borg Invasion 4D[]
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In 2004, the Borg Queen made a re-entry onto the big screen when the Borg Invasion 4D-ride premiered at the Star Trek: The Experience, an interactive attraction that incorporated live-action stage performance and animation, in which the visitors had a limited part themselves, within a 3D cinema environment. The movie for the attraction was mostly produced by the veteran Star Trek production team on the studio's own premises.
The storyline, set after the events depicted in "Endgame" entailed yet another incursion into Federation space by a Borg cube, attacking Copernicus Station and capturing a shuttle with its occupants (the attraction visitors), who were trying to escape from the overrun space station. While the captured crew was being prepared for assimilation, the Queen made a dramatic entrance and, true to form, begins lecturing about the perfection of the Borg Collective and demanded the surrender of the group's inhibitions and instructed them to join the hive mind. When all seemed lost and much to the dismay of the Queen, Admiral Janeway came to the rescue, by flying USS Voyager straight into the cube, destroying the tractor beam that held the shuttle, enabling it to escape, in the process inflicting critical damage to the cube, which subsequently blew up. Again true to form, the Queen made her escape, but not before exclaiming, "Savor your victory! We will meet again!"
For the film portion of the ride, some of the original, former Voyager cast reprised their respective roles, including Alice Krige as the Queen. Many of the Borg featured in the film (as opposed to the attraction live crew performing as such), were played by performers who had already done so for First Contact (or for the respective Voyager television episodes); "It was a most joyful reunion," Krige declared tongue-in-cheek. When presented with the first 3D footage of her close-up scenes, Krige admitted to being flabbergasted by her own, literal in-your-face performance. (VOY Season 7 DVD-special feature, "The Making of Borg Invasion 4D") While an official Star Trek franchise production, events depicted in the film are, as usual for these kind of productions, not considered canon, and treated as apocrypha.
External links[]
- Borg Queen at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
- Borg Queen at the Star Trek Online Wiki
- Borg Queen at Wikipedia