LibriumArcana.Games

So recently, I picked up Star Trek: The Next Generation - Resistance, one of the new TNG books taking place post-Nemesis. The main antagonist in the book are the Borg....

The Borg in this book take a new twist...which I thought interesting. It seems these are Borg which were separated from the Collective when Voyager killed the Queen and blew up the Transwarp Hub. These Borghave become aggressive - they see humanity finally as a obstacle which deserves not assimilation, but utter and complete destruction.

These Borg are instantly more aggressive, they attack on sight when the Away Team first beams over - even going so far as to beam over the remains directly to Sickbay as a taunt. It should be noted, the Borg didn't just kill them, they mutilated the bodies before sending them back. Not only that, while the Borg aren't running - they defiantly move faster than they have before. Gone is the lumbering zombie lurch, and in place is what can be best described as speed walking.

Now, this got me to thinking.....this made the Borg scary, a threat like they should have been - they should have become after the loss of Locutus.



So...this is the challenge. Let's say a your a designer on TNG, and the Borg have been given to you as a enemy concept. How do you make them scarey, threatening, and powerful. What changes would you make to them, be it their actions, or their look.

I always figured the problem was that the Borg were intimidating and mysterious when first introduced; the problem was that they made an enemy that was too powerful, and had to make them a bunch of wusses to be something the Feds could actually beat. Because in Trek the "good guys" always win. :P

The Q Who? Borg would have been awesome to keep around, with the caveat that they only appeared once or twice in episodes of a darker variety, and the outcome wasn't a clear cut victory for Picard and his crew.

Otherwise such a powerful foe, one that could have devastated the Federation with relative ease, appear frequently wouldn't work. They would either have to win (not possible, because it wouldn't be Trek anymore), be defeated through DXM like in BoBW, or get gimped like in V'ger.

The solution would have been to keep Borg appearances very rare, and in isolated locations far from Federation space. They have no interest in the Federation because after the Q Who? encounter they were analyzed as being primitive and unworthy of further attention.

Drones, the only thing I would have changed would have been to make the Descent rogue drones' wrist-disruptors standard equipment, and to have them run at inhuman speeds at boarders, taking advantage of their cybernetic enhancements. Appearancewise they're fine as they are.

You don't need to make the Borg sadistic and vicious, just not morons.