I didn't think it was that bad, but it was definitely a little forced. It was part of the Destiny trilogy if anyone is interested to know more.
It was in fact in Shatner's book. Where it was revealed that actually Kirk was the one who first met the Borg and the person who could destroy them forever. How we may ask? By flipping a switch on the Borg Homeworld
I feel like the VGER stuff is the closest we've gotten to an origin but I have always thought it was a terrible idea. I love the VGER concept as a standalone entity in The Motion Picture.
The Borg would probably be classed as some kind of hybrid intelligence - definitely not AI, but equally definitely not standard organic/biological intelligence. However I think AI, or something very similar to it, would be a reasonable precursor technology for whatever the Borg are. If there were an Alpha Quadrant committee on what kind of research to limit to prevent another Borg, I think AI would be right up there.
That's a backstory that I can imagine being interesting, but seems like it'd be really easy to mess up, so I'm a bit wary about the inevitable big reveal of the reason for the existence of this super-duper secret Romulan squad.
No origin story, Voyager gave the tiniest bit of their history (seemingly about a thousand years before the series, the Borg were confined to a handful of systems), but I don't think that was presented as totally reliable information. I think the presumption has always been that they didn't really need an origin story since it'd be something like "some careless society kept developing technology and integrating it more and more into their societies and eventually their bodies without fully understanding it, and this is the end result, so don't be so careless, twentieth century humans".
Yeah that sounds awful. Origin story of the galaxy's most dangerous threat (arguably) and it's just a standard science-gone-wrong episode of the week. I'm kind of pleasantly surprised Voyager's creative team was able to see the problems with that. They didn't show a whole lot of restraint for other Borg stories.
I don't know if she's cloned. The Borg Queen in Voyager's final episode is indeed the same person who was in First Contact, but the Borg Queen in other episodes is a different person. In one Voyager episode the Queen, talking to a child, says "I was about your age when I was assimilated". That doesn't rule out a cloning process, but it'd have to be a very strange process - a process where a non-Borg clone was created and developed and then assimilated. It seems more likely that they can just promote drones to Queen based on need and ability.
Eh, not so much a nitpick as 'wait what happened to holographic labour?'. Seems less efficient to build an artificial life form when you can just make a hologram that can do the same thing. I mean, the hologram path of AI seemed like it had more potential for advanced AI than a 'solid' path like androids , which are limited to their physical brains.
They did have emitters capable of projecting other versions of the Doctor as labour on asteroids or mining colonies or whatever.
As soon as it drops in its country of origin (in this case on CBSAA in the US) like every other weekly show here on Era.
I think the implication is that the Commodore is someone whom the Romulans have turned, but isn't Romulan herself (just a Vulcan). She probably thinks that doing so is for "the greater good" or whatever rationalization she's come up with to justify her actions. Similar to how the Russians have corrupted and turned many within the US government to serve their ends.
