The Long Road

08/16/2003 Archived Entry: "Borg Me"

I was having this conversation not long ago and I thought I should write it down.

In the series finale of Voyager, not only do they end their 7 year voyage through some crap deus ex machina, thus negating all the hard work many of the characters had done; but they also happily commit mass murder on their way to achieving their goal!

Let me explain. Voyager was lost in space and, in the end, got home by using a Borg wormhole-type-thing. After they get through the hole, they release some kind of biological virus that kills the Borg Queen, destroys the entire array of Borg ships and probably billions of Borg with it. Now, I’d be okay with them killing billions of Borg if they were repelling some kind of attack, but that’s not how it happened. They sought out the Borg, invaded their space, used them and then killed them for good measure.

Remember “I, Borg” from ST:TNG? Picard was given the chance to utterly destroy all Borg but decided not to because he realized that under the cybernetic, collective consciousness lay individuals that were very much alive and undeserving of genocide. And Picard had been assimilated; he had every reason to have vindictive and homicidal urges, Janeway did not. Janeway was just as bad as the Borg had ever been and the show made her out to be some kind of hero in the end. Mark my words; Gene Roddenberry is still turning over in his grave this many years later.

I know I complain a lot about Trek always showing humans as being right (or doing the right thing) and here I’m complaining about the Voyager crew doing something absolutely wrong, my problem is that the show didn’t present it as wrong. To them, it was the right thing to do and they didn’t even need to think twice about it.

For Trek to show that as a happy ending, a viable solution to their dilemma just makes me sick. Ugh.

Anyways, this all makes a nice segue into my thoughts about Enterprise 2x26: The Expanse