“Unity”
Written by Kenneth Biller
Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill
Season 3, Episode 17
Production episode 159
Original air date: February 12, 1997
Stardate: 50614.2
Captain’s log. Chakotay and Kaplan are flying a shuttle through the Nekrit Expanse, trying to find a faster route through it. Unfortunately, they’re lost, as shown when they come across an asteroid field they’d already encountered. Chakotay is frustrated by the fact that they’re not only lost, but going around in circles.
Then they receive a distress call on a Federation frequency from a ship that identifies the shuttle as a Federation craft. This confuses and intrigues the away team, and they respond, but there’s too much interference. Kaplan drops a buoy to let Voyager know what’s going on, and then they land the shuttle on the planet that sent the message.
They’re immediately ambushed. Kaplan is killed and Chakotay is badly wounded before they’re rescued. Chakotay soon learns that there are a bunch of people, some from the Alpha Quadrant, on this world. According to Dr. Riley Frazier, a human woman from Earth, she was kidnapped and taken here, as were all the others. (Surprisingly, Chakotay doesn’t say, “Oh no, not again,” remembering “The 37’s.”)
Chakotay is also very badly injured, and Frazier treats him, telling him to rest.
Buy the Book
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
Voyager is tootling through the Nekrit Expanse, with Paris complaining that he’s bored right up until Janeway offers to let him clean the warp plasma filters, at which point Paris thinks the Nekrit Expanse is the jinkiest.
And then Tuvok detects an object nearby. They investigate, only to find a Borg Cube—albeit one that appears to be completely non-operational. Janeway calls for red alert anyhow, but scans confirm that there’s absolutely no power on board.
Frazier tells Chakotay more about the cooperative that her half of the colony has formed. Unfortunately, they’re in competition with the other half, the ones who shot Chakotay and killed Kaplan, who have no interest in cooperation and only want to take what they can. Chakotay offers to take her and any of the others on the planet with them on Voyager, but she politely declines, saying that they’ve made a home here.
Their communications array is down—the distress signal Frazier sent to the shuttle was its last hurrah, as it were—and she goes off to repair it. Chakotay offers to help, but Frazier says he’s too weak, and also locks him in his room as she leaves.
Tuvok and Torres beam to the Cube. As far as they can determine, something catastrophic happened to the Cube five years ago, leaving it adrift. Several Borg corpses have been preserved by the vacuum of space, and they beam one back for autopsy. Tuvok speculates that whatever happened to them severed their link to the Collective, which is why the Borg haven’t been by to collect them in five years. Torres worries that they were defeated by a foe even more powerful, which doesn’t bear thinking about.
The EMH and Torres perform the autopsy. The doctor activates an axonal amplifier, which causes the drone to come back to life. Quickly, the EMH deactivates the amplifier, and the drone goes back to being a corpse, but Torres is very apprehensive now about the possibility of the Borg reactivating.
Chakotay gets through the locked door and discovers that many of the other people in the cooperative have cybernetic implants—including Frazier, who hides hers behind a blonde wig. It turns out that she didn’t tell the whole truth: they were all assimilated by the Borg. Frazier served on the U.S.S. Roosevelt at Wolf 359—another of the cooperative is a Romulan named Orum. Frazier apologizes for lying, but people’s responses to the Borg are so visceral, she was worried that Chakotay would reject them automatically if he knew they were ex-Borg.
After reassuring them that this changes nothing as far as he’s concerned, Chakotay collapses, as he’s still not well. Orum brings him back to bed.
Frazier tells him that he’s not getting any better. The only option they have left with the equipment they have is to form a small neural link among the cooperative—a kind of mini-Borg Collective. She assures him that it won’t be like becoming a Borg, it’s just using the residual link that they all have with each other from being part of the Collective to give each other strength. It’s how they’ve healed other injuries in the past.
Chakotay reluctantly agrees, since he has no idea when Voyager will come fetch him. He links with the others, and sees memories they all have.
After he recovers, fully healed, he and Frazier have sexy fun times. Chakotay still feels a residual link with the cooperative, which Frazier says is temporary, but he should enjoy it while it lasts.
Voyager finds the buoy Kaplan dropped, but not the shuttlecraft. However, Chakotay has helped them fix the communications systems, so he’s able to contact them. He brings Frazier aboard with a proposal: they want to make the link among them more permanent, to become a true cooperative. They don’t have the equipment to do it on the planet, and Voyager doesn’t, either—but the Borg Cube does. Janeway, however, does not like the idea in the least, and ultimately refuses to help them accomplish it. However, she does offer food, medical supplies, and technology to help them out, which is gratefully accepted.
Torres and Chakotay head back to Voyager on a shuttle after dropping off supplies, and then the cooperative is attacked by the other faction. Desperate, they reach out to Chakotay and are able to take over his mind and get him to stun Torres and divert the shuttle to the Borg Cube to get the tech they need.
Unfortunately, doing so activates the drones on the Cube. Tuvok sends a security detail to stop him, but then the cooperative, realizing what they’ve done, sets the Cube to self-destruct, once all of Voyager’s crew gets off the Cube.
The cooperative apologizes for suborning Chakotay’s will, and they promise that they will have no more influence on him, confirmed by the EMH’s examination. Voyager continues homeward.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The movie First Contact already established that Picard still has a connection to the Borg even after he was removed from the Collective, so it makes sense that these ex-Borg would be able to link up with each other mentally to a degree.
There’s coffee in that nebula! For some reason, Janeway never actually tells Frazier about the drone who was activated from the dead in sickbay, which is really the best reason why they shouldn’t have done it—as proven by their attempt to do so, which did indeed revive the Borg…
Mr. Vulcan. Upon seeing the dead Cube, Tuvok’s first thought is of being able to learn more about the Borg.
Half and half. Torres is much more concerned about the possibility of the Borg awakening, a fear that is justified by what happens in sickbay.
Forever an ensign. Kim, despite not being remotely part of security, is part of the security detail that beams over to the Cube to retrieve Chakotay.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH accidentally revives a Borg, zombie-style.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Chakotay and Frazier have pretty much instant chemistry, and after they share a brain, that goes into overdrive.
Do it.
“I still can’t get a fix on our position.”
“Are you saying we’re lost, Ensign?”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘lost,’ sir.”
“Lost, as in, you still can’t get a fix on our position.”
–Kaplan and Chakotay discussing spatial positioning and semantics
Welcome aboard. Susan Patterson returns as Kaplan from the “Future’s End” two-parter just long enough to die. Lori Hallier plays Frazier and Ivar Brogger plays Orum. Brogger will return in “Natural Law” as Doctor Barus.
Trivial matters: When Chakotay is linked with the other ex-Borg, he sees various memories, some of which involve various space battles and images of the Borg, mostly taken from “Q Who,” “Emissary,” “The Way of the Warrior,” and “Caretaker.” Mixed in was new footage, notably of Frazier as a little girl with her grandfather.
The cooperative of ex-Borg are not seen again onscreen, but they do appear in the post-finale Voyager novels The Eternal Tide, Protectors, and Acts of Contrition, all by Kirsten Beyer; and in the future history of Star Trek Online.
The producers deliberately held back from having Voyager encounter the Borg until after First Contact had been out for a while. There was also discussion about possibly not using the Borg and establishing that they were wiped out by the destruction of the Borg Queen in that movie, but that was nixed.
Previous Borg Cubes were models, including the one made by TNG’s effects team for that show’s Borg episodes, and then another by Industrial Light & Magic for First Contact. This time, the Cube was done via CGI.
The Borg will next be seen in “Scorpion” at the end of the season, and Torres’ fear that the Borg have faced an enemy more powerful than them will prove prophetic.
The shuttle Chakotay and Kaplan are in is taken and dismantled by the cooperative’s opponents, making the fourth shuttle Voyager has lost (the other three were trashed in “Initiations,” “Non Sequitur,” and “Parturition“).
Voyager left the Ocampa homeworld with 155 people on board. (Janeway said there were 152 on board in “The 37’s,” but that wouldn’t have included the EMH, since he was tethered to the ship at the time, but we’re going to count him now. Seska had left and Durst had died by then.) Since then, they’ve lost Bendera (“Alliances“), Darwin (“Meld“), Jonas (“Investigations“), Bennet (“Innocence“), Hogan and Suder (“Basics, Part II“), Martin (“Warlord“), Kaplan (this episode), and four unnamed crewmembers (“Alliances,” both parts of “Basics“), bringing them down to 141, but the Wildman baby was born making it 142.
Set a course for home. “It’s not exactly a united federation around here.” It’s fascinating to watch this episode after seeing the first season of Picard, because in many ways Frazier’s cooperative of ex-Borg is the first draft of Hugh’s gaggle of xB’s in the current show. But this is the first look at an entire community of Borg who have broken off from the Collective, not just a couple of isolated cases (Hugh, Picard).
This is a good episode, but a few things keep it from being a great one. For one thing, as stated above, Janeway never mentions to Frazier and Chakotay about what happened in sickbay. That was just a minor futzing with a piece of the drone, and that basically brought it back to life. What Frazier is proposing carries a huge risk of doing the same for the whole Cube, and the fact that Janeway never even mentioned it is maddening.
Worse, Chakotay is completely taken over by the cooperative, and it barely gets a comment. Chakotay muses to Janeway about how they might do something nasty like that again, but it’s a very muted response to possession of the body and subsuming of the mind, especially by someone you just so recently knocked boots with.
It also would’ve been nice if Chakotay showed some understanding of Frazier’s desire to stay on the world because they’d built a home there, given that Chakotay’s pre-Voyager career was spent fighting to stay on a world he’d built.
And Chakotay spends basically no time mourning Kaplan, and neither does anyone else. Sigh.
But the biggest problem with the episode is that, as described by Frazier, this cooperative can’t possibly exist. Frazier says she was assimilated at Wolf 359. But the Cube that destroyed the fleet at that star was shortly thereafter blown up in Earth orbit. So, um, how did Frazier and the others get there?
What’s especially ridiculous is that it’s an easy fix: have her be one of the eighteen people snatched from the Enterprise in “Q Who.” It was assumed at the time of the episode that they were killed, but that episode was written before assimilation was established as a thing. It’s quite likely that all eighteen of them became Borg. Frazier could easily have been one of them.
Still, despite these flaws, it’s a good episode. It’s the first look at what a true life post-Collective can look like, setting the stage for Seven of Nine and Icheb and the other ex-Borg on both Voyager and Picard. The connection between Chakotay and Frazier is genuine, and both Robert Beltran and Lori Hallier play it well.
Warp factor rating: 6
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Heck yeah, they should’ve tied this to “Q Who.” A missed opportunity there. And if not that, they could’ve came from the missing colonies from “The Neutral Zone.” Choosing Wolf 359 was bizarre. I suppose they wanted to use it because… it’s more famous? Like, hey, remember how awesome “The Best of Both Worlds” was? Yeah, but we actually watched the end of that two-parter!
Side note, I really dig the look of the drone in the top image. He’s extra Borgy somehow. Nicely detailed anyway.
Regarding the assertion that the colony could not exist:
There was some time the cube was off screen between Wolf 359 and Earth. I’ve seen a credible calculation that it would have taken 22 hours for the cube to travel from Wolf 359 to Earth.
By this point, we’ve already seen a cube eject a spherical ship to perform a specific mission. We’ve seen evidence that other Borg were operating in or around the Alpha Quadrant during the TNG era, and that there was a link to the rest of the collective ( Hugh was not aboard Locutus’ cube, but knew who he was). There is plenty of opportunity for humans captured at Wolf 359 to have been shipped back to the Delta Quadrant.
@2
I suppose the Borg cube could’ve done that. But why? They’d already taken samples of humanity and their technology in “Q Who.” And if the cube was taking up side quests in “TBOBW,” it kind of undercuts the singular driving force of their attempt to conquer Earth in that episode.
@2/lerris: I was just about to post the exact same thing, and you beat me to it. I figure some of the captives from Wolf 359 were sent back in an auxiliary sphere ship for more careful analysis or something. That doesn’t really make a lot of sense, since the Collective is supposed to be fully decentralized with every part an equal piece of the whole, but I guess in practice the more remote cubes aren’t as intimately connected to the hive as the ones in the Delta Quadrant. So it’s a stretch, but it’s not impossible.
The Cooperative was an interesting idea — a semi-benevolent alternative to the Borg — and it’s a pity the show never followed up on them and explored the possibilities further. Of course, the 20,000-ly jump at the start of next season makes that impossible, but then, I have other issues with that whole “Scorpion” storyline, which we’ll get to in time.
Maybe the Borg cube reached its maximum occupancy…
As always, I think my thoughts on this episode are best summed up by this gem from Chuck Sonnenburg’s review at SF Debris:
Chakotay: But that ship was destroyed.
Riley: You think in such three dimensional—
Chakotay: Uh-uh, don’t try that crap with me, lady. I’m not some bald French guy who’ll start crying when he falls in the mud.
Picard: It’s called “acting”, damn it! Try it sometime! You might like it.
So is the Federation the only spacefarers that can’t quickly travel to the Delta Quadrant?
I never watched Voyager when it originally aired. We didn’t have UPN around here. I knew about Seven of Nine joining the show during season 4, but other than that, I knew nothing. My first time watching Voyager last year was essentially my first real exposure. So I was surprised to see mid season 3 episodes already dealing with the Borg in a nicely understated way, prepping the ground for the what was to come. Blood Fever had that excellent closing scene, which genuinely surprised me. I was not expecting Borg at all on that episode.
And then there’s Unity. Not a perfect episode by any means, but a well-meaning competent entry nonetheless. In retrospect, I didn’t even realize Hugh’s XBs on Picard were essentially the same concept of a cooperative as introduced here. Kudos to @krad for catching that. The episode makes good use of Chakotay. Of course the former pragmatic Maquis leader would be the one character to try and adapt to the new circumstances without putting up a fight, even willfully embracing a partial mini Borg collective. This wouldn’t work with, say, Janeway, Torres or Paris. It would be a different story altogether. This is why I don’t have much of a problem with Chakotay’s muted reaction. Most of his character can summed up as muted and accepting.
The Wolf 359 callback makes little sense. You can tell they made the callback simply to piggyback on TNG’s best two parter without thinking through the implications of such. If Voyager were staffed primarily by people who didn’t work on TNG like Biller, I might understand that mistake, but the VOY staff had Taylor, Braga and Menosky, all of whom were active TNG staffers during production on Best of Both Worlds. Even Berman should have caught it.
Also, a nice second effort for McNeill behind the cameras. I wouldn’t put him on the same level as Frakes (First Contact is on a whole other level), but he’s getting warmed up to do some better ones (he’ll direct one of Enterprise‘s best hours down the line).
@@.-@ The most interesting part about the Cooperative, for me, was Janeway’s observation about how quickly they exerted their power to achieve their ends. It suggests to me that maybe the Borg originated with good intentions.
“Lori Haller plays Frazier”
It’s Lore Hallier, not Lori Haller.
And there’s no edit… Lori Hallier is what I meant.
Forever an ensign. Kim, despite not being remotely part of security, is part of the security detail that beams over to the Cube to retrieve Chakotay.
Not only that, but this entire sequence makes Tuvok look awful. They were able to beam over, so the transporters work, so instead of sending security after Chakotay, why not just beam Chakotay back to the ship? He’s still wearing his combadge and they should be able to beam him back even if he discarded it. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Tuvok points his phaser at Chakotay and orders him to stop, thus allowing Zombie Chakotay to get the drop and stun him. Tuvok, just shoot him! There’s a reason there’s a stun setting. The whole series of events is so absurd it really would be better if Chakotay legged it to the Cube and did the Tech Whatever before Voyager could catch up. Instead there’s an “action” sequence that does nothing but make our heroes look bad.
I’m genuinely perplexed by this. I understand why, for the sake of the story, sometimes our characters have to act incompetent. But this just makes them look bad for no real story reason.
@10/11: Got it–fixed, thanks!
I enjoyed this episode. It’s not immediately obvious the people Chakotay finds himself with are ex-Borg from the cube, so the reveal is quite effective. I also liked the thought that had gone into the situation on the planet, and the problems that would arise from having a random mish-mash of people from different, often mutually antagonistic cultures suddenly marooned together.
The only thing that let this episode down for me was the performance of Lori Haller as Frazier. Frazier seems to be among the leadership of her group, but Haller doesn’t play her forcefully enough for this to be believable. I also didn’t really buy the chemistry between Frazier and Chakotay. I know trying to fit a romance subplot into a TV episode is problematic, but I’d like to have seen a bit more development of the interest between them, not just “I rescued you, we mind-linked, now let’s get it on”.
I suppose it’s also interesting that, coming directly after Blood Fever, this is the second episode in a row that explores the idea of telepathic abilities as part of characters’ sex lives. I’m not sure what to do with this information, except note that different writers wanted to explore the same idea. They’re very different takes on the idea, so it doesn’t feel like retreading the same ground.
That brings up another idea, though. In their mini-collective, the ex-Borg could feel what each other felt. That may be fun for sexy times, but would they all suffer if someone stubbed their toe or had a hangover?
I suppose one possibility is that the Borg are continually backing up the minds and biological information from the drones they assimilate. The cube gets destroyed, but the Borg have all the information to essentially print the drone elsewhere in the collective. It might explain why Seven insists that part of her remains with the collective, as well as that time she had a multiple personality disorder, which implied the Borg kept backups of personalities and memories for some reason.
@8/Eduardo: “The Wolf 359 callback makes little sense. You can tell they made the callback simply to piggyback on TNG’s best two parter without thinking through the implications of such. If Voyager were staffed primarily by people who didn’t work on TNG like Biller, I might understand that mistake, but the VOY staff had Taylor, Braga and Menosky, all of whom were active TNG staffers during production on Best of Both Worlds. Even Berman should have caught it.”
I think they chose it because of the implications. Fiction is not about cataloguing cold, dry facts, it’s about provoking emotional and perceptual responses in an audience. This was the episode that introduced the Borg to Voyager. What’s the most iconic location in the Borg narrative up to that point, the one that would have the most resonance and familiarity to the audience? The Jouret IV colony? Some random starship? No, it’s Wolf 359. So that’s the reference they chose, because familiarity and resonance are more important in a fictional story than strict factual accuracy. It’s the same reason Gene Roddenberry stuck with using star names like Rigel and Deneb in TOS even though his science advisors pointed out they were unlikely to support life. It wasn’t because he was ignorant of the facts, it was because he didn’t prioritize the facts above the needs of the story. The factual arguments against those star names were less important to a work of fiction than their resonance with the audience. (Although Wolf 359 is a real star name that was pretty obscure before BOBW, so maybe GR was wrong…)
Christopher: yeah, but Frazier saying she served on the Enterprise would have at least as much resonance for a viewer of a Star Trek series……..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
You know, I just glanced at the top photo of the zombie drone in sickbay, and it suddenly made me want to rant about how little sense the Borg’s design makes. There’s nothing “efficient” about sticking random parts asymmetrically on a humanoid body. The worst part is probably the way they leave one eye bare and cover the other eye with some sort of gadget. Binocular vision evolved for a reason. Sticking something over one eye and not the other doesn’t enhance it, it totally ruins its benefits. Also, why encase the whole body in armor of some sort but leave most of the head bare? Surely the head is one of the most vital areas that should be armored.
I think a more plausible Borg design would’ve been something that looked entirely inorganic and uniform on the outside, with the organic parts concealed underneath. It could’ve been a good surprise for their debut episode — the crew thinks they’re being attacked by some kind of androids, and then they make the shocking discovery that there’s flesh and blood inside! So I guess basically I’m saying that the Cybermen make more sense design-wise than the Borg.
@16/Christopher: You do have a point. The mention of Wolf 359 does work on an immediate emotional level. A viewer can instantly respond to this and understand Frazier’s story, thus creating sympathy for the character. But it’s still the kind of detail that really can’t go under scrutiny because the result is this ongoing debate over the possibility of a Borg drone from that cube ending up on the other side of the galaxy and somehow not contradicting the original two parter.
I do think it would be interesting to have a semi-benevolent Borg Cooperative of some sort running around, encouraging us to view radically different forms of consciousness and community as more complicated than scary Others.
@@@@@ Wolf 359, less because I think the issue needs an answer than because continuity noodling is, to me, satisfying on its own merits, perhaps Borg Cubes engaged in large scale combat funnel new assimilees through a Spatial Trajector to other Borg infrastructure to ensure that they will not be destroyed or recovered before their biological and experential distinctness may be added to the collective.
(Well, I think the problem there is that probably the Borg hadn’t assimilated Spatial Trajector technology until sometime after Wolf 359).
@17
Yep, those eighteen missing in “Q Who” were a gut punch, mostly due to Patrick Stewart selling the anguish.
@18
I already said this on another board, but I think the only way to make sense of the Borg design is to think of them as techno-fashionistas. They love tech SO much it’s their religion, and it affects their fashion choices to a bizarre, illogical degree. Basically, the Borg began as a merger of their alien equivalents of the Pentagon, Facebook, and Paris Fashion Week. ;-)
@20/Benjamin: As lerris and I pointed out above, First Contact established that Borg cubes have auxiliary sphere ships. We’d see later in VGR that the spheres are capable of independent transwarp travel. Seems to me that’s the simplest explanation.
After the consent issues brought up in the last ep, I found it frustrating that there was only one throw away line from Janeway about a large portion the people on the planet getting zero choice about joining the new collective in the earlier scene with her & Chakotay and no follow up in their final scene.
@23/treebee72: I don’t think it was a throwaway line at all. The closing lines between Janeway and Chakotay were a discussion of their concern at how the Cooperative achieved their ends through force and the risk that that willingness to impose their will on others might outweigh their benevolent intentions. That question was the very last thing the episode left us to think about, which is the opposite of a throwaway.
Indeed, that’s why I regret the lack of followup. That ending was a setup for future revisits if ever there was one.
Voyager encountering the Borg still feels fresh at the moment, and even though the production team apparently decided they needed to do a “proper” Borg episode for the season finale, they’re perhaps to be commended for doing something different with them. It’s easy to follow Chakotay’s journey here as he gets to know and trust Riley’s people: Their requests seem reasonable, but by the end they’ve crossed a line. Or have they? It does seem like this was their only real chance of survival, and the positions reverse somewhat at the end as Janeway gives them the benefit of the doubt while Chakotay worries power will corrupt. Part of me agrees it would have been nice to see what became of the “co-operative” but perhaps it’s better to leave it on that unsettling note. (The relaunch novels did go there eventually, but that was post-Destiny when the situation had changed somewhat.)
After her literal background appearances in “Future’s End”, Kaplan gets to appear in focus but still dies in the first five minutes: No real explanation for why she’s killed outright and Chakotay isn’t other than “Because he’s a main character.” Talking of which, Chakotay shoots Torres with a phaser presumably set on stun at pointblank range, something which varies between being almost certainly fatal and perfectly safe depending on the episode. Chakotay’s shuttle can be listed as lost, since we’re told one of the ex-Borg factions breaks it up. The ending doesn’t make it clear whether or not Voyager bothers to retrieve Neelix (last heard of onboard a separate shuttle and left behind when Voyager pursues Chakotay), but he’s back on ship next episode so I guess they did!
Also, when Riley started talking about the co-operative making food, I found it impossible not to think of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-operative_brand
Re Wolf 359, I kind of agree with both sides. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to mention it here. We know from the events of “The Neutral Zone” that the Borg were raiding the Alpha Quadrant long before their encounters with the Enterprises, and I was actually assuming the co-operative came from there until she suddenly had that line. All we really need to know about Fraizer is that she’s a human who was abducted and assimilated by the Borg and then freed from the collective: We don’t need her life story. On the other hand, it is just about plausible that some Starfleet officers assimilated in that battle were sent to the Delta Quadrant ahead of the cube blowing up, and I don’t think this is the last time it comes up. (Also, most of the co-operative and the other ex-drones don’t seem to have come from Wolf 359: I doubt there were many Romulans there, and there seem to be Delta Quadrant types among them, so the implications aren’t as far-reaching as “The co-operative can’t exist.”)
I thought this was a good episode and a nice original take with the Borg: the ex-Borg commune idea. It appears though that at the time of the broadcast of this episode was that the general reaction of the viewership was disappointment because the Borg in this episode weren’t “real” Borg. So that led the show runners to push the intended “Year of Hell” cliffhanger well into next season and instead come up with the original “Scorpion” cliffhanger that would feature “real” Borg.
I was also annoyed by the whole notion of Starfleet officers being assimilated at Wolf 359 and brought back to the Delta Quadrant. It just seemed like a callback to “TBOBW” from TNG in order to tie into that fan-favorite two-parter without being seriously thought-through.
@1/JFWheeler: I think that particular drone you’re referring to may appear extra-Borgy since it was probably intended to be used in the promo for this episode to entice viewers.
I wonder if the intended allegory of this episode was perhaps a statement on communism/socialism, that is, the needs of the state and group think coming before the interests and welfare of the individual and individual expression? So yay, democracy!
I’ve wondered for a long time about the possibility of the Borg having some kind of extremely long range transporter tech. It could address the Wolf 359 issue here (although I agree that a sphere can explain that, too) and would also address the astounding coincidence in Scorpion part 1 where one of the first human’s ever assimilated just happens to be on the random cube Voyager approached.
@26/garreth: “I wonder if the intended allegory of this episode was perhaps a statement on communism/socialism, that is, the needs of the state and group think coming before the interests and welfare of the individual and individual expression? So yay, democracy!”
I doubt it. I mean, that’s even more the case with the regular Borg, surely, and yet this episode was taking a more nuanced view, suggesting that a collective existence could have positives and wasn’t automatically an evil to be condemned.
@26
Good point. I also like that particular image because it reminds me of the Borg’s original black and white color scheme, without the bits of green which became standard after First Contact. That made more sense to me, having them stripped down to little or no color at all.
Speaking of First Contact, was there an agreement behind the scenes to hold off on the Borg until after the movie was released? I’m curious to know how soon the creative staff were wanting to bring them in. I do remember that being a topic in the fan community at the time as soon as the concept for this series was released — Voyager is going to the Delta Quadrant, that’s where the Borg is — and so forth.
If Frazier’s collective is made up of Starfleet officers it’s a pity none of them got excited about the idea of rejoining so to speak and wanted to come along.
If Janeway had explained their idea of going full collective was bad because it might reactivate the dead drones maybe Frazier et.al. would have rethought their decision to stay, what with the enemy over the hill, and joined up? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to get some recruits for a change?
@30/roxana: Only four of the Cooperative members were human/Starfleet, according to Riley. Others were Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, and unfamiliar species.
It’s about half of a good episode. Chakotay was a complete jerk to Kaplan in the early scenes, and then later, it would have been more compelling if he’d resisted the Borg implants even if it meant his death. The writers could have gotten him out of it somehow.
@32/JohnC: The ironic thing is that, despite being a Maquis leader, Chakotay isn’t really a “resist unto death” kind of guy — more someone who’s willing to open his mind to new points of view and new ways of living. There was an interesting ambiguity there that the writers failed to develop as Chakotay’s character faded into the background over time.
If the link is preserved for a while after it breaks, does that mean the full cohort in the link understood … boots were knocked?
@33/CLB – It’s a shame that DS9 didn’t give the Maquis a political/cultural philosophy distinct from the Federation with the Eddington character until well after Voyager had lost interest in them. It could have made for some interesting stories.
I’ll also note that while the Borg are one of those antagonists who by their nature tend to lose some of their impact with each appearance, I appreciate Voyager taking the time to build up the tension of their appearance before actually reintroducing them as ongoing antagonists.
@36/CuttlefishBenjamin: I agree with that sentiment but then once reintroduced, the show went quite in the opposite direction of subtlety and over saturated the series with appearances by the Borg. They no longer became event episodes and it strained credulity that Voyager always escaped unscathed or flat out defeated the Borg. They no longer seemed like an unstoppable force of nature.
@37: Oh, I expect to do plenty of complaining when we get there, but however flawed the execution, I think it’s worth giving the show credit for managing the set-up at least.
@18/CLB: Isn’t that basically a Cyberman from Doctor Who?
ETA: Oops, nevermind. Saw the last line in your comment
@18/CLB: Great point about the illogically distributed cybernetic implants. As for the eye problem, I think it’s safe to assume the one cybernetic eye gives them far greater visual capabilities than we’ve gained from our evolutionary binocular eyes. I remember in TNG‘s I, Borg; it was suggested that Hugh’s Borg eye might be some kind of holographic imaging system. As for the remaining biological eye, perhaps it’s retained as something for a drone to fall back on if his visual systems are disrupted in some way.
@32 JohnC:
Was he being a jerk? I don’t remember feeling that way. Of course it’s been years since I saw this episode. If so, I bet he felt bad about it after, considering Kaplan gets killed a few minutes later. Or not… You have to wonder sometimes about the impact of crew deaths considering how many have been casually forgotten in Voyager.
One thing about this episode that bothered me besides the Battle of Wolf 359 reference, was the depiction of Klingon ships at Wolf 359. I know Admiral Hanson mentioned the Klingons sending ships and it was a clever effect in Unity to superimpose some Way of the Warrior battle scenes over that of a Borg cube. However, I was always under the impression that the Klingon ships didn’t arrive in time. The Klingons commitment to the battle was never mentioned again beyond Hanson’s line…
@40/Thierafhal: As far as I know, there’s only been one depiction of Klingons in the Battle of Wolf 359. That was in “Ghosts,” issue 10 of Marvel’s Voyager comic, in which Voyager encountered a spacetime rift connecting to the battle, making it look as if the battle was going on right in front of them, with both Starfleet and Klingon ships present. They also rescued a group of survivors, including at least one Klingon, although they were unable to stay for timey-wimey reasons. The story is set sometime not long after “Unity,” since it references the episode, but Kes has short hair so it has to precede “Before and After.”
@40/Thierafhal: I think it’s entirely within the realm of possibilities that the Klingons aided in the battle of Wolf 359. After all, it was never stated that they didn’t make it. Admiral Hansen also mentioned reaching out to the Romulans so that could explain why there was also a Romulan among the ex-Borg colony. Of course, this Romulan could have been originally assimilated by the Borg from one of the Romulan outposts along the Neutral Zone that was attacked in the TNG episode of the same name. That’s assuming this was the same Borg cube that would later attack the Federation in “TBOBW.”
@41/42: I guess “bothered me” was maybe the wrong term in the wrong context. The depiction of the Klingons here in Unity, was welcome. What I should have said is that it bothered me that the Klingons commitment to the fight was never suggested again canonically before this episode. In fact I remember my first reaction to seeing the Klingon ships and the Borg cube on the same television screen was one of intrigue. I probably said to myself, “finally they hinted that Klingon ships actually did make it to the battle!” But it’s good to know that it’s not a totally forgotten detail and is at least shown in a comic.
Upon further thought, Klingons at Wolf 359 could have been a point of respect between Sisko and Martok. I’m not suggesting Martok fought in the battle, only that he knows about it and knows the Klingons were as badly manhandled as Starfleet was. Perhaps he could be impressed that Sisko actually survived the decimation. I know I’m stretching things significantly, but I was always a fan of Sisko and Martok’s seamless camaraderie after Martok was rescued from the Gamma Quadrant and assigned to DS9. It’s not like it needed justification, but I like the possibilities.
@42/garreth: “That’s assuming this was the same Borg cube that would later attack the Federation in “TBOBW.””
Why assume that? It was never said that all the Borg in the Cooperative were assimilated at the same time or by the same cube, only that Riley and three others were. Many in the Cooperative were from species she’d never seen before. As some of us have said, it’s probable that some of the personnel assimilated at Wolf 359 were sent back to the Delta Quadrant in a sphere ship for study, and presumably they were later added to the existing drone population of a cube in the DQ.
@43/Thierafhal: You know, it never occurred to me that that shot of Klingons fighting Borg was meant to represent Wolf 359. I just figured they’d had their own Borg encounter we hadn’t heard about. But it certainly could be.
@45/CLB:
Interesting, I’m the exact opposite. I didn’t think it could have been anything but Wolf 359. But yes, it’s entirely possible it was some other encounter.
Actually, considering the possibility of Wolf 359, it occured to me that if the Borg fought Klingon ships for the first time in that battle, wouldn’t the Klingons have been more effective than Starfleet? The Borg would have needed time to adapt. As we saw in “Q, Who”, the Enterprise did some significant damage to the Borg, Worf’s atrocious aim notwithstanding, at System J-25.
@46/Thierafhal: Maybe the Klingons were more effective, but that wouldn’t have been a dealbreaker. As in previous encounters, they would’ve done some damage that then would’ve repaired itself, and afteward they would’ve been ineffectual because the Borg would’ve adapted.
There’s an unfortunate tendency that’s set in over the years to think of a Borg cube as tantamount to any other single ship. Voyager was certainly guilty of this. But in TNG, they only needed to send one cube to invade and almost successfully conquer an entire civilization, because a single Borg cube is the equivalent of an entire fleet, just all jammed together in one uniform mass. So the kind of firepower that could completely destroy an enemy starship would just damage one section of a Borg cube, and that section would be repaired before long.
Re: no follow-up on this episode – although it’s not a very direct follow-up, you do see the ramification of this episode on Chakotay’s character in later episodes, as he becomes much more anti-Borg. He is completely against the idea of allying with them in Scorpion, and even when Seven joins the crew, he is fairly hostile to her. So you can see, in his attitude, that what happened to him at the end of this episode had its effects on him.
I’m surprised by the read of this collective as a comparison to Hugh’s XBs, which came across much more as ex-Borgs helping and supporting each other. This episode to me is a fascinating and chilling look into how the Borg Collective might have begun (as many fascist regimes do) – with good intentions, but ultimately imposing the will of a few on everyone “for their good.” Especially since it turns out the hostile faction against Frazier’s collective simply don’t want to join them.
@@@@@ 47- Borg Cube-
Oddly enough, it was spotting one of the ‘miniatures’ of the Borg Cube for the Star Trek Attack Wing game (about which I otherwise know pretty much nothing) that really helped drive that point home for me. The things are hecking large!
@48: Given that the hostile faction murder Kaplan and nearly murder Chakotay without any provocation, and are attacking and probably trying to kill Fraizer’s faction at the point the connection is formed, it seems a bit more serious than “don’t want to join them”: They’re portrayed as scavengers who’d kill anyone for their supplies and technology.
@50 Fair point (I haven’t actually seen the episode in a couple of years so I couldn’t remember how serious it was) – but that still doesn’t justify taking away their free will, at least, not in my book. That’s why it’s fascinating to me, because you can and do sympathize with Frazier and her collective, yet what they want to do to reign in the other side is still sinister, and possibly how the Borg themselves began.
I’m uncomfortable with the suggestion to make Frazier be a Borg prisoner from the Enterprise in “Q Who?” I prefer to think of service on Enterprise as an ethical training that isn’t easily left behind… though you probably can point out exceptions to that idea, such as “The First Duty”. And “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Still, I prefer to see morally equivocal, corrupted, or plain crazy commanders and crew from other ships.
@53/Robert Carnegie
I agree and disagree. I do think serving aboard the flagship should be a privilege granted to the absolute best of the best of servicemen/women in terms of skill and character. But you have acknowledged that eminently flawed people do exist in Starfleet. Despite the fact that high ranking individuals surely could not have attained their positions as frequantly as the “Crazy Admiral” cliche seems to indicate, we obviously can’t deny that it happens in Star Trek. In the same vein, it would figure that lower ranking crewmembers with the same undetected character flaws would have to exist too, even on the Enterprise.
Though for me, that is only part of the argument. Hypothetically, if Riley Frazier did serve aboard the Enterprise and was assimilated from the people who went missing in System J-25, it would have had to be a tremendous psychological injury. Once she escaped the collective, I can not believe her life could ever be close to the same without a lot of healing. To deny that possibility takes the realism out of her plight.
Sorry, not to dismiss your viewpoint, but if that’s what you like out of Trek, then that’s great! I have no objections to maintaining steadfast optimism in stories in and around our heroes. I personally, however, love where modern Trek has gone with ambiguity and realism.
@53/54: Personally I hate the idea of the Enterprise as some unique “cream of the crop” ship. That kind of elitist “We’re better than you” crap is anathema to everything Starfleet is supposed to be about. Besides, how dumb would Starfleet have to be to put all its best people in the same place at the same time? You want to distribute your best people as widely as possible.
Plus, of course, we’ve seen Trek shows set on multiple ships and posts by now, and most of them have people who are among the best of the best (except maybe the Cerritos).
@55/CLB
Well that’s not at all the tone of how I meant it. I don’t see why being the best of the best has to mean “elitist”. I think exceptionally gifted people can still be humble. However, I do agree with your point about Starfleet not having all their eggs in one basket. But I guess Starfleet is dumb in the TNG era because the Enterprise having the best people was not my idea. In “Tin Man”, Captain DeSoto states about the Enterprise : “Starfleet’s got new orders for you. This is top priority. They need the fastest ship in the fleet and the best people. That is you.”
I’ve heard ideas regarding the TNG era being at the tail-end of a “Golden Age” of space exploration for the Federation. They had the cease-fire with the Romulans, and the Klingon alliance, which probably also served as a deterrent to potential Romulan aggression. The Cardassian wars I’ve heard described as largely a border conflict. It could all explain a prevailing false-sense of invincibility for the Federation which explains DeSoto’s comment and also evolved into the questionable practice of having families aboard starships.
@56/Thierafhal: “I don’t see why being the best of the best has to mean “elitist”. I think exceptionally gifted people can still be humble.”
It’s not about the individuals’ attitude. Elitism is about institutional inequalities, one group being treated as more special and privileged than others or being given advantages deprived to others. Reserving one ship for “the best people” and deliberately staffing the rest with lower-quality personnel is just that sort of arbitrary inequality, and it doesn’t make any sense.
And yes, I know it was built into TNG, and it’s TNG’s use of it I was complaining about. I wasn’t directing it at you, I was voicing my general annoyance with this stupid, hateful concept that TNG’s writers used.
@57/CLB: I hear you on the elitist idea. I guess as a gamer, I’m so used the more personal aspect of the label…
And sorry, I know you weren’t necessarily directing the comment at me, personally. But I saw it as a great opportunity to talk (write?) Trek, haha. Which is why we’re all here =)
side note: in my comment @55 I embarrassingly forgot to put your comment # and handle as my header
Although, you knew who it was directed at, haha. Anyways it’s been since corrected
Regarding Enterprise being the best in the fleet I can see that without the cliche of all the best people are assigned there. I’m sure in every navy (or any other groups, military or otherwise) certain ones will achieve a superior rating or reputation. This can often be the result of a captain and officers who simply achieve the best from the people assigned to it, regardless of their individual “rankings.” I’m sure that sometimes just the reputation a ship (or company or whatever) achieves helps to inspire its crew (members) to excel.
Now, I have never been the military, but I do know from the company I worked for for nearly 40 years that individual stores competed with each other.
@@@@@59/costumer:
I have been in the military, so I know your civilian example is just as applicable.
In fact, there even is a relevant Trek example too! In TNG S7 “Force of Nature”, Geordi LaForge is having a competition with the Chief Engineer of another starship to reach a higher power conversion level (whatever that means). In the future, hopefully that sense of competition, formal or otherwise, will still be part of our nature.
60. Thierafhal
I agree.
After a few day’s reflection… Once I argued that Enterprise crew are basically perfect, it did cross my mind that in nearly every story where a regular character serving on the Enterprise is promoted to higher responsibility, or is top officer in a crisis, another crew member who is a horse’s hindquarters is provided for the hero to have to deal with. Usually never seen before, or Dr McCoy. So they’re around, or maybe there is an Academy course in being an equine butt, for these situations. The officer has to handle the butt sensitively but firmly.
@CLB: I vaguely recall reading somewhere Braga saying he was inspired to do this episode after hearing how Ostalgie was becoming a cultural phenomenon in East Germany.. so there’s a socialism link there? Kind of?
Saying the actual Borg are the real authoritarians, this collective is not – but also suggesting these people don’t mind it as much, or at least want to return to some aspects now they have their freedom back. Now, I am personally a leftist, but I don’t deny that various self-styled socialist governments did messed up things, and that we shouldn’t do it that way again. While some other leftists can be all “wish I was in the 70s in a socialist state”.
I don’t recall him going that deep, I just recall reading him mentioning it as an inspiration spark, but like… one could read into it to see the stuff I said in the prior paragraph there, maybe.
Would certainly be interesting to ask him nowadays, if he recalls anyway, whether he personally had those kinds of implications/readings in mind while going through drafts.
Has nobody asked the really important question? The one that haunted me throughout the episode? The one that burns in my mind even now?
Where did Frazier get the wig?
Poor Kaplan . As with the main review the loss of lives on this show bugs me more than on other Trek shows where the Red shirts buy the farm.. because they make such a big deal of talking about how they are a family but never seem to show it much beyond the senior staff. No funeral or memorial service.. just bye then..
How can Voyager still be in the Nekrit Expanse if Fair Trade was four episodes ago unless the production order was all screwed up? The reference guide Delta Quadrant thought Chakotay and Frazier had zero chemistry, but to each his own. Picard asked the Borg Queen how there could be survivors when that Borg ship was destroyed. She refused to give him an answer. Does anyone else find Frazier’s voice as soothing as Jennifer Lien’s?
3: Sidequests? It’s interesting to consider something happening within the margins of The Best of Both Worlds like Flashback or Back to the Future II? 9: Janeway? Wasn’t that Chakotay? 14: Are Chakotay and Frazier any more convincing a couple than Paris and Torres? 16: Whether it’s Blood Fever or Unity that introduced the Borg to VGR is a grey area. 18: JG Hertzler is blind in one eye so that’s why they made Martok lose an eye in that Dominion prison camp.
20: They take up that idea in Unimatrix Zero, sort of. 21: What about Jonathan Frakes’ anguish? 25: I always assumed Orum was a Romulan taken from one of the outposts bordering the Neutral Zone. 40: The Borg like to blend biology with technology which is probably the reason for one cybernetic eye and limb. 46: I never really considered 20% that damaging but Borg starship design must have improved since then because it’s doubtful they would shut down to regenerate that soon in battle. And was Worf’s aim really that atrocious? Because the ship had no vital areas, he wouldn’t know where to fire phasers.
48: Was Chakotay more hostile to Seven than Torres? Chakotay lessened back on that after Scorpion but Torres never totally did. 55: I always took the Enterprise to be staffed by Starfleet’s best and the brightest. They’re usually pretty quick to notice when someone isn’t. 56: That is a questionable practice and even Picard thought so. By the time of the Dominion War they were no longer permitting families aboard Starfleet ships. 63: It’s interesting that the lure of a Collective is still tempting to Frazier’s Cooperative, even after they reclaimed their identities.
@66/David Sim: “How can Voyager still be in the Nekrit Expanse if Fair Trade was four episodes ago unless the production order was all screwed up?”
It’s an expanse. By definition, it’s expansive. Enterprise spent a whole season in the Delphic Expanse.
67: Sorry, but I’m still not convinced. In the past few episodes we saw Voyager flying through space with not a glimpse of the Nekrit Expanse. It’s not like the nebula they had to traverse for a month next season.
@68/David: Why assume the entire Expanse has visible nebulosity? They said it’s a vast territory. So some parts of it might be clearer than others. Really, I always had the impression that the plasma storms were just what delineated the border between known space (to Neelix) and the Expanse beyond, not that they filled its entire reach. Yes, the guy at the station in “Fair Trade” said the Expanse was too unstable to chart, but he may have just meant the nearer, known portions. After all, if it was uncharted, surely that means they didn’t know how far the storms extended.
Besides, realistically, after “Dark Frontier” the ship should be right alongside the galaxy’s Central Bulge and half the sky should be a near-solid mass of starlight, while the sky all around should be much denser with stars and nebulae, throughout the entire final two and a half seasons. Instead, we just get the same old starscapes as always. So you can’t always take the visuals literally.
It’s strange to think that it took a whole quarter of a century after this episode for Trek to do another story depicting the Borg as anything other than horrific. Hopefully someone at some point will actually do something with Jurati’s Collective, and they won’t fall by the wayside like these guys.