Star Trek: 11 Things You Didn't Know About The Borg Queen
Forgotten everything you knew about the Borg Queen? Must be something you assimilated!
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00:00 She's the head honcho herself, she's the hostess with the mostess, she's going to assimilate
00:05 you, your entire family, and your world.
00:08 Make sure you read the original article by the wonderful Jack Kiley, I am Sean Ferrick,
00:12 and here is 11 Things You Didn't Know About The Borg Queen.
00:18 Number 11.
00:19 Enigmatic Entity.
00:21 It's difficult to fathom now, but the introduction of the Borg Queen in Star Trek First Contact
00:24 wasn't well-received by all at the time of the film's release.
00:29 Controversy among Star Trek fans?
00:31 Well, I never.
00:33 Before First Contact, the Borg were a homogenous, single-willed foe with no clear leader, or
00:37 rather, without the apparent need for one.
00:40 This kind of impenetrable, indivisible hive mind, save for Locutus, was, for some, their
00:46 distinctive appeal.
00:47 The fact the Borg Queen had never been mentioned in The Next Generation made the character
00:51 equally perplexing for some fans.
00:54 As First Contact co-writer Brandon Braga discussed in an interview with StarTrek.com, it was
00:58 quickly realised that a robot zombie tight-lipped adversary wouldn't quite work for a feature
01:03 film.
01:04 This is why the Queen was created, to speak for the Borg, and not just because they were
01:08 gunning for sexiest on-screen kiss.
01:11 Fans were also left unclear by the film as to the exact role the Queen played within
01:15 the collective.
01:16 You could think of the Queen as some sort of central processing and command hub from
01:20 within the central nexus.
01:22 As First Contact screenwriter Ron Moore also stated, the Borg Queen was always intended
01:26 to be a literal person, and not merely a manifestation of the collective.
01:31 Number 10.
01:32 Maybe she's Borg with it.
01:33 Maybe it's make-believe.
01:35 For their appearance in Star Trek First Contact, the Borg got a significant wardrobe and makeup
01:39 upgrade overseen by the incomparable Michael Westmore.
01:43 Individually moulded bodysuits and Borg implants were created, and airbrushing was used for
01:47 the creepier, more intricately technological look on the skin of each drone.
01:51 In the end, the whole process of Borgification took around five hours for each actor.
01:56 Electronic makeup artist Michael Westmore Jr., son of above, also got creative and made
02:01 the light on each one of the new Borg eyepieces blink the names of members of the cast and
02:06 crew in Morse code.
02:08 The transformation was the most extensive for Alice Kreeg.
02:11 It took on average six and a half hours for the actress to get into the Borg Queen makeup
02:15 and suit.
02:16 The first bodysuit that was used caused her blisters, and the silver contact lenses that
02:19 formed part of the look were so painful, Kreeg could only wear them for a maximum of four
02:24 minutes at a time.
02:25 The floating head sequence in First Contact was done mostly through practical effects.
02:29 To achieve the scene, Kreeg was separated into two, a prosthetic Borg neck with an animatronic
02:34 spine fixed to her neck at an angle, and the rest of her body wrapped in blue, placed on
02:39 a slant board attached to a crane rig to lower the actress down to the set.
02:44 Just to be clear, the Borg Queen was separated in two.
02:47 Alice Kreeg was not bifurcated for this film.
02:49 Number 9.
02:50 The Royal We.
02:51 As the Queen herself put it, "I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many."
02:57 Far from being a contradiction in terms, the Borg Queen is instead probably the ultimate
03:01 example of the majestic plural.
03:03 We have seen multiple different versions and copies of the Borg Queen over the years, leading
03:07 to a lot of speculation as to just how this system of replacements works, still largely
03:12 unexplained in canon.
03:13 The Queen was by Picard Lacutus's side on the cube headed to Sector 001 in The Best
03:18 of Both Worlds, Wolf 359 was an inside job, and yet despite that cube's destruction,
03:24 was very much alive and assimilating during the events of First Contact.
03:27 Having dissolved in plasma coolant at the end of that movie, the Borg Queen nonetheless
03:30 made a second appearance in the Star Trek Voyager feature-length episode "Dark Frontier."
03:35 Alice Kreeg was unavailable to reprise the role for the episode, and so Susanna Thompson,
03:39 who had auditioned to play the Queen in First Contact, was hired.
03:42 Whilst this Voyager version was meant to be in the same line as Kreeg's incarnation,
03:46 Thompson's Queen was also intended to be somewhat distinct.
03:50 Thompson wore the same bodysuit as Alice Kreeg, with only a few alterations made to fit, and
03:54 the Queen's makeup got a bit of a retouch.
03:56 Thompson would play the Queen once more in the Voyager two-parter "Unimatrix Zero,"
04:00 and Kreeg returned in the season finale "Endgame."
04:03 In season two of Star Trek Picard, we would meet a different, but equally familiar Borg
04:07 Queen, portrayed by the sadly missed Annie Wershing.
04:10 The character was then given a surprising twist by Alison Pill.
04:14 Technically speaking, Seven of Nine was also the Borg Queen of her own mini-collective
04:18 on the Artifact Cube for a hot minute.
04:20 For her appearances in the final season of Star Trek Picard, the Borg Queen was played
04:24 by two people.
04:25 Reprising the role, Alice Kreeg gave her immediately recognizable voice to the Queen, and it was
04:30 Australian actress Jane Edwina Seymour who stood in on set with a tour de force and bloody
04:36 scary performance as her body double.
04:38 Number 8.
04:39 A Dating Profile.
04:40 The origins of the Borg Queen remain one of the most mysterious parts of Star Trek.
04:45 We know very little about how this embodiment, perhaps mastermind of the collective, came
04:49 to be, or even much about her daily existence.
04:52 Do multiple Queens exist simultaneously?
04:54 Similar to the Bee, does any drone have the potential to become Queen?
04:58 From canon, we know that the Borg originated in the Delta Quadrant thousands of centuries
05:02 ago, much like any other humanoid species.
05:04 At an unknown point in their history, they began to incorporate cybernetic technology
05:09 into their bodies.
05:10 As the Vadwar revealed in Star Trek Voyager's episode "Dragon's Teeth", the Borg had
05:14 only assimilated a handful of systems by what was the 15th century on Earth.
05:18 It's never indicated if the Borg Queen was around, practising her high-wire act in the
05:22 1400s.
05:23 The collective itself may not have known, as their memory of that time was fragmentary.
05:28 Only the few bits of dating we do get for "the" or "a" Queen comes from two Voyager
05:33 episodes.
05:34 In Dark Frontier, the Queen states to Seven that we all originated from lesser species,
05:38 I myself came from species 125.
05:41 Later, in Unimatrix Zero Part 2, the Queen intimates that, when she was assimilated,
05:46 she was just about the age of the child she speaks to during her visit to the Borg virtual
05:51 reality.
05:52 While this would at least tend to mean that the Queen "became" Borg at some point rather
05:55 than being created in situ, it would be difficult to date her assimilation, especially given
06:01 the fact that the Borg use maturation chambers which may accelerate growth.
06:06 Number 7 – Tales worthy of assimilation The seductive appeal of the Federation's
06:10 greatest foe has been hard to resist for creators of Star Trek beta canon.
06:14 What seems to entice writers the most is origin stories for the Borg and their monarch, and,
06:19 given that the series and films have provided us with very little on how the Borg, let alone
06:23 the Queen, came to be, they have had a lot of creative space for invention.
06:28 The very nature of the species tends to lend itself to origin stories along the themes
06:32 of "technology run amok" or "experiment gone awry".
06:35 For example, both the Star Trek The Original Series manga story "Side Effects" from
06:40 the "Shinsei!
06:41 Shinsei!" anthology and the Strange New World 6 short story "The Beginning" depict
06:46 the creation of the first Borg Queen as the result of ill-fated medical experiments attempting
06:52 to cure a deadly disease.
06:53 In the Star Trek Destiny trilogy by David Mack, the predecessor to the Borg Queen was
06:58 the disastrous result of a last-ditch attempt for survival by a member of the highly advanced
07:03 alien race the Coeliar, capable of forming their own hive-like mind called the Gestalt,
07:09 and a group of humans from the Columbia NX-02 stranded in the past.
07:12 Some of the novels do expand upon the role of the Queen within the collective.
07:16 In the Star Trek Voyager book "The Farther Shore" by Christy Golden, the Borg have a
07:19 royal protocol to quickly replace a Queen, whereas in the Destiny series, several Queens
07:24 can exist at the same time.
07:26 In the game Star Trek Legacy, a Queen was needed to unite the Borg, who were originally
07:30 created by V'ger.
07:32 In Star Trek Online, the Borg and their Queen returned in 2409 to launch an assault on the
07:37 Alpha and Beta Quadrants.
07:39 In the perfectly titled "The Next Generation" Mirror Universe novel "The Worst of Both
07:44 Worlds" by Greg Cox, there's also a Borg King.
07:47 Number 6.
07:48 Don't be so three-dimensional.
07:51 Equally outside of what is considered canon, what you might not know is that the Borg Queen
07:55 was central to the story of the Star Trek The Experience Borg Invasion 4D attraction
08:00 in Las Vegas.
08:01 The immersive experience, which included a number of live performers, was set aboard
08:05 a Starfleet research outpost.
08:07 Guests on the ride were told, by the Doctor no less, that they were there as part of medical
08:11 research into their possible genetic immunity to Borg assimilation.
08:15 Naturally, a Borg cube arrives to put a stop to all that, with none other than the Borg
08:19 Queen aboard.
08:20 4D effects mounted in interactive chairs were used to make the audience feel like they were
08:25 being infected by nanoprobes as the Queen appeared.
08:28 Admiral Janeway arrives aboard Voyager and, with a little help from the Doctor, saves
08:32 the day.
08:33 Alice Krieg, who had played the character only about a year earlier in Endgame, was
08:37 the Borg Queen, as we find out in the Voyager Season 7 DVD extra "The Making of Borg Invasion
08:44 4D".
08:45 All of the original Borg who worked on First Contact were hired for the filming, making
08:49 it something of a family reunion for Krieg.
08:51 Number 5.
08:52 Mind your beeswax.
08:53 "For the new Borg Queen of a beehive to hatch from her cell, she must first chew through
09:00 a wax cap in which the worker bees have encased her.
09:04 The wonders of nature."
09:06 Yeah, planet Earth this ain't.
09:08 For her mechanical majesty in Star Trek, Queen cells also exist aboard Borg vessels, although
09:13 they seem to function as a place of temporary residence or hiding, a locus of control, and
09:18 somewhere to flee from.
09:19 The Queen cell contained a powerful piece of technology called a spatial trajector,
09:24 assimilated from the Delta Quadrant species the Sicarians, capable of transporting the
09:28 Queen up to 40,000 lightyears, but only in the event of an emergency.
09:31 Each appearance of the Queen, aside from Star Trek Voyager's Endgame, has been in disembodied
09:36 form.
09:37 In Voyager, within Unimatrix One, the Queen descended from a central alcove as little
09:40 more than a head and shoulders, only for the knees and toes to join her from compartments
09:44 beneath the floor.
09:45 She's introduced in first contact in disassembled mode, and Annie Wershing's Queen in Picard
09:50 is similarly disincorporated, although with arms and more of a torso this time.
09:55 It is likely that the Borg Queen spent most of her time disassembled in the central alcove,
09:59 only going walkabouts when the need arose.
10:01 By the time we see the Queen in season three of Picard, however, she could only dream of
10:06 such flawless heights.
10:07 Number four, the Janeway Factor.
10:09 Captain Janeway and the crew of Voyager had bounties of battles with the Borg Queen, and
10:13 yet for the most part avoided the nanoprobe treatment.
10:16 As they hitched a transwarp ride back to the Alpha Quadrant, they even managed to decimate
10:20 the Borg and destroy the (or at least one) Queen with just one hyperspray full of a neurolytic
10:26 pathogen.
10:27 It was also thanks to Voyager that the research of pioneering exobiologists the Hansons was
10:31 found.
10:32 The couple had set off in search of the Borg.
10:34 During their three years in the field, before their eventual assimilation, the Hansons became
10:37 aware of the existence of the Borg Queen and of her primary residence, Unimatrix One.
10:43 Such knowledge was well in advance of the Federation, who, we assume, only found out
10:47 about the Borg Queen after the Enterprise-E returned to 2373.
10:52 Until recently, since her presumed death in Endgame, we hadn't seen another prime version
10:56 of the Borg Queen, aside from the hilariously holographic hindrance to Boimler's perfection
11:01 in Lower Deck's episode "I, Excretus".
11:05 Well THAT was until the last two episodes of the Star Trek Picard season three, and prior,
11:11 as a voice inside Jack Crusher's head.
11:13 Number 3.
11:14 Resistance is Retro Star Trek Picard introduced us to a very different
11:17 Borg Queen from the beginning of its second season.
11:20 Looking more like she's about to work the runway and read you for filth than rumble
11:23 your resistance, this Queen, who had fused with Dr. Agnes Jurati, was looking for peaceful
11:28 cooperation with the Federation to prevent destruction of galactic proportions.
11:34 This wasn't the first time we'd seen a different sort of Borg in Trek history, however.
11:38 In the Star Trek Voyager season three episode "Unity", Chakotay, and may as well have been
11:43 a redshirt and a Kaplan, come across a group of ex-Borg who, by the end of the episode,
11:47 have formed a new kind of hive mind amongst themselves called the Cooperative, so they
11:51 can get along with their rowdy neighbours.
11:53 Unity was also the first episode to show that the Borg as a whole had survived the destruction
11:58 of their Queen in first contact, which wasn't a given at the time.
12:01 As reported in Star Trek Monthly issue 24, there was debate as to whether the Borg should
12:06 return at all after first contact, with the film's co-writer Ronald D. Moore believing
12:10 the death of the Queen and the other drones should have marked the end for the entire
12:14 collective.
12:15 And then along came Terry Metallus.
12:17 At the climax of season three of Star Trek Picard, we meet the Borg and their Queen,
12:21 very much post-Endgame, still crippled from the Janeway's neurolytic pathogen.
12:26 In a similar manner to Annie Wershing's season two version, this Queen is tethered
12:30 in dismembered form, reduced to draining the life out of the few remaining drones to survive,
12:35 then consuming their necrotic tissue in this horror show that sends chills down the spine.
12:40 This place is a tomb, Riker notes ominously.
12:44 With the help of the Changelings, who also shared the anger of a generation lost to Starfleet,
12:49 the Queen created a new collective by assimilating the children of Starfleet through their genes.
12:53 With the Queen's progeny Vox at the helm of the Hive, these Gen Z Borg are no longer
12:59 just about assimilation, but annihilation.
13:02 Number two, if we could turn back time.
13:06 One fact about the Borg Queen's original outing is so strange you almost won't "Believe"
13:10 it.
13:11 Okay, I'll stop.
13:12 As revealed in 2016, when discussions were being had about who should play the Borg Sovereign,
13:17 a certain Oscar-winning global pop star's name was in the mix.
13:21 Had she got the part, perhaps instead of being lowered from the ceiling, Cher's Borg Queen
13:25 could have entered slowly down an engineering ladder singing "Fernando".
13:29 However, we'd have to agree that first contact was right in following makeup artist Scott
13:35 Wheeler's advice when he said in the Hollywood Reporter interview that character would not
13:41 have worked without Alice Krieg.
13:42 No offence to Cher, she's had some great moments, but it would have been so gimmicky.
13:46 In another bit of "if I could turn back timey-wimey", had Star Trek Enterprise not
13:50 been cancelled after its fourth season, we might well have finally gotten an origin story
13:55 for the Borg Queen that would have equally featured Alice Krieg in the role once more.
14:00 Krieg would have played a Starfleet medical technician who would somehow have met the
14:04 drones from Enterprise's episode "Regeneration", leading to her becoming the Queen.
14:09 Number 1.
14:10 Is this the end, my friend?
14:11 Star Trek Picard the series has reached its conclusion, and what an epic ride the final
14:16 season has been.
14:17 Not only was it the best of reunions for the next-generation cast of characters (sorry
14:21 Wesley, at least your mum gave you a shoutout), it turned out their greatest enemy, the Borg
14:25 Queen, was hiding behind that big red door inside Jupiter.
14:28 In the series finale, the Queen is revealed in a mangled, ghoulish state.
14:32 She does have arms, though, so it's not all that.
14:35 Standing beneath her less-than-majestic majesty is Jack Crusher, looking rather good in his
14:39 levelled-up locutus getup.
14:41 Or, as Chris said, he is the Borg-er King.
14:44 D'ya get it?
14:46 D'ya get it?
14:47 This Queen is desperate, vengeful.
14:50 She has been working with the rogue changelings, all along to weaponise Picard's pre-synth
14:54 corpse, Borgified DNA.
14:56 Jack, who would probably have preferred to inherit the vineyard, instead receives Picard's
15:01 genes, altered enough to turn him into a transmitter for a new Borg code.
15:06 He is the command signal for this new evolution of the Collective, and, in some warped way,
15:11 the Queen believes she's his mother.
15:14 It is family, both chosen and by birth, that wins the day, however.
15:18 Picard's love for his son helps break Jack free from the Queen's grasp, and it's
15:22 the unshakeable bond between the crew of the Enterprise-D and Riker with a Zamazadi that
15:26 saves the day.
15:28 The last we see of the Queen is her raising her hand in a futile attempt to shield herself
15:33 from the fiery blast, screaming out with no one there to hear.
15:36 The title of the final episode is "The Last Generation".
15:40 This is the end of Star Trek Picard, but could this really be the last we see of the Borg
15:45 and their Queen?
15:46 That's everything for our list today.
15:48 Thank you so much to Jack Kiley for writing this list, and thank you so much to the wonderful
15:53 editor Martin for making it look so pretty.
15:55 You're all awesome, everyone, thank you so much for following along.
15:59 What do you reckon?
16:00 Are the Borg done, or will they regenerate and come back?
16:04 Let us know in the comments below.
16:05 Don't forget to get in touch with us over on Twitter @TrekCulture.
16:07 You can also get in touch with us on Instagram @TrekCultureYT.
16:10 I'm @SeanFerric on the various socials.
16:13 Everyone, Slava Ukrania, look after yourselves, live long and prosper, and have a great time
16:19 until I see you again.
16:20 Thanks.
16:20 Thanks.