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Forgotten everything you knew about the Borg Queen? Must be something you assimilated!
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00:00She's the head honcho herself, she's the hostess with the mostess, she's going to
00:04assimilate you, your entire family and your world.
00:08Make sure you read the original article by the wonderful Jack Kiley, I am Sean Ferrick
00:12and here is 11 things you didn't know about the Borg Queen.
00:18Number 11, Enigmatic Entity.
00:21It's difficult to fathom now but the introduction of the Borg Queen in Star Trek First Contact
00:25wasn't well received by all at the time of the film's release.
00:29Controversy among Star Trek fans, well I never.
00:33Before First Contact the Borg were a homogenous single-willed foe with no clear leader or rather
00:38without the apparent need for one.
00:40This kind of impenetrable indivisible hive mind, say for Locutus, was for some their distinctive
00:46appeal.
00:47The fact the Borg Queen had never been mentioned in the next generation made the character equally
00:52perplexing for some fans.
00:54As First Contact co-writer Branham Braga discussed in an interview with StarTrek.com it was quickly
00:58realised the robot zombie tight-lipped adversary wouldn't quite work for a feature film.
01:04This is why the Queen was created to speak for the Borg and not just because they were
01:08gunning for sexiest on-screen kiss.
01:11Fans were also left unclear by the film as to the exact role the Queen played within the
01:15collective.
01:16You could think of the Queen as some sort of central processing and command hub from within
01:20the central nexus.
01:22As First Contact screenwriter Ron Moore also stated, the Borg Queen was always intended to
01:26be a literal person and not merely a manifestation of the collective.
01:31Number 10.
01:32Maybe she's Borg with it.
01:33Maybe it's make-believe.
01:35For their appearance in Star Trek First Contact the Borg got a significant wardrobe and makeup
01:39upgrade overseen by the incomparable Michael Westmore.
01:43Individually moulded body suits and Borg implants were created.
01:46An airbrushing was used for the creepier, more intricately technological look on the skin
01:50of each drone.
01:51In the end the whole process of Borgification took around 5 hours for each actor.
01:56Electronic makeup artist Michael Westmore Jr, son of above, also got creative and made the
02:01light on each one of the new Borg eyepieces blink the names of members of the cast and crew
02:07in Morse code.
02:08The transformation was the most extensive for Alice Krieg.
02:11It took on average 6.5 hours for the actress to get into the Borg Queen makeup and suit.
02:16The first body suit that was used caused her blisters and the silver contact lenses that
02:20formed part of the look were so painful Krieg could only wear them for a maximum of 4 minutes
02:24at a time.
02:25The floating head sequence in First Contact was done mostly through practical effects.
02:29To achieve the scene Krieg was separated into two, a prosthetic Borg neck with an animatronic
02:34spine fixed to her neck at an angle and the rest of her body wrapped in blue, placed
02:39on a slant board attached to a crane rig to lower the actress down to the set.
02:44Just to be clear, the Borg Queen was separated in two, Alice Krieg was not bifurcated for
02:48this film.
02:49Number 9.
02:50The Royal We.
02:52As the Queen herself put it, I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many.
02:57Far from being a contradiction in terms, the Borg Queen is instead probably the ultimate
03:01example of the majestic plural.
03:03We have seen multiple different versions and copies of the Borg Queen over the years, leading
03:07to a lot of speculation as to just how this system of replacements works, still largely
03:12unexplained in canon.
03:13The Queen was by Picard Locutus's side on the cube headed to sector 001 in the best of
03:18both worlds, Wolf 359 was an inside job, and yet despite that cube's destruction, was
03:24very much alive and assimilating during the events of First Contact.
03:27Having dissolved in plasma coolant at the end of that movie the Borg Queen nonetheless made
03:31a second appearance in the Star Trek Voyager feature length episode Dark Frontier.
03:35Alice Krieg was unavailable to reprise the role for the episode, and so Susanna Thompson
03:39who had auditioned to play the Queen at First Contact was hired.
03:42Whilst this Voyager version was meant to be in the same line as Krieg's incarnation, Thompson's
03:47Queen was also intended to be somewhat distinct.
03:50Thompson wore the same bodysuit as Alice Krieg with only a few alterations made to fit, and
03:54the Queen's make up got a bit of a retouch.
03:56Thompson would play the Queen once more in the Voyager two-parter Unimatrix Zero, and Krieg
04:01returned in the season finale Endgame.
04:03In season 2 of Star Trek Picard we would meet a different, but equally familiar Borg Queen
04:08portrayed by the sadly missed Annie Wershing, and the character was then given a surprising
04:12twist by Alison Pill.
04:14Technically speaking, Seven of Nine was also the Borg Queen of her own mini-collective on
04:18the Artifact Cube for a hot minute.
04:20For her appearances in the final season of Star Trek Picard, the Borg Queen was played by
04:24two people.
04:25Surprising the role, Alice Krieg gave her immediately recognisable voice to the Queen, and it was
04:30Australian actress Jane Edwina Seymour who stood in on set with a tour de force and bloody
04:36scary performance as her body double.
04:38Number 8.
04:39A Dating Profile.
04:40The origins of the Borg Queen remain one of the most mysterious parts of Star Trek.
04:45We know very little about how this embodiment, perhaps mastermind of the collective, came
04:49to be, or even much about her daily existence.
04:52Do multiple queens exist simultaneously?
04:54Similar to the B, does any drone have the potential to become queen?
04:58From canon, we know that the Borg originated in the Delta Quadrant thousands of centuries
05:02ago much like any other humanoid species.
05:05At an unknown point in their history, they began to incorporate cybernetic technology into
05:09their bodies.
05:10As the Vadwar revealed in Star Trek Voyager's episode Dragon's Teeth, the Borg had only assimilated
05:15a handful of systems by what was the 15th century on Earth.
05:19It's never indicated if the Borg Queen was around practicing her highwire act in the 1400s.
05:23The collective itself may not have known, as their memory of that time was fragmentary.
05:28Only the few bits of dating we do get for the or a queen comes from two Voyager episodes.
05:34In Dark Frontier, the Queen states to Seven that we all originated from lesser species,
05:39I myself came from species 125.
05:41Later in Unimatrix Zero Part 2, the Queen intimates that, when she was assimilated, she was just
05:47about the age of the child she speaks to during her visit to the Borg virtual reality.
05:52While this would at least tend to mean that the Queen became Borg at some point rather
05:56than being created in situ, it would be difficult to date her assimilation, especially given
06:01the fact that the Borg use maturation chambers which may accelerate growth.
06:06Number 7.
06:07Tales worthy of Assimilation.
06:08The seductive appeal of the Federation's greatest foe has been hard to resist for creators of
06:13Star Trek beta canon.
06:14What seems to entice writers the most is origin stories for the Borg and their monarch, and
06:19given that the series and films have provided us with very little on how the Borg, let alone
06:23the Queen, came to be, they have had a lot of creative space for invention.
06:28The very nature of the species tends to lend itself to origin stories along the themes of
06:32technology run amok or experiment gone awry.
06:35For example, both the Star Trek the original series manga story side effects from the Shinsei Shinsei
06:41Anthology and the Strange New World 6 short story The Beginning depict the creation of
06:47the first Borg Queen as the result of ill-fated medical experiments attempting to cure a deadly
06:53disease.
06:54In the Star Trek Destiny trilogy by David Mack, the predecessor to the Borg Queen was the disastrous
06:58result of a last ditch attempt for survival by a member of the highly advanced alien race
07:04the Seeliar, capable of forming their own hive-like mind called the Gestalt, and a group of humans
07:09from the Columbia NX-02 stranded in the past.
07:12Some of the novels do expand upon the role of the Queen within the collective.
07:16In the Star Trek Voyager book The Farther Shore by Christy Golden the Borg have a royal protocol
07:20to quickly replace a Queen, whereas in the Destiny series several Queens can exist at the same
07:26time.
07:27In the game Star Trek Legacy a Queen was needed to unite the Borg who were originally created
07:31by V'ger, in Star Trek Online the Borg and their Queen returned in 2409 to launch an assault
07:37on the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.
07:39In the perfectly titled The Next Generation Mirror Universe novel The Worst of Both Worlds
07:44by Greg Cox there's also a Borg King.
07:48Number 6.
07:49Don't be so three-dimensional.
07:51Equally outside of what is considered canon what you might not know is that the Borg Queen
07:55was central to the story of the Star Trek The Experience Borg Invasion 4D attraction in
08:00Las Vegas.
08:01The immersive experience, which included a number of live performers, was set aboard a
08:05Starfleet research outpost.
08:07Guests on the ride were told, by the doctor no less, that they were there as part of medical
08:11research into their possible genetic immunity to Borg assimilation.
08:15Naturally a Borg cube arrives to put a stop to all that, with none other than the Borg Queen
08:20aboard.
08:214D effects mounted in interactive chairs were used to make the audience feel like they were
08:25being infected by nanoprobes as the Queen appeared.
08:28Admiral Janeway arrives aboard Voyager and, with a little help from the doctor, saves
08:32the day.
08:33Alice Krieg, who had played the character only about a year earlier in Endgame, was the
08:37Borg Queen.
08:38As we find out in the Voyager Season 7 DVD Extra The Making of Borg Invasion 4D, all of
08:45the original Borg who worked on First Contact were hired for the filming, making it something
08:49of a family reunion for Krieg.
08:51Number 5.
08:52Mind your beeswax.
08:53For the new Borg Queen of a beehive to hatch from her cell, she must first chew through
09:00a wax cap in which the worker bees have encased her.
09:05The wonders of nature.
09:06Yeah, planet Earth this ain't.
09:08For her mechanical majesty in Star Trek, Queen Cells also exist aboard Borg vessels, although
09:13they seem to function as a place of temporary residence or hiding, a locus of control, and
09:18has somewhere to flee from.
09:19The Queen's cell contained a powerful piece of technology called a Spatial Trajector, assimilated
09:24from the Delta Quadrant species the Sicarians, capable of transporting the Queen up to 40,000
09:29light years, but only in the event of an emergency.
09:31Each appearance of the Queen, aside from Star Trek Voyager's Endgame, has been in disembodied
09:36form.
09:37In Voyager, within Unimatrix 1, the Queen descended from a central alcove as little more than a
09:40head and shoulders, only for the knees and toes to join her from compartments beneath
09:44the floor.
09:45She was introduced in first contact, in disassembled mode, and Annie Wershing's Queen in Picard
09:50is similarly disincorporated, although with arms and more of a torso this time.
09:55It is likely that the Borg Queen spent most of her time disassembled in the central alcove,
09:59only going walkabouts when the need arose.
10:01By the time we see the Queen in Season 3 of Picard, however, she could only dream of such
10:06flawless heights.
10:07Number 4.
10:08The Janeway Factor.
10:09Captain Janeway and the crew of Voyager had bounties of battles with the Borg Queen and
10:13yet for the most part avoided the nanoprobe treatment.
10:16As they hitched a transwarp ride back to the Alpha Quadrant, they even managed to decimate
10:20the Borg and destroy the Queen with just one hyperspray full of a neurolytic pathogen.
10:26It was also thanks to Voyager that the research of pioneering exobiologists, the Hansons, was
10:31found.
10:32The couple had set off in search of the Borg.
10:34During their three years in the field, before their eventual assimilation, the Hansons became
10:38aware of the existence of the Borg Queen and of her primary residence, Unimatrix 1.
10:43Such knowledge was well in advance of the Federation, who, we assume, only found out
10:47about the Borg Queen after the Enterprise E returned to 2373.
10:52Until recently, since her presumed death in Endgame, we hadn't seen another Prime version
10:56of the Borg Queen, aside from the hilariously holographic hindrance to Boimler's perfection
11:01in Lower Decks episode, I Excretus, well that was until the last two episodes of the Star
11:07Trek Picard season 3 and prior as a voice inside Jack Crusher's head.
11:13Number 3.
11:14Resistance is Retro.
11:15Star Trek Picard introduced us to a very different Borg Queen from the beginning of its
11:19second season.
11:20Looking more like she's about to work the runway and read you for filth than rumble your resistance,
11:24this Queen, who had fused with Dr Agnes Jurati, was looking for peaceful cooperation with the
11:29Federation to prevent destruction of galactic proportions.
11:34This wasn't the first time we'd seen a different sort of Borg in Trek history, however.
11:38In the Star Trek Voyager season 3 episode Unity, Chakotay, and may as well have been a redshirt
11:43and an entenkaplan, come across a group of ex-Borg who, by the end of the episode, have
11:47formed a new kind of hive mind amongst themselves called the Cooperative, so they can get along
11:52with their rowdy neighbours.
11:54Unity was also the first episode to show that the Borg as a whole had survived the destruction
11:58of their Queen in First Contact, which wasn't a given at the time.
12:01As reported in Star Trek Monthly issue 24, there was debate as to whether the Borg should
12:06return at all after First Contact, with the film's co-writer Ronald D. Moore believing
12:10the death of the Queen and the other drones should have marked the end for the entire collective.
12:15And then along came Terry Metallis.
12:17At the climax of season 3 of Star Trek Picard, we meet the Borg and their Queen, very much post-Endgame,
12:23still crippled from the Janeway's neurolytic pathogen.
12:26In a similar manner to Annie Wershing's season 2 version, this Queen is tethered in dismembered
12:31form, reduced to draining the life out of the few remaining drones to survive, even consuming
12:36their necrotic tissue in this horror show that sends chills down the spine.
12:40This place is a tomb, Riker notes ominously.
12:44With the help of the Changelings, who also shared the anger of a generation lost to Starfleet,
12:49the Queen created a new collective by assimilating the children of Starfleet through their genes.
12:53With the Queen's progeny Vox at the helm of the Hive, these Gen Z Borg are no longer
12:59just about assimilation, but annihilation.
13:02Number 2.
13:03If we could turn back time.
13:06One fact about the Borg Queen's original outing is so strange you almost won't believe it.
13:12As revealed in 2016, when discussions were being had about who should play the Borg Sovereign,
13:17a certain Oscar-winning global pop star's name was in the mix.
13:21Had she got the part, perhaps instead of being lowered from the ceiling, Cher's Borg Queen
13:25could have entered slowly down an engineering ladder singing Fernando.
13:29However, we'd have to agree that First Contact was right in following makeup artist Scott
13:35Wheeler's advice when he said in the Hollywood Reporter interview, that character would not
13:41have worked without Alice Krieg.
13:42No offence to Cher, she's had some great moments, but it would have been so gimmicky.
13:47In another bit of, if I could turn back timey-wimey, had Star Trek Enterprise not been cancelled
13:51after its fourth season, we might well have finally gotten an origin story for the Borg
13:55Queen that would have equally featured Alice Krieg in the role once more.
14:00Krieg would have played a Starfleet medical technician who would somehow have met the drones
14:04from Enterprise's episode Regeneration, leading to her becoming the Queen.
14:09Number 1.
14:10Is this the end, my friend?
14:12Star Trek Picard the series has reached its conclusion.
14:14And, what an epic ride the final season has been.
14:17Not only was it the best of reunions for the next generation cast of characters ,
14:23it turned out their greatest enemy, the Borg Queen, was hiding behind that big red door
14:27inside Jupiter.
14:29In the series finale, the Queen is revealed in a mangled, ghoulish state.
14:32She does have arms though, so it's not all that.
14:35Standing beneath her less-than-majestic majesty is Jack Crusher, looking rather good in his levelled-up,
14:40cutest get-up. Or, as Chris said, he is the Borger King. Gou get it? Gou get it?
14:46This Queen is desperate, vengeful.
14:49She has been working with the rogue changelings, all along to weaponize Picard's pre-synth-corpse Borgerfy DNA.
14:56Jack, who would probably have preferred to inherit the vineyard, instead receives Picard's genes,
15:01altered enough to turn him into a transmitter for a new Borg code. He is the command signal
15:07for this new evolution of the Collective and, in some warped way, the Queen believes she's
15:13his mother.
15:14It is family, both chosen and by birth, that wins the day, however. Picard's love for his
15:18son helps break Jack free from the Queen's grasp, and it's the unshakable bond between
15:23the crew of the Enterprise-D and Riker with his Amzadi that saves the day. The last we
15:28see of the Queen is her raising her hand in a futile attempt to shield herself from the
15:33fiery blast, screaming out with no one there to hear. The title of the final episode is
15:38The Last Generation. This is the end of Star Trek Picard, but could this really be the last
15:44we see of the Borg and their Queen?
15:45That's everything for our list today. Thank you so much to Jack Kiley for writing this list,
15:51and thank you so much to the wonderful editor Martin for making it look so pretty. You're
15:56all awesome everyone, thank you so much for following along. What do you reckon? Are the
16:00Borg done, or will they regenerate and come back? You let us know in the comments below.
16:05Don't forget to get in touch with us over on Twitter at TrekCulture. You can also get
16:08in touch with us on Instagram at TrekCultureYT. I'm at SeanFerrick on the various socials.
16:13everyone, Slava Ukrania, look after yourselves, live long and prosper, and have a great time
16:19until I see you again. Thanks.
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