20

Very related to this question, we know why there are so few/almost no non-humanoid Borg out there. That's all well and good.

But in nearly every iteration of Borg that we've seen, every last member of the collective looks incredibly... human. Even the initial borg who teleports onto Enterprise-D looks like a human with all the color drained from their skin.

Why do we never see any humanoids with head-ridges to indicate Klingon assimilation? Why do we never see any Vulcan borg? (Edit: We clearly have, and they're clearly no more numerous than humans, so that at least is answered)

In short, why do so many Borg look like pale-skinned humans, and not pale-skinned version of the various species they've been assimilating for eons? There are a few that aren't, but since the Borg have only had a few years contact with humans, shouldn't the difference be far greater?

Community
  • 1
Zibbobz
  • 24,282
  • 16
  • 104
  • 175
  • 1
    We do and they don't. Wait a bit and people will post a bunch of screenshots, no doubt. – ThePopMachine Apr 16 '14 at 15:59
  • @ThePopMachine If nothing else, I will be satisfied by cool screenshots of non-human borg. – Zibbobz Apr 16 '14 at 16:01
  • To be fair, even the queen looked fairly human, but she wasn't originally. I think in general it is a matter of the collective homogenizing the drones to all look the same. – Xantec Apr 16 '14 at 16:25
  • 1
    Can we generally see Borg drone ears? If not, we probably couldn’t tell if they were Vulcan or not. – Paul D. Waite Apr 16 '14 at 16:49
  • @PaulD.Waite has a point. The standard drones usually have the sides of their heads covered up. – Xantec Apr 16 '14 at 17:07
  • 1
    As picky as it might sound, you might rephrase the question as "Why are there so few non-human borgs depicted?". Why there are many humans is self-evident, since we mostly see humans in the show and movies. – joshbirk Apr 16 '14 at 17:13
  • @joshbirk Except there is a reason canonically for us to see so many humans - The Federation Headquarters is on Earth, and a large number of humans make up the Federation. – Zibbobz Apr 16 '14 at 17:26
  • That's what I mean. It's not surprising that we see so many human borg, since it is a human-centric show. At the heart of your question is why don't we see Borg ships full of races from the Delta Quadrant (Kazon, Talaxians, Ocampans, Borg, Vidiians, Hirogen, Krenim, etc). – joshbirk Apr 16 '14 at 17:32
  • 4
    Borg cubes are notoriously lax when it comes to meeting their diversity quotas. – Theik Jun 08 '18 at 06:49
  • Because, while resistance may be futile, Klingons would far rather die an honorable death in a futile fight than be assimilated. – FreeMan Sep 02 '21 at 17:00

3 Answers3

22

In-universe, it's just a perspective of rarity, I think, as the majority of characters we see on Trek are humans, and the Borg are usually fighting humans on screen. What we see depicted is not the "deep well" of aliens that the Borg has assimilated over a long period of time - but usually the newer recruits being assimilated as the Borg invade.

Out-universe, my guess is that it makes production easier to only apply Borg makeup to random extras and not double up with alien and Borg makeup.

It's not that non-human borg don't exist, as we see in the show and movies they can retain their native features:

When B'Elanna was assimilated, she retained her Klingon head ridges

B'Lenna Torez as a Borg

Granted, she's half-Klingon.

Tuvok also maintains his Vulcan appearance:

Captain Janeway and Tuvok as Borg

First Contact had at least three non-human drones. A Cardassian, a Bolian and a Klingon (with mustache).

Cardassian Borg Bolian Borg Klingon Borg

DavidW
  • 128,443
  • 29
  • 545
  • 685
joshbirk
  • 12,739
  • 4
  • 52
  • 74
  • Okay, that's two...but that's two we specifically know, out of billions. Still more than zero though... – Zibbobz Apr 16 '14 at 16:23
  • Well like I said - in-universe it isn't that they aren't there, as we can see, its just that they are rare in this quadrant ... however, out-of-universe my assumption is that is simply a matter of production. When you are creating a bunch of Borg extras you just create them as the same race to keep it simple. – joshbirk Apr 16 '14 at 16:31
  • 2
    I added two more examples from First Contact – Xantec Apr 16 '14 at 16:33
  • 3
    And then there was Axum, Seven's lover from Unimatrix Zero. And everyone other non-human we saw in Unimatrix Zero had to have been a drone as well, even if we didn't see them all as such. – Xantec Apr 16 '14 at 16:45
  • @Zibbobz: we haven’t seen billions of Borg drones though. You haven’t established your premise unless you go and count how many Borg drones we’ve seen on-screen. Hop to it. – Paul D. Waite Apr 16 '14 at 16:47
  • 2
    And then we have these three from VOY:"Survival Instinct" (corrected the link). – Xantec Apr 16 '14 at 16:56
  • Starting to see a very clear trend here...I guess the only question remaining is...why so few, when the Borg have presumably been assimilating long before encountering Humans? In any case, I've edited my question to reflect this evidence. – Zibbobz Apr 16 '14 at 17:00
  • 1
    @Zibbobz Think of it this way. The show tends to be from the viewpoint of humans. When the Borg come in, their sample to choose from is human. If the show changed to be seen from Klingon, maybe you would see a majority of Klingon variations. – David Starkey Apr 16 '14 at 19:39
  • @Xantec There was also at least one Klingon in the Unimatrix Zero episodes that is seen in borgified and non-borgified forms. Possibly a Hirogen as well. – mu is too short Apr 16 '14 at 20:34
  • @muistooshort Yup, but I couldn't find any good images of him on Google. – Xantec Apr 16 '14 at 20:35
  • Out-of-universe - First Contact had a huge budget compared to the TV series, and Jonathan Frakes made the most of it. (The Borg were also redesigned for the movie.) In Voyager, the characters needed to be easily identifiable on-screen - hence B'Elanna's ridges, and the lack of eyepieces on the main characters. –  Apr 17 '14 at 02:40
  • Woah; for some reason the idea of a Cardassian Borg is really frightening. – Lightness Races in Orbit Oct 27 '14 at 18:06
  • Seeing the picture of a Klingon drone with a moustache made me wonder: when someone with the ability to grow facial hair is assimilated, does their facial hair stop growing at that point? Or do Borg drones shave? – Wallnut May 22 '19 at 07:56
16

The Borg Queen in "Dark Frontier" is explicitly a member of Species 125, and not human. However, she looks like an ordinary human with Borg implants:

the Borg Queen

Presumably at least some of the other human-looking Borg are actually members of similar "extremely humanoid" species (or just species which differ from humans in ways that are obscured by becoming Borg).

DavidW
  • 128,443
  • 29
  • 545
  • 685
Micah
  • 21,806
  • 5
  • 94
  • 113
  • 23
    Let’s also not forget that there is a vast amount of “extremely humanoid” but non-human species in the Star Trek universe – at least if you take into account all series. – Wrzlprmft Apr 16 '14 at 18:51
  • Wll the borg queen is humanoid, but she isn't human. Note the prominence of the esophageal ridges on her neck. – Escoce Mar 17 '20 at 16:50
9

Alien races in Star Trek tend to look more or less humanoid (many look completely human even, such as the race in VOY False Profits).

Out-of-universe this is clearly due to budgetary constraints as well as avoiding unnecessary plot complexity.

If the TNG episode The Chase is to believed, the progenitor race seeded much of the galaxy with their DNA. This could explain why so many races look humanoid, or rather they look like that progenitor race. Granted, the message did imply they only seeded part of the galaxy, but it's not explicit.

progenitor race from TNG

We have seen many Borg drones on various iterations of Trek and they are all humanoid. As others have mentioned already they are not all human, but I can't think of any example of a Borg drone that isn't humanoid (two arms, two legs, etc.). The implication is that Borg drones are almost all humanoid, at least those serving on Borg ships. Even if the Borg attack and assimilate non-humanoid races (we certainly know they tried to do so with Species 8472 in Voyager), they may choose not to incorporate those individuals from those races as drones. Perhaps they find other uses for them or maybe they just kill them. Assimilation is about more than just increasing the Borg drone population — they take whatever they find useful and discard the rest.

Also, Borg assimilation technology may not work as well with some non-humanoid races. We know they had trouble assimilating Species 8472, and conceivably Borg nanoprobes would have trouble with Tholians or Changelings.

Tholian

We also know that the Borg value uniformity, efficiency, and perfection. It's much more efficient to build a Borg cube that can accommodate a mostly-uniform body type and appendages rather than have to deal with a variety of different shapes and sizes of drones. Mass-producing hallways, control panels, recharging stations, and implants is a lot easier and more efficient if they can all be exactly the same (or can be modified to be the same). The Borg have no incentive to design things to be universal and given the abundance of humanoid life to assimilate in the galaxy they can afford to be picky about who they make into drones.

So conceivably the Borg started off from a humanoid race (likely given how common those types of species are in the galaxy from what we've seen throughout Star Trek) and continued that trend due to convenience. Still, it's also possible they originated in a non-humanoid species and found that humanoid species made the best drones.

It's not alpha canon but Star Trek Online apparently has a Gorn Borg drone — though the fact that this is an elite tactical unit merely reinforces the point that regular drones are intentionally humanoid. Plus Gorn are relatively humanoid anyway.

elite Gorn borg

EDIT:

Noticed that in Star Trek Prodigy, S01E12 "Let Sleeping Borg Lie" one of the Borg units shown is quite large and has three horns (identified only as a "Rhino" by Memory Alpha and so far only appearing in Prodigy). In this episode the Borg were also able to assimilate Zero who is a non-corporeal energy being (albeit temporarily).

large horned Borg unit in ST Prodigy

EDIT: The Ovions are a hexapodic race briefly mentioned by the Doctor at the beginning of VOY S07E09.

DavidW
  • 128,443
  • 29
  • 545
  • 685
shim
  • 1,299
  • 12
  • 16