Voyager encounters a Borg cube inhabited solely by assimilated children. No, wait, come back!
By rights, this should be the episode where I’m finally persuaded that Voyager really did “ruin” the Borg. Borg kids? What’s next, an assimilated dog?
The joke’s on the haters, though, because “Collective” is actually … good. Let’s break down why.
1. it takes the Borg seriously as a threat
I said back in “Tinker, Tenor…” that Voyager did not ruin the Borg, but using them as easily-defeated villains in the Doctor’s fantasies doesn’t really help their cause.
That’s not an issue here. When our intrepid away team — Chakotay, Tom, Harry, and, for some reason, Neelix — realise there’s a Borg cube in the vicinity, they are straight to business with just a faint whiff of panic in the air. This isn’t the first time we’ve used a dead or dying cube as a setting for creepiness, and it won’t be the last, but it’s always effective. Harry explicitly compares it to a haunted house as he leaves a trail of playing cards as bread crumbs — which are just as quickly gathered up by Deadpan Evil Child Mezoti. It’s good stuff!
2. The Borg kids aren’t cute
There is absolutely going to come a point where the Li’lest Borgs stand alongside Naomi Wildman as adorable TV moppets of the most syrupy sweet type. But we’re not there yet. The twins and Deadpan Evil Child Mezoti are suitably eerie in their manner, while Icheb and First, the young adults, play out a fairly predictable — although not unrewarding — tale of conflicting masculinities, ending in the death of First and the vindication of Icheb’s less aggressive, more collaborative approach to leadership.
3. It’s in conversation with “Survival Instinct”
It’s interesting that First is the antagonist of this story, the drone determined to return his unit to the Collective regardless of their wishes, because that was Seven of Nine’s role in “Survival Instinct”, just fourteen episodes back.
Was this intentional? Did Michael Taylor have this in mind? That seems unlikely, given everything we know about how the writing process worked on Voyager. But Taylor has demonstrated many times that he is an astute, intelligent writer who understands the characters and the story he’s telling. So I’m going to give him points for this one.
4. First, as the antagonist, is both scary and pitiable
On the one hand, it’s easy to empathise with First, just as we could with Seven in “Surival Instinct”. He’s a scared child who feels compelled to take a leadership role and save everyone, whether or not they want to be saved.
On the other hand, he’s kind of a dick. And in a way that’s probably familiar to a lot of people in 2024: overbearing and manipulative of his peers; simultaneously dismissive of and aggressive towards women. When he attacks Janeway, pushing her up against the wall and almost choking her, I found myself wondering if the Collective assimilated the manosphere somewhere along the line.
The final draft of the script for “Collective” was completed in early November 1999, and I wonder if the Columbine massacre of April that year played a part in driving the sense of menace that surrounds First — a sense that teenage boys can be profoundly dangerous.
Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it, based on my own experiences as a teenage girl in 1999 and my existence now as a citizen of the year 2024.
5. Kathryn Janeway is not a maternal figure
I am going to have a lot to say in coming weeks about Seven’s relationship with the kids and the way she is momzoned almost by default. Like, yes, she has unique experience that can only be an asset as the Borg kids transition to individuality and (in Icheb’s case) young adulthood, but why is she expected to raise them more or less alone? Why isn’t Tuvok, an actual parent, playing a role here?
But that’s a matter for future blog posts. Here, instead, I want to highlight that Janeway is so far from wanting to adopt the Borg kids that she’s extremely open to using a pathogen to kill them. The Doctor, who has obviously upgraded his manipulation subroutines, engineers a situation where she is holding the tiny newborn Borg baby as he tells her the pathogen is ready for deployment on her order, and Kathryn “heart of stone” Janeway merely tells the baby that it’ll be the kids’ fault if she has to use it.
And I’m gonna say something that might be controversial: I don’t think she’s entirely wrong.
As I say that, please remember that I think Janeway was right to kill Tuvix, and that my current blorbo is Star Trek: Discovery’s Katrina Cornwell, an admiral who gives the order to deploy a weapon which would render the Klingon homeworld uninhabitable. Previous blorbos include Lin Beifong of Legend of Korra, a cop whose answer to every solution is state violence, and Ambassador Delenn of Babylon 5, who ordered the destruction of the human race. Show me a problematic female character over the age of 40, and I will love her with my whole heart. (Outlier teen blorbos include Zuko and Mai of Avatar: The Last Airbender, literal child/teen soldiers. Soooooo…)
I don’t think Janeway would have relished deploying the pathogen against the Borg; I don’t think she’d have made that choice lightly or looked back at the situation with anything but regret. I think she’s relieved that Seven can find another solution and save as many of the children as possible. But I also think it’s smart that she looked at these erratic, powerful kids — who are holding hostages, who have already killed at least one person, and who could well cost Harry his life — and recognises that they are a threat. Like Seven says, “Not every drone can be saved.” (Which is a rich and fascinating line that I wish had played more into her characterisation in Star Trek: Picard.)
On the other hand, I think the Doctor takes the development of the pathogen — whose origins we’ll learn about in a few weeks — way too lightly. He has always taken a strong and correct Anti Biological Weapons Stance, and it’s weird that he only makes a token protest here.
Other observations
- Neelix hustling the others at poker is super cute
- so is Tuvok going into Dad Mode as he extolls the idiosyncrasies of youth
- this is the second episode of the season where someone dreams or fantasises about Chakotay being assimilated, and I have questions
- actually, this is a particularly good episode for Chakotay — everyone in the ensemble gets a moment to shine, because again, Michael Taylor is good at his job
- I am lowkey obsessed with how Tuvok pronounces “escape POD”, extremely Greatest Generation-coded of him
- there’s a lot of ropey CGI in this episode, but the computer-generated Borg baby in its maturation chamber may be the most cursed image in the entire franchise. Real Renesmee Cullen vibes
In conclusion
This is a Good Episode. I had to watch it twice in a couple of months because I forgot to save the post I drafted back in August and couldn’t remember what I said, and I didn’t feel like my time was wasted. Four and a half janky CGI babies out of five.