The History of the Borg - Star Trek's Unstoppable Villains

From The Next Generation to Picard Season 3, the Borg are Star Trek's most insidious villains - born from equally epic behind-the-scenes battles.

Many of Star Trek's most iconic species can be traced back to series creator Gene Roddenberry. However, the iconic and unstoppable Borg are the brainchild of one of his greatest on-set adversaries. Maurice Hurley was a new arrival on The Next Generation's staff who didn’t see the future the same way Roddenberry did, but was bound to tell stories by his rules. Their conflict gave rise to characters who would help define the entire franchise.

When Roddenberry staffed The Next Generation, he brought many of the writers he worked with on The Original Series back. However, there was a new narrative edict. Starfleet in the 24th Century would've continued to evolve from Captain Kirk's era. He believed there would be no jealousy, tension or any interpersonal conflict within the crew. Roddenberry's lawyer Leonard Maizlish started acting as a de facto producer, allegedly responsible for hiring Hurley to enforce Roddenberry's strict rules. Yet the talented storyteller just didn't know what to do with no crime, conflict or any of the other storytelling staples he was used to from procedurals like Miami Vice and The Equalizer. In order to alleviate this problem in the second season, Hurley wanted to introduce a new kind of villain that couldn't be reasoned with or stopped.

Star Trek's Borg Were Originally Going to Be Insects

The central problem between Roddenberry and Hurley was that the latter didn't believe in what he was supposed to sell the other writers. In the documentary Chaos on the Bridge, Hurley called Roddenberry's ideas of the future "wacky doodle." Since he thought they were bad rules, he could only guide them in constructing "bad" episodes. Sometimes writers would even pull an end run and take a story to Roddenberry that bent or broke his rules. Hurley claimed he would "go ballistic" arguing Roddenberry's ideas back at him. Still, he wasn't setting out to make bad Star Trek, so he thought of a solution: insects.

The Ferengi were introduced in Season 1 as the "new Klingons," but they failed to land in that way with the audience. Hurley thought of insects as an unrelenting natural force, and believed that would make a good basis for an alien species to menace the crew all season. Insects proved to be impossible to create on a regular basis, so he instead went with the idea of cybernetic and organic lifeforms -- cyborgs. He dropped the "cy" from the name, and The Next Generation had its most memorable villains. Hurley planned to seed Season 2 with hints to the Borg until revealing them during October sweeps for the first time. However, the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike necessitated a new plan.

Eventually, Hurley used the popular character of Q to bring the Borg into contact with the Enterprise-D in The Next Generation Season 2, Episode 16, "Q Who?". However, they became a looming threat out in the galaxy rather than a regular villain, as the costuming for the Borg proved to be as difficult as crafting believable insects. Hurley envisioned the aliens being mostly disinterested in organic life, only concerned with Starfleet technology. This changed when the villains returned to assimilate Captain Jean-Luc Picard at the end of Season 3. By that time, Hurley had happily moved on from Star Trek.

The Borg Have Become Star Trek's Most Important Villain

Captain Picard and the Enterprise-D crew faced the Borg only nine times in 35 years, including in the film Star Trek: First Contact and Picard Season 3. However, the Borg appeared in a whopping 23 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager -- in large part because of Seven of Nine, the former Borg turned Starfleet officer. The writers who succeeded Hurley worried that using the Borg too much would've curtailed their threat. Some fans did complain about the prevalence of the Borg in Voyager. Yet that allowed the Admiral Janeway from an alternate future to hobble the Borg Collective in Voyager's series finale.

The Borg were mostly a thing of the past by the time Picard debuted, with a significant portion of the first season taking place on a "dead" Borg cube. By Season 2, the introduction of a new Borg Queen meant Picard had to again face a mini-collective. However, by then showrunner Terry Matalas and his crew of storytellers knew how to make Roddenberry's rules work. Hurley's unstoppable, unrelenting villains became provisional members of the Federation. Their collective was opt-in only, and their purpose was to stand by a tear in space-time that some future threat would emerge from. Picard could apparently negotiate peace with anyone.

Well, maybe not anyone. The Borg also made him and his son Jack Crusher time bomb for their last-ditch attack on Earth. When Picard faced the Borg Queen in the Picard series finale, he wasn't there to talk. The Borg were seemingly destroyed once and for all by the crew of the Enterprise-D. But Maurice Hurley's creations are too perfect to stay gone. He may not have known how to shape a season of Star Trek, but he inspired its most fascinating and enduring villain because of his frustration.