| The Next Generation | |
| 123 | |
| I Borg | |
| 45854.2 | |
The Enterprise is finally serving a useful purpose - it is out looking for new star systems to colonise! It seems a little hypocritical having the almighty Prime Directive and then promptly trying to take up as much stellar real-estate as possible. They probably won't be able to "claim" this system anyway as it's already inhabited, and there is a weak distress signal being transmitted from within. Worf, Bev and Riker beam down to find the survivor of a crash - a lone and living Borg!
The crew has mixed emotions about this - the Chrome Dome Gnome wants it left to die; Laughing Boy fully supports him; Worf wants to prompt its entry into the great beyond with his phaser; and Dr Social Conscience just wants to help it. How sickening. At least the other four Borg that were with it all died in the crash. Picard finally relents and allows it to be beamed on-board.
This seems to be a strange attitude given the interesting facial decorations that they gave him during their last encounter, but the wily captain has more interesting things in mind. He wants Geordi to give it a new root command by reprogramming its implants, that way they can return it to the hive and destroy them all. No-one has a problem with this except Dr Whinger who doesn't seem to understand the concept of war.
The Borg finally wakes up, and having nothing else to do, does a mime "stuck behind the glass" act. It's actually better acting than most of the crew normally manage! But the poor little fellow is hungry, and needs to be fed energy rather than food. Imagine the banquet it would have if they opened up with their phasers...
Geordi Skinner realises that if he is to understand how to reprogram the Borg, he has to know how they think, so he devises a set of tests for it. Dodge the phaser would have been high on my list of tests. Bev continues to whinge about how it isn't nice. She'll be first against the wall...
Geordi wants to name his new pet, and settles on Hugh. So now it's time for introductions: "I'm Beverly", "I'm Geordi", "We are Hugh" and the rest of us are getting bored with the whole thing. Of course now that it has a name, he becomes a simpering wimp, just like the doctor. He tries to explain the concept of self to Hugh: "We're all individuals". He's not.
It may all become academic soon anyway as a Borg rescue ship is on its way. Data comes up with a geometric paradox that Hugh can be imprinted with. It will eventually take all the processing power of the Borg to try to solve and will cause them all to crash. He calls it "Windows". It's probably the cruelest thing they could have done.
Guinan goes to see Hugh, and her lifelong hatred of the Borg is wiped out in a moment, and she joins the whinger gang too. Next on this list is Picard, who plays at being Locutus again. Hugh resists his commands, and causes Picard to rethink his entire strategy. In other words he wimps out as well. Shouldn't they have told Starfleet command by this time?
Since it would be cruel to him, they don't give him the invasive program, and return him to the crash site where they found him. Now the Borg will wipe his mind and their one chance at a clean kill will have been lost. When Starfleet Command find out they are going to crucify Picard over this one.
His politically correct excuse is that maybe the knowledge of self will be sent through the entire collective in that moment before they wipe out Hugh's mind, and will change them forever. He seems to have completely forgotten that when beings get assimilated all that they know becomes part of the collective - including their own personal knowledge of self - just as happened to him. Bollocks.
