Star Trek’s Borg Queen Was Head Of Starfleet Medical

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 second ago

Star Trek: First Contact is generally considered the best of the Next Generation movies, one that pitted Captain Picard and his erstwhile crew against their most implacable foe: the Borg. Fans love the movie, but one thing that many of them hate is the inclusion of Alice Krige’s Borg Queen. Her very existence as an individual makes no sense in a Collective where everyone shares the same hive mind. On top of that, she’s a walking time paradox, repeatedly dying onscreen only to pop up in future TV shows whenever the writers needed a cheap Big Bad reveal.

However, Star Trek’s stupidest villain was almost fixed by the franchise’s first prequel. Recently, a number of writers and producers for Star Trek: Enterprise got together for Trek Talks, a livestream telethon that helps raise money for the Hollywood Food Coalition. Together, they revealed a number of rejected episode pitches that would have electrified the fandom. Arguably, the most ambitious of these pitches would have been an origin story for the Borg Queen, one that had the potential to answer burning questions Trek fans have been debating for decades. 

The Borg Queen’s Origin Story

During the Trek Talks stream, Enterprise writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens revealed they wanted to “have another Borg show, but bring in the head of Starfleet Medical, which would be played by Alice Krige.” Krige, of course, played the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact, and the franchise has never revealed any details about who or what she was before being assimilated. In Reeves-Stevens’ story, we would see her Starfleet Medical bigwig “choosing to join the Collective,” and they wanted the episode to explore “what goes through the mind” of a person making such an insane choice to abandon both their individuality and their humanity.

Sadly, Reeves-Stevens didn’t elaborate on their pitch beyond those details, so all we know is that this Enterprise episode would have been a Borg Queen origin story explaining how this mechanical monarch was once the human head of Starfleet Medical. Still, I can’t help but think that this episode would have made her character much more palatable to the average fan. That’s because a well-written episode could answer fans’ biggest questions about this character while more organically integrating her into Star Trek canon.

Attack Of The Drones

For example, the Borg we first saw in The Next Generation spoke with a singular hive mind, and the concept of individuality was completely alien to them. That’s what made Picard’s assimilation so shocking. Not only did these bionic baddies target everyone’s favorite captain, but they turned him into a mouthpiece for their coldhearted collective. The Enterprise episode that Reeves-Stevens pitched could explain how and why the Borg learned the value of having an individual spokesperson. Furthermore, showing Krige’s character volunteering to join these villains might offer context for why the Borg Queen in First Contact wanted Picard to surrender himself willingly rather than be assimilated against his will. 

Additionally, a Borg Queen origin story might finally help fans nail down a timeline of how and when Starfleet first learned about the Borg. In The Next Generation, Q is seemingly responsible for introducing Starfleet to this new threat by flinging the Enterprise deep into Borg territory. However, the Voyager episode “Dark Frontier” later revealed how Seven of Nine’s parents were Federation scientists eager to study the Borg, a race they mostly knew about through whispered rumors. The Enterprise episode “Regeneration” retconned things even further by revealing that Zefram Cochrane warned people about the Borg seen in First Contact, but he later recanted after his claims were dismissed as tall tales from a known drunk.

Resistance Is Futile (She Brought Cuffs)

This has led to lingering questions, like how long have Starfleet and the Federation officially known about the Borg? Unofficially, who was keeping tabs on these villains? Were shadowy figures (like Section 31) cross-referencing Cochrane’s tall tales with stories from El-Aurian refugees and Captain Archer’s own account of hostile, cybernetic beings? Right now, all of this is a mystery, one made more frustrating because it involves Star Trek’s most famous villains. Had we gotten this Enterprise episode, it might have cleared that mystery up for fans while making it easier for future writers (say, the Picard writers) to do more with the Borg Queen than have her show up and make evil speeches.

Early on Enterprise was viewed as a major letdown for Star Trek fans. But it started to get really good in its fourth and final season, and the Borg Queen pitch from Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens proves that this show still had some great stories to tell. Had we gotten this episode and more like it, Enterprise might have gone on to become one of the franchise’s most successful series. If nothing else, it could have avoided decades of fan squabbles over who and what the Borg Queen is and what she offers to the Collective beyond being (let’s face it) dommy mommy eye candy for drones and fans alike.