A Brief Guide to Star Trek

Captain Janeway is forced into an uncomfortable alliance with the Borg to save
Voyager
. This proved to be one of the series’ most popular end of season cliffhangers with fans. The second episode introduced the Borg fully designated as Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01 (Jeri Ryan), the envoy between the humans and the Borg. Based on the human ship, Seven helps the crew confront Species 8472 by introducing Borg technology to the vessel. Afterwards, Seven attempts to assimilate
Voyager
, but is defeated thanks to forward planning by Janeway: having escaped the Borg, the ship now has a disconnected Borg drone as a member of the crew.
    Future episodes would give Seven of Nine a poignant back-story (assimilated at the age of six, she’d grown up Borg), and explored her Spock or Data-like attempts to blend in with the human crew in sometimes serious, sometimes humorous ways. With the majority of her cybernetic implants removed, Seven still retained the appearance and manner of a Borg, a most unsettling development for those on
Voyager
’s crew who had to work alongside her (an issue not widely explored by the series). However, she would prove to be an undoubted asset in the crew’s future battles with both the Borg and Species 8472 and in their eventual return home to Earth. Jeri Ryan also proved to be an asset to the show: producers emphasised her sexiness by putting her in a series of skin-tight uniforms. Ryan undoubtedly brought a degree of sex appeal to
Star Trek
that had largely been missing since the short skirts of
The Original Series
. Of course, some critics and fans saw this as nothing more than a blatant attempt to boost the ratings of a flagging show . . .
    Voyager
drew further on the success of
First Contact
by reintroducing the character of the Borg Queen. The Borg continued to be a nuisance for the crew of
Voyager
through a variety of episodes, appearing as hallucinations or holograms in a handful (‘The Raven’, ‘Living Witness’, ‘One’) before making proper appearances in fourth season finale ‘Hope and Fear’, fifth season episodes ‘Drone’ (exploring the life cycle of a Borg drone) and ‘Infinite Regress’ (exploring multiple personality disorder through Seven of Nine). A two-part tale, ‘Dark Frontier’, in the middle of season five saw actress Susanna Thompson take over from
First Contact
’s Alice Krige as the Borg Queen. While filling in the back-story for Seven, the episodes revolve around a daring heist by the
Voyager
crew to steal Borg technology that might allow them to speed up their return to Earth. Captured by the Borg, the Queen attempts to convince Seven that she was deliberately infiltrated into
Voyager
’s crew by the Borg, and now they intend to study her in order to devise a successful way of assimilating humanity. Janeway is able to rescue Seven, but only after the former drone suggests a way of disrupting the Queen’s control. A very popular feature-length tale, ‘Dark Frontier’ helped give the final seasons of
Voyager
a new dramatic energy as the Borg Queen became something of a regular nemesis for the
Voyager
crew, creating an almost maternal struggle between her and Janeway for control of their wayward child, Seven.
    More Borg-centric episodes followed, each exploring different aspects of the collective. ‘Survival Instinct’ saw Seven of Nine encounter a trio of Borg connected with her past, while ‘Collective’ explored the lives of a group of isolated Borg children. The two-part ‘Unimatrix Zero’, from the end of the show’s sixth season and the beginning of the final year, returned the Borg Queen to centre stage, and introduced a utopian, rebel faction of Borg who share a realm of the unconscious called ‘unimatrix zero’. Janeway and the Queen once more clash over Seven of Nine, leading to the seeds of civil war being sown in the previously united Borg collective.
    All of this eventually culminated in the final double episode of
Voyager
, ‘Endgame’, broadcast in 2001. That the series finaleshould feature the Borg and their Queen can have come as little surprise to fans, given the prevalence of Borg stories throughout the second half of
Voyager
’s existence. Whereas
The Next Generation
, which spawned the Borg, featured only six Borg episodes,
Deep Space Nine
just one and the subsequent
Enterprise
also only one,
Voyager
clocked up a whopping twenty-two Borg-centric instalments. For a series that had declared its