Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Borg

10. Electric Entomology

Head Writer/co-executive producer Maurice Hurley was firmly a part of the chaos and infighting that plagued the first two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but you can't reproach the man one thing — he (pretty much) invented the Borg!

As quoted in The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, Hurley was unhappy with the "waste of time" Ferengi and so put his mind to concocting a new, properly menacing antagonist for the series. What he came up with was a (literal) race of insects, but that was far beyond the budget. Instead, insect became cyborg, a portmanteau of cybernetic and organism first used by Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in an article in the September 1960 issue of Astronautics. Cyborg then became Borg.

Despite the changes, the now electrified species still held true to their entomological origins. As Hurley stated in Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages:

The Borg are a variation of an insect mentality. They don't care. They have no mercy, no feelings towards you. They have their own agenda and that's it. If all of them die getting there, they don't care.

Of course, as the Borg were developed further, the insect association would be made more explicit through terms such as 'drone,' 'hive mind,' and not least in the introduction of the Borg Queen bee (or ant if you prefer) in Star Trek: First Contact.

Speaking of insects…