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

The creation story for the Borg is more down-to-Earth, and down-to-the-writers'-room, than divinely inspired. As well as Maurice Hurley's insect-to-cyborg parable, the Borg mythos was also inspired by contemporary trends in science-fiction of the 1980s, most notably the transhumanist philosophies of the then relatively new cyberpunk movement. As writer/story editor Melinda Snodgrass recalled in Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, the idea for the Borg was "in many ways" Maurice Hurley's, but it was she who brought up cyberpunk and "augmented humanity."

For the more transcendental, it would be difficult to argue that the Borg have a set of beliefs as much as they do a series of mandates, the loftiest of which is 'be(come) perfect!' That said, judging by Seven of Nine's reaction to the stuff, the Omega molecule (Particle 010) did seem to have an almost religious significance for the Borg. Omega was their "infinitely complex, yet harmonious" Holy Grail. The Higgs boson is soooo 2013!

Other than for the sheer perfection of it, and I doubt they'd turn their cybernetically-enhanced noses up at the power boost, no further reasoning as to the Borg's obsession with Omega has been provided on screen. Each drone was instructed to assimilate the molecule at all costs, and several vessels and hundreds of thousands of drones were lost trying.

In the Star Trek: Destiny novel trilogy, this pre-programmed fascination is given an explanation. The Caeliar, who eventually gave rise to the Borg, were a species who had harnessed Omega as a power source for their advanced technology. Unknowingly following its Caeliar origins, the Collective was willed to seek out the particle.