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

Even Star Trek's most ruthless species needs a good marketing slogan to really sell the assimilation to the still imperfect masses of the galaxy. From its first utterance in The Best of Both Worlds, Part I, the phrase "Resistance is futile" — and not to forget some of their other 'sayings' — has become so ubiquitous that you don't need to have met the Borg to have encountered it.

Star Trek most definitely popularised the line, but, in point of fact, "Resistance is futile" and variations thereof had been used by characters in other TV shows long before Star Trek: The Next Generation. For example, in the 1976 Doctor Who episode The Deadly Assassin, The Master says, "Resistance is futile," as does Maya in the 1977 episode The Dorcons of Space: 1999. Back in Star Trek, The Motion Picture this time, Spock also gave us, "Any show of resistance would be futile, Captain."

Of course, we, the audience, hear all of the familiar Borg spiel in Federation Standard. However, if the 'species' has any kind of language to call its own, it is alphanumeric and algorithmic in nature. In The Raven, for example, B'Elanna Torres refers to "[Seven of Nine's] log entries written in Borg alphanumeric code."

In its visual or 'written' form, the use of the Borg language (of sorts) on screen dates back to the introduction of the Borg in Q Who. The graphic design was the work of Michael Okuda, who, in The Next Generation DVD extra Alien Speak, explained the thought process behind it:

It was supposed to be this all-encompassing, web-like culture that would envelop people. I thought of it as a bowl of green spaghetti; you threw it on the floor and photographed that.

Now we really know what the Borg were after all along — not perfection, but carbs!