12 Abandoned Star Trek Ideas That Would Have Been Incredible
9. Maurice Hurley's Plans For The Borg
Q wasn't the only Season 2 plan that Maurice Hurley had to leave by the wayside. Initially, his plans were for the first season finale episode (The Neutral Zone) to be the first of two parts. The second part would focus on the Enterprise and the Romulans being forced to work together to unravel the mystery of the missing colonies in both their territories. The answer to that mystery? A migratory insectoid hive-mind species called 'The Borg'.
That's right, in the eyes of the man who came up with them, the Borg weren't meant to be a race of cyborgs, they were meant to be space army ants. They were extracting all materials from planets in their way. The Enterprise would discover that they were heading deeper and deeper into the Federation and would have to scramble to collect allies in facing off against this threat. The Romulans and Klingons would be among them.
This plan would have seen the complete defeat of the Borg at the conclusion of the second season. Just think on that for a moment, the Borg were only meant to appear for a single season and they weren't introduced by Q.
Perhaps it's for the best that the Writer's Strike threw these plans asunder because afterwards Maurice Hurley left the show and it took a very different direction. A better one? Perhaps not. But a fascinating one? Certainly.