Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The Borg Cube You Need To Know

Despite the Borg cube having received a makeover for its dramatic introduction on the big screen in 1996's Star Trek: First Contact, the ship was yet again redesigned for its appearance in Star Trek: Voyager, only four months after the film hit theaters.

As much as a grungy black cube can have style, the Borg cube that showed up in Voyager's "Unity", was a markedly different design from the ships that appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: First Contact.

Voyager's Borg cube was, in fact, a hybrid of the two previous physical models, this time rendered entirely in CGI by Foundation Imaging. This third version of the Borg cube blended the kluged together, model kit look of the ship from TNG with the more intricate, interlocking details of the one from First Contact.

Foundation's Borg cube would go on to appear in a total of fifteen episodes of Voyager (more than any other series) and was also the basis for the Borg tactical cube that destroyed the Delta Flyer in the "Unimatrix Zero" two-parter. Veteran designer (and the man who put a fireman's pole on the NX-01), Doug Drexler recalled his task to soup up the Borg cube:

It was during my tenure at Foundation Imaging as part of the Voyager VFX team. I remember Rob Bonchune came to me with an assignment. Our producers wanted some design ideas for a new Borg Cube...a battle-cube. "Rob! It's a cube!" I laughed. "That's like being asked to restyle a basketball!"

Nevertheless, Drexler did restyle the cube, adding heavy hull plating (or as Drexler considered it, a flak jacket) to the existing model and calling it done... but not before considering an alternative:

My one joke was the Borg pyramid. I mean think about it. First we had the Borg cube, then the sphere from First Contact, and now the pyramid! It's the UPN logo!