Star Trek: 11 Things You Didn't Know About The Borg Queen

The seductive appeal of the Federation's greatest foe has been hard to resist for creators of Star Trek beta canon. What seems to entice writers the most is origin stories for the Borg and their monarch. And, given that the series and films have provided us with very little on how the Borg (let alone the Queen) came to be, they have had a lot of creative space for invention.

The very nature of the species tends to lend itself to origin stories along the themes of 'technology run amok' or 'experiment gone awry'. For example, both the Star Trek: The Original Series manga story Side Effects from the Shinsei Shinsei anthology and the Strange New Worlds VI short story The Beginning depict the creation of the (first) Borg Queen as the result of ill-fated medical experiments attempting to cure a deadly disease.

In the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack, the predecessor to the Borg Queen was the disastrous result of the last-ditch attempt for survival of a member of a highly advanced alien race the Caeliar (capable of forming their own hive-like mind called the Gestalt), and a group of humans from the Columbia NX-02 stranded in the past.

Some of the novels do expand upon the role of the Queen within the Collective. In the Star Trek: Voyager book The Farther Shore by Christie Golden, the Borg have a 'Royal Protocol' to quickly replace a Queen, whereas in the Destiny series, several Queens can exist at the same time. In the game Star Trek: Legacy, a Queen was needed to unite the Borg who were originally created by V'ger. In Star Trek Online, the Borg and their Queen returned in 2409 to launch an assault on the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.

In the perfectly titled The Next Generation mirror universe novel The Worst of Both Worlds by Greg Cox, there is also a Borg King.