3. The Borg Queen
In Star Trek: First Contact we meet the Borg Queen. This is the first incident when the Borg manifest an individual voice and face that directs the Borg Collective. In her words, she "brings order to chaos". All of a sudden, the ante is upped. Now an individual, backed up by the might of the many acting as one, threatens the crew of the Enterprise. Moreover, the Enterprise is lost in time, under siege and faced with the prospect of preserving history. With threats on so many different fronts, how will Picard and the crew of the Enterprise prevail? Quite simple by doing away with the condescending sense of superiority that guided their previous encounters with the Borg. Twenty-first century survivalism and drunken debauchery provide the background in which the battle with sensuous Alice Krige (aka the Borg Queen) and her cybernetic minions. The Starfleet officers get their hands dirty by helping Zephraim Cochrane (inventor of warp travel) build and fly his theta radiation-ridden Phoenix into space, where he encounters the Vulcans and initiating first contact between them and the Human race. This ushers in a new age of peace and civilization for the planet Earth. Of course, the paradox is that this actually opens the door for that condescending sense of superiority to begin. But hey: beggars can't be choosers, right? The human race survives and in the face of overwhelming odds, the Enterprise still manages to succeed by simply accepting and adopting the basic instincts the 24th century is supposed to have driven out. Picard declares to Lily: "In my century, we don't succumb to revenge; we have a more evolved sensibility." Lily's response? "Bulls**t." Lily makes Picard realize that he is still governed by the base instinct of retribution, regardless of his "evolved sensibilities". He wants to make the Borg pay for the hurt they have inflicted on the Federation, but most of all, on him. Sure enough, as soon as he realizes this, he is finally ready to destroy the Enterprise to preserve humanity. In the end though, the final battle is made manifest in the form of a jilted lover confronting her former paramour. The Borg Queen shows Picard formerly Locutus what he could have had by revealing the newly half-organicized Data as his replacement. It's all a bit of a soap opera, really, which emphasizes the theme of the base nature of humanity as a primal, overpowering force to be reckoned with, which is ultimately the downfall of the abandoned lover. The Borg Queen reveals her weakness: she is a simply a woman whose advances have been repelled. In other words, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. A truly basic instinct that the evolved members of Starfleet have forgotten, but entirely effective in defeating this manifestation of the Borg.