Recap / Star Trek Voyager S 6 E 16 Collective

Kids these days. One minute they're playing with their Pogs, the next, they think they can run a whole Borg cube.

The Voyager crew encounter a group of Borg children who, it turns out, have been permanently severed from the Collective.

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This episode provides examples of:

• Affectionate Gesture to the Head:
  • After Seven repairs Icheb, he suddenly brushes her hair, saying that his mother's hair was the same color (despite just claiming that he had no memory of his parents). First enters then and is not happy, threatening to deactivate Icheb for engaging in irrelevant discourse.
  • Mezoti strokes the head of First as he's dying.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted when Harry gets a bruised face from Explosive Instrumentation, then he's injected with Borg nanoprobes whose ineffectual assimilation causes further Facial Horror.
• Bittersweet Ending: First, the most rebellious drone, is killed while still resisting Seven's influence.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Seven points out that her years in the maturation chamber having her synapses rewired for the Hive Mind has given her a sense of order that supported her as a Rogue Drone. The children may not have that support if they attempt to leave their Collective.
• Call-Back:
  • The Borg attempt to use a Starfleet vessel's deflector dish to contact the Collective, as per Star Trek: First Contact.
  • A group of Borg who have been severed from the Collective accept the authority of the first leader who offers an authoritive voice, regardless of their actual leadership skills, as per the TNG episode "Descent".
  • A Starfleet captain is given a weapon to destroy the Borg, and must decide whether to use it or spare a Rogue Drone (TNG's "I, Borg").
• Card Sharp: Neelix has never played this, what's it called...poker?
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The poker cards from The Teaser. Harry uses them to leave a Trail of Bread Crumbs.
  • Averted with the virus that the Doctor isolates—Janeway ends up not using it.
  • We discover how the pathogen got onto the Borg Cube in "Child's Play".
• Children Are Innocent:
  Tuvok: If we can revive the pathogen and reintroduce it, we could neutralise the drones without harming the away team.
  EMH: Neutralise? You mean murder, don't you? Captain, they're children!
  Tuvok: Need I remind you that these children have committed murder themselves in their futile attempts to assimilate others.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Mezoti is a Norcadian, the race Voyager visited in the previous episode.
  • First's forehead ridges suggest he's a member of Gotana-Retz's species from "Blink Of An Eye". Evidently they did manage to find a way to leave their world; hopefully his fate isn't indicative of what happened to the race as a whole.
  • Tuvok describes the Borg children's rebellious behavior as "Typical adolescent behavior for any species.". And he would know, as the flashbacks to Tuvok's childhood in "Gravity" showed that he was very rebellious towards his Vulcan teachers when he was growing up.
• Creepy Child: Seeing kids still echoing the Borg rhetoric and cold demeanor definitely has this effect.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Surprisingly, Voyager pulls this on the Borg cube. Granted, the cube was already damaged and suffering from Critical Staffing Shortage, but still...
• David vs. Goliath: How the Doctor describes the pathogen that disabled the cube and killed the adult drones.
• Daydream Surprise: Neelix dreaming they've been assimilated.
  Chakotay: Your subconscious was jumping the gun. But not by much. From the look of this room, I'd say we're in an assimilation chamber.
• Distressed Dude: It's up to Seven of Nine to save Chakotay, Tom, Harry and Neelix.
• Derelict Graveyard: Harry wakes up on the Delta Flyer, looks out the window and realises its inside a Borg cube with several other spacecraft whose technology is awaiting assimilation.
• Diverting Power: When the Borg attempt to tear off the deflector dish by force with a Tractor Beam, Janeway orders all power diverted to structural integrity. B'Elanna says it will only give them another minute at most.
• Doorstop Baby: Lampshaded by the Doctor when the Borg baby is unexpectedly beamed into Sickbay.
• Electronic Speech Impediment: Icheb has this when he claims he has no memory of his parents. Seven fixes him, something that the First had told him could only be done by the Collective.
• Explosive Instrumentation:
  • During the battle Kim is in a Jeffries tube trying to effect repairs when a conduit explodes in his face, knocking him unconscious. Because of that he's missed by the Borg children when they search the Flyer for survivors.
  • When Voyager sends a feedback pulse to overload the shield generator, First refuses to leave and is electrocuted when the console explodes.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Seven reminds Icheb of his mother.
  • The mysterious pathogen that disabled the Cube. We'll learn its origin come "Child's Play".
• Forcefield Door: Locking the assimilation chamber the prisoners are kept in.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Implied in the scene where Janeway is hunched over a console while the satanic-looking Tuvok on one side of her, and the EMH on the other, argue whether they should use the pathogen to kill children. Janeway has a Kubrick Stare as she listens to them debate, but decides to meet the children face-to-face and see if she can find an alternate solution.
• Go to Your Room!: Seven tells the children to return to their maturation chambers, but they refuse. Icheb then clarifies that they can't; like most of the systems on the ship, the pathogen rendered them inoperable.
• Holding the Floor: Janeway, Seven and Kim all variously attempt to stall the Borg children by talking.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: The children demand Voyager's deflector dish so they can contact the Borg Collective. Janeway can't afford to hand it over as Voyager can't go to warp without it, so everyone plays for time.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight:
  Janeway: Maybe it's hard for you to accept, but you don't have to rejoin the Hive. Our Doctor can remove your implants. You can come with us. You were individuals yourselves not long ago. Children with families. You were abducted and assimilated. I recognize your species. You're Brunali, and you're Norcadian. Do you remember your world?
  Mezoti: A theta class planetoid. Population two and sixty million. Binary suns.
  Janeway: And what did it look like when those suns set each night? Can you remember that?
  First: Irrelevant! The deflector, now.
• It Works Better with Bullets:
  Mezoti: Your phaser won't work in here. Dampening field.
• Kids Are Cruel: And chaotic, and rebellious, just like human kids. Having been "rescued" from the order and unity of the Collective did them no favors in that area.
• Last Words: A Defiant to the End First says, "We are Borg." Seven can only agree.
• The Magic Poker Equation: The boys are playing poker and Tom Paris suggests that whoever has the winning hand can sleep in the next morning. Kim has a two pair, Neelix has a flush, Chakotay has nothing helpful, and Tom has an Oh, Crap! look when he looks out the window and sees a Borg cube bearing down on them.
  Chakotay: Battle stations!
  Paris: (rushing to his seat) And I had a full house...
• Maternally Challenged: Seven isn't happy when Janeway delegates to her the task of helping the Borg children adapt to their individuality, because they've already bonded with her. The episode ends with Seven tucking them into their regeneration alcoves.
• Mega-Maw Maneuver: The Delta Flyer is caught in a Tractor Beam, a hatch of the kind used to deploy the Borg sphere opens in the cube and the Delta Flyer is drawn inside.
• Moving the Goalposts: Seven tries this on discovering the cube is being run by immature drones, but First refuses to accept her authority.
• Oh, Crap!: An epic one where the crew of the Delta Flyer see the terrified look on Tom Paris' face, then turn to see a Borg cube bearing down on them.
• Out-of-Character Alert: The crew note this when they first encounter the Cube, Seven stating the attacks on various parts of Voyager are too erratic. Then when the Borg offer to return the crew members in exchange for technology, B'lanna notes "Talk about unusual behavior. The Borg negotiating?" This sets up how the Borg survivors aren't the usual type.
• Parental Abandonment: Of a sort; being a very pragmatic and mechanistic race, the Borg Collective discarded the damaged cube and its inhabitants, including the children, as irrelevant, unworthy of re-assimilation.
• Playing Card Motifs: Mezoti likes the Queen of Hearts because it reminds her of Seven of Nine.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: First, the lead Borgling. He uses bluster to cover for the fact that he has no idea how to be a true leader.
  First: Do what I say!
  Icheb: What you say? I thought we were a collective.
  Mezoti: One mind, one voice.
  First: I protected you! Gave you order!
  Icheb: Your order. Your rules.
• Public Secret Message: Chakotay tells Seven to "give my regards to Harry", to let her know that Harry Kim is out there somewhere, a fact that the Borg children don't know.
• Reset Button: Thankfully averted; in most other stories like this, the button would be hammered at the start of each new episode, but at least Icheb, whose name we'll discover in the next episode, recurs for quite a long time. Also the younger Borg children show up in scattered appearances later on.
• Sticky Bomb: Harry puts a plasma charge on the Cube's shield generator. Unfortunately Mezoti catches him at it.
• Take a Third Option: Lampshaded by Janeway when she has the chance to deploy the pathogen but chooses not to.
  Tuvok: There is no alternative.
  Janeway: There's always an alternative, we just need to find it.
• Teenage Wasteland: In space. With Borg teenagers. The kids think they can function just fine as a collective without any adult drones around, but they lack the cohesion or mental discipline necessary to function as a unit, Borg or not. In practice, it just boils down to First bullying the others into submission.
  Tuvok: [The Borg kids] are contemptuous of authority, convinced that they are superior. Typical adolescent behaviour for any species.
• They Will Come For Me: Subverted in that it's not a good thing. The First is convinced the Collective with come for them, but they already know their fate and have written the children off as damaged and thus imperfect drones. First refuses to accept this even when Seven shows him the encrypted message in the database.
• This Is No Time to Panic: Chakotay keeps Tom focused on getting out of the assimilation chamber. After all their captors aren't very smart, locking Starfleet officers in a roomful of cyborg components.
• Trail of Bread Crumbs: Harry Kim leaves a trail of playing cards as he goes into the Borg cube to sabotage the shield generator. Unfortunately Mezoti finds the trail and uses it to track him down.
• Voice of the Legion: Until The Reveal that the five immature drones are actually the entire 'Collective'.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: There's no mention of what Voyager did with the Borg baby. According to Brannon Braga, the baby was returned to its people offscreen.
• Who Is Driving?: Away from their captain's eagle eye, the boys are getting in a poker game while leaving the Delta Flyer on autopilot. They pay the price for their carelessness when a massive Borg cube creeps on them by hiding its approach from their scanners with a dispersal field.
• Worf Had the Flu: If not for severe damage and incompetent command, the Borg Cube would be more than a match for Voyager.
• Would Not Hurt A Child:
  • When its maturation chamber fails, First refuses to allow the Borg baby to be transported to Voyager for medical treatment, but the rest of his Collective put their collective foot down and back Seven.
  • The Doctor makes a point of showing his captain the Borg baby. Despite the Cuteness Proximity, Janeway doesn't like how he's trying to manipulate her and orders him to proceed with the virus. She's reluctant to use it, however, relying on Seven to sway the children even though Seven herself thinks they may be a lost cause.
• You Are Number 6: The children designate themselves according to the order they emerged from the maturation chambers, except Icheb was first but failed to establish 'order', so the second oldest child has replaced him as First with Icheb becoming Second. At the end of the episode, Seven discovers their names in their assimilation profiles, though we never discover who First was.
• You Will Be Assimilated: There's a dead body inside the assimilation chamber from a botched assimilation attempted by the children. Harry later gets injected with nanoprobes, which will also kill him if he's not treated.

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