As a child of TNG I kinda have a thing for the Borg. Not that I would ever want to be borg, just that they have always seemed like one of the most alien species in Trek despite being composted at least to some degree of humans. As a result of my predisposition I always look forward to Borgcentric episodes, but lately they don't seem to pay off like they should. This one is an exception though. Looking into what happens to Borg separated from the collective is interesting and the idea that some of them would actively try to escape afterwards is especially interesting. It seems like the direct connection to the collective has a calming and or pacifying effect that they lose quickly if disconnected. Because of this it seems likely that there are subcollectives all over the place given the lack of care the Borg seem to give their wounded.
We open on Dagobah, errr, some random swamp planet not found in a galaxy far far away. A Borg sphere crashes and we see the survivors making their way our of the rubble. Seven of Nine is there in full borg mode and since the collective connection has been severed she orders them to evacuate the area since the ship will explode and to take a dead drone for parts to make a communications system. Back on the ship they have docked at a large space station and have many guests on board. The captain's ready room is filled with gifts and Tuvok stops by to complain about the guests. In astrometrics Naomi interrupts Seven to ask why she isn't ready to go to lunch. After resisting briefly Seven agrees to join her but they are interrupted by a scarred man. He offers Seven some Borg pieces which she instantly recognizes and agrees to barter for the. She leaves to study the pieces and the man starts talking in his head to two other scarred people on board Voyager that the plan is moving forward.
The three disable sensors and break into the cargobay but set off some sort of non-area specific alarm. They find Seven regenerating and attempt to connect to her over the objections of one of the three. They start injecting her with nano-probes but she wakes up and starts fighting back as Tuvok shows up with security. In sickbay Seven recognizes the three as former members of her unimatrix. Janeway has them woken up and they explain that they somehow have their own subcollective that links just their three minds together. It drove them mad inside the collective so they escaped but even after removing most of their implants the link remained. They think the answer lies in a memory none of them including Seven have of what happened on the planet years earlier. It seems that while cooking they started remembering they were individuals and all wanted to break away except for Seven who took charge. But all their memories stop there.
They are determined to get free of each others minds and Seven seems to understand. She agrees to link with them and try to retrieve the memory. It works but it turns out what happened was they fought back against Seven. She wasn't willing to leave the collective so she injected them with nano-probes which made a mini-collective keeping them from leaving. They wake up blaming her and collapse into neural shock. The Doctor tells Seven he can remove the implants that will end the link but it will kill them in just a few weeks. Or they could go back to the collective. Seven insists they be made into individuals over the Doctors objections. After the four of them come together. One wants to stay on the station, one wants to be alone until he dies, and the Bajoran woman wants to stay on Voyager for the rest of her life.
Review: I liked this one quite a bit. It dug as deep as the better TNG episodes into the moral dilemmas of living in a space future. Plus an interesting Borg story doesn't hurt a thing.
8 out of 10
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