Episode 49: "Regeneration"

Okay, let’s talk about the Borg.

The Enterprise episode “Regeneration”, written by Mike Sussman & Phyllis Strong, is part horror story, part history lesson, part morality tale about the consequences of actions on future events and part silliness. But, for better or worse, it introduces the Borg to the Enterprise series.

From what I understand, the Borg were introduced in a TNG episode entitled “Q Who”. In this episode, an entity with god-like powers (“Q”) shows his frustration with Captain Picard and his mostly human crew by tossing them across the galaxy, many light years beyond Star Fleet’s farthest exploration, to get a taste of an enemy more powerful than anything Star Fleet has ever faced: the tenacious, fast-adapting, technologically enhanced hive-minded race that calls itself “the Borg”.

The only thing that saves Enterprise during this encounter is the fact that Picard, realising his ship is no match for the Borg vessel that pursues it, asks Q for help. Q snaps his fingers and returns Enterprise to its original position in space, which is, for the time being at least, a safe distance from the Borg.

If I am not mistaken, this Q-fuelled encounter results in the Borg taking an interest in the human race and changing the direction of its campaign of assimilation toward Earth.

It is important to note, the writers of “Q Who” were very careful to ensure Trek-history continuity by making it clear that the Borg would not and could not have been known to Star Fleet in Captain Kirk’s era – the Borg were, at that time, too far away.

Then comes the TNG film First Contact which is, in my opinion, by far the best of the TNG movies. In First Contact, Picard’s Enterprise intervenes in a Borg assault on Earth itself and then pursues a Borg sphere as it travels back in time to 2063 in an attempt to interfere with Zephram Cochrane’s fabled first warp flight. Enterprise destroys the Borg ship in the process.

“Regeneration” picks up what Sussman and Strong apparently felt was a loose thread left by First Contact in order to be able to introduce a Borg episode to the Enterprise lineup. Remember, Enterprise is set 88 years after First Contact and 115 years before Captain Kirk and TOS.

Sussman and Strong ask the question: what happened to the Borg sphere after it was destroyed by Picard’s Enterprise? Viewers of First Contact probably interpreted the visual clues provided in that movie to mean that the Borg cube blew into a million tiny fragments and any Borg drones left aboard were blasted to smithereens as well.

S&S, however, posit that large portions of the vessel, as well as two drones, actually managed to make it through the explosion intact, only to fall through Earth’s atmosphere and crash land (still somewhat intact) in the high Arctic. There, according to the “Regeneration” story, the Borg debris remained unnoticed and untouched until discovered in approximately 2151 when it is discovered and investigated by a team of human scientists.

In their DVD commentary, S&S explain that Brannon Braga gave them the green light to write “Regeneration” and even dictated to them that the first movement of the story should be an homage to earlier horror films with similar plots: scientists discover some sort of beast frozen solid in the ice, decide to thaw it out, then are unprepared when it behaves in a horrifying but completely predictable beast-like way.

The interesting thing is, in “Regeneration”, this horror movie approach works very well. The fact that the viewer knows a great deal more about the beasts that the scientists have found than the scientists themselves only adds to the suspense.

In fact, taken on its own, “Regeneration” is an effective, entertaining and dramatic episode of Enterprise. The horror-film opening leads into a tense plot where Archer’s Enterprise is ordered to intercept the fleeing Borg drones and rescue the scientists whom, Star Fleet believes, the two drones have kidnapped.

But, as Star Trek, there are real problems with the episode, many of which were discussed almost ad nauseum online as soon as the episode was aired. S&S discuss some of the reservations raised by fans in their DVD commentary.

The biggest issue that S&S discuss is the complaint that, if Star Fleet already has photographs and scans of Borg drones in Archer’s time (and they do get plenty of opportunities to collect data on both the Borg’s bodies and their practices), how come the Borg come as such a surprise to Picard when he first encounters them and how come Star Fleet is not better prepared when they have 200+ years’ warning?

I don’t buy S&S’s explanation that, with all the races Star Fleet encounters over the two-plus centuries between Archer’s encounter with the Borg and Picard’s voyages (including any number of races that combine flesh with machine), it’s likely Star Fleet simply wouldn’t have made the connection. And, in those two centuries, the urgency was probably lost.

There are a multitude of reasons why this argument doesn’t wash but the main one that pops into my head is: Data. The android would have made the connection almost instantly simply by scanning his database and connecting common traits.

But let’s not go down that rabbit hole at this point. I have other concerns to discuss with regard to “Regeneration” that are more self-contained within the episode itself:

Defeating Borg Nano-probes

Based on the fact that the two Borg drones that landed in Earth’s Arctic lie frozen and inactive for 88 years before thawing and coming back to life, we must assume that the nano-probes inside those two drones must also have been inactive for that period. Certainly, it is only when the bodies begin to thaw that the nano-probes become active and start to regenerate the bodies and repair the technology. So, nano-probes can be frozen and their work to transform a host body can be delayed at least by freezing the host body. Hmmm…

That contradicts directly the evidence we get in First Contact. In that film, we see Borg drones working quite comfortably, without the use of pressure suits, in the cold of space. Now, from what I understand, space is very cold. When unmitigated by heat from a star, the temperature in space is -270.45 Celsius, -454.81 Fahrenheit. I’ve never been to the Arctic but I do know that it is never that cold. Yet, in the cold of space, the Borg drones do not freeze and, from what I can see, their nano-probes do not stop working.

If that problem can somehow be explained away and freezing a host body can stop the nano-probes as well, why doesn’t Phlox simply freeze people who are infected? This would give him more time to work out a resolution to the problem. One of the scientists even suggests this course of action but, at the point that he does, the threat has not yet been recognised so his suggestion is ignored.

Further, how is it that no other Star Fleet medical officer who has studied the Borg problem has not come up with the solution of bombarding the host body with Omicron radiation to kill off the nano-probes? Phlox discovers this solution in a matter of hours. Are you telling me Dr. Crusher (TNG) or “Joe the Holographic Doctor” (Voyager) couldn’t have come up with this in the years they had to study the problem? And wasn’t it that same Omicron radiation that Tucker had to get a shot to withstand in an earlier episode of Enterprise (“Cogenitor”)?

Technological Development

In their commentary, S&S explain that the two Borg drones steal a transport from Earth and take along all of the debris from their original sphere. They then use their own technology to upgrade the transport’s drive, defensive and weapons systems, adding technology as well from other ships they encounter and defeat along the way.

This is not made at all clear in the episode itself, to be honest. Be that as it may, it still sticks out that the Borg drones enhance the transport in fits and starts – increasing its speed in stages, for example. This makes no sense. If they have the technology from their own ship, the improvement should be significant as soon as they incorporate their own stuff.

Adaptation

These Borg come from Picard’s time. They were part of a hive mind. Members of their hive have been exposed to Star Fleet hand weapons that are significantly more powerful than the phase pistols of Archer’s Enterprise. Yet the 22^nd century phase pistols (both original and as adapted by Reid) manage to kill numerous Borg before the drones adapt. Does that mean the Borg defences re-set themselves to the lowest level at some point after each encounter? Is that not completely ridiculous?

And how come the Borg on Enterprise adapt so quickly to the weapons they face yet the Borg on their own ship don’t adapt to Reid’s improved weapons nearly as quickly?

And don’t Reid and his crewman helper specifically take out phase rifles to adapt after their experiments prove successful? And don’t they have at least some time to adapt as many weapons as they can before the Borg arrive? So how come 1) none of the Enterprise crew are equipped with adapted phase rifles in their attempt to ward off the Borg boarding party and 2) Archer and Reid carry adapted phase pistols with them onto the Borg ship?

Further, if Reid is able to come up with a way to make their hand weapons significantly more powerful in the 10 minutes he has available to him in this episode, why didn’t he do it earlier? Like after the first time their weapons proved ineffective against any enemy?

Vulcan psychology

In “Regeneration”, T’Pol advocates the killing of the two Borg who are originally onboard Enterprise and the complete destruction of the Borg vessel (and all aboard it) at the end of the show. Apparently, she has come to the conclusion that, once infected and assimilated, Borg drones are irredeemable and dangerous. She’s right, of course, though Seven of Nine might argue with her.

S&S, in their DVD commentary, state that T’Pol is behaving logically in making this argument and point to the behaviour of the first Vulcan, Spock, for confirmation. The problem is, the Spock to whom S&S refer is the Spock of “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, TOS’s second pilot, where both the character and Vulcan philosophy were still basically unformed.

I’m not sure what Star Trek fandom has done to explain Spock’s emotional behaviour in “The Cage” or his cold-blooded behaviour in “Where No Man” but the Spock who emerges throughout the first season of TOS would not have jumped so quickly to the termination conclusion.

An intensely non-violent man from an intensely non-violent culture, Spock argues on several occasions in favour of finding peaceful solutions over violent ones, of valuing life in all its forms over killing a threat just to be free of it.

S&S’s comment on this point makes me wonder: is it possible that the creators of Enterprise chose the Spock of “The Cage” and “Where no man” as the model for their Vulcans? Would they defend their depiction of Vulcans as being cunning, aggressive and violent on that basis? That it matches the Spock of those earliest of TOS episodes?