I don’t think the queen was treated as a command structure to the borg until Voyager. Her portrayal in First Contact seemed to me to be essentially the same as Locutus in best of both worlds. Not an individual, not in charge, but the avatar for communication that was the entire collective.
The one part that I will agree with you would be that she was much more willing to talk than previous portrayals which was compelling for the movie but did water down some of the aspects of the borg’s characterization you mention
DATA: Who are you?
BORG QUEEN (OC): I am the Borg.
DATA: That is a contradiction. The Borg have a collective consciousness. There are no individuals.
(the Borg Queen’s head and shoulders descend from the ceiling)
BORG QUEEN: I am the beginning, the end, the one who is many.
(the head and shoulders lock into a cybernetic body and the Queen approaches Data)
BORG QUEEN: I am the Borg.
DATA: Greetings. I am curious, do you control the Borg collective?
BORG QUEEN: You imply disparity where none exists. I am the collective.
I do agree that the construct of a command structure was formalized in voyager. I do think the very introduction you quoted still completely imploded the borg as a concept. Data even is directly pointing it out. The queen is just hand-waving it away without actually answering.
I think the ambiguity in explanation was designed to let the audience to just “fill in the blanks” however they wanted. I think the writers just said “who cares, it’s a movie, TNG is over, we can fuck the TNG universe”.
Huh, I always took that scene as being a classic hard sci-fi sort of “no, your thinking is constrained by what you have previously encountered, this is a new class of thing”, though I could see how one would read it your way
I totally agree that the lines are written to align with the trope of “my existence is beyond your comprehension”. I just don’t think they really followed through on that.
I feel like Occams razor here is just that you need to put THE villain on the movie poster. Sacrifices were made in order to meet that goal.
I don’t think the queen was treated as a command structure to the borg until Voyager. Her portrayal in First Contact seemed to me to be essentially the same as Locutus in best of both worlds. Not an individual, not in charge, but the avatar for communication that was the entire collective.
The one part that I will agree with you would be that she was much more willing to talk than previous portrayals which was compelling for the movie but did water down some of the aspects of the borg’s characterization you mention
I do agree that the construct of a command structure was formalized in voyager. I do think the very introduction you quoted still completely imploded the borg as a concept. Data even is directly pointing it out. The queen is just hand-waving it away without actually answering.
I think the ambiguity in explanation was designed to let the audience to just “fill in the blanks” however they wanted. I think the writers just said “who cares, it’s a movie, TNG is over, we can fuck the TNG universe”.
Huh, I always took that scene as being a classic hard sci-fi sort of “no, your thinking is constrained by what you have previously encountered, this is a new class of thing”, though I could see how one would read it your way
I totally agree that the lines are written to align with the trope of “my existence is beyond your comprehension”. I just don’t think they really followed through on that.
I feel like Occams razor here is just that you need to put THE villain on the movie poster. Sacrifices were made in order to meet that goal.