Star Trek Retro Review: 'Unimatrix Zero' | Borg Episodes

▶Join this channel to get access to perks:

Listen to the Late Seating podcast:

Listen to The Ensign's Log podcast:

#startrek #startrekvoyager #review #borg

[patrickdodds]

After Borg assimilation:

Picard: "They took everything I was. They used me to kill and destroy and I COULDN'T STOP! I should've been able to stop!. But, I wasn't good enough! I wasn't strong enough! I should've been able to stop. Should have...*breaks down crying*

Janeway, Torres, and Tuvok: "Meh."

[blueantoid]

As far as Voyager going back to the Borg well so many times... One can imagine the hoard of First Contact props, costumes, and CGI assets burning a hole in the producers' collective pocket. "What do you mean you want to write a story about NEW aliens? What did I buy all those glowy green plasma circles from Spencer's Gifts for, if you weren't going to use them? Get out of my office."

[thecynicaloptimist]

Honestly insane that Plan A of Janeway's strategy was to voluntarily undergo the process that frequently leaves people losing a limb and scars them for life with unfathomable psychological trauma.

[creativerealms]

The queen becomes more of a Saturday morning villain every time she shows up.

[TheLittleMako]

They should really develop the Doc's anti-borg shot further and include it in the standard Starfleet vaccination panel. Might come in handy in the event of, say, every officer younger than 25 getting remotely assimilated.

[ricconway]

"Kazon in different costumes." A damning, if accurate indictment.

[darkseid]

What frustrated me so much about Voyager is that Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, and Robert Picardo by themselves are good enough to easily carry a series. But they were let down by the writers and producers.

In and of itself, "Starfleet ship stranded away from home" is a vastly more interesting concept than "space station by a wormhole", but the ball was dropped too many times.

[MarcSGA]

100% believe that Voyager writers wrote some episodes knowing Steve would be furious about them publicly decades later

[alanpennie]

This two - parter made such an impression on me that I'd completely forgotten it.
Impressive to take a pretty neat idea and do so little with it.

[matthewhearn]

I actually went to school with the little kid Borg in this episode, I thought it was the coolest thing ever that one of my classmates was gonna be in a Star Trek episode. And I watched the episode and remember really liking it. Maybe in part because I was the same age as the little kid Borg in this episode. Never held up as well on later watches.

[RadioJosiah]

My brother and I were watching Trek from TNG forward, and BoBW had us tense that entire summer. Jump forward a few years: This episode was not doing it for us. When it got to the reveal of Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres all Borgified, we laughed. We LAUGHED. Because we knew four things: 1) It was all part of the plan-- thanks Chakotay. 2) It was, on its face, an irresponsible, poorly conceived plan. 3) It would magically work out anyway, because it's Voyager. 4) Voyager was trying to top the Locutus cliffhanger by having THREE assimilated crewmembers and NO stakes, which is where the laughter came in. The very idea of intentionally getting yourself assimilated is moronic, no matter what you have in mind. Too many things can go catastrophically wrong. If the Borg and their Queen had borne even the slightest level of competence-- noticing three disconnected drones and rectifying the problem-- the crew would have lost three senior officers and the plan would never have got off the ground because the Borg would have then assimilated all of their knowledge about it. And that's not to mention all of the trauma and body horror from that experience, and the risk of losing an arm and an eye or both. Again, it was easier to start laughing than to take the premise seriously. And it was so insulting to the viewer's intelligence, it could only mean that the writers of Voyager weren't taking their own premise seriously. I view this as the dumbest Borg story, and the lowest point of Voyager as a whole. While some episodes were doubtlessly worse, none of those were attempting to be this consequential. Thank you for articulating the problems so well.

[Hawqis]

I'm wondering if Hugh was the cause of the Borg being the way they are everything beyond "I, Borg." If Picard and his staff didn't get compassionate for Hugh, the individuality would have never happened.

[Scerttle]

Good to see 55 seconds into the video we have confirmation that Tom Paris is still the POV character.

[doneisenbarth]

Can’t believe we’re doing “regeneration” next week. One of the best episodes of Star Trek enterprise. It’s been a long road getting from there to here.

[kingdave]

Here's my in-universe take on this: Sometime between Q-Who and The Best of Both Worlds, some race that was threatened by the Borg tried to disrupt them with a computer virus or something. But it didn't work as intended and instead created a malignant split personality within the collective: the Queen. Unlike the sterile Borg uni-mind that just wanted to endlessly consume technology, the Queen wanted to conquer and dominate. As she slowly took over the collective, they started assimilating people and planets. Eventually she took over completely the way Agent Smith took over the Matrix. But since the Queen was a more singular, individual personality the Borg under her control were weaker than before, and that's why Voyager was always able to defeat them without breaking much of a sweat.

[kaitlyn__L]

Bravo on the callback to the well metaphor. Pulling up buckets of wet mud and calling it water is just beautiful.

[PaulGuy]

Borg Queen: "Hey, you should really mind your own business. After all, I know that one of the things about your Prime Directive is to not mess with foreign species' development."

Janeway: "At what point did I give you the impression that I cared about the Prime Directive?"

[erichitsthewoods]

I'd like to add that another missed part that should have been in the plot is the body horror of being a borg. Maybe Tuvok could keep his cool but as a human could you imagine waking up with all that crap in your body?

[frazerx]

Thank you for reminding me to say this: I never understood, why B'Elanna, Janeway and Tuvok were absolutely fine after this episode. Yeah i know, Voyager has only setting continuity and character development is hit and miss, but come on! I know the Doctor does miracles (AND has Seven giving him a hand with Borg Knowledge/Nanoprobes). But they are PHYSICALLY ALTERED, even if you somehow (mostly) rebuild my body to its old self, i would be traumatised. I'am not speaking of the psychological component which Picard had to get through, that they so neatly avoided, well...2 out of 3 at least. They were borgified. Do i even have to mention that they luckily retained both of their eyes? And that's just one thing!

[TheBeef]

I've never been able to get past how casually this episode handles assimilation, which should be deeply traumatic. It even often involves amputation. Was Janeway just fine with everyone having their arms sawn off? I don't care how good Starfleet medicine is at making them whole again, the psychological scarring would be horrific.