When Seven is told “your mind is independent now,” she replies, “I don’t want that life.” Janeway, as ever, ignores her, confident that being human is the best way to be.
It’s true the Borg’s foreign policy is more of a reign of terror, forcibly assimilating members of other species, and attacking Janeway’s crew. But the Borg are hardly the first species to have hostile relations with Starfleet, and Janeway harbors a disdain for their internal society, too. A clue as to why is Janeway’s idolization of The Original Series’ Captain Kirk. Waxing lyrical about the Wild West days of Kirk and co., she says: “Space must have seemed a whole lot bigger back then… I have to admit, I would have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of officers like that.”
Humanity’s mythology is populated by cowboy heroes, and it’s no different in Star Trek. Kirk himself is an obvious example, with his maverick command, and Janeway isn’t the only one starry-eyed. In the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations,” Dax, having gone back to Kirk’s time, is excited to see “one of the most famous men in Starfleet history.” Captain Sisko, having also time-traveled, admits wanting to shake Kirk’s hand, and Worf says meeting him would be an “honor.”
The hero worship isn’t confined to Kirk. Janeway’s crewman Paris plays at being the intergalactic swashbuckler Captain Proton on the Holodeck. In Deep Space Nine‘s Holosuites, meanwhile, O’Brien and Bashir act out WWII’s iconic Battle of Britain, a few souls against the might of the Axis. TNG’s own Picard has a romantic family history of sea captains and Mars colonizers, which he regards with wistful pride. The very status captains hold in the world of the show and among fans are evidence of a kind of myth-making which revolves around exceptional individuals.
It also suggests Starfleet, infused as it is with Earth culture, is still dogged by a historical hangover. Its ideals, even the “final frontier” tagline, hark back to colonial explorers like Christopher Columbus and the suspiciously Kirk-sounding James Cook―perhaps further still, to epic poetry’s great adventurers like Homer’s Odysseus and Virgil’s Aeneas. Starfleet’s heroes are the successors of these men, the latest in a line of individuals that societies can tie their identities to.
But it’s certainly not a kind of pride that the Borg would share. While Star Trek‘s captains dream of the named men who first conquered the Earth’s oceans or took humanity to warp speed, the Borg value the group over the individual. In fact, they don’t really believe in the individual; when they do think of particular drones, the focus is on what their duty and role is in their society.
