Subject: Re: Their flesh isn't dead...
Author:
Posted on: 2009-07-28 12:06:00 UTC
Re the maturation chambers - I suspect, also, if they assimilated someone pregnant, the foetus would be gestated in a box and left to mature until the age of seventeen.
If so, can steps be taken to prevent assimilation in utero?
Could a regeneration alcove be adapted for use as a stasis chamber for normal beings? I don't know where I got this crazy idea, but it would be very convenient if it works. If not, I'll think of something else.
~Neshomeh
was that the Borg grow babies in an incubation chamber (First appirences in TNG). Which is refuted in later episodes. I think in Voyager they say that the Borg do not have children. If they assimilate children, they are put into a maturation chamber to accellerate growth to adulthood (the Borg children).
I myself think that it would be impossible for the Borg to have children because the flesh of the borg is esentially dead, not the grey palor.
That is my reasonings. There is alot of conflict within canon itself that it could go either way.
Leto
Unless I've missed a lot. Their flesh is grey because their bloodstreams are filled with nanoprobes - machines made of grey metal. Once Seven of Nine had the bulk of them drained from her system, her flesh turned a healthy pink.
That said, I'd forgotten about the maturation chambers. Generally I take the 'facts' of the later Trek episodes over the early ones - in TNG they seemed to be very much feeling it out, and things solidified later (later in TNG, and in Voyager). After all, the Ferengi were originally supposed to be dangerous villians. They became a laugh.
:)
Re the maturation chambers - I suspect, also, if they assimilated someone pregnant, the foetus would be gestated in a box and left to mature until the age of seventeen.
Depends on how far along the pregnancy was, I guess. The Borg aren't particularly moral.
Very true, but then one has to wonder why they bother hanging on to children and assimilating them. Be easier (and more sensible, in terms of maintaining populations to assimilate) to leave the kids and just take the adults. Presumably they're interested in making up the numbers of drones, and I'd guess they could probably just as easily grow a foetus as grow a toddler up to a suitable age.
Sorry.
...I think not. If there are in-built safeguards to prevent drones from getting too emotional, I imagine there would be safeguards against biological "infestations". And there is, you know, the armour that keeps anything biological from going in or out.
If possible, it would be a way to increase their numbers, but they just don't seem to need that, since infants don't provide much new data to assimilate.
That said... there is nothing in canon to say definitely not, but I think it unlikely.
Hasn't been for some time.
But she still had a cortical node (or something like that) which had to be very carefully removed before she could feel strong emotions, and her body constantly had to be supported by the technological implants in her blood and skull and...
In short, I doubt her body could take it. But there are no hard facts from canon on this, so I suppose it's up for interpretation.
My way of thinking is: the Borg assimilate a body, and improve that body in whatever way they can. Would a Borg within the Collective be improved by having working reproductive organs, or by having them shut down somehow? Given said organs aren't going to be used at all, thanks to the Borg assimilating rather than breeding asexually, any resources used by the body for the maintenance of the reproductive organs are resources wasted. Assuming the Borg are advanced enough to be able to supply their drones with some sort of implant or upgrade that will regulate their hormones and suchlike, I suspect a lot of the reproductive organs would be removed or otherwise shut down.
Even if the organs weren't removed entirely, they would be neglected by the strictly-regulated body system and probably wither away. I can't imagine female drones bleeding naturally every month...