Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Bones, and the rest of the classic Enterprise crew will be taking on a familiar enemy in the near future: the Borg. Though the assimilating cyborgs are a well-known sight among Star Trek fans, the rebooted classic crew of the Kelvin Timeline do not have the same experience that more contemporary Starfleet officers — like Picard and Janeway — have had in fighting the Borg.
Launching this October, and set after jarring events of Star Trek Beyond the new IDW comic series Star Trek: Boldly Go will find the crew facing “an enemy unlike any they’ve faced before … an enemy all-too-familiar to Trek fans.” That promise is backed by a cover featuring a slimmed-up version of the Borg we all know and fear. These newly imagined Borg are more processors and wire than skin and bone this time around. Does this possibly hint at a Borg with even less humanity than before? Is that even possible?
The cover for issue #3 of 'Boldly Go' featuring the Borg
The Borg originally showed up in The Next Generation in the year 2366, assimilating Captain Jean-Luc Picard into their hive mind, which was the reason for their eventual demise. They, of course, pop up several more times in the Star Trek universe to sufficiently screw over Federation crew after Federation crew.
Now, the Borg have their sights on Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew, fresh from their harrowing defeat of Krall in Beyond. The Borg have been involved in parallel universes and time travel before, so their showing up in the Kelvin Timeline isn’t too far of a stretch. The current canon of IDW comics even mentioned that Nero’s time-traveling ship in the 2009 comics was partially based borrowed Borg tech, too.
The Borg Queen with Picard in 'First Contact'
For fans of Star Trek’s rich history, and the Borg specifically, having the classic crew clash with these horrific tech-zombies creates a lot of potential. Imagine Bones’s incredulity over a “species” that has no respect for the individuality of life. The Borg act as a threat to freedom and diversity of both society and spirit, a classic theme within Trek that Kirk and company have taken on time and time again.
Star Trek: Boldly Go arrives on comic book shelves in October, while issue #3 with the Borg will publish in December.
