[color=#000000
ost_uid0]As someone who avoided spoilers as best he could, but still sought out the producers' comments on TrekBBS (the producers refrained from spoilers so I felt safe reading just their posts), I can give you more information on what they were thinking.
The producers were actually trying to reconcile "Q Who?" and "The Neutral Zone". In "The Neutral Zone" the Borg were on the outskirts of known space already. I mean, they were picking off Federation/Romulan outposts along the Neutral Zone. So why were they there? For a DQ-based people, why were they expanding so far toward the AQ when they hadn't even assimilated all of the DQ or BQ? This is the question they tried to answer. I think they did a pretty good job in that regard.
And since I'm posting anyway, here's what I thought of the episode:
likes:
- the tension dominating the entire first act
- the "Conspiracy" sort of ending at the end
- the semi-Borg *
- the music
dislikes:
- some of the implausibility of the episode based on what we know of the Borg
* I liked the semi-Borg that we saw. It made sense that since they didn't have a facility where they could integrate the mechanical components what we'd get is mostly biological Borg. To an extent this tells us what part of the Borg's abilities are due to the nanoprobes and what part are due to their machine-enhancements. In all frankness I find it hard to believe that nanoprobes somehow create the personal shields against phaser fire. I also find it difficult to accept that their assimilation tubules are somehow created by the nanoprobes as well, but, oh well.
Last thought: When watching the ending of the episode, I was reminded of "Relativity" where Seven was explaining how through a paradox, the Borg's efforts to stop Zefram Cochrane actually ended up allowing him to succeed in the end. It seems that those same efforts also started the Borg vs Federation struggle which instigates the Borg's efforts to go back in time.[/color
ost_uid0]