Bajorans, Borg, and... Brady

Article by Aeon

My first article for the Blue Report, and I instantly got a writer's block. I'm kidding of course, but then, there's a grain of truth in every joke. I'm feeling like a mix of Carrie Bradshaw, Gene Roddenberry and Stephen King, while I'm sitting here at my desk, racking my brain about useless words just to fill this article and make it look like an exemplary work for a newbie. Ironically, the Beatles are singing "Paperback Writer" in the radio while I'm typing this. Is it a sign?

Probably not. And I'm getting off the track, so I really should start with the story about the rank charts. On another long night, I was clicking my way around the Outpost to find bugs and broken links, because I wanted to spam Iain again with one of my notorious "suggestion mails", when I found the rank charts. This instantly aroused my curiosity, as I was thinking: "Yeah, this is the best suggestion ever. Let's play with it." And believe me, it wasn't only a game at all.

The Bajoran ranks have been really easy to make, as there are lots of resources as well as an already established rank chart as seen on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. So, it's been the Borg who assimilated turned me into a philosopher, as I was thinking about the idea of re-equipping their chart. One important question, brought up by a fellow agent, was there to deal with: "Does a collective, that denies individuality, really use ranks to separate each other?" And my answer to this is simply "No, of course not. But they do have designations". And that was the literal push in the right direction. I remembered an episode from Star Trek: Voyager, which was called "Survival Instinct". For the first time, the audience was able to see a small example of the Borg hierarchy, as it featured the terms 'subjunct', 'adjunct' and 'processor'. A tactical drone, mixed with Locutus and the Queen, a suggestion by Zild to change a certain rank, and the rank cocktail was ready.

After the work was done, Brady and I were enjoying the OZD staff picnic, chilling and relaxing on a sunny afternoon (a holographic one, of course) when he suddenly said: "Why don't you write an article about it? I'm sure, you put a lot of thinking into the justification behind your ideas for the subgenres and it'd be a shame not to put your thoughts out there!"

This made me think for a couple of days about my reasons and the question, if the Borg really have a hierarchy, or if it was foolish to think, that we should implement individual ranks for the chat. A discussion with another OTF member brought me to a conclusion. It doesn't matter at all, if a fictional species from a TV series, based on a collective mind, has or needs individual ranks or not, and that was not the reason why I've done the work. I have played with the rank chart because I like to give ideas to improve OTF's Star Trek genre. But after all, I have made it for fun purposes only, because I was tired of all these "drones" around and it was quite a challenge to find all these Borg ranks. My justification is, that some of us like the Borg pretty much and would use their ranks - for fun purposes, again. So, let's not waste too much energy on a debate of principles if a collective has some shades of individuality or not. Let's just enjoy the new Borg ranks and have fun. Because that's exactly what we all are here for - right?

CL5 Aeon
Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix One-Zero