The Only Star Trek Aliens Safe From The Borg
In the universe of Star Trek, the Borg are often presented as a kind of all-consuming threat because they don’t simply kill their foes…instead, they assimilate other cultures in order to make themselves stronger. Various series and episodes have often made it seem like these bionic bad guys would assimilate anyone they came across, something which is often presented as a fate worse than death. However, Seven of Nine once revealed that the Kazon were unworthy of assimilation, seemingly making them the only aliens in all of Star Trek that are safe from the Borg.
The Kazon
To understand why the Kazon would be ignored by the Borg, you need to understand a bit more about how these cybernetic foes operate. When the Borg decide to assimilate a ship, planet, or entire culture, they aren’t doing so simply to eliminate a foe. They are also hoping to add the “biological and cultural distinctiveness” of these aliens to their own Collective, thereby making the Borg stronger with each such attack.
Kazon Technology Is Second Hand
A great example of this is the Federation, which is technologically leaps and bounds beyond the Kazon and often attracts Borg attention. The Borg mostly wants the cutting-edge technology found aboard Starfleet vessels, and this has led to a fan theory that these bad guys are deliberately holding back by only sending a single ship to attack Earth every so often. According to the theory, the Borg are basically “farming” the Federation, forcing Starfleet to frantically develop new technology between attacks that the bad guys can simply assimilate later.
Seven Of Nine Made The Acknowledgement
But while the Federation is a high-value target, the Kazon are not, and that is why the Borg leaves them alone. Seven of Nine comments on this when she describes a time when the Borg discovered a Kazon colony, effectively making first contact with these backwater aliens. According to Seven, “their biological and technological distinctiveness was unremarkable,” resulting in Star Trek’s scariest foe deciding that this primitive race was “unworthy of assimilation.”
That may sound like a pretty harsh judgment of the Kazon, but Star Trek: Voyager presents these aliens as scavengers who steal technology and even water from others, and that’s exactly why the Borg don’t care about assimilating them.
The Only Race We Know The Borg Won’t Touch
The Borg assimilate because they are incapable of innovating on their own, so stealing everyone else’s innovations helps them stay one of the greatest threats in the galaxy. The Kazon are similarly incapable of innovation, so the Borg felt that it would have been a waste of time and energy to assimilate aliens that don’t bring any new ideas to the table.
What makes Seven of Nine’s comment about the Kazon so fascinating is that they are seemingly the only race that we know the Borg have deemed “unworthy.” Theoretically, other aliens would also be bad candidates for assimilation, including the dull-witted Pakleds who specialize in stealing technology from other cultures.
Star Trek’s Reliance On The Borg
Lower Decks revealed how dangerous the Pakleds and their Clumpships could be, but the blunt truth is that the Borg wouldn’t want to assimilate scavengers when they could instead assimilate the more advanced cultures the Pakleds have stolen from.
The final episode of Picard seemingly showed us the end of these villains, which is probably for the best…the Borg went from being the most intimidating threat in the galaxy to being the most overused villains in the franchise. Permanently retiring them will make many fans (us included) happy because it forces the writers of future shows and films to develop better antagonists. Such a retirement also benefits the Kazon because, until anyone says otherwise, they are officially the only Star Trek aliens safe from the Borg.
