Star Trek Archives: Best of the Borg

Star Trek Archives #2

by Michael Jan Friedman, Peter Krause (Illustrator), Paul Jenkins

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships..." Ever since those chilling words reverberated throughout the bridge of the Enterprise, the Borg have been the most dangerous and relentless adversary of the entire Star Trek universe. Now, collected for the first time, their most fearsome adventures on the comics page

Genres: Star Trek, Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2008

About the author

Michael Jan Friedman is an author of more than seventy books of fiction and nonfiction, half of which are in the Star Trek universe. Eleven of his titles have appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. Friedman has also written for network and cable television and radio, and scripted nearly 200 comic books, including his original DC superhero series, the Darkstars.

Reviews

[Aron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but not great either. It seems like I've been saying that alot lately about ST comics. It also seems like there's alot of ST comics out there that fall short, but to be fair there are some really great ones out there too though. I just love Star Trek so much that it's irritating to ever see it fall short of excellence. There was a good story here & the artwork was good but the writing could have been a little better. However, as will happen in comics more than it should action is created just for the sake of action & not necessarily when the story calls for it. I'm glad I read it though because it was interesting to see a somewhat different rendering of the episode The Best of Both Worlds, which this basically was.

[Jefferson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very mediocre. This so-called "best of the Borg" consists of two stories, both of which are fairly unoriginal, with artwork that doesn't really hold up to modern standards.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picard recalls his time among the Borg when he was Locutus. The Enterprise encounters (another) anomaly and ends up in (another) parallel universe. This is one where the Borg have conquered just about everyone and they are in the process of assimilating people on Earth.

They also encounter another Enterprise, at least the battle section, and their duplicates (except for the ones already killed.) Both crews and ships will have to work together in order to find a way to stop the Borg from taking over the Earth, even if that means Picard will have to meet Locutus himself.

Another story has a Romulan warship with an over-confident commander. They encounter the Borg and find out just how deadly they are.

An interesting read.

[James Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of two comic stories featuring the Borg - a four-parter from DC's TNG comic and a one-shot from Marvel's 1990s Trek comics. The four-parter is sufficiently entertaining, but not especially deep - it the end it hews too closely to "The Best of Both Worlds" with only a few tweaks. (Plus, the alternate TNG crew felt almost like space pirates at times... though the resulting cheese factor actually helps the fun a little. There was also one embarrassing if minor error with alt-Guinan.) The second story starts off promising but is only functional in the end. (Also, why does the Romulan Borg have a cleavage window?) This is a nice popcorn read for Trek fans, but pretty skippable overall. (B)

[Rocky Sunico · Rating 4 out of 5]

To call this collection the Best of the Borg may be a bit of an overstatement since it only really includes one TNG-era story arc and a one-shot involving a Romulan encounter with the Borg, but the TNG Story The Worst of Both Worlds is a pretty solid experience. Involving a parallel reality where the Borg eventually conquered most of the Federation with that single Cube at Wolf 359, our Prime Universe crew are challenged with helping the remaining survivors finally defeat the Borg in exchange for going home. It's not the Mirror Universe, but it's certainly a more grim version of the reality we've come to know when a lot of hard choices had to be made.

[Apostolos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad collection of stories. I particularly liked the final story of the Romulans encountering the Borg for the first time. The main story (TNG parallel universe) was interesting, but I wasn't as taken by the art style. The parallel universe was visually distracting in that the uniforms seemed like TNG uniforms but with a slice of ham (or a pancake) on either shoulder...The story was fine though.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection consists of only two works: a mediocre miniseries with the unoriginal title The Worst of Both Worlds involving yet another "dark mirror" parallel universe, and a very good one-shot about Romulans called Operation Assimilation. Buy it for the latter alone. I read it when as a kid when it first came out in 1997 and remember being disappointed there was no second issue. Unlike The Worst of Both Worlds the artwork has aged very well (except for the nonsensical boob window), and its theme of moving from one brand of authoritarianism to another one is still engaging.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection includes five issues from the 1990's - the four-part "The Worst of Both Worlds" and the standalone "Operation Assimilation." My recommendation is to stick with the Borg encounters in the shows or the novels instead of looking here.

"The Worst of Both Worlds" is an alternate universe story, where one of the differences is that Starfleet uniforms have orange shoulder pads. (Seriously! Details like that are important when you deal with alternate universes.) It's tacky and rather predictable.

"Operation Assimilation" is the story of one Romulan as she encounters the Borg. You can guess what happens.

The art is dated and underwhelming, and the stories are cheesy. But I bought this for 99 cents and got to make fun of it, so I can't complain.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember when Star Trek TNG first came out. I did not care at all, except the guy from Reading Rainbow was going to be on it.

After an episode or two, that still wasn’t enough to keep my interest. So I watched it rarely if ever, and really didn’t care about it until I learned about the Borg. Then recently I started watching clips of Captain Picard and felt he was a great role model.

I watched a few of the movies, some of the episodes on the Borg, and really enjoyed them. So of course I had to pick this up.

It is a good story. Even with only partial familiarity with the characters, I enjoyed this. But honestly I have just been enjoying reading again lately, and that in itself is exciting.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times, "The Worst of Both Worlds" feels a little bit overstuffed. And "Operation Assimilation" doesn't really have much to do with it other than the fact that it features the Borg. But Picard's guess that the Locutus of a different universe has Sarek's emotions was a clever solution, seeing as how the episode "Sarek" took place a short time before "The Best of Both Worlds."

[Yosef Shapiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is similar to the original episode, "mirror.mirror. in this story, the next generation crew gets transported to a parallel dimension where the Borg have won and Picard is still Locutous. In this universe, Will has an eye patch. This reminds me of Spock's beard in the original episode.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

Loved it, have to force my self to stop reading just to sleep. Hope there is more where this book came from.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alternate timeline take on the events of Wolf 359

[Andrew Beet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good story

I liked the next generation story to do with the Borg and that they have conquered earth I didn't like the operation assimilate story

[Andrew Beet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good graphic novel story was good I liked the idea that the Borg in this alternate universe that the crew were transported to conquered earth I didn't like the operation assimilate story

[sarah poole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic reads

Looking for some of the older titles to read through and found this to be a fun and entertaining read.

[Travis James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!

Thought I'd read everything about the Borg, but this graphic novel contains material that I didn't know existed. I give it five *****'s!!!!!!! 😀

[Morbus Iff · Rating 1 out of 5]

Parallel universe travelling. Not a huge fan of that.