Star Trek: Picard Explains How The Borg Queen Always Survives

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 1, Episode 6

Star Trek: Picard episode 6 revealed new Borg technology that explains how the Borg Queen manages to escape each time she's defeated. Kicking off the second half Star Trek: Picard season 1, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) finally came face-to-face with Soji Asha (Isa Briones), the synthetic daughter of the late Commander Data (Brent Spiner). Unfortunately for the Starfleet legend, to find Soji, Picard had to confront his greatest fear by traveling to the Artifact, the Borg Cube under the control of the Romulans. Aboard the Artifact, Jean-Luc rediscovered a secret about the Borg Queen that he once knew when he was assimilated and turned into Locutus of Borg.

The existence of the Borg Queen was discovered by Magnus and Erin Hansen, the parents of Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), but the Hansen family was assimilated before they could transmit their data to Starfleet. Trekkers met the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) for the first time in Star Trek: First Contact when the Borg attempted to assimilate Earth in 2063, before they were stopped by Captain Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E. Picard and Data teamed up to kill the Borg Queen but she reappeared on Star Trek: Voyager, albeit with a different organic form (portrayed by Susanna Thompson). The Borg Queen tangled with the U.S.S. Voyager's Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) on a few occasions, usually over whether Seven of Nine would be able to retain her reclaimed humanity. In Star Trek: Voyager's series finale, "Endgame", a future version of Admiral Janeway tricked the Borg Queen and infected her with a neurolytic pathogen, which spread to the Collective. The Borg complex Unimatrix One was destroyed as the U.S.S. Voyager returned to Earth using a transwarp hub - this was the last time the Borg Queen was seen in Star Trek canon.

While Trekkers saw the Borg Queen die in "Endgame", she also perished in Star Trek: First Contact - yet the Queen manages to keep returning. While all of the Borg Queen's secrets haven't been revealed, she doesn't seem limited to her physical form and can manifest across the Collective at will - or possibly, a version of the Borg Queen exists in every Borg vessel to "bring order to chaos". Regardless, Star Trek: Picard unveiled one of the Borg Queen's many tricks: When Picard and Soji were fleeing the Romulans aboard the Artifact, Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco), Jean-Luc's old friend from Star Trek: The Next Generation who is now the executive director of the Romulan Reclamation Project, brought them to a hidden room within the Cube. Picard recalled this place as the Queen's Cell, which contained a device called a spacial trajector, i.e. a transporter with a theoretical range of 40,000 lightyears. This is technology the Borg assimilated from the Sikarians of the Delta Quadrant, a race introduced on Star Trek: Voyager.

Picard and Soji used the spacial trajector to escape the Artifact, which exists for the Borg Queen alone to make a quick escape. If, in fact, there was a Borg Queen aboard the Artifact when it suffered a submatrix collapse, it's possible she used her secret transporter to flee the Cube before it was permanently severed from the Collective. The Borg Queen would find it necessary to do so, or else her physical form would have remained trapped in the Cube, and therefore the Romulans could have been able to reclaim organic parts of the Borg Queen herself and harvest her technology when they took possession of the Artifact.

It's not clear whether the Borg Queen will appear again in an upcoming Star Trek series (or movie) but the invention of the spacial trajector answers one question about how the Borg's leader manages to travel from place to place. Even though the Borg Queen seems to be able to manifest at any point in the Collective at will, it's possible there is a secret Queen's Cell containing a spacial trajector in every Borg vessel. This would point to the Borg Queen realizing that there would be situations where she would need an emergency escape to prevent her unique technology from being captured. It's quite possible this was the scenario the Borg Queen was faced with when the Artifact fell into Romulan hands in the years before Star Trek: Picard began.

Star Trek: Picard streams Thursdays on CBS All-Access and Fridays internationally on Amazon Prime Video.

Source: screenrant.com