Dear Log Lady,
On the jukebox: Philip Glass, "Wichita Vortex Sutra", off Aleck Karis: Piano Music of Philip Glass
I think at times about the mechanics of fiction writing. There's lots in the Star Trek series to love and hate from various angles of craft, but one thing I've always thought is that the Borg are really really hard to get right. The line of reasoning went something like this:
We want some really bad guys. What makes for really bad guys? The unknown. Freaks! A totally different mental configuration (like being part machine, and lacking a real individual consciousness) is about as unknown/unknowable as you can get.
So you start writing that into the scripts, and it works for a while, but then you think you just can't get much mileage out of totally unfathomable forces in a plot, so you start making them not unknowable. But that's hard, since you've established that they're unknowable in some fairly basic ways that you just can't easily explain. I think that what's called for is less Shakespear stylee, and more David Lynch stylee. The Borg Queen should be less Cruella DeVil, and more Log Lady. Or Bob. Or Ben from Blue Velvet. Or Frank Booth. "Mommy... MOMMY! Don't look at me! Don't look at me!!"
