‘Lower Decks’ finally resolves a huge Star Trek villain mystery [Exclusive]

There is only one Borg Queen. Or are there plenty of? First launched inside the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact, the enigmatic chief of the Borg appeared to transcend time and home. She moreover represents a paradox: A single explicit particular person speaking for a complete hivemind collective.

Carried out first by Alice Krige, there are literally three Borg Queens in full. Susanna Thompson took on the place in plenty of episodes of Voyager; and in Picard Season 2, one different Borg Queen could be carried out by Annie Wersching.

Nevertheless who’s the “precise” Borg Queen? In a present beautiful (and hilarious) cameo in Lower Decks, the reply seems to be that the distinctive Borg Queen continues to be the canonical one — a minimum of all through Starfleet teaching simulations!

To unravel this primary Star Trek thriller, we spoke to the Borg Queen herself. Proper right here’s what Alice Krige wanted to say about her shock return to the Star Trek canon and why she thinks her character is always there, even when you don’t see her.

In Lower Decks, Season 2, Episode 8, “I, Excretus,” Boimler (Jack Quaid) finds himself in a holographic drill the place he has to do each little factor he can to “resit the Borg.” After obsessively working the drill many times, Boimler meets a holographic recreation of the Borg Queen. Cue an Easter egg from First Contact.

The Borg Queen blows gently on Boimler’s pores and pores and skin, referencing one factor associated she did to Information when his android pores and pores and skin was briefly grafted with human pores and pores and skin. It’s a hilarious scene, and all-to-brief, nonetheless there’s a stage of Trekkie legitimacy delivered to it on account of it really is the voice of Alice Krige.

The distinctive Borg Queen tells Inverse she under no circumstances anticipated to return to Star Trek, notably not like this.

“They solely, they merely referred to as and requested if I’d do it. It was good pleasing,” Krige says, revealing she recorded most of her dialogue in her husband’s closet. “It has the easiest sound within the residence. It’s so full of garments, a great deal of insulation.”

This isn’t the first time since First Contact that Krige has returned to her well-known Star Trek place. When the Borg Queen initially crashed the Voyager party for the episode “Darkish Frontier,” she was not carried out by Krige, nonetheless in its place by Susanna Thompson (perhaps additional well-known for her place as Lenara Kahn inside the DS9 episode “Rejoined.) Nevertheless when it was time for Voyager’s big finale, Krige was requested as quickly as as soon as extra to don her Borg leather-based. This put her inside the distinctive place of being one among many few Star Trek villains (Q is one different) who’ve tangoed with every Captain Picard and Captain Janeway.

Krige says that when she returned for Voyager, she realized she’d primarily based a variety of her effectivity on the Borg Queen’s makes an try to seduce Subsequent Period’s primary males.

“There’s sexual energy that she kind of manipulated every Information and Picard,” Krige says. “Correctly, she didn’t manipulate each of them, nonetheless she thought she was. So I wanted to resolve tips about the right way to play that in Voyager on account of in its place of two males this was two girls [Janeway and Seven of Nine.]”

This led Krige to a quick cellphone title with “the producers” of Voyager, throughout which it was decided the Borg Queen was “Omnisexual,” which meant, certain, she would perhaps have some kind of flirtation with Janeway or Seven, too, if she wanted to.

“After that, I assumed good. I merely went and had fun on account of they’re two nice actresses,” Krige tells Inverse. “It was a very utterly totally different actually really feel for the character on account of it was a very utterly totally different kind of energetic alternate.”

It’s been exactly 20 years since Krige last carried out the Borg Queen in Voyager, and since she perished in that episode and we moreover observed Picard take her out in First Contact, followers have questioned for years merely what variety of copies of the Borg Queen there are, or if the Queens are actually utterly totally different characters.

With Annie Wersching’s Borg Queen coming to Picard Season 2 and Alice Krige’s nice return to Lower Decks, might there ever be a gathering of all these Borg Queens? How does she maintain coming once more? Alice Krige isn’t sure, nonetheless she wouldn’t rule out a live-action return.

“She manifests in many different strategies, or presumably she wouldn’t?” Krige says playfully. “Even when she’s not there, it doesn’t recommend she’s not there. She’s so mysterious and endlessly fascinating. Who’s conscious of how she reveals up?”

Lower Decks is streaming now on Paramount+.