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star trek - Were the Borg inspired by Lord Dread?


Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future was a dystopian science fiction television series that aired in North America for only one season (1987-1988), and which had J. Michael Straczynski as its head writer.


The primary antagonist was "Lord Dread". From Wikipedia:



With the new opportunities offered by the human-machine combination, [Dr. Lyman] Taggart becomes obsessed with the precision and "perfection" of machines and convinces himself that merging human consciousness with mechanical bodies is the next step in human evolution. OverMind [a supercomputer] achieves self-awareness and shares Taggart's beliefs as they take over Bio-Mech armies throughout the world and attack humanity in a conflict known as the Metal Wars.




Here is Lord Dread, as he appeared in the series:


enter image description here


Now, here is a typical Borg from Star Trek:


enter image description here


The Borg first appeared in 1989 (in "Q Who"), two years after Lord Dread and his Bio-Mech army were introduced in Captain Power.


Given the similarity between Lord Dread and the Borg in both appearance and goals, is there any evidence that Lord Dread was an inspiration for the Borg in Star Trek?



Answer



Originally, the Borg were not intended to be the cyborg race they were, but a race of insects:




The Borg were initially conceived by Maurice Hurley as a race of insectoids. Hurley wrote in to "The Neutral Zone" a plot point that Federation and Romulan starbases along the Romulan Neutral Zone had been mysteriously wiped out, having been "scooped off" the face of the planet in the same way that would later be referenced in "Q Who" and shown in "The Best of Both Worlds". This was intended to lead into a series of episodes that would have introduced the Borg as a main villain in the wake of the Ferengi's complete failure to meet with audience expectations of a major Starfleet antagonist. (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages, pp. 169, 180)



(Source)


So, no, Lord Dread was not the original inspiration for the Borg.


However, this does not mean that Lord Dread was inspiration for the cyborg version of the Borg.


The costume designer for TNG, Durinda Rice Wood:



was inspired by a drawing by H.R. Giger, known for his work on the film Alien.



(Source: kudos Praxis)



Due to time and budget constraints though, she couldn't go through with the original designs (see below):



A company I worked with already had certain mechanical human part moulds and so I incorporated those into my design.



(Source: kudos Praxis)


Now, after a search on Wood it turns out that she worked on Beyond Hawaii which used the company MacGillivray Freeman Films, which was also used on Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future according to IMDB. So it is entirely plausible that they were using the same parts for the Borg and Lord Dread.


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