Ahead of 2021's Star Trek Day, Star Trek: Picard surprised fans with an announcement: veteran Star Trek actor Annie Wersching, who started her career playing Liana on Star Trek: Enterprise, was joining the cast as a Borg Queen. With the announcement, the actress technically (which is the best kind of correct) becomes the fourth person to take on the role of the Collective's seductive matriarch/monarch.
The Borg Queen's first appearance in 1996's Star Trek: First Contact introduced the world to one of the greatest villainesses in sci-fi history. The character was described as "a fully-alive disembodied torso lowered by mechanical armatures into a waiting and shapely female body," who is "planning the assimilation of the human race," by Star Trek author Andy Mangels in Star Trek: Villains. After Seven of Nine briefly became a Borg Queen in Picard's first season, there are now technically four Queens total.
In Picard's season opener, a new Borg Queen arrives with a surprising message for Sir Patrick Stewart's Admiral Jean-Luc Picard: instead of assimilation, she, who is the many, wants peace. Well, she wants peace once she drains the Stargazer of power. Introducing a new Queen also means introducing a new look, and it's unlike anything a Queen has donned before. She's wearing an all-black dress, chainlink helmet reminiscent of a Borg Cube version of Elizabethan armor, and tentacle-like weapons set to stun. But how does the new Borg Queen fit into the larger picture?
Who is the Borg Queen?
When the Borg Collective became one of Starfleet's biggest menaces in Star Trek: The Next Generation, they only exhibited a collective Hive mind. Like all drone insects, the Borg eventually needed a Queen to guide them in their elusive goal to assimilate the human race. In First Contact, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore created a Borg Queen to bring order to the Borg Collective and be that guide.
Unlike Borg drones, the Queen has a unique personality and sense of individuality. She controls the Hive mind and usually "speaks" for the Collective. In her words, "I am the beginning. The end. The one who is many. I am the Borg."
According to the Star Trek website, it's unclear if more than one Queen exists simultaneously or if a new Queen is created when the old one dies. Either way, a new Queen may have all her predecessors' and counterparts' qualities and memories, possibly throughout time. The screeners sent to critics for Picard's second season provided some cool facts about the Queen, so keep watching!
Star Trek: First Contact's Alice Krige
Alice Krige originated the Borg Queen's role in First Contact, giving the audience someone to hate. Krige's Queen leads the Borg in an attempt to alter Earth's history, but the Enterprise intervenes, putting a stop to the Collective's plan and killing the Queen.
Despite her death, Krige's performance has had an enormous impact on the character, with every monarch opting for the signature hanging torso and skin-tight leather suit. According to Krige, the crew "gasped" seeing her in the costume for the first time. Fans all know the scene and costume well, too: when the Borg Queen emerges from her lair and re-assembles into a predominantly artificial body — the arms, legs, and torso appear to be entirely synthetic, while the head and shoulders seem to be organic, but with substantial cybernetic implants.
Krige reprised the role to face off against a future Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) in the Star Trek: Voyager finale, "Endgame," an episode that led her to call "the producers" about the Queen identifying as "Omnisexual." The Queen dies again after Janeway introduces a neurolytic pathogen into the Hive. Krige returned for Star Trek: The Experience ride Borg Invasion 4D and Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Star Trek: Voyager's Susanna Thompson
Susanna Thompson is a Star Trek regular, playing two TNG characters, Lenara Kahn in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the enigmatic Borg Queen on Voyager. Although Enterprise destroyed the Borg Queen's organic components in First Contact, the Collective soon replaced the monarch with another, almost identical successor, played by Thompson.
Thompson's Queen meets Voyager in the Delta Quadrant seeking to return Seven of Nine to the Collective in "Dark Frontier," and again when a subconscious realm infecting Borg drones with their previous individuality threatens the Collective. In a 1998 interview, the Voyager actress described Krige's Queen as "a more sexual, human sort of emotion," compared to Thompson's Queen, "less sexual but very much into mind tricks."
If Krige's Queen died in "Endgame," shouldn't Thompson have voiced the Queen in Lower Decks?
Hail to the Queen
In Picard Season 1, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) briefly becomes a Borg Queen. The once-assimilated daughter of Magnus and Erin Hansen, who collected the earliest Federation data on the Borg, must attach herself to the device inside the Queen's liar and say, "We are the Borg," to save Borg and xBs on the Artifact.
When Seven takes control of the Cube and becomes a Queen, she controls every remaining Borg in stasis. Now in charge of the Cube, she can help the xBs fight the Romulans who are trying to kill them, but when the Romulans get the upper hand and flush out the remaining Borg, Seven screams out, "No!" It's clear Queen Seven feels each drone's suffering. Although she feared she would give in to the temptation of power once she completed her duties, she disconnects from the device of her own free will.
There is also a version of the Borg Queen Seven of Nine in Star Trek Online, voiced by Ryan.
Star Trek: Picard's Annie Wersching
Wersching's Borg Queen is an exciting addition to Picard this season. Co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman told Polygon he found inspiration in how the Borg Queen's existence is "quite binary." He added, "She's either connected to all or totally disconnected."
He also said the Borg Queen would be paired with Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill). "Although there are clearly feelings and encounters that are driven by feelings with Seven and the Borg Queen, and Picard in the Borg Queen — we know those stories," Goldsman added. "We've told those stories. We could retell them with a sort of darker, more graphic grammar because we're streaming. But otherwise, it's the same story."