Marvel's late 1990s Star Trek comics were actually the publisher's second round with the franchise. They held the license for two years after the premiere of Star Trek:The Motion Picture.
Star Trek: Operation Assimilation, a one-shot first published by Marvel Comics in 1997, was written by Paul Jenkins and drawn by Steve Erwin. Released just a few months after Star Trek: First Contact revived interest in the Borg, Operation: Assimilation follows a lowly Romulan officer as she navigates her people’s first encounter with the cybernetic aliens. She is captured, and the remainder of the special shows her assimilation. Using novel narrative techniques, Jenkins and Erwin pull back the horrors of the process, including the loss of identity and humanity.
The Borg, Star Trek's Most Horrifying Species, Explained
The Borg Are One of Star Trek's Most Popular Races for a Reason
After the Ferengi failed to become the new major bad guys of the Star Trek universe, the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation needed a new foil for the Enterprise, one that was genuinely scary. Thus, the Borg were born. At the time of their introduction, in the second season episode “Q Who,” the Borg were unlike any other race seen in the franchise. A race of cyborgs residing in the then-distant Delta Quadrant, the Borg were relentless and could not be reasoned with, making them a serious departure from other species, such as the Klingons.
The Borg proved popular, and they returned at the end of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s third season, in the classic “Best of Both Worlds.” The show’s producers and writers wanted to up the drama quotient for the Borg. To that end, they introduced the assimilation process, by which a person is turned into a Borg. In “Best of Both Worlds,” Captain Picard is abducted by the Borg, who assimilate him into their collective, thus obtaining all his knowledge and experience. Now, in addition to stopping the Borg, the crew had to save Picard’s humanity.
Adding the concept of assimilation to the Borg’s MO was a stroke of genius, as it indeed created drama, and made them into one of Star Trek’s scariest species. Previous hostile alien races, like the Romulans, were out for conquest and the acquisition of resources. While the Borg have the same aims, there is another layer: they want to add everyone to their collective, submerging their individuality and converting them into a drone. The idea that a person can be converted into what they are fighting so easily is spine-tingling.
The Borg's Assimilation Process is Horrific, and This One-Shot Shows Why
Star Trek: Operation Assimilation Pulls No Punches in Depicting Assimilation
And Star Trek: Operation Assimilation adds an even more disturbing layer to the assimilation process by giving fans a first-hand look at the loss of freedom and the loss of that which makes a person unique. As the Borg nanoprobes slowly overwhelm her, the Romulan officer tries in vain to retain her Romulan identity. She thinks back to her first kill and the day she became a true Romulan. As the assimilation process overtakes her, these memories become corrupted, twisted to fit the Borg’s agenda. Finally, the Borg use her as a vanguard to more assimilation.
