The Borg have faced some formidable adversaries over the years.
Species 8472 nearly destroyed them. Captain Janeway caused the Collective no shortage of headaches. Q has repeatedly demonstrated that there are things wandering around the universe that make even the Borg look rather insignificant.
But apparently there is one weapon against which resistance truly is futile:
A giant space penis.
At least, that’s what you might have concluded from a YouTube thumbnail that appeared this week.
The Borg vs. the Doomsday Machine
TrekVault recently published a video titled The Forbidden Battle: When the Borg Met the Doomsday Machine.
It’s actually an interesting premise.
The Doomsday Machine comes from the classic Star Trek episode of the same name. It’s an enormous, virtually indestructible planet killer left behind by some long-forgotten civilization. It consumes entire worlds for fuel and continues wandering through space long after whoever built it has presumably vanished.
So what happens if this thing encounters the Borg?
Can the Borg assimilate it? Can they adapt to its weapon? Could the Doomsday Machine actually destroy a Borg cube?
These are legitimate questions worthy of serious scientific investigation.
Unfortunately, DeepSpace.club immediately noticed something considerably less serious about the video’s original thumbnail.
There was a problem.
Once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it.
Yes.
That is the Doomsday Machine.
And yes, we know what it is supposed to look like.
But the particular angle chosen for the thumbnail made the ancient planet-destroying superweapon look remarkably like an enormous space penis bearing down upon an apparently helpless member of the Borg Collective.
DeepSpace.club takes its responsibility to chronicle important developments in science fiction extremely seriously.
Therefore, we performed our solemn journalistic duty and left the following observation:
“According to the thumbnail, the Borg are helpless against a giant space penis.”
We considered our contribution to Star Trek scholarship complete.
Then something happened.
The Giant Space Penis Disappeared
When we returned to the video a few hours later, the thumbnail was different.
Not slightly different.
The entire composition had changed.
The original head-on view of the Doomsday Machine was gone.
Instead, the new thumbnail showed the machine from the side, firing directly at a Borg cube.
It’s arguably a better thumbnail.
It’s unquestionably a less phallic thumbnail.
And that raises an obvious question:
Did DeepSpace.club just shame a Star Trek YouTube channel into changing its thumbnail?
We have no idea.
YouTube creators change thumbnails all the time. Creators frequently test different images to see which one generates a better click-through rate. TrekVault may have already intended to replace it.
It’s also entirely possible that somebody running the channel independently looked at the original thumbnail for the 47th time and suddenly experienced the horrible moment of realization:
Oh God. Now I see it.
And once you see the giant space penis, there really is no going back.
But there is another possibility.
Were the Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy Involved?
Longtime Deep Space Nine viewers will undoubtedly remember Dr. Elias Giger and his warnings about the soulless minions of orthodoxy.
Giger believed powerful forces were determined to suppress his revolutionary research into cellular regeneration.
Naturally, respectable journalists such as ourselves would never suggest without evidence that those same shadowy forces remain active in the 21st century.
Nevertheless, consider the facts.
DeepSpace.club publicly revealed evidence suggesting that one of the most dangerous civilizations in the Star Trek universe may possess a previously unknown vulnerability to enormous interstellar genitalia.
Within hours, the evidence disappeared.
Coincidence?
Almost certainly.
But that’s precisely what the soulless minions of orthodoxy would want you to think.
Perhaps TrekVault didn’t change the thumbnail voluntarily.
Perhaps somebody received a visit.
Perhaps a strongly worded subspace communication arrived.
Perhaps the powers that be simply decided that certain truths are too dangerous for the Alpha Quadrant to know.
We may never know.
Why Would This Even Work Against the Borg?
That leaves us with a considerably more important scientific question.
Why would a giant space penis pose such a problem for the Borg in the first place?
Only Q knows.
Perhaps the Collective couldn’t adapt its shields quickly enough.
Perhaps its unusual geometry prevented the Borg from properly identifying the threat until penetration of their defensive perimeter was already underway.
Perhaps the Borg Queen finally encountered something that was simply too much for even her to, ahem, assimilate.
Whatever happened, the Collective clearly needed a new defensive strategy.
WE ARE THE BORG. LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIPS. WE WILL ADD YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR…
Wait.
RAISE THE SHIELDS.
RAISE THE FUCKING SHIELDS.
Perhaps resistance wasn’t futile after all.
Perhaps it was simply impotent.
Did Our Comment Actually Change the Thumbnail?
Sadly, we cannot claim victory.
There is no evidence available to us showing that anyone at TrekVault even saw the DeepSpace.club comment before changing the thumbnail.
What we can document is the following sequence of events.
TrekVault uploaded a video with a thumbnail that appeared, unfortunately, to depict a Borg being menaced by an enormous interstellar dong.
DeepSpace.club noticed.
DeepSpace.club publicly pointed it out.
And sometime afterward, the giant interstellar dong disappeared and was replaced with a significantly less anatomically suggestive Doomsday Machine.
Make of that what you will.
Perhaps our comment changed the course of Star Trek YouTube history.
Perhaps TrekVault was already testing another thumbnail.
Perhaps the soulless minions of orthodoxy intervened before humanity learned too much.
We simply don’t have enough evidence to establish causation.
And as responsible students of logic, science, and enormous fictional planet-killing objects, we refuse to confuse correlation with causation merely because doing so would produce a more entertaining story.
That would be a logical fallacy.
Or, in this particular case…
a logical phallacy.
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