Entertainment
Star Trek's Borg Queen Was Head Of Starfleet Medical
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Star Trek: First Contact is generally considered the best of the Next Generation movies, one that pitted Captain Picard and his erstwhile crew against their most implacable foe: the Borg. Fans love the movie, but one thing that many of them hate is the inclusion of Alice Krige’s Borg Queen. Her very existence as an individual makes no sense in a Collective where everyone shares the same hive mind. On top of that, she’s a walking time paradox, repeatedly dying onscreen only to pop up in future TV shows whenever the writers needed a cheap Big Bad reveal.
However, Star Trek’s stupidest villain was almost fixed by the franchise’s first prequel. Recently, a number of writers and producers for Star Trek: Enterprise got together for Trek Talks, a livestream telethon that helps raise money for the Hollywood Food Coalition. Together, they revealed a number of rejected episode pitches that would have electrified the fandom. Arguably, the most ambitious of these pitches would have been an origin story for the Borg Queen, one that had the potential to answer burning questions Trek fans have been debating for decades.
The Borg Queen’s Origin Story
During the Trek Talks stream, Enterprise writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens revealed they wanted to “have another Borg show, but bring in the head of Starfleet Medical, which would be played by Alice Krige.” Krige, of course, played the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact, and the franchise has never revealed any details about who or what she was before being assimilated. In Reeves-Stevens’ story, we would see her Starfleet Medical bigwig “choosing to join the Collective,” and they wanted the episode to explore “what goes through the mind” of a person making such an insane choice to abandon both their individuality and their humanity.
Sadly, Reeves-Stevens didn’t elaborate on their pitch beyond those details, so all we know is that this Enterprise episode would have been a Borg Queen origin story explaining how this mechanical monarch was once the human head of Starfleet Medical. Still, I can’t help but think that this episode would have made her character much more palatable to the average fan. That’s because a well-written episode could answer fans’ biggest questions about this character while more organically integrating her into Star Trek canon.
Attack Of The Drones
For example, the Borg we first saw in The Next Generation spoke with a singular hive mind, and the concept of individuality was completely alien to them. That’s what made Picard’s assimilation so shocking. Not only did these bionic baddies target everyone’s favorite captain, but they turned him into a mouthpiece for their coldhearted collective. The Enterprise episode that Reeves-Stevens pitched could explain how and why the Borg learned the value of having an individual spokesperson. Furthermore, showing Krige’s character volunteering to join these villains might offer context for why the Borg Queen in First Contact wanted Picard to surrender himself willingly rather than be assimilated against his will.
Additionally, a Borg Queen origin story might finally help fans nail down a timeline of how and when Starfleet first learned about the Borg. In The Next Generation, Q is seemingly responsible for introducing Starfleet to this new threat by flinging the Enterprise deep into Borg territory. However, the Voyager episode “Dark Frontier” later revealed how Seven of Nine’s parents were Federation scientists eager to study the Borg, a race they mostly knew about through whispered rumors. The Enterprise episode “Regeneration” retconned things even further by revealing that Zefram Cochrane warned people about the Borg seen in First Contact, but he later recanted after his claims were dismissed as tall tales from a known drunk.
Resistance Is Futile (She Brought Cuffs)
This has led to lingering questions, like how long have Starfleet and the Federation officially known about the Borg? Unofficially, who was keeping tabs on these villains? Were shadowy figures (like Section 31) cross-referencing Cochrane’s tall tales with stories from El-Aurian refugees and Captain Archer’s own account of hostile, cybernetic beings? Right now, all of this is a mystery, one made more frustrating because it involves Star Trek’s most famous villains. Had we gotten this Enterprise episode, it might have cleared that mystery up for fans while making it easier for future writers (say, the Picard writers) to do more with the Borg Queen than have her show up and make evil speeches.
Early on Enterprise was viewed as a major letdown for Star Trek fans. But it started to get really good in its fourth and final season, and the Borg Queen pitch from Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens proves that this show still had some great stories to tell. Had we gotten this episode and more like it, Enterprise might have gone on to become one of the franchise’s most successful series. If nothing else, it could have avoided decades of fan squabbles over who and what the Borg Queen is and what she offers to the Collective beyond being (let’s face it) dommy mommy eye candy for drones and fans alike.
Entertainment
Wordle today: Answer, hints for April 19, 2026
Today’s Wordle answer should be easy to solve if you can never sit down.
If you just want to be told today’s word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for today’s Wordle solution revealed. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.
Where did Wordle come from?
Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once.
Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.
What’s the best Wordle starting word?
The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.
What happened to the Wordle archive?
The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website’s creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.
Is Wordle getting harder?
It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn’t any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle‘s Hard Mode if you’re after more of a challenge, though.
Here’s a subtle hint for today’s Wordle answer:
To rise.
Mashable Top Stories
Does today’s Wordle answer have a double letter?
There are no recurring letters.
Mashable 101 Fan Fave: Nominate your favorite creators today
Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with…
Today’s Wordle starts with the letter T.
The Wordle answer today is…
Get your last guesses in now, because it’s your final chance to solve today’s Wordle before we reveal the solution.
Drumroll please!
The solution to today’s Wordle is…
STAND
Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints. Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.
Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Wordle.
Entertainment
Hurdle hints and answers for April 19, 2026
If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.
There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it’ll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.
An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.
Mashable 101 Fan Fave: Nominate your favorite creators today
If you find yourself stuck at any step of today’s Hurdle, don’t worry! We have you covered.
Hurdle Word 1 hint
The edge.
Hurdle Word 1 answer
BRINK
Mashable Top Stories
Hurdle Word 2 hint
Moody.
Hurdle Word 2 Answer
POUTY
Mashable 101 Fan Fave: Nominate your favorite creators today
Hurdle Word 3 hint
America’s bird.
Hurdle Word 3 answer
EAGLE
Hurdle Word 4 hint
A platform.
Hurdle Word 4 answer
FORUM
Final Hurdle hint
Cheapskate.
Hurdle Word 5 answer
MISER
If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.
Entertainment
Star Trek’s Most Ambitious Villain Helped Create The Franchise’s Most Complex Hero
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When Star Trek: Voyager first came out, the most fascinating character was the Doctor. While Robert Picardo’s performance was superb, it’s fair to say this character was mostly fascinating on a conceptual level. We had seen things like hypercompetent Starfleet captains and exotic aliens before, but what we hadn’t seen was a fully holographic chief medical officer. Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram seemed like the perfect embodiment of the Star Trek ethos. He’s a technological strange new world and new life, all rolled into one.
However, what casual audiences didn’t realize is that the Doctor wasn’t completely unique. Long before Picardo’s character ever sawed bones in the Delta Quadrant, Captain Picard dealt with another extraordinary hologram: Moriarty, the brilliant foe of the famous investigator Sherlock Holmes. Over on The Next Generation, Geordi LaForge accidentally created this villain as a sentient hologram when he asked the holodeck to create a challenge worthy of the android Data. Later, Star Trek: Voyager executive producer Jeri Taylor revealed that, in-universe, the holographic Doctor was created because Starfleet took advantage of the same accidental breakthrough that created Moriarty!
It all started in “Elementary, My Dear Data,” the Next Generation episode in which the titular android and Geordi LaForge recreated Sherlock Holmes’ adventures on the holodeck. Thanks to his positronic brain and his encyclopedic knowledge of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes novels, Data is able to easily solve every mystery that is thrown at him. That’s when Geordi makes a seemingly simple request. He asks the Enterprise computer to develop a holodeck foe that could actually defeat Data, one of the smartest beings in the entire galaxy.
The computer obliges and creates a sentient version of Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ greatest foe. Following Geordi’s instructions, the Enterprise computer included much of Data’s vast programming, which resulted in the holographic character becoming self-aware. Moriarty ended up threatening the Enterprise on two different occasions, and Picard eventually got rid of him by trapping the unknowing villain in a simulation where he thought he had left the holodeck and could explore the stars. This was meant to be a happy ending for Moriarty, but in the show’s typically bleak fashion, Star Trek: Picard later showed us a different, more hostile version of this character created by a malevolent Section 31 AI.
How A Villain Created A Hero
What does all of this have to do with Robert Picardo’s holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager? Elementary, my dear reader! Very early in Voyager’s development (the show didn’t even have a name yet), executive producer Jeri Taylor was inspired by Moriarty to create a new character. As reported in A Vision of the Future-Star Trek: Voyager, Taylor wrote down notes for a holographic doctor “who, like Moriarty, has ‘awareness’ of himself as a holodeck fiction. He longs for the time when he can walk free of the Holodeck.”
A few days later, she wrote down additional notes that contain a startling bit of Star Trek lore. “The Holo-Doctor represents a new, state-of-the-art technology which has capitalized on the serendipitous incident which created Moriarty, and has programmed a holographic character which has self-awareness of his situation and limitations.” While Moriarty is name-dropped on Voyager a couple of times, the show never mentioned what Taylor’s notes seem to confirm: that Lewis Zimmerman could never have created the Emergency Medical Hologram program if not for Geordi LaForge accidentally creating Moriarty on the holodeck.
From Villain To Leading Man?
If that’s not strange enough, there was a period of time when Voyager’s producers were considering making Moriarty a mainstay character on the show. As reported in Star Trek–Where No One Has Gone Before, Taylor’s notes mentioned that “everyone agreed that was a little too broad, and we couldn’t figure out why anyone would take him along.” After dismissing the idea, they decided “that having a holographic doctor with the full consciousness of being a hologram might be fun, and we’d never done anything like that before, except for Moriarty.”
There you have it, gentle reader. Without the character of Moriarty on Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’d never have the Doctor on Voyager. In this way, Trek’s most ambitious villain helped create the franchise’s most complex hero. Thanks to Jeri Taylor’s notes, we also know that, in-universe, Lewis Zimmerman would never have been able to create the Doctor if not for Geordi accidentally creating a sentient Moriarty so Data could have fun. In retrospect, this does make Zimmerman’s arrogance that much weirder. After all, he has a lot of attitude for someone who owes his entire career to the two biggest book nerds in the galaxy!
Rockets open series vs. Lakers without star Kevin Durant (knee)
Nashville SC maintains early East lead with road shutout of Atlanta
