Star Trek has introduced a plethora of interesting and diverse alien races in the many years since Gene Roddenberry, in the late 1960s, first introduced the public to the wild and wonderful universe. While some of these races were shown fleetingly and often shrouded in unsolvable mysteries, many played significant repetitive roles, such as the Vulcans and the Klingons, who played significant roles as friend or foe.
Some of the franchise’s most memorable adversaries were the Borg, and while they changed a lot over the years, they remained some of the most feared and dangerous adversaries the Federation had ever seen. That was until the Dominion showed up in the events of Deep space 9, which nearly destroyed Starfleet and much of the Alpha Quadrant. Despite their quadrant-shattering war that stretched far and wide in Federation space, they were never shown going up against the Borg. This, of course, begs the important question: who would win in a fight?
It may seem obvious on paper, the Borg suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Federation and the Dominion nearly wiped them out until the tables turned very late in the war. However, the truth is a bit more complicated. As powerful as the Dominion was, they had one major drawback against the Borg, specifically something unique to the Borg race (if it’s possible to call it that): assimilation.
The Dominion’s greatest strength, meanwhile, lies with its leaders, the founders. They are a shape-shifting alien race of organic changelings, but interestingly enough, they are naturally uncomfortable in physical form. They exist as a joint entity, a kind of connected hive that looks suspiciously like a large lake of viscous jelly, taking on physical ‘bodies’ only on rare occasions and separating from the hive jelly.
Their existence as a massive shape-shifting entity gives them a huge advantage over other creatures. They can adapt in various ways and challenge potential predators, and by connecting like a beehive, they are able to learn vast amounts of shared knowledge and experiences to create a vast and almost unparalleled intelligence. This, combined with their natural strength and speed, gives them another advantage in combat, but they do have a huge weakness. They are not invincible and can be affected by something as common as diseases, which prevents them from changing shape. They are also just as vulnerable as other organic races to energy weapons. Though they are considered gods by many who serve them (somewhat of a marker for evil in Roddenberry), they are weak to many of the same things they are. The Founders are also far from divine when it comes to their ability to sense emotional shortcomings such as stress, greed, anger, and melancholy.
All of these weaknesses could be targeted by their enemies, but they are unlikely to ever find out. The founders are so shrouded in myth and legacy, revered as gods, that it’s highly unlikely anyone would talk openly about what could potentially harm them. Even the Vorta, their right-hand man, who might know, probably wouldn’t reveal this weakness, since they were such a strong-willed race.
This is where the Borg assimilation advantage comes in handy. All it takes is for one of the Vorta to be brought into the collective, and all of the Founders’ secrets would be revealed, highlighting exactly how to bring the Founders to their knees. With the knowledge of the Vorta and Jem’Hadar absorbed by the Borg, the Founders would have been helpless, either assimilated or wiped out by the raw firepower the Borg possess. Whether the founders can actually be assimilated has never been discussed within the canon. It is quite likely that they cannot, due to their shape-shifting nature and their natural state of being non-corporeal. However, they can still be destroyed quite easily due to another flaw the founders have against the Borg: a single point of failure.
This is a term often used when looking at computer programs and algorithms, which makes it ironic to use it for the founders rather than Borg. A single point of failure refers to a single point of a system that, if it fails, takes the entire program down with it. For the Dominion, this only point of failure is the Founders, or more specifically the individual changelings they send out into the universe to gather information and gain experience to share with the beehive jelly. With the exception of DS9’s space cop Odo, their function is to go out, collect data, and then return to the docked ghost. By infecting just one exchanger with an effective disease, they could become a carrier, infecting the rest of the collective and eventually rejoining.
It’s important to note that while the Borg didn’t have the same flaw at one point, this was completely ruined by the introduction of the Borg queen in the movies and the unpopular Voyager TV series. While defeating the Queen would greatly hinder the Borg, it would not crumble their entire race. It has been confirmed that the Borg would still exist without central guidance (perhaps until a new queen is chosen). Plus, all this military weakness doesn’t take into account the fact that the Dominion wouldn’t have the same weapons to attack even the Borg. Borg technology is so advanced and eclectic, being the Frankenstein of hundreds of different races merged into one, it took the Federation years of very specific study to put together primitive weapons that would work against them. The Dominion probably doesn’t have these weapons. Of course, everything would change if the reign somehow got their hands on the war criminal Captain Janeway, who on numerous occasions turned out to be a Borg-conquering queen (although this is believed to be due to poor writing rather than actual skill). ).
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