After watching "The Omega Directive" episode of Voyager the other day, it got me thinking. Harry's initial designation was 6 of 10. When he "misbehaved", Seven redesignated him to 2 of 10, which he took as a demotion. Also, Seven's title was the Tertiary Adjuct of Unimatrix 01. This leads me to believe there's a Secondary that she "reports" to. Are there any other indications of Borg ranks, and how they get promoted?
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1 Answer
Borg do not have "rank" per se -- this is evidenced in that same episode where, when Harry expresses surprise at the Borg having rank, Seven informs him that she learned it from her time on Voyager and is adopting it, the obvious implication being that it is not a normal part of the Borg Collective.
Borg do have functions, such as "Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01". This is not, however, a hierarchical designation1. Rather, she served as the third adjunct, similar to the arithmetic co-processors computers used to have back in the day -- Seven would have performed various tasks to facilitate the function of Unimatrix 01 (e.g. an arithmetic co-processor was used to perform floating-point arithmetic so that the primary CPU didn't need to).
The show never goes into detail on what precisely her function was, beyond being in love with the title; on more than one occasion, however, it is implied that she served as essentially another "co-processor", and this is backed up through multiple interactions with the Borg Queen where various drones are referred to as supplying "processing power". It's definitely not any form of "rank", however.
1 It is possible that "tertiary" referred to her "rank" in a sort of "line of succession" for the Adjuncts of Unimatrix 01, after Primary and Secondary. This is still not a "rank" in the same manner as we use one, it would merely have been a function that the Borg Collective assigned to Seven. That said, I believe "another adjunct", rather than "third backup adjunct", is more consistent with what's said and implied throughout the series.
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It also appears while i agree they don't have "ranks" they have higher level of personal awareness. The queen is completly aware and able to comunicate with humans at a human level while a drone has no communication other then what is fed to them to say. where seven has more personal awareness that she is able to interact with humans as well. Maybe we could say more fully able to Use the collective. instead of just drones.– HimarmJul 30, 2014 at 18:45
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@Himarm I'd argue that that's a function of their... well, their function. That is, Borg such as Seven, Locutus, and even the Queen are intended to interact with non-Borg, hence the apparently "higher level" of awareness -- after all, it's pretty clear that other drones certainly are aware of others, they just most often ignore them in pursuit of their primary function. That said, the existence of the Queen does seem to imply some sort of hierarchy, although perhaps her function is just to act as a sort of "arbiter" for the millions of collective voices.– KromeyJul 30, 2014 at 19:39
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@Kromey Yeah, the novels explained the Queen as one original Borg created by accident, that assimilated others to create the Collective. She is the core voice that all the others extend from, which matches up pretty well with the quote Zoredache pulled from First Contact in the question's comments, even though it's non-canon and the quote is canon– IzkataJul 30, 2014 at 22:57
BORG QUEEN: You imply disparity where none exists. **I am the collective.**They don't have a queen, the queen is an anthropomorphic personification of the collective.