When the Borg first appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Q Who, they were portrayed as a faceless collective, speaking with a single voice. This changed, however, with the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact, with the introduction of a 'Borg Queen,' an individual who spoke for the collective, but still seemed to have a unique personality of her own. She was the "one who was many," in that she could function as an individual yet was the glue that held together billions of Borg minds. The deadliest of her species, she used every asset, from intelligence to sexuality, in an effort to crush the Federation and assimilate Humanity. The beautiful, multi-talented Alice Krige was chosen to bring the Queen to life. It was an acting challenge she initially found to be a bit daunting. 

"I've never known whether I'm going to reach the point where I'm animated by the character or vice versa, " she muses. "So it starts out very much a process of exploration and self-examination and turning over every stone. I read a lot and constantly look for images. As an actress, one thing that's very important to me is the clothes my character will be wearing. If you're playing an ordinary Human Being and the clothes don't feel right they can always be changed. However, you can't just try on a new dress when you're playing the Borg Queen," laughs Krige. 

"Once I'd been cast I received a call from Paramount Studios wanting to see me because the make-up department needed to do a live mask of me. Now in the script it said, 'She is bald but has a haunting beauty.'  I thought, 'Oh,I can handle that. It should be interesting.'  There was no mention, though, of prosthetics. After they made the mask I asked, 'Why are we doing this?'  Micheal Westmore [make-up supervisor and designer] explained to me, 'For the prosthetics.'  I said, 'Oh, I'm wearing prosthetics?'  He said, 'Yes, would you like to see the sculpture?'  Michael introduced me to Scott Wheeler, who had, with some input with other people, created and sculpted the Borg Queen's head and face. 

"I thought it was beautiful and astonishing," continues the actress. "The only thing I asked to be changed were the eyebrows on the forehead piece. Scott made them look very much like Cruella De Vil's [from One Hundred and One Dalmatians], and I didn't want the Queen to have a defined expression that I couldn't change. I asked Scott if he'd erase the eyebrows and he said, 'I'll tell you what, I'll make two versions, one with the eyebrows and one without and we'll try both.'  I thought that was a fair compromise." Michael then showed me the design of the Queen's costume and they proceeded to do a body cast of me. As all of these processes were being done I began asking people questions like, 'Who are the Borg? Where do they come from?'  Everyone gave me his or her own ideas, none of which fully satisfied me. I decided to reread Professor Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time, and suddenly a light went of in my head. I thought, 'That's what she is. She's pure energy in the sense that pure energy cannot be created or destroyed. This creature has been around forever only we've just never seen her before. She invaded the Borg Collective and absorbed its consciousness. So the drones are more or less an extension of her.'  Oddly enough at that point I came to grips with who she was and was ready as I'd ever be to play her." 

The Borg's future first lady was born 28th June 1954 in Upington, South Africa. Since childhood Krige wanted to become a dancer, but her father did not approve of this idea. So instead she went to university with the intent to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a psychologist. Ironically, she had one free credit left and took an acting class. "I graduated with a psychology degree, but my desire to become an actress won out," says Krige. "I stayed in school and earned a second degree in drama. That's when I left South Africa and came to England where I took a three-year course in acting at London's Central School of Speech and Drama." 

Krige made her professional debut on British television in the autumn of 1979. "I had just finished drama school and was hired for this teeny tiny part. In fact, I'm surprised I didn't end up on the cutting room floor," she jokes. "I played one of four sisters in a BBC TV play. It was a period piece and we filmed it in the Cotswolds, so it came out looking absolutely beautiful. We were dressed in these magnificent Edwardian outfits complete with great big hats and spent most of our time running through cornfields. Talk about a fun time. My next part was Sybil in the movie Chariots of Fire, which was also a wonderful experience." 

The actress went on to appear in countless other feature films. On the small screen Krige has guest-starred on a variety of programmes including The Professionals, Murder She Wrote, Welcome to Paradox and Becker as well as several made-for-TV movies and mini-series. She has also made a name for herself on the English stage. "Up until very recently I'd been cast in period roles in England," notes the actress. "Having been raised in South Africa, which back then was considered by England to be fairly colonial, I'd always been thought of in the UK as being slightly from another time. I hope that makes sense. However, when I began working again in England during the early Nineties, I learnt how to sound more 'street London,'  so I've finally started to get more modern roles."

Although the Borg Queen in Star Trek: Fist Contact was certainly a 'modern' enough character for Krige, she almost turned down the audition for it. "The Queen is, in fact, only in three scenes in First Contact. Actually, four if you count the small one in which she's standing over Data [Brent Spiner]. My agent sent me the sides for the scenes and I said, 'I'm sorry, but I won't read for them unless they send me the entire script.'  She said, 'No, you don't understand, this is Star Trek. No one gets a script. You either meet with them on the basis of these pages or you don't see them at all.' " 

"I found the material sufficiently interesting enough to want to audition. Now I should mention that I grew up literally without television. It arrived in South Africa the year after I left. So there's a great deal of television with which I'm not familiar. I'm mean I'd heard the phrase, 'Beam me up, Scotty,'  but that was it when it came to Star Trek. I rushed over to a friend of mine who had written for the show and he kindly loaned me some tapes of the Borg episodes to watch. At least then I could walk into the audition with some sense of the universe I was dealing with. I read for Rick Berman [First Contact producer and writer], the film's director, Jonathan Frakes [Commander William T. Riker], whom I'd worked with before back in 1986 [in the mini-series Dream West], and a lovely casting lady by the name of Junie Lowery. It was during the act of performing those scenes that I discovered I really wanted to play the character." 

"Three weeks passed and I didn't hear anything. I figured, 'Right, another one bites the dust.'  Then I received a callback asking me to come in and do the whole thing over again. I did, they offered me the role, and then they went off. They were already filming exteriors for the film in Angeles National Forest, and I was about to leave for Vancouver to do another picture. However, I left with the knowledge that when I returned to Los Angeles I'd be working on Star Trek, I was immensely happy to be made a part of the project." 

According to Krige she sent chills up people's spines on her first day of filming when she was completely made up as the Borg Queen. "Scott and I had been working for hours,' she recalls. "once he had put the headpiece on me and spray-painted on the make-up it was time for the costume. Unfortunately, the outfit had been made out of this rubber that, for some reason, shrank, so the thing was far too tight. We had to jiggle me into it. I felt like a lump of sausage meat being stuffed into a casing!" 

"When I finally finished dressing we walked over to the main make-up trailer and they called Rick Berman to come down and have a look. While we were waiting I put in the contact lenses. They were mirrored which allowed me to see out, but no one could see in. With that done I glanced up into a mirror in front of me and as I did I heard a collective gasp from everyone standing behind me. I realized, 'Oh, my God, they're frightened. They created her and they are scared.'  All of a sudden I got this incredible rush of power. It was the wildest sensation. I feel that the costume and the mask were extraordinary gifts to me in that when I got into them it was like going through the looking glass. It was no longer me, but the Borg Queen." 

In First Contact, the Borg Queen had her sights set on Data, which meant that Krige spent most of her time working with Brent Spiner. "Brent was immensely helpful to me," says the actress. "He pointed out something that I'd not quite understood. When Captain Picard [Patrick Stewart] was taken by the Borg, [in the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter "Best of Both Worlds"], the one who freed him was Data. So the Queen had gotten all she wanted from Picard. What's funny, and what Brent explained to me, was that she, in fact, did not want Picard, she wanted Data. She's met her match in the android. So in the film it's no mistake that Data, not the captain, is dragged under the doorway and taken. Knowing this helped put so many things into perspective for me when it came time to play those scenes between the Queen and Data." 

When prior work commitments prevented krige from playing the Borg Queen in the Voyager episodes "Dark Frontier" and "Unimatrix Zero," actress Susanna Thompson was hired to step into the character's skin-tight costume. However, Krige was free, not to mention flattered, to be asked to reprise the role in the series finale "Endgame." 

"A couple of days before filming was due to commence I began to feel panic stricken," she recalls. "I called Ken Biller, the show's supervising producer, and explained to him how nervous I was. In First Contact the Queen was pitted against two male characters. Remember now, she's an entirely amoral entity who's entranced by power and does whatever she must in order to achieve her goals. The Queen knew that Data wanted to feel emotions and to be a Human Being. Sexuality is a very potent part of the Human experience and she used it ruthlessly on him. I said to Ken that her sexuality, no matter how creepy, was what created such strong feelings in peoples' initial response to her. In Voyager the character would be playing opposite two females, Janeway [Kate Mulgrew] and Seven of Nine {Jeri Ryan]. I asked Ken, ' What am I going to do?'  and he told me, 'Just think of her as being omnisexual.'  I said, 'Cool! I'm up for that.'  So that door opened again, and the Queen used a kind of sexuality, not so much with Janeway, but with Seven in order to unnerve and manipulate her. Once we began filming I found that she responded to Janeway and Seven in ways that she hadn't responded to Data and Picard because they were very different people. I ended up enjoying myself very much." 

With the Borg Queen dethroned, once in First Contact and again during the climax of Voyager's "Endgame," Krige went on to do other projects. She can be seen in a recurring role in the HBO series Six Feet Under. Currently, the actress is in England getting ready to produce a feature film focusing on the youth of Julius Caesar. "It's going to be filmed in an actual prison in Wales with a mix of actors and prisoners. The events will be the same only they'll be set in the present," she explains. "I'm not by any means giving up acting for producing. It's just that I feel incredibly passionate about this piece and want very badly to see it made. I cant' wait to get started."                                                                                   


                                                          TV Zone Special #44, Greatest Villains 2002   
                                                                            (images below)
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The Top Twenty Villains
The Borg Queen: Alice Krige #2
by
Steve Eramo