Synopsis: Enterprise, meet Borg.
Memory Alpha Summary: They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are assimilated.
Review: While this episode does an excellent job at introducing the Federation’s most feared enemy until the Dominion, it is weakened by Q popping up constantly like a VH1 video. His comic relief doesn’t fit with the ominous nature of what they’re encountering, and it leaves a weird taste in my mouth.
I do like Sonya Gomez, and wish she had become a recurring character. Geordi also shines again in his new leadership role while handling her anxieties.
Also, the Borg use a “laser beam” to cut the Enterprise? It’s well-established in this series that lasers are a very weak weapon. Someone in the technobabble division must have been asleep that day.
Picard saves the day once again by showing restraint and humility rather than posturing. Good job captain. Unfortunately, this episode feels more like a tease than anything.
Death By Troggles 
In retrospect, it was obviously a setup episode more than anything, but at the time, it was a fun episode, and I greatly enjoyed the whole “there are dangers you are ill-prepared for” theme of the episode.
I do like how it was a set-up that took a season and a half to pay off. Some nice forward thinking there.
I’m offended that there could be an enemy more feared than the Borg.
It’s sort of the same problem that Stargate had with Anubis. You’ve got this all-powerful enemy that the protagonists can’t possibly tangle with without horrifying results, and you’re asked to build a narrative around it. Stargate tried to solve it by having the enemy building toward something for like a season and a half without actually ever really doing anything, Star Trek went with the “oh, they’re really powerful, but they’re… um…. busy. In another part of the galaxy.” method.
Hard to say which is the better way. I would say that the Borg are the most feared enemy, but the Dominion made for easier story arcs.
Most certainly. The Dominion were fallible, just extremely powerful. The Borg could adapt so fast it made their victims feel helpless.
Battlestar has dealt with this dilemma very, very well. Give the enemy hopes and dreams and motivations, and there’s always a good reason to keep them apart. It’s not enough for a great villain to be all “We’re bad, so we do bad things.”