Special to STAR TREK.COM by Deborah Fisher

The Borg are back as Star Trek: Voyager airs its sixth season finale "Unimatrix Zero." This time, the villains that fans love to hate have problems of their own. The Borg Queen -- reprised by Susanna Thompson -- finds out that there's a virtual escape hatch from the Collective where drones can romp around as individuals. When the Queen goes hunting in cyberspace to shut the place down, she drags Voyager's crew into the fray.

The Borg have been fan favorites since Q threw the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D into the path of the Borg back in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Q Who?" The assimilation of Jeri Ryan's Seven of Nine into Star Trek: Voyager's crew three years ago has given writers a whole new angle on the Borg. This season, Seven has even played mom to a group of Borg children, rescued from a dying cube in "Collective." In "Unimatrix Zero," Seven reportedly gets a chance at romance and some of her crewmates get the Borg treatment.

Getting the Borg treatment is a story in and of itself. Only suiting up as a Klingon comes close in the legendary rigor of Star Trek makeovers. Building a Borg is actually handled by two different, but cooperative departments at Paramount -- makeup and costuming. Anyone scheduled to get the Borg treatment is required to show up at 4:30 a.m. in the makeup trailers near sound stages 8 and 9 where Star Trek: Voyager is shot. Manu Intiraymi, who had several guest shots this season as the Borg child, Icheb, describes the experience of being Borgified as wild.

"First they do a bald cap that has some Borg implants on it. Then they do the facial pieces and the eyepiece. After the makeup, you get into the suit which is a three-piece unit. It's like wet suit material and all the pieces are plastic even though they're painted to look like metal. For my character, because I was never fully assimilated, the suit has lots of parts that aren't developed yet where you can see skin sticking out.

"I had never gone through anything like that before. I've heard interviews with actors who talk about sitting in the makeup chair for four hours and I thought 'you whiny actor.' But the Borg outfit was uncomfortable, itchy and gross. You sweat inside it and when you move, parts scrape you. I knew so many had worn the Borg outfit before me, I was trying to whine as little as possible."

Makeup Director Michael Westmore has worked hard over the years to give the Borg a certain look. "We want to show that the Borg are suffering," says Westmore. "They're a collective and it hurts." Where the television Borg have been more zombie-like, more often than not just walking by you, the movie Borg in "Star Trek: First Contact" were made to look more menacing. "You wouldn't want to get close to them," says Westmore.

Costumer Bob Blackman is in charge of the Borg from the neck down. Guests like Intiraymi only stand for a few measurements before shooting begins and Blackman's crew pulls out a collection of suit components that are assembled into a costume. Featured guests like Thompson are given a bit more attention. Thompson wears a refitted Borg outfit originally designed for Alice Krige in "Star Trek: First Contact." Krige's first outfit was made of a hard rubber that uncharacteristically shrank a bit in the curing process. Her first day on the set, the suit squeezed so much she almost passed out. The since-redesigned suit is a little friendlier -- but not much. ST: VOY series regular, Jeri Ryan, got extra special treatment when her Borg suit was custom-designed for her. In fact her treatment was so special, she joked at the time about having second, third and even fourth thoughts about having taken on the role.

"The first day I had to get a cast made of my head which is an experience in itself. Your head is covered with plaster for 15 minutes with only two little nostril holes, which is scary. Then they took me over and made a full-body cast which was another whole experience. Then they make a Lycra bodysuit from the full-body cast and put the rubber and the latex on to the costume. It's sprayed onto this form. I had well over a half dozen fittings for the initial costume. It really was a fascinating process. Bob Blackman is a genius. The work that he and Michael Westmore do is breathtaking."

As arduous as it is, Borgified actors say the long, grueling makeup process actually helps get into character. "Once the outfit is on," says Intiraymi, "it's so easy to play the role. You look in the mirror and you're not you anymore. You can't help but act Borg. The costume sticks to your body and you feel controlled and robotic, like you're encased in something. Parts of my skin that were showing through were airbrushed, so I'd stand up and close my eyes and pretend to be in the maturation chamber, feeling that cold blast of air."

Despite the enormous popularity of the Borg with fans, the Star Trek writers have often found them difficult to write for. The relentless collective as an episodic device doesn't last very long. In order to have dramatic confrontation that showcases Star Trek: Voyager's regular characters, for example, you have to pit them against individuals.

"The Borg aren't individuals so how do you have scenes with them?" says former Star Trek: VOY Executive Producer Jeri Taylor of her stint writing for the Borg. "I think a large part of the popularity of the Borg has to do with the fact that they just look so cool. When we first saw them, they were really scary because they seemed impervious to anything. But having established that, you'll see that in just about every story that's been told about them, some extraordinary measure has been taken to have scenes with them."

"The writers actually helped me a lot with Icheb," says Intiraymi. "As soon as I got the part, I looked at Borg episodes. Most of them have been plainly robotic, but the Borg children weren't. They weren't fully assimilated, so their minds were split between the collective and their own thoughts. I could picture Icheb's memories."

Intiraymi says his stage training helped him project Icheb, not so much in volume but in precision. "In Star Trek, everyone pronounces everything very clearly and correctly. I emphasized Icheb in a very direct way. When a Borg says something to you, it has purpose. They don't say anything irrelevant."

When Intiraymi and his fellow Borg kids first appeared in "Collective," director Allison Liddi and Jeri Ryan teamed to help teach the young actors the finer points of being Borg. "Allison would tell us that when the Borg talks to the collective, they tilt their head like this. Both she and Jeri helped with the physicality of it. Jeri is just so friendly. She's a mother figure in the scripts, but her personality is so open that it was easy to look up to her as a mother figure."

By the time Intiraymi was handed a feature role in "Child's Play," he had fleshed out more of Icheb's back-story. "He's not so conflicted anymore. The issues in the story are very simple really. He's going back to parents he doesn't know." Intiraymi says he played off the idea that his character wasn't fully assimilated in the first place. "I got to play some emotion. I was the sensitive new age Borg."

"Unimatrix Zero" will be Susanna Thompson's second appearance on the small screen as the Borg Queen. Her introduction in last season's two-hour special episode, "Dark Frontier," was one of the show's most popular episodes. Her portrayal is a blend of overlapping elements that carry over out of necessity from Alice Krige's big screen Queen and her own spin. "[Executive Producer] Brannon Braga said one little thing to me on 'Dark Frontier' that I was looking for and that was all her movements have a purpose. From that you take the words and you start to play around with it. The Queen has an almost serene calm, an omniscient energy, and yet she is most human in terms of dialogue and expression."

"Unimatrix Zero" is a cliffhanger, so the Borg will propel Star Trek: Voyager into its seventh -- and final -- season. Whether the U.S.S. Voyager makes it home or remains lost in the Delta Quadrant has yet to be settled or at least revealed. "There are a great number of repercussions in either scenario," as Executive Producer Rick Berman recently stated. "I would always like to believe that, with one season left, the best episodes are yet to come."