Species 8472 in Voyager: were they really invaders?

Species 8472 are remembered as the invaders of Star Trek: Voyager, the aliens who told us our galaxy would be purged and then built a full replica of Starfleet Headquarters, right down to a fake Boothby. Apparently even alien infiltration needs someone to yell at cadets about flowerbeds. At first glance it looks like a dress rehearsal for an invasion of Earth. But when I break it down, I don't think they were planning an invasion at all. Voyager gave them every reason to. Maybe they should have.

Say Species 8472 to most Star Trek fans and the first word you'll hear back is invasion. The series, starring Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway, introduced them in the two part "Scorpion" in 1997. That reputation didn't come from nowhere. It may come from Kes suffering and warning that they meant to destroy everything, or from the line that stuck with everyone: your galaxy will be purged.

How Scorpion introduced Species 8472 like a horror movie

Voyager presents them like a horror film, and the first thing we see isn't the monster. It's what the monster left behind. Before anyone on Voyager faces them, Kes starts having visions and warns that Harry is in danger. Then 15 Borg cubes pass Voyager at maximum speed. One slows down long enough to scan the ship, decides it isn't worth the trouble and moves on. Later, Voyager finds all 15 cubes destroyed.

The Borg tactical data fills in the rest: 12 engagements in five months, and the Borg lost every one. By the next episode, the Collective is reading out losses from a single battle: eight planets destroyed, 312 ships disabled and more than 4 million drones killed. This is the species that made "resistance is futile" its motto, and something out there beats them every time they show up.

Kes is the only one who can hear what that something is thinking. The first message she receives from a bioship pilot is "The weak will perish." Then 133 bioships pour through the Northwest Passage at once. She connects with the whole fleet, hears the same words again and learns why they are there: it's an invasion, and they intend to destroy everything. If you saw "Scorpion" once, as most of us did in 1997, that's the whole picture: a species slaughtering the Borg at will and looking genocidal toward everyone. On its face, it's terrifying, and it's the version everyone remembers.

The Borg started the war with Species 8472 in fluidic space

Part one of "Scorpion" spends its whole running time asking who could do this to the Borg. Part two answers a question nobody on Voyager thought to ask: who really started it? Once Voyager is pulled into fluidic space, Seven of Nine seems to know the place well, and Chakotay realizes it. He asks whether our galaxy wasn't big enough for them, and whether they had to conquer new territory.

Seven doesn't deny it, which for a Borg drone counts as a plain confession. The Borg invaded fluidic space first, tried to assimilate Species 8472 and found them more resistant than expected. In Borg language, that means we started a fight and lost. Tuvok sums up the result neatly: instead of assimilating these aliens, the Borg opened a door for them into our galaxy. Basically, the Borg kicked the door in, then got upset about what came through it.

Go back to the Northwest Passage and to what Kes heard before the cold hatred and the invasion. She describes them as living somewhere they are completely alone, where nothing else lives. Asked if it's some kind of parallel universe, she says she doesn't know. That's their home as Kes describes it, a realm with no neighbors. As far as the show reveals, the Borg were the first outsiders to arrive, and they came to assimilate. We never learn what Species 8472 were doing before that, but we know who showed up uninvited. That changes the first half of "Scorpion". Those 15 cubes racing past Voyager were heading to a war the Borg started, and each of those 12 lost engagements was a fight the Borg chose.

First contact from the side of Species 8472

Let's try something Voyager never did and look at first contact from the other side. Until Voyager appears, everything Species 8472 knows about our galaxy comes from the Borg, a species that came to their home to strip them of everything they are. Keep in mind too that every hostile word we've heard from them so far came through a single telepathic intermediary, Kes, and from a species in the middle of a war it didn't start.

So how does Voyager introduce itself? It sends one standard hail to the bioship docked on a Borg cube. There's no response, and that's the end of diplomacy. Voyager then sends an away team to the cube, has two of them walk around inside the bioship itself, and puts Harry Kim at a Borg access point to download the Borg tactical database. Imagine coming home to find strangers in your house going through the files of the person who just tried to kill you.

The member of Species 8472 that bursts through the wall isn't on a Starfleet hunt. It kills drones first, and Harry happens to be standing next to one. That's a battlefield, not an ambush. We don't even know whether that individual knew Voyager had sent a hail. It was a bit busy at the time. What it would have seen is a species it had never met standing on an enemy ship, plugged into enemy systems, while some of its crew wandered all over its own vessel.

Why I think the first bioship attack on Voyager was a warning

As Voyager escapes, the bioship detaches and powers up. Kes says its pilot is trying to communicate with her, and what reaches her is the same line: "The weak will perish." The bioship fires twice. The first shot misses. The second hits Voyager's shields hard enough to knock the ship out of control. Then nothing. Voyager goes to warp and the bioship doesn't follow.

Remember that, because in part two, once Species 8472 have a reason to want Voyager dead, a single bioship nearly finishes the job. If you want my opinion, that first attack was a warning. They knocked Voyager out of control and then let it go.

Janeway's nanoprobe weapon and her alliance with the Borg

So how does Starfleet respond to all this? It immediately starts work on a way to wipe them out. The boarding pays off at once. Tuvok's scans show the bioship is made of the same tissue as the aliens themselves, so the Doctor's modified nanoprobes, the treatment that just saved Harry Kim, can destroy their ships too. Janeway hands that finding to the Borg as part of a deal she has already made, which is a sentence that should make everyone nervous.

Even Janeway's restraint has limits. When the Borg propose a mine big enough to wipe out an entire star system, she refuses, because it would kill innocents on worlds that have nothing to do with this war. Her alternative is a few smaller strikes, enough to show Species 8472 they aren't invincible, in the hope of convincing them to back off. That's restraint toward everyone except the species she's targeting.

Meanwhile, Species 8472 get into Kes's mind, and the Doctor realizes they may now know about the nanoprobes. If someone were building a weapon designed specifically to kill your species, that's exactly what you'd go looking for. Shortly afterward, a single bioship emerges, ignores the Borg cube and heads straight for Voyager. Shields and weapons go down in one attack, and the cube has to put itself in the line of fire. The Borg taking a hit for Voyager tells you how badly they need this deal. From the point of view of Species 8472, it's one more case of the Borg willing to sacrifice themselves for Starfleet.

The Scorpion moment I think gets overlooked

Voyager is pulled into fluidic space, Seven admits the Borg started this war, and Chakotay confronts Janeway as soon as she wakes. In part one he had already objected to the alliance, saying it would hand an advantage to a race guilty of killing billions. Now he has proof they started this fight too. He wants to open a way home. Janeway's answer: "There's no other way out of this, Chakotay. It's too late for opinions. It's too late for discussion. It's time for a decision, and I'm making it. We will fight the aliens in full cooperation with the Borg."

Janeway decides to fight them right there, in their own realm. When four bioships arrive, they speak through Kes and tell Voyager it has contaminated their realm. Janeway has Kes reply that Voyager had no choice and was only defending itself. Species 8472 answer that our galaxy threatens their genetic integrity. Janeway's next message is a threat. She tells them about the weapons and says she will use them if the attack doesn't stop. Then, and only then, comes the line everyone remembers: your galaxy will be purged.

Look at the order. That line comes after Voyager has parked in their home with a Borg drone on the bridge and torpedoes built to kill them, and after its captain has claimed self defense and followed it with a threat. One way to read purge is as an answer to all of that, aimed at the galaxy that sent the Borg and has now sent this. Put the steps side by side. Voyager boards and scans their ships, and they fire twice and let it go. Voyager builds a weapon from that scan, and one ship comes to stop it. Voyager sits in their realm and threatens them, and they promise to purge the galaxy. Every escalation in their hostility toward humanity follows something Voyager did.

Prey and the dying member of Species 8472 handed to the Hirogen

With all that said, I don't think you can judge a whole species by two episodes. The next time one of them gets a voice, it threatens no one. Six months after "Scorpion", Voyager meets another in "Prey", which opens with a single bioship fleeing a Hirogen hunting party. The Hirogen had studied this ship for six months and tracked it across 50 light years. Two days before Voyager showed up, they captured it. It broke its restraints, attacked its captors and escaped. When Voyager found the Hirogen ship, only one hunter was still alive. So yes, it killed at least one Hirogen, while escaping captivity after months of being hunted for sport.

Then think about what it climbed into next. Voyager had just rescued the surviving hunter and put him in sickbay. The wounded member of Species 8472 forces its way through Voyager's hull, and in engineering it injures four crew, two of them seriously. That happened, and I don't want to pretend it didn't. But it was trapped on a ship full of the species that made the weapon that drove its people out, a ship that had just taken in the hunter chasing it.

What it does next tells us why it was really there. Seven explains how Species 8472 fought aboard Borg ships: they always targeted and disabled the central power matrix. This one never touched Voyager's power. It holed up on deck 11, cut gravity and life support to keep its pursuers away, and tried to use the deflector to open a way back home. It failed. When Tuvok finally makes telepathic contact, the story comes out. Its ship was damaged fighting the Borg, it was left behind when the others withdrew to fluidic space, it has been hunted ever since, and it's dying.

Janeway does the decent thing here. She calls the hunt a slaughter, tells the Hirogen the creature is under Voyager's protection and orders Seven to help open a way home for it. Seven refuses. Six Hirogen ships cripple Voyager, the Alpha frees himself, and in the chaos Seven transports hunter and hunted to the Hirogen. The attack stops. Janeway tells Seven she disobeyed a direct order and caused the death of a sentient being. But I want to be clear: Seven may have saved the ship, and Janeway admits there's no way to know. Species 8472 don't see the argument in the briefing room or the punishment in the cargo bay. What they see is another of their people, alone and dying, ending up on a Starfleet ship and being handed to the people hunting it. You can read Seven's choice as the Borg way of settling things, but from their side, the uniform is the only part that matters.

Species 8472 wearing human faces in the Starfleet replica

More than a year after "Scorpion", Voyager finds Species 8472 again, and this time they're wearing our faces. This is the Starfleet Headquarters replica with the fake Boothby. Their intelligence is recent enough to include a Ferengi cadet and old enough to miss the new uniforms, but nobody's perfect. Chakotay goes undercover, and on his way out he and Tuvok abduct an ensign named Gentry. In the treatment room, Gentry sticks to his story like a prisoner of war: name, rank, serial number and his homeworld, Earth. When he realizes he isn't leaving, he backs against the wall screaming: "No. Don't touch me. Disease. Humans." Then he releases a poison into his bloodstream and dies.

He doesn't attack them. Remember that. Maybe he was protecting what he knew, but my reading is a bit simpler: he was terrified of his captors and preferred death to finding out what they'd do to him next. Chakotay goes on a date with one of the trainees, Commander Valerie Archer, who isn't shy about her view of us. She says humans make beautiful art and music, but they're violent and quick to attack any species outside their Federation. To his credit, Chakotay keeps a straight face through dinner. She has also been offered a post on a Klingon ship, which tells you the program isn't limited to Earth. They're studying the great powers.

Not everyone there is so thoughtful. The hardliners talk about being ready in weeks, maybe days, and their case against us is short: we allied with the Borg and invaded their realm. Neither charge is easy to dismiss. Janeway looks at the same kind of evidence and reaches the same conclusion from the other side. A training ground imitating Starfleet officers looks like an invasion, maybe of Earth itself, and she considers Voyager the last line of defense. It's a reasonable reading. It's also the same reading Species 8472 made about Voyager.

Janeway's Directive 010 claim against Voyager's own record

Seven starts mass producing nanoprobes, stronger than the last batch. To Janeway's credit, when it comes to the confrontation she refuses to target their life support. Then she sits in her ready room and weighs it against Directive 010: exhaust every diplomatic option before engaging an alien race in battle. With Species 8472, she tells Seven, they tried diplomacy and barely survived.

Let's check the logs. Voyager sent one automated greeting and got no reply. Every word after that came through Kes. After learning the Borg started the war, Janeway said it was too late for discussion. In fluidic space she threatened them and destroyed 17 bioships. Real talks only began when Chakotay was caught spying and Voyager turned up with armed warheads. That's the diplomacy she credits under Directive 010.

How the peace talks with Species 8472 played out

In the meeting room, Species 8472 make their case. Admiral Bullock accuses Voyager of infiltrating their recreation area and capturing and killing one of their people. Gentry ended his own life, but he was only in Voyager's sickbay because they abducted him. Bullock goes on: Voyager built biological weapons to kill them and allied with the Borg. Boothby looks across the table at Seven. Janeway tells them Seven is no longer part of the Collective, and the reply is that the Borg aren't the problem. Humans are the real threat.

Every point Janeway makes is rejected and answered. So she does something neither side has done since "Scorpion". She orders the warheads disarmed and says someone has to take their finger off the trigger, and she'll go first. That changes the mood in the room. Archer admits the mission is reconnaissance. Bullock still refuses to take part, and Archer asks whether he'd rather risk another war. Boothby agrees to terms: Voyager's nanoprobe technology, which he admits terrifies him, in exchange for their genetic disguise technology. He can't promise his superiors will listen. He can only tell them what happened and hope to win some of them over.

Executive producer Brannon Braga described the story as finding peace between two suspicious races pushed into conflict by a common enemy, the Borg. Writer Nick Sagan built it on Cold War fears and the hope of détente.

Why I think only one side gets remembered as the monster

Go back over everything Species 8472 told us. The weak will perish. Your galaxy will be purged. You are a disease, humans. It sounded like a species announcing genocide. But when they finally sat across the table from us, they explained it in plain words: they were only trying to protect themselves.

Voyager said the same thing about itself in fluidic space, right before threatening them. Both sides spied, built weapons and called it self defense. So I find it ironic that only one of them is remembered as the monster.