what if u dropped acid with a sentient space probe in ur 40s and god was like hey instead of purging all emotion have u considered just kissing a man

So I found the Star Trek original motion picture soundtrack vinyl on sale the other day and obviously had to get it. I love finding stuff like this!

There's just a loose picture of the enterprise inside:

Also on the sleeve, there's pictures of aliens featured in the film, and some v'ger scenes, and then this picture of Chekov:

There's no other scene photos of the main cast, theres no pictures of Kirk or Spock (except for a full cast photo on the back of the record), why did they include this picture of Chekov??

SYD MEAD

Enterprise Incidents #8 - Enterprise over V'Ger by Mahlon Fawcett

Feeling totally normal about V'ger sensing Kirk/Spock mutually pining across light years, and making Spirk its whole personality.

Wow V'Ger origin story

Ryu Number: V'ger and Voyager

If I had a nickel for every time the consciousness derived from a Voyager probe qualified for a Ryu Number, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - V'Ger Concept Art by Mike Minor

The V'Ger model from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, by Eaglemoss Collections.

It'd be great to have an itty bitty USS Enterprise model to go with it for scale.

Voyager 2, which left Earth nearly 46 years ago, stopped receiving or transmitting communications in July, when controllers accidentally sent a command that shifted its antenna 2 degrees away from Earth.

“We shouted 12.3 billion miles into interstellar space, instructing it to turn its antenna back to Earth, and after 37 hours, we found out it worked!”

NASA said its highest-powered transmitter at NASA’s huge dish Deep Space Network facility in the Australian capital, Canberra, “sent the equivalent of an interstellar ‘shout’” to Voyager 2 — a round-trip communication that required some 18.5 hours each way, for the command to reach the probe and to hear back.

“The spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/05/nasa-voyager2-contact-interstellar-shout/

Mirror V'Ger

I know that even producers were willing to believe the possibility that V'Ger and the Borg had some connection, and that it's occasionally been used in various non-canon material, but honestly? I don't buy in to the idea. V'Ger showed no consideration that "carbon units" were even life - it referred to the crew of the Enterprise as "infesting" the ship, believing that technology alone was the only form of life. That doesn't fit with the Borg MO.

Even with the idea that the Borg originally were only interested in technology, I don't think it fits either, considering the way that the Borg were still conscious of the drones as serving a function on their vessel - again, V'Ger seemed to see the "carbon units" of the Enterprise as an infestation, as something leeching off the ship, rather than being part of the ship's functions.

Not only that, but the Borg wouldn't seem to be the type to upgrade V'Ger and let it loose again - they'd assimilate it and take it into themselves, there's no reason for them to allow it to go on its way and continue its mission.

Also, I refuse to believe that it only took V'Ger roughly three centuries to reach the point that it "learned all that could be learned," so I've always believed that the black hole or wormhole or whatever it went through to cross space also sent it through time, which could very easily mean it went to a point pre-Borg - Voyager's Dragon Teeth indicated that about a millennia prior, the Borg held only a fraction of the space they did, so the Borg as a galactic superpower happened relatively (on a galactic scale) recently.

So I'm comfortable saying that V'Ger encountered a machine race unrelated to the Borg. Maybe the Borg later encountered this race and incorporated them into the Collective, but in this scenario, that would have been something that came AFTER V'Ger's upgrade, not prior to.

STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE (1979)

Star Trek Online - Mirror V'Ger Concept Art by Nick Guguid

Aft view of V’ger by Steve Burg, who digitally recreated the mysterious intruder for Star Trek: The Special Edition.

I'm convinced V'Ger created the Borg/is the Borg nobody touch me