Evolving the Borg costumes

The Borg started with Derinder Wood, and she came up with a jump suit, out of a fabric called popcorn spandex, it�s pebbly. She had so little time to do it, it�s amazing how wonderfully they turned out, those original Borg.

She then went to a lot of special effects houses, and found moulds and things, and they made rubber pieces that had the male side of velcro embedded in them, and then using a kind of split cable, she would just plant them on - not unlike a children�s felt board, you would stick these items on them, and then you would run the cords between them, and when they first appeared on The Next Generation, in the second season, that�s how they were done.

The first time they used them, I think it took two hours per Borg, to get them dressed, because they were figuring it out, getting these sort of cod pieces on, getting all of these shoulder pieces, the chest pieces, and all the bits that went between them. So, I then got that as the legacy, and I had to slowly but surely figure out ways to condense the imagery, and make them get more sophisticated along the way.

Yhe suits originally were a very dark olive colour, and the plant-ons were black with metallic highlights and bits on them. I changed the suits to black, so that the spaces in between became visually less, so it looked like it was more organic rather than a suit with things stuck on it. And then, bit by bit, I started colouring it and rusting them out. Eventually we made them into more unit-ised suits. There were still things that had to be planted on, but they became more worn, so they were quicker to get in and out of.

Then, First Contact came along and Deborah Everton took that image, that history, and evolved it into a two piece suit, so that people could get in and out, and they became much more monsteresque. Part of the problems was doing stunts in them when they were plant-ons - bits would be flying.