Tell me about designing the Borg.

We didn�t know what we were getting into with the inital description in the script. The description was that the Borg ship was not in chambers like our ship, it didn�t have a bridge, the Borg are very powerful, they are part organic, and part mechanical. They are a collective, they think as one unit. The ship and the Borg are a unit. And the ship was described as a vast endless chamber of Borg, as far up as you could see and as far down as you could see and as far forward as you can see.

I thought, well maybe we�ll do this all by mirrors. I spent a week by myself at the studio, and I felt if I did something that looked the same high up as it was far down and from side to side, and endless forward it would work, and so it was just a repeat. Everything on the set was repeated over and over and over. It was a series of alcoves where the Borg would plug in and become part of the ship.

The ship had to look part organic and part mechanical, as well as the Borg themselves, so that they blended together. Duranda Woods was the costume designer, and she picked up elements of the flex hoses that were in panels and in the alcoves. She reinforced the costumes with that, so that once they got plugged in they became part of the set.

On one element which was for over the head I used an antique art deco hair dryer as the base. It looked kind of like a helmet. That was the mould, and I repeated that, so that it looked like it got to the brain. Then the actors literally would plug in to the set. It was a way to make it graphically look like they became part of the ship.