Voyager vs. Plato's Allegory of the Cave

"We are the Borg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."

Plato's allegory of the cave begins like this: a group of prisoners has been held in a cave their whole lives, chained facing a blank wall. Behind them burns a fire. Normal civilians pass by the cave every day, going about their daily lives, herding animals, carrying tools and instruments,  and these images are projected as shadows across the wall of the cavern. The prisoners identify the objects, giving them name and meaning, believing these shadows to be the objects themselves.  One day, a prisoner is set free and brought outside. Faced with new color and dimension, he finds the real world unsettling and is in denial about the fact that the shadows he has seen are mere reflections of real objects. However, he eventually adjusts to this new reality. When he goes back into the cave, his previous environment is too dark to see clearly and he can't make out the images on the wall. His fellow prisoners meet him with contempt and refuse to join him in the real world.

The story arc of the character Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager can be compared to Plato’s allegory of the cave. In the Star Trek universe, the Borg are a vast collection of cybernetic organisms who survive and reproduce by forcibly assimilating members of other species into their collective. They give them neural and physiological implants, transforming them into automatonic drones. The collective works in a hive mind, combining all relevant knowledge of the individuals into their collective consciousness.

Toward the end of its third year in the Delta Quadrant, Voyager encounters an unknown species that appears to be destroying Borg vessels. This is highly daunting, as the Borg are constantly adapting as to be virtually indestructible. Captain Janeway proposes an alliance with the Borg to help defeat this species - known by the Borg as Species #8472 - in exchange for safe passage through Borg territory. Seven of Nine is a drone chosen to make contact with Janeway to help them develop a weapon. At one point she attempts to assimilate Voyager, but First officer Chakotay cuts off her telepathic connection to the Borg collective. As a result of the severance, her body begins rejecting the Borg technology. In order to save her life, The Doctor has to remove the implants and allow her human biology to reassert itself. From that point on, Janeway decides to integrate her into the crew of Voyager.

Before leaving the cave and entering the real world, Seven has a certain perception of humanity, the only version she can see from inside the collective. She sees humans as weak, chaotic, incapable of working cohesively as a unit. Captain Janeway is the one who pulls Seven out of the cave, albeit against her will and shows her the truth and beauty of what it means to be human. More importantly, Seven learns what it means to be an individual, in charge of her own path and choices. Though Seven is occasionally lured to rejoin the collective, she can no longer see the Borg the same way and knows in her heart that the life she has entered is better than the existence she left behind. I think the Borg collective can be compared to the cave because of the straightforward, unquestioning nature of the inhabitants. In the cave, the images and prisoners consist only of shadow and light. Their perception of the world is literally black and white. Once released from the cave, the prisoner realizes the complexity and depth of reality, in the same way Seven experiences emotion, empathy, and morality for the first time.