One of the coolest things about Star Trek was the Borg. The original Roddenberry-era Borg, mind you, not the type they’ve been using since First Contact screwed them up. Since the original AKAKU always reminded me of the Borg, and the whole idea behind the BIONICLE® theme was based around organic robots, it was really just a matter of time before I got around to doing this.

The distinguishing features of the borg are hoses, blinking lights, funky arms that only serve one function, and mechanical eyes on one side of their face, all wrapped up in a body that’s various shades of black, grey, and silver.

One of the coolest things about doing this MOC was that I got to try making arms for a standard sized TOA that don’t actually use any of the official limbs. The gun arm is built off a standard black TECHNIC® ball joint, using a #4 angle connector to approximate the bend in the original TOA leg. It’s got a communications receiver built in to home in on enemy communications, built-in viewports so the Borg Warrior can see exactly what the gun is pointed at, a heat-dissipation coil to keep it running in a long fire-fight, and little buttons for…well, for something (hey not everything on a standard Borg costume has an obvious function beyond looking like it does something that would only be important to a Borg).

Hoses were actually a lot tricker than I originally thought. There are a lot more connection points on the original TOA torso than on the METRU torso, but most of them are just far enough apart that the hoses can’t reach. I blame it more on the shortness of the hoses that I was using than on the placement of the connection points.