Personally I found the classic white faced Borg (Locutus, Hugh, really any from TNG series) to be far more compelling and frightening than the pus filled, green Borg. The EMH's remarks about "According to Starfleet Medical Databases, Borg implants are extremely irritating to the skin. I could prescribe an analgesic" or words to the effect- while they are certainly plausible- doesn't help me accept the "new" Borg. yeah yeah I know they've been around longer than the originals in terms of air time. but I found them more disturbing in that they still LOOKED human, not alien. Assimilation was a slow, multi stepped process that was humiliating, painful, certain to break a spirit... later it was just, ZAP! I've stuck you with some tubes, you are assimilated. No drama, no sense of loss. What do you think?

I also liked the TV (white faced) Borg better. To me they actually looked spookier than the "green" ones!

I suspect that the pasty Borg didn't translate well to the big screen. They always looked to me to be essentially cybernetic zombies – dead beings animated by machines rather than living tissue and machines interdependent with each other. (And, now that I think about it, that just makes them even more creepy.) I would guess that having a real budget to play with, as well as more time for development, allowed the makeup people something that could play up their organic aspects as well. Plus, like I said, I don't think the TV solution would look terribly good in a film.

As regards the increased pace of assimilation, I think the montage in First Contact covered that rather well, what with the shots of people getting limbs chopped off, people getting their eyes replaced, etc. Some nanoprobes are enough to enslave you, but it takes work to turn you into a real Borg.

Dunno,I think the movie and Voyager version of the Borg were a little better and scarier than
the TNG version were.
The first time I saw the Borg on TNG it reminded me too much of Col. Klink!

I like the TV borg better as well. Cold, mechanical, faceless, all male (It's really freaky when females don't need males to reproduce, that means Kirk and Riker will prove the superiority of our way, but when men figure out how to reproduce without women, that is a true abomination of infernal technology), more like insects and without any emotion. But then again, there are only three true Borg episodes. "Q-Who", which introduces us to them, shows us what they can do, and that even the Enterprise crew is helpless agaist them. Do you remember how they ignored the crew? Do you remember who Riker found the Borg baby? "Best of Both Worlds" which may be Trek's finest Hour, that was just scary. Finally, "I, Borg", which showed another side to the Borg, and explored Hugh, the collective, individualty. Everything after that is just an excuse to reuse the outfits or raise ratings.

What didn't make sense was that in the TV show, the Borg added a Borg-prosthesis arm ON TOP of Picard's natural arm...yet in the movie "First Contact", we saw dismembered crewmembers getting Borg-prosthesis arms where their natural arms used to be! Why the change?

Budget.

Picard's a cast regular, you know...same reason the Ceti eel didn't kill Chekov, the lightning and the plant spikes didn't kill Spock ("The Apple"), etc.

Personaly, I like the Stage 2 Borg best.
(Stage 1- Q Who- White faced borg with complete metal scullcaps. They looked like they were pool caps. Ugh.

Stage 2- Best of Both Worlds to Descent- White faced Borg with metal Ring around their head, a suspended eyepiece, and the white skull top visible. Locutus look.

Stage 3- First Contactto present- Green/Gray veined skin, no headpiece, bald and ridgy skull with a directly attached eye-piece. While these Borg are more intimidating, I still liked the look of Stage 2 better.)


Answer for Picard's arm- the Borg Queen didn't want her Locutus to be mutilated like that. (the Borg Queen is an excellent scapegoat for any unusual Borg choices, thank goodness!)

This is probably as good a place as any to put this...

In my opinion, these are the major Borg episodes which were done well, not so well and...er...Voyager.

TNG:
'Q Who': great
'Best of Both Worlds': best episode of Trek ever
'I Borg': a bit iffy
'Descent': shades of Voyager, though it wasn't the whole collective

DS9:
'Emissary': correctly done

First Contact: First part of the movie fine, latter half iffy because of the ridiculous queen concept.

VGR:
'Blood Fever': brilliant (the Borg bit, not the rest of the episode!) because it was so unexpected.
'Unity': correctly, NextGenly done
'Scorpion': VGR's equivalent of 'BoBW' and almost as good...correctly done with collective voice rather than queen...at this point 7of9 actually seemed a sensible addition
'Hope and Fear': correctly done with collective voice and 'they keep coming'...
'Drone': also correctly done for same reasons and Voyager couldn't beat the Borg sphere on its own.
'Infinite Regress': AWFUL! TNG spent ages going on about how Borg ships are completely decentralised with loads of redundant systems, and now it seems each cube has ONE CENTRAL PROCESSOR?!!
'Dark Frontier': Transwarp iffy. Don't like a Borg ship that Voyager can beat quite easily. Unicomplex okay, Borg queenship silly (not a simple geometric shape).
'Unimatrix Zero': Bad for same reason as above - and also the ONE CENTRAL PROCESSOR shows up again, but now it's something completely different!!!
'Endgame': It was future technology, but the Borg seemed defeated too easily. The transwarp hub didn't make sense with the type of transwarp seen earlier, but I liked the fractal design. As with Unimatrix Zero, the queen and collective seemed capricious and irrational. Maybe that Species 6339 virus did more damage than they thought!

ENT:
'Regeneration': I was sure this would be awful, but it actually worked quite well. No queen, and it actually makes sense that the 'primitive' phase pistols would be more effective against the Borg (remember Picard's tommy gun?). The only problem was that Phlox was assimilated oh-so-slowly and then found a handy-dandy cure. Why not just sacrifice a semi-regular guest crewman and not have to implausibly bring someone back like that?