The Borg are such a juggernaut. When one fights an enemy in war, one generally has an adversary that may be irrational, but that plays by some kind of rules. The Borg is a bee colony and it's a self sustaining entity. The entire colony has one purpose: to absorb everything in its path and make itself stronger. Intellect is of no use unless it helps the collective learn something. All sentient life is meaningless. They are the dead look in the shark's eye. As we will see later, they do speak and threaten. "Resistance is useless" is the response to all. In this episode we realize that the Federation has been anticipation this threat for a long time and decides to send its full arsenal at the Borg. The results of that and the future of Picard are the issues in the first half of this episode. At this point, the show kicked into a different gear, putting great stresses on all involved and confronting an entity that would haunt, not just the people in this series, but the Voyager crew as well.