Seven of Nine - Character Development

Character Development

After being cast, actress Jeri Ryan acknowledged that she had hardly even seen Star Trek, and had no idea what the Borg were. To prepare her, the producers gave her a copy of Star Trek: First Contact and the Star Trek Encyclopedia.

Seven of Nine made her debut in the episode Scorpion: Part 2 (September 3, 1997) where she was introduced as a representative of the Borg in its alliance with the Voyager crew against the threatening Species 8472. After the resolution of the alien threat, she attempted contact with the Borg collective and also tried to assimilate the crew. During this process, she was severed from the collective and forced to adapt to being an individual. In the following years, the Voyager writers wrote several plot lines revolving around Seven's exploration of the positive and negative sides of human individuality. The cyborg nature of the character is seen as representing a challenge to "simple conceptions of connections/disconnections between bodies."

Ryan maintained that the main topic about Seven was "humanity" and stated that her character was pivotal to the success of the show, because she "brought conflict to the show, which was sadly lacking. ... The Voyager crew was just one big happy family." After the addition of the former Borg drone to the starship's crew at the start of the fourth season of Voyager, the shows' weekly viewer ratings increased by more than 60%. Ryan's arrival on the show was accompanied by a massive publicity campaign in TV magazines and newspaper supplements. Maintaining Star Trek tradition, "Seven of Nine was an outsider who could comment on humanity and all of its follies as well as serve as a foil for Janeway’s character." She also remarked that "combining non-human qualities with an attractive human appearance," as in Seven's character, was a great move by the producers. In terms of portrayal, she said that "keeping a straight face" while showing suppressed emotion was an enjoyable challenge. Regarding her infamous form-fitting one-piece costume, Ryan commented that it was extremely impractical and uncomfortable, but worth the reward of portraying a character like Seven.

During the course of the series, Ryan portrayed Seven as a logical, matter-of-fact, extremely blunt young woman with difficulties expressing human emotion. Seven sometimes behaved condescendingly towards "human weaknesses" and "human inefficiency", but slowly grew loyal to the crew she later called her "collective." A recurring theme writers established was flashbacks of her life before her assimilation. By the end of the series (2001), Seven develops social skills and engages in a romantic relationship with Chakotay. At this time it was also discovered by the Doctor that part of Seven's inability to feel and express emotion was due to the programming/design of Borg "cortical implants." A Borg drone that felt and/or expressed emotions was seen by the collective as "defective" as these feelings were a sign of "individuality." Hence the cortical implants were designed to suppress emotions, and if this failed, to deactivate (i.e., kill) a drone who felt/showed emotion. This discovery was made in the episode "Human Error," and the Doctor suggested that the implants could be removed during several surgical procedures, all of them risky. She declined the offer, but in the final episode "Endgame," she changed her mind after the Doctor informed her that he had been successful in combining all of the procedure into a single operation that was less risky.