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Jeri Ryan's 25-Year 'Star Trek' Legacy: Seven of Nine's Best Moments on 'Voyager' & 'Picard' (Flashback)

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Jeri Ryan kicked off a new chapter of Star Trek: Voyager when Seven of Nine, an ex-Borg drone on the long road back to her humanity, was transported onto the wayward Intrepid class ship 25 years ago.

To celebrate this milestone and the indelible mark the character left on Gene Roddenberry’s universe, ET is looking back at Ryan’s groundbreaking introduction and Seven’s journey to becoming one of the franchise’s most important stories. 

In VOY ’s season three finale ("Scorpion" Part I"), a game-changing cliffhanger teased a brand new era for Captain Janeway ( Kate Mulgrew ) and crew. As part of a peace agreement, the Borg offered a liaison to Voyager as the ship continued traversing the Delta quadrant. While expanding a core  Star Trek ensemble had been done before -- Worf (Michael Dorn) hopped off the Enterprise to join the cast of Deep Space Nine just a couple years earlier -- introducing an original character mid-run was a brand new move.

“I think after our first three years, the feeling was we wanted to add a bit of pizzazz to the show,” Star Trek executive producer Rick Berman explained to ET in 1997. “We all agreed that we needed something to bring something fresh to the fourth season.”

As Berman told it, VOY was lacking one of Star Trek ’s most successful archetypes. The Next Generation had Data (Brent Spiner), an android embedded with the pursuit of what it means to be mortal. The original series had Mr. Spock ( Leonard Nimoy ), whose inherent half-Vulcan, half-human dichotomy highlighted both the grace, as well as the faults, of the former and latter. 

In search of what next iteration of this tradition could be, VOY producers flipped the script. “When we looked at what was possible, we realized the Borg were a group who had never failed to excite both the fans and the non-fans alike,” Berman said.

In June 1997, Ryan’s casting as Seven of Nine was officially announced.

“I don't think there's anybody in my generation who is not at least familiar with Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry and his vision,” Ryan told ET that summer. While Star Trek auditions are legendary for being quite the ordeal, she said her consideration was “not that arduous of a process,” which involved just a few readings for producers and the network (UPN, which later combined with The WB to become The CW) before landing the role. 

For Ryan, a lot of the TV landscape at the time was “dark” and “really pessimistic,” which made her excited to expand the franchise’s sincere, optimistic view of the future. “It should open up some interesting possibilities with the storylines, because [Seven] was raised, basically, as a machine… It should be really interesting,” Ryan said. 

IT GETS INTERESTING

Shortly after filming began on the season 4 premiere, “Scorpion Part II,” Ryan ended up in the hospital. 

While Seven’s mainstay wardrobe throughout the series had its own brand of infamy, Ryan’s full-body Borg costume and makeup prosthetics for her character’s introduction proved to be the most dangerous.

“The costume is very snug. And it's rubber and it's very thick,” Ryan explained to ET weeks later. As she recalled, the Borg costume was especially constrictive around the neck and the on-set emergency stemmed from moving her head in one direction just a little too long. “It apparently cut off my carotid artery and brought on a blackout,” she said.

There were other issues with Seven’s costume in that first week, but, thankfully, they were simply the result of Ryan having fun with her new castmates.

”It's their fourth year together, so it could have been very awkward,” Ryan said. “[But] they couldn't be any nicer. Any more welcoming. And every single one of them is a comedian, so it's a lot of fun. A lot of laughing. They kept making my eye piece pop off when I was in the Borg costume, because I kept laughing.” 

As for Seven’s captain, her integration was a welcome change of pace on-screen and behind the scenes. 

“It's impossible not to be nice to her. She's a kick. She's my kind of gal, frankly,” Mulgrew told ET in 1997. “I think the idea behind it was that Janeway would finally have somebody, as Picard had Data, to relate to in terms of developing relationship. And Seven of Nine is half-Borg, half-human. It's wonderful. It's filled with conflict and tension to begin with."

Mulgrew also revealed her words of wisdom to Ryan upon joining the ensemble. “I think what I said to her originally was, first of all, laughter is the only balm. It's the only way to get through this,” she recalled. “And I said take a deep breath, because this will end soon. And then you can relax and fly with it.” 

THE DELTA CHRONICLES

When it came to Seven fostering a relationship with Janeway, as well as her attempts to be more human, VOY opted for a slow and steady approach. As Ryan’s finished out her first season, she said the character is picking up where her six-year-old, pre-Borg self left off. 

“This is Seven experiencing a lot of growing pains, because emotionally she's a child,” Ryan told to ET in 1998. “This is her sort of hitting her preteen years and not really knowing where she belongs. She's not really a Borg. She's not really a human. How does she feel about potentially going back to Earth? And she lashes out at the authority figure -- Janeway. “

She added, “It has been a wild ride. That's for sure. It's been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed myself, but it has been crazy.”

The next few years wouldn’t get any less intense for Ryan or her on-screen counterpart. In the seasons that followed, Seven found herself wrestling with one existential crisis after another. Whether it was fending off the Borg Queen’s temptations to rejoin the collective or preparing to go on her first date, she always came out the other end a little less broken or, at least, a little less Borg.

There was also that time she wrestled The Rock . 

“[I’ve] beaten Stone Cold Steve Austin on numerous occasions. The Undertaker. Mankind. The list goes on and on and on,” Dwayne Johnson told ET on the set of "Tsunkatse" in 1999. “But [Ryan,] she's probably one of the toughest, if not, dare I say, the toughest The Rock has ever faced.”

Alongside the character’s many breakthroughs, Ryan noted that what made Seven’s journey unique was her passive attitude toward recapturing her humanity.

“I don't think it's so much that Seven really, really wants to be human. It's the fact that she is and she doesn't really have a choice now that she's not a Borg anymore,” she told ET in 1999. “She realizes that the Borg wasn't such a great thing in hindsight. She's just sort of taking what she sees as an inevitable course.”

THAT’S A WRAP

In 2001, the Voyager crew was set to finally return to the Alpha Quadrant. And like TNG and DS9 before them, VOY prepared to say goodbye to fans after seven seasons on the air.

“We've had a couple days that were a little bittersweet,” Ryan told ET on the set of “Endgame,” VOY ’s series finale. “I've been with these people for four years and they've been together for seven. And you really do become like a family, because you see them more than your family.”

Ryan added with a laugh, “I won't miss the corset.”

At VOY ’s wrap party, Ryan reflected on the end of her four-year journey, which also corresponded with the beginning of the end for Star Trek ’s television renaissance at the time.  

“This has been a wonderful, wonderful ride and I will miss these people so much, because I've made such dear friends,” Ryan said. “But I think it's time to move on. “

HELLO, CHATEAU

Nearly 20 years after VOY ended, Ryan was called back into service. Following the debut of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, Sir Patrick Stewart returned to help shepherd another pivotal moment for the franchise. To everyone’s complete surprise, the first trailer for Star Trek: Picard in 2019 revealed Seven of Nine was part of the new series. But as Ryan tells it, no one was more shocked than her to see the character on TV again.

"I did four years on Voyager and I really thought that was it," Ryan explained to ET  in March . "And when I said goodbye to the character, then I really thought that was it. I was saying goodbye to that character."

Bringing the two characters together made sense to fans on many levels, but no more so than their shared history as victims of the Borg. As one moment in season 1 of STP conveyed (“Stardust City Rag”), both characters live with PTSD from their experiences.

Seven: After they brought you back from your time in the Collective, do you honestly feel that you've regained your humanity?

Picard: Yes.

Seven: All of it?

Picard: No. But we're both working on it, aren't we?

Seven: Every damn day of my life.

"[Stewart]'s a legend, obviously, and these two characters, it was exciting to get these two characters, especially, together in this world," she shared. 

On STP , Ryan’s been able to perform several full-circle moments for the ex-Borg-formerly-known-as-Annika, as well as portraying some of her most evolutionary and unbeknownst insights. Some of these are tragic, such as the death of her ex-Borg protege, Ichab, while others are well-deserved new horizons. Even amid the chaotic events of season 2, which saw Q (John de Lancie) throwing nearly every trademark Star Trek crisis at the La Sirena crew, Seven cultivated her romance with Raffi (Michelle Hurd) and re-upped her commitment to Picard’s latest band of interstellar explorers. 

"It's crazy. That's a really rare gift as an actor," Ryan said. "It was a rare gift to begin with to have a character that was so beautifully written and had so much growth, since she didn't even start out human. But then to be able to revisit her this many years later and continue her journey, It's been pretty astonishing."

Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Picard both stream on Paramount+. 

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The Entire Seven Of Nine Timeline Explained

For a character who joined the main cast in the fourth season of Star Trek: Voyager , Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) has since become a major icon in the Star Trek franchise. The former Borg drone has been compared to a "Spock"-type character for her outsider's perspective on human events or even a former cultist struggling to regain her individuality. Her form-fitting catsuit has also drawn criticism from some fans, who feel she was over-sexualized in her initial appearances.

While all of these perspectives offer insights into Seven's character, none of them paint a whole picture of a woman who first appears in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Scorpion, Part II," regains her humanity with the Voyager crew, and later evolves into a very different character on Star Trek: Picard. Seven has been a frightening cybernetic monster, a mother-figure, and even a vigilante action hero. She has striven to rediscover her humanity while helping others discover theirs, and has become the object of affection for many people (while struggling with relationships herself).

Clearly such a complex character has a rich history full of trauma and triumph. If you'd like to learn more about the woman who became so much more than just another Borg drone, here is Seven of Nine's entire timeline explained.

The exobiologists' daughter

While most people know her as Seven of Nine, Seven was born Annika Hansen in the year 2350 to exobiologists Magnus and Erin Hansen. In the Star Trek: Voyager season 5 episode "Dark Frontier," we learn that in 2356, Annika's parents took their young daughter on a deep space mission to study the cybernetic race of creatures known as the Borg.

Using the U.S.S. Raven , a small Starfleet vessel, the Hansens illegally cross the Romulan Neutral Zone in search of the Borg. They even follow a Borg cube through a transwarp corridor that takes them into the Delta Quadrant. By modifying their ship with special multi-adaptive shielding, the Hansens manage to remain undetected by the Borg and continue their studies. Annika's parents are also able to secretly beam aboard Borg cubes and even study unconscious drones up close and personal by transporting them onto their own vessel.

Unfortunately, the Hansens' recklessness finally catches up with them. A subspace particle storm disables their multi-adaptive shielding, allowing the Borg to detect them. In the season 4 episode "The Raven" we see the Borg eventually capture Annika and her parents, assimilating them into the Borg Collective. The U.S.S. Raven itself is damaged and left on a moon for eighteen years.

Growing up in Unimatrix Zero

While being assimilated by the Borg seemingly robs Annika of her childhood, we later learn that she receives a form of reprieve. In the Star Trek: Voyager season 6 episode "Unimatrix Zero," it's revealed that Annika is one of the rare people with a recessive genetic mutation that allows her to access the virtual Borg construct known as Unimatrix Zero. In contrast to the grim, mechanical world of the Borg, Unimatrix Zero is a very pleasant environment that resembles an idyllic garden.

Drones with the one-in-a-million mutation can enter this virtual reality whenever they regenerate or are kept in maturation chambers. Even better, the drones regain their lost memories and stolen individuality, allowing them to continue with some form of their lives. Annika gets to grow up in Unimatrix Zero over the next eighteen years during her regeneration cycles. She forms many friendships and even falls in love with a man named Axum.

Mercifully, the Borg drones forget everything they do in the real world whenever they come to Unimatrix Zero. This allows Annika to have a somewhat normal childhood and young adulthood without the emotional scars of her Borg activities.

Life as a Borg drone

In the real world, Annika's life as a Borg drone is anything but pleasant. After spending time in a Borg maturation chamber, Annika emerges rebuilt as a half-organic, half-mechanical being meant to assimilate other life forms into the Borg Collective. She is given the designation Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One and obeys the orders of the Borg Queen without question.

Over the next several years, Seven of Nine assists in the capture and assimilation of many alien species. As a member of the Borg Collective, she gains access to the knowledge of thousands of civilizations, making her smarter and more efficient. Unfortunately, she only uses this knowledge to continue assimilating other species.

In the Star Trek: Voyager season 6 episode "Survival Instinct," we learn that Seven of Nine had a chance to escape the Borg in the year 2368 when she and three other drones crash landed on a planet. This caused their link to the Collective to be severed and the drones to begin recovering their individuality.

However, this also caused Seven of Nine to revert back to the frightened child she was when she was first assimilated. Unwilling to become an individual after spending so much time in the Collective (and unable to access the personality she developed in Unimatrix Zero), Seven fused the drones into a miniature hive mind and let them be recaptured by the Borg.

Seven of Nine assists Voyager

In 2374, the Starfleet vessel U.S.S. Voyager attempts to make it through a section of Borg space in their efforts to return to the Alpha Quadrant after being stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Remarkably, they discover the Borg are battling an alien race known as Species 8472 which poses both a threat to the Borg Collective and the rest of the galaxy. Seeing an opportunity to protect her crew, Voyager's captain Kathryn Janeway ( Kate Mulgrew ) forges an alliance with the Borg by offering them the technology to create weapons against Species 8472. In exchange, the Borg seemingly give Voyager safe passage through their space.

The Borg attempt to temporarily link Janeway and her second officer Tuvok (Tim Russ) to their hive mind, but Janeway refuses to allow the procedure. Instead, she suggests the Borg provide Voyager with a representative to speak for the Collective. The Borg agree and assign the role to Seven of Nine. Seven assists in the creation of some new photon torpedoes modified with Borg nanoprobes. However, once the Borg win their battle, Seven attempts to assimilate the Voyager crew into the Collective.

In response, Janeway's first officer Chakotay (Robert Beltran) uses a neuro-transmitter to link with Seven, unlocking some of her human memories. This distracts Seven long enough for the crew to knock her unconscious. In the aftermath, Seven of Nine's link to the Collective is permanently severed and her human biology begins reasserting itself.

Seven of Nine joins Voyager

No longer a Borg drone but now a traumatized woman unable to reassert her individuality, Seven of Nine demands that Voyager return her to the Borg to be reassimilated. In the season 4 episode "The Gift," Janeway refuses and points out that Seven's reawakening human organics are rejecting many of her Borg implants. While Voyager 's holographic Doctor (Robert Picardo) is able to save her by removing most of her cybernetic components, Seven feels violated. She misses the voice of the Collective and attempts, unsuccessfully, to contact the Borg.

Although Seven of Nine considers Voyager 's crew hypocritical for claiming they want to give Seven back her freedom but denying her the choice to return to the Borg, she realizes she can't exist as an individual without help. Deciding that interacting with Captain Janeway and the Voyager crew may be the only way she can adapt to her new status, she agrees to work with Voyager .

Unknown to the Voyager crew, severing Seven of Nine's link to the Collective also eliminates her ability to return to Unimatrix Zero. As a result, the Annika Hansen who got to grow up in the virtual construct is essentially erased, although aspects of her memory and personality still exist in Seven of Nine.

Regaining her humanity

To help Seven of Nine adjust to her new individuality, the Doctor further modifies her appearance. Although he cannot remove all of her cybernetic components, he reveals in "The Gift” that he has extracted 82% of the implants, granting her an almost complete human appearance. He also stimulates her hair follicles and designs a silver catsuit to help her skin regenerate. As a result, Seven of Nine is now a very beautiful woman, although her personality remains cold and robotic.

Seven also retains vast knowledge from her time in the Borg Collective, making her an invaluable resource. However, her interpersonal skills are poor and after a short stint in Engineering in the season 4 episode "Day of Honor," she asks to be assigned to Astrometrics, a lab for stellar cartography where she maps and catalogues interstellar bodies. This means Seven works largely in solitude. She also needs to regenerate in an alcove located in one of Voyager 's cargo bays, further emphasizing her isolation.

However, Seven also makes attempts to look out for her crewmates and grow as an individual. When Voyager 's guide Neelix (Ethan Phillips) is fatally injured in the season 4 episode "Mortal Coil," Seven shows the Doctor how to use nanoprobes from her blood to revive him. And where she once considered the Borg a superior form of life, she begins realizing how traumatizing their actions are to others — including herself — as she experiences flashbacks of her own assimilation in "The Raven."

Seven of Nine and Captain Janeway

As the person who chose to have Seven of Nine remain on Voyager , Janeway feels responsible for encouraging Seven to embrace her individuality. As Seven's captain, however, Janeway often has to set limits when Seven's willful choices go against Starfleet regulations. This causes Seven to frequently call out Janeway on her contradictory stance, setting up a unique dynamic between the two women .

In the season 4 episode "Prey," Captain Janeway orders Seven to help a wounded member of Species 8472 escape a deadly Hirogen hunter. Instead, Seven beams both the hunter and his prey — an enemy of the Borg — onto the Hirogen ship. While Seven claims her actions helped save Voyager, Janeway revokes many of Seven's privileges on the starship for the ex-Borg's insubordination. In response, Seven points out that although Janeway claims she wants Seven to be an individual, she also punishes her when Seven doesn't comply with Janeway's point of view.

Despite this tension, Seven develops a great deal of respect for Captain Janeway, who in turn learns to place more trust in Seven. She even gives Seven command of Voyager in the season 4 episode "One" when the rest of the crew must go into stasis. They may not always see eye-to-eye, but both are willing to see the other's point of view and support each other.

Seven of Nine and the Doctor

From the beginning, Voyager 's holographic Doctor functions as a Pygmalion to Seven's Galatea . Just as the mythical sculptor Pygmalion crafted Galatea, his ideal woman, from clay, the Doctor is responsible for physically restructuring Seven from a Borg drone into a functioning human woman. He also assists in Seven's emotional development, even encouraging her to date people in the season 5 episode "Someone to Watch Over Me." And like Pygmalion, the Doctor develops romantic feelings for Seven of Nine but is crushed when she doesn't reciprocate.

Seven remains the Doctor's greatest flame and appears in many of his daydreams in the season 6 episode "Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy." He also bases a character after her for his holo novel in "Author, Author." And while Seven never falls in love with the Doctor, she does consider him a close friend and regularly accepts his guidance and support.

Despite their lack of a romantic relationship, the Doctor and Seven technically become closer than most couples when the Doctor temporarily takes over Seven's body in the season 7 episode "Body and Soul." Being able to eat and feel like an organic being proves intoxicating for the Doctor, although Seven isn't thrilled when he becomes sexually aroused while in her form. Nevertheless, she understands his longing for physical sensation and later describes a meal for him so he can enjoy it vicariously.

Seven of Nine and Tuvok

While Seven develops relationships with almost all of the bridge crew, her friendship with Lieutenant Commander Tuvok is particularly striking. As one of the few Vulcans aboard Voyager, Tuvok possesses an outsider's perspective similar to Seven's. Seven also respects Tuvok's logic and honesty, leading the two to have many conversations about human customs and interpersonal relationships.

Although Vulcans are known to suppress their emotions, Tuvok and Seven become friends after Tuvok helps Seven deal with her emotional trauma when she experiences flashbacks to her assimilation in "The Raven." Later episodes show them exchanging views on attitudes toward death and participating in research missions together.

In the two-part season 4 storyline "Year of Hell," Tuvok is blinded while attempting to protect Seven from a torpedo explosion. In response, Seven devotes herself to helping Tuvok with his daily tasks, even offering to help him shave. While these events are erased when Voyager resets the timeline, they show how Seven can form very powerful connections with people she respects.

Seven the den mother

Despite her aloof reputation, Seven forms several attachments with children aboard Voyager and finds herself falling into the role of surrogate mother more than once. Naomi Wildman (Scarlett Pomers), the first child born on Voyager , is initially scared of Seven but later bonds with her in the season 5 episode "Infinite Regress" when Seven manifests personalities from past Borg victims, including a girl Naomi's age. Seven ends up mentoring Naomi and lets her know she thinks of Naomi as family.

Seven actually has a "son" with the Doctor in the season 5 episode "Drone," when her nanoprobes interact with the Doctor's mobile emitter and a hapless ensign's DNA. The combination results in a benevolent drone who calls himself "One" and sees Seven as a mother figure. Seven develops an attachment to One and is greatly distressed when he chooses to sacrifice himself to save Voyager .

However, Seven's closest relationship is with Icheb (Manu Intiraymi), a young man genetically engineered by his parents to possess a virus capable of killing the Borg. Intentionally given to the Borg to be assimilated, Icheb and five other young drones are found and adopted by Voyager . Seven assists all of them with readjusting to life as individuals and develops a particularly strong bond with Icheb, who donates his cortical node to save her life in the season 7 episode "Imperfection." By the Star Trek: Picard episode "Stardust City Rag," Seven openly states she sees Icheb as her son .

Return to the Borg

If any episode truly emphasizes how far Seven has come from her time as a Borg drone, it's the season 5 two-part story "Dark Frontier." Taking place in 2375, a year after being separated from the Borg Collective, the story has Seven come face-to-face with the Borg Queen herself. In a chilling revelation, Seven learns she was deliberately granted freedom by the Collective to develop a perspective that would help the Borg create a virus for assimilating humanity. The Queen actually tries to force Seven to help build the weapon along with other drones.

In contrast to how she was presented originally, Seven refuses to re-assimilate into the Borg, preferring to retain her individuality. She also shows compassion for the species the Borg attempts to assimilate and begs for their freedom. She even identifies herself by her human name — Annika Hansen — and is horrified when she sees her father, still alive, as a Borg drone.

Return to Unimatrix Zero

Seven experiences another powerful reunion in the season 6 episode "Unimatrix Zero." In 2377, three years after her liberation from the Borg Collective, Annika Hansen's lover Axum manages to reconnect with her and allow her to re-enter Unimatrix Zero. However, Seven can't access her old memories at first and doesn't remember she once had an entire life in the virtual construct.

Over the course of the two-episode storyline, Seven's original Annika Hansen personality appears to resurface. She remembers the names of old friends, appears as a fully human woman, and becomes noticeably more relaxed than her Seven of Nine persona. Although Axum doesn't disclose their former relationship, Seven eventually pieces together her lost memories and realizes she's still in love with him.

Voyager manages to liberate the Borg inhabitants of Unimatrix Zero although the crew's efforts end up destroying the virtual sanctuary. Tragically, Axum reveals his drone form is stationed in a remote sector of the Beta Quadrant, making a real-life reunion impossible. In the end, Seven manages to salvage more of her Annika Hansen persona, but loses the people she grew up with.

Possible future and romance

Seven's newfound interest in exploring human emotion leads her to pursue a serious romance with Voyager 's first officer, Commander Chakotay. Initially, Seven only interacts with a holographic simulation of Chakotay in the season 7 episode "Human Error." When her attempts to experience strong emotion cause a Borg implant in her brain to hurt her, she chooses to have surgery to remove the implant in the series finale, "Endgame," and begin dating the real Chakotay.

At one point in "Endgame," an older Admiral Janeway from an alternate future travels to the present and informs Captain Janeway that the Chakotay and Seven of Nine of her reality married while serving on Voyager. However, Seven dies on an away mission and when Voyager returns to Earth in 2394, Chakotay dies shortly after. By traveling to her past, Admiral Janeway is able to bring Voyager home by the year 2377, erasing her own timeline.

On his Instagram ,  Star Trek: Picard  showrunner Michael Chabon stated that the Seven and Chakotay relationship likely ended by 2399. Regardless, Seven's choice to have her emotion-limiting Borg implant removed may have allowed her to explore a fuller range of emotions, explaining how her personality dramatically changed by the events of Star Trek: Picard.

Return to the Alpha Quadrant

Returning home to Earth may have been Voyager' s main mission, but the homecoming comes with some major downsides for Seven of Nine. Although the Voyager crew accept Seven as one of the family, other worlds are less welcoming. People hold many prejudices against the Borg for the planets and people they destroyed. This extends to "xBs" or people like Seven who were liberated from the Borg Collective and are struggling to regain their lost individuality.

Fortunately, the xBs gain an ally in Hugh (Jonathan del Arco) a former Borg drone who regained his individuality in the season 5  Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "I Borg." By 2399, Hugh becomes a Federation citizen and the executive director of a Romulan Borg Reclamation Project. In the Star Trek: Picard episode "The End is the Beginning," Hugh reveals that the xBs are now the most despised people in the galaxy. By working with the  Romulans , who seek to profit off the xBs by removing their implants and learning from the technology, Hugh hopes the xBs can be treated with more humanity during their recovery. While Seven knows of Hugh, she does not work with him.

Joining the Fenris Rangers

Seven of Nine joins a vigilante organization in the Romulan Neutral Zone known as the Fenris Rangers. Operating in the largely lawless Quris sector in the Beta Quadrant, the Fenris Rangers soon find themselves overrun when a power vacuum attracts many smugglers and warlords to their territory. Her experiences (and her newfound ability to process more emotion) radically alter Seven's personality. No longer the uptight professional she was aboard Voyager , Seven now adopts a more sarcastic and edgy persona. She also abandons her famous catsuits and starts dressing in leather jackets and sweaters.

Seven receives an additional traumatic experience when she loses her "son" Icheb  (Casey King). After successfully enrolling in and graduating from Starfleet Academy, Icheb becomes a lieutenant assigned to the science vessel U.S.S. Coleman by 2386 . He also assists Seven and the Fenris Rangers by participating in reconnaissance missions for them. Unfortunately, one of the Rangers –- a friend of Seven's named Bjayzl –- is secretly a black-market dealer in Borg parts who sees an opportunity to profit off Icheb.

After learning of Icheb through Seven, Bjayzl lures Icheb into an ambush and transports him to a facility where his implants are forcibly removed, leaving him in agonizing pain. Seven tracks down Icheb and kills the doctor torturing him, but she's forced to fatally shoot Icheb to end his suffering. The experience scars Seven who feels less hopeful about the universe from that point on.

Meeting Jean-Luc Picard

By 2399, Seven is still working with the Fenris Rangers. In the Star Trek: Picard episode "Absolute Candor," she helps the ship La Sirena in a battle with a Romulan Bird-of-Prey and is beamed aboard the La Sirena when her ship is destroyed. Seven ends up meeting retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard ( Patrick Stewart ), who was once assimilated into the Borg Collective himself. Now seeking to rescue Soji (Isa Briones), a synthetic woman from the Borg Reclamation Project, Picard asks for Seven's help in rescuing one of Soji's creators, Dr. Bruce Maddox (John Ales), who had been captured by Bjayzl (Necar Zadegan).

Seeing an opportunity to take her revenge on Bjayzl, Seven agrees to help Picard's crew. In the episode "Stardust City Rag," Seven lets herself be used as bait to draw out Bjayzl and helps Picard save Maddox. Shortly after, however, she beams down to Bjayzl's nightclub and vaporizes her former friend before shooting her way out through Bjayzl's security team.

Seven displays strong differences from her earlier persona. Where she once got drunk on a single glass of champagne in the Star Trek: Voyager season 5 episode "Timeless," by the time of Star Trek: Picard she downs an entire glass of bourbon in a single gulp. Despite her cavalier attitude, she admits she's still working on regaining her humanity "every damn day of my life."

The new Borg Queen

At the end of "Stardust City Rag," Seven leaves a communication chip with Picard, offering her help in case he ever needs a vigilante. In the episode "Broken Pieces," Picard's Romulan friend Elnor (Evan Evagora) uses the chip to contact Seven, who makes her way onto the Romulans' damaged Borg vessel — known as the Artifact — just in time to save his life. When the Romulans begin jettisoning the Borg drones into space and killing the xBs, Seven decides to save them by connecting herself to the drones in a mini-Collective, effectively transforming herself into a new Borg Queen.

The experience unnerves Seven, who fears she won't want to let the drones go once she re-experiences Borg life. However, she's able to resist temptation and disconnect everyone (including herself) from the new Collective once they take control of the Borg cube. Still realizing she has work to do, she directs the Artifact to follow Picard's crew to the planet Coppelius. She reunites with Picard and helps him contact Starfleet, but stays behind to help the xBs.

Joining a new crew

In the final scene of the Star Trek: Picard episode "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2," Seven of Nine apparently joins Picard's new crew aboard the La Sirena to wander the galaxy. She's also seen holding hands affectionately with Picard's former first officer, Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd). This, along with some hints about Seven's past relationship with Bjayzl, indicates that Seven of Nine may now identify herself as gay or bisexual.

Jeri Ryan has announced that she will return as Seven of Nine in season 2 of Star Trek: Picard. She also admited in her Twitter feed that she enjoys playing Seven more on Picard than she did on Voyager.  Seven's dramatic evolution from her original incarnation on Star Trek: Voyager to her present form on Star Trek: Picard indicates that this former Borg drone will continue to change in surprising ways as her story continues.

Seven Of Nine's Arrival On Star Trek: Voyager Came With Some Growing Pains

Sometimes, the greatest and most famous characters on a television show are the ones who were added part-way through the series. That's absolutely the case with "Star Trek: Voyager" and its breakout character, liberated Borg drone Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). Joining the show in season 4 , Seven's sex appeal was obvious, but she rose beyond the expectations for a fan-service character. Her journey back to something resembling normalcy after being assimilated made her one of the few characters on the show with concrete character development, and Ryan played the part excellently. Instantly popular, she practically became the show's star, especially in advertising. 

Of course, not all of Ryan's castmates took kindly to having the spotlight diverted from them, and this led to some friction behind the scenes.

Reintroducing the Borg

In "Voyager," the titular ship is stranded in the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy. Two crews, Voyager's own and members of the rebel movement the Maquis, must join forces to get back home to the Alpha Quadrant. The Delta Quadrant had been established as home to the Borg , but the writers held off on giving their heroes such a challenge during the first two seasons. "Star Trek: The Next Generation" established a single Borg Cube could wipe out a Federation fleet; showing a single, lone Starfleet vessel besting them week after week would've strained credibility. Plus, villains as scary as the Borg are best served in small doses.

The Borg first appeared on "Voyager" during season 3 episode "Unity," which features a group of drones disconnected from the larger collective. This premise wasn't exactly a novel idea; "TNG" episodes "I, Borg," and "Descent" had previously used "drones cut off from the larger Borg" as a way to tell a Borg story minus apocalyptic stakes. However, the episode had a significant, albeit indirect, impact on the larger direction that "Voyager" charted.

According to "Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration" (by Ben Robinson and Mark Wright), when writer and producer Brannon Braga was watching a promo for "Unity," an idea for a disconnected Borg drone joining Voyager's crew came to him. His producing partner Rick Berman was also for the idea, but steered the concept away from a "cybernetic looking creature" like Braga initially envisioned. Instead, the character would give "Voyager" new sex appeal.

The two-part season 3 finale and season 4 premiere "Scorpion" introduced Seven of Nine. In these episodes, USS Voyager forms an alliance with the Borg against extra-dimensional invaders known as Species 8472. The collective chooses Seven as a representative to communicate with Voyager. When the alliance is over, she turns on the crew, who respond by severing her link to the collective. Now an individual for the first time since childhood, Seven is slowly assimilated by Voyager.

Ryan speaks up

"Scorpion" marks a sea change for "Voyager." From there on out, the Borg became the main villains of the series. Plus, as Seven came onto the show, Kes (Jennifer Lien) departed . For many years, rumors swirled that the price of Jeri Ryan joining the show was another cast member getting the boot; however, based on interviews with the cast and crew conducted for "A Celebration" by Robinson and Wright, Lien's personal problems, including substance abuse, were affecting her performance and this was the real reason for her leaving.

Still, that left Ryan in the always awkward position of the new guy, not helped by her being the effective replacement for someone the rest of the cast had acted alongside for three years. During an appearance on the "girl on guy" podcast in 2013, Ryan recounted the ups and downs of her "Voyager" experience; the transition was far from easy:

"That's hard when the new kid comes in and suddenly it's all about them. That was tough, and it was particularly tough for some more than others, which was not real fun ... basically, until I started dating [Brannon Braga]. Once I was dating the boss, funny how things suddenly cleaned up. But it was really, really tough the first couple of years. and there were many days when I was nauseous before going into work because it was that miserable. Just unnecessarily, intentionally unpleasant."

While Ryan doesn't single anyone out in her comments, behind-the-scenes gossip indicates there was one main party responsible for this unpleasantness: Captain Janeway herself, Kate Mulgrew.

Ryan vs. Mulgrew

One of Seven's most important relationships is with Captain Janeway, who becomes a mentor to her. One of the best "Voyager" episodes, "Dark Frontier," is essentially about Seven being torn between two mother figures: Janeway and the Borg Queen (Susanna Thompson). However, according to the cast and crew, Mulgrew and Ryan's relationship was a different story. Rather than taking Ryan under her wing as Janeway did Seven, Mulgrew alienated her.  

"The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek" (by Edward Goss and Mark Altman) contains interviews with numerous "Voyager" cast and crew who shed light on the situation. In a nutshell, Mulgrew's treatment of Ryan was motivated by her frustrations that her character — a strong, empowered woman — was being upstaged by a role designed for maximum sex appeal. 

Speaking to Goss and Altman, Berman described the situation between the two actresses as such: 

"Kate was sort of the Queen of 'Star Trek'... She hung out with astronauts, she hung out with Hillary Clinton, and she was the spokesman for women in leadership roles, and for a lot of things. All of a sudden, this busty, gorgeous, blond babe appears who took away everybody's breath. I literally once remember some press being on the stage and just sort of pushing by Kate to get to Jeri."

In a separate interview for "The Fifty-Year Mission," Garret Wang (Harry Kim) added:

"Kate's anger was not directed toward Jeri Ryan, it was directed toward the character of Seven of Nine. She was the female captain, and now you bring in this borderline T-and-A character. When the writers/producers said no [to getting rid of Seven]... her anger was turned toward the actress playing the character, Jeri Ryan."

Mulgrew's attitude toward Ryan was steeped in her own frustrations, rather than being based on anything Ryan had done. Since the show concluded, Mulgrew has since cleared the air. In her own interview with Goss and Altman for "The Fifty-Year Mission," Mulgrew gave a more direct mea culpa:

"Let's be very straight about something. This is on me, not Jeri. She came in and did what she was asked to do. No question about that, and she did it very well. It's on me because I'd hoped against hope that Janeway would be sufficient. That we didn't have to bring a beautiful, sexy girl in. That somehow the power of my command, the vicissitudes of my talent would be sufficient unto the day, because this would really change television, right? That's what dug me the hardest, that to pick up the numbers they did that... that hurt me."

Seven overshadows the supporting cast

Mulgrew wasn't the only one who felt usurped by Ryan's role on the show. Speaking to StarTrek.com , Robert Beltran (Commander Chakotay) said:

"When the Seven of Nine character made her entrance, the focus changed... That was fine with me, but I think writers have an obligation to fill out all the characters if they're regular characters on a series. I think several of the characters were diminished — Chakotay and Tuvok and Kim and Neelix."

Beltran isn't wrong, but the mishandling of those characters predates Seven's introduction. Characterization was never the show's strong suit on "Voyager." Mulgrew at least had strong acting chops to compensate for the inconsistent writing of Janeway, but many of her co-stars couldn't compare, leaving their characters to fall into broad archetypes.

By the time Ryan came onto the show, "Voyager" had totally failed to use the most exciting part of its premise — the Starfleet and Maquis schism. When interviewed for "The Fifty-Year Mission," writer Ron Moore (of "TNG," "Deep Space Nine", and briefly "Voyager") opined, "When the Maquis put on those Starfleet uniforms at the end of the pilot, the show was dead." Season 3 episode "Worst Case Scenario" (a pre-Seven episode, I might add) features a holodeck simulation of a Maquis mutiny on USS Voyager. The episode reeks of the writing staff trying to have it both ways: introduce exciting new character conflict  and preserve the status quo. Yet, the mutinous holographic Chakotay comes alive more than his real self ever does. With Chakotay reduced to a yes man, Seven wound up a better foil to Janeway than he ever was.

Not coincidentally, the one character who adapted best to the presence of Seven on "Voyager" who had been working well before her introduction: the Doctor (Robert Picardo).

My Fair Seven

"Star Trek" has a long tradition of characters learning what it meant to be human: Spock, Data, and Odo. At first, it seemed the Doctor would fill this role on "Voyager." An Emergency Medical Hologram (EMH) modeled on Dr. Lewis Zimmerman (also played by Picardo), the Doctor has to become Voyager's full-time medical officer after his human counterpart is killed in the pilot. His character avoided being a rehash of Data (an artificial intelligence seeking to become more) thanks to his cranky bedside manner (which had more in common with Doctor McCoy) and Picardo's charming performance. 

However, once Seven was introduced and Kes was written out, Picardo became concerned. As he explained to StarTrek.com , 

"Kes had really been The Doctor's mentor. Officially, he's mentoring her as a medical assistant, but she has been mentoring him and developing his humanity. My concern was that she's been his emotional sounding board, his confessor. The moment she's gone, The Doctor is just going to go back to being a buffoon and a windbag."

When Picardo brought his concerns to Brannon Braga, the writer suggested the actor find a way for the Doctor and Seven to connect. Picardo elaborated,

"I ... suggested that we take the relationship that the Doctor had with Kes and we turn it around. So the Doctor thinks that the best person to teach Seven of Nine how to become human again is him ... Eventually, that culminated in 'Someone to Watch Over Me,' akin to Professor Higgins falling in love with his pupil in 'My Fair Lady.' That suggestion afforded me four seasons of great scenes with Jeri Ryan."

Instead of usurping the Doctor's role as she had some of the other cast, Seven brought his character full circle. Therein lies the benefit of having three-dimensional characters: it's easier to make their relationships with each other compelling.

Settling old wounds

Since "Voyager" concluded, it seems that Mulgrew has come to regret how she treated Ryan and has gained a new appreciation for what Seven brought to the show. At a Las Vegas "Star Trek" convention in 2018, Mulgrew praised Seven's character and Braga's writing of her relationship with Janeway, "Seven of Nine is what [brought] Janeway to life, as a deeply human woman, I believe. And I am deeply grateful for that."

While it's hard to excuse Mulgrew's behavior, one can empathize with the root of her frustrations. Despite the bullying she endured from Mulgrew, Ryan doesn't seem to regret her time on "Voyager" and is proud of Seven. In an interview with the Huffington Post,  she said:

"I don't have a problem with Seven's overtly sexual physical appearance, if only because of the way she was written and developed. If it was a crappy character, then OK. But she was so nuanced and beautifully written."

Indeed,  Ryan returned as Seven in "Star Trek" Picard." One only hopes her transition back into the role was easier than when she first jumped into it.

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Seven of Nine

• View history

She was assimilated , along with her parents, in 2356 , but was later liberated by the crew of the USS Voyager in 2374 . In the following years she began to reclaim her humanity, but still preferred to go by her Borg designation rather than her given name. She eventually returned to Earth aboard Voyager in 2377 .

• 1.1 Annika Hansen
• 1.2 Life as a drone
• 1.3 Voyager
• 1.4 In the Alpha Quadrant
• 2.1 25th century
• 3 Personal timeline
• 4.1 Connections
• 4.2.1 Appearances
• 4.3 External links

Biography [ ]

Annika hansen [ ].

Annika Hansen in 2354 .

Annika Hansen was born on the Tendara Colony on stardate 25479 , to human exobiologists Erin and Magnus Hansen . Because her parents moved frequently because of their work, Annika spent a great deal of time with her aunts, Irene Hansen and Helen , on Earth . ( VOY episodes : " The Gift ", " Author, Author "; VOY short story : " Maturation ")

One of her ancestors was Sven "Buttercup" Hansen , a 22nd century prize fighter . ( VOY episode : " 11:59 ", ENT - Rise of the Federation novel : A Choice of Futures )

Her maternal grandmother, Elaine Bergstrom , was a security officer aboard the USS Enterprise during the 2270s . She died in 2349 . ( TOS novel : No Time Like the Past )

By the time that she was five, Annika was living with her parents on Heronius II . She often spoke to her Norwegian maternal grandfather via subspace . Shortly before her sixth birthday, she was visited by an older version of herself (though Annika did not realize her identity) who tried to dissuade her parents from their plans to leave Federation space. Following this encounter, Annika began to have disturbing dreams of black cube-shaped starships. ( VOY short story : " A Ribbon for Rosie ")

In 2354 , Annika and her parents left Heronius II aboard the USS Raven , as they finally had approval by the Federation Council to begin a study of the mysterious Borg Collective . After spending many months searching for a Borg ship, the Raven had broken regulations and had crossed the Romulan Neutral Zone . However, just as they were contemplating a return to Earth, they encountered a Borg Cube . After six months of observation, the Raven followed the cube into a transwarp conduit and into the Delta Quadrant .

Life as a drone [ ]

Seven of Nine in 2374 .

The Hansens gathered a large amount of data about the Borg over the next two years, however it came to an abrupt end in 2356 , when the Raven was detected by the Borg and attacked. The Borg pursued the Raven to a planet just inside B'omar space, where the science vessel crash landed. While her parents were quickly assimilated, Annika attempted to hide, but was later found and also assimilated. ( VOY episodes : " Dark Frontier ", " The Raven ")

Annika Hansen was given the designation Seven of Nine and served aboard a cube. In 2368 , Seven was briefly disconnected from the hive mind when she and several other drones in her unimatrix crash landed on Planet 1865-Alpha . Scared of being alone, she injected her fellow drones with nanoprobes and established another collective, before being rescued and re-assimilated. ( VOY episode : " Survival Instinct ")

In 2374 , Seven, working on Cube 3764 , was selected as a liaison to work with Captain Kathryn Janeway and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok as of the alliance against Species 8472 . Their mission was to develop a modified nanoprobe weapon that could destroy 8472 bio-ships and force them to withdraw back to fluidic space . After the mission was successful, Seven attempted to assimilate the Voyager crew, but her link to the collective was severed. ( VOY short story : " Seventh Heaven ", VOY episode : " Scorpion ")

Voyager [ ]

Seven, initially resistant to life on Voyager

After many of her implants were successfully removed by Voyager 's EMH , her mental and emotional recovery as well as social training was going to be a huge task. After several attempts to communicate with the collective, Seven eventually accepted that her place was aboard Voyager as an individual. Earning the trust and respect of Captain Janeway, Seven began to work on several projects to enhance Voyager 's capabilities, such as working on transwarp drive and the construction of the astrometrics lab. ( VOY episodes : " The Gift ", " Day of Honor ", " Revulsion ")

On stardate 53689, Seven analyzed debris that was destroyed with Borg technology; She confirmed that it was Borg technology. During that time, Seven told Janeway that she was receiving a Borg message but was not sure what it meant. When Voyager was trapped by a Borg ship of some kind but found its tactics odd. After they failed to modulate their shields against the Borg ship, Seven suggested that she attempt to board the ship knowing that she might still be taken as Borg. Captain Janeway agreed but also advised sending Chakotay, Tuvok and an away team disguised as Borg to the ship. ( VOY comic : " False Colors ")

In mid 2374, shortly after discovering the Hirogen communication relay stations , ( VOY episode : " Message in a Bottle ")

Voyager was intercepted by the individual Borg, Hugh . Hugh had learned about Seven's severance from the collective and wanted her to be his Second of the Independent Nation of Borg . After some deliberation, Seven decided to remain aboard Voyager . ( VOY short story : " Seventh Heaven ")

In 2375 , Seven suffered a telepathic assault by a race known as the Skedans . As a result, the personality of Annika Hansen briefly resurfaced, as part of a plan by the Skedans to exact revenge on the Borg after the near-completed annihilation of their race. ( VOY novel : Seven of Nine )

Later that year, Seven became the target of an assassin aboard Voyager after a series of potentially fatal accidents occurred. An in-depth investigation revealed that Voyager herself were responsible for the accidents, after a specially programmed bio-neural gel pack had been installed by Ensign Roberta Luke . Luke was revealed to be a Section 31 agent who had been assigned to Voyager in 2371 as part of an operation to destroy the Maquis . After re-establishing contact with the Federation in 2374, Luke was ordered to kill Seven, but she herself was killed by the Srivani shortly after. ( VOY - Section 31 novel : Shadow )

In 2377 , Seven and Lieutenant Tom Paris were abducted by the Chiar while Voyager was undergoing repairs in orbit. The Chiar were dependent on nanotechnology. After infecting Paris with memory suppressing nanites , Seven was tortured by the Chiar, and eventually removed and replicated Borg nanoprobes. Unfortunately, the nanoprobes began assimilating the Chiar, but Seven was able to modify Paris' memory nanites to disable the Borg nanoprobes. ( VOY novel : The Nanotech War )

In the Alpha Quadrant [ ]

2390s , as a Fenris Ranger .

After Voyager' s return to Earth, Admiral Kathryn Janeway fought unsuccessfully to get Seven into Starfleet . ( PIC episodes : " Stardust City Rag ", " Hide and Seek ")

Upon the USS Voyager's return to Earth, Seven of Nine was met with racism and suspicion by both Starfleet officials and the Fenris Rangers, who feared she could be a Borg infiltrator. ( PIC novel : Firewall )

Due to her expertise with the Borg, she was a vital part of a Federation think tank . ( VOY reference : The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway )

Opting to retain her Borg designation over her birth name, Annika Hansen, she was denied her Federation citizenship , though officially, her name change was not cited as the reason. Amid these difficulties, Admiral Janeway's efforts to get Seven admitted into Starfleet were unsuccessful. Seven's personal connections suffered; she lost touch with all her Voyager crewmates besides Janeway and ended her relationship with Chakotay when he was reassigned to the USS Protostar . Attempts to bond with her aunt, Irene Hansen , failed.

When her appeal for Federation citizenship had been rejected in 2380 and her house in Cape Town was vandalized by locals, she decided to leave Earth. She then moved to two different worlds and, one year later eventually settled in Starheim on Utsira III , a Federation protectorate . She worked in a factory there.

During that time she was approached by an individual named Arastoo Mardani who claimed to represent the Federation Security Agency . He recruited her to gather intel on the Fenris Rangers in Arendel on Otroya II . ( PIC novel : Firewall )

By 2386 Seven joined the Fenris Rangers . ( PIC episodes : " Stardust City Rag ", " Hide and Seek ")

During that time, she became friends with Bjayzl and told her about her surrogate "son" Icheb . However, Bjayzl had kidnapped Icheb and harvested his body for Borg components on Vergessen . Seven ended the operation, but was forced to euthanize Icheb due to the operation. Seven spent the next 13 years tracking Bjayzl down. ( PIC episode : " Stardust City Rag ")

Seven's Ranger ship.

Alternate timelines [ ]

25th century [ ].

Seven was then recruited by Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise -E to help Starfleet infiltrate the Borg . ( TNG - Hive comic : " Hive, Issue 2 ")

In 2385 , Seven left Starfleet after it decided the fact the Borg were no longer a threat after a decade of non-threatening actions from them. Seven saw their decision as dangerously reckless. Seven then accepted a job as a researcher for the Daystrom Institute . ( STO website  : The Path to 2409 )

In 2409 , Seven refused to return to Starfleet despite the return of the Collective and the Borg attacks on Vega colony . However, at the request of Admiral Tuvok , Seven accepted the position of science adviser to Tuvok's fleet and was assigned to the USS Callisto . ( STO video game : Delta Rising )

Seven of Nine in 2410

In 2410 the Callisto was destroyed by a malfunction in the automated defense system of a Federation outpost in the Delta Quadrant's Yontasa sector . Seven was able to disable the defenses and beam the survivors aboard the outpost. After being rescued by an Alpha Quadrant Alliance starship, Seven helped the crew re-enable the planetary defense grid on the Turei homeworld , foiling a Vaadwaur invasion. When the USS Voyager arrived in orbit after the battle, Tuvok asked her to rejoin Voyager 's crew, and she accepted. ( STO - Delta Quadrant mission : " Revelations ")

Seven in 2411 .

In the year 2411 , Seven operated for the Fenris Rangers again. She followed up a report of Borg activity in the Traelus system when she and an Alliance vessel were pulled to Excalbia . The Excalbians put them through trials, alongside a construct of Michael Burnham , to help them decide whether to pursue the ideals of Good or Evil . ( STO - J'Ula's Discovery mission : " The Measure of Morality (Part 1) ")

The Excalbian constructs became sentient , and a construct of Seven of Nine, enhanced by Control 's nanites into a powerful Borg Queen , threatened the Excalbians. Seven, Burnham and their allies defeated the constructed queen and her minions, allowing Seven to conclude her mission in the Traelus system. ( STO - J'Ula's Discovery mission : " The Measure of Morality (Part 2) ")

In an alternate timeline , " Admiral Seven of Nine" married The Doctor in the late 25th century . A renowned Federation scientist with political ties, she and the former EMH contributed research to the Phoenix Project . Both were compelled out of mutual respect for the countless hours of dedication and sacrifice devoted to the Pathfinder Project years ago. ( DS9 novel : The War of the Prophets )

In another alternate timeline, she remained a member of the Collective until late 2374 , when an attack by Species 8472 liberated her and seven other members of Unimatrix Zero . They were subsequently rescued by the Vostigye ship Ryemaran , and Seven reasserted her identity as Annika Hansen.

In another alternate timeline, Species 8472 won the war with the Borg by using the Omega molecule to destroy approximately half of the Borg Collective while limiting the surviving Borg vessels to sublight velocity. As it had already moved beyond Borg space by this time, Voyager was not affected. In this timeline, Seven of Nine was never liberated from the Collective. It was believed that she was killed in the devastation caused by the Omega molecule. ( VOY - Myriad Universes - Infinity's Prism novella : Places of Exile )

In another alternate timeline, Annika Hansen was a member of Jean-Luc Picard 's resistance cell, until Wesley Crusher staged a coup, which she joined. She was subsequently killed by the Klingons . ( TNG - Myriad Universes comic : " Do Not Close Your Eyes ")

In another alternate timeline in which Voyager took twenty-three years to return to Earth, Seven married Chakotay at an unknown time and died some time between the wedding and their return to Earth. Grief over her death caused Chakotay's own death in 2394 . It was these events, along with Tuvok 's insanity, which caused Admiral Janeway to go back in time and bring Voyager home in 2377. ( VOY episode & novelization : Endgame )

In another alternate timeline in which the Borg were not absorbed by the Caeliar gestalt , Seven retained her Borg technology and link to the collective. When the Voldranaii attacked the Borg and started to purge the galaxy, Seven, operating undercover, was selected by the Borg Queen to be their ambassador again and to help Starfleet update their weapons. She confirmed the Voldranaii threat the Queen told them. When Starfleet realized the Borg's deception, Seven was coerced into betraying Starfleet when the Queen transmitted the Sentinel protocol to her. She was forced to give the Borg the prefix codes to all Starfleet ships, enabling the Borg to lower all the Starfleet ships' shields. Fortunately, Commander La Forge was able to disrupt the Queen's control over Seven.

Despite Lieutenant Kira Archer 's and Seven's call to terminate herself, Picard kept her alive and under guard. She, Captain Picard, and Data then devised a plan to use Seven's filter technology and the nano-virus that the future Locutus created to stop the Borg. The three of them then beamed to the Borg Vinculum , where Picard allowed himself to be assimilated by the Queen. Seven then used her filter to save as many drones as she could. However, Seven was mortally wounded during the attempt, when Lieutenant Archer fired torpedoes at the Borg cubes. Seven then died onboard the Enterprise . ( TNG - Hive comics : " Hive, Issue 2 ", " Hive, Issue 3 ", " Hive, Issue 4 ")

Personal timeline [ ]

Appendices [ ], connections [ ], appearances and references [ ], appearances [ ].

• PIC novel : Firewall

External links [ ]

• Seven of Nine article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• Seven of Nine article at The Star Trek Online Wiki .
• Seven of Nine article at the Star Trek Timelines Wiki .
• 1 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
• 2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

• More to Explore
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Published Mar 6, 2019

Dynamic Duos: Seven of Nine and The Doctor

Author Mary Fan considers how The Doctor and Seven of Nine compelled Trek fans to ask, "What makes us human?"

StarTrek.com

One of the many things that makes Star Trek special is its willingness and ability to explore complex emotions and relationships against a science-fiction backdrop. In fact, the franchise often takes it a step further by weaving sci-fi elements into these very human stories — which are made all the more interesting when the participants aren’t actually human.

The relationship on Star Trek: Voyager between The Doctor (Robert Picardo), a sentient hologram, and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), a cyborg, is fascinating and wonderful on many levels. Both are rooted in humanity. The Doctor was originally a virtual copy of his human creator, Dr. Zimmerman, and Seven of Nine was born human and then assimilated into the Borg collective as a child. And both exhibit many human traits, even as the world or even they themselves deny their own humanity.

It’s intriguing — almost ironic — that their relationship begins with an artificial being helping a woman reclaim the humanity that was stolen from her. The Doctor literally removes Seven’s Borg implants, extracting those parts of her that had suppressed her humanity for so long. However, he’s unable to completely return her to an organic state, as some of the Borg technology has become so integrated into her body that removing them would have killed her.

This parallels her personality; she’s now an individual and not part of the Borg collective, and yet being essentially raised by the Borg has impacted her personality and the way she interacts with the world. Even after her escape, the Borg have forever shaped her, inside and out — something that’s metaphorically acknowledged in her decision to remain “Seven of Nine,” her Borg designation, rather than reclaiming her human name, Annika Hansen.

Meanwhile, throughout the series, The Doctor is constantly working to improve his own humanity, adding subroutines and exploring new dimensions of himself. In fact, his desire to help Seven rediscover her humanity through social lessons is, in a sense, him projecting his desires on to her. This is made the most apparent in the episode “Body and Soul,” where he inhabits her body and indulges in the physical sensations he can’t experience as a hologram, most notably by overeating (and giving Seven the mother of all stomachaches). Though she (understandably) objects, she comes to appreciate his perspective that eating can be for pleasure, and not just as a way of refueling.

The Doctor is arguably the first one to appreciate just how dynamic a person Seven can be. Through their social lessons, they both discover elements of her that were previously buried. While Seven explores her identity, the Doctor eventually falls in love with her, adding a new level of complication to their relationship. Especially since his feelings are not requited.

It’s rare, truly rare, in any media to see a close emotional relationship between a man and a woman that doesn’t end with a mutual romance. It’s become expected that if a man and a woman are depicted as being so close that they’ll eventually fall for each other and live happily ever after (or at least want to until circumstances rip them apart). Yet, unrequited love between friends is something that happens in the real world. While it may not be as satisfying to watch, it’s certainly worth exploring through storytelling.

I, for one, appreciated that Seven and the Doctor did not end up in a romantic relationship, even though that seemed like the obvious conclusion to their story. It made their friendship far more interesting, especially since they remained friends even after Seven made it clear that she wasn’t romantically interested in the Doctor (who was crestfallen). I also appreciated that Seven didn’t take offense when she glimpsed the Doctor’s daydreams about her via the holodeck; she acknowledged that these were only fantasies and trusted him enough to know that they wouldn’t impact their interactions. The mutual respect they show for each other throughout this sticky emotional situation is admirable.

Picardo and Ryan did an absolutely phenomenal job of bringing these two complex characters to life, and making their interactions ring so true. Picardo’s combination of irritability, dry humor, wit and slight insecurity made him truly believable as a person always trying to better himself, while Ryan’s ability to display cold intelligence while hinting at the vulnerability beneath is what makes Seven such a compelling character. It couldn’t have been easy to bring all the layers of the Doctor and Seven’s evolving relationship to life on screen, and both actors managed it with charm and subtlety.

Like all good teachers, The Doctor eventually has to acknowledge that Seven has outgrown him. What started out as social lessons evolves into a true friendship, complicated by romantic tensions, that survives several fraught circumstances. And along the way, we, the audience, are invited to ask questions about what makes us human as we watch two non-humans figure it out.

Mary Fan is a sci-fi/fantasy writer hailing from Jersey City, NJ. She is the author of the Jane Colt sci-fi series, which comprises Artificial Absolutes (2013), Synthetic Illusions (2014), and Virtual Shadows (2015), and Starswept (2017), and Flynn Nightsider and the Edge of Evil (2018), a YA dark fantasy and the first novel of the Flynn Nightsider series. Due out in 2019 is Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon , a YA steampunk fantasy. Check out her official page at www.maryfan.com/ .

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Human Error

• Episode aired Mar 7, 2001

Using the holodeck, Seven of Nine is trying to perfect her social skills to the point of becoming an obsession. Using the holodeck, Seven of Nine is trying to perfect her social skills to the point of becoming an obsession. Using the holodeck, Seven of Nine is trying to perfect her social skills to the point of becoming an obsession.

• Allan Kroeker
• Gene Roddenberry
• Rick Berman
• Michael Piller
• Kate Mulgrew
• Robert Beltran
• Roxann Dawson
• 10 User reviews
• 4 Critic reviews

• Capt. Kathryn Janeway

• Cmdr. Chakotay

• Lt. B'Elanna Torres

• Lt. Tom Paris

• Seven of Nine

• Ensign Harry Kim

• Voyager Computer
• Ensign Culhane
• (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia One of the few episodes in the series that doesn't end with a scene of Voyager flying through space.
• Goofs In the holodeck simulation where they are cooking, Seven tells Chakotay that his technique is flawed and he should guide the food with his left hand, but when she goes to demonstrate, she in fact does the exact opposite, holding the food in one place with her left hand, while moving the knife laterally across the cutting surface.

Seven of Nine : [in a holo-simulation] To the newest member of our crew. May all her desires be fulfilled except for one, so she'll always have something to strive for.

• Connections References Star Trek: Voyager: Unimatrix Zero (2000)
• Soundtracks Star Trek: Voyager - Main Title Written by Jerry Goldsmith Performed by Jay Chattaway

User reviews 10

• Sep 18, 2018
• March 7, 2001 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (Studio)
• Paramount Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 44 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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One (episode)

• View history
• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 2 Log entries
• 3 Memorable quotes
• 4.1 Story and script
• 4.2 Cast and characters
• 4.3 Production
• 4.4 Visual effects
• 4.5 Continuity and trivia
• 4.6 Reception
• 4.7 Video and DVD releases
• 5.1 Starring
• 5.2 Also Starring
• 5.3 Guest star
• 5.4 Co-stars
• 5.5 Uncredited co-stars
• 5.6 Stand-ins
• 5.7 References
• 5.8 External links

Summary [ ]

Seven's social skills lesson

Seven of Nine stands apprehensively in the USS Voyager 's mess hall , watching other crewmembers as they sit, eat and interact. She approaches a table, at which Lieutenant jg B'Elanna Torres and Ensign Harry Kim are sitting. She begins to engage them in conversation but all she does is confuse Kim and antagonize Torres. Her manner is brusque, her questions demanding personal information instead of asking, and she does not wait for the answers.

The Doctor says "freeze program." The interaction had been a holographic exercise designed to teach the former Borg drone social skills. He discusses with Seven her conduct which, far from making friends, would alienate a lot of people. Seven is very uncomfortable with the exercise and, against his wishes, leaves the holosuite, demanding that the doctor perform his weekly physical examination.

On the bridge , Captain Kathryn Janeway and the bridge officers watch the viewscreen , looking at a Mutara class nebula. The nebula is so large that long-range sensors cannot see beyond it and they can only see a distance of several light years ahead. Going around the nebula will take far too long, therefore Janeway orders a course through it. Soon everyone on the bridge begins to wince with pain, then convulse in agony as burns and sores appear on their faces, necks and hands.

Act One [ ]

In intense pain, Janeway orders Lt. Tom Paris to reverse course out of the nebula immediately. Paris tries but collapses before he can. Lieutenant Commander Tuvok manages to get to the helm and execute the order. Janeway calls sickbay for emergency medical help. The Doctor is there with Seven, dealing with a barrage of crew-members who are in the same state as the bridge officers. However, he and Seven are unaffected. He dispatches Seven to the bridge with dermal regenerators .

It's too late for this officer, as he's already been burned to death by the radiation.

Seconds later, as Voyager moves away from the nebula, the agony suddenly stops. Seven arrives and administers aid with the regenerators. It is too late for one officer though as his face was burned beyond recognition.

Janeway, after having ordered all-stop, meets with Seven in the astrometrics lab , where Seven brings up a sensor scan of the nebula, showing Voyager 's position outside of it. She reports that the nebula is at least one hundred and ten light years wide. It will take Voyager over a month to travel through, a trip the crew would certainly not survive. Janeway realizes that going around the nebula would add a year onto their journey, which is not a welcome idea. Janeway is determined that, after all the crew and ship have been through and traveling 15,000 light-years, this nebula won't stop them.

She speaks to The Doctor in sickbay about the effects the nebula had on them. He has found that it has massive amounts of subnucleonic radiation which caused the burns and agonizing pain. He tells her there is no way to inoculate against the effects. Janeway asks how then they can protect themselves and he suggests putting the crew into stasis for the duration of the flight through the nebula while he remains online to monitor everyone. Janeway questions this course of action but The Doctor responds that he has looked at all options and this is the only way. Janeway asks him who will monitor the ship's systems and make necessary course adjustments while all of the crew is put in stasis. The Doctor promises Janeway that he is capable of keeping on top of everything, but she assures him it is not a question of trust; they have no idea what effect the radiation will have on his holomatrix, so he needs a backup in case he goes off-line. The Doctor reminds her of only one other crewmember that was unaffected, Seven of Nine.

Janeway speaks to Seven about running the ship with the crew in stasis

Janeway goes to speak to Seven and finds her in cargo bay 2. Janeway explains to Seven what The Doctor has told her, stressing the seriousness of the task as the lives of the crew will be in her hands. Seven assures her that she is fully capable of this responsibility. Janeway however, still has doubts as most Humans do not react well to long-term isolation. Janeway does acknowledge that, as a former drone, this must be even more difficult for her. She wonders if she could handle it if The Doctor goes offline due to a malfunction. Seven looks rather uncertain but insists she can do it. Janeway accepts her assessment but stresses that The Doctor is in command of the ship. She leaves to inform the senior staff of her decision.

In the briefing room , Janeway outlines the plan to the senior officers. The officers are uneasy about this but Janeway gives the crew The Doctor's assurances that it is quite safe to be put into stasis, pointing out that he and Seven will monitor their vital signs several times every day. They will go into stasis and when they wake up, they will be on the other side of the nebula feeling like they had just taken a quick nap. Everyone has concerns, Janeway included, but she reminds them that crews have been in stasis a lot longer than month and knows they can make it. She dismisses them until 1700 hours, at which time they will be put into stasis and prepares to make a ship-wide announcement. Commander Chakotay remains behind to discuss his own concerns regarding leaving Seven in charge. He reminds Janeway of Seven's insubordinate and rebellious track record ever since she came to Voyager, how she has openly disagreed and argued with her decisions at times and even disobeyed direct orders. Janeway understands his concerns but points out that not only do they not have any other choice but that she also really believes that, in spite of her insolence, Seven really wants to do well and prove herself to the crew.

The crew enters stasis

At 1700 hours, on Deck 14 , one-by-one, all crewmembers are put into stasis chambers . Paris is anxious but The Doctor assures him that all will be well. Should an emergency occur in which he revives and needs to get out, Janeway informs him, he can unlock the unit from the inside. Still very nervous, he goes in. Janeway, as captain, is the last to be put into stasis.

Act Two [ ]

Voyager traverses the nebula

Voyager is ten days into its journey through the nebula. Seven has created an efficient routine that sees her performing duties of maintenance, monitoring the crew and regenerating at specific times. She enters the dark, empty mess hall, where she has the computer replicate one of her preferred nutritional supplements , which she sits and drinks. She then goes to the bridge and makes a course adjustment. Walking down a corridor, she finds Paris on the floor, unconscious. Apparently, he let himself out of his stasis unit. She calls The Doctor who checks out his vital signs and returns him to his stasis chamber.

But the isolation is wearing on both of them. After eating cheese, they begin to bicker. The Doctor insists they go to the holodeck for another social lesson but Seven angrily insists she has no time for frivolous pursuits. They continue to argue about the other becoming increasingly irritating. The Doctor finally orders Seven to follow him to the holodeck to continue her social lessons.

During the lesson, Seven is much more successful at maintaining a "normal" conversation, but, to The Doctor, her approach is no more than a cop-out. Instead of "mixing" and mingling with her fellow crewmembers, she engages in a discussion about warp theory , using the captain and others to find a way to fix technical issues The Doctor and Seven are experiencing during their time in the nebula. This annoys The Doctor yet again, leading to more bickering.

Then the computer sounds a warning about an emergency problem with the antimatter , which could lead to a warp core breach . They rush to engineering but find it is a false alarm. The subnucleonic radiation from the nebula has begun to affect the bio-neural gel packs that comprise the computer's processing circuitry. As a result, the computer is detecting false signals relating to the warp core .

Act Three [ ]

They enter the Jefferies tube system and investigate the extent of the affected gel packs. When they find one, they remove it and The Doctor prepares to take it to sickbay for study. Then, to his horror, his signal begins to cut in and out: the radiation is affecting his mobile emitter . He tells Seven they need to return to sickbay immediately, as if the emitter goes offline while The Doctor is outside sickbay his program may be deleted. He and Seven race back there and fortunately make it back before the mobile emitter goes offline. The Doctor is saved but Seven confirms that the emitter has been damaged by the nebula in the same way as the gel packs. The Doctor can no longer leave sickbay and so it will be up to Seven to take care of everything on the ship, as they must make sure Voyager is able to get through the nebula in one piece without being crippled by the radiation. Seven is visibly disturbed by the prospect of being by herself almost all of the time, but resolutely promises The Doctor she will continue on alone if she must.

Twenty-nine days into the nebula, Seven, now working by herself, continues her daily routine. However, she is now clearly showing the effects of her prolonged isolation. Meanwhile, the ship's systems are requiring more and more maintenance to ensure they don't break down completely. On the bridge, she tries to have the computer make a course correction, but now even the sound of the computer's voice, which she had depended on for company, seems ready to fail. The computer takes several seconds to respond, then, when it does, the voice is slow and eventually cuts out altogether. The computer tries to make the correction but fails. Seven does it manually, then has the computer diagnose itself. It reports that one third of the gel pack relays are non-functional. She has it perform a rerouting of processor signals to bypass the affected gel packs. Then she finds that they still have about six days and five hours to go through the nebula. She takes heart because this does not seem too long. While on her way to engineering, she hears anguished cries from Paris, who seems to have escaped his stasis chamber again but when she goes to Deck 14, she notices that all is as it should be.

Seven deals with Trajis Lo-Tarik

Shortly after, she receives a proximity alert informing her of an approaching ship . The pilot introduces himself as Trajis Lo-Tarik , stating that he is in need of a microfusion chamber, asking her whether she would consider a trade. He says he is trying to cross the nebula as well. Seven is reluctant but he does have liquid helium which she needs, therefore, she agrees to meet for an exchange. She meets him in one of the cargo bays where he expresses curiosity about her name. She explains that it was her Borg designation. The visitor states that he has never heard of the Borg and asks if she is alone on this ship. Seven explains the situation and that everyone has been put into stasis. He makes small talk, which, despite her professed disdain for such, she is glad to respond to. He is alone on his ship and he, just like Seven, is resistant to the radiation; the radiation has forced him to rebuild his engines twice to keep going, but he is determined to be the first of his kind to get through it. He tells her that given that she has been going through the nebula for over three weeks, she is doing quite fine because no one has ever managed to cross the nebula. He then goes on to ask her how she is handling the loneliness, the isolation in this vast space because he has heard that the drones can't stand being alone, severed from the Collective . This alerts Seven because he had just told her that he never heard of the Borg before. She asks him to leave and when he becomes pushy, asking to get something to eat, she ensures him that he will not be accommodated, pointing a phaser at him. He keeps harassing her and frightening her about the consequences of loneliness. While escorting him to the transporter room , she hears Paris again. She looks around, but sees nobody. Then she turns to Lo-Tarik who is gone. She runs in the direction he may have headed and sees a shadow moving. She calls The Doctor and informs him about an intruder.

Act Four [ ]

In the sickbay, The Doctor informs Seven that he has scanned for but found no alien lifeform aboard or the apparent ship he came from. He still cannot leave sickbay and instructs her to arm herself and track Lo-Tarik down by herself. She looks uncertain, but when The Doctor asks her compassionately if she is frightened, she grits her teeth and calls upon her Borg heritage for Borg do not know fear.

She moves cautiously through the corridors, armed with a phaser rifle . She hears the echoing voices of crew-members calling for help. She also hears Lo-Tarik call her over the comm, taunting her, asking again about her unusual name. When she does not answer, he mockingly makes her race to Engineering by threatening to collapse the structural integrity around the warp coils . In Engineering, he informs her of his location: the bridge, where he can do just about anything over there. She hallucinates, seeing Paris and Kim crawling in agony, then going up in flames. When she rushes to them, they vanish. Lo-Tarik continues to taunt her. But she turns the tables on him, cutting off oxygen to the bridge. She listens with satisfaction as he gasps for oxygen, then goes silent. She informs The Doctor, who congratulates her. He has fixed his mobile emitter, and is marching briskly to engineering to join her.

Lo-Tarik is unaffected by Seven's phaser rifle shot

The doors open, but to her surprise, in steps an unharmed Lo-Tarik. She fires at him but he is unaffected, merely stepping forward, mocking her as a weak former Borg drone whose days of power are long gone; someone who thought she could be Human but failed at it miserably. He tells her that she is Borg, that this is what she was meant to be: one of many. But now she is alone, weak, pathetic. The Doctor approaches her who appears to be talking to empty space. She tells him about Lo-Tarik but The Doctor assures her that no one is there and that she is hallucinating. That is when she realizes that she was imagining Lo-Tarik just as she has been imagining Paris and the others crying for help. The Doctor has an explanation from his examination of the radiation-affected gel packs: they degraded the packs' synaptic relays ; the radiation is doing the same to her Borg implants, altering the neurotransmitter level in her sensory nodes . The Doctor offers to try to modify her implants to stop the hallucinations. She agrees, remembering a time as a drone when she was cut off from the Borg Collective for several hours, and the fear she had felt; the same fear and panic she is experiencing now.

Then suddenly, the primary EPS conduits overload and The Doctor again begins to malfunction, since his mobile emitter is tied to the EPS conduits. The computer warns that secondary systems are failing and The Doctor tells Seven that she has to repair the EPS conduits and that everything depends on her now. She frantically states that she cannot function alone, but The Doctor says that she has to. He will not be damaged, but he will go offline and will remain off until they are out of the nebula. The Doctor stresses that everyone is depending on Seven to survive, before his program finally fails. Terror-stricken and shaken to the core, Seven is now truly alone on Voyager .

Seven is now alone

Act Five [ ]

Days pass. Seven, despite her terror, continues to work, keeping the power on and the ship moving. Her only company now is her hallucinations; hallucinations which echo her own fears about being Human. Now with only seventeen hours before Voyager clears the nebula, she works in Astrometrics and is joined by an imagined, radiation-burned Ensign Kim, who mocks her efforts.

Seven is mocked by a hallucinated drone

She heads for the bridge, but she sees corridors lit Borg-green, and a Borg drone following her, coldly berating her for leaving the Collective. It tells her that her decision to leave the Collective was foolish because now she is alone, only one, Human, weak, pathetic – part of an imperfect Human race; that she will and cannot survive without the Collective. She says that she will adapt as an individual but the Borg keeps repeating that she is only one, alone, pathetic, one among many, weak for a Borg cannot be one, she will die as one, detached, isolated. She insists that she is an individual and finally escapes the Borg who keeps repeating to her that she will die alone. In a turbolift , Lo-Tarik appears and urges her to go back to the Collective, stating that the Borg drone just now was right about her. She sees the doors open to the inside of a Borg vessel . She hears the echoing, multi-track resonant voice of the Collective, telling her that resistance is futile. She resolutely ignores it all and continues to the bridge.

On the bridge, she hallucinates Captain Janeway and several senior officers, all burned from radiation, talking to her, mocking her, putting her down as she attempts to keep things together. She will never hold up, they say; the crew will die because of her failure, she will fall apart before they leave the nebula they say. Janeway takes the blame sardonically: she trusted her, she says, but she should have known better.

The computer warns that propulsion is going offline. The mocking crew turns to her again, wondering if she can do it. The computer tells her that they have another forty-one minutes to go until the ship clears the nebula. Janeway says that it is too long and that she won't make it. Seven tries rerouting power from every non-essential system and environmental controls to the engines, but to it doesn't help and the propulsion systems fail leaving Voyager dead in space. Desperate to get the ship moving again, she has an idea. The hallucinated officers discuss it in mocking tones: she is going to have to reroute power from the stasis chambers to the engines. But, they sneer, that will kill some of the crew, although they doubt that this would bother her too much, after all, she has already killed a few million, would a few more matter? Seven has the computer reroute power from ten of the stasis units to the propulsion system and resume course. This works and the engines come back online. The crew laugh at her, because now the crew members she disconnected will die, but they all knew it anyway, they knew she didn't care about them.

Then she races to Deck 14. A "Janeway" hallucination meets her there, mocking her decision. She sees the ten affected chambers, smoking, their occupants writhing in death-throes. "Janeway" taunts her to save them, if she can. With only eleven minutes until Voyager clears the nebula, Seven orders the computer to cut life support on all decks and reroute available power to the affected units. The computer acknowledges and the stasis units reactivate. "Janeway" taunts her with the fact that Seven has now ensured her own death: no oxygen, no heat. Finally, as heat and oxygen rapidly vanish, Seven sinks down in a corner, defiantly saying that she is Seven of Nine, that she is alone, but that she will adapt. She passes out.

Seven recovers in the sickbay

A flash of white light.

She awakens to find herself surrounded by The Doctor, Captain Janeway and Chakotay; not hallucinations this time but real, informing her that she was successful in getting the ship through the nebula. Chakotay tells her that she is the one they nearly lost. When they left the nebula, The Doctor came back online and found her, restarted life support and woke the crew. A very pleased Doctor tells her she did well and that he is proud of her. She whispers that she is glad she was able to help.

Later, Seven enters the mess hall and looks around as crew-members sit, eat and interact. Not a simulation but real this time. She sees B'Elanna, Tom, and Harry sitting together and asks whether she may join them. Utilising her social lessons with The Doctor, she tells them that she felt the need for companionship. Paris jokes that after a month with only The Doctor for company he can understand that. She tells Kim and Torres about how The Doctor had to put Paris back in his stasis unit four times after he got out. They laugh and rib him good-naturedly. He responds that he has never liked closed spaces and Seven, her own experience still fresh in her mind, notes that maybe he just disliked being alone.

Log entries [ ]

• Personal log, Seven of Nine

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Describe the nature of your sexual relationship with Lieutenant Paris! "

" We've come 15,000 light years. We haven't been stopped by temporal anomalies, warp core breaches, or hostile aliens. And I'll be damned if we're going to be stopped by a nebula. "

" The Doctor will be in command. You will follow his instructions just as you would follow mine. " " Follow the orders of a hologram? "

" Look at the fact that here's someone who's butted horns with you from the moment she came on board; who disregards authority and actively disobeys orders when she doesn't agree with them. " " And this is the person I'm giving responsibility for the lives of this entire crew. I suppose you want me to tell you I'm not crazy. " " In a nutshell. "

" Holodecks are a pointless endeavor, fulfilling some Human need to fantasize. I have no such need. " " What you need is some editorial skill in your self-expression. Between impulse and action there´s a realm of good taste begging for your acquaintance. " " I find your self-expression ponderous. " " And I can't put up with this for another month! "

" Come on, Tom. Sleepy time. " " What if we… had to get out in a hurry? " " You can unlock the unit from inside, Tom. " " Do I detect a hint of claustrophobia, lieutenant? "

" Why do they have to design these things like coffins? " " Should we replicate you a teddy bear? "

" Seven of Nine to The Doctor. " " Go ahead. " " Lieutenant Paris has left his stasis unit and is unconscious. " " I'll be right there. Apparently, he's more claustrophobic than I thought. "

" If you had even the slightest sense of humor, you'd realize I was making a small joke. " " Very small. "

" It's not unheard of for people to come out of stasis and start wandering. Leave it to Mr. Paris to be just as much trouble now as when he's awake. "

" These tubes certainly weren't designed with creature comfort in mind. "

" I can complain if I want to, it's comforting. " ... " Well, this journey certainly has not lacked excitement. I can´t complain about being bored. " " Since you find it comforting, you´ll undoubtedly find something else to complain about. " " No doubt, you really should try it. "

" Seven, are you… frightened? " " I am Borg. "

(Doctor's program flickers, begins to degrade) " I have to get back to sickbay! " (program flickers again) " Hurry! " " I am hurrying. " " If the mobile emitter goes off-line while I'm out of sickbay my program may be irretrievable! " " Don't panic. It's counterproductive." " That's easy for you to say. You're not facing cybernetic oblivion! " (program flickers yet again) " If that happens again, I'm a goner! "

(The Doctor gives a sigh of relief) " Home, sweet sickbay, I never thought I'd be so happy to see these walls. "

" I am Seven of Nine, I am alone. But I will adapt, I will… "

(The computer's voice slows and deepens, returns to normal, then deepens again) " Warning. Deuterium tank levels are fluctuating beyond acceptable tolerances. " " The computer sounds like it needs a stimulant. "

" I hope you're not afraid of the dark. "

" Neelix, this soup is great. What is it? " " It's my secret recipe. I've never told anyone what's in it. " " Why does that make me nervous? " " Oh, come on, Tom. Where's your sense of adventure? " " Not in my stomach. "

" I… felt the need for companionship. " " Well, after a month with only the Doc for company, I can understand that. "

Background information [ ]

Story and script [ ].

• The original pitch for this episode came from James Swallow , who was given the opportunity to pitch for Star Trek: Voyager after having submitted numerous unsuccessful story ideas to Star Trek: The Next Generation , Deep Space Nine , and Voyager . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 17) The unauthorized reference book Beyond the Final Frontier (p. 319), incorrectly suggests Swallow's work on this installment was rooted in an idea by John Devins.
• The pitch that eventually became this episode had the working title "Perchance to Dream" and primarily featured The Doctor. It was jokingly compared, by staff writer Bryan Fuller , to the horror film The Shining . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 17) Fuller was actually the person who bought the pitch. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 18) He recalled, " Some responses [to the plot idea] were 'Uhhh… Okay', until I said 'But! You can do this…! We can have scenes with creepy corridors, spooky hallucinations!' " Co-executive producer Brannon Braga was another writing staffer who instantly recognized that the story had potential. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 19)
• At the end of January 1998 , James Swallow received a telephone call from pre-production coordinator Lolita Fatjo , who notified him of the purchase of one of his pitches. " Just like that, the words I had been waiting to hear for years came beaming across the world to me from California , " Swallow reminisced. " The dulcet tones of Lolita Fatjo […] told me, 'Congratulations, Jim! We want to buy your story!' […] I, after almost a decade of dogged struggle, had finally achieved a personal goal – to help create a little piece of the Star Trek universe. " Also, Swallow was the first British writer to sell a story to Star Trek , a fact that Fatjo later informed him of. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 17)
• Voyager 's writing staff decided to do a different take on the story and chose to alter the episode's protagonist to Seven of Nine. Bryan Fuller related, " We saw how much more interesting it would be to have somebody who was part of a collective with millions of voices in her head every day, taken down to abruptly having no voices in her head and surrounded by a hundred-odd crewmen, and then to only be with one other crewman, and then finally to be on her own. How frightening would that be? " The writers additionally came up with the idea of Seven having fearsome hallucinations due to her mental state in such isolation. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 19) The change of lead character to being Seven had taken place by two months after the pitch's conception. Another development that occurred by the same time was that the submitted plot idea had become the basis of a story entitled "One", assigned to be scripted by executive producer Jeri Taylor . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 17)
• The ultimately-used title of this episode was previously a working title for the second season outing " Tuvix ". [1]
• A preliminary beat sheet for this installment was written by Jeri Taylor while the episode was in development. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 18) The beat sheet had the episode's first scene taking place in sickbay, rather than on one of Voyager 's holodecks, and the only characters said to be involved in the scene were The Doctor and Seven of Nine. The Mutura-class nebula was not present in the story yet, with the topic of banter on the bridge (during the teaser ) having not been decided either. Instead, the cause of the crew's maladies was said to be " a vast bio-degenerative field, which was undetected because of TBD. " The effects on the bridge crew started with an extreme headache suffered by Tom Paris, not by Harry Kim. In the beat sheet's version of the first act, Paris' pained effort to operate the controls needed to back Voyager away was successful, so Tuvok was uninvolved in trying to guide the ship out of the nebula. Sickened junior officers crawled into sickbay but, in the episode itself, they are already there when they are first seen. Voyager was then to be shown, turning in the opposite direction of its original heading, though the episode establishes the course change without directly showing it happening. Seven's subsequent arrival on the bridge was not in the beat sheet and, instead, Janeway began to investigate why exactly the crew had suffered, a scene whose equivalent in the episode is apparently the discussion between her and Seven in astrometics. Once the cause of the illnesses was determined on the bridge, a meeting of the senior staff was held in the briefing room and their discussion included dialogue much like some of the conversation that, in the episode, The Doctor and Janeway have in sickbay; for example, The Doctor suggested that the entire crew be put into stasis and that Seven join him, the same advice that he gives Janeway in the episode. The beat sheet continued with a concerned Janeway making her way to Deck Fourteen, where Seven assured the captain that she herself would be fine and that she wouldn't suffer from cabin fever. Typically, a similar conversation is in the episode, even though the captain's journey to Seven's domain is omitted. ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 17)
• This episode's final draft script was submitted on 13 February 1998 . [2] The teleplay continued to be revised thereafter, with one of the script revisions being made on 10 March 1998 . A page that was revised on that date was the first of the script, detailing the start of the episode's teaser . This part of the teleplay underwent no further changes. The page included Harry Kim stating that his birthplace was New Mexico , although this was ultimately changed to South Carolina . ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 17)
• Robert Picardo contributed some dialogue that his character of The Doctor says to Seven of Nine in one of their arguments here. " I asked to add the lines, 'What you need is some editorial skill in your self-expression,' " remembered Picardo. " 'Between impulse and action, there is a realm of good taste begging for your acquaintance' […] They put that in, because the lines that I had, I wasn't enjoying. " Another reason why Picardo suggested the dialogue was because he imagined that, while The Doctor was criticizing Seven for lacking certain social graces, the holographic character would probably use a selection of well-chosen words to demonstrate what he was trying to communicate to her. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, pp. 84-85)

Cast and characters [ ]

Jeri Ryan relaxes during a break from the filming of this episode's penultimate scene

• Seven of Nine actress Jeri Ryan enjoyed performing in this installment, despite being sick during the episode's production. She was also attracted to its plot, later referring to it as "an interesting story." Concerning Seven's plight of aloneness here, Ryan stated, " It was a neat concept for an episode. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 19)
• Director Kenneth Biller was pleased to collaborate on this installment with Jeri Ryan, who Biller described as "great to work with." He recognized, however, that the episode was challenging for Ryan. Biller commented, " It was basically her all day, every day […] [with] grueling hours. She was very present and very there the whole time. This was a very difficult show emotionally for her, where she has to slowly come unraveled. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 110)
• Bryan Fuller was highly satisfied with Jeri Ryan's work here, referring to it as "amazing." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 19)
• Ken Biller observed that, by this point in the series, Torres actress Roxann Dawson had more-or-less recovered from having been pregnant, earlier in the fourth season. " By the time I was directing ['One'], she'd already had the baby, and she was raring to go and ready to get back to work, " noted Biller. " So as a director I really didn't have the problem of having to shoot around her belly. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, pp. 91 & 95)
• Robert Picardo was delighted with the dialogue that he himself added to the episode. " I thought [it] was a pretty funny Doctor dress-down, " he enthused. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 84)

Production [ ]

• In this episode, the stasis room was a redress of the Voyager cargo bay set and the stasis units were reused from the second season episode " The Thaw ". ( Star Trek: Voyager Companion  (p. 246)) According to the unofficial reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 245), the stasis units were also previously used in " Resolutions ", an episode that is slightly later in Star Trek: Voyager 's second season than "The Thaw".
• This was the second of two Star Trek episodes directed by Ken Biller, who normally operated as a member of Star Trek: Voyager 's writing team. He previously helmed the earlier fourth season outing " Revulsion ".
• In the morning of 3 February 1998 , a production meeting for this installment was held, attended by Ken Biller. By the time the lunch interval ended on that day, Biller had departed from the meeting and was ready to join the other members of the series' writing staff in a story break session that resumed after lunch, concerning the season finale, ultimately entitled " Hope and Fear ". ( Star Trek: Action! , pp. 10 & 11)
• One of the sets for this episode was under construction on 9 February 1998 , on Paramount Stage 16 (which simultaneously housed Star Trek 's permanent cave set as well as a set used for both the Museum of Kyrian Heritage in the earlier fourth season episode " Living Witness " and the Son'a surgical facility in the film Star Trek: Insurrection ). ( Star Trek: Action! , pp. 13 & 15)
• According to James Swallow, this episode was "shot in the last two weeks of February [1998] ." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 17) The episode was in production – on several stages of the Paramount Pictures lot – by 16 February 1998 . ( Star Trek: Action! , pp. 16 & 20) Ken Biller specified that the scenes of this episode involving Jeri Ryan were filmed over a period of seven days. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 110)
• While the episode was in production, Robert Picardo took some time to be interviewed for Cinefantastique , sitting in the Voyager engineering set. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 84)
• Ken Biller found that the duration in which he directed this episode was "great." ( The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine  issue 18 , p. 18) He said further, " It was a really good episode to direct because it had some fantasy sequences, and some scary, atmospheric stuff […] There are significant portions of the episode that don't really have any dialogue, which is always fun for a director, because you try to tell the story through the pictures. That was really a challenge. " Some difficulties of the episode's making concerned Biller's direction of Jeri Ryan. " There were moments when we had to make a decision about exactly how vulnerable she was going to be and how much fear she would show, " Biller said. " There were times when maybe she wanted to go a little further than I did, and I would have to remind her that we still have to give ourselves some place to go, so that you don't reach your most unraveled state until the end of the picture. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 110)
• The production of the shot in which a regenerating Seven of Nine dreams of being alone in a frozen wasteland involved the use of bluescreen . " We shot Jeri Ryan on a bluescreen stage, " visual effects supervisor Mitch Suskin recalled, " and did a dolly-back and a crane-up to pull back and away from her. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 81)
• On the night of 26 February 1998 , filming on this episode was ended shortly before midnight. ( Star Trek: Action! , p. 28) On the following day (which was scheduled to be the last day of production on the installment), some second unit photography for the episode was filmed on the Voyager bridge set (on Stage 8 ). This involved some hand-held camera work, usage of bluescreen, low level lighting and special effect smoke, as well as heavy burn make-up for several of the regular cast (specifically, Kate Mulgrew , Robert Duncan McNeill , Robert Beltran , Tim Russ , and Garrett Wang ). ( Star Trek: Action! , pp. 27 & 28) The footage filmed was both the scene in which Seven is tormented by illusory members of the senior staff on Voyager 's bridge and part of the scene before that, with Seven in a turbolift. In the knowledge that "One" had filmed late on the previous night, Winrich Kolbe – who was assigned to direct "Hope and Fear" – was waiting patiently, at 9 am, for a break in the filming of this episode. At 11:30 am, such a break began (as was scheduled), allowing Kolbe a twenty-five-minute meeting with his key department heads. Filming of this installment continued soon thereafter, initiated by a crew call at noon. ( Star Trek: Action! , p. 28) Even though unit production manager Brad Yacobian made a "guess-timate" that the season finale would begin shooting at 3:30 pm, the production of this installment continued past that point and finally wrapped at 4:30 pm. ( Star Trek: Action! , pp. 28 & 32) The performers who had donned makeup to look incinerated visited the makeup trailer before the next installment entered production. ( Star Trek: Action! , p. 28)

Visual effects [ ]

• The Borg interior that Seven sees through a pair of turbolift doors was a single frame of a visual effect sequence from Star Trek: First Contact . ( Delta Quadrant , p. 245)
• To complete the shot of Seven apparently standing alone in an icy wilderness, the appropriate bluescreen footage of Jeri Ryan was, in Mitch Suskin's words, "match-moved into a 3-D painting element" – specifically, a matte painting done by Eric Chauvin . Snow that covers Seven's feet, in the shot, was actually part of this painted environment. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 81)
• 27 April 1998 was the eighth day in a row in which visual effects supervisor Ronald B. Moore was situated in the compositing bay at visual effects house Digital Magic and was also a day on which he was completing his work on the visual effects shots of this episode. Moore had hopes of completing his work on this installment by the day's end despite repeatedly being interrupted from that work, such as by a ringing telephone. ( Star Trek: Action! , p. 85)
• Mitch Suskin was happy that the visual effects work of this episode was somewhat unusual for the series. " Even though the effects we are doing on 'One' are a little bit out of the ordinary, " he commented, " it's nice for us to have the difference. " ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 81)

Continuity and trivia [ ]

• A similar storyline to this occurs in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode " Doctor's Orders ", when Doctor Phlox is forced to take control of the ship on his own – to pilot it through a nebula – but begins to hallucinate.
• This episode also has many similarities to two other Voyager episodes – " Persistence of Vision " in season 2, and " Bliss " in season 5 – which feature The Doctor working closely with another crew member ( Kes in the former, Seven once again in the latter) while most of the crew is incapacitated in some way.
• In their first foray into the nebula, when the crew starts getting burns, Janeway orders Paris to reverse course but Paris is unable to reach the panel. It is unclear why Paris or Janeway do not use voice command. When the crew is in stasis, Seven uses voice commands to ask the ship to correct the course.
• The death of a bridge crew member from radiation marks the 19th confirmed death of Voyager crew since the pilot episode " Caretaker ", the previous deaths having occurred in the Kyrian encounter depicted in " Living Witness ". This would put the crew complement as of the end of this episode at 140, given the crew complement of 148 that was most recently established in " Distant Origin " and " Displaced ", and the deaths that have occurred since.
• Janeway remarks in this episode that Voyager has traveled a total of 15,000 light years toward home since being stranded in the Delta Quadrant.
• Seven mentions having been temporarily disconnected from the Collective for two hours. Flashback scenes in " Survival Instinct " may also refer to this same event.
• The Doctor continues wearing the mobile emitter despite being on the holodeck . Previous episodes have shown that he can be transferred to the holodeck without issue. However, The Doctor has previously mentioned, in " Revulsion ", that he is free to "take a stroll", and may have simply preferred to walk to the holodeck, using his emitter to navigate the ship's corridors.
• This episode marks the final appearance of the type 3 phaser on Star Trek: Voyager , a form of rifle that was introduced in Star Trek: First Contact . All phaser rifles subsequently shown on the series are the compression phaser rifle .
• Bio-neural gelpacks make an appearance in this episode for the first time since the third-season episode " Macrocosm ".
• At one point, Seven reads Paris' body temperature as 97.6. This is a rare use of the Fahrenheit scale.
• In the atlas Star Trek: Star Charts , the Mutara-class nebula of this episode has been named the Swallow Nebula in James Swallow's honor.
• Torres (albeit, a holographic version) mentions at the beginning of this episode that she joined the Maquis after Chakotay saved her life. This was previously established in Jeri Taylor 's book Pathways and marks the only mention in the series of Torres' motivations for joining the group.
• Kate Mulgrew , Robert Beltran , and Garrett Wang all play three versions of their respective characters in this episode: the "real" one, a holodeck recreation, and an illusion in Seven of Nine 's mind.
• This episode's title, at three letters, beat the record for the shortest in Star Trek history held by " Miri " for nearly 32 years. It held the record for just three years, when it was beaten by " Q2 ", which also held it for three years before it was beaten in turn by " E² ".
• The way Seven of Nine criticizes The Doctor's small joke closely resembles some dialogue between Pavel Chekov and Spock in TOS : " The Trouble with Tribbles ".
• After Seven of Nine says, " I am Borg, " a few notes from " Scorpion "'s musical score (by Jay Chattaway ) play.

Reception [ ]

• Both James Swallow and Bryan Fuller liked how this episode ultimately turned out. Swallow referred to the final version of the installment's teleplay as "a dynamic and taut script." ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 17) Fuller remarked, " What we got was a great episode […] I think it's one of the strongest episodes of the [fourth] season. " ( Star Trek Monthly  issue 42 , p. 19)
• One story possibility that was temporarily considered for the following episode, the fourth season finale "Hope and Fear", was discarded precisely because it was thought to be too close to the plot of this episode, especially this installment's plot point about the crew being vulnerable to the nebula. ( Star Trek: Action! , p. 6)
• This episode achieved a Nielsen rating of 3.9 million homes, and a 6% share. [3] (X)
• Cinefantastique rated this episode 3 out of 4 stars. ( Cinefantastique , Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 109)
• Star Trek Monthly  issue 47 , p. 62 scored this episode 3 out of 5 stars.
• The unauthorized reference book Delta Quadrant (p. 247) gives the installment a rating of 7 out of 10.

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 4.13, catalog number VHR 4634, 28 December 1998
• As part of the VOY Season 4 DVD collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway / Kathryn Janeway (hologram)

Also Starring [ ]

• Robert Beltran as Chakotay / Chakotay (hologram)
• Roxann Dawson as B'Elanna Torres / B'Elanna Torres (hologram)
• Robert Duncan McNeill as Tom Paris
• Ethan Phillips as Neelix / Neelix (hologram)
• Robert Picardo as The Doctor
• Tim Russ as Tuvok
• Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
• Garrett Wang as Harry Kim / Harry Kim (hologram)

Guest star [ ]

• Wade Williams as Trajis Lo-Tarik

Co-stars [ ]

• Ron Ostrow as Borg Drone
• Majel Barrett as Computer Voice

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• Tarik Ergin as Ayala (hologram)
• Kerry Hoyt as Fitzpatrick (hologram)
• Unknown actor as burned ops ensign

Stand-ins [ ]

• Brita Nowak – stand-in for Jeri Ryan

References [ ]

14 Beta 7 ; ability ; antipsychotic ; bio-neural circuitry ; bio-neural gel pack ; blood pressure ; body temperature ; Borg ; Borg Collective ; Borg drone ; cardiopulmonary system ; cargo bay ; Chi 14 ; claustrophobia ; closet ; cloaking device ; coffin ; command processor ; dermal regenerator ; electro-optic modulator ; EM stress parameters ; EPS conduit ; Federation ; force field ; game ; gestation ; gesture ; headache ; heart ; helium ; holodeck ; inoculation ; Intrepid -class decks ; irritable ; Jefferies tube ; level 4 diagnostic ; Maquis ; maintenance duty ; manual override ; microfusion chamber ; mobile emitter ; Mutara class ; nanoprobe ; nebula ; neurode ; organic tissue ; oxygen ; parisses squares ; phaser rifle ; photon torpedo ; plasma conduit ; plasma vent ; potato salad ; pulse ; radiation burn ; self-expression ; sense of humor ; sensory nodes ; sexual relationship ; short tempered ; soup ; South Carolina ; stasis chamber ; stimulant ; subnucleonic radiation ; subspace field matrix ; suspended animation ; tennis ; turbolift ; volleyball ; warp core breach ; warp field

External links [ ]

• "One" at StarTrek.com
• " One " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " One " at Wikipedia
• " One " at MissionLogPodcast.com , a Roddenberry Star Trek podcast
• " One " at the Internet Movie Database
• "One" script  at Star Trek Minutiae
• 2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

• Lower Decks
• Short Treks
• Strange New Worlds
• Deep Space Nine
• Star Trek: Picard
• The Next Generation
• The Original Series

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Seven of Nine – From Borg to Badass!

In the Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode Surrender , Seven of Nine ( Jeri Ryan ) puts her own life on the line attempting to save the crew of the Titan. Introduced as a member of the Borg collective in Star Trek: Voyager , Seven has transformed from the drone who wanted nothing to do with Starfleet to the second in command who is willing to risk it all for her crew.

Seven has had a multitude of titles in her life so far. Borg drone. XB. Fenris Ranger. Starfleet officer. Although these titles give glimpses into her past and present, none have succeeded in accurately describing exactly who she is. For nearly half their life, she existed in a race that shunned individuality. But Seven has been nothing but unapologetically herself since her introduction in ST: Voyager . If a singular title is needed to describe her, may I suggest Badass?

A Borg Beginning

Abruptly separated from the collective in her first episode, Seven of Nine begins her Star Trek journey as an enemy and an outsider. Seven is forced to exist in a world she thought she’d left behind as a child. As a result, Seven spends most of her first year on Voyager rebelling. When she isn’t trying to escape, she’s busy emphasizing how different she is from the rest of the crew. She intentionally avoids all attempts at integration. Her time is spent trying to replicate her rigid routine lightyears away from the only family she’d known since she was six. Early in her time on Voyager, a furious Seven tells Janeway that she “cannot change our nature.” That all attempts to “rehabilitate” her will be, in fact, futile and that she will ultimately betray them. Not backing down from a challenge, Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) makes it her personal mission to prove Seven wrong. She takes the young woman under her wing and teaches her valuable life skills deemed unnecessary and frivolous by the Borg. It goes without saying that Seven joining Voyager was not a decision universally loved by the crew. However, from day one, an intense effort was made to show her how different and wonderful life outside the collective could be. After all, Janeway referred to Seven as part of the Voyager family before the former drone even spoke in the first person singular. Seven’s trademark stubbornness was no match for Janeway’s persistent compassion.

Learning From The Best

Janeway reminded Seven what it was like to be human and that being human is not bad. But Captain Janeway’s influence on Seven of Nine did not stop after she left Voyager. Nothing illustrates this fact like the penultimate ST: Picard episode Vox . Seven is told by a dying Shaw (Todd Stashwick) that the Titan is now under her command during an intense battle. And what does she do? She refuses to abandon her ship, and she continues to fight. Sound familiar? In ST: Voyager season five’s Dark Frontier, Janeway shares her three rules for being a starship captain with Naomi Wildman (Scarlett Pomers). “Keep your shirt tucked in, always go down with your ship, and never abandon a member of your crew.” Three principles that Seven of Nine witnessed in practice every day about Voyager. In a crisis, Seven turned to her mentor’s wisdom for guidance.

A Life of Consequences

After Seven refuses to sacrifice his life to save others, a furious Shaw tells her that her actions have consequences. Seven of Nine is no stranger to consequence and needs no reminders. ST: Voyager showed us a Seven of Nine who for the first time, was given glimpses into the destruction she caused as part of the Borg Collective. ST: Picard showed us a Seven of Nine who has spent years grappling with this knowledge.

One could argue that nearly every action Seven has made in ST: Picard is because she is aware of the consequences of her past actions. Introduced in season one as a Fenris Ranger, Seven dedicated her post-Voyager days to atoning for her Borg past by turning to vigilante justice. Singling out those causing harm, Seven channeled her guilt into action. Once used as a pawn to bring new attributes into a collective, Seven turned to use the skills she obtained from the Borg to rid the universe of those she deemed unworthy of redemption.

Making a promise to herself in the season one finale to “never again kill somebody just because it’s what they deserve”, we see a shift in how Seven of Nine conducts herself. She is no longer focused on how she can make others face the justice they deserve. She is no longer the judge and the jury. Instead, she focuses on her actions and how she can bring about the best possible outcome. And lately, that has manifested as risking her own life instead of ending the lives of others.

In Conclusion

You could easily argue that Seven of Nine is the Star Trek character that has drastically changed since her introduction into the franchise. The evolution of Seven of Nine was not quick. It was not easy. And it was not without setbacks. But it resulted in one of the most nuanced, unique, and ultimately rewarding character journeys on television today. Introduced as a spokesperson for a terrifying enemy, Seven of Nine has transformed into an incredible role model, captain, and person through the dedication of Captain Janeway and the Voyager crew and through her self-reflection and dedication to doing better. Seven of Nine is so much more than the ratings boost she was intended to be in the 90s. She is a masterclass in redemption. A shining example of incredible character growth. And, of course, a total badass.

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‘picard’ star jeri ryan reveals devastating insight about that consequential seven of nine moment.

"After 'Voyager' ended, if you asked me if I would play this character again, I would have said, 'Absolutely not,'" the actress says of her cosmic career journey.

By Ryan Parker

Ryan Parker

Former Senior Reporter

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[Warning: this story contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Picard season two penultimate episode “Hide and Seek.”] 

Star Trek: Picard means more to Jeri Ryan than she ever felt was possible.

It has been nearly 25 years since the actress’ iconic Borg character, Seven of Nine, made her first appearance on Star Trek: Voyager . And when that series concluded in 2001, Ryan bid Seven farewell, assuming that was the end of their road. Then came the Paramount+ series Picard. 

The expanded Star Trek Universe gave Ryan and fans a chance to know Seven on a deeper level. And through nearly two seasons, that is exactly what happened — which is why the event of this week’s penultimate season two episode, “Hide and Seek,” is so devastating. In order for her life to be saved after being gravely wounded, Seven is once again assimilated, this time by Agnes Jurati’s (Alison Pill) incarnation of the Borg Queen. For most of the second season, Seven has been human for the first time since she could remember. And, just as before, it was taken away from her in an instant.

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In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter prior to the release of “Hide and Seek,” Ryan touches on that poignant moment while also delving deeper into the relationship between Seven and Raffi (Michelle Hurd). The actress also explains why the Picard series means so much to her before teasing what’s to come in the third and final season.

The episode is one of the best in all the series, in my humble opinion. So much emotion, so much action. Grand storytelling. Did it feel different in production?

For my character, in particular, it was pretty huge. This has been Seven’s struggle since she was separated from the Collective, trying to reconcile her Borg and her human parts. So, this season was the first time in her life since she had been assimilated that she was just human. She got to see how different life could have been and would have been, and how differently she’s treated without those visible Borg parts.

The moment when she is assimilated again, this time in order to save her life, was so heartbreaking. To me, it appeared from the look on her face the price to survive was too costly. Can you shed some light? Would she have rather died?

I think that’s her gut reaction. She comes to understand, but I think immediately she does not think that it was necessary.

Brutal. Switching to something happier, Seven and Raffi’s relationship is just wonderful. I am positive there is love there. Such a bond. Will the universe allow them ever to be truly together?

There is definitely love there between the characters. They’re growing more understanding of each, their flaws and their struggle and their broken parts. Michelle and I, when talking to the producers, said we wanted a realistic portrayal of these two women who are very mature and very driven and very independent. They’ve had lives and careers. And that it wasn’t going to be “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy,” they’re in a relationship with a white picket fence, because that is not who these women are. So, we wanted that relationship struggle. They do love each other. They do care for each other. They respect each other. But can they entwine their lives completely without losing who they are and what their lives have been? And that’s any relationship: How much are you willing to change and sacrifice and give up for the benefits of that relationship? And are they even built to do that? How much can they heal together and heal each other? That remains to be seen.

One of my favorite aspects of this series and especially this season is there are so many powerful, extraordinary female characters. I would love to hear your thoughts on keeping such great company.

Oh my God, it’s not just in the story with the characters, but also behind the scenes. It’s incredible how many women I’ve gotten to work with and the crew and the producers and the writers. You know, I’ve said before, but it was a really huge moment for me in the first season when there was the first female camera operator I’ve worked with — in my entire career! It’s been really incredible that the women have been embraced all across the board for this show.

Star Trek: Voyager’s “Scorpion Part 2” premiered in September 1997. And I know it’s a silly question whenever I ask you folks, “Could you ever imagine then?” But I’d love your thoughts on this (no pun intended) journey you and Seven have made from then to now. 

Never in a million years. After Voyager ended, if you asked me if I would play this character again, I would have said, “Absolutely not.” I was convinced that I had said goodbye to her, and that chapter was done. This has been such a gift, even more than I expected it to be, because I was a little hesitant when I signed on to do Picard . Ideas sound great on paper, but until you start seeing fully realized scripts and how the characters are really being developed, you just don’t know. It’s a leap of faith. So, it has been such a gift on so many levels to be able to revisit this character and continue this huge amount of her journey and massive arc.

I know you can’t say much, but will we see Seven in the third and final season of Picard ?

Yes, you’ll see Seven again, I can tell you that. I think the fans will not be disappointed. The season is huge, and it is a very worthy sendoff for all of these characters.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Picard streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

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8 Alpha Quadrant Things Star Trek: Voyager Found In Delta Quadrant

• Star Trek: Voyager finds familiar things from the Alpha Quadrant in the Delta Quadrant, sparking important questions and connections.
• Encounter with Ferengi negotiators leads Voyager crew to stop their interference in a pre-warp civilization for profits.
• Janeway and crew discover humans abducted by aliens in the 1930s living in the Delta Quadrant, including Amelia Earhart.

For a show with the conceit of being so far from home, Star Trek: Voyager found a surprising number of things in the Delta Quadrant that originated in the Alpha Quadrant, including several from Earth itself. The USS Voyager, commanded by Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), and Commander Chakotay's (Robert Beltran) Maquis raider Val Jean were both brought to the Delta Quadrant in 2371 by the Caretaker (Basil Langton). After Janeway destroyed the Caretaker's array to save the Ocampa , Voyager and the Val Jean were left without a ticket back to the Alpha Quadrant, and banded together to make the long journey.

Finding something familiar in an otherwise totally alien corner of the galaxy brought a sense of familiarity to the USS Voyager crew and viewers at home alike, but the presence of something from the Alpha Quadrant in the Delta Quadrant inevitably raised important questions , like how familiar people and objects traveled 70,000 light years from home in the first place, and whether the find could lead Captain Kathryn Janeway towards a quicker path home to Earth.

Star Trek: Voyagers 20 Best Episodes Ranked

A pair of ferengi negotiators, arridor and kol, star trek: voyager season 3, episode 5 "false profits".

The USS Voyager encounters a pair of Ferengi negotiators, Arridor (Dan Shor) and Kol (Leslie Jordan), who claim to be the prophesied Great Sages of the Takarians, a society with Bronze Age level technology. The Ferengi have no Prime Directive to deter them from interfering with the Takarians' development , so they're performing "miracles" with a standard replicator to reap the monetary benefits of the Takarians' worship. Voyager's crew know the Ferengi reputation well enough to know they're no Sages, so they must figure out how to put a stop to Arridor and Kol's grift.

"False Profits" serves as a Star Trek sequel episode to Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3, episode 8 "The Price", as Voyager catches up with Arridor and Kol (formerly played by J. R. Quinonez) seven years after their Delta Quadrant arrival. The Ferengi took a test flight through the supposedly stable wormhole near Barzan II, which was supposed to emerge in the Gamma Quadrant, but instead stranded the Ferengi in the Delta Quadrant, where they made the best of their situation as only Ferengi can.

Star Trek: Voyager Season 3, Episode 23 "Distant Origin"

"Distant Origin" opens on Forra Gegen (Henry Woronicz), a scientist who discovers that his people, the Voth, share certain genetic similarities with the humans aboard the USS Voyager. While this confirms Gegen's theory that the Voth are the descendants of a species brought to their homeworld millions of years ago , religious leader Minister Odala (Concetta Tomei) refuses to accept the truth. Even with Commander Chakotay present as a living specimen of humanity, Odala pushes Gegen to recant, because Gegen's theory goes against the Voth Doctrine that keeps Odala in power.

After meeting Gegen's assistant, Tova Veer (Christopher Liam Moore), Janeway and the Doctor use the holodeck as a research guide to extrapolate how hadrosaurs might look in the 24th century if they'd been able to evolve into a humanoid form with comparable intelligence. The result resembles Veer, so Janeway and the Doctor conclude, like Gegen, that the Voth evolved from hadrosaurs into a highly advanced species on Earth , then fled to the Delta Quadrant in spacefaring vessels instead of being wiped out with the other dinosaurs.

The Friendship One Probe

Star trek: voyager season 7, episode 21 "friendship one".

By Star Trek: Voyager season 7 , the USS Voyager is in regular contact with Starfleet Command, and Starfleet gives Voyager a mission to retrieve a 21st-century Earth probe, Friendship One . The probe proves difficult to find, but once discovered on an alien planet suffering devastating climate collapse, the implications of Friendship One's launch become clear. Besides the irreversible damage to the planet's climate, the inhabitants are all suffering from radiation sickness, and bear understandable hostility towards Earth, because the aliens believe humans orchestrated their destruction with the Friendship One probe.

The United Earth Space Probe Agency was one of the early names for the organization the USS Enterprise belongs to in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "Charlie X".

Friendship One was launched in 2067 by the United Earth Space Probe Agency with the intention of making friends with whomever found it, as the name implies. Although Friendship One, the 400-year-old Earth probe, traveled for centuries carrying messages of peace, musical recordings, and ways to translate languages, the people who discovered Friendship One in the Delta Quadrant took a greater interest in the antimatter it used to travel across space. Without the proper knowledge of its use, antimatter proved devastating to the planet and its people, resulting in death and disease for generations.

Dreadnought, a Cardassian Missile

Star trek: voyager season 2, episode 17 "dreadnought".

The USS Voyager discovers a dangerously powerful, self-guided Cardassian missile in the Delta Quadrant, which Lt. B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) recognizes as one nicknamed "Dreadnought" . When B'Elanna was with the Maquis, Torres had actually reprogrammed the missile herself, with the intention of turning the Cardassians' own weapon against them. Without a Cardassian target in sight, the artificially intelligent Cardassian Dreadnought targets a heavily-populated Class-M planet , Rakosa V. B'Elanna determines she must be the one to keep Dreadnought from hurting anyone else, and boards the missile to convince it to stand down.

While no concrete reason is given for exactly how the Dreadnought wound up in the Delta Quadrant, its last known location in the Alpha Quadrant was the Badlands, the same rough patch of space where Voyager and the Val Jean, Chakotay's Maquis raider, fatefully met. Because of this, Torres theorizes that Dreadnought arrived in the Delta Quadrant the same way that Voyager and the Val Jean did , courtesy of the Caretaker.

Star Trek: Voyagers BElanna Is More Klingon Than TNGs Worf Ever Was

A klingon d-7 class cruiser, complete with klingons, star trek: voyager, season 7, episode 14 "prophecy".

The USS Voyager certainly never expected to find a Klingon ship in the Delta Quadrant, but more surprising is the fact that the crew of the Klingon D-7 Class Cruiser believes their savior, the prophesied kuvah'magh, is aboard Voyager . Janeway assures the Klingon captain, Kohlar (Wren T. Brown), that the Federation and Klingon Empire have been allies for the past 80 years, and offers Voyager's own half-Klingon, Lt. B'Elanna Torres, as proof their societies are working together now. The kuvah'magh is Torres' unborn daughter, who does save the Klingons, but not the way they expected.

Centuries ago, Kohlar's great-grandfather set off on a quest to find the kuvah'magh, and the Klingon D-7 Cruiser became a generation ship that is now crewed by the descendants of its original crew . The quest begun by Kohlar's great-grandfather brought Kohlar and his crew to the Delta Quadrant after four generations of searching. Whether B'Elanna's child is actually the kuvah'magh or not, Kohlar desperately wants the baby to be their savior, so that his people may finally rest.

Amelia Earhart

Star trek: voyager season 2, episode 1 "the 37s".

The discovery of a 1936 Ford truck, seemingly disconnected from any parent vehicle, leads the USS Voyager to a nearby Class-L planet, where they find eight humans who have been in cryo-stasis since they were abducted by aliens in the 1930s. Among them are one of Janeway's personal heroes, legendary American aviator Amelia Earhart (Sharon Lawrence) , who disappeared without a trace while attempting to fly around the world, and Earhart's navigator, Fred Noonan (David Graf). Earhart and the other preserved humans are known by the planet's inhabitants as "The 37s", and revered as sacred.

Originally thought to be aliens, the natives of the unnamed planet are the descendants of humans. A species called the Briori abducted the natives' ancestors, along with Earhart and the other 37s, from Earth centuries earlier , and took them to the Delta Quadrant. Once held as slaves, the humans who weren't in stasis revolted to free themselves from the Briori, and developed a thriving, Earth-like civilization in the Delta Quadrant. Voyager's crew consider staying with the humans in their little slice of home, while Janeway also offers a ride back to Earth to anyone who wants it, including Amelia Earhart.

The USS Equinox

Star trek: voyager season 5, episode 26 & season 6, episode 1 "equinox".

The crew of the USS Voyager believe they're the only Starfleet vessel in the Delta Quadrant until they find the USS Equinox, five years into their journey home. Captain Rudolph Ransom (John Savage) and the Equinox crew have had a harder time in the Delta Quadrant than Voyager, with more damage, fewer starting resources, and fewer opportunities to make friends along the way. Ransom's survival tactics include sacrificing innocent nucleogenic life forms for a more efficient form of fuel, which Janeway finds hard to stomach, and decides that Ransom needs to be held accountable for defying Federation ideals, regardless of how badly the Equinox is damaged.

Although Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) suggests that the Equinox might be in the Delta Quadrant on a rescue mission to find Voyager, the USS Equinox's specs don't fit the profile of a starship that would be assigned to a long-range mission. The explanation of how the Equinox arrived in the Delta Quadrant in the first place seems fairly simple, because Captain Ransom tells Janeway that the Equinox was also abducted by the Caretaker , just like Voyager, but the Equinox has only been in the Delta Quadrant for 2 years, and Janeway destroyed the Caretaker's array 5 years earlier.

Seven of Nine

Debuts in star trek: voyager season 4, episode 1 "scorpion, part 2".

When Captain Kathryn Janeway allies with the Borg in order to secure safe passage across Borg space, Janeway refuses the cursory assimilation that the Borg want to use to communicate with Janeway and Voyager's crew, and instead requests a speaker for the Borg, citing the existence of Locutus (Patrick Stewart) as precedent. Seven of Nine , Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01, is selected as the Borg drone to act as liaison between the Collective and Voyager, likely because Seven of Nine had once been a member of Species 5168, like most of Voyager's crew -- in other words, human.

Voyager season 5, episodes 15 & 16, "Dark Frontier" provides even more detail of the Hansens' fateful journey.

After Seven's link with the Collective is severed, more information about Seven's human origin comes to light. In Voyager season 4, episode 6 "The Raven", when Voyager nears the Hansens' ship, the USS Raven, memories of Seven's early life surface, revealing that Seven had been six-year-old human Annika Hansen , the daughter of Magnus Hansen (Kirk Baily) and Erin Hansen (Laura Stepp), Federation scientists who were studying the Borg when they were assimilated. Voyager season 5, episodes 15 & 16, "Dark Frontier" provides even more detail of the Hansens' fateful journey, showing the Raven arriving in the Delta Quadrant by following a Borg Cube through a transwarp conduit.

10 Ways USS Voyager Changed In Star Treks Delta Quadrant

Star Trek: Voyager links back to the greater Star Trek universe with people and starships from the Alpha Quadrant. Connections to the familiar were especially important early on, because Voyager 's place in the Star Trek franchise was established and aided by the legitimacy these finds offered. Later, when the USS Voyager used the Hirogen communications array to communicate with Starfleet Command, links back to the Alpha Quadrant were plentiful again, not only to prove that the USS Voyager was closer to home, but to help Star Trek: Voyager maintain connections to Star Trek and carry the franchise in its final years.

Star Trek: Voyager is available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Voyager

Cast Jennifer Lien, Garrett Wang, Tim Russ, Robert Duncan McNeill, Roxann Dawson, Robert Beltran, Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo

Release Date May 23, 1995

Genres Sci-Fi, Adventure

Network UPN

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Michael Piller, Rick Berman

Showrunner Kenneth Biller, Jeri Taylor, Michael Piller, Brannon Braga

Rating TV-PG

Inside NASA's 5-month fight to save the Voyager 1 mission in interstellar space

After working for five months to re-establish communication with the farthest-flung human-made object in existence, NASA announced this week that the Voyager 1 probe had finally phoned home.

For the engineers and scientists who work on NASA’s longest-operating mission in space, it was a moment of joy and intense relief.

“That Saturday morning, we all came in, we’re sitting around boxes of doughnuts and waiting for the data to come back from Voyager,” said Linda Spilker, the project scientist for the Voyager 1 mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “We knew exactly what time it was going to happen, and it got really quiet and everybody just sat there and they’re looking at the screen.”

When at long last the spacecraft returned the agency’s call, Spilker said the room erupted in celebration.

“There were cheers, people raising their hands,” she said. “And a sense of relief, too — that OK, after all this hard work and going from barely being able to have a signal coming from Voyager to being in communication again, that was a tremendous relief and a great feeling.”

The problem with Voyager 1 was first detected in November . At the time, NASA said it was still in contact with the spacecraft and could see that it was receiving signals from Earth. But what was being relayed back to mission controllers — including science data and information about the health of the probe and its various systems — was garbled and unreadable.

That kicked off a monthslong push to identify what had gone wrong and try to save the Voyager 1 mission.

Spilker said she and her colleagues stayed hopeful and optimistic, but the team faced enormous challenges. For one, engineers were trying to troubleshoot a spacecraft traveling in interstellar space , more than 15 billion miles away — the ultimate long-distance call.

“With Voyager 1, it takes 22 1/2 hours to get the signal up and 22 1/2 hours to get the signal back, so we’d get the commands ready, send them up, and then like two days later, you’d get the answer if it had worked or not,” Spilker said.

The team eventually determined that the issue stemmed from one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers. Spilker said a hardware failure, perhaps as a result of age or because it was hit by radiation, likely messed up a small section of code in the memory of the computer. The glitch meant Voyager 1 was unable to send coherent updates about its health and science observations.

NASA engineers determined that they would not be able to repair the chip where the mangled software is stored. And the bad code was also too large for Voyager 1's computer to store both it and any newly uploaded instructions. Because the technology aboard Voyager 1 dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, the computer’s memory pales in comparison to any modern smartphone. Spilker said it’s roughly equivalent to the amount of memory in an electronic car key.

The team found a workaround, however: They could divide up the code into smaller parts and store them in different areas of the computer’s memory. Then, they could reprogram the section that needed fixing while ensuring that the entire system still worked cohesively.

That was a feat, because the longevity of the Voyager mission means there are no working test beds or simulators here on Earth to test the new bits of code before they are sent to the spacecraft.

“There were three different people looking through line by line of the patch of the code we were going to send up, looking for anything that they had missed,” Spilker said. “And so it was sort of an eyes-only check of the software that we sent up.”

The hard work paid off.

NASA reported the happy development Monday, writing in a post on X : “Sounding a little more like yourself, #Voyager1.” The spacecraft’s own social media account responded , saying, “Hi, it’s me.”

So far, the team has determined that Voyager 1 is healthy and operating normally. Spilker said the probe’s scientific instruments are on and appear to be working, but it will take some time for Voyager 1 to resume sending back science data.

Voyager 1 and its twin, the Voyager 2 probe, each launched in 1977 on missions to study the outer solar system. As it sped through the cosmos, Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn, studying the planets’ moons up close and snapping images along the way.

Voyager 2, which is 12.6 billion miles away, had close encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and continues to operate as normal.

In 2012, Voyager 1 ventured beyond the solar system , becoming the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, or the space between stars. Voyager 2 followed suit in 2018.

Spilker, who first began working on the Voyager missions when she graduated college in 1977, said the missions could last into the 2030s. Eventually, though, the probes will run out of power or their components will simply be too old to continue operating.

Spilker said it will be tough to finally close out the missions someday, but Voyager 1 and 2 will live on as “our silent ambassadors.”

Both probes carry time capsules with them — messages on gold-plated copper disks that are collectively known as The Golden Record . The disks contain images and sounds that represent life on Earth and humanity’s culture, including snippets of music, animal sounds, laughter and recorded greetings in different languages. The idea is for the probes to carry the messages until they are possibly found by spacefarers in the distant future.

“Maybe in 40,000 years or so, they will be getting relatively close to another star,” Spilker said, “and they could be found at that point.”

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

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Science News

‘humanity’s spacecraft’ voyager 1 is back online and still exploring.

After five months of glitching, the spacecraft is talking to Earth again from interstellar space

The Voyager 1 spacecraft (illustrated) is back online after a few months of transmitting garbled data. It’s now poised to continue its exploration of interstellar space.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

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By Ramin Skibba

April 26, 2024 at 11:45 am

After months of challenging trouble-shooting and suspenseful waiting, Voyager 1 is once again talking to Earth.

The aging NASA spacecraft, about 24 billion kilometers from home, began transmitting garbled data in November. On April 20, NASA scientists got the probe back online after uploading new flight software to work around a chunk of onboard computer memory that had failed. They’re now receiving data about the spacecraft’s health and hope to hear from its science instruments again in a few weeks, says Suzanne Dodd, the mission’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

That means the iconic craft could be on a path to recovery — and to continue its exploration of interstellar space.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 briefly visited Jupiter and Saturn before eventually departing the solar system. It and its twin, Voyager 2, are the longest-operating space probes, now tasked with studying far-flung solar particles and cosmic rays. In particular, the probes have been monitoring the changing of the sun’s magnetic field and the density of plasma beyond the solar system, yielding information about the farthest reaches of the sun’s influence .

“The spacecraft is really remarkable in its longevity. It’s incredible,” Dodd says. “We want to keep Voyager going as long as possible so we have this time record of these changes.”

Voyager 1 and 2, cruising along diverging paths, made history by crossing the heliopause in 2012 and 2018 , respectively ( SN: 9/12/13; SN: 12/10/18 ). At nearly 18 billion kilometers from the sun, that’s long been considered the outer extent of our star’s magnetic field and the solar wind, the boundary before interstellar space.

Since then, Dodd says, the science team has made some surprising findings ( SN: 11/4/19 ). For one, they’ve determined that the heliosphere, the huge bubble of space dominated by the solar wind, might not be spherical but have one or two tails, making it shaped like a comet or a croissant.

And thanks to Voyager, scientists now know that, despite expectations otherwise, the sun’s magnetic field and charged particles actually remain significant even beyond the heliopause, says David McComas, a Princeton University astrophysicist not involved in the mission.

Some theories predicted a serene environment in the distant oceans of interstellar space, but the Voyagers keep passing through waves of charged particles, indicating that the solar magnetic field still holds some sway there. What’s more, the probes’ data have shown how ripples in the field form bubbles at the edge of the solar system, which is more frothy and dynamic than expected.

Other missions have begun building on Voyager’s solar physics research. These include NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, and the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, which is set to launch next year. Earth-orbiting IBEX has been measuring high-energy particles to map the heliosphere for 15 years, whereas IMAP will orbit between the sun and Earth, giving it an uninterrupted view of the sun as it monitors the galactic cosmic rays that manage to filter through the heliosphere.

“There’s a huge synergy between the Voyagers and both IBEX and IMAP,” says McComas, principal investigator of the latter two missions. “We were all really scared when Voyager 1 stopped phoning home.”

It will be decades until another mission could accomplish what the Voyagers have done. NASA’s New Horizons soared by Pluto in 2015 and kept going ( SN:8/9/18 ). It’s heading toward the edge of the solar system, but it’s cruising slowly and will run out of power before it can collect data beyond the heliopause.

The Voyagers can fly forever, but power for their instruments is waning. Over the next few years, NASA will shut some down to conserve energy for the rest.

That means Voyager 1’s days of collecting science data are numbered. “It’s a very beloved mission,” Dodd says. “It’s humanity’s spacecraft, and we need to take care of it.”

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NASA hears from Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, after months of quiet

by Marcia Dunn

NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 again in a way that makes sense.

The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft's coding to work around the trouble.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data.

It takes 22 1/2 hours to send a signal to Voyager 1, more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space . The signal travel time is double that for a round trip.

Contact was never lost, rather it was like making a phone call where you can't hear the person on the other end, a JPL spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 has been exploring interstellar space — the space between star systems — since 2012. Its twin, Voyager 2, is 12.6 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) away and still working fine.

© 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Scientist Warns That NASA’s Voyager Probes Are “Dodging Bullets Out There”

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A scientist who's been working on NASA's Voyager mission for more than half a century has helped shepherd the iconic spacecraft all the way to interstellar space — and now, he says that the probes are straight-up catching strays.

In an interview with Mashable , Alan Cummings , a cosmic ray physicist at NASA and Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who's been on the probes' missions from the very start, explained that Voyagers 1 and 2 are in greater danger than ever now that they've left the Sun's protective bubble.

Last week, NASA was mighty relieved when Voyager 1 regained contact with Earth after a whopping five months incommunicado . It took Herculean engineering ingenuity to make that happen, and as Cummings notes, scientists still aren't sure what the exact problem was.

"We don't know everything," the scientist said. "But I do think galactic cosmic rays are the guilty party here for most of these problems."

While Voyager 1's five-month quiet spell was unusually long, it was far from the first time the probe or its sister — which are some 15 and 20 billion miles away from Earth, respectively — have run into trouble trouble.

Back in 2010, Voyager 2 began transmitting gibberish back to Earth. Scientists still don't know exactly what went down, but Cummings suspects cosmic rays were again the culprit because, as he explains, "the galaxy is permeated" by them.

Beyond not knowing definitively if cosmic rays are the culprit for the woes experienced by the Voyagers and NASA's New Horizons probe as they make their way out of our Solar System, scientists are also not entirely sure what causes these merciless, super-fast beams.

The predominant theory, as Mashable notes, is that they're caused by the explosion of stars, known as supernovae, which supercharge particles and shoot them out in all directions. So violent is the shock from a supernova that particles are stripped of their shells, whipping through space as just nuclei — per the theory, at least.

Whatever is going on with them, however, Cummings says one thing is for sure: "We are dodging bullets out there."

More on the cosmos: James Webb Turns to Examine Planet Showing Potential Sign of Life

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Star trek: 20 weirdest details about seven of nine's body.

As a former member of the Borg, Seven of Nine's body is capable of many incredible things.

Seven of Nine, known by many simply as “Seven,” is one of the most iconic characters in Star Trek: Voyager .

The former Borg drone who is rehabilitated by the crew of the Voyager has had a long history of struggle. First, she is a part of the evil Borg collective, then she struggled to fit in among the citizens of the Federation. However, the fact remains that Seven is a very impressive character.

She is extremely intelligent, strong, and creative, and though her mannerisms can sometimes come across as a bit robotic, she eventually charms many of the crew of the Voyager and develops lifelong friendships.

Seven of Nine is persistent — when she sets her mind to something she follows through, and she takes the job of learning about human life and interactions very seriously.

Seven has an incredible range of features and skills. Because of her time spent as a Borg drone, Seven of Nine has many unique and interesting abilities.

From super strength to tiny robots that live in her bloodstream to incredible sight that can practically see the invisible, she is truly like no other.

So, without further ado, here are the 20 Weirdest Details About Seven Of Nine's Body .

20. She Was Part Of The Borg For A Long Time

Star Trek fans may have only seen Seven of Nine after she was de-assimilated from the Borg, but she spent most of her life as a Borg drone.

Seven spent six years in a maturation chamber, as she was still young when she was captured and could not immediately be turned into a full-on drone.

All told, Seven spent six years maturing in stasis and 13 years as a drone, which isn't a great upbringing.

During her years as a part of the collective Seven was called "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One," more of a designation than a name.

When she was removed from the collective, she shortened her name to “Seven of Nine,” or simply “Seven.”

19. She Was Assimilated As A Child

Before her assimilation into the Borg, Seven of Nine was Annika Hansen, the child of two exobiologists studying the Borg. This was dangerous work, as the Borg were a hostile race determined to assimilate all living beings into their collective.

For some reason, the Hansens chose to bring their young child along with them as they performed a dangerous research mission that involved sneaking onto a Borg ship.

While her father was aboard the Borg vessel, the ship that Annika was waiting on was hit with an ion storm that allowed the Borg to track them down.

The rest was history, as Annika was captured and assimilated, spending almost her entire childhood as a member of the Borg.

18. She Holds The Memories Of Beings She Assimilated

While she was a member of the Borg, Seven did their dirty work assimilating other beings into the collective. While it may appear that the memories and experiences of those beings were erased upon their assimilation, that’s not entirely the case.

While aboard the Voyager, Seven begins to exhibit odd behavior similar to what humans would diagnose as multiple personality disorder.

It is discovered that the personalities that Seven is displaying are not random or made up - they belong to the beings she had assimilated.

The crew of the Voyager finds out that the neural patterns of assimilated beings are stored in the Borg hive mind.

An accident had caused Seven to connect to those memories that she associated with those she assimilated.

17. She Had A Son

Seven’s first experience with loss was the demise of her “son,” One.

While One wasn’t born in the traditional sense of the word, he was created after an accident involving a transporter and Seven’s nanoprobes. One was a different kind of Borg. He matured within hours and had many interesting powers.

Seven felt very close to One, who she had inadvertently helped to create, but their mother/son relationship was doomed to end in tragedy.

One inadvertently communicates with a Borg sphere, alerting the Borg to Voyager’s location. While he is able to fight off the Borg ship, he knows that the Borg will not stop hunting him because of his advanced technology.

He sacrifices himself to save Seven and the rest of the crew of the Voyager.

16. She Is A Formidable Fighter

Seven is known for her scientific achievements, but she’s no slouch in combat either.

While Voyager is orbiting Norcadia Prime in order to give the crew a chance for some shore leave, Seven and several other crew members are captured by a sketchy promoter who forces people to fight for the entertainment of others.

Some of these fights are just competitions of strength and agility… while some are fights to the end.

Seven is forced to fight a legendary alien warrior played by Dwayne Johnson. After a brutal fight, she eventually gains the upper hand but hesitates to deliver her knockout blow.

Given this momentary respite, her opponent recovers and knocks her out.

Though she didn’t win the fight, it’s clear that Seven is no pushover.

15. She’s One Of The Sharpest Minds In The Universe

Perhaps Seven’s biggest asset to the Voyager crew is her incredible intelligence. Her experience with Borg technology that is years ahead of Federation tech comes in very handy for the crew.

One of her biggest accomplishments was designing and building Voyager’s astrometrics lab.

Using Borg technology, Seven used the lab to plot a course for the Voyager that was several years shorter than the one they had previously been on. Seven’s knack for astrometrics was such that the lab became home to her during her years on the ship.

Seven discovered a network that helped Voyager regain temporary contact with Alpha Quadrant, and even used nanoprobes to develop technology that could revive someone who had been dead for several hours.

14. She Needed Surgery To Be Able To Feel Strong Emotion

While there are some positives to Seven’s history with the Borg, such as her experience with technology and her superior physical traits, there are also some real downsides that stayed with her even after she left the collective.

One huge problem caused by Seven’s Borg implants is that the Borg program their drones to shut down if they feel strong emotion.

This means that Seven cannot fall in love, feel extreme joy or feel strong negative emotions like sadness or loss.

The Doctor (a hologram in charge of the ship’s medical operations), thinks that he can remove the implants that hide Seven’s emotions from her, but she initially doesn’t want to risk the dangerous procedure.

Later on, she decides to have the surgery.

13. Most Of Her Borg Implants Were Removed

While Seven appears mostly human save for the implants visible around her right eye, she used to be completely covered in Borg implants.

After Seven was stranded aboard the Voyager after a joint mission between the Borg and the ship’s crew, the Doctor managed to remove most of her implants and restore her human appearance.

However, there’s no way to make her completely human again.

Several of Seven’s implants are essential to her survival due to the length of her time with the Borg, so they cannot be safely removed. Others, like her ocular implant, are important in allowing her to carry out a normal life.

Though Seven may never look entirely human, she regained more and more of her humanity each passing day aboard the Voyager. After all, appearances aren’t everything.

12. She Has Super Strength

Seven is extraordinarily strong for a woman of her age.

Her upbringing with the Borg caused Seven to develop super strength, which comes in hand on many occasions for the Voyager crew.

Her heart and repertory system are stronger than a human’s and she can resist radiation and other exposures that would certainly harm any human.

Seven is also a highly trained martial artist — she is the best hand-to-hand combatant on the ship.

However, Seven’s incredible abilities come with a downside — she is still part machine.

This means that occasionally she can malfunction in the same way a broken or hacked machine does. It’s a tough tradeoff, but Seven is always able to make the most of her situation.

11. Her Vision Is Incredible

After Seven’s Borg eyepiece was removed as a part of her de-assimilation, the Doctor fitted her with an ocular implant that was designed to look almost exactly like Seven’s remaining human eye.

However, the implant is far better than a human eye.

Seven’s ocular implant allowed her to see things at great distances and at the same clarity as all her human counterparts, but it also let her see things that were not visible to human eyes.

She could even see irregularities in space-time better than most Federation sensors.

While Seven is always looking to regain her humanity, the ocular implant might be one part of her that she is perfectly happy with.

10. Her Recollection Is Unmatched

In addition to her physical skills and scientific aptitude, Seven of Nine has an incredible memory.

The technical term for Seven’s ability is eidetic memory, or photographic memory. She can recall images from her memory in great detail even after being exposed to them only briefly.

Like some of us might look through a photo album, Seven can view mental pictures of her memories for several minutes at a time.

As a result, Seven never forgets a face, situation, or bit of scientific knowledge.

It makes sense why the Borg wanted her on their side, and with her de-assimilation, the crew of the Voyager found themselves with a valuable ally capable of remembering even the smallest of details.

9. She Is Filled With Nanoprobes

In order to assimilate their victims, the Borg use tiny nanoprobes that infiltrate host systems and replace cell functioning.

Once inside, the nanoprobes can repair their host bodies, attack viruses, and mimic chemical signatures. In fact, nanoprobes can be programmed to do almost anything.

Seven’s body contains 3.6 million nanoprobes, making her extremely valuable. Nanoprobes are highly sought after on the black market due to the many things they are able to be programmed to do.

Because of this, the Ferengi have on several occasions tried to steal Seven’s nanoprobes.

Seven has used her nanoprobes to modify torpedoes, treat radiation poisoning, and carry out other medical and technical tasks. Seven has many unique abilities, but these tiny robots that she carries in her bloodstream might be her most impressive feature.

8. She Can Regenerate Her Body

One of the benefits of being filled with nanoprobes is that Seven is practically immortal.

The nanoprobes in her bloodstream have the convenient ability to repair her cells, so Seven can handle a lot more physical punishment than the typical human.

Be it radiation, cuts and bruises from hand-to-hand combat, or exposure to the vacuum of space, Seven can heal herself without much assistance from the ship’s doctors.

Though for some of her more grievous medical conditions, like those resulting from her Borg implants rejecting her body or her surgery to allow her to feel more human emotions, she required medical assistance, Seven has a great ability to survive on her own and take care of her own injuries.

7. Her Uniform Is Very Constricting

Seven’s skintight catsuit is fairly infamous in the Star Trek universe. Not only did it overtly objectify the character, but it was a very difficult costume for the actress, Jeri Ryan, to wear.

On several occasions, Ryan needed to have nurses on set with oxygen tanks standing by because her costume was so tight.

The producers of the show designed the costume to look like a second skin, and as a result, the garment was so tight and oddly constructed that Ryan was barely able to bend while wearing it.

While Seven of Nine is an iconic character, there are certainly things that could have been done better in regards to her costuming.

6. Her Brain Can Be Overloaded

While Seven’s intellect and recollection are on another level from her human counterparts, having a mind so deeply tied to machines as Seven’s definitely has its downsides.

One of those drawbacks is that just like a computer, Seven can be overloaded if she takes in too much information.

On one occasion, Seven comes to believe that the Voyager was stranded in Delta Quadrant on purpose as a part of a giant conspiracy involving the Federation and many other alien nations.

As she begins to investigate, she becomes increasingly paranoid and starts acting out of character.

As it turns out, Seven had been taking in too much information, making herself sick. While her intelligence is a great strength, Seven has to be careful not to lose control.

5. She Suffered From PTSD

Seven has been through a lot . During her years with the Borg, she committed many atrocities against other alien races, and those acts remain with her.

Along with her guilt about her actions while she was with the Borg, Seven also deals with troubling flashbacks to her assimilation.

Seven cannot escape her connection to the Borg, even as she works to regain her humanity.

She has traumatic flashbacks that aren’t just in her head — once she follows her visions and finds the ruins of her parents’ ship, The Raven .

While viewers might not be reminded of the pain that Seven has experienced in every episode, her experience of finding her parents’ shuttle served as a reminder of everything that Seven has fought to overcome.

4. She’s A Mix Of Human And Machine

Seven will forever be marked by her experience as a Borg drone, both mentally and physically.

Her implants are necessary for her to survive and function in society, and her memories of her time spent as a part of the collective will always impact how she looks at and views society.

However, Seven grows to accept her past as a part of the Borg and look ahead into her future. She learns to socialize with humans, have meaningful relationships, and generally participate in Federation society.

While Seven might still have the occasional crisis of identity, she found a home among the crew of the Voyager.

Seven will forever be a mix of human and machine, but she’s learned to take the good in both and use them for a worthy cause.

3. She Had To Regrow Her Hair After Being Assimilated

When she was a member of the Borg collective, Seven lost the distinctive blonde hair that is associated with her time on the Voyager.

As a part of the removal of her Borg implants, the Doctor also stimulated her hair growth and helped other parts of her body regain their normal human appearance.

When all is said and done, Seven looks almost perfectly human other than the implants remaining above her eye.

However, her appearance isn’t the thing that give her away as being something other than human, instead it’s her mannerisms that tip people off.

Seven has a very clinical way of speaking, and has somewhat awkward social skills. However, her human appearance allows her to participate in Federation society and learn these missing skills.

2. She Might Have Been One Of The First Humans Ever Assimilated

It’s not exactly apparent when the Borg first made contact with the Federation, but it’s possible that Seven’s parents might have been one of the first to ever do so.

The pair of exobiologists were some of the first scientists to ever study the Borg, back when the Borg did not make regular contact with the Federation or humanity in general.

A sad result of their exploration is that their daughter, Annika, would become one of the first humans to ever be assimilated into the Borg collective.

Of course, Annika was too young to be immediately assimilated when she was captured by the Borg, so she was raised in stasis for six years before becoming Seven of Nine.

1. She Was Disconnected From The Borg Hive Mind

Seven spent much of her life as a part of a collective, not having to think for or make decisions for herself.

However, after she came aboard the Voyager, her Borg implants were removed, disconnecting her from the only mind she had known since she was six years old.

Seven did not originally want to be disconnected, but her Borg implants were slowly destroying her so the crew of the Voyager made the decision to go against her wishes.

However, she did not entirely lose her connection to the collective. At various times throughout the show, Seven gets visions or hears voices from the Borg.

Usually, she is able to use these insights to help her new crew on Voyager.

However, she is troubled by her past, and has on occasion left the ship to find answers on her own.

Can you think of any other interesting facts about Seven of Nine's body in Star Trek ? Let us know in the comments!

NASA hears from Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, after months of quiet

NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 in a way that makes sense

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 again in a way that makes sense.

The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the trouble.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data.

It takes 22 1/2 hours to send a signal to Voyager 1, more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space. The signal travel time is double that for a round trip.

Contact was never lost, rather it was like making a phone call where you can’t hear the person on the other end, a JPL spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 has been exploring interstellar space — the space between star systems — since 2012. Its twin, Voyager 2, is 12.6 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) away and still working fine.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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