“Star Trek: Voyager” struggled with ratings during its first three seasons. It did well, but it was nowhere near as popular as its immediate predecessors “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” The show’s producers tried several desperate measures to boost ratings, but they rarely worked. For example, regular use of a beach holodeck program in a sun-soaked bikini did not set Trekkies’ hearts on fire. Ultimately, the showrunners thought the series needed a character shake-up to attract attention. They canceled the sweet, kind, moral character of Kes (Jennifer Lien) and replaced her with a cute Borg named Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). Ryan possessed magazine model looks, and the costume designers outfitted her in an elaborate corset and skin-tight catsuit, clearly a desperate ploy to add sex appeal to the series.
Oddly enough, the ploy worked. Seven of Nine proved very popular and ratings increased. Additionally, many of the show’s writers loved the idea of having a super-genius, semi-mechanical former Borg in the show, and they couldn’t stop writing stories for her. Seven quickly became the central star of “Voyager,” supplanting most of her on-screen colleagues. Yes, some other cast members were unhappy with Ryan and his character’s popularity.
Ryan loved playing this role, even though she hated that damn corset. Seven of Nine remained until the end of “Voyager’s” seven seasons, expanding and growing all the time. Little by little, she became more human and even fell in love. Seven returned to “Star Trek” in 2022 as part of “Star Trek: Picard.” By the end of this series, she had become captain of the USS Enterprise-G.
Jeri Ryan recently attended MegaCon in Orlando, Florida, to talk about her career and revealed some issues she had with the “Star Trek” writers’ treatment of Seven. In fact, she noted three palpable errors in the character, two large, one small. The little one: how do you pronounce “futile”?
Jeri Ryan didn’t like the pronunciation of “futile”
Ryan explained that she really didn’t know anything about “Star Trek” or the Borg when she signed up to play the role, and shared the funny story of her assigned “homework.” She was asked to watch the feature film “Star Trek: First Contact” and the “Next Generation” episode “The Best of Both Worlds,” and was then specifically asked not to imitate what she had seen. More than anything, she noted that the Borg, when attacking and assimilating their prey, were announcing that “resistance is futile.” In any case, the Borg pronounced the world as “futile” and “few tiles”, not the equally common “few”. This made for a strange head-butting moment on the set of “Star Trek: Voyager.” As Ryan recalls:
“In my 103 episodes, there are… three missteps with this character. And that’s really it! […] “Resistance is futile!” ” is the first, and it’s a bit of a big deal. […] And from the first script, he showed up and he said, “Resistance is futile.” So I said, “Now I should say ‘a few tiles,’ right?” Because the voice of the Collective says “a few tiles”. They said, “No, no, no. Patrick [Stewart] just has a British accent, you say “a few”. And it’s like… ‘Are you sweating? The voice of the Collective says “a few tiles”. Each. Bachelor. Time.'”
Second, Ryan didn’t like that Seven was becoming, in his words, “too human and too fast.” Seven was born human, but was assimilated into the Borg collective when he was a young child. Her memories were mostly erased and she became a soulless machine. When she was removed from the Collective and placed on the USS Voyager, Ryan liked the idea of Seven coming into her humanity very, very gradually. But from the start, Seven was freer and more expressive than the rest of the series. Ryan pointed out, however, that the writers corrected this mistake by reducing Seven’s early human development and making her more machine-like later in the series.
Jeri Ryan also hated the Seven/Chakotay romance
Many “Voyager” fans will tell you about the horrific development late in the series of Seven falling in love with Chakotay (Robert Beltran), Voyager’s first officer. Many objected to the plot because it was too abrupt. It also made much more sense for Seven to initiate an affair with the Doctor, a living hologram with whom she spent much more time. Instead, Seven was forced into Chakotay’s arms in a way that seemed illogical and incompatible. Even Beltran hated it.
Ryan thought the relationship with Chakotay was a pretty good idea, but that the showrunners deliberately didn’t develop it well. She even remembers the episodes in which the romance began and how the producers told her not to overdo the budding romance. In his words:
“The third was… Do you remember the episode where Seven was fantasizing about the holodeck, practicing dating, and she fell in love with Chakotay? The Chakotay holodeck? [Prolonged, exasperated pause] The next movie we did was Seven and Chakotay, like crashed on the shuttle or something on a planet. And they were stuck together. I specifically asked the producers, and Robert as well, that we should continue, right? His character wasn’t aware of it, since it was a holodeck simulation, but I should take it with me. […] scenario.”
But the producers told him no, don’t exaggerate Seven’s attraction to Chakotay. She didn’t, and it seemed the romance was dead. But then she continued:
“Let’s move on to the last episode and it’s ‘Oh! Seven and Chakotay are dating! Oh! They’re getting married!’ Which is fun. This would have been perfectly fine and completely logical if it had been played! This should have been an undercurrent for my character […] all the time!”
Perhaps fans would have liked the Seven/Chakotay romance better if it had actually been developed.
