75. The Raven

Seven, don't panic, but there's a Borg spider on your hand. Seriously, don't panic. 

75. The Raven, Voyager, Season 4, Episode 6

As you may have noticed, I've strayed from my initial mission statement of reviewing the Top 100 Star Trek Episodes of All Time, as compiled by io9. There is a very good reason for that. I took a job in Japan and one of the many, many differences between the United States and Japan is that Japanese Netflix doesn't have any of the series. In fact, the only two pieces of Trek available to me are Abram's Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. While, I'll get to reviewing those films later, because I cannot stand the vacuum of Trek in my life right now, I wanted to get back on track, with at least this review that I started before I began my journey to the Land of the Rising Sun.

And now, without further ado, let's set course for the Delta Quadrant.

It's a common belief that Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, 'saved' Voyager. I'm not sure that's consistent with fact. I would say that that's more to the presence of the Borg than that particular character. And though the first episode in which she appeared had relatively high ratings, it was the part two of a cliffhanger that found Voyager in the clutches of the Borg. I understand the ratings for the show went back to normal, yet Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, remained pretty much the focal point of the show from the moment she arrived until the series finale.

"Excuse me, my ocular implants are up here." — Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One

Up until she arrived, the show had steered away from cheesecake. The show had three prominent female characters and none of them were overly sexualized. Janeway was, for all intents and purposes, Picard with better hair. B'Elanna was portrayed as a smart, strong, if sometimes cartoonishly angry character. And while there was a certain manic-pixie-dreamgirl quality to Kes, she was never really presented as a sex symbol. But Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One, was front and center with her silver catsuit, Borg enhancements, and characters inexplicably falling for her despite her being a flat out horrible person. Seriously, Harry, Chakotay and the Doctor all fell hard for her despite her having nothing but contempt for pretty much anyone and everything that wasn't Borg.

I guess that I was supposed to find Seven of Nine sexy. I didn't. This is not because Jeri Ryan did not have a pleasing shape that was squeezed into a skintight catsuit. She did and it was. It was because the character was a terrible person. Arrogant. Rude. Entitled. Mean-spirited. Intentionally unlikable. She was interesting, but horribly unlikable.

Worst of all, her presence changed one of the greatest villains in all of Trek history into being a non-threat. Through her, the Borg became familiar. And that familiarity bred contempt. I'll dig into this a bit deeper when we get to episodes like, I, Borg or Best of Both Worlds, but the Borg were legitimately scary. They were partially scary in that their appearances were scarce. The were a shadow threat that loomed over the Next Generation crew. The creators of the show were wise to keep their appearances few and far between. That is, they were scary until Voyager defeated them left and right using their own technology as an intergalactic cure-all for seemingly every situation. I'd love to see how many episodes were resolved by modifying Borg nanoprobes, because there were a lot. The Borg went from being the embodiment of the loss of self through technology to an irksome nuisance.

While she may be an interesting character, Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One,  pretty much guaranteed that any chance Voyager ever had from getting out of TNG's shadow was nil. They essentially assimilated the Borg into their cast. Don't get me wrong, I do like Voyager, and there are some great episodes on this list yet to explore. But Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero One's addition to the cast was a fundamental shift in the show's dynamic, and I'd argue not for the better.  She became the show's new toy. Janeway was constantly trying to explore her humanity, and teach her about the importance of her free will outside the Borg Collective. I'll skip over the painful, painful irony of Janeway denying Seven's choice to rejoin the Collective because she's trying to get the former Borg to understand the concept of freewill. Over the next few seasons, their mentor-student relationship became tiresome and repetitive.

With the Raven, we get a little bit more about her backstory, and how as a child she was assimilated and raised by the Borg. A mysterious signal triggers something in her brain and she is driven to rejoin the Collective. As she traces the source of the signal what we find is the wreckage of her parent's ship, The Raven. This is where Anaka Hansen was filled with robot parts and had everything she was carved away and turned into a microscopic cog in the infinite machine that is the Borg Collective.

We're even robbed of the connection between Janeway and Seven in the resolution. And in the end, it's Tuvok, not Janeway, that shares the moment of her repressed memories of her assimilation being unleashed. Seven has a breakdown, and it reveals that Ryan's acting chops are far more suited to standing still and hating people while looking good doing it than trying to show a genuine emotion. She's clearly pushing herself as a performer, but the scene is awkward and forcing too much down our throats in terms of emotional connection to the character.

From her facial expression, I'm pretty sure Ryan can smell the clunkiness of this scene. 

This is supposed to make her sympathetic, but I felt it was too rushed. Like we're checking off a box with Seven's origin, rather than getting to a place where her origin mattered. I would have much preferred to see her explored a bit more and see a bit of her PTSD creep in over the course of a season before we rush to her origin story. This was just a few episodes after her debut, and if Janeway and crew had a better chance to care about her, her drive to rejoin the Borg would have had more weight. This would also have given the audience to better understand Janeway's drive to maintain Seven's humanity. If she cared about her as a person rather than as an intellectual and ethical exercise in preserving one's individuality. 'Assimilated as a child' is all we really needed to know about her backstory, and while this episode fills in the gaps to her tale, it doesn't have the emotional resonance that I would have expected from one of my favorite Trek and TV writers and personal heroes, Bryan Fuller.

As she evolves and develops her human side, there are great moments with Seven of Nine throughout Voyager. This is just felt too much too soon.

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Next up, we take a trip to a museum dedicated to the most ruthless villain in Trek History, Katherine Janeway, with 'Living Witness.'