Star Trek Producer Wanted This Franchise Favorite Character Killed Off Long Ago
While she was a controversial addition to Star Trek: Voyager, it didn’t take long for Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine to become a fan-favorite addition to this Paramount franchise. She was such a fan-favorite that she became one of the best parts of Star Trek: Picard, especially in season three.
Seven Of Nine Should Have Died
That’s why we were so shocked to discover this character nearly went to that big final frontier in the sky: according to ScreenRant, executive producer Brannon Braga thought that in the Voyager series finale, “Seven of Nine should have died getting the crew home.”
These days, seeing what modern Star Trek writers have done with Seven of Nine’s character (up to and including making her the captain of a new Enterprise), it’s difficult to imagine the franchise without her.
Why did Braga want to get rid of her all those years ago? It all comes down to his belief that Seven of Nine led a tragic and depressing existence.
Caught Between Two Worlds
In the rest of Braga’s interview (which appears in the oral history The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek), he clarified that he saw Seven of Nine as a character forever caught between two worlds.
In his view, she is a “tragic character who can’t ever be a Borg again, she can never really be human,” and because of this, “she is leading a really hard existence.” Some of that tragedy was even fueled by a later episode of the series.
Learning To Love
As Braga said about that last season of Star Trek: Voyager, “We had just done an episode where she had developed a love for somebody, and an implant activates – we learn that if she falls in love, her Borg implants will kill her.”
Given all of this context, he thought that Seven of Nine might not even have a reason to go on. Or as he put it, “if you can’t love, what’s the point of living?”
Jeri Ryan In Star Trek: Picard
This may be one of the few areas where modern Star Trek writers agree with one of Brannon Braga’s notions…to a point, at least. When Seven of Nine came back for Star Trek: Picard, she found a new reason to live by meeting and falling in love with the flawed Starfleet officer Raffi Musiker.
It turns out that Seven can love, and that plot about love causing her Borg implants to kill her was left back in the Delta Quadrant where it belonged.
A Bad Idea
While most Star Trek fans can agree that killing Seven of Nine off in the Voyager finale would have been a bad idea, it’s worth pointing out that Braga was very focused on making that finale a memorable one, and he believed “There would not have been a dry eye in the f****** house” if everyone’s favorite Borg died.
What Was Missing?
“To me,” he continued, “the finale was missing something potent like that.”
Considering that the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale (co-written by Braga, no less) had wrapped up its own story without killing any major characters, maybe the “potent” thing missing from Voyager’s finale was simply quality writing?
