Star Trek: Voyager’s central conceit was that the eponymous ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy, 70,000 light years away from Earth. The series shows the 75-year journey of the Voyager and the various alien ships and planets they encounter. The crew is joined by the former Borg drone Seven of Nine in season 4.
The series finale of the show reduced the travel time of the Voyager by a large amount and featured a time-travel storyline, including an encounter with the Borg Queen. However, the show was reportedly also going to kill off Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine. In fact, producer Brannon Braga revealed the death was set up in a previous episode.
Star Trek: Voyager series finale would have seen Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine sacrifice herself
The Star Trek franchise has almost always seen the death of a major crew member by the end of its run. William Shatner’s Captain Kirk is canonically dead as he was killed in Star Trek: Generations. Bren Spiner’s Data is also killed in Star Trek: Nemesis, sacrificing himself for the crew. Trip from Enterprise also dies.
While Star Trek: Voyager avoided it in a way (though there were some deaths of alternate versions of the main crew members), producer Brannon Braga reportedly wanted to kill off Jeri Ryan’s character Seven of Nine. Braga was the writer behind both Kirk and Trip’s deaths, and it might just seem like the writer had a penchant for killing off central characters.
But, Braga reportedly had a logical reason for it and mentioned that Seven of Nine’s journey was leading up to a sacrifice. He said (via Trek Movie),
It was my feeling that Seven of Nine should have died…This was a woman who knew she was neither here nor there. She couldn’t go back to the Borg, nor would she want to, but she could never be fully human, so she was doomed. And I wanted to have her sacrifice herself to get her shipmates home.
The finale does see an alternate Seven of Nine die (as part of Admiral Kathryn Janeway’s crew), but she ends up surviving as the ‘wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimey’ shenanigans of the finale avoid that event.
Brannon Braga claimed that Seven of Nine’s death was established in a previous episode of Star Trek: Voyager
Seven of Nine’s journey in Star Trek: Voyager is as tragic as it is inspiring, in a way. The former Borg drone is saved by the Voyager crew and is taken as a protégé by Captain Janeway as she unlearns her Borg propaganda. However, Seven’s journey to becoming a human is long and arduous, and almost seems impossible in the episode ‘Human Error.’
The season 7 episode sees Seven start a relationship with a virtual Chakotay on the holodeck, but also realizes that the Borg had programmed a failsafe option in her chip that would kill her if she felt a human emotion. According to producer Brannon Braga, this element set up a possible death for Seven in the finale. He said,
If you watch the episode ‘Human Error’ written by Andre Bormanis, it is not only a heartbreaking episode in that Seven of Nine learns, as she begins to explore her human emotions, that she can’t experience them. There’s a Borg chip inside her that will kill her if she tries to do so. First of all, that’s kind of an interesting ‘r*pe victim’ analogy or whatever you want to call it, about a damaged woman who can’t get past what happened to her, but I also always saw it as a crucial episode that would set up the finale.
The death never came to be and Jeri Ryan returned to the role in Star Trek: Picard, in a recurring capacity.
Star Trek: Voyager is available to stream on Paramount+.
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