Star Trek: Voyager’s Seven of Nine originally had a more gruesome backstory

Seven of Nine quickly became a popular character on Star Trek: Voyager.

Introduced in season four of Star Trek: Voyager, Seven of Nine, the former Borg drone played by Jeri Ryan, had a difficult time acclimating to her new enviroment. She hadn’t wanted to leave the Borg Collective and tried to find her way back to the only home she’d known since she was a child. But not only was her name going to be different originally, her entire history had been written as exceedingly more violent when the producers were casting for this character.

In the beginning, according to Whatculture, Seven of Nine’s name was going to be Perra, and presumably, that would have been the name she would have gone by aboard Voyager. Perra lived on Kelta Prime, and the planet was assimiliated by the Borg. Perra witnessed the murders of all of her family and friends, and after that, she believed that her humanity had died as well. Tormented by the constant grieving and unable to face it any longer, Perra learned to take comfort in being a part of the Borg. The collective consciousness didn’t leave her the ability to think on her own so she didn’t have to think about what she’d lost.

This backstory would have created a different Seven of Nine.

Though Seven begins remembering her parents and how she was assimilated after she joins Voyager, the memories, though painful, aren’t as traumatic as they would have been for Perra. Had the producers chosen to keep that history, Perra would have begun to remember the brutality of her parents, her family, and her friends’ deaths, and it would have only made sense for her to have rebelled against the Borg.

While Seven maintained a lack of emotion, for the most part, it would have been difficult for Perra to have recovered those horrific memories without giving her an outlet for them. She would have either become very angry or bitter…or both, making for a vastly different ex-Borg drone, one that the crew of Voyager might not have been able to help. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Perra became Seven of Nine.