The Raven originally had a bloodier story to tell about Seven of Nine

A script for Star Trek: Voyager’s “The Raven” originally sent Seven of Nine down a darker path.

In the fourth season episode of Star Trek: Voyager “The Raven,” Seven of Nine is drawn away from Voyager. She has been having hallucinations and dreams of a large, black bird. After escaping the ship, she discovers that her visions have taken her to the remains of a Federation ship, the USS Raven. It’s where she and her parents were assimiliated by the Borg.

The episode is a dramatic, moody piece with plenty of emotional drama, but that wasn’t the way it was originally intended. In fact, there’s no clear indication in that script that Seven of Nine would have even survived once the hallucinations began.

Seven of Nine had a much grimmer storyline in The Raven’s original script

According to Whatculture, in another script, the ex-Borg drone didn’t escape Voyager. She didn’t leave the ship at all because she was too busy killing crewmembers, both human and alien alike once she was reawakened by the Borg. As her killing spree winded down, she ended up in engineering where Lt. Torres blew off her legs to keep her from destroying the ship. Seven dragged herself across the deck while begging Captain Janeway to kill her to stop her from continuing to kill.  Is it just me, or does that sound pretty gory?

Branna Braga thought so, too, describing the episode as “an empty, soulless piece of action, one that neither pushed the characters onward, nor helped anyone learn anything about themselves.”  How would Seven had come back from such a dark place? The crew could have never trusted her again, and after all the killing, she would have, most undoubtedly, been terminated. And then we wouldn’t have her as Captain Seven aboard the new USS Enterprise.