The former Borg drone known as Seven of Nine was born as a human female called Annika Hansen at the Tendara Colony in 2348. Few records in the U.S.S. Voyager NCC- 74656"s databanks make any reference to the child, but there is a substantial amount of information on her parents. Annika's parents were unconventional scientists who left Federation space to perform experiments in pursuit of some unique theories. The last record the Federation has of the Hansen family places them and their ship, the Raven NAR 32450, at a remote outpost in the Omega system. They refused to file a flight plan, and simply aimed their small vessel toward the Delta Quadrant. By some unknown method, the Raven traveled approximately 50,000 light years away from Federation space in a relatively short period of time. Seven has very few memories of her early life, but she does remember that she lived on the Raven with her parents and that she celebrated her sixth birthday on the bridge. Shortly after this, the Raven encountered a Borg vessel. Seven's father attempted to fight, but it was a hopeless battle and the Raven was forced to crashland on a Class-M moon. Seven's parents appear to have been killed, though it is possible that they were assimilated. The Raven too was partially assimilated, and its ruined hulk was altered to transmit a Borg resonance signal. The young Annika was assimilated and raised as a Borg. Her full Borg designation is Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One. As a Borg, Seven lost touch with her human side and never developed many of the characteristics that are typical of humans. She has no experience of socializing as part of an adult group, or of sexual instincts. In fact, it is irrelevant to talk about Seven as an individual while she is part of the Borg collective - any individual characteristics she once possessed are suppressed. Like all Borg, she sees herself as part of a greater whole. When the Borg are forced to cooperate with the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager to defeat Species 8472, Captain Janeway requests that a single drone acts as a representative of the collective, in the same way that Locutus did during the Borg invasion of Federation space in 2366-7. The collective selects Seven of Nine for this role, presumably because of her human origins. During the conflict with Species 8472, the Voyager crew are forced to disable the neurotransceiver in Seven's upper spinal column, severing her link to the collective. Seven goes into shock and her human immune system starts to reassert itself, rejecting her Borg implants. When she regains consciousness, Seven's first instinct is to return to the Borg. When Janeway refuses to return to Borg space, Seven asks her to put her off at the nearest habitable planet with a subspace transmitter so that she can contact the Borg alone. However, Janeway refuses to consider this option - with her human and Borg elements in constant conflict, Seven is in physical danger The crew of Voyager anesthetize Seven and the Doctor begins to remove her Borg components, allowing her awaking human metabolism to take over her body's functions. Although there are some complications, Seven survives the process. The Doctor replaces many of her Borg components, making her far more human than she has been for nearly 20 years. He even replaces her Borg eyepiece with a prosthetic human eye. At the end of the process, Seven is not exactly human; the Doctor removes 82 percent of her Borg hardware, but the remaining bioimplants and nanoprobes are still an essential part of her body. Seven is far more powerful than most humans - she is slightly stronger even than the Vulcan Tuvok - and the effects of the nanoprobes in her bloodstream are unclear; they certainly have medical applications. Importantly, Seven still has vast amounts of knowledge that she learned while she was a part of the collective. Seven has considerable emotional and philosophical problems in adjusting to her new situation. Even after she leaves the collective, she does not resent her treatment by the Borg; in fact, she misses her life with them. She regards her 'upbringing' as natural, and can barely remember anything about her early life. At first, she is convinced that her 'Borg nature' will ultimately triumph over any human impulses she may feel. Initially, Seven finds life as an individual almost unsupportable. She is used to hearing thousands of voices in her head, and when she is isolated she is deeply distressed and clearly frightened. Unlike other Borg who have left the collective, Seven has no significant memories of life as an individual, and as a result she cannot imagine what her new life will be like. Even when she learns that her given name is Annika, she decides she wishes to be known as Seven However, Seven is used to cooperation and to doing as she is told. Eventually, she decides to integrate herself with Voyager's crew. In many ways, she is still the six year old child she was when she was assimilated. She has hardly any experience of life outside the collective; she has not swallowed food for nearly 20 years; she still prefers not to sit; she has never made love. As she makes a new life on Voyager, she is essentially discovering for the first time what it means to be human.

Jeri Lynn Ryan

The newest and most fascinating character on Star Trek Voyager is played by Jeri Ryan. She was born Jeri Lynn Zimmermann on Feb 22, 1968 to Jerry and Sharon Zimmermann. Ryan has lived all over the U.S., an Army brat born in Munich, Germany, and raised on military bases from Kentucky to Hawaii. While in college, she won the sixth annual Miss Northwestern Alpha Delta Phi Pageant in 1989. A junior majoring in Speech, Jeri also won the talent contest singing "On My Own" from "Les Miserables" and co-won the swimsuit contest. Later on that year she won the Miss Illinois Pageant and went on to place fourth in the 1990 Miss America Pageant. But if you think she's all looks and no brains, you're wrong; while in school Jeri was also a National Merit Scholar.

These days she is married to a 37 year old investment banker from Chicago named Jack Ryan and they have a four year old son named Alex. Her husband doesn't want to move to Los Angeles since all of his clients are in the Windy City, so she flies back home most weekends and has her mother bring Alex to the set as often as possible.

Although an accomplished actress, Ryan considers her greatest role to be that of mother to Alex. "As a mom, I'm more patient and feel more complete," she says. "Nobody could have convinced me while I was pregnant of how magical it would be to be a mother." A world-class commuter, Ryan usually spends weekends flying from her home in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley back to Wilmette to reunite with her husband which she has done for about eight years. In her spare time, she enjoys snow skiing as well as cooking and baking, "I make some mean pies!" Ryan states proudly.

Jeri is naturally 5' 8" and at 6'2" in her Borg-heels, she is more than statuesque. TV Guide referred to her "whiplash-inducing presence." Syndicated columnist Ron Miller said, "One gets the impression she's going to shiver the timbers of the Voyager males."

Her character's name is Seven of Nine which is short for Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One, or something like that," says Ryan. "We've streamlined it to Seven, which isn't so bad."

Voyager executive producer Rick Berman described Seven as "a sensual creature neither fully Borg nor fully human." She's dressed to look like an extraterrestrial version of Catwoman, encased in an ultratight catsuit, bearing a few remaining Borg markings on her face and hands.

Co-star Ethan Phillips says those tight costumes make working with Ryan a little "complicated." Ryan says, "For the first costume, if I would do anything other than have my head straight ahead, it cut off my carotid artery. It was so tight that I passed out four times," says Ryan, interviewed on the Voyager set in a new costume that she says is looser but still takes an hour to climb into. The old suit forced her to lie down between scenes to regain her composure. But she didn't complain. "That was my nice Midwestern girl upbringing," she says. "They would bring nurses to the set with oxygen, and I wouldn't say anything. But after the fourth time passing out, I spoke up." Producers quickly refitted the suit.

But the new costume has problems of its own. "Forget vanity, throw vanity to the wind! And you can forget anything about privacy, because it ain't gonna happen. Anytime I have to go to the bathroom, everybody has to know about it. It's announced over the P.A. system, because production stops for a half-hour. 'We can't roll a shot. Jeri's not here.' 'Why not, where's Jeri?' 'Jeri has to go 10-100.' It's just a whole procedure."

And now to confuse matters even more there is a third costume which premiered in "The Raven."

Prior to Trek, she's appeared in episodes of "Melrose Place," "The Flash," "Time Trax," "Matlock," and "Murder, She Wrote" as well as several TV movies and the unreleased independent feature, "The Last Man." " 'The Last Man' is about the last three people on Earth, and I'm the last woman," says Ryan. "I know it sounds like sci-fi, but it's really not. I hope they get the film released. It's a small, but very good film."

She was also in the final seven episodes of last season's "Dark Skies." Looking back on "Dark Skies," Ryan notes that she liked the people and the premise, but that NBC had given up on the series by the time she arrived on the scene. " 'Dark Skies' had a lot of potential," Ryan says. "The show was just finding its footing when it got canceled. "I did a complete 180," says Jeri Ryan, "I was fighting the collective, the (alien) Hive on 'Dark Skies.' Now I'm part of the collective, the Borg. It's very funny." On those shows, she was billed as Jeri Lynn Ryan. A new manager hired before her Voyager job convinced her to drop the "Lynn." "He didn't think it would sound like a name that would grow with me," Ryan says. "He didn't see me at 44 years old as Jeri Lynn. "Personally, I miss the Lynn. I've been Jeri Lynn all my life, and my husband always calls me Lynn, which causes confusion around the set."

To help Ryan achieve Borg perfection, the makeup department made a plaster cast of her face, a 45-minute process that involved breathing through two straws pushed up into her nose. That was followed by a four-hour cast of her entire body. "You have to suffer for art," she quips. But she has no problem with being sold as the new sex symbol of Voyager. "There are worse things you could be called than 'whiplash-inducing,' " she says. "But as long as the character is intelligently written and gets challenging stories for me to play, I'm fine with it . . . as long as I can breathe."