How old is Seven emotionally/mentally in the different seasons?

I have read at least one person in this forum say that she is a child emotionally. What I personally think the situation is, is that she is in a state of 'arrested development'. I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist so I hope I have that term right. What I think it means is that mentally, parts of her are mature and other parts are not. Of course that probably applies to all human beings anyway doesn't it.

She was assimilated at six and then went through some time in a borg maturation chamber. I can't say that I'm an expert on borg maturation chambers but it is obvious that at least some of the changes that happen in kids and teenagers and twenty something's brains would have happened to her but at a faster rate. That period where teenagers and twentysomethings, though as late as 32 in some males, where they are somewhat volatile and immature and more readily commit crimes, she did not have when she was liberated from the collective. She had a calmness.

She also had vast knowledge and would have had to have had a huge vocabulary. These things also help with maturity.

Someone stated that she doesn't come across as a child and they don't look at her as one. And that's true that in many ways she doesn't behave like a child. She didn't seem to carry herself as a child.

In revulsion she offered herself for the safety of her new collective but I think that was more a borg left over thing. But by the second to last? episode of season 4 she was willing to die to save the crew.

I am hoping that people who are more familiar with Voyager than I am will be willing to help with this question. Since buying the DVD's in December I've only been through them once and since then watching favorite episodes and have only just started going through them again. So I am sure that there are people here who know the episodes a whole lot better than me. If anyone wanted to participate in this thread I suggest one way would be to if they wanted to mention things that Seven did and in what season. Perhaps people could underline and bold the season to make it stand out?

It would be interesting to get a psychiatrists or psychologists take on her. And of course it would be interesting to hear other people's take on her as well.

 

Actually it was the episode before Revulsion which was Day of Honor when this happened.

In some ways, I feel like she was like a teenager rebelling against her "mother" figure in this episode. The way she was acting in the first part about the hover ball game. But she was being selfless in Hope and Fear (I think that's the one you're talking about).

It seemed like she had normal emotions while she in Unimatrix Zero (the virtual reality that some Borg could experience where they could be individuals until their regeneration cycle ended).

 

...this is going to lead to someone labeling the EMH, Chakotay, or maybe even Janeway a "creep" isn't it?

 

Perhaps, but that wasn't my intention with the thread.

 

She may have not understood social norms, but she didn't seem to be emotionally stunted to me. I think the artificial reality from Unimatrix Zero may had some effect on her emotional development. She still had a childish fear of the dark in the flashback scene in Survival Instinct. By Scorpion she seems to be completely mature and extremely confident.

I can't really pin a specific age/level of maturity on her, but she always seemed to be very level headed and "adult" to me.

 

For me it took a while to realize how earnest she actually is. She really wants to fit in and please Janeway. She's an adult, but doesn't really understand people in her first season or two. There's a funny scene where B'elanna is getting on her case. She says "You don't say 'sorry.' You don't say 'excuse me.' You treat us all like we're a bunch of drones. You're.......rude!" And Seven replies "I'm ......rude." It's also hard to tell how much she cares for everyone until you've watched it a couple times. She very innocent but I don't think she has the mind of a child.

 

Another really neat characteristic of her is how she takes pride in her Borg heritage. She has no interest in returning but is nostalgic about it. To insult the Hirogen (and others) she tells them they will be assimilated .

 

I remember this neighbor we had. He was in his fifties and had been in a motorcycle accident when he was 19. It used to bug me that people would want to say he was like a ten year old when he was a man. He had some memories of his life when he was a teenager. Tried to play the guitar for me. Yet he played the piano so loudly in his house you could hear it all around, he was good. He remembered the accident, right down to knowing he had been drinking before hand. He laughed. He was also like a child who made peanut butter sandwiches to feed the birds. Who was fair game to people who would ring him up and scam him for money. He went away for a month and I was left fending for his cat. He scared people who didn't know him. He was and is a decent, unpredictable individual who cannot be defined by an age.

Seven is like that. Her emotional age is a jumble.

Her intellectual age is of the collective.

Her looks are of a twenty something.

 

Funny. I've made the same reflection (minus Janeway)I

More seriously, even if Seven clearly & emotionally matured from s4 to s7, she still needs some time and experiences to be ready to lead a normal life.

 

Yeah I like that facet about her.

 

Yeah, she does indeed need some time. There is a part of maturity that can only come with time and experiences.

 

Chakotay wasn't her first boyfriend. She went on dates, went clubbin'; she had a pretty serious thang with Axum. She conducted her own personal studies on courtship rituals, and marriage. She got lessons on all these things(albeit from the worst possible instructor)

And then she got into a serious relationship with Chakotay(holographic Chakotay, that is). We don't know how long this went on for, but it must have been a while. She at first chose him as her ideal, and most compatible partner, then fell in love with him. She had to quit that, but eventually decided to move towards the real thing.

She knew who her man was, and set out to assimilate him into her unimatrix. The rest is history. They lived happily ever after.

 

That's a rather unpopular opinion. They had about as much chemistry as a rock and vinegar in my opinion.

The holographic Chakotay thing was even more vomit inducing-though the thing about her liking order and structure and holographic Chakotay telling her to let go(during the piano thing) was telling that I don't think she had finished maturing by the end of Voyager.

 

Some unpopular opinions deserve their fair shake. I feel for Chuckles. He's facing the prospect of living out his life single, and alone in space. He's one of the few guys who could handle Seven. She's a bit of a basket case(alcove case?) She chose him for a reason. Even if people don't like the romance part of their relationship, I can totally see the rest working quite well. And marriages are about much more than romance.

 

I don't want to ruin a good thing because the holodeck is a good thing! However it strikes me as a little dodgy when they get caught out with holodeck characters who are also real people and their crew mates. Fair Haven with Janeway kissing fictional Sullivan is about as far as you would like to think they would go. Even then Janeway seemed to feel a little guilty she had made him taller etc. Yet when the Doctor got caught out with holocharacters that were real people he was embarrassed, giggled about and then later when he did his holonovel there was annoyance and hurt feelings.

So Seven simulating intimate recreations with Chakotay, I mean.. Oh shut up 'Refuge'. What am I thinking? There was nothing wrong with Seven doing that, lol. As long as you don't get caught.. Oh but the Doctor did 'catch' her. Probably the Doctor needed the wake up call himself.

 

The episode is not presenting what Seven was doing as healthy. In fact, just the opposite. And it's not at all like what Barclay did. She thought she could experience dating Chakotay as one of her experiments, in a controlled environment. And even then, she was still ashamed of it, and kept it a secret from everyone.

 

I think just about anybody who is socially awkward and wants to date and has access to a holodeck would hide it and keep it hidden from everybody.

Lord Knows I would-I'm a rather awkward guy myself and I could see myself simulating a date(or event or talk or something wholesome I assure you) with a crush or something. If I could do that-you bet I'd hide it from everyone and would feel somewhat embarrassed about it.

 

Indeed, the holodeck was a catch up for her to practice being human. The Doctor was sensitive and considerate about that. In many ways he was new to being 'human' too.

 

The Holodeck experiment with Chakotay reminded me of what many young girls go through as teenagers. You reach a point of reckoning where you start asking yourself hard questions. It's not just 'what do I want to be when I grow up?' It's also 'Do I want marriage? Do I want children? Do I want a career? Do I want both? If I do want to marry, what kind of man do I want to marry? What kind of wife/mother would I be? What are relationships really like?

To me, this is what she was trying to find out. I suspect had she not been caught she would have married holodeck Chakotay and even had a couple of holo kids in an attempt to sort this out...something that most young girls start to come to terms with when they are about sixteen or so.

 

I had issues with the Hansens. I mean they took a child into such danger to do their scientific research. Annika was thrown under the Borg bus.