The purvy EMH is to blame.
Who created and crafted 7 of 9?
- Thread starter M.A.C.O.
- Start date
A male Borg in cool looking armor with awesome Borg weapons/abilities would have appealed to young males too. As much as I liked One, his armor wasn't cool looking, his abilities were.
But they were painting him as Seven's son, not a love interest.
Who said anything about that!? 
I meant instead of Seven of Nine and they went with a male drone.
I meant instead of Seven of Nine and they went with a male drone.
Girl Seven was meant to get the male audience hard.
Boy Seven would have equally meant to make the female audience wet.
One, on the other hand, didn't play up sex at all, but how different would One have been if they wanted the world to be aroused by the character? True the actor looked better in Hugo Boss, J Paul isn't unattractive, but "armour" isn't sexy.
Which means you're probably left with a hot guy in a catsuit, with some metal shit on his face.
Boy Seven would have equally meant to make the female audience wet.
One, on the other hand, didn't play up sex at all, but how different would One have been if they wanted the world to be aroused by the character? True the actor looked better in Hugo Boss, J Paul isn't unattractive, but "armour" isn't sexy.
Which means you're probably left with a hot guy in a catsuit, with some metal shit on his face.
The camera and set design added a lot of power to her character - as well as other cast. The shots are very often at eye level; it is a rare occasion you get to see someone's true stature compared to a recognizable scale.
These are not tall people but on screen, they are formidable presences. Watch scenes such as Scorpion pt 2 when Chakotay enters the cargo bay and meets Seven for the first time. Her alcove is elevated on a dais, and it is from here where she faces him from a superior height. But when she bounces out of her alcove, you see, she's more like a Kerry Strug kind of girl.
In other words, though proportioned beautifully for the screen, and for her own shape, everything is actually smaller and more mundane than it appears. The magic of TV.
You'll often see shots aimed upward toward the Hirogen or Kazon, letting you know how imposing they are - but you don't really see full-frontal shots of the crew from the alien warrior perspective.
So just saying, the set design, blocking and camera angles added a lot of presence to these characters. Conversations took place face to face so that faces filled the screen, but if you stood back across the room you would be like, "Why the crap are they breathing each others' oxygen over there? Are they gonna kiss?"
(Let's see that again).
Shes' 5'6", 169 CM tall. Elijah Wood and Jack Black-sized.
You know, come to think of it, Hollywood in general is shorter than you think from watching on the screen.
Or maybe it's the cam work. Like, if you're a little person seeing all these characters at eye level every episode, maybe you'd be surprised how tall they really are?
These are not tall people but on screen, they are formidable presences. Watch scenes such as Scorpion pt 2 when Chakotay enters the cargo bay and meets Seven for the first time. Her alcove is elevated on a dais, and it is from here where she faces him from a superior height. But when she bounces out of her alcove, you see, she's more like a Kerry Strug kind of girl.
In other words, though proportioned beautifully for the screen, and for her own shape, everything is actually smaller and more mundane than it appears. The magic of TV.
You'll often see shots aimed upward toward the Hirogen or Kazon, letting you know how imposing they are - but you don't really see full-frontal shots of the crew from the alien warrior perspective.
So just saying, the set design, blocking and camera angles added a lot of presence to these characters. Conversations took place face to face so that faces filled the screen, but if you stood back across the room you would be like, "Why the crap are they breathing each others' oxygen over there? Are they gonna kiss?"
(Let's see that again).
Shes' 5'6", 169 CM tall. Elijah Wood and Jack Black-sized.
You know, come to think of it, Hollywood in general is shorter than you think from watching on the screen.
Or maybe it's the cam work. Like, if you're a little person seeing all these characters at eye level every episode, maybe you'd be surprised how tall they really are?
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They also had Jeri wearing high heels.
Looking at her wearing the uniform I have to say as a straight woman that I thought she was perfectly fine just like that. Just let the beautiful women be beautiful and quite messing with them. However I'm not a straight guy nor a costume/make up artist so I should probably just shut up.
I could see them putting a male drone in something similar to those 'climbing' outfits they wore in Blood Fever. Robbie McNeil looked good in that but then at that stage of his life he looked good in anything.
Looking at her wearing the uniform I have to say as a straight woman that I thought she was perfectly fine just like that. Just let the beautiful women be beautiful and quite messing with them. However I'm not a straight guy nor a costume/make up artist so I should probably just shut up.
I could see them putting a male drone in something similar to those 'climbing' outfits they wore in Blood Fever. Robbie McNeil looked good in that but then at that stage of his life he looked good in anything.
I thought it was an interesting contrast that while 7 of 9 appeared erotic her demeanor was asexual/stoic. The scene where she propositions Harry was hilarious.
Yes that was great. I also think that was why so many of the female fans (after they got over the initial shock of her appearance) came around to liking her.
Seven had two main stories.
1. An empty broken person on a quest to reclaim her stolen humanity.
2. A bit of a dick who did what she wanted and #### the consequences.
This is what Berman thought that women want to be and men want to do.
Is Berman a caveman or a genius?
1. An empty broken person on a quest to reclaim her stolen humanity.
2. A bit of a dick who did what she wanted and #### the consequences.
This is what Berman thought that women want to be and men want to do.
Is Berman a caveman or a genius?
What does Braga have to do with the costuming of Troi or Kira? He didn't start writing for TNG until 1990, some three years after Troi's creation and didn't become a producer for the show until 1993. He never worked on DS9. So I don't see how he could influence costume choices.
That's the point!
I think it was Braga who were obsessed with catsuits. First Troy, then Kira, Kes, Seven and T'Pol.
And I thought that Star Trek was about good stories, good characters and space exploration.
OK, maybe I was wrong here about Braga and catsuits.
But someone among the "gods of the Star Trek Universe" seem to be obsessed with that clothing.
Maybe Braga's absence from DS9 explains why Kira's uniform was decent compared to the other characters I mentioned.
Guy Gardener wrote:
A caveman with a strike of genious!
I don't like Berman, Braga and Jeri Taylor because they messed up a lot of things. But we can't deny the fact that they did actually contribute in creating a wonderful universe with a lot of possibilities.
Or to be more correct: They took over Roddenberry's wonderful universe and developed it even more.
It's a shame that they ruined some of it too.
I don't know if women 'wanted to be her' or not. I can only speak for myself to say that I am perfectly happy the way I am. (I know. Blasphemy. Women are supposed to hate themselves) but I know what women didn't want to see was a beautiful woman who didn't have a brain cell in her head who giggled and flirted with all the men and just generally created chaos. Women don't hate other women simply because they are beautiful. That's a myth. Women hate other women, beautiful or otherwise, who make all women look bad. Seven was a refreshing change from all of that.
And in all fairness if it had been a boy drone the last thing I would want to see would be a male version of that. The man that is so handsome who acts like a jerk but somehow some women will make excuses for his bad behavior...and male viewers wind up hating him because he makes men look bad.
All that was avoided.
"Men want to be him, women want to be with him" is an old as dirt description of James Bond that you have had probably your entire life to rally against. Yes, it is expected that you are a little more evolved than your grandparents were in the 1950s.
GOOD JOB!
I love this line... "A woman's natural enemy is her own bottom. It follows her everywhere, constantly snacking."
GOOD JOB!
I love this line... "A woman's natural enemy is her own bottom. It follows her everywhere, constantly snacking."
I agree with the latter, though I'm not sure whose contribution to that effect was greater, but not the former. That is, while I'm not saying that Seven wasn't drop dead gorgeous, I think I found her appearance in her normal getup, padding notwithstanding, struck me as being Teutonically militaristic. I suppose what goes into this impression, is an inherent tension in her bearing, always being on guard, a wariness of the intentionality of individuals and situations that she encountered, and of course her manner of speech.
These factors don't diminish the innate fact of her beauty, but as to having the aura of eroticism, IMO once one got over the initial frisson of her transformation and accepted it, and began seeing her as a real person with frailties and vulnerabilities exhibited so often during her long journey of reclamation, then not so much.
M
marlboro
Guest
So, who exactly created the character? Who decided to introduce a new character and make her the the focus of so many episodes? Was there a felling that the show needed to be shaken up a bit?
Right. Because before Braga there was never anything sexual in Star Trek
Yes, ratings had reached a nadir by the end of the third season so they wanted to sex up the show a bit (originally only figuratively speaking but as we came to see it, later they decided to do this in the literal sense of the word as well).
It's difficult to sift through the process now and decide what was fact and was only rumour but they did decide to introduce a former ex-drone at some point, possibly during season 3. Originally, it was supposed to be a male drone but how and when and especially why they changed their minds, beats me.
What is even more mind-boggling than this is the fact that Harry was supposed to have been axed but due to a magazine poll they decided to get rid of Kes. I strongly suspect that if they'd gone along with the idea of giving Harry the sack, then the new borg drone would have been male.
Also, what beats me is that I understand about introducing a new character but I'm at a loss why to make practically every story revolve around her once she's joined them. Hell, even if a story is about Tuvok or B'Elanna or anyone else, you often have the feeling that the whole story happened only so that Seven could give her opinion of the events (RANDOM THOUGHTS is a conspicuous example of that, for instance).
There is a book called A Vision of the Future, it is about Voyager. I remember reading in that that the idea for Seven came along before there was talk of getting rid of Kes or Harry.
Brannon Braga*, who was involved in the casting process from the start.
Of course, when Jeri Ryan was hired, nobody has even thought that, in addition of a pleasant physical appearance, she was also capable of acting, as if both aspects were not compatible between them.
Braga's interview in TrekNews.net - September 21, 2011:
"The show needed a kick in the ass. Creatively, we needed something. A Star Trek series, in my opinion, is only as good as its captain, and Captain Janeway was a great captain, but she didn’t have her Spock or Data, really. We just didn’t have that special science-fiction character like Spock or Data, the striving-to-be-human character. The idea of putting a Borg on board gave us a chance to have a wild child there. That was the metaphor, a wild child, and Janeway would be her mother and try to tame her and help make her human again. That was a new take on that kind of character.”
“That’s not to diminish the Doctor, Bob Picardo’s character. He was great, but he really wasn’t a foil to Janeway. He wasn’t someone Janeway could play off of. To me, Seven of Nine added a nice touch of magic that the show needed at the time. The fact that she was a beautiful woman was just, to me, a benefit. A lot of people thought it was in poor taste that we had a buxom babe, but I’m like, “Have you actually watched TOS?” That was babes on parade. Kirk would be considered a sex addict by today’s standards. A certain sensuality has always been at the heart of Star Trek. So I’d dispute that criticism of Seven. I thought the character was a great addition to the show. And it kind of lit a fire under the cast, too. It was very controversial. We got rid of Kes and brought in Seven of Nine, and some people in the cast were upset about it and some thought it was cool, but at the end of the day I think it did all the right things creatively to the show, in my opinion.”
Brannon Braga envisioned, upon devising the Seven of Nine character, that she would ultimately be portrayed as meeting an unfortunate end. "Seven of Nine was, for me, designed to be a character that was gonna die tragically," Braga admitted. "I planned that." [2] He elaborated "I thought she should have somehow sacrificed herself to get the closest thing she had to a family home. I think it would have been amazing but I was shot down. I was not running the show at the time it was Ken Biller and Rick."
OR
“It was my feeling that Seven Of Nine should have died. If you watch the episode ‘Human Error’ written by Andre Bormanis, it was not only a heart breaking 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 ‘rape 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. 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.” – Braga in SFX
(on this point, some people thought - and still think - that he was picking on the wrong character. If any character should have been killed off – permanently and not resurrected/replaced/retconned at the end of the episode – it should have been the pointless Harry Kim closely followed by dull Chakotay. I agree 100%!
).* I don't know if he has planned to sleep with Ryan but at the end did it, what was at least unprofesional, IMHO but well, I guess that both interested had to find an interest there...
