The Raven (Voyager episode)

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Star Trek: VOY episode
"The Raven"
Seven's Borg implants reactivate
Episode no.	74
Prod. code	174
Airdate	October 8, 1997
Writer(s)	Bryan Fuller Harry Doc Kloor
Director	LeVar Burton
Guest star(s)	Richard J. Zobel, Jr. as Gauman Mickey Cottrell as Dumah David Anthony Marshall as Magnus Hansen Nikki Tyler as Erin Hansen Erica Lynne Bryan as Annika Hansen
Year	2374
Stardate	?
Episode chronology
Previous	"Revulsion"
Next	"Scientific Method"

The Raven is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the sixth episode of the fourth season.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Seven of Nine, having just been liberated from the Borg collective, is starting the process of learning to be a human again. She begins having flashbacks (or hallucinations) involving Borg and, strangely, a large black bird. The Doctor diagnoses her with post-traumatic stress disorder. He decides to help her move forward by starting her on a diet of real food; now that she has been relieved of her Borg implants she'll need to take in nutrients. Neelix prepares a first meal for her to start on, and coaches her on the basics of chewing and swallowing. Suddenly she is struck by another vision, and a Borg implant grows from her skin. She jumps up and threatens to assimilate Neelix.

Captain Janeway is right in the middle of negotiating passage through space owned by the B'omar. Her duty is made harder when Seven steals a shuttle and leaves Voyager with it, trespassing into B'omar space.

The Doctor figures that Seven's Borg nanoprobes have reactivated and are taking over her body and mind again. The crew cannot recover her because the B'omar won't allow Voyager into their territory, but Tuvok and Tom Paris are able to covertly cross B'omar security lines in a shuttle and go after Seven. Tuvok transports to her shuttle but Seven is able to subdue him. She explains that she is following a Borg homing beacon. When Tuvok tells her there are no Borg ships anywhere in the vicinity, she tells him he's wrong and steers the shuttle to a moon.

On the moon's surface they find no Borg, only the wreckage of an old Federation ship. It shows signs of Borg invasion and partial assimilation. Seven feels that the ship is familiar to her; very familiar. There is a bit of Borg machinery still active on board, which is what caused Seven's homing instinct to reactivate. As she looks around the ship, the memories hit her hard. This is her parents' ship, the Raven. It was taken by the Borg almost twenty years ago, when Seven was a little girl named Annika Hansen. She and her parents were assimilated on this very spot.

[edit] Notes

This episode shares some commonalities with "Brothers" (TNG episode), where Commander Data, as the result of being summoned by his creator, Dr. Noonien Soong, takes over the Enterprise-D.

During the course of her flight back to the Raven, Seven's shuttlecraft seems to change several times between Type-6 and Type-8.

Either earth avian taxonomy has changed significantly by the 24^th century, or Captain Janeway flunked ornithology. Her description of the bird family Corvidae is very much inaccurate.

Seven of Nine's tight and rather revealing silver jumpsuit uniform gets replaced by a more appealing, and understated brownish uniform, this is the first of many changes in her garments that occur over the remaining seasons.

Although when Seven of Nine first joined Voyager, Captain Janeway said that they would leave "one" alcove active for her to regenerate with, you can clearly see that all the Borg alcoves that are in the cargo bay appear to be powered up and active.