I mean, I could argue that Seven’s whole deal on Voyager is horrifying from a certain perspective, from the fact that she’s been told “you’re a woman now” (is she? did she ever have a choice?) to the ideas of extreme, unattainable (and to me, definitely uncomfortable) femininity that this simple declaration immediately entails for her. It’s the Doctor that decides what she looks like from then on, ffs. Except the horror isn’t about having been Borg, it’s about the constraints we put on bodies, both in universe and out of universe (just read what Jeri Ryan had to say about working in that bodysuit).
I started this post thinking I would casually discuss it, then my inner writer jumped out and turned it into an essay, so I’ll keep my brain rot under the break for the sake of your dash.
So, my original post was written with a purposefully polemic tone, because I wanted to offer a different perspective on the way we (as fans) often think about Seven’s physical appearance post-reclamation. Specifically that if she’d looked more Borg-like, more ‘fucked-up’, it would’ve been clear how horrifying the Borg assimilation process actually is. So this post is a response to that idea; in many ways I think Seven’s appearance describes very well what assimilation into Federation society apparently entails for her.
(In case there’s any doubt left, yes, I am a DS9 fan first and foremost, so my first instinct is always to look at who the Federation’s supposed utopia leaves out, and what is the price to pay for outsiders to be let back in.)
I totally agree with you that Seven’s appearance is due to Doylist factors (I lost count of how many times the words 'borg babe’ appear in “The Fifty-Year Mission, and the way both Braga and Berman talk about Seven in that book is mostly awful). But as a fan (and a fanfic writer) I’m also left to decide what to do about Seven’s story in a strictly Watsonian, in-universe perspective. How do I look at Seven’s physical appearance? How do I interpret how it came to be?
And here I disagree with you, mostly about the character of the Doctor. He’s a medically-minded hologram, sure, but over and over his storylines revolve around the fact that he doesn’t know when his 'rational’, algorithm-driven decision turns out to be fundamentally flawed because of underlying assumptions that he didn’t question (and lo and behold, how often those assumptions revolve around sexism and generally ignoring the specificity of his patients’ situations?). Of course it’s not strictly the Doctor’s fault; every Star Trek show is genuinely horrible when it comes to depicting the medical profession. But again, this is a real-life perspective: I’m still left with the Doctor issuing the bodysuit to Seven and constantly "instructing” her on the “appropriate behavior” to maintain (which is always very, VERY gendered when not sexist), which Seven inevitably seems to find incomprehensible.
The Doctor likely acted in good faith. This doesn’t change the harm that his decisions led to. Perhaps it is my perspective as a GNC woman who has always rebelled/felt inadequate at the both overt and hidden requirements to present 'correctly’ as a woman. I can’t help but empathize with Seven’s confusion and sometimes rejection of those requirements.
Of course it’s ridiculous to expect a mainstream show like Voyager (with showrunners constantly obsessed with audience numbers, I should add) to handle a character like Seven with the care my 2020s sensibilities would’ve liked to see re: gender identity. Of course the show’s writing never has a doubt about the fact that Seven is a woman (or that she’s straight, for that matter). However I was focusing again on the universe that these unquestioned assumptions end up building around Seven. What possibilities were left behind? What does this say about the Voyager crew, and the Federation at large?
My verdict isn’t particularly positive, I’m afraid, and it’s not like what I know of the Picard show has done much to dissuade me. You are, of course, absolutely free to disagree with this assessment.