Voyager's Eights
"What you need is some editorial skill in your self-expression. Between impulse and action, there is a realm of good taste begging for your acquaintance."
-- the Doctor to Seven of Nine in One
From a recurring guest role to a one-shot character played by a series regular to an opening-credits star, Voyager has run the gamut of Eights -- both wings are represented, as well as all three subtypes.
The difference between the wings of the Eight can be seen as one of temperature. The 7-wing is "hot" -- the Eight is more outwardly aggressive, impatient and emotionally overreactive. The Eight with a 9-wing (represented by Seven of Nine) is "cold" -- calmly domineering, with a callous indifference to the people around them.
The emotional, volatile Seska was an intimate subtype Eight with a 7-wing. Suffice to say, she was a rather unhealthy Eight. Power was what mattered to her, disregarding principles, rules, or the feelings and even lives of others.
Like most Eights, she did not like others having authority over her and pushed the limits of what she could get away with. While she served on Voyager, she chafed under Star Fleet command and under Janeway's authority in particular. As she said in Prime Factors, trying to convince a reluctant B'Elanna Torres to disobey orders: "We can sit here and let someone make the decision for us, or we can take matters into our own hands."
She took matters into her own hands in a big way in State of Flux, attempting to form her own alliance with the Kazon. When caught, she explains her reasons in blunt Eight terms: Voyager needs to build a power base in the quadrant.
"I did it for you," she tells Chakotay. "I did it for this crew." She no doubt means this. Eights see themselves as protective of those perceived to be weaker, using their own strength to shield them from an unfriendly environment.
Spitting out contempt for Captain Janeway and her adherence to Federation rules -- which stranded them in the Delta Quadrant in the first place -- Seska says, "We are alone here at the mercy of any number of hostile aliens ... We must begin to forge alliances. To survive we must have powerful friends."
Eights see the universe as a hostile place, where only the strong survive -- and they want strong people on their side. For Seska, Janeway clearly does not fit the bill. "You're a fool, Captain," Seska says -- then turning to Chakotay, her former lover, "and you're a fool to follow her."
Seska's relationship with Chakotay provides an excellent picture of the behavior of an unhealthy intimate subtype Eight. Intimate Eights feel the need to dominate and control their partner, and get obsessive, jealous and unable to let go. (This also comes from the low side of Eight's connection to 2.) When they are very unhealthy, they descend to violent, stalking behavior. Stalking is not too far off to describe Seska's pursuit of Chakotay -- particularly in Maneuvers, when she captures him, threatens him, looks on as he is tortured, but still claims to care for him, tries using sexual ploys and, of course, attempts to impregnate herself with his DNA.
Her relationship with Maj Culluh lacks the emotional weight she throws into dealing with Chakotay, but she certainly carries into it the need to dominate him as well. She orders Culluh around, belittles him and pushes him as far as she thinks she can get away with.
Watching her trying to work with Culluh and the Kazon brings up the dilemma of female Eights. In the real world today, female Eights can sometimes have a hard time, because their aggressive disposition goes against traditional ideas of femininity. But in Star Trek, in Federation and (as far as I know) Cardassian cultures, females are accepted as equals, so presumably Eights would no longer have to deal with this.
But in the Delta Quadrant, Seska aligned herself with a fiercely patriarchal culture -- women are invisible (we never actually met a Kazon female) and their opinions are worthless. So Seska performed a careful balancing act, making an occasional show of submissiveness to Culluh, letting him seem like he was in charge, but more often running roughshod over him, strategizing, barking orders at his men, making him an essential figurehead as leader -- and well she might, since she was clearly miles more intelligent than any of them. Voyager reviewer Jim Wright put it best: "If she were a man, she'd be running this quadrant by now." As it was, as long as she allowed the rather 3-ish Culluh to maintain the image of his authority, she got away with being the one truly running the show. Unlike 3s, Eights don't need the glory -- they just need the power.
Long after she was dead, Seska got in one last hit at the Voyager crew. Eights can grow obsessed with vengeance for perceived wrongs, and in Worst Case Scenario, Voyager deals with a holographic program Seska had booby-trapped to visit revenge on Tuvok -- for spying on the Maquis (never mind that she was a spy herself) and for creating a program that implied the Maquis were traitors.
Voyager encountered another noteworthy Eight before they picked up Seven of Nine -- Tieran, the would-be despot who inhabited Kes' body in the episode Warlord. Tieran was another Eight with a 7-wing like Seska, but he was so unhealthy as to make her look positively enlightened. At least she had some measure of impulse control. He is belligerent, paranoid about betrayal, and uses violence reflexively, without remorse. He holds onto power by terrorizing others.
He is a social subtype Eight, primarily exercising power as the leader of a group -- essentially a group of his followers who want to return him to political power. When healthy, social Eights take on the role of protector of the group. But when as unhealthy as Tieran, the Eight becomes the group's oppressor. In the words of Demmas, the rightful ruler Tieran unseats, "He began to treat his own subjects as enemies. He became convinced everyone was a potential traitor."
But Tieran still sees himself as the people's protector. As a social Eight, he views himself as more adult than others -- his people are children that need to be taken care of. "My people are crying out for moral leadership," he says.
He also uses sex to demean and control others. He pretty much comes out and says it: Power is "the finest aphrodisiac there is."
What gentleness or morality he does show seems to be coming from Kes, who is fighting his possession of her tooth and nail. Kes, a 9, draws on her usually latent 8-wing to battle him. She warns Tieran: "I'll be relentless and merciless just like you."
But Eights like a good fight, and despite headaches and sleeplessness, Tieran avoids showing any sign of weakness, any admission that he is losing the battle with Kes. "She's been resisting me all right," he says. "I can feel her in the back of my mind somewhere like a trapped animal rattling her cage. She has a lot of spirit -- it's invigorating."
Unhealthy Eights believe themselves to be invincible -- even over death. Tieran finds a sci-fi means to cheat death -- transferring his consciousness into host bodies, all the while thinking nothing of taking the lives of others. In the words of enneagram writer Don Riso: "An obscene fascination with death manifests itself. ... The fear of death, a reflection of their more basic fear of being harmed by anyone, impels unhealthy Eights to defy death by killing others if it is within their power to do so."
Tieran describes a childhood that is often found in the background of Eights: one of hardship, where weakness was not tolerated, and the Eight learned to toughen up to survive. "I've been fighting worse battles since the day I was born," Tieran says. "When the doctor said I wouldn't live past my first year I proved them wrong. Even when my parents thought I was too sickly to be worth caring for, I survived on the streets."
It could be said that being assimilated by the Borg provided a similar childhood background for Seven of Nine. Certainly, as a part of the Collective, she would have learned quickly that defective -- weak -- drones were disposed of. It was a lesson she had fully internalized by the time she was disconnected from the Borg and made to join Voyager's crew. Her journey from Borg to human has mirrored a progression from unhealthy Eight-ness to the healthier side, at least to some degree.
The episode One provided a good look at Seven of Nine facing the basic Eight dilemma -- buttressing the self against feelings that inside she is essentially a weak person. An alien that turns out to be Seven's own hallucination repeatedly tells her, "Your days of power are gone. You're all alone now. Weak. Pathetic." All the while, though, she refuses to admit that she is frightened.
She has shown gradual growth, however, and has occasionally been able to acknowledge feelings an Eight would consider weak -- anxiety, sadness, dependency on others. (It would be a big step just to say "thank you" to Janeway, as we learned in The Voyager Conspiracy.)
Seska considered Janeway weak and foolish. But from their first meeting, Janeway managed to impress Seven of Nine -- mostly by acting fearless in the face of the Borg and standing her ground when in conflict with Seven of Nine. Pushing back when the Eight pushes you is a good way to earn an Eight's respect. It is a high compliment that Seven pays Janeway in the episode Hunters when she tells the Hirogen, "You will find our captain a formidable opponent and our ship heavily armed."
Tempering Seven of Nine's breathtaking bluntness is not just a matter of teaching the Borg social niceties -- it's also convincing an Eight that such niceties matter. An Eight's natural impulse is to simply say what she means, and if others can't deal with it, that's their problem. Of course, that's hard on others who aren't used to or take offense at the Eight "telling it like it is." The Doctor puts it perfectly what many have probably wanted to tell an Eight: "What you need is some editorial skill in your self-expression. Between impulse and action, there is a realm of good taste begging for your acquaintance."
As we've already seen with Seska and Tieran, bluntness extends to the area of sexuality as well. Seven of Nine may lack those two's seduction techniques (such as they were) but in the episode Revulsion, she's hilariously straightforward with a flustered Harry Kim when she determines he is attracted to her: "Ensign, take off your clothes."
A 9-wing makes her markedly more self-contained than Seska or Tieran were. As Thomas Condon puts it, Eights with a 9-wing have "an aura of preternatural calm, like they haven't had a self-doubt in decades." Their power is held in reserve, but when angered, they can erupt. Such outbursts from Seven were more common in the early days (i.e., pretty much throughout the episode The Gift), but it can still come up, such as the tongue-lashing she gave Chakotay in One Small Step.
While the 9-wing makes an Eight less outwardly belligerent than the 7-wing would be, the downside is that an unhealthy Eight with a 9-wing can be have a kind of callous numbness, combining ruthlessness with indifference. The Eight with a 9-wing can still be violently destructive, but in a depersonalized way. (In a way, that characterizes the Borg Collective itself.)
Despite the "collective" approach you'd think being a Borg would give her, Seven of Nine is a self-preservation subtype. This subtype of Eight is preoccupied with control of survival needs. They value maintaining order and physical security, and don't want to rely on others for survival. This leads to a kind of "fortress" mentality, and once Seven had accepted her disconnection from the Borg, the ship Voyager became that fortress.
The self-preservation Eight dynamic was played out in the episode Prey, as Seven of Nine vehemently disagreed with Janeway's protection of an alien whose species had at one time threatened both Voyager and the Borg. "A lesson in compassion will do me little good if I am dead," she tells Janeway. Finally, she declares, "I will not be a willing participant in my own destruction or the destruction of this ship." Survival is paramount -- and survival is best achieved by following an ethic of selfishness.
The high side of this subtype is that the self-preservation Eight can be fiercely protective of those in her inner circle. Seven of Nine has gradually grown into this, subtly changing from wanting to protect the ship that assures her survival to wanting to protect the crew along with the ship. "Voyager is my collective," she says in Drone; and in Dark Frontier, she is actually willing to put her own survival in peril to protect the crew.
The self-preservation subtype also dovetails with a strong connection to 5. From Eight's connection to 5, Seven of Nine gets an intellectual streak, emotional detachment and exaggerated independence. That and, "I do not enjoy crowds," as she says in Survival Instinct. The self-blaming and guilt she experiences in Survival Instinct are also related to the Eight's connection to 5.
--Teresa Malcolm