plasmoidal@startrek.websitetoStar Trek@startrek.website•Annotations for *Star Trek: Discovery* 5x05: "Mirrors" (SPOILERS):
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6 months agoMinor quibble (but then what other kind of quibble would it be):
In DS9: “The Adversary” the leader of the Breen Confederacy in the 24th Century is known as the “Autarch”.
Actually, "autarch" was the title of the Tzenkethi political leader, not that of the Breen. To my knowledge, the title of the head of state of the Breen Confederacy was never spoken (except perhaps in the form of Breen static).
You bring up a good point about how Seven's Borg implants may have actually helped her to adjust more rapidly than someone who had been similarly traumatized and isolated for an equivalent amount of time. That said, it might be a wash, since her implants also harmed her in various ways: Seven's implants compelled her to revisit the site of her assimilation ("The Raven"), resurface personalities of assimilated people ("Infinite Regress", albeit they were malfunctioning), develop paranoid delusions ("The Voyager Conspiracy", though arguably this was again a malfunction). Seven's implants were also said to have inhibited her ability to experience the full range of emotions ("Human Error"), and that was by design. Still, I think your basic point holds, that it seems like Seven could learn and develop more easily than an unmodified 30 yo human.
But the question of Borg tech raises another issue that makes one wonder whether this adaptability could be attributed to her implants: What exactly were the Borg "maturing" in that chamber for 5 years? Presumably, they didn't stick her in that chamber for her personal development---the Borg would have selectively "matured" the parts of her body (and brain) that would enable her to function as a drone in the collective, nothing more. So it may be possible that the maturation chamber effectively "walled off" or "isolated" the parts of Seven's mind that would have been developing during that time to stop them from interfering with whatever parts the Borg did want to develop. As a result, even if the rest of her body was effectively 30 yo, her mind might still be effectively 6 yo (or maybe a bit older, depending on how the chamber worked).
In the case I just described, Seven's improved "adaptability" would arise more from her humanity---aided, ironically, by the Borg having preserved it during their "maturation" process. In a sense, Seven would not be a "feral" child who was left with the wolves at 6 and then developed from there. Instead, she would be a child of 6 who was left immune to many of the effects that her subsequent experiences would have had.