List of Minor Recurring Characters in Star Trek: Voyager - Icheb

Icheb was played by Manu Intiraymi. He was assimilated by the Borg and has many parallels with the character Seven of Nine: they were both assimilated by the Borg while small children, were separated from the Borg hive mind, and restored very close to their pre-Borg selves with the help of the crew of Voyager and Captain Janeway.

After Icheb was assimilated he was placed inside a Borg maturation chamber where he was to grow into an adult drone until an apparently space-borne virus infected the vessel he was aboard and consequently killed all the adult drones, disconnecting the vessel from the Borg. This caused the chamber to open and Icheb to emerge as an underdeveloped Borg drone.

He was not the only neonatal drone aboard, and the other drones that emerged (Azan, Rebi and Mezoti, plus an unnamed 'First') from their maturation chambers formed their own small collective to run the ship and return to the Borg. At this point, in the episode "Collective", they encountered Voyager. First was dangerously unstable and was eventually killed in the cube's explosion and Captain Janeway persuaded the other children to abandon the Borg cube and join Voyager.

As with Seven of Nine, the crew of Voyager restored the Borg children to their pre-Borg selves by removing most of their Borg implants and counseling them as they regained their normal personalities.

In the episode "Child's Play", Icheb was facing a reunion with his parents. He met them, and at first was reluctant to return to the mainly agricultural planet, compared to the advanced technology and science of Voyager. Eventually, he warmed to his parents and elected to stay with them. It then emerged that the people of his homeworld had genetically engineered Icheb to be a weapon against the Borg using the genetic knowledge they had applied to agriculture. When assimilated, he introduced a biological virus into the collective; it was this virus that first disabled the Borg ship from which he and the other adolescent drones were recovered. His parents were planning to use him in this way again in order to protect their homeworld, which frequently came under attack by the Borg. He was sedated by his parents, placed on a ship engineered to emit a false warp signature to attract the Borg, and sent toward a transwarp conduit frequently used by the Borg. Voyager retrieved Icheb before his ship was tractored into the Borg ship.

Icheb had many talents intellectually and fit in well with the crew of Voyager. His main position on Voyager was assisting Seven of Nine in the astrometrics laboratory. He sought to be admitted to the Starfleet Academy through training courses provided by the senior officers aboard Voyager. Partial communication was established with Starfleet Command on Earth, through which Icheb sat for and passed the entrance exam to the Academy. He gained the field rank of cadet from Captain Janeway.

The episode "Shattered" featured an alternate timeline set in 2394 in which an adult Icheb (who had attained a commission in Starfleet of Lieutenant Commander) helped Janeway and Chakotay restore Voyager to the correct space and time after it was hit by a "chronokinetic surge" that altered the ship. He did this by using advanced instruments that he and Naomi Wildman developed in the astrometrics lab.

External links

• Official Star Trek bio
• Icheb at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)