It was obvious to everyone watching Star Trek Voyager at the time, that the introduction of Jeri Ryan to the show was to make the show more sexy and gain viewership.
However, at the time, they were not yet sure how much more sexy they wanted to make it. So they shot many alternative scenes and would decide later which ones to use. Those scenes have been safely hidden away – that is, until now.
Example 1
For example, Seven of Nine is going to be trapped in a fight club for one episode. This was a fun episode to try to shoot alternatives.
Eventually they chose to use the scene where she was wearing a full silver jumpsuit.
Example 2
Here is one of her first scenes. She is just out from the borg is not very self conscious yet. She is walking around in this leotard with bare legs.
Example 3
Later in the show, while she was alone in astrometrics, they wanted to convey the message that she was making herself at home. Or at least, that was their excuse to shoot several scenes of her not wearing any pants.
Example 4
When Seven of Nine was being treated by Tuvok and he was getting ready for a mind-meld, they had a scene of her being topless. However, in this case, it simply didn’t make sense in the plot and they removed the scene before even considering it.
Example 5
A scene was taken out where Janeway explained to Seven how her appearance affected some of the other crewmembers.
Example 6
And in the final example from the scenes that were actually shot, we see the very first scene of her getting liberated from the borg and in this version she is completely nude. There were good excuses to do this, as she would not have self awareness to be embarrassed at this time. However, they finally opted to put her in the now-famous silver jumpsuit.
On to some of the marketing material that was produced in anticipation of the sexier version being used. None of this marketing material was actually used, despite that it could probably have made the show more popular.
Marketing Example 1
This was not the most risque example. The other version was the famous silver jumpsuit and this one was just sexed up a bit more.
Marketing Example 2
Another interesting example that was a bit more risky was this bottomless promotional shot with Harry Kim and The Doctor.
If you don’t see anything, look again. They had cut out a piece of her bodysuit right around the crotch. Quite an innovative idea I must say.
After Party
One photo from the set after a day of shooting even shows Janeway trying out some costume modifications at the behest of the director.
In Present Time
Seven of Nine returned to the show in “Picard” on Amazon Prime and even for that installment, they shot some raunchy marketing material, just in case they needed it.
Other examples
This is of course not the first time Star Trek has tried this sort of thing. You all remember the green bikini aliens from the original series.
How about this costume from Enterprise where T’Pol entered a slave trading station?
Or how about this scene where they are going to impress an alien species and take attention away from her vulcan ears.
Of course this idea is not new by any means. Even Deanna Troi had a famous scene where she is wearing a sheer top and no bra. But very few know that she was wearing a leotard the first few episodes and they had to go back and reshoot them when they changed their minds.
They changed it to a short skirt in the beginning.
When they changed away from the skirt a few episodes later, they actually had an episode where she had something of a cleavage.
However, there were too many wardrobe malfunctions and eventually because of Patrick Stewarts brilliant acting, they chose to not use this weapon just yet and ended up never doing so.
Finally, a gem that we saved till last.
Uhura from the original series was well-known for wearing short skirt. But few know just how short they were in the pilot episode.
Much of the deleted scenes showed her skirt riding up and exposing her hairy sixties vagina.
(The illustrations for this story was faked by AI using inpaint)