LogFAQs > #934469058

2. Data
Beep boop.

Until I met Ed, Id never met anyone who disliked Data. Hes like the most lovable character on Star Trek. What if Pinocchio, but a Vulcan, but not, but Three Laws of Robotics, but not? People give Gene Roddenberry a lot of **** for having terrible ideas whenever it comes to details or human characterization, but the man was very good at broad ideas and basic ideas. He was clearly more of a George Lucas, in that he needed other people to iron out the flaws. Unlike George Lucas, he was lucky enough to die before he could ruin his own creation. Have you ever seen the stuff made after his death from his unused ideas? Andromeda and Earth: Final Conflict? Yeesh. Thank God no one ever set a Star Trek show a thousand years in the future after the Federation fell and the main character has to fix things, right? Right? Right?

Its worth talking about how Data was even conceived of. Back during the 70s, Roddenberry was like Well make Star Trek: Phase 2, and I have a million terrible ideas for it, like the Klingon planet has no defenses because theyre so sure no one would ever attack them. Then he was told make a movie, and it turned into The Motion Picture, and he had to integrate his ideas for the show into the movie. This is why characters who only show up in that movie each have more lines than Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty combined. When he made TNG, he changed the characters names and left them identical. Thats why Commander Decker has a relationship with an alien psychic and why Commander Riker has a relationship with an alien psychic. But the most important character for our purposes is Xon. Xon was going to be a Vulcan whod never experienced emotions and wanted to experiment with them. In the final product of the movie, Xon has two lines, then dies in a random accident unrelated to the actual plot. And its not a nice death, either, hes killed in a beaming accident and its the most gruesome Star Trek death ever. Point is, I have no idea why they even included the character in the movie.

A decade later, Roddenberry goes a Vulcan who wants to feel emotions, huh? Well, we already did a lot with Vulcans in TOS and the five previous movies, so I want to explore new ground, and he made an android. Consider that, too. It wasnt until 1995 that Star Trek went back to mine the Vulcan main character well. I respect TNG and DS9 a lot for not just treading old logical ground.

Holy **** did I get off-topic. This is supposed to be about why Data is such a fun, engaging character. Well, the reason is basically twofold. First, the writers immediately realized Data and Worf were the most fun characters on the show, in that they could comically misunderstand stuff (theres a scene where Picard holds an unopened umbrella, then he opens it, and Worf flips out and goes into a karate stance, then realizes whats happened and goes back to normal, all done without a word or even drawing attention to it, so good), so Data and Worf got waaaaay more to do than almost anyone else. Data can explore what it is to be a human with Geordi, he can prove himself to a racist, he can ask awkward questions of Picard without realizing why theyre awkward, he can interpret idioms literally, and when you want drama, he can just react to horrible stuff with straight-faced huhness while everyone else screams or whatever. Second, characters trying to explore who they are and where they fit into the world is inherently way more interesting than we need to stop the thing because of the thing. Sure, every Star Trek episode includes a we need to stop the thing, but thats engaging because we care about how it affects the characters we know and love. And its really easy to love Data because of a sense of innocence that no other character in the franchise could ever plausibly possess Except Kes, I guess, but we dont talk about her.

It helps that Brent Spiner is the least embarrassing actor in TNG after Patrick Stewart and LeVar Burton. Note that I didnt say hes good, but he is the least awful after those two, and he does know how to ham it up. Every so often, Data gets to feel emotions or his wacky evil brother shows up, and we get to see the range of Spiners acting, which is slightly wider than the range of, say, Jonathon Frakes acting.

Theres also the simple fact that in a sci-fi show, I am a robot beep boop inherently leads to interesting scenarios. Again, this is also true of Worf and his alien code of honor. Data can be used to examine whether or not sapient computers are really sapient, he can be stolen by an insane art collector, he can hook his brain into a computer to do whatever (by the way, I love how often they use the opening Datas head special effect, they were clearly very proud of that incredibly lame fake computer chip they glued to his head), and so on.

Not to mention, and I said this before several times, Data is the only correctly-written scientist character besides Spock. Its just those two. Dax and TPol are never properly used as investigator characters, Harry Kim and Michael Burnham are written by people who think science is a form of magic or can be understood, and Janeway is written by people who can only comprehend heady subjects by way of analogy. Its fun to see Data slowly unravel a puzzle. Its fun to see Data be smarter than everyone else.

Man, lets just list fun Data moments. Remember when the Klingon challenges him to an arm wrestling contest and Data instantly wins, then he tries to bribe him, and when Data calls him on attempting to bribe him, the Klingon plays it off like Data is misunderstanding a human thing and pretends to be offended, and Data falls for it? Remember when Troi and her mother get into a petty argument where the mom keeps slipping implied insults into everything she says so that Troi will get upset, and when Troi demands she stop with the petty bickering, Data begs her to continue with the petty bickering because its teaching him things about humans he cant learn by watching professionals on a ship? Remember when Data ruins a hologram detective story by instantly solving the mystery? Remember when Data has a girlfriend, and he tells her that hes devoting 0.001% of his current processing power to her right now, so she breaks up with him and he just says Ill delete the program I wrote to interact with you, then? Remember when he betrays the Borg Queen, then admits to Picard that he was tempted by her offer for a nanosecond, and Picard is like thats not a big deal, and Data is like dude for an android thats an eternity? Remember when Data gets mind controlled by his father and imitates Picards voice to fool the computer? Remember when Q makes Data laugh so he can know what its like to be a human?

I think it says something that of all the people Q interacts with, the only one hes not completely dismissive and contemptuo