Considering the amount of times the Enterprise has been hacked and the amount of times the holodeck has nearly killed someone, Data is significantly safer than some of the other tech in Star Trek.
Honestly, given that the warp drive irreparably carves up space-time whenever it's used, and the transporter is essentially just a murderbox that assembles a new copy of a person at the destination before straight up recycling the original right into the replicators... is ANY Federation technology even REMOTELY safe? Do they even have OSHA in the future?
Was there never a season any of the human/alien characters were brainwashed into doing weird things? A.k.a. hacked, kinda like Data? Or replaced by an evil lookalike? Nothing in Star Trek universe is safe.
No, it's a valid question. I can rather see my kids consciously wanting to kill themselves after thinking they killed their brother than eating it for any other reason in that situation.
Was going to post exactly this. When kids do something stupid and you ask them "Why!!?" they just stare at you like you're asking a dumb question and respond "I don't know." Kids don't even know why they do what they do.
Less mobile, but since technology is vulnerable to manipulation the ship computer itself should have been written into more "we've been taken over...again" stories.
It's a device that we should use constantly - especially when we're trapped on the other side of the galaxy and are surrounded by factions that aren't friendly. And in spite of it running on a different power source than our ship with dwindling supplies - we are not going to find a way to use that power source for better purposes to our survival. We will also keep restocking that power source's fuel supply instead of restocking something more valuable to our survival.
I love the exchange between Data and Spock, where Spock muses that there are Vulcans who work their whole lives to accomplish what Data was given by design, and Data points out how Spock, a half-human Vulcan has set out to suppress the part of himself that represents the height of Data’s goals for self-actualization.
Data is great. Noonian Soong however is one of history's greatest monsters. Instead of a homing beacon that just gives Data coordinates to a meeting place, it overrides his whole personality and makes him hijack the nearest ship to fly straight there? That's some Rick and Morty sh*t right there.
Indeed, luckly for Soong that Data was not on a diplomatic mission on a Klingon ship or undercover on a Romulan ship or would have cause an interstellar war, and luckly too that the Enterprise was not on the middle of a salvament mission with thousands of life at risk or in the middle of a battle against the Borg or something like that.
Data always having to save the day after the rest of the crew is disabled due to their biology is an excellent argument for greater diversity among Starfleet crews (ie more non-humanoids).
“Night Terrors” is another episode where Data’s essential. As Picard tells Data “I will need to rely on you from now on; we may need to count on you for our very survival.” By the end of the episode, Data has assumed command at the request of Picard.
Ooh, ooh, just thought- remember when Garak went bananas and killed a bunch of redshirts? But it wasn't his fault because of the spaceroids he accidentally got juiced on? So the families just shrugged and said "well, these things happen I guess." Why are there almost no consequences on Star Trek?! Even DS9 which did consequences better than any other Classic Trek.
Tsk, your species is always so uptight. I am simply a valuable asset you see. Except in small spaces... Um, anyway I have lunch with the good Doctor. Good day.
I'm sure the exact cause of death was never reported to the families, especially given what we know of the admiralty at Starfleet Command. But, your point is a good one. I just re-watched "Let He Who is Without Sin,” where Worf openly assists a terrorist group, while he's still wearing a uniform, and nothing. But later on, he's told he'll never have a command of his own for prioritizing Dax's life over the mission. Gross oversimplification, but basically Starfleet is like, "Aiding a terrorist group, yeah, we're cool with that. Saving a life at the cost of a mission... Not cool."
Garak actually only killed one star fleet officer. The others were killed by the cardasians (which Garak did kill). He was under the influence of a drug and wasn't in control of his actions. So he was found not guilty.
"Before he does anything worse than torture Geordi a little." So just a standard day on the Enterpise? Geordi and O'Brien both were tortured a lot. And the writers had that weird thing with almost every Troi episode involving her being violated either physically or telepathically...
It was getting to point that Troi was becoming like character Calley - the Telepath on Liberator in BLAKE'S 7. Every other episode she under some telepathy assault by another alien species.
My favorite Data goes rogue moment is in The Most Toys, where we see that Data can even break under emotinal stress and then straight up lie about it to Rikers face. This moment shows that Data is both more human and more dangerous than he is given credit for.
One of my favourite episodes and Data seems fully capable of lying.... He nearly killed Artie though bad bot. That was Artie not Kivas Fajo, he just escaped Earth warehouse 13 and started over
I loved that part and yes, Data was so damn human even without emotions...and I´d say he often acted like he did have them...again he was so human and I love it.
Fajo screwed himself by gloating that he would keep killing. If someone tells you they will continue killing, and you have the means to stop them but choose not to for any reason, you are in effect allowing them to continue k***ing, which Data could "not permit"
Agreed, not to mention in that example there's nothing to stop his programming going off when he's cut from the team, if he's in the team they can keep an eye on him, stop him from getting out of hand, not to mention utilising his skills the rest of the time.
Seems to me one of the reasons they have the Hulk on the team is just to keep an eye one someone who'd be too dangerous on his own, considering Bruce isn't in full control.
Guess this is a bad time to mention all the times the "heroes" in the Comics have tried to dump Hulk in space (twice, i believe), the microverse, and possibly in time? I mean, they apparently used some kinda conditioning on Banner to cause him to calm down while in Hulk mode in the movies; you know lightly BRAINWASHED him.
I like to imagine that Troi's big role on the ship is actually in between episodes and that's why we don't ever get to see her in action. Character X gets mind controlled in an episode but is freed from the control by episode end? Well, clearly that character has some off-screen sessions with Troi in between episodes before they get to go back to full duty.
i'd argue the point that Data wasn't made to be 'complete' without emotions; that's why Soong calls him in. It was to give Data the ability to grow and be stable without them, so he had a proper foundation to build upon once he had them. That's the mistake with Lore that Soong learned.
I argue that Data had emotions, that he just wasn't created with "adult" emotions, and the emotion chip was just an placebo so Data could be honest about feeling emotions.
@@BiPaganMan I've always thought he's meant to be reserved *and* self-deluded to protect himself and others from what is there. Crusher's remark in "The Offspring" suggests that other characters have their doubts about the official story, too.
Yep he has emotions, he has a brain thats basically human but better. Seems lore was created already complete, and data was build to grow from a childs stage developement. The emotion skip is a plot hole, and undermines that, but we see and the finale highly indicates, his potential for growth as human. Again the emotion chip is, i dont like it. Its like in person of interest where th guy ho is a super careful humanist ironically by crippling a supe AI and force it to delete and reprocess interesting , made t"the maschine a moral human AI, the other evil AI, was just said, by a terrible person , ho gives a never checked AI limitless power over th worlld and predictibally, is really ruthless and doesnt have human life, while th maschine, who even experienced death, does value choice and human lives and acts more manipulative too, but it gives choices and is more well predicting but also, gives choices and not unltimati, just advice.
@@marocat4749 Data had emotional intelligence before he got the chip. His neural net simulated emotional reactions as appropriate based on context clues. Data bascally spent most of the show trying to reason out how to be emotional. The chip doesn't "make him have emotions." At a guess, it was intended to create a default library of emotional cues and references to allow Data to be better at expressing what he was already feeling. The difference between simulating and emulating in other words. Or the difference between running graphics on an integrated chip vs a dedicated graphics card. The integrated chip can kinda do it but the specialized hardware is better at it.
my theory is that Data had emotions, but was unaware of them/not able identify them as emotions. instead he translates them into rational statements that he can comprehend.
Another reason for Data to remain in Star Fleet is that should Data go rogue due to outside influence, it would be preferable for him to be assigned around other SF personal familiar with him who would notice inconsistencies and be able to deal with the problem promptly with knowledge they already have. A rogue Data unchecked in the universe would imho be very bad considering his many strengths and capability for death, destruction and mayhem.
This actually ties into one of my theories for Picard. The reason Dahj was sent to find Jean-Luc is that the Enterprise crew had the most experience in the Federation with both Soong-type androids and hard-takeoff intelligences (from "The Nth Degree"), and he'd be the easiest to find.
"Descent" is a perfect example. Had Data not been on Enterprise/with Starfleet, there would have been no counter to Lore's control over him and now there's TWO androids running around with a handful of manipulated former Borg completely unchecked and doing who knows how much harm until I guess they run afoul of Starfleet and either infiltrate and take over or are annihilated. Data would have been lost to us. And the Enterprise wouldn't have lasted long either, considering how often the show Data Ex Machina-ed. Data is probably the LEAST dangerous thing to Starfleet, even with the occasional blown fuse.
I think Uncle Ben has always put it best. "With great power, comes great responsibility." Physical. Mental. Super. Political. It doesn't matter *what* kind of power is involved, it always comes back to how it is exercised. PS - I've been on a TNG rewatch binge, and I need to point out something - the two kids involved in the whole "killer parasite" incident were both having some on-planet time, NOT on the Enterprise itself.
I’ve always felt that Picard had an interesting equivalence with Spock because he is always portrayed as someone who only knows how to work and has no social life. Like how his interaction with kids is portrayed in the beginning and how he interacts with his family later.
I actually remember the first time that I watched TNG when I was not much older than 10. My first impression on the bridge crew was that Spock had been split into resulting in Worf and Data. All three are misfits in mostly human Starfleet which time and again is used as a story plot. All of them have "emotional issues". If you take Spock as the "emotional point of reference" (emotions, but suppresed), Worf and Data are variations on that theme. Worf is very emotional (ie. aggressive, for the most part), that he struggles to control, while Data is quite the opposite, being emotionless and yet fascinated by this "concept" and eager to experience them. 30 years later I still think that my first assessment of these three characters wasn't too far from the truth.
It also does the laundry tho. Can it be a magic food and laundry hole? I'm looking forward to sticking shit in them more than getting shit out to be frank. Dirty dishes, laundry, rubbish, etc 😊
I wish you had talked about the episode "Masks" illustrates both sides of the point. Data's brain is susceptable to the probe's reprogramming, but at the same time his personhood and interactions with the crew allow Picard to work through the problem and find a solution to save the ship. It's also one of my favorite episodes, i know having Data taken over by Space Aztecs is not a great premise, but its so much fun to watch Brent Spiner play around with a dozen different characters all at once.
It one of my favourity guilty pleasures too, picard gets to do archiology to save th day, and brad spiner is always a delight acting as data acting as other characters, i also loved a fistful of datas Spiners mut have had such a blast playing trolling in that glitch worf, the whole scene meta trolling worf The sexworker , oh my god
I never really liked that episode personally lol, but seeing Spiner express so many different personalities through Data was definitely fun to watch. What's funny too though is that Spiner, himself, has said that he actually hates that episode and sees it as the worst he's ever done as Data.
Considering his abilities, I think Data is more under-utilised by Starfleet more than anything else…considering how dangerous, intelligent, adaptive, rigidly ethical etc. that he shows himself to be, it just feels like he should be doing more than a few shifts at a job an adolescent with no formal training (Wesley) can seemingly do just as well, interspersed with saving the day heroics…you’d think Starfleet must have some high level ambassadorial or espionage roles he would be more suited to, like a space Bond who’s immune to honey traps
Throughout TNG, we see him get more and more integrated with the crew, and his mannerisms become more relaxed and less robotic. In Encounter at farpoint, some of his body language was downright jerky. Imagine before then, earlier in his learned behaviour how awkward he would be - that's a great premise that would breed so many interesting stories.
I'd love if 'The Lower Decks' visited Thanatos VII and showed that there was a good reason for the name. Mayb that system has an environment bad for solids but great for producing warp plasma, maybe something of a 'place of the dead' myth, maybe it's like a warp-equivalent of a rocky shoal that would get a name like "devil's pass", in any case, great potential for misadventure
I always feel that Spock got separated into multiple characters such Worf (strong), Data (emotionless) and Troi (emotional understanding). Maybe a bit simplistic but Spock often fulfilled the same roles
I had a friend who pointed out the same thing when the show first came on. Spock as you describe (except he didn't add in Worf) and Kirk into Picard and Riker, with Picard being the diplomat and Riker being the swashbuckler. The writers didn't follow the formula strictly, but I think one can definitely see the outlines of it. Interestingly, McCoy's character would best be described as being split between Crusher and Pulaski, but Pulaski wasn't an original character. That makes me wonder if they'd toyed with a Pulaski like character, meaning critical of Data in the way McCoy was critical of Spock, when the who was being conceived and that didn't make the cut into production.
I feel Spock and Worf are similar in they were relative outsiders to their respective cultures, Spock due to being half-human and Worf being raised by humans, who sought to be epitomes of of their cultures. Spock was trying to be more Vulcan than most Vulcans, even going so far as to seek Kolinahr, a ritual most Vulcans don't pursue, while Worf was so intent on living up to Klingon ideals, almost as a warrior monk, that in many ways he looked down on some of the "fight hard, drink hard" rowdiness of everyday Klingon warriors.
Picard interstingly has aspects of spock too. When they meet they even talk about it, or picards whole arc to learn to be less stoic when he is among the crew and socialize more, a lot of the crew seems to mirror spock in a way.
When you combine many sources of risk, it’s always safer for them to be vulnerable to different, independent events so that the harm posed by one can be mitigated by the others. Any Ferengi could tell you that; diversification is basic portfolio theory!
The weirdest part is that they only found out that Data was created by Soong during the first season of TNG at the beginning of "Datalore". Therefore, Starfleet Command let him attend Starfleet Academy, put in 19 (!!) years of service in Starfleet, and reach a command rank and position *before* they figured out that he wasn't, say, some bomb waiting to go off or an alien robot trying to infiltrate the Federation.
This reasoning for why Data is important to the ship also applies to Troi, because of that episode where she sends a telepathic dream message to those aliens.
Given who the head of Starfleet security in Star Trek: Picard is I don't think Starfleet is trying to be very safe. They need to take some of those security courses that tell you not to click links in emails.
You'd think everyone would know that by now but a majority of data breaches still come from someone clicking a link, I bet even star fleet still has the problem. People just love to click on stuff
Here's how i read Data's multiple malfunctions: it's an analogy for how we fear that some neighbor or family member could just lose their shit and burn our house down.
not forgetting the nanites he was experimenting with that infected the AI core, tbh I have always thought they are all too dumb to be allowed to fly around the Galaxy unsupervised, for example, you DON'T send command crew into hostile locations, and you especially don't send ALL the command crew and leave the night shift running shit, and what's with all those parasites everyone and their uncle seems to get infected with?, is no one looking at the BioFilter readouts on the transporters? that's what they are there for, even shuttle crew should be beamed a short distance so that any intrusions can be spotted in the cellular makeup, those parasites should almost never get aboard.
The more diverse the crew the greater then chance They'll have someone who can quickly fix whatever crazy thing is happening this week. We need more Horta and so have cetacean Ops be a regular feature
As for this, characters on these shows get taken over by ghosts, parasites and other stuff all the f'ing time, can't blame Data if his creator put a come home instruction in him.
then again, if you are putting a synthetic lifeform in a position where it could potentially cause problems for, or even the loss of the Federations flagship, maybe you should vet his hardware for remote access devices and his software for backdoors, also, if he had an encrypted OS he would be the hardest member of the crew to subvert, not the easiest
Data goes a little crazy in Generations due to his emotion chip. He's seduced by the Borg Queen because of his emotion chip in First Contact and for a fraction of a second he considers helping to assimilate the Earth and probably the entire alpha quadrant. He's damaged in Insurrection and goes on a rampage, potentially breaking the prime directive. Oh and in Nemesis, he downloads all of his memories, starfleet codes and all, into an enemy agent.
A lot of people mention that data was took over many times during the series; what they hardly ever realise is that people were took over just as often - it's just that there's only one data and a thousand people. Imagine you have a deck of cards, one red and one black. However, you have all 26 black cards but only one red card. Are you going to blame the red card for always being picked? If you had a ship full of datas with a single human, that single human would have been disproportionately took over too. Now what I'm saying here is that people being took over is just an accepted part of the job. It happens to everyone. Data is just unlucky in that its a different set of things that take over him. For example the game, it didn't effect data but it effected everybody else. The pitcher plant in voyager wouldn't have affected data. This is why data is allowed to be around - everyone has a different set of things they can succumb to - so Starfleet keeps a variety of people/species around so not everyone can be incapacitated at the same time. This is just the side effect. Every once and a while someone can go rogue. So in conclusion I agree with those points 100%
Although Data endangers the ship, it was Geordi’s visor that destroys it. In fact wasn’t there an episode where Geordi got brainwashed through his visor and tried to assassinate some Klingon dude?
And Picard was tortured and actually broken. Everyone is vulnerable to stuff like that. But it's easier to blame and fear the guy who's different, because he's not like us.
@@amandaforrester7636 My words exactly, why is Data blamed for not being perfect? Everyone can be a problem and there are enough episodes to show that it happens, just like everyone can save the day, like Data did often enough. Also he´s just a good guy, has his own personaility and even humanity without emotions, one of the crew and I didn´t need Measure of a Man to see it.
Another episode where Data saves the day is "Clues". Without Data lying to the crew, they would have continued to hang around by the Paxan"s planet and been destroyed. But if Starfleet tried to remove him from active service, Data could never use it as his defence because he can't tell anyone what he did.
I've always assumed that the episode Brothers picks up after the kids had been on some sort of recreational shore leave with the crew, eating the sad-time fruit there... Obviously they should have been supervised more closely, but it makes more sense than "getting lost on the ship and eating random fruit from somewhere"
yeah, that was my first thought because I helped raise my 3 kids into successful adulthood, and now I'm all "I bet Steve is making one of his acerbic jokes"
Same reason Ophelia ate the grapes off the Pale Man's table in Pan's Labyrinth...kids will be kids. They don't have the impulse control and forsight that adult usually...often...sometimes have.
"Delicious.... It is a cellular peptide cake, with mint frosting." I had to look it up to make sure the quote was accurate, but I remember the cellular peptide cake part perfectly. It's like the episode was written by David Lynch, and it's one of my favorites. That and the one where Captain Picard draws a smiley face on an explosion frozen in time.
7:00 Yeah, the set up for the little boys and why the older one is in trouble is definitely.. weird and raises a lot of questions. 😅 But God Damn.. Data commandeering the entire ship is my favorite sequence of Data to watch cuz he KICKS ASS!
24:40 In the episode Cause and Effect, Data's original suggestion was to use the Tractor Beam, Riker suggested decompressing the main Shuttle bay. Picard went with Data's option resulting in the crash and the loop. Therefore if Data wasn't present it's reasonable to conclude that Picard would have used Rikers suggestion and thus avoided the loop entirely. Data pretty much caused the problem ... but I really enjoyed the episode so I'm glad he was there :-D
In Brothers, they were on shore leave on Ogus II. Willy ran away and was likely gone for an extended time, causing him the become hungry and trying to find anything he thinks he can eat.
This is off-topic, but has anyone discussed what a rats' nest Picard's mind must be? He's got Locutus rattling around in there, Sarek's katra, and the memories of his life as Kamin from "the Inner Light". There might be a personality I've missed. I'm amazed he hasn't had a breakdown (I mean SINCE he had his PTSD reaction to being turned into Locutus).
Given how many times Picard has been possessed, transformed, brainwashed, and/or tortured, it seems preposterous that they allow him to remain in Starfleet much less continue as a captain!
They work on ships that are essentially bombs, play in rooms that go haywire, investigate phenomena that melt you through the floor, and interact with beings that can vanish you in a snap of the fingers. I'm not sure where I'm going with this regarding Data, but Star Trek, if played in a different tone, could be an interesting horror story.
If only because of the amount of space time anomalies, the space of star trek has more to do with warhammer 40's warp than real space or even star war'slight speed travel. It's an insanely dangerous universe to travel and colonize!
This problem with Data and Bucky is really a reflection of society's total failure to deal skillfully with mental illness. Mental illness and disability sometimes go hand in hand with brilliance in some special field so it can be good for everyone to integrate them into society (or a team). But such people need a lot of support. When you're unreliable but sometimes brilliant, you need support, and when your unreliability is potentially hazardous to self or others, you need to be monitored. Data (and everyone) would be safer with the right support and monitoring, as would Bucky. Data has a disability. Bucky has a disability. Both disabilities are invisible disabilities. The series Perception, about a professor with schizophrenia who helps the FBI with cases, explores this brilliantly.
The kid in "Brothers" didn't eat the plants on the Enterprise. They were on a planet. I mean, why would he eat random plants he found on the ship? He ran into the wilderness, hid, got hungry, and ate what he found. If he was on the ship he would have just gone to a replicator.
Remember that Voyager episode where the Doctor dumps a bunch of historical figures personalities into his program, develops an evil persona and throws Kes’ new love interest off a cliff? Nobody’s perfect right?
I have a simple answer : Picard as Locutus, Geordi and his VISOR hacked, Deanna and her Child, Worf and his complicated Klingon obligations, Wesley taking over he ship, Barclay becoming the ships computer.... etc ...
Data ultimately saved the ship in "Cause and effect ", but it is worth mentioning that his solution to stopping the crash between the two ships was what caused them to die and repeat the loop in the first place. So if Data hadn't been there, Picard would have gone with Riker's solution first time around, and they would have all been fine.
Regarding "Brothers" and the kids bit - there's a blink and you'll miss it moment where Picard's voice over opens with something like "We've had to cut short a two day layover at 'Planet-We-Don't-Get-To-See'" - which was perhaps underplayed for the rest of the episode - I always wondered until recently rewatching why there was a deadly forest onboard the ship that never came up again. I mean, what kind of ship would it be that had deadly, life threatening, hazardous sceanarios when there are families and chidr.............oh, wait..........
It must because of kids like in that "Brothers" episode, that people in some areas can't legally obtain nice things, like Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs, or the reason why the manuals for their kitchen appliance contain excessively detailed descriptions on what not to use them for.
Nice analysis. I love how you missed adding The Game to the list of the times that Data saved the day, but then cleverly snuck it in later. You did kinda miss talking about the Borg taking over crew members though.
I'm surprised Starfleet doesn't have better "officer has been compromised" protocols. People get possessed by random aliens often enough they should be able to act more quickly to lock them out of the various ship's systems. Similarly, Data should be an example of where there are problems with ships security so that they can realize "maybe having everything activate by easily replicated voice commands is a bad idea."
exactly, all major commands need three way concurrence, dropping to two for lesser critical decisions , that way any potential threat has to find the right THREE persons to compromise and get to act together, these could be mixed and matched amongst the command crew to prevent anyone succeeding by just assuming they needed the three most senior crew, for acts that would require multiple stages, different people could be required to act at each stage, inherently safer than relying on just one crew member to be uncompromised.
I can post this while your intro is still rolling: yes, of course he's too dangerous for Starfleet. After the first time he was able to override the Enterprise computer security by impersonating Picard's voice, he should have been deactivated.
Dr. Soong: I have an emotion chip here for you, Data. Lore, stepping out from the shadows: Did someone say............ships? Jokes aside, remember that in The Best of Both Worlds it was only thanks to Data linking with Locutus that the Borg were defeated at all. Without Data, everyone in the Federation would be Borg now!
I'd argue that Soong DID intend and want Data to have emotions eventually, but originally built him without them to prevent him from being like Lore (at the time, not knowing any other way). While at the same time, hoping he could solve the problem in the future (which is why he worked so long on the emotion chip).
Before I watch this, I want to say I’ve asked myself this question before. “Brothers” is the episode that really makes you think about it. He takes over the Enterprise with Picard’s command codes in about 2 seconds.
Happy Captain Picard Day! I understand what you mean about Data. If I randomly found a talking car, I don't know if I would 100% trust sitting in it. I don't know if I would even want to sit a self-driving car today.
He just needs a firewall. In every single case listed outside sources interface with his internal programming easier than an amateur hacker at a Star Bucks hacking Android phones on the WiFi. Give him a semi-decent firewall and he's all good! ;)
Jurati killed a dude and nobody asked her to leave, either. Partly because they are forgiving people in a future where Troi is, actually, doing a phenomenal job as a therapist. She's somehow keeping a thousand people sane when they turn into armadillos every so often.
To me Lore has a lotof resemblance with Homelander from the Boys. Supposed to be a good one but actually a really nasty dude who is emotionally unstable and abuses his superhumanpower. And by the way: Do you knwo the *Spoilers* book storyline were Soong uses the machine from the last TOS episode to upload his mind into an even better Data body? Only to become the owner of a successful casino on Orion for some reason.
@@DeathBYDesign666 that was a duplicate, not a download of his ACTUAL wife. He wasn't trying to make a version of himself, and then die. He was trying to download his own brain into an android body so he doesn't die.
Mr. Shives - Your analysis and commentary on Star Trek are spot on. Asking questions I've never even thought of. And - I hope you take this as the complement it's meant to be - You are a really handsome Man. I look forward to your future vids on Star Trek.
Is it not there then fair to ask the same about all vehicles or starships on the ship. everything on the ship seems to get compromised from George’s eyes to the run about.
Imagine Picard dies as Locutus. Riker becomes captain, Data becomes first officer, and Reginald takes over operations (though Worf becomes second officer). I would absolutely have watched that show.
I have one more question: "Why are there kids on the Enterprise to begin with?" I *was* a kid when TNG premiered, but this still never sat right with me.
I have a possible answer: enterprise was an exploratory vessel that covered a LOT of space, so Starfleet personnel bringing their families was not odd at all. It was not a ship of war, from what we can tell of the alternate realities with a more militaristic bent they had no children aboard. I’d also postulate that at least a few of the families were colonists en route to a new planet or simply families traveling from one place to another. Starfleet does have dominion over space travel throughout Federation space after all, the ship is actually massive for it’s necessary crew, and the passengers would be the best PR that Starfleet could possibly have on their side. The children would see how amazing the ships are first hand, increasing the chances of those kids being cadets one day. So, in short: families want to be together on long trips, people like to get around, and it makes them lol good. The Enterprise goes through a lot of crazy scenarios, but so does the whole galaxy. Where else could you be safer than inside the best ship of the Federation, led by the most capable crew possible? Sounds safer than most anywhere else, when you think of it like that…
When TNG first came out , The Enterprise carried both Federation officers, and crew. There was also families on board. Picard had a strict rule of no children allowed on the bridge. Over time the family idea went to the edge of the road and forgotten about, until " Generations" when the ship did it's hull separation scene you see family members being evacuated to the saucer section. A sad time for the big "D"..😢
You raised some good points here, and it would have been nice to see Picard and Worf discussing procedures or protocols to mitigate future 'Data tantrums' following the events of Brothers, but I think the answer to your central question was already answered pretty concisely by none other than James Kirk. "Risk is our business."
"We've seen times where Data's programming was co-opted by an outside force, of behaved in an unpredictable manner." You say that was if no other crew member was ever mind controlled or behaved irrationally.
Ehem... as a citizen and Grand Cleric of Thanatos IV, I must *strongly* protest! Thanatos VII is a mere production and labor hub and not worthy to be called Planet Death, we still prefer Thanatos Prime though! It turns out customers like a seemingly occult name better when not understanding its meaning. We definitely didn't have anything to do with the people from universal translators loosing all variations of Greek!
12:20 Eh, I'm pretty sure crewmembers going rogue and temporarily stealing spaceships happens often enough that Starfleet regulations state that everyone gets their first one free.
Considering the amount of times the Enterprise has been hacked and the amount of times the holodeck has nearly killed someone, Data is significantly safer than some of the other tech in Star Trek.
Honestly, given that the warp drive irreparably carves up space-time whenever it's used, and the transporter is essentially just a murderbox that assembles a new copy of a person at the destination before straight up recycling the original right into the replicators... is ANY Federation technology even REMOTELY safe? Do they even have OSHA in the future?
@@marquisofcarrabass They don't even have sick leave after traumatic events
It can't be ignored that more than one of the times the Enterprise was hacked, it was Data that did it.
lot of times Data was the only one unaffected by some ailment or psychic effect.
Was there never a season any of the human/alien characters were brainwashed into doing weird things? A.k.a. hacked, kinda like Data? Or replaced by an evil lookalike?
Nothing in Star Trek universe is safe.
"Why would the kid eat some random fruit?" See, this is how we can tell Steve doesn't have kids. 😂
😂😂😂😂😂 right
No, it's a valid question. I can rather see my kids consciously wanting to kill themselves after thinking they killed their brother than eating it for any other reason in that situation.
Obviously they don't have that "Don't Stuff It In Your Face" commercial in the future
The kid watched too much TOS 😁
Was going to post exactly this. When kids do something stupid and you ask them "Why!!?" they just stare at you like you're asking a dumb question and respond "I don't know."
Kids don't even know why they do what they do.
Hey, if Data's too dangerous, what about the murderbox that is the holodeck?!
Less mobile, but since technology is vulnerable to manipulation the ship computer itself should have been written into more "we've been taken over...again" stories.
He already talked about that.
or the double whammy of Data being rogue on the holodeck
A Fistful of Datas
@@rmeddy one of the great episodes
It's a device that we should use constantly - especially when we're trapped on the other side of the galaxy and are surrounded by factions that aren't friendly.
And in spite of it running on a different power source than our ship with dwindling supplies - we are not going to find a way to use that power source for better purposes to our survival. We will also keep restocking that power source's fuel supply instead of restocking something more valuable to our survival.
I love the exchange between Data and Spock, where Spock muses that there are Vulcans who work their whole lives to accomplish what Data was given by design, and Data points out how Spock, a half-human Vulcan has set out to suppress the part of himself that represents the height of Data’s goals for self-actualization.
Data is great. Noonian Soong however is one of history's greatest monsters. Instead of a homing beacon that just gives Data coordinates to a meeting place, it overrides his whole personality and makes him hijack the nearest ship to fly straight there? That's some Rick and Morty sh*t right there.
Considering his ancestor created the Augments, that seems par for the course for the family.
@Liver Success oh agreed. I know I wouldn't be able to handle being Inner Light'ed. That shit was messed up.
Look Data, I transformed myself into a robotic pickle! I’M PICKLE SOOOOOONG!
Uhm…What’s a Rick & Morty, & why does it even exist?
Indeed, luckly for Soong that Data was not on a diplomatic mission on a Klingon ship or undercover on a Romulan ship or would have cause an interstellar war, and luckly too that the Enterprise was not on the middle of a salvament mission with thousands of life at risk or in the middle of a battle against the Borg or something like that.
Data always having to save the day after the rest of the crew is disabled due to their biology is an excellent argument for greater diversity among Starfleet crews (ie more non-humanoids).
Or that humanity is completely hopeless without Data.
it's worth noting in the "anyone can be susceptible" category that the eventual destruction of the Enterprise is due to the hacking of Geordi's VISOR
“Night Terrors” is another episode where Data’s essential. As Picard tells Data “I will need to rely on you from now on; we may need to count on you for our very survival.” By the end of the episode, Data has assumed command at the request of Picard.
Ooh, ooh, just thought- remember when Garak went bananas and killed a bunch of redshirts?
But it wasn't his fault because of the spaceroids he accidentally got juiced on?
So the families just shrugged and said "well, these things happen I guess."
Why are there almost no consequences on Star Trek?! Even DS9 which did consequences better than any other Classic Trek.
@@andrewanastasovski1609 But he's so useful and capable and charming!
@@andrewanastasovski1609
It was absolutely crazy bringing such a rogue as Garak on missions.
Tsk, your species is always so uptight. I am simply a valuable asset you see. Except in small spaces... Um, anyway I have lunch with the good Doctor. Good day.
I'm sure the exact cause of death was never reported to the families, especially given what we know of the admiralty at Starfleet Command.
But, your point is a good one. I just re-watched "Let He Who is Without Sin,” where Worf openly assists a terrorist group, while he's still wearing a uniform, and nothing.
But later on, he's told he'll never have a command of his own for prioritizing Dax's life over the mission.
Gross oversimplification, but basically Starfleet is like, "Aiding a terrorist group, yeah, we're cool with that. Saving a life at the cost of a mission... Not cool."
Garak actually only killed one star fleet officer. The others were killed by the cardasians (which Garak did kill). He was under the influence of a drug and wasn't in control of his actions. So he was found not guilty.
"Before he does anything worse than torture Geordi a little."
So just a standard day on the Enterpise? Geordi and O'Brien both were tortured a lot. And the writers had that weird thing with almost every Troi episode involving her being violated either physically or telepathically...
NextGen was a Sadist Show, LOL!
How about the time at Starfleet academy when that one kid kept throwing waded paper balls at the back of Cadet Data's head ?.
Roddenberry's legacy
It was getting to point that Troi was becoming like character Calley - the Telepath on Liberator in BLAKE'S 7. Every other episode she under some telepathy assault by another alien species.
My favorite Data goes rogue moment is in The Most Toys, where we see that Data can even break under emotinal stress and then straight up lie about it to Rikers face. This moment shows that Data is both more human and more dangerous than he is given credit for.
One of my favourite episodes and Data seems fully capable of lying.... He nearly killed Artie though bad bot. That was Artie not Kivas Fajo, he just escaped Earth warehouse 13 and started over
I loved that part and yes, Data was so damn human even without emotions...and I´d say he often acted like he did have them...again he was so human and I love it.
He realized that asshole would never, ever, stop and go from evil to increasing evil and had to be stopped right then.
Fajo screwed himself by gloating that he would keep killing. If someone tells you they will continue killing, and you have the means to stop them but choose not to for any reason, you are in effect allowing them to continue k***ing, which Data could "not permit"
If the Avengers can handle having the Hulk in their ranks, I don't think Bucky would be much of a problem.
Agreed, not to mention in that example there's nothing to stop his programming going off when he's cut from the team, if he's in the team they can keep an eye on him, stop him from getting out of hand, not to mention utilising his skills the rest of the time.
Wrong franchise 😂
Seems to me one of the reasons they have the Hulk on the team is just to keep an eye one someone who'd be too dangerous on his own, considering Bruce isn't in full control.
@@robertmiller9735 but the point is compared to the hulk Bucky/the winter solider, is just a guy with a gun and a cool arm
Guess this is a bad time to mention all the times the "heroes" in the Comics have tried to dump Hulk in space (twice, i believe), the microverse, and possibly in time?
I mean, they apparently used some kinda conditioning on Banner to cause him to calm down while in Hulk mode in the movies; you know lightly BRAINWASHED him.
I like to imagine that Troi's big role on the ship is actually in between episodes and that's why we don't ever get to see her in action. Character X gets mind controlled in an episode but is freed from the control by episode end? Well, clearly that character has some off-screen sessions with Troi in between episodes before they get to go back to full duty.
i'd argue the point that Data wasn't made to be 'complete' without emotions; that's why Soong calls him in. It was to give Data the ability to grow and be stable without them, so he had a proper foundation to build upon once he had them. That's the mistake with Lore that Soong learned.
I argue that Data had emotions, that he just wasn't created with "adult" emotions, and the emotion chip was just an placebo so Data could be honest about feeling emotions.
@@BiPaganMan I've always thought he's meant to be reserved *and* self-deluded to protect himself and others from what is there. Crusher's remark in "The Offspring" suggests that other characters have their doubts about the official story, too.
Yep he has emotions, he has a brain thats basically human but better. Seems lore was created already complete, and data was build to grow from a childs stage developement. The emotion skip is a plot hole, and undermines that, but we see and the finale highly indicates, his potential for growth as human. Again the emotion chip is, i dont like it.
Its like in person of interest where th guy ho is a super careful humanist ironically by crippling a supe AI and force it to delete and reprocess interesting , made t"the maschine a moral human AI, the other evil AI, was just said, by a terrible person , ho gives a never checked AI limitless power over th worlld and predictibally, is really ruthless and doesnt have human life, while th maschine, who even experienced death, does value choice and human lives and acts more manipulative too, but it gives choices and is more well predicting but also, gives choices and not unltimati, just advice.
@@marocat4749 Data had emotional intelligence before he got the chip. His neural net simulated emotional reactions as appropriate based on context clues. Data bascally spent most of the show trying to reason out how to be emotional.
The chip doesn't "make him have emotions." At a guess, it was intended to create a default library of emotional cues and references to allow Data to be better at expressing what he was already feeling. The difference between simulating and emulating in other words. Or the difference between running graphics on an integrated chip vs a dedicated graphics card. The integrated chip can kinda do it but the specialized hardware is better at it.
my theory is that Data had emotions, but was unaware of them/not able identify them as emotions. instead he translates them into rational statements that he can comprehend.
Captain Picard himself, just 4 episodes before Data meets Lore, is mindcontrolled by the Ferengi in "The Battle".
Another reason for Data to remain in Star Fleet is that should Data go rogue due to outside influence, it would be preferable for him to be assigned around other SF personal familiar with him who would notice inconsistencies and be able to deal with the problem promptly with knowledge they already have. A rogue Data unchecked in the universe would imho be very bad considering his many strengths and capability for death, destruction and mayhem.
Exactly. Keep your friends close, keep your (potential) enemies closer.
This actually ties into one of my theories for Picard. The reason Dahj was sent to find Jean-Luc is that the Enterprise crew had the most experience in the Federation with both Soong-type androids and hard-takeoff intelligences (from "The Nth Degree"), and he'd be the easiest to find.
I agree, but was thinking this even more applied to his Winter Soldier example.
"Descent" is a perfect example. Had Data not been on Enterprise/with Starfleet, there would have been no counter to Lore's control over him and now there's TWO androids running around with a handful of manipulated former Borg completely unchecked and doing who knows how much harm until I guess they run afoul of Starfleet and either infiltrate and take over or are annihilated. Data would have been lost to us.
And the Enterprise wouldn't have lasted long either, considering how often the show Data Ex Machina-ed.
Data is probably the LEAST dangerous thing to Starfleet, even with the occasional blown fuse.
"Lore and the Borg"...the terrifying spinoff nobody ever wanted.
Until Janeway showed up with a single ship kept running by whatever she found laying around and took them out in the better part of an afternoon.
Be funny if it was a buddy cop comedy.
I think Uncle Ben has always put it best.
"With great power, comes great responsibility."
Physical. Mental. Super. Political. It doesn't matter *what* kind of power is involved, it always comes back to how it is exercised.
PS - I've been on a TNG rewatch binge, and I need to point out something - the two kids involved in the whole "killer parasite" incident were both having some on-planet time, NOT on the Enterprise itself.
I'll just be Powerful and Irresponsible.
I’ve always felt that Picard had an interesting equivalence with Spock because he is always portrayed as someone who only knows how to work and has no social life. Like how his interaction with kids is portrayed in the beginning and how he interacts with his family later.
Agreed! Picard and Riker are kinda like a role-reversal of Spock and Kirk.
I actually remember the first time that I watched TNG when I was not much older than 10. My first impression on the bridge crew was that Spock had been split into resulting in Worf and Data. All three are misfits in mostly human Starfleet which time and again is used as a story plot. All of them have "emotional issues". If you take Spock as the "emotional point of reference" (emotions, but suppresed), Worf and Data are variations on that theme. Worf is very emotional (ie. aggressive, for the most part), that he struggles to control, while Data is quite the opposite, being emotionless and yet fascinated by this "concept" and eager to experience them.
30 years later I still think that my first assessment of these three characters wasn't too far from the truth.
Picard was remarkably dispassionate and logical for a human being. Spock even says that's why Sarek chose to be friends and later mind-meld with him.
I would add that Spock's psychic abilities were given to Troi.
"Magic food hole" is what I'm going to call a replicator from now on XD
It also does the laundry tho. Can it be a magic food and laundry hole? I'm looking forward to sticking shit in them more than getting shit out to be frank. Dirty dishes, laundry, rubbish, etc 😊
I'm sure that's how Neelix calls it.
lol
I wish you had talked about the episode "Masks" illustrates both sides of the point. Data's brain is susceptable to the probe's reprogramming, but at the same time his personhood and interactions with the crew allow Picard to work through the problem and find a solution to save the ship. It's also one of my favorite episodes, i know having Data taken over by Space Aztecs is not a great premise, but its so much fun to watch Brent Spiner play around with a dozen different characters all at once.
It one of my favourity guilty pleasures too, picard gets to do archiology to save th day, and brad spiner is always a delight acting as data acting as other characters, i also loved a fistful of datas Spiners mut have had such a blast playing trolling in that glitch worf, the whole scene meta trolling worf The sexworker , oh my god
" Data, I'd be happy for you,.....if I could." Lore.
Riker treats Dr.Soong like he's a nobody when he finds him.
I never really liked that episode personally lol, but seeing Spiner express so many different personalities through Data was definitely fun to watch. What's funny too though is that Spiner, himself, has said that he actually hates that episode and sees it as the worst he's ever done as Data.
Considering his abilities, I think Data is more under-utilised by Starfleet more than anything else…considering how dangerous, intelligent, adaptive, rigidly ethical etc. that he shows himself to be, it just feels like he should be doing more than a few shifts at a job an adolescent with no formal training (Wesley) can seemingly do just as well, interspersed with saving the day heroics…you’d think Starfleet must have some high level ambassadorial or espionage roles he would be more suited to, like a space Bond who’s immune to honey traps
Never understood why Jellico got Riker to fly the damn shuttle when he had Data right there.
It's always seemed to me that Data's position was his choice, and he requested it. To be more ordinary, you know.
@Lee Birchenough have you seen the measure of a man…
He is THE most capable person on the ship and pretty much all of star trek. The only thing he wouldn't be good at is diplomacy
Star Fleet: where changing your position, you'll be transferred to this espionage job
Data: I resign.
I would have liked to see a “Data” Star Trek movie. Showing how he was found by Federation and his Academy days.
Throughout TNG, we see him get more and more integrated with the crew, and his mannerisms become more relaxed and less robotic. In Encounter at farpoint, some of his body language was downright jerky. Imagine before then, earlier in his learned behaviour how awkward he would be - that's a great premise that would breed so many interesting stories.
How about a "Q" movie with the same premise. Before the Q transform and the after, when everything is not known
I'd love if 'The Lower Decks' visited Thanatos VII and showed that there was a good reason for the name. Mayb that system has an environment bad for solids but great for producing warp plasma, maybe something of a 'place of the dead' myth, maybe it's like a warp-equivalent of a rocky shoal that would get a name like "devil's pass", in any case, great potential for misadventure
"Too get Guilt Tripped by Doctor Crusher and his Shit-Head little brother." I have to admit I laughed out loud at that.
The parasitic plant wasn't onboard the ship. It was on a planet with an arcade type facility.
That definitely makes more sense.
I always feel that Spock got separated into multiple characters such Worf (strong), Data (emotionless) and Troi (emotional understanding). Maybe a bit simplistic but Spock often fulfilled the same roles
Data is stronger than Worf.
I had a friend who pointed out the same thing when the show first came on. Spock as you describe (except he didn't add in Worf) and Kirk into Picard and Riker, with Picard being the diplomat and Riker being the swashbuckler. The writers didn't follow the formula strictly, but I think one can definitely see the outlines of it.
Interestingly, McCoy's character would best be described as being split between Crusher and Pulaski, but Pulaski wasn't an original character. That makes me wonder if they'd toyed with a Pulaski like character, meaning critical of Data in the way McCoy was critical of Spock, when the who was being conceived and that didn't make the cut into production.
I feel Spock and Worf are similar in they were relative outsiders to their respective cultures, Spock due to being half-human and Worf being raised by humans, who sought to be epitomes of of their cultures. Spock was trying to be more Vulcan than most Vulcans, even going so far as to seek Kolinahr, a ritual most Vulcans don't pursue, while Worf was so intent on living up to Klingon ideals, almost as a warrior monk, that in many ways he looked down on some of the "fight hard, drink hard" rowdiness of everyday Klingon warriors.
Picard interstingly has aspects of spock too. When they meet they even talk about it, or picards whole arc to learn to be less stoic when he is among the crew and socialize more, a lot of the crew seems to mirror spock in a way.
Worf is like Spock in the way that he's the character that introduces the audience to exotic alien cultures and ceremony.
When you combine many sources of risk, it’s always safer for them to be vulnerable to different, independent events so that the harm posed by one can be mitigated by the others. Any Ferengi could tell you that; diversification is basic portfolio theory!
The weirdest part is that they only found out that Data was created by Soong during the first season of TNG at the beginning of "Datalore". Therefore, Starfleet Command let him attend Starfleet Academy, put in 19 (!!) years of service in Starfleet, and reach a command rank and position *before* they figured out that he wasn't, say, some bomb waiting to go off or an alien robot trying to infiltrate the Federation.
This reasoning for why Data is important to the ship also applies to Troi, because of that episode where she sends a telepathic dream message to those aliens.
Given who the head of Starfleet security in Star Trek: Picard is I don't think Starfleet is trying to be very safe. They need to take some of those security courses that tell you not to click links in emails.
You'd think everyone would know that by now but a majority of data breaches still come from someone clicking a link, I bet even star fleet still has the problem. People just love to click on stuff
@@hello-ox5rf Especially porn!
That " Picard" android episode was senseless. I thought androids were banned in this time period.
Here's how i read Data's multiple malfunctions: it's an analogy for how we fear that some neighbor or family member could just lose their shit and burn our house down.
The Enterprise crew thought nothing of letting Wesley have some antimatter for his science project. An accidental spill would blow the ship in two.
not forgetting the nanites he was experimenting with that infected the AI core, tbh I have always thought they are all too dumb to be allowed to fly around the Galaxy unsupervised, for example, you DON'T send command crew into hostile locations, and you especially don't send ALL the command crew and leave the night shift running shit, and what's with all those parasites everyone and their uncle seems to get infected with?, is no one looking at the BioFilter readouts on the transporters? that's what they are there for, even shuttle crew should be beamed a short distance so that any intrusions can be spotted in the cellular makeup, those parasites should almost never get aboard.
The more diverse the crew the greater then chance They'll have someone who can quickly fix whatever crazy thing is happening this week. We need more Horta and so have cetacean Ops be a regular feature
The 1970's cartoon had a Horta as a pilot or navigator.
As for this, characters on these shows get taken over by ghosts, parasites and other stuff all the f'ing time, can't blame Data if his creator put a come home instruction in him.
then again, if you are putting a synthetic lifeform in a position where it could potentially cause problems for, or even the loss of the Federations flagship, maybe you should vet his hardware for remote access devices and his software for backdoors, also, if he had an encrypted OS he would be the hardest member of the crew to subvert, not the easiest
Data goes a little crazy in Generations due to his emotion chip. He's seduced by the Borg Queen because of his emotion chip in First Contact and for a fraction of a second he considers helping to assimilate the Earth and probably the entire alpha quadrant. He's damaged in Insurrection and goes on a rampage, potentially breaking the prime directive. Oh and in Nemesis, he downloads all of his memories, starfleet codes and all, into an enemy agent.
A lot of people mention that data was took over many times during the series; what they hardly ever realise is that people were took over just as often - it's just that there's only one data and a thousand people. Imagine you have a deck of cards, one red and one black. However, you have all 26 black cards but only one red card. Are you going to blame the red card for always being picked? If you had a ship full of datas with a single human, that single human would have been disproportionately took over too.
Now what I'm saying here is that people being took over is just an accepted part of the job. It happens to everyone. Data is just unlucky in that its a different set of things that take over him. For example the game, it didn't effect data but it effected everybody else. The pitcher plant in voyager wouldn't have affected data. This is why data is allowed to be around - everyone has a different set of things they can succumb to - so Starfleet keeps a variety of people/species around so not everyone can be incapacitated at the same time. This is just the side effect. Every once and a while someone can go rogue.
So in conclusion I agree with those points 100%
Yeah they get possessed by engery beings on a regular basis. Happens all the time. Hazards of the job!
Warp Cores from Planet Death sounds like a Captain Proton episode. Somebody tell Tom Paris
Oh, that's good!
Data's no more likely to be taken over by alien mind control than any other Starfleet officer. 😝
Oh, so probability = 100%.
Although Data endangers the ship, it was Geordi’s visor that destroys it. In fact wasn’t there an episode where Geordi got brainwashed through his visor and tried to assassinate some Klingon dude?
And Picard was tortured and actually broken. Everyone is vulnerable to stuff like that. But it's easier to blame and fear the guy who's different, because he's not like us.
@@amandaforrester7636 My words exactly, why is Data blamed for not being perfect? Everyone can be a problem and there are enough episodes to show that it happens, just like everyone can save the day, like Data did often enough.
Also he´s just a good guy, has his own personaility and even humanity without emotions, one of the crew and I didn´t need Measure of a Man to see it.
Another episode where Data saves the day is "Clues". Without Data lying to the crew, they would have continued to hang around by the Paxan"s planet and been destroyed. But if Starfleet tried to remove him from active service, Data could never use it as his defence because he can't tell anyone what he did.
I've always assumed that the episode Brothers picks up after the kids had been on some sort of recreational shore leave with the crew, eating the sad-time fruit there... Obviously they should have been supervised more closely, but it makes more sense than "getting lost on the ship and eating random fruit from somewhere"
Why did the boy eat the weird fruit when … You don’t have kids do you Steve?
Absolutely not his brother's fault though
yeah, that was my first thought because I helped raise my 3 kids into successful adulthood, and now I'm all "I bet Steve is making one of his acerbic jokes"
Same reason Ophelia ate the grapes off the Pale Man's table in Pan's Labyrinth...kids will be kids. They don't have the impulse control and forsight that adult usually...often...sometimes have.
He doesn't lol
It's a running gag on the podcast "Late Seating" Steve and Jason do.
Maybe he's a One Piece fan??
"Delicious.... It is a cellular peptide cake, with mint frosting."
I had to look it up to make sure the quote was accurate, but I remember the cellular peptide cake part perfectly. It's like the episode was written by David Lynch, and it's one of my favorites. That and the one where Captain Picard draws a smiley face on an explosion frozen in time.
"Eating the first thing he sees on a tree" seems on theme in the series about space exploration
7:00 Yeah, the set up for the little boys and why the older one is in trouble is definitely.. weird and raises a lot of questions. 😅
But God Damn.. Data commandeering the entire ship is my favorite sequence of Data to watch cuz he KICKS ASS!
24:40 In the episode Cause and Effect, Data's original suggestion was to use the Tractor Beam, Riker suggested decompressing the main Shuttle bay. Picard went with Data's option resulting in the crash and the loop. Therefore if Data wasn't present it's reasonable to conclude that Picard would have used Rikers suggestion and thus avoided the loop entirely. Data pretty much caused the problem ... but I really enjoyed the episode so I'm glad he was there :-D
Okay. Now I really wanna hear how you'd reimagine TNG with Barclay in place of Data.
I would have loved the inevitable TNG version of 'smoke me a kipper'... Imagine Reg with that Lord Flashheart wig: Chef's kiss!
In Brothers, they were on shore leave on Ogus II. Willy ran away and was likely gone for an extended time, causing him the become hungry and trying to find anything he thinks he can eat.
This is off-topic, but has anyone discussed what a rats' nest Picard's mind must be? He's got Locutus rattling around in there, Sarek's katra, and the memories of his life as Kamin from "the Inner Light". There might be a personality I've missed. I'm amazed he hasn't had a breakdown (I mean SINCE he had his PTSD reaction to being turned into Locutus).
Given how many times Picard has been possessed, transformed, brainwashed, and/or tortured, it seems preposterous that they allow him to remain in Starfleet much less continue as a captain!
I like to think they all cancel each other out like Mr burns sicknesses
They work on ships that are essentially bombs, play in rooms that go haywire, investigate phenomena that melt you through the floor, and interact with beings that can vanish you in a snap of the fingers. I'm not sure where I'm going with this regarding Data, but Star Trek, if played in a different tone, could be an interesting horror story.
There are no "safe spaces" in Star Trek.
If only because of the amount of space time anomalies, the space of star trek has more to do with warhammer 40's warp than real space or even star war'slight speed travel. It's an insanely dangerous universe to travel and colonize!
This problem with Data and Bucky is really a reflection of society's total failure to deal skillfully with mental illness. Mental illness and disability sometimes go hand in hand with brilliance in some special field so it can be good for everyone to integrate them into society (or a team). But such people need a lot of support. When you're unreliable but sometimes brilliant, you need support, and when your unreliability is potentially hazardous to self or others, you need to be monitored. Data (and everyone) would be safer with the right support and monitoring, as would Bucky. Data has a disability. Bucky has a disability. Both disabilities are invisible disabilities. The series Perception, about a professor with schizophrenia who helps the FBI with cases, explores this brilliantly.
The kid in "Brothers" didn't eat the plants on the Enterprise. They were on a planet. I mean, why would he eat random plants he found on the ship? He ran into the wilderness, hid, got hungry, and ate what he found. If he was on the ship he would have just gone to a replicator.
Remember that Voyager episode where the Doctor dumps a bunch of historical figures personalities into his program, develops an evil persona and throws Kes’ new love interest off a cliff? Nobody’s perfect right?
I have a simple answer : Picard as Locutus, Geordi and his VISOR hacked, Deanna and her Child, Worf and his complicated Klingon obligations, Wesley taking over he ship, Barclay becoming the ships computer.... etc ...
Data ultimately saved the ship in "Cause and effect ", but it is worth mentioning that his solution to stopping the crash between the two ships was what caused them to die and repeat the loop in the first place. So if Data hadn't been there, Picard would have gone with Riker's solution first time around, and they would have all been fine.
Regarding "Brothers" and the kids bit - there's a blink and you'll miss it moment where Picard's voice over opens with something like "We've had to cut short a two day layover at 'Planet-We-Don't-Get-To-See'" - which was perhaps underplayed for the rest of the episode - I always wondered until recently rewatching why there was a deadly forest onboard the ship that never came up again.
I mean, what kind of ship would it be that had deadly, life threatening, hazardous sceanarios when there are families and chidr.............oh, wait..........
It's obvious his physical abilities are never fully utilized.
Data only beats up like two guys in the show :(
Tasha Yar enters the conversation...
and just smiles.....
Esp when you see how the androids in Picard are in action...
@@StudioDaVeed "Fully functional" indeed...Soong knew what he was doing!
It must because of kids like in that "Brothers" episode, that people in some areas can't legally obtain nice things, like Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs, or the reason why the manuals for their kitchen appliance contain excessively detailed descriptions on what not to use them for.
I was surprised to review and see just how few times Lor appeared in the series.
Lore and The Borg are both in the show much less than you'd imagine.
Nice analysis. I love how you missed adding The Game to the list of the times that Data saved the day, but then cleverly snuck it in later. You did kinda miss talking about the Borg taking over crew members though.
"Just ask the magic food-hole for a damn cheeseburger!" 😂
Several phallic references: sucking "straws", heads, the Washington Monument, you should probably have a convo with holodeck Freud.
"Diversity being our strength" - The motto of the City of Toronto is "Diversity Our Strength".
I came here from one of Innuendo Studios' videos, and I'm very much enjoying this channel thus far.
I'm surprised Starfleet doesn't have better "officer has been compromised" protocols. People get possessed by random aliens often enough they should be able to act more quickly to lock them out of the various ship's systems.
Similarly, Data should be an example of where there are problems with ships security so that they can realize "maybe having everything activate by easily replicated voice commands is a bad idea."
exactly, all major commands need three way concurrence, dropping to two for lesser critical decisions , that way any potential threat has to find the right THREE persons to compromise and get to act together, these could be mixed and matched amongst the command crew to prevent anyone succeeding by just assuming they needed the three most senior crew, for acts that would require multiple stages, different people could be required to act at each stage, inherently safer than relying on just one crew member to be uncompromised.
I can post this while your intro is still rolling: yes, of course he's too dangerous for Starfleet. After the first time he was able to override the Enterprise computer security by impersonating Picard's voice, he should have been deactivated.
Dr. Soong: I have an emotion chip here for you, Data.
Lore, stepping out from the shadows: Did someone say............ships?
Jokes aside, remember that in The Best of Both Worlds it was only thanks to Data linking with Locutus that the Borg were defeated at all. Without Data, everyone in the Federation would be Borg now!
I'd argue that Soong DID intend and want Data to have emotions eventually, but originally built him without them to prevent him from being like Lore (at the time, not knowing any other way). While at the same time, hoping he could solve the problem in the future (which is why he worked so long on the emotion chip).
"Riker seems to have a little Kirk in him"
- and he seems to want to put his little Kirk in everyone else too!
Phrasing!
Yesssss "Cause and Effect"! I'm a sucker for a good time loop.
Maybe I should have listened to that tweaker outside the bus station when he said he was covered in invisible bugs.
Data and Spock were great together in that TNG episode.
Before I watch this, I want to say I’ve asked myself this question before. “Brothers” is the episode that really makes you think about it. He takes over the Enterprise with Picard’s command codes in about 2 seconds.
To be fair, a few of the main cast have actually done that too XD
Happy Captain Picard Day!
I understand what you mean about Data. If I randomly found a talking car, I don't know if I would 100% trust sitting in it. I don't know if I would even want to sit a self-driving car today.
I'm surprised that you didn't compare Data to the Terminator.
Data has an off switch. Terminator doesn't.
@@aprilk141 Also, Terminator is a Killer Robot programmed to Kill All Humans. Data is designed and programmed to be a Robot Buddy/Pinocchio.
If Wesley is allowed on the bridge, your damn right Data is as well. But our android should have been promoted a while ago.
He just needs a firewall. In every single case listed outside sources interface with his internal programming easier than an amateur hacker at a Star Bucks hacking Android phones on the WiFi. Give him a semi-decent firewall and he's all good! ;)
Data = soong-type Android phone, and a couple of decades later, Apple releases Dahj and Soji
I figure he has one but hasn't figured out how to turn it on
Thanks for the shout-out to Dick Giordano, Steve!
I think a more apt question is: “were those writers too dangerous for Star Trek?”
The plants were on Ogus II where the Enterprise stopped for shore leave.
The real question is if Steve Shives is too dangerous for Starfleet?...
Jurati killed a dude and nobody asked her to leave, either. Partly because they are forgiving people in a future where Troi is, actually, doing a phenomenal job as a therapist. She's somehow keeping a thousand people sane when they turn into armadillos every so often.
To me Lore has a lotof resemblance with Homelander from the Boys. Supposed to be a good one but actually a really nasty dude who is emotionally unstable and abuses his superhumanpower.
And by the way: Do you knwo the *Spoilers* book storyline were Soong uses the machine from the last TOS episode to upload his mind into an even better Data body? Only to become the owner of a successful casino on Orion for some reason.
The question is why would he need that when he already had such technology used to create an almost perfect Android duplicate of his wife?
@@DeathBYDesign666 that was a duplicate, not a download of his ACTUAL wife. He wasn't trying to make a version of himself, and then die. He was trying to download his own brain into an android body so he doesn't die.
Data taking over the Enterprise was brilliant. I only watch that part of the episode when it repeats.
I like to think in this hypothetical bucky-verse that the prime minister of new zealand is there because she's also an avenger.
Mr. Shives - Your analysis and commentary on Star Trek are spot on. Asking questions I've never even thought of.
And - I hope you take this as the complement it's meant to be - You are a really handsome Man.
I look forward to your future vids on Star Trek.
Lets be honest, TNG season 1 Picard could have planted that random poison plant just out of spite. Man did NOT like kids.
I so love this channel, wonderful walks down memory lane.
Is it not there then fair to ask the same about all vehicles or starships on the ship. everything on the ship seems to get compromised from George’s eyes to the run about.
This one made me laugh out loud several times. Good stuff!
At this point, Brent Spiner can play Soon, but if they need young Data, and don’t have the FX budget, get another actor.
Imagine Picard dies as Locutus. Riker becomes captain, Data becomes first officer, and Reginald takes over operations (though Worf becomes second officer). I would absolutely have watched that show.
I have one more question: "Why are there kids on the Enterprise to begin with?" I *was* a kid when TNG premiered, but this still never sat right with me.
I have a possible answer: enterprise was an exploratory vessel that covered a LOT of space, so Starfleet personnel bringing their families was not odd at all. It was not a ship of war, from what we can tell of the alternate realities with a more militaristic bent they had no children aboard. I’d also postulate that at least a few of the families were colonists en route to a new planet or simply families traveling from one place to another. Starfleet does have dominion over space travel throughout Federation space after all, the ship is actually massive for it’s necessary crew, and the passengers would be the best PR that Starfleet could possibly have on their side. The children would see how amazing the ships are first hand, increasing the chances of those kids being cadets one day.
So, in short: families want to be together on long trips, people like to get around, and it makes them lol good. The Enterprise goes through a lot of crazy scenarios, but so does the whole galaxy. Where else could you be safer than inside the best ship of the Federation, led by the most capable crew possible? Sounds safer than most anywhere else, when you think of it like that…
When TNG first came out , The Enterprise carried both Federation officers, and crew. There was also families on board. Picard had a strict rule of no children allowed on the bridge. Over time the family idea went to the edge of the road and forgotten about, until " Generations" when the ship did it's hull separation scene you see family members being evacuated to the saucer section. A sad time for the big "D"..😢
You raised some good points here, and it would have been nice to see Picard and Worf discussing procedures or protocols to mitigate future 'Data tantrums' following the events of Brothers, but I think the answer to your central question was already answered pretty concisely by none other than James Kirk. "Risk is our business."
"We've seen times where Data's programming was co-opted by an outside force, of behaved in an unpredictable manner." You say that was if no other crew member was ever mind controlled or behaved irrationally.
I thought the kids were down on a planet when enterprise was on a "shore leave" situation.
Ehem... as a citizen and Grand Cleric of Thanatos IV, I must *strongly* protest! Thanatos VII is a mere production and labor hub and not worthy to be called Planet Death, we still prefer Thanatos Prime though! It turns out customers like a seemingly occult name better when not understanding its meaning. We definitely didn't have anything to do with the people from universal translators loosing all variations of Greek!
12:20 Eh, I'm pretty sure crewmembers going rogue and temporarily stealing spaceships happens often enough that Starfleet regulations state that everyone gets their first one free.
Last time I've benn so early Dr Noonian Soong was traveling under an assumed name to a colony on Omicron Theta 😉
NEEEERD!!!!
Don't ever change 😊