Two things straight off the top: first, I’m
gonna drop a spoiler for the first season of Star Trek: Picard in a minute, so if you
want to avoid that I suggest you just skip to the next section. Second, I know the subject of this video might
rub some people the wrong way, so let me put it out there right now: I love Data. Everybody loves Data! He’s one of the most beloved characters
in the franchise, which is probably why the creators of Star Trek: Picard decided to build
their entire first season up to the scene where Data dies — even though he already
died almost twenty years ago in Star Trek: Nemesis, which made that whole bit, beautifully
written and acted though it was, seem weirdly anticlimactic, but that’s not the point! The point is, Data’s great. I’m not saying Data shouldn’t have been
on the show, or that he was a bad person, or anything else like that. I’m just asking the same sort of question
that I often ask when I’m musing about the overlooked or perhaps unintentionally troubling
aspects of a TV show or a movie — Star Trek, in this case. The only difference is, instead of asking
this question to myself, as I sit slumped on the couch, alone in the early morning dark,
semi-conscious, empty beer bottles scattered in a jagged half-circle around my feet like
a fragment of the perimeter of some crude mandala marked out by a drunken yogi, I’m
asking this question to you, in this video. And that question: Is Data Actually Too Dangerous For Starfleet? Pretty much everyone agrees that Star Trek:
The Next Generation got off to a rough start. Creatively, it seemed to be pulling in two
directions at once, simultaneously trying to recapture the tone and morality-play-of-the-week
format of Star Trek: The Original Series, and chart its own unique course with a new
and diverse cast of characters, most of whom had no direct analogues to the classic crew
of the Enterprise. Sure, lots of people have pointed out that
Riker seems to have a little Kirk in him, but the rest of the TNG cast can’t be lined
up with their predecessors nearly so easily. Who’s the Picard on Classic Trek? Who’s the Tasha? Who’s the Worf? At first glance, it seems obvious that Data
is meant to be TNG’s answer to Spock. And in a way that does turn out to be the
case. The two characters are superficially similar:
they’re the only ones of their kind on the ship, they’re unemotional, and they’re
each the breakout character of their series. But if you look a little deeper, you see that
Spock and Data have a lot less in common than it first appears. For example, as TOS goes on we eventually
learn that, while Spock doesn’t display emotions — usually — he does have them. He represses them, as most Vulcans do, through
a form of mental discipline that empowers the logical mind over the passions. This means that Spock is constantly fighting
his own emotions for control, subverting his natural tendencies for a calmer, colder state
of mind that his culture has decided is superior. Data, on the other hand, is an android who
— during the TV series, anyway — is incapable of emotion. He behaves in a way that suggests empathy,
but he doesn’t actually feel empathy — he doesn’t feel anything. But he doesn’t need emotions to recognize
that not having them sets him apart from everyone else. Feeling emotions is a realm of experience
that Data knows he can’t access, and that knowledge is the source of his greatest discontent. Whereas Spock views his emotions as a wild
animal that must be caged, Data regards himself as incomplete without them. This is despite the fact that Data isn’t
actually incomplete — as we learn in the first season episode “Datalore,” Data’s
creator, Dr. Soong, was capable of building an android with emotions. With Data, he just chose not to. Data isn’t missing his emotions — he was
never intended to have them in the first place. They were never supposed to be part of his
programming. The fact that Data has programming — programming
so complex even he doesn’t fully understand it, programming which he frequently struggles
to transcend — is one of the major reasons why, if Data were a real person rather than
a character in a sci-fi/adventure show, the question in the title of this video would
be so necessary to ask. Because throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation,
we find examples of times when Data’s programming was co-opted by an outside force, or behaved
in an unpredictable way, leading to some pretty serious problems for the rest of the crew
of the Enterprise D, and for Data himself. For one such example, let’s talk about an
episode from early on in TNG’s fourth season, titled “Brothers”. Tragedy has struck aboard the Starship Enterprise! I mean . . . kinda. There’s this kid, Willie, and he’s got
a dangerous infection, so the ship has to head for the nearest starbase, which is about
two days away. Willie’s big brother, Jake, is in trouble,
because he played a prank on Willie that made Willie think he had killed Jake during a game
of laser tag. So Willie panicked and ran away and hid, and
while he was hiding he ate some fruit filled with deadly parasites, and now poor Willie
is quarantined and on death’s door — — and I have some questions. Why are there plants with deadly parasites
on the Enterprise? And if there’s some legitimate reason for
them to be there — medical research, or maybe they’re being transported to a botanical
garden on some planet — why are there plants with deadly parasites on the Enterprise where
kids can get at them?! Are there just poisonous plants in the arboretum,
out in the open where anyone can get at ‘em? Was that you, Keiko? I’m not trying to jump on you — I like
you Keiko, I’m not one of your weirdo haters, but what’s with leavin’ the deadly plants
out there for the kids to eat? Feel like you might’ve dropped the ball
a little here . . . Speaking of kids eating deadly plants, that’s
my second question: Willie thinks he’s killed his brother, runs off and hides and just,
what, eats the first thing he finds hanging on a tree? Why? Was he hungry? If he was hungry, he lives on a spaceship
where every room has a magic hole in the wall that can make him any food he asks for! Why would a little kid need to eat the fruit
of a random plant instead of just asking the magic food hole for a goddamn cheeseburger? And finally, if the kid is that much of a
dipshit that he crams the first thing he finds hanging off a tree into his face and winds
up full of parasites, how is that his brother’s fault? I’m not saying the prank Jake pulls on Willie
is cool — it’s messed up, and he should feel bad about it. But this first scene has Riker leaning on
Willie like he told his doofus little brother to go eat the poison fruit, and that ain’t
the deal! We also learn in this opening scene that Jake
and Willie are on the ship by themselves since their parents went on sabbatical. Their parents went on sabbatical and left
their kids on the ship! Not sure who got the better half of that,
the parents or the kids, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is . . . . . . what am I supposed to be talking about? Data! Data comes in to escort Jake to the quarantine
room so he can get guilt-tripped by Dr. Crusher and his shithead little brother, but in the
turbolift Data suddenly clams up mid-sentence and starts giving Jake the silent treatment. Data redirects the turbolift to the bridge
and gets off there, leaving Jake alone in the car. Now’s your chance, Jake! Make a run for it! Take the lift to the shuttlebay and make a
run for it while everyone’s distracted! Your brother’s gonna croak and they’re
gonna try to pin it on you! You gotta catch the hoof express, kid! Anyway, Data walks to his station on the bridge. He’s obviously acting oddly, not acknowledging
any of his fellow officers, and within moments of him sitting down at his control console,
shit starts breaking down all over. The computer announces that life support is
about to fail so they’ve all gotta evacuate the bridge, so they all rush to the turbolifts,
but Data fakes ‘em out, waits for the doors to shut on the other turbolifts, then steps
off and he’s alone on the bridge. While the rest of the team regroups in main
engineering and tries to figure out what’s going on, Data takes control of the ship,
cuts off external communications, and locks out the computer from everyone but himself. He takes the Enterprise to this planet, Terlina
III, and sets up a series of force fields so he can move from the bridge to the transporter
room without security grabbing him, because by this point the others have figured out
that Data’s gone rogue. Meanwhile, Jake’s been apprehended by Counselor
Troi and brought to the quarantine room. I guess it’s hard to steal a shuttle and
get off the ship when you’re locked out of the computer. Ah well. Nice try, Jake, but I guess it’s just not
your day. Troi tries to get Jake to apologize to Willie,
but Willie just rolls over and Crusher and Troi look at each other like, “Eh, what
are ya gonna do?” Better not leave any medical tools in the
bubble with him, Beverly, or you’ll be pickin’ ‘em out of his stool tomorrow. Just saying. Anyway, Data makes it to a transporter room
and beams down to the planet and who does he meet there but his father, Dr. Noonien
Soong! Dr. Soong had been presumed dead after the
crystalline entity destroyed the Omicron Theta colony where Data was created. But it turns out Soong escaped. And he activated a built-in homing device
to bring Data here. While Soong and Data are catching up, we discover
the homing device didn’t just bring Data home, because in walks Data’s evil twin,
Lore. Oh yeah, that’s actually the most important
thing we learn in that aforementioned first season episode, “Datalore” — that Data
has an evil twin, who does have emotions, and indomitable ambition, and who tries to
murder everybody whenever he shows up. So Dr. Soong is like, “Oh, hey, Lore.” And Data’s like, “You shouldn’t trust
him, because he’s always trying to murder everybody.” Soong waves that off, like, “Ahhh, whatever,
Lore’s not so bad. He just reacts badly when people treat him
unfairly. And now I have something very special to give
you, Data, my beloved and most favored son . . .” Dr. Soong has a chip to give Data — an emotion
chip. Lore sees that and he’s like, “Oh hey. How about that? Good for you, Data. I’m so happy for you.” Soong explains that the procedure to install
the chip is really easy and it’ll just take a second, but first he needs to go into the
other room and take a nap so Lore can bum rush Data and knock him out and switch places
with him. Which is exactly what happens during the next
cutaway, and we come back to Soong installing the emotion chip, and Lore stands up like
“Surprise! It’s me! The evil one! Now with twice the emotions, I guess?” Lore kicks the shit out of Soong for a minute,
then beams away right before Riker and Worf and Geordi get there, because by this point
the rest of the crew has at least regained enough control of the ship to come down and
get Data. Riker wakes up Data, who was deactivated by
Lore, and Data doesn’t remember any of the Manchurian Candidate shit he did to hijack
the ship earlier. Data has a final scene with Soong, who is
about to die, and then we’re back on the ship to wrap things up with Jake and Willie,
who is still in quarantine but is gonna be just fine. Data and Picard and Crusher watch the kids
playing with some toy dinosaurs that Data brought back from Soong’s place. I’m glad somebody’s keeping an eye on
Willie. Just make sure you count those toys when you
get ‘em back, make sure you’re not missing one. Hopefully they’re made of non-toxic materials,
though they did belong to Soong, so who the hell knows. Anyway, Data’s like, “Hey, Jake and Willie
are getting along.” And Dr. Crusher’s like, “Sure they are! They’re brothers. Brothers forgive!” And so does Starfleet, apparently, because
Data returns from the whole “suddenly falls into an impenetrable trance and takes over
the ship” episode and goes right back to work like nothing happened! But, I mean, come on, is that so unreasonable? It wasn’t Data’s fault. It wasn’t even a malfunction — it was
his long-lost father activating a homing program. And now his long-lost father is dead, so Data
going haywire and endangering the entire crew is gonna turn out to be a one-time thing. I’m sure it’ll never, ever happen again
until the two-parter that bridges the show’s sixth and seventh seasons, “Descent.” “Descent” marks the return and the team-up
of two of TNG’s most memorable villains: Lore, and the Borg. At the end of part one, Data, who has been
feeling inexplicable rushes of emotion, leaves the ship with a Borg prisoner. The crew beam down to a nearby planet to conduct
a search, and Picard, Troi and Geordi are captured by a group of Borg who are disconnected
from the Collective and now being led by Lore — dressed in a half-finished Black Adam
cosplay — and Data, who has turned heel and joined forces with his evil twin! It turns out Lore has lured Data to the dark
side by disabling his ethical program and feeding him emotions from the chip he pinched
from Soong a few years ago. Fortunately, the heroes are able to turn Data’s
ethical program back on before he does anything worse than torture Geordi a little, and, with
some help from Hugh, they defeat Lore and leave this colony of confused and exploited
Borg to fend for themselves in Classic Star Trek fashion! And just like “Brothers,” Data betrays
his crew, endangers lives, stops short of doing anything too terrible, gets his head
right and goes back to work! No harm done! All’s well that ends well, right? Another isolated incident, special circumstances,
no chance it will ever happen again until like a month later in the episode “Phantasms.” Yeah, it’s the one where Data almost stabs
Troi to death in an elevator. Only it turns out he was sleepwalking, and
he stabbed her in the shoulder because that’s where something wacky was happening to her
in this dream he had. Good thing he didn’t get on the elevator
with Riker, I guess, huh? Data’s been running a dream program he discovered
last year during a crossover episode with Dr. Bashir from Deep Space Nine, and he’s
just had his first nightmare. In the dream he encounters a group of old-timey
miners chipping away at a hole in the corridor. He tries to tell them to knock it off, but
a high pitched tone comes out of his mouth and the miners overpower him and pull his
head off. Later, Data tells Geordi that it was the strangest
and most disturbing imagery he’s ever experienced. Well, when someone from the bourgeoisie has
an unexpected encounter with members of the working class in an unprotected environment,
it can be startling, even upsetting, but honestly, Data, don’t you think you’re overreacting
a little? They’re just simple laborers. They’re not gonna hurt you. Except for the head-ripping-off bit . . . The Enterprise has just been fitted with a
new warp core, but it doesn’t seem to be working so well. Every time they try to fire it up, the ship
doesn’t move. Did they install the Millennium Falcon’s
hyperdrive by accident? While Geordi tries to figure out what’s
wrong, Data keeps having nightmares. There’s this one that takes place in Ten
Forward, where Worf is enjoying the hell outta some cake, and Dr. Crusher is sucking Riker’s
brain through a straw. Reminds me of a dream I had about Dr. Crusher
back in the day. Only it wasn’t my brain she was sucking,
you know what I’m saying? It was this friend of mine’s brain. But she wasn’t sucking it through no straw
on the side of his head, I’ll tell you that much! The straw was coming straight out the top
of his head, actually. But the really wild part is, the straw was
shaped like a dick! Dick Giordano, specifically. I think he was inking some of the Knightfall
stuff for DC that year . . . Anyway, yeah, it was a pretty hot dream. Data keeps having nightmares, and they’re
really freaking him out — as freaked out as an android without emotions can get, anyway
— so he seeks guidance from a recreation of Sigmund Freud on the holodeck. Freud listens to Data’s story and says,
“My diagnosis is, you wanna fuck your mom and your dick don’t get hard.” Data’s like, “But my mom won’t be retconned
in for a few more episodes, and my dick is like a lead pipe 24/7, so that doesn’t sound
right.” So he goes to talk to Counselor Troi, and
she’s like, “Maybe you should stop obsessing over your own dreams, you neurotic weirdo. Also, you went to see a hologram of a 19th
century psychiatrist whose theories had been mostly discredited for decades by the time
this episode was written, nevermind the time at which it takes place? What’s up with that? I know I’m a lousy therapist, and the audience
knows I’m a lousy therapist, but none of you other assholes on the ship are supposed
to be wise to it, so what’s up, Data? Are you gonna get with the program or are
we gonna have a problem?” Data’s like, “Chill, chill, we’re cool,
we’re cool!” And the next time he sees her, he stabs her
in the elevator. And I’m not saying I condone it. But I get it . . . It turns out Data’s nightmares are the result
of these scary invisible bugs that are infesting the crew. Somehow, Data is detecting these creatures
unconsciously, and this unconscious awareness is being processed through his dream program. So, in order to figure out how to get rid
of them, Data runs his dream program again, this time with a hook-up to the holodeck. This enables Picard and Geordi to enter Data’s
subconscious and explore the dream like an actual physical location. And somewhere in London, a young Christopher
Nolan turned from the TV screen in his university dorm room to scribble something down. That something: Must have been his turn to pick up supper. . . . How do I have this? They figure out that the murderous proletarians
represent the gross invisible bugs, and that they can be killed by a high frequency interphasic
pulse, represented in Data’s dream by that high pitched sound Data made. Once the bug infestation has been eliminated,
Geordi speculates that they must have been hiding aboard a component of the new warp
core that was manufactured on the planet Thanatos VII. Thanatos VII?! Starfleet buys warp cores that are made someplace
with a name that literally means “death”?! Damn, you Federation types just do not give
a shit, do you? By the way, I know not all of Brannon Braga’s
contributions to Star Trek have been positive, but he wrote this episode and I’d love to
shake his hand if for no other reason than establishing that Starfleet uses warp cores
manufactured on Planet Death. Those aren’t the only examples of Data’s
programming causing him to act in a way that endangers or could potentially endanger other
people — this is an essay, not a comprehensive list — but I think they’re enough to get
my point across. Data’s programming is vulnerable to being
disrupted or manipulated by outside forces, and when that happens, because Data is so
smart, and fast, and strong, and generally capable, he becomes a really serious threat
to the Enterprise and to the lives of everyone on it. In the wrong circumstances, Data is extremely
dangerous. Is he too dangerous to be in Starfleet? Let’s think about this the way Data would
— rationally, divorced from emotion. And since most of us are pretty attached to
Data, let’s make it easier by taking Data out of the equation and considering the question
with another character in a different but analogous situation. Let’s consider what might happen if, in
another fictional universe, James “Bucky” Barnes, the Winter Soldier, joined the Avengers. I know — that actually happened in the comics. I’m not talking about that, I’m talking
about a different, hypothetical situation that I’m making up and describing to you
right now. So, here’s how it goes: Bucky proves his
worth as a hero, helps to save the world once or twice, and so the Avengers decide to reward
him and strengthen their own ranks by giving him a spot on the team. Bucky is no longer an agent of HYDRA — he’s
a good guy and that’s all he wants to be — but he still has the psychological conditioning
HYDRA brainwashed into him. He and his allies think he got rid of all
that stuff, but it turns out they were wrong, and one time during a crucial Avengers mission
a HYDRA agent hacks into Bucky’s headset and says some magic words and Bucky goes into
assassin mode and tries to kill, I dunno, the Prime Minister of New Zealand — she’s
pretty good, right? As far as world leaders go? The other Avengers foil the assassination
attempt and break through the HYDRA programming. Bucky comes back to his senses. He hasn’t actually killed anybody. And nothing that happened was his fault. So, the other Avengers decide to let it go
and allow Bucky to remain a trusted member of the team. Fair enough, right? But let’s say, a couple of years later,
it happens again. Maybe SHIELD uncovers a secret HYDRA base
miles beneath the streets of, oh, let’s say, Branson, Missouri — nobody’s that
surprised — and the Avengers get called in to help and Bucky finds the diary of some
old HYDRA mind control expert and one of the phrases written in it triggers another bit
of Winter Soldier conditioning no one knew was there, and Bucky does some more involuntary
HYDRA shit — maybe the Red Skull is dead and Bucky works some warlock mojo and resurrects
him. But once again, the Avengers are able to pull
Bucky back from the dark side, and he helps the team stop Red Skull from, I dunno, taking
over the world or whatever he wants to do. And once again, it’s all good, the rest
of the team doesn’t hold it against Bucky, and why should they — he didn’t do anything
too bad, and it’s only happened twice since he joined the team. No problem. Then a couple of weeks later it happens again. Bucky’s in the kitchen making a cup of hot
chocolate and he overhears Iron Man telling Hawkeye a joke that includes a phrase that
somehow, randomly, incredibly triggers yet another bit of Winter Soldier programming
that compels Bucky to steal a quinjet and attempt to crash it into the Washington Monument
or something. Once again it all works out fine, once again
no one is hurt, once again Bucky is himself again when everything is over. But the question must be asked — mustn’t
it? — how many times does this have to happen before the rest of the team asks Bucky for
his keys to the mansion? It’s nothing personal — Bucky’s a good
dude and most of the time is a major asset, but he just so happens to have this thing
about himself, that’s difficult to understand and perhaps impossible to fully get rid of,
that makes him, through no fault of his own, an unpredictable danger to the rest of the
team. At some point, doesn’t cutting him become
the responsible thing? And if that’s true of Bucky in my ad hoc
Avengers example, isn’t it true of Data, too? Maybe, but maybe not. True, we’re shown in multiple episodes of
TNG that Data is a potential danger to the ship. But we’re also shown, in a much greater
number of episodes, that Data is uniquely capable of saving the ship. Three years pass between “Brothers,” my
first example of Data’s programming causing him to behave in a way that threatens the
ship, and “Descent,” my second example. During those three years, we get the episode
“Hero Worship,” where Data realizes, with seconds to spare, that the solution to the
crisis that is threatening the ship is to drop the shields. Nobody else was gonna think of it, and if
Data hadn’t been there, it’s reasonable to assume the Enterprise would have been destroyed. And if that’s not enough, another episode
that occurs during that three year interval is one of my favorites, “Cause and Effect,”
which is where the Enterprise gets caught in a time loop. Data’s presence is essential to the ship
escaping the loop: his positronic brain makes it possible to send a message from one round
of the loop to the next, he sends the message, and at the end of the next loop he recognizes
and correctly interprets the message just in time to avert disaster and break the Enterprise,
and Frasier’s ship, free from the loop. Those are the two episodes from that three-year
period I can think of where Data clearly saves the ship in a way that another crew member
wouldn’t or couldn’t have. There are other, less clear-cut examples from
those years, too. Early in season five there’s the episode
“Disaster” where Data uses his body to disrupt the arc of electricity blocking the
way through the jefferies tube, enabling Riker to pop off Data’s head and make it to main
engineering to regain control of the ship, which he does by plugging Data’s severed
head into the computer. Data’s also crucial to the “Time’s Arrow”
two-parter that bridges seasons five and six; his positronic brain allows the crew to travel
back in time to stop the Devidians from killing people in 19th century San Francisco. That wasn’t really a threat to the ship,
but lives were saved, and Picard was able to complete the time loop that allowed him
to encounter Guinan for the first time (from her perspective, anyway), and he got to meet
Mark Twain, too! Thanks, Data! None of that would have happened if Data had
been kicked out of Starfleet for being too much of a risk after “Brothers.” So obviously, in hindsight kicking Data off
the ship would have been a mistake, especially when viewed by us from a real-world perspective. But even in-universe, in the immediate aftermath
of incidents of Data going apeshit and hijacking the ship or attacking people, it’s understandable
why Captain Picard or some other authority figure wouldn’t have reacted by throwing
Data off of the ship. Because the thing is, yeah, Data can be manipulated
and compelled to act in dangerous ways, but that’s no less true of anyone else on the
ship. In the real world an artificial intelligence
with a programmed personality might be far more vulnerable to that sort of third-party
control than a flesh-and-blood person, because that kind of extreme psychological conditioning,
brainwashing, doesn’t really exist, it’s the stuff of popular fiction. But Star Trek, being popular fiction, operates
under different rules. In Star Trek, pretty much anybody is vulnerable
to being mind controlled. In the first season’s “Conspiracy,”
a species of intelligent parasites infected and controlled enough senior officers to almost
take control of Starfleet, until Picard and Riker got wise to the scheme and blew up the
head parasite. Geordi is brainwashed into a sleeper agent
in the episode “The Mind’s Eye” and almost assassinates a Klingon governor. In “The Game,” aliens use an addictive
game to control the crew of the Enterprise. Only Wesley and Robin Lefler manage to avoid
falling victim to the plot — until the end of the episode, when they’re about to be
turned only to be saved at the last moment by Data, who is immune to the mind-controlling
effect of the game and has spent most of the episode deactivated. Hey, this was after “Brothers” and before
“Descent” — should we add this to the list of times the rest of the crew was lucky
Data was there? I think so. There’s also “Allegiance” from season
three, where Picard is abducted and replaced by an exact duplicate who orders the ship
to move perilously close to a pulsar; “Conundrum” from season five, where aliens wipe the memories
of the entire crew and almost succeed in tricking them into using the Enterprise to attack an
enemy species; and “Power Play,” also from season five — in fact, from the week
after “Conundrum” — where Troi and O’Brien, in addition to Data, are possessed by the
disembodied consciousnesses of criminals who take hostages in Ten Forward as part of a
plot to stage a cosmic jail-break. In other words, it’s Star Trek, and in Star
Trek, Star Trek shit happens, which means not just Data, but anybody is vulnerable to
being mind controlled or manipulated into endangering the ship, which means if Data
is too dangerous for Starfleet, so is everybody else. To return to Star Trek: Picard for a minute
— and this isn’t gonna be a spoiler, I’m talking about stuff from the first episode
that was also discussed in the promotional materials — one of the key incidents of
that first season is the Federation banning androids after a group of androids carry out
a deadly attack on Mars. Those androids are compromised and manipulated
in ways similar to incidents involving Data on TNG, and the creators of Star Trek: Picard
obviously want us to regard that as a mistake, an overreaction that violates the Federation’s
most cherished values. It’s true that being an android gives Data
certain vulnerabilities that can and have been exploited, causing him to act in dangerous
ways. But while Data is the only android on the
ship and therefore the only person with those specific vulnerabilities, he’s not the only
person on the Enterprise with the potential to threaten the ship or the lives of the crew. It’s only reasonable to ask if Data, specifically,
is too dangerous if you regard Data as inherently more dangerous than the others. And in this context, despite his special abilities,
I don’t think that’s warranted. Plus, it kinda goes against the whole point
of Star Trek, diversity being our strength and all that. As Star Trek: The Next Generation demonstrates
over and over again, the crew of the Enterprise, and Starfleet in general, gains a lot more
than it risks losing by having Data around. Besides, if Data wasn’t on the show, who’d
be the breakout character? You know what? . . . That might have worked. I can see Barclay taking Data’s place on
the show — and on the ship, too. We know he’s good with computers. — — — Hey, folks! Hope you enjoyed this one. I’m gonna let you know what the subject
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us for Trek, Reluctantly, we’d love to have you. Now, let’s talk about the next episode of
this series. This is gonna be a fun one. It was another first-time topic that captured
the imagination of the patrons and members and swept through and won the poll. It was a nail-biter — it won the poll by
a single vote! And I’m so glad it did, because it’s a
topic that allows me to survey a broad cross-section of the Star Trek franchise, but also to zero
in on some of the most delightfully odd concepts from The Original Series, namely the many
duplicate Earths encountered by the crew of the Enterprise. The question around which we will focus our
discussion is: What Is Actually Star Trek’s Worst Parallel Earth? Like I said, should be fun. Look for that one next month. And also, look for a special video next week
where I talk about some of the most popular and interesting couples that Star Trek fans
have shipped together over the years. We’re gonna talk about Star Trek ships — but
not starships — relationships. See you soon for that one. Thanks for watching. Take care, everybody.
Data is too dangerous NOT to have in Starfleet.
Nah. There were a few instances when he was brainwashed or controlled by someone else, but that's common for any Starfleet member. Data was only dangerous when he disobeyed orders on his own will, but those instances were always well intended.
In episodic fashion, you could ignore these things. You might have forgot about an old episode over time or even missed it. But the more serious you take continuity, it seems like Data should have been kicked out of Starfleet a long time ago. He was the most dangerous officer on the Enterprise and the only times that Starfleet tried to do exert some sort of authority over him, it was only because they wanted to make more of these dangerous beings and because he made a daughter. Never did they have an inquiry about how he almost killed a kid and took over the ship to visit his creator, or how he sided with the Borg and almost killed everyone.
Oh God it's Steve Shives, Trek Fandom's greatest gatekeeper. What a turd.