Data (Star Trek)

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Data
Species: Android
Gender: Male
Home planet: Omicron Theta
Affiliation: Starfleet
Posting: USS Enterprise-D operations officer and second officer
USS Sutherland commanding officer (temporary)
USS Enterprise-E operations officer and second officer
Rank: Lieutenant commander
Portrayed by: Brent Spiner

Data[1] is a character, portrayed by Brent Spiner, in the Star Trek fictional universe. Designed by Doctor Noonien Soong, Lieutenant Commander[2] Data is an android who serves as the second officer and chief operations officer aboard the starships USS Enterprise-D and USS Enterprise-E. Data appears throughout the Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) television series and in the films based on The Next Generation.

Data is a sentient artificial lifeform designed to resemble a human. His positronic brain allows him impressive computational capabilities[3] and the ability to perform most human activities. However, he has ongoing difficulties understanding various aspects of human behavior and is unable to feel emotions[4] until he is provided with an "emotion chip" in Star Trek: Generations.

Dramatically, Data is a rough counterpart to Spock from Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) in that he has a rational, analytical mind and finds humans hard to understand, and through his attempts to understand human behavior, the series' creators comment on certain aspects of humanity. Unlike Spock, however, he is drawn to the concept of humanity. Coincidentally, Data was one of the few non-Vulcans to master the Vulcan nerve pinch.[5]

Data's name[1] is properly pronounced (in IPA) "/'deitə/" (or day-tuh) as opposed to the alternative pronunciations "/'dα:tə/" or "/'dætə/" (dah-ta, datt-a). When Data corrects Dr. Katherine Pulaski for using the latter pronunciation, Pulaski asks, "What's the difference?" Data replies, "One is my name, the other is not".[6]

Contents

[edit] Fictional character biography

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Star Trek: The Next Generation

Data's originally planned backstory was that he had been created by aliens.[7] The backstory appears in the novelisation of "Encounter at Farpoint" by David Gerrold, which has Data having been built by alien machines from Kiron III, in order to preserve the memories of a wiped-out human colony.

The episode "Datalore" abandoned this backstory, and instead had the cyberneticist Dr. Noonien Soong creating Data on Omicron Theta after several attempts. In the episode, Data's immediate predecessor, Lore, Data's "evil twin", is reactivated. Data discovers in the episode that he was active on Omicron Theta, but Soong deactivated him and erased most of his memories (although he retains the contents of the Omicron Theta colonists' journals) at some point prior to the Crystalline Entity's attack on the colony. The creature destroyed almost all the life on the planet, and Data was then found and reactivated by Starfleet officers. Another of Data's predecessors, B-4, is discovered in the movie Star Trek: Nemesis. He is functional but dim-witted.

Data attended Starfleet Academy over the objections of Bruce Maddox and graduated with honors degrees in probability mechanics and exobiology.[3] Data served aboard several starships before being assigned to the Enterprise-D as the ship's chief operations officer.

Data (left) with his evil twin "brother", Lore
Data (left) with his evil twin "brother", Lore

In 2365, cyberneticist Bruce Maddox obtains permission to have Data reassigned for "study," which would involve the android's deactivation, disassembly, and duplication (with his knowledge and memories dumped into a computer and thereafter transferred back), possibly destroying his personality and sentience in the process. Data refuses, but Maddox asserts that Data is Starfleet property and therefore unable to refuse the procedure. With Captain Jean-Luc Picard as his advocate, Starfleet Judge Advocate General asserts that Data is not property and therefore can refuse the procedure, which he does.[3]

Data and Lal, his short-lived android "daughter"
Data and Lal, his short-lived android "daughter"

Desiring to reproduce, Data creates an android "daughter", Lal, in 2366. She exceeds Data's abilities, using verbal contractions and feeling some emotions. She becomes scared when Starfleet scientists wanted to separate her from Data, and, overwhelmed, she suffers a cascade neural failure and "dies." She tells Data, "I love you, father," but Data is incapable of reciprocating. To preserve Lal's existence, Data transfers her memories into his own memory core.[8]

During his captivity at the hands of fraudulent antiquities dealer Kivas Fajo, Data makes clear his ability to kill "if necessary". The episode is ambiguous as to whether Data finds it necessary to kill Fajo to prevent Fajo from murdering other people: Data is beamed away at the moment of firing. Chief O'Brien detects that Data's weapon has discharged, but Data suggests that it was a malfunction.[9]

During the Borg invasion of the Federation in 2366-7, Data successfully interfaces with Locutus of Borg (an assimilated Picard who is abducted then rescued), accesses the Borg collective consciousness, and introduces a command into a low-level program pathway that forces the Borg to regenerate. This action effectively "put them to sleep", halting their advance and causing the Borg ship's power systems to overload, destroying the vessel.[10]

Data and his father, an elderly Dr. Noonien Soong
Data and his father, an elderly Dr. Noonien Soong

In 2367, Soong, intending to give Data a basic emotion chip, activates a homing signal that overrides Data's other programming. Unbeknownst to Soong, the beacon summons Lore as well. Lore fools Soong into giving him the chip, then kills his "father" and departs.[11]

Data temporarily commands the USS Sutherland as part of Picard's blockade of the Klingon-Romulan border during the Klingon Civil War. Sela chooses Data's ship as the target for a scheme to interrupt the Starfleet force's tachyon net, which prevents the cloaked Romulan flotilla from crossing into Klingon space. Despite his crew's misgivings, Data identifies a failure in Sela's scheme and almost single-handedly exposes the Romulan ships.[12]

In 2368, Data's head is discovered in an archaeological site in San Francisco. The ensuing investigation sends Data, followed by several senior Enterprise-D officers, to late 19th century San Francisco. Data's presence sets up a number of temporal paradoxes involving Guinan, who is on Earth at that time, and the senior staff as they discover and deal with an alien presence on Earth. Data's head is blown off in the 19th century while his body travels back to the 24th century. Picard, left in the past, plants a message into the head; when it is reattached hundreds of years later, the message allows the crew to avoid a catastrophe and rescue Picard—who leaves Data's head behind to be rediscovered five centuries later.[13]

Data with an android version of his "mother", Dr. Juliana Tainer
Data with an android version of his "mother", Dr. Juliana Tainer

In 2370, Lore kidnaps Data and coerces him, through Lore's manipulation of the emotion chip, into aiding an insurrection by the Borg. Data is forced to attack and disassemble his brother. The weapons blast that subdues Lore also damages the emotion chip.[14]

Later in 2370, Data meets a woman who appears to be and thinks she is Dr. Juliana Tainer, the widow and collaborator of Dr. Soong; in a sense, Data's mother. However, she is an android constructed by Dr. Soong after the original Dr. Tainer died; unlike Data, she was built to be unaware of her artificial nature, and she eventually divorced Dr. Soong and remarried. When an accident incapacitates Tainer, Data discovers in her circuitry a message from Soong imploring him not to reveal to Tainer her true nature. Data respects Soong's wishes.[15]

In an alternate future created by Q, Data holds the Lucasian professorship at Cambridge. Picard's actions at various points in the timeline, however, mean that this exact future will not come to pass.[16]

[edit] Films

Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge assists Data in installing the emotion chip Dr. Soong made for him
Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge assists Data in installing the emotion chip Dr. Soong made for him

In 2371, Data chooses to install the emotion chip he extracted from Lore. Despite initial difficulties in adaptation, Data successfully integrates the emotion chip.[17] He is later able to deactivate the emotion chip at will.[18]

When the Enterprise-E pursues a Borg sphere through a temporal warp to 2063, the Borg Queen takes Data captive and attempts to coerce him into allying with the Borg, reactivating his emotion chip to make Data easier to manipulate. She provides him the ability to feel tactile sensations as humans do by grafting functional organic flesh to portions of his body, and attempts to seduce him sexually. Although Data is tempted by the Queen's manipulations, his apparent actions to aid the Borg are a ruse; his actions are instrumental in averting the Borg's attempt to prevent humanity's first contact with Vulcans and assimilation of humanity in the 21st century.[18]

Damage caused by weapons fire on the Ba'ku homeworld leads to Data blacking out and his ethical programming taking control of his actions; as such, he exposes a Federation–Son'a plot to forcibly relocate the Ba'ku in order to collect potentially useful metagenic particles in the planet's rings.[19]

Data holding the head of another "brother", B-4, upon his discovery
Data holding the head of another "brother", B-4, upon his discovery

Shortly after William Riker and Deanna Troi's wedding, Data discovers a prototype version of himself, whom Dr. Soong had named B-4. Data copies his knowledge and memories to B-4's brain in the hopes that this would help B-4 learn and grow. Shortly thereafter, Data is destroyed when destroying a thalaron beam generator aboard the Reman ship Scimitar.[20] When Picard attempts to explain to the simple B-4 that Data is dead, B-4 cannot quite grasp it. But then Picard overhears B-4 singing part of a song Data had been singing earlier, suggesting that Data is not necessarily gone forever. (However, it is somewhat unlikely Data will be resurrected in another film, as The Next Generation is likely finished as a franchise for at least the near future, and Spiner has repeatedly said he is aged past the point of believably playing an android.)

[edit] Star Trek: Enterprise

In 2005, Spiner recorded a brief, uncredited voice-only cameo as Data for Star Trek: Enterprise's finale, "These Are the Voyages...": Data is heard speaking to Deanna Troi over the intercom. The 24th century component of the episode takes place during the events in "The Pegasus".

[edit] Relationships

Data with Spot
Data with Spot

Data characterizes his ability to have friends as being based on his "mental pathways" becoming accustomed to certain people's "sensory inputs"; such inputs are "missed" when those people are gone.[21]

Data is best friends with Geordi La Forge, and Data's pet cat is named Spot.

Data experiencing "sexuality" with the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact
Data experiencing "sexuality" with the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact

Data briefly has a sexual relationship with Lieutenant Tasha Yar in 2364,[22] and he briefly pursues a romantic relationship with Lieutenant Junior Grade Jenna D'Sora in 2367.[23] In 2373, Data has an intimate encounter with the Borg Queen.

Data had an affinity for other artificial lifeforms, both androids like him and less sophisticated machines like Exocomps.[24] Data also seems to have an affinity with children, becoming close to them in several stories.

Over the years, a strong relationship of loyalty, respect, and trust emerges between Picard and Data. Picard mentors Data in "the human condition", in particular with holodeck recreations of Shakespearean works.[25]

Although Data has the admiration and respect of his fellow shipmates, there are individuals who question his rights. Bruce Maddox asserted when Data applied to Starfleet Academy that he was not a sentient being, and refers to Data as "it" until the JAG decision that asserted Data's right to make his own decisions.[3] Afterward, Data sent several missives to Maddox to aid in the cyberneticist's ongoing research. Vice Admiral Anthony Haftel tries to separate Data from Lal upon the latter's activation, predicating this desire on refusal to recognize Data as a "parent."[8] Data's first officer aboard the Sutherland, Lieutenant Commander Christopher Hobson, requests a transfer because he does not believe an android would make a good commanding officer, although he comes to respect Data's abilities.[12]

[edit] Specifications

Weighing 100 kilograms,[15] (approximately 220 pounds) Data is composed of 24.6 kg of tripolymer composites, 11.8 kg of molybdenum–cobalt alloys, and 1.3 kg of bioplast sheeting.[9] Data's upper spinal support is a polyalloy designed for extreme stress; his skull is composed of cortenide and duranium.[26] Data was built with an ultimate storage capacity of 800 quadrillion bits (93,132,257.46 gigabytes or 88.82 petabytes). At the onset, Data was constructed with a total linear computational speed rated at 60 trillion floating point operations per second (TFLOPS).[3] However, through bidirectional sequencing (which compensates for signal degradation) and conversion of his main interlink sequencer to asynchronous operation, Data's computational speed was later no longer limited by the physical separation of his positronic links and, thus, became effectively unlimited.[24] This allows for sapient cognition at a time-resolution of at least hundredths of a second. He has stated that, to him, a thought lasting for 0.68 seconds feels like "an eternity".[18]

Data's storage capacity is at least 17 times that of Google circa 2005, over 93 million iPod Shuffles, or about 11,904 times more than Wikipedia as of August 2006[27] or approx 20,696,057.21 standard DVDs. After Data's specifications were initially noted on-screen, TNG began referring to fictional quads (and SI prefix derivatives) as the basic units of computer storage capacity. As well, BlueGene/L, the world's fastest supercomputer, has a measured peak computational speed of approximately 280 TFLOPS, almost five times that of Data's initial computational speed.

[edit] Inspiration

The character was inspired by a made-for-TV movie Gene Roddenberry wrote in the 1970s entitled The Questor Tapes,[citation needed] which was the pilot for a series that would have detailed the adventures of a lifelike android searching for the secret of being human. Roddenberry himself stated that Data was based on "The Bicentennial Man" created by Isaac Asimov, as well as inspired by other "Positronic Androids" in various other stories by Asimov.[citation needed]

[edit] Brent Spiner on Data

Brent Spiner has noted that he has visibly aged out of the role and that it would be implausible for him to continue playing an android whose appearance should not change with time [1] (although the seventh-season episode "Inheritance" establishes that Data has an aging program that can change his appearance). While Spiner has often expressed affection for Data and appreciation for his career within Star Trek, he has also made it quite clear he is ready to move on.

[edit] Key episodes and milestones

Notable moments in Data's life as shown on screen:

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b In the episode "The Measure of a Man", Data's full name—the sole word—is elaborated upon in an on-screen graphic with the initialisms NFN and NMI: No First Name, No Middle Initial.
  2. ^ In the past timeline scenes in "All Good Things...", Data wears the insignia of a lieutenant junior grade, although Picard addresses him as "Commander."
  3. ^ a b c d e TNG: "The Measure of a Man"
  4. ^ TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"
  5. ^ TNG: "Unification, Part II"
  6. ^ TNG: "The Child"
  7. ^ Nemeck, Larry (2003). Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-7434-5798-6. 
  8. ^ a b TNG: "The Offspring"
  9. ^ a b TNG: "The Most Toys"
  10. ^ TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds"
  11. ^ TNG: "Brothers"
  12. ^ a b TNG: "Redemption, Part II"
  13. ^ TNG: "Time's Arrow"
  14. ^ TNG: "Descent"
  15. ^ a b TNG: "Inheritance"
  16. ^ TNG: "All Good Things..."
  17. ^ Star Trek: Generations
  18. ^ a b c Star Trek: First Contact
  19. ^ Star Trek: Insurrection
  20. ^ Star Trek: Nemesis
  21. ^ TNG: "Legacy"
  22. ^ TNG: "The Naked Now"
  23. ^ TNG: "In Theory"
  24. ^ a b TNG: "The Quality of Life"
  25. ^ TNG: "The Defector", "Emergence"
  26. ^ TNG: "The Chase
  27. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Technical_FAQ#How_big_is_the_database.3F

[edit] External links

Regular characters on Star Trek
 The Original Series  Kirk | Spock | McCoy | Scott | Uhura | Sulu | Chekov | Chapel | Rand
Animated Series Arex | M'Ress
 The Next Generation  Picard | Riker | Data | La Forge | Worf | B. Crusher | Troi | W. Crusher | Yar | Pulaski
 Deep Space Nine  B. Sisko | Kira | J. Dax | Odo | Bashir | O'Brien | Worf | J. Sisko | Quark | Rom | Nog | E. Dax | Garak | Martok | Damar | Dukat | Weyoun | Winn
 Voyager  Janeway | Chakotay | Tuvok | Paris | Torres | Kim | Doctor | Neelix | Seven | Kes
 Enterprise  Archer | T'Pol | Tucker | Reed | Phlox | Sato | Mayweather
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