Should Data have been recast for Nemesis?

Well, maybe we can cut Baird a little slack. He was primarily a film editor, Nemesis was only his 3rd film as director, and he never directed again. And he's English.

 

But Spiner WAS one of the credited writers, no?

(Which perhaps he could have remained even if another actor played Data, but I doubt it.)

 

That is brilliant! I always though Jim Parsons would make a good Data as well.

 

Casting a different actor as B4 would have been a logical choice. I don't see any need to write Spiner out due to his age when they could just say that Data was choosing to alter his appearance to age.

 

The only problem with B-4 was that it showed the Powers That Be simply didn't have the will to change the status quo on Star Trek.

 

I did think it took a lot of the drama out of Data's death with B-4 clearly set up to be the new Data, which is a good and bad thing, since it also took the sting out of Data's death too.

 

When I first glanced at the title of this thread for a second I thought it said, "Should Data have been racist for Insurrection?"

I can just see Data as some interstellar Archie Bunker.

 

I thought I was the only person who misread text around here. Didn't have trouble with this one, but I often misread things into some sort of risqué variation.

 

Lunkheads.

 

From my understanding, Spiner wanted to be written out in a heroic death due to his age reflecting on the character.

TPTB insisted on creating a loophole with B4 so they could revive Data if they needed to.

Recasting him for the movie would have allowed them to drop Spiner, and his baggage, as well as select someone that's younger and would clash out with the rest of the crew (they could play up to what Data said in the episode "Time's Arrow" where he said he was expecting to outlive several generations of friends.

Not that Nemesis didn't have worse problems, but at least they could have forgotten the entire idea of "Data's death", and maybe the movie wouldn't have ended up so depressing.

 

I think recasting him would have been a terrible idea. But I would actually like if they de-aged him like they did Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy.