Including the recent novels, does anyone besides Data have the ability to create self aware conscious androids reliably?
Well, Naomi Wildman. If she had the will and bothered to ask Flotter the right questions. I mean, holotech allows the average Joe to simply tell the computer to make a self aware, conscious android. All you need is big enough a computer (and sufficient user privileges) to give those qualities to the holographic product. And if you can give the qualities to a holographic android, you can no doubt also give them to a wholly physical construct, provided there's a datalink between it and the computer. What Soong seemed to rather uniquely achieve was an android with all its wits contained inside its cranium. But is that such an important criterion in a world with sufficient wifi connectivity? Perhaps the obvious potential of holodeck is what makes physical androids, let alone ones with sapience and sentience, so uninteresting in the 24th century? Timo Saloniemi
Lore is dead as his brain was destroyed during the E-D crash. B-4 even with his firmware upgrade is unlikely to even understand the instructions. I thought all of Data's memories in B-4 got moved into Soong's brain.
I stopped reading the novels in the early 80s, so maybe he did. The only Soong I knew of died before B-4 was found.
Is that canon or in a novel? Or are you assuming that Lore's parts were probably kept near Engineering, so lost with the stardrive section?
It sounds a bit odd that the parts would be kept aboard the ship at all. What would be the point? Does nuKirk keep Khan's frozen body aboard the Enterprise, too? They did keep Moriarty on the ship between his two appearances, but that wasn't something they had any power over. Once they did figure out the upload-to-portable-memory trick, the supervillain may well have been dumped overboard, though. And while I mean dumped to a Federation safekeeping facility of some sort, it wouldn't have been out of place to simply space him, either. Unlike Lore in the corresponding situation, he would have had high odds of living happily ever after! Timo Saloniemi
Wouldn't Lore be facing criminal charges, though? With Moriarty, Picard may have agreed to dropping all of those, as no real harm was done. But Lore killed people left and right, including civilians not under Picard's direct command. "Your honor, I'll be keeping my brother in irons in my basement as punishment for his sixty-eight counts of first degree murder, if that's all right with your honor..."? Timo Saloniemi
I was including the novels. Lore's brain mentioned to be destroyed in "the persistance of memory". My interpretation is the B-4 retains no more memories of Data. i was not considering Moriarty in this thread.
Akharin can resurrect positronic brains after cascade failure but if he could incept them then why did he need a team to create Rhea? I also thought that he said that he could not replicate making a holonomic android why Data, via Soong's memories should be able to
Akharin was a human, while Data was an android himself. He may, from experience, have been able to fill in any gaps in the technology.
Akharin may not have the skills to incept a positron brain else he could have done it before Soong did.