"The Most Toys" Data would have killed but lied to Riker!

Rubbish.

First of all, the Federation doesn't have the death penalty anymore (unless Fajo has gone to the Talos Star Group, which I doubt).

Secondly, even if he did deserve the death penalty, would Data do it himself or would he make sure that Fajo was tried by a jury? Data never seemed to be the type to dispense summary justice.

Thirdly, Data had the means to contain Fajo! I've explained this many times.

 

Evidently, Data disagrees with you or else he wouldn't have pulled the trigger.

 

That's not really relevant to a legal argument, though. If you think you have a good reason to take someone out, and later examination turns up that you made an error in judgement, you might well still get a guilty verdict.

Plus again, if Data was certain of the facts, I personally don't think he would have been evasive later on.

 

Data is a sentient being, capable of being evasive when he feels he needs to be. Since Fajo was not actually killed, Data felt no obligation to flat-out admit firing the weapon. What purpose would be served if he had?

 

I agree, I mean, that's basically the question it comes down to: Why did he feel it necessary to be evasive? So far possible answers we've come up with is that he found himself unable to provide a statement at the time, that he was intentionally evasive to avoid admitting to a potentially criminal action, that he didn't feel it necessary to do so, and that he "just didn't want to expound on it".

You can take the speculation pretty far: What if Data was aware that O'Brien could in fact easily tell Data had fired the weapon, and was being evasive to trigger Riker's human reflex of empathy, relying on the assumption that Riker would instinctively identify with emotional reasons for shooting and let the matter rest to cover for a fellow officer? Mr. Data, expert manipulator of people?

 

I'll point to two pieces of dialogue and you make of them what you will...

Perhaps during times of great duress, the death of a colleague or being trapped, his ethical subroutine takes over? All he knows is right and wrong. Plus it allows him to come off the transporter pad denying an action he took part in. He may have been there but he didn't make the conscious decision to fire...

 

I suppose it is also possible that at a later debriefing, Data came clean and admitted that he fired. I highly doubt he would have been prosecuted for so doing, he could certainly have argued self-defense. He might have been evasive at that one time in the transporter room, but later (under questioning from Picard) admitted what he'd done.

 

I guess there could be a third possibility: the Veron-T was unstable causing it to discharge during transport.

 

^ I might believe that if we hadn't actually seen Data pull the trigger. It certainly looked like he did, anyway.

 

Like I said, bad writing.

 

If someone kidnapped me and was going to detain me indefinitely in a cage, and I ended up having to kill the person as a last resort in order to escape, I would be legally and ethically justified. So was Data.

In law, kidnapping is one of the most serious crimes, right behind murder. Injuring or killing someone to get away from a kidnapping is self defence, pure and simple.

 

No, it's writing you personally disagree with. I agree with Data's actions... does that automatically mean that I think it's good writing? No.

 

I think it's excellent writing that just did exactly what it wanted to, it made us think about it and the character more intriguing.

And I don't necessarily agree with his actions, at least I find them worthy of suspicion and inquiry.

 

This.

 

Exactly. Data may be an android but as a sentient lifeform, he has a unique set of values which may not jibe with what we think an android might do. He isn't perfect, after all. Even an android will have conflicts, uneasiness at times.

 

Data was obviously going to kill him. He had processed it & was acting on it. I'm amazed people still think otherwise

Fajo had a forcefield, for which Data had no counter. The damn thing is blinking on his belt when Data points the disruptor at him. I guess we must assume by Fajo's sudden fear, that it was not able to withstand a disruptor blast

The fact that the disruptor is a painfully gruesome weapon doesn't factor into this, because Data's morality program should not be confused for compassion, which might give someone pause in the face of its cruelty.

Data was in no way responsible for the woman's death. She chose to risk her life, like Data, to free herself, an opportunity Data would likely never get again

Fajo admitted a willingness to kill others, unless Data handed over control of his own life to Fajo. Neither of those circumstances are acceptable treatment of a being, especially if Data can stop it by eliminating Fajo, and preventing him from causing harm to his own life & that of others, another opportunity that may never come again, as far as he knew. These are the things he's processing, & finally decided that this opportunity was the best & maybe only possible way to solve the Fajo problem.... And I happen to agree with him

Data didn't lie. He withheld the truth. Were he attempting a lie, he would have come up with a fabrication of the events. He didn't do that. He purposely said something to Riker that let it be known that he had no intention of explaining himself in this situation

Why would he withhold the truth from his commanding officer? Because it was personal. It didn't have one damn thing to do with Starfleet, & therefore, none of their bloody business, what he was planning to do. "Perhaps something occurred during transport, Commander" Translation? "Mind your own damn business, Sir"

Freedom is life. Just ask Patrick Henry

 

So if you were writing the episode, what would you do? Would you have Data take the alternative, non-murder option and have him confine Fajo inside the escape pod? Or would you have Data's character say to himself, "Despite the presence of non-lethal options, I will kill this man"?

If you think that having a character act out of character is excellent writing, then you must love Star Trek 5.

 

As mentioned earlier, I think the situation Data was finding himself in was meant to and did incite personal growth. It's not out of character if the character changes, and if I tried I could probably build bridges from this episode to his behavior in later episodes. After all, having had this experience doesn't require him to be a serial killer subsequently, the lesson may have been more subtle than that.

 

Except there is no proof that he pushed the trigger. The only "fact" we have is that he looks like he's about to fire.

If that were the case, why does the emitter stay dormant?

 

Because the firing process doesn't get that far until the transport has already occurred. If Data had not been beamed out, we would have seen the emitter begin working.