So Data Becomes the Captain of Enterprise E?

While looking up information on the Emotion Chip related to another thread, I came across this:

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Emotion_chip

"The comic book series Star Trek: Countdown (a tie-in to the 2009 Star Trek film) and the timeline established for the Star Trek Online game establish that sometime prior to 2387, Geordi La Forge installed Data's emotion chip into B-4's neural net. This caused the uploads to B-4 by Data to fully reactivate, allowing Data's full memory and personality to assert itself, essentially resurrecting him. Starfleet decided to reinstate the android to service, and by 2387 Data had become captain of the USS Enterprise-E."

Yet a while back I remember reading something about Picard and crew gave up on B-4 and took him offline and that was it.

Is this comic book series considered Canon?

If so, then even though it was Data taking over B-4's body, wouldn't there be some complications due to B-4's more "Primitive" design or did they do a number of improvements/upgrades?

Maybe Data himself did some upgrades to his system??

Is there any other information revolving around this?

I know in Nemesis they did leave the story with the hint that Data never really died completely and that there was the chance of the above happening, thus a Spock resurrection.... so?

 

Generally, anything not presented in a series or a film is not considered canon. So according to canon, Data is dead.

 

Yet don't some novels end up as Canon?

As reference to Data's resurrection is in the Star Trek Online game, this comic book and a novel.... and since the TNG movies are finished off, plus Brent saying himself he doesn't want to do Data anymore due to his age, it does leave a lot of questions.

 

It depends on each individual fan whether books, games, comics are their personal canon, but not every fan is going to agree on the same thing.

 

The Countdown as well as the Ongoing comics are overseen and approved by Roberto Orci, so they are as close to canon as you can get. They might be overruled by events occuring in a future movie or tv show, but they definitely beat any of the other literature out there.

In other words: As long as nothing in a future movie or tv show contradicts Countdown, Data is Captain of the Enterprise!

 

Too bad Nero's backstory was left in the comic book. He would have been a much better character had it been in the movie.

Given B-4 humming Blue Skies at the end of Nemesis, I figured Data would come back inside him, since it was a blatant ripoff of the katra thing from Star Trek II. Had there been another TNG movie, no way Spiner bows out, wrinkles or no wrinkles.

 

^This. They clearly would've spackled the tinman up with some more gold paint to cover the aging & dumped a resurrection plot onto us, proving once again, that anything can happen to a Star Trek character and they come out of it just fine, if the interest is there for it

 

Data's death was so poorly written I'll accept any excuse to have him back alive. They went back in time and saved him at the last minute! They backed him up! He somehow survived the explosion and they found him floating years later! They went back in time, found his head in the mine and downloaded his memory and built a new Data!

Poorly written, tacked on, story inexplicable deaths of popular characters for shock value are made not to be acknowledged by fans.

Just like I prefer to think Luke's mother died of an actual medical condition instead of disappointment. Like, maybe Padme had an undiagnosed aneurism that happened to burst at that exact moment. Anything would be more satisfying than 'She was just so bummed Anakin was mean that her body said **** it I quit'.

 

The humming was a Spock-like "remember" trick, to give them a way to bring Data back if they wanted to.

I for one would be perfectly fine and happy with Data being dead and staying dead. Same with Trip on Enterprise. Spock made death a joke, a temporary inconvenience. Too many Trek characters come back from the dead. Data's death made sense for the arc of his story.

The online game and novels aren't canon, just the movies and TV series. So officially, Data is dead - or blown to bits, I guess.

 

A comic book tie-in is just that: a comic book. That particular comic also had so many inconsistencies between it and the actual film it was meant to be a "prequel" of, that it's hard for me to take it seriously other than as just a way to make a few more marketing dollars.

 

Heck, Countdown was overruled by events occurring in the very movie it was tied in with! Half the things happening to Nero in the comic backstory could never have happened to the guy we saw in the movie, due to there simply being no suitable timeslot in the movie events.

However, the Data bits aren't in open contradiction with anything much. Their only fault is the general silliness of the very concept of Data's return.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Data's return in any film or tv show would be simply fan service, and nothing more, except possibly offering Spiner enough money.

 

Gah... barely. At this point he's the most perfect expression of artificial life in their universe, not to mention one of the very few in existence. I find it hard to believe the most sensible conclusion to that is to voluntarily destroy it. The most sensible thing for his story arc would've been to have him be the father of a race, as Picard predicted in The Measure of a Man.

"New life & new civilizations"

 

No, it's not canon. It's not even been taken as such in the novels who have done a much better job of (sort of) ressurrecting Data.

 

Daniels whisks Data off the Scimitar just before it explodes and places him on the NX-01 just before the explosion there so he can save Trip.....

 

That's if you think Data's story was to be "the most perfect expression of artificial life."

My thought is that Data's story was about being human. That was his pursuit, that's what the strove for, from the beginning when he told Riker he was superior to humans, but would give it all up to be human.

Dying is human.

P.S. Besides, Data already came back from the dead at least once before, in Time's Arrow when they put his time-ravaged head back on his body.

Or do we want Trek to be a child's fantasy story where no one* ever, ever dies and everyone lives for ever and ever...
* not wearing a red shirt, or with a full name and portrayed by a known actor, or is part of the main cast

 

No.

 

While I agree with your view that his death was about being human.... a sacrifice of himself so that others may live.

But in regards to being a child's fantasy story where nobody ever dies..... for one thing, it is all just fantasy.

Secondly, the show is about the future, future technology, future philosophy, future medical breakthroughs.

The show already talks in great length about hunger & disease being taken care of, medical advances have increase human life expectancy into 100+.... and a bunch of other things people today can only really dream about and are indeed, mere fantasy.

As Data is machine, programming and software, him being able to be resurrected and restored seems more plausible than Spock being resurrected.

Spock's death was left open to interpretation at the time and people were assuming that STII was going to be the final ST movie.... and leaving it open brought a lot of demand for another one (AFAIK)

With Data, if they never bothered with the download into B-4, that would have been it, and everybody could easily accept that Data was gone forever..... but they did leave that in the movie and thus, left fans hanging with the unanswered question.

 

I hate Data beeing dead but I don´t like the handwaveish way he is ressurected in the comic. I think the novels handle his resurrection much better:

There getting Data back is actually hard and HAS consequences. Data is (and his friends too) as of yet still struggling with what this resurrection actually means. Even Data is not really sure who he exactly is.

 

I'd recommend David Mack's Cold Equations trilogy of novels to ANYONE who has an interest in Data.

It's superb...