As all TNG fans know, Data's tv series arc of trying to achieve emotions reached a dramatic conclusion in Generations when he finally installed his emotions chip, although Data's initial inability to handle them indirectly caused the destruction of the Enterprise NCC-1701-D (experiencing fear facing Soran allowed the capture and compromise of chief engineer Geordi, which resulted in the Duras sisters bypassing the Enterprise shields).
After Generations, there are mentions of Data's emotions (He says "To hell with our orders" in First Contact, and the Borg later try to use Data's emotions to corrupt him to join them). Otherwise, however, Data takes out his chip in Insurrection and there is no mention of it in Nemesis. For all of the anticipation regarding Data's life-long goal of gaining emotions, it seems once he actually has them he either often turns them off or takes out the chip quite frequently (there is some mild foreshadowing of this when Data demands of Picard in Generations: "Sir! I no longer want these emotions! Deactivating me is the only viable solution.")
What happened? (Other than the likely real-life reason that the movie writers wanted to maintain audience familiarity with the non-emotional Data of the tv series).
One thing I noticed was that the early years of Data's having emotions corresponded with the Dominion War (the war starts in 2373, the year of First Contact, and ends in 2375, some time after Insurrection).
We don't know from canon what exactly the Enterprise E crew, and Data in particular, were doing during the war, although some non-canon licensed works have delved into this. We can assume though that, the Enterprise E being the flagship and Data being a prominent Starfleet officer, Data likely was on the front-lines of some horrifying Dominion War battles with massive casualties and injuries to friends and fellow officers.
Even if Data had the emotion chip turned off during actual combat, he would still feel the emotional fallout of the battles once he reactivated the chip (the way in Generations his emotions reacted to jokes said years before the chip installation, like the Farpoint joke). Data, being relatively new to having emotions to begin with, might be even more vulnerable to emotional trauma caused by war than other Starfleet veterans would be.
Considering real world combat often severely emotionally damages real world soldiers and causes PTSD, could Data also have suffered an android form of PTSD from the Dominion War (that caused him to regularly keep the emotion chip turned off)?
If so, it would explain why he hardly ever used the emotion chip during the TNG movie timeframe (which ran mostly concurrently with the Dominion War). What are others' thoughts on this?
A separate question I had, very tangentially related, was why the Borg in First Contact didn't deactivate Data's ethical subroutines to try to corrupt him? Lore and his Borg faction were able to easily deactivate the ethical subroutine in the episodes 'Descent', parts 1 and 2, and the combination of this with emotions turned Data into a villain cackling at mutilating Geordi in experiments. I can only assume that, sometime after Descent and in horror of what he almost did to Geordi, Data massively upgraded the security around his ethical subroutines to make deactivating them nearly impossible. (The Doctor in Voyager mentions he planned to do this after recovering from the incident where the crew of the renegade USS Equinox deactivated his ethical protocols to force him to experiment on Seven of Nine in 'Equinox').
After Generations, there are mentions of Data's emotions (He says "To hell with our orders" in First Contact, and the Borg later try to use Data's emotions to corrupt him to join them). Otherwise, however, Data takes out his chip in Insurrection and there is no mention of it in Nemesis. For all of the anticipation regarding Data's life-long goal of gaining emotions, it seems once he actually has them he either often turns them off or takes out the chip quite frequently (there is some mild foreshadowing of this when Data demands of Picard in Generations: "Sir! I no longer want these emotions! Deactivating me is the only viable solution.")
What happened? (Other than the likely real-life reason that the movie writers wanted to maintain audience familiarity with the non-emotional Data of the tv series).
One thing I noticed was that the early years of Data's having emotions corresponded with the Dominion War (the war starts in 2373, the year of First Contact, and ends in 2375, some time after Insurrection).
We don't know from canon what exactly the Enterprise E crew, and Data in particular, were doing during the war, although some non-canon licensed works have delved into this. We can assume though that, the Enterprise E being the flagship and Data being a prominent Starfleet officer, Data likely was on the front-lines of some horrifying Dominion War battles with massive casualties and injuries to friends and fellow officers.
Even if Data had the emotion chip turned off during actual combat, he would still feel the emotional fallout of the battles once he reactivated the chip (the way in Generations his emotions reacted to jokes said years before the chip installation, like the Farpoint joke). Data, being relatively new to having emotions to begin with, might be even more vulnerable to emotional trauma caused by war than other Starfleet veterans would be.
Considering real world combat often severely emotionally damages real world soldiers and causes PTSD, could Data also have suffered an android form of PTSD from the Dominion War (that caused him to regularly keep the emotion chip turned off)?
If so, it would explain why he hardly ever used the emotion chip during the TNG movie timeframe (which ran mostly concurrently with the Dominion War). What are others' thoughts on this?
A separate question I had, very tangentially related, was why the Borg in First Contact didn't deactivate Data's ethical subroutines to try to corrupt him? Lore and his Borg faction were able to easily deactivate the ethical subroutine in the episodes 'Descent', parts 1 and 2, and the combination of this with emotions turned Data into a villain cackling at mutilating Geordi in experiments. I can only assume that, sometime after Descent and in horror of what he almost did to Geordi, Data massively upgraded the security around his ethical subroutines to make deactivating them nearly impossible. (The Doctor in Voyager mentions he planned to do this after recovering from the incident where the crew of the renegade USS Equinox deactivated his ethical protocols to force him to experiment on Seven of Nine in 'Equinox').
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