Other Androids

[Mojochi]

We all know that TOS had featured other types of androids, of varying degrees of intelligence. We're expected to entertain the conceit that, for a number of reasons, Soong type androids were profoundly groundbreaking & unique. Perhaps the only ones capable of true sapience or as they called it sentience. However it's worded, they're apparently the only ones with comparable cognizance to a real person

So much so was the case, that TNG never even really mentioned the other types of androids that are out there, least of all the ones the viewers had already encountered. Would you have rather they had? That they'd come across other, perhaps lesser androids in their adventures, maybe try to explain how Data is different from say Mudd's androids or something?

Or was it best in your opinion that they kept them out of the lore, so to speak? (No pun intended lol)

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

Or was it best in your opinion that they kept them out of the lore, so to speak? (No pun intended lol)

I can't even come up with a response to that, because that last line was too good!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Dukhat]

Unless they were germane to the story being told, I'm not sure why TNG would need to bring up any instance of androids discovered a century before.

 

[matthunter]

This was addressed very throughly in the TNG novel (still available as an eBook) Immortal Coil, which focuses heavily on Data and also the theft of a new "Holotronic" android created by a team involving Bruce Maddox and a mysterious "former colleague" of Noonien Soong.

I'd highly recommend it. It gets an also good follow-up in the more recent post-Nemesis novel Persistence of Memory which is part of The Cold Equations trilogy.

Spoiler

The "colleague" turns out to be an alias of Flint (from the TOS ep Requiem for Methuselah, having actually lied to Kirk at the end of that ep that he was giving up his immortality. He backed Soong's research, hoping one day to create a more stable android companion than Rayna. This led them to the planet where Roger Korby discovered the androids of the Old Ones, and a disaster means some of those turn on them and get hold of starship tech - though they don't use it for some time. Soong was able to adapt the android scanning system to create his own synaptic scanner (that he used to create the Juliana android in the TNG ep Inheritance).

Flint, in disguise, works with Maddox (and Barclay) to create the holotronic android, but the Old One androids attempt to steal it in order to fix perceived flaws in their own design. The holotronic android disguises herself as the Ent-E's new Security Chief and begins a relationship with Data (who has his emotion chip at this point).

We are also introduced to a "club" of AIs created by lots of different societies who choose to interact with organics at different levels and have an interest in the new android as a possible member. One of these is masquerading as a bartender on the Enterprise (and might be intended to be the same bartender used in the TNG ep Lower Decks, I'm not sure).

Even M-5 gets a brief appearance!

 

[Alexander Corrino]

We all know that TOS had featured other types of androids, of varying degrees of intelligence. We're expected to entertain the conceit that, for a number of reasons, Soong type androids were profoundly groundbreaking & unique. Perhaps the only ones capable of true sapience or as they called it sentience. However it's worded, they're apparently the only ones with comparable cognizance to a real person

So much so was the case, that TNG never even really mentioned the other types of androids that are out there, least of all the ones the viewers had already encountered. Would you have rather they had? That they'd come across other, perhaps lesser androids in their adventures, maybe try to explain how Data is different from say Mudd's androids or something?

Or was it best in your opinion that they kept them out of the lore, so to speak? (No pun intended lol)

I believe this entire thing might be something of a victim of Gene's idea that TNG's connections to TOS should be as loose as possible. Obviously that viewpoint was relaxed somewhat - even in the pilot episode we literally have Leonard McCoy walking around AND the second episode is basically a sequel to a TOS episode - but he still wanted for TNG to stand on its own without continously drawing inspiration from TOS (I believe this, along with the whole "they are REPLACING KIRK NOW HOW DARE THEY" angle was one of THE things that riled up the TOS purists back in the day). Maybe this is why other androids went unmentioned on TNG.

 

[Mojochi]

^ Yeah, that's one of the main reasons a lot of TOS aliens got passed over on TNG too (Ahem, I'm looking at you Andorians) lol

 

[Kor]

Soong-type androids didn't seem to malfunction and have existential crises or systems crashes from confusing sensory input as much as androids that showed up in the 23rd century.

Kor

 

[Mojochi]

Soong-type androids didn't seem to malfunction and have existential crises or systems crashes from confusing sensory input as much as androids that showed up in the 23rd century.

Kor

Well... eventually

 

[gweeps]

Soong-type androids didn't seem to malfunction and have existential crises or systems crashes from confusing sensory input as much as androids that showed up in the 23rd century.

Kor

What about Lore?

 

[Mojochi]

What about Lore?

or B4, or the others. Soong had a ramp up for sure lol

 

[dupersuper]

We all know that TOS had featured other types of androids, of varying degrees of intelligence. We're expected to entertain the conceit that, for a number of reasons, Soong type androids were profoundly groundbreaking & unique. Perhaps the only ones capable of true sapience or as they called it sentience. However it's worded, they're apparently the only ones with comparable cognizance to a real person

So much so was the case, that TNG never even really mentioned the other types of androids that are out there, least of all the ones the viewers had already encountered. Would you have rather they had? That they'd come across other, perhaps lesser androids in their adventures, maybe try to explain how Data is different from say Mudd's androids or something?

Or was it best in your opinion that they kept them out of the lore, so to speak? (No pun intended lol)

I'd say that the androids from What Are Little Girls Made of were at least potentially sapient, but the I, Mudd androids were plenty simple. Needing a central node to operate and able to be nonsensed to malfunction. There were other non-humanoid sapient AI before Data like V'Ger as well. It'd be cool if they came up, but I never saw the Federation making a big deal about Data because he was the first sapient android they met, but because he was the first sapient android created by the Federation (a citizen in hiding, but still). Also the first sapient Federation AI besides M-5, who...was less than successful.

 

[Mojochi]

I'd say that the androids from What Are Little Girls Made of were at least potentially sapient, but the I, Mudd androids were plenty simple. Needing a central node to operate and able to be nonsensed to malfunction. There were other non-humanoid sapient AI before Data like V'Ger as well. It'd be cool if they came up, but I never saw the Federation making a big deal about Data because he was the first sapient android they met, but because he was the first sapient android created by the Federation (a citizen in hiding, but still). Also the first sapient Federation AI besides M-5, who...was less than successful.

That's a good point that I'll concede to. It's just that a lot of the language the D crew uses in reference to Data is meant to kind of color our take on him as unique, one of kind, strange & unknown. Granted, any storylines that came up seemed to always revolve around the potential of the tech, like Haftel wanting Lal. Despite his claim, he clearly wasn't thinking about her development. He was driven by getting his grubby little hands on the tech. The same with Maddox. So yeah, the implication is that Data is most notably special for the fact that humans have reached a point where their tech can achieve something heretofore impossible to them

 

[Oddish]

What I can't figure is that positron brains can't feel emotions, but programs inside perfectly ordinary ship/station computers (Moriarty, Vic, and Voyager's EMH) seem to generate them without effort.

 

[Mojochi]

What I can't figure is that positron brains can't feel emotions,

Except that they do, like all of them, all the time. Data is the only one where it was deliberately shut off/blocked/dialed down, or what have you, & even when he used his own to make Lal, she developed them too. The default is that they DO have emotions. Sometimes there's been problems, like Lore's, but they do have them

 

[at Quark's]

The way I figure Lore was better with emotions, but dangerously unstable. For that reason, and because probably people were afraid of androids that mimicked them too closely but still not perfectly (the uncanny valley), I think Soong chose to stay in 'safe' territory with Data.

 

[Orphalesion]

Interestingly, early scripts for TNG (when Data was still made by an unknown civilization) featured other androids. Like early drafts of Homesoil (I think it was home soil) had an early version of Minuet be an android of Data's kind who lived among humans, keeping her true nature hidden. She revealed it to Data during the episode.
I assume this was also before they decided on Data's makeup, or else Minuet probably had a more human-like design.

 

[Mojochi]

The way I figure Lore was better with emotions, but dangerously unstable. For that reason, and because probably people were afraid of androids that mimicked them too closely but still not perfectly (the uncanny valley), I think Soong chose to stay in 'safe' territory with Data.

I actually think Soong's Motus Operandi was to universally aim to have his androids be better than humans, stronger, faster, more acute/finely tuned, larger brain capacity, more durable, longer lasting etc...

So it kind of tracks that like everything else about his design, maybe Lore's emotions were overdesigned too, stronger, more sensitive, wider ranging etc...

And the fix for that was that Soong dialed all that back somehow, to allow Data time to learn better how to manage them. This really is how Spiner played it

If you evaluate the performance, Lore is always flying off the handle, overreacting, being consumed by varied feelings, erratically shifting from one emotional state to another. Perhaps in the very designing of his emotions to be greater than human, he, himself, inadvertantly made Lore to basically be a person with borderline personality disorder, or emotional dysregulation.

You'd think that if he could correct the flaw in the next model, then it surely would've been within his grasp to repair it in Lore. Lore was maybe designed to be a mad man, & Soong basically abandoned him

 

[at Quark's]

I actually think Soong's Motus Operandi was to universally aim to have his androids be better than humans, stronger, faster, more acute/finely tuned, larger brain capacity, more durable, longer lasting etc...

So it kind of tracks that like everything else about his design, maybe Lore's emotions were overdesigned too, stronger, more sensitive, wider ranging etc...

Interesting idea, but what would be the point of giving an android stronger emotions? As for the other features (stronger, faster, etc), the potential advantages are obvious. With stronger emotions, not su much (at least, to me). More sensitive emotions, perhaps, yes.

 

[Mojochi]

I suppose saying he was trying to make stronger emotions might not be accurate. I guess think of it as trying to make a superior emotional system, that could have gone off the rails, & ended up with it being profoundly elevated in nature.

So it's another "trying to make better people" cautionary tale

 

[JoseNoodles]

I do wonder whatever happened to the various androids models from TOS and what influence if any they made have had on Soong family's or Maddox's research. I mean the golem tech seems derivative of the stuff from Exo III and Sargon's people, transferring or copying consciousness into an android body. The Andromedan androids seem like an intermediate step between basic non-sentient androids seen at Utopia Planetia and Soong-type androids. Also, wouldn't those Andromedan androids still be active in the 24th century? As the last living representatives of an extinct civilization, I would think that would entitle them to some sort of protection.