Would you serve under Data?

[Mojochi]

The thing about Data, is he will go rogue or insane when something goes wrong or his circuits get fried or an alien probe downloads a bunch of masks with personalities into him. Granted, most of that has similar analogues with humanoids but it seems to happen more often with Mr. Data. Gotta have a rock solid first officer at the very least

But does it happen more often, relevant to ALL the humanoid incidents, on the whole? Data's nature is unique aboard ship. If more androids were aboard, the occurrences might be more dispersed, as they are with humanoids. Hell, in The Game, the every single occupant aboard is compromised, like 1000 people

Troi's extra sensory nature has made her almost as frequently susceptible to compromise as Data, because she's seemingly the only one, or among very few too. I maintain that Data is no more a statistical risk for compromise than humanoids. The only issue is the severity of how badly things have gone when he is compromised, vs when humanoids are, and a lot of that can be compensated for, as I'm absolutely sure they did, after Brothers.

Some folks don't care for Descent, but one thing it did get right was to illustrate just how much less havoc a compromised Data poses, to overall ship operations this time. It goes unnoticed, but if Lore had gained the kind of access that Data showed in Brothers, things would've been much worse. Clearly, changes were made that prevented such a risk ever happening that way again.

Data gets compromised & the worst he could do, right then, was snag a craft & abscond with the Borg prisoner. No hijacking the ship, impersonating Picard, locking everyone out of the computer, & using the whole damn ship against the crew... on top of possessing superhuman attributes himself.

So, to the OP's point, yes, I'd be fine serving under Captain Data. He certainly deserves the recognition of that post as a much as anyone. Although I'd expect that his unique nature & vulnerabilities would need to be taken into account, maybe even more so than when he's held 2nd or 3rd officer status.

 

[Crazyewok]

No, anymore than I would under toaster.

 

[DonIago]

Some folks don't care for Descent, but one thing it did get right was to illustrate just how much less havoc a compromised Data poses, to overall ship operations this time. It goes unnoticed, but if Lore had gained the kind of access that Data showed in Brothers, things would've been much worse. Clearly, changes were made that prevented such a risk ever happening that way again.

Data gets compromised & the worst he could do, right then, was snag a craft & abscond with the Borg prisoner. No hijacking the ship, impersonating Picard, locking everyone out of the computer, & using the whole damn ship against the crew... on top of possessing superhuman attributes himself.

I'm not sure it's reasonable to assume that what Data does in "Descent" is the worst he could do at the time.

 

[cooleddie74]

He's a competent, eminently skilled officer with numerous Starfleet decorations and medals. I definitely wouldn't mind since his track record is superior to that of many other officers.

 

[Mojochi]

I'm not sure it's reasonable to assume that what Data does in "Descent" is the worst he could do at the time.

Well, there's certainly nothing said or shown that would make it a given, or anything more than my own head canon, but I don't find it a terribly unreasonable theory, considering the objectives of Lore & the Borg. Hijacking Data & having him leave with the imprisoned Borg would obviously provoke a search party, which could be prevented by disabling the ship or crew while he was still on board, were he to possess that ability still. Maybe they wanted to lure everyone to the surface for capture, but they had no idea what kind of party would be sent, & plenty could've remained.

Not disabling the ship also leaves it in play against their vessel as well, which I guess they could've considered insignificant, but why bother with a definite battle engagement, when Data could disable or lockout the ship, as easily as he did in Brothers?

But most prominently, given his past dealings with them, I really doubt Starfleet would've been silent about what he did in Brothers, unintentional or otherwise. Even exonerated, I'd think there'd be no way in hell they'd ever let him serve again, had they not at least implemented safeguards, which assured that every last thing he did (which no one else had ever had the ability to do before) and maybe even some other grim potentialities he posed a unique threat of, could never happen to them again. Some of 'em don't even like him having rights. They'd be very vocal about him having unchecked threat potential.

I at least like to think he left rather uneventfully in Descent because he was deliberately not afforded as much opportunity to cripple them, as before. Lore certainly wants to cripple or destroy them, & Data is being manipulated by him in that moment. It'd make sense he didn't, largely because they've seen to it that he can't as easily now.

 

[DonIago]

My interpretation has been that while whatever was going on stirred up (negative) emotions in Data, it didn't compromise him (at the time) to the point where he would take unnecessary actions to harm his crewmates. That came later (and unfortunately off-screen).

 

[MurphyCooper]

Assuming that in Universe I had the qualifications to serve, I definitely would serve under Data.

 

[Qonundrum]

In one episode Picard and Riker are temporarily absent and Picard has left Data in command of the Enterprise.
Worf seems a bit unhappy about this (perhaps he feels passed over, possibly because HE wanted to be in command) and mumbles something under his breath that is slightly critical of Data, so Data takes him into the ready room to reprimand him and Worf backs down.
I'm on Worf's side because to me "Mister" Data is nothing more than a computer on legs and rather than serve under it, i'd request a transfer to another ship.
Am I being over-sensitive or what?

Nope, I prefer men to machines... (Really, lick the wrong power socket and now one's BBQ.)






In seriousness, maybe as exemplified in the season 7 story where he feels like an accessible and reasoned surrogate for Picard. But in the season 5 opener, remove the hokey plot armor and contrived proceedings and Data wouldn't have lasted very long, and you'd think he'd still "emulate emotions" for any number of scenes after that story except it's more of the same "I am an android", so we know that story was fudging things. Every other hero captain in TOS and spinoffs were still using traits Data wasn't. Season 5 set the stage for so many contrivances and ridiculous last-minute explanations, so it's not just Data coming across inauthentically... Now if a TNG episode aped Dirty Harry and Dirty Data states "A good man always knows his limitations.", things could have been more interesting, unless he upended Picard the way Wesley was scripted in season 1 to upend everyone else. Underrated movie, though, and it's got Andrew Robinson showing just how damn good of an actor he can be as he really nails the chilling nature of Scorpio in what is a multifaceted storyline on top of multifaceted characterizations... but it's deservedly rated R...

 

[seti alpha]

I’d be intimidated AF working for Data. ‘Oh no, he asked me to do something, and I know he could have done it perfectly in a tenth the time it took him to explain it to my dumb ass…’

 

[FederationHistorian]

Yes I would.