We don't know what the process entailed. If could have been easy or it could have been complex. All we have are two panels of page 9 of Countdown Part Two to go by and it doesn't say anything about the procedure.
We have logic. We have what
Nemesis established about B-4. That film made it very clear that B-4 was far too crude to process Data's memories. The logical conclusion is that bringing Data back through B-4 would be anything but a simple process.
This is why you're arguing backward. You're treating
Countdown as the definitive source from which all other argument springs. But it isn't.
Nemesis is the definitive source of information on the character of B-4.
Nemesis establishes the "facts" about the character.
Countdown is a non-canonical interpretation whose portrayal of the Data/B-4 issue is problematical because it disregards the facts and logic established in the movie. If a tie-in overlooks or fudges something that was established in canon, why should the fudge be treated as more authoritative than the canonical information?
On the topic of your ethical dilemma, I'm not sure I completely agree. Consider that the mind of Spock on the Genesis Planet may have been blank, but he lived for several days before being rejoined with his katra. What happened to that mind? Were they merged with our Spock upon the rejoining?
That's a valid point, but I'm speaking in terms of what the films themselves made a point of establishing. TSFS made a point of including the line "His mind's a void" precisely in order to suggest that those ethical questions did not apply. But NEM made a point of establishing B-4 as a distinct entity with his own awareness, however limited. So the evident intent of the filmmakers was different. (The hinted possibility of Data's memories returning within B-4 was inserted at studio insistence; the intent of the script was that the attempt to put Data's memories into B-4
failed due to B-4's intrinsic limitations.)
Lastly, it is a fact. It is a fact in terms of what happened in that story. This topic is talking about that story and Star Trek Online (which, coincidentally, tells us how Data's resurrection happens and how much of a complex procedure it would have been) being incorporated into Pocket's continuity. If they adhered to the Countdown story, then it's be a fact in that storyline and explained somehow.
Key word,
if. You and I are defining "fact" in two different ways here. Yes, it is a fact that there is a comic book called
Countdown that postulates Data's resurrection. But since the comic is non-canonical, that is not a "fact" within the
Star Trek universe, only a conjecture. It doesn't have to be a "fact" within the continuity of Pocket Books.
And even if Pocket did conform to
Countdown's continuity, I sincerely hope the book in question wouldn't ignore the precedent of
Nemesis and treat B-4's transformation into Data 2.0 as something simple and straightforward, because that would be lazy and simplistic. And I sincerely hope it wouldn't be treated as something "just like" Spock's resurrection, because that would be lazy and imitative. It's not so much the possibility of Data's return that I'm objecting to here; though I'd rather not see it happen, I can see the possibility of telling the story in an engaging and challenging way. What I object to more is the assertion that it should be seen as no different from Spock's resurrection. We've already seen that story, so why do it again?
