News Brent Spiner Returned for "Picard" (and you could do the CGI better in 15 minutes, we get it)

Sure. Once we have a "rumors" tag.

 

I had the same thought. It worked for Clu in the last Tron movie - although, they messed it up by using it for young Flynn in the first scene, should have saved the full frontal for just Clu.

 

No, because then the average viewer wouldn't know who Clu is, or why he looks like a young Jeff Bridges.

 

Samuel L Jackson had 25 minutes of screen time in Captain Marvel and it was flawless through out. In fact, the only place where Marvel's CGI deaging has failed my eye was a few, brief seconds of Clark Gregg in CM, and I doubt it will bother me on small screen.

 

never know, this wasn't true either this one was allegedly debunked, then it came as a shock to the people who bought into it, can't really write much of anything off at this point

 

You know, despite his age, it wouldn't take much creative makeup to give Spiner the Data look from the movies. I think he'd be fine reprising the role.

 

Exactly. What's more human than ageing? Of course he would want that. If he can grow a beard (S1), and get gray hair just so he could be the distinguished Prof. Skunk of Cambridge (AGT), he can certainly age his skin.

 

B9? I think that was the original pun name from Nemesis. But they ended up using B4.

 

Spiner will at the very least do a voice over cameo on this show. There's no way they're not going to capitalise on Data's popularity in some sort of way.

But we have to remember Data died years ago. It's easier to explain he's dead than explain how he came back to life. I'm not sure that's in their plans given what we know about the series so far. It's Picard's story.

 

No, the whole point of the final scene in Nemesis -- with B4 whistling -- was that Data is still alive. He undoubtedbly would have been back to normal in the next film, had it been made. It's identical to the final scene of TWOK where the soft-landed torpedo was meant to tell us "Hey, Spock's gonna be OK!".

 

But that never happened. TNG and Data ended right there. This show is about Picard. There's no way Data's resurrection is going to be touched on, at least in the first season. It's too convuluted and will detract from the Picard story. How many people, even Trek fans, saw Nemesis? How many even remember Data died? They could just as easily have him waltz on screen with no explanation and very few people would blink an eye. Obviously the hardcore fans would riot but either way Data would be a distraction for many reasons. It's only 10 episodes. Let it be it's own thing for now.

 

Thats’s actually the likeliest way they would do it. Have him appear as Data but add a throw away line about his physical appearance, to which his reply would be “B4’s aging protocol...” have him be interrupted, done.

 

I'm not arguing that Data must be in Picard and must overshadow Stewart. You're misinterpreting that. I'm simply saying that Data didn't die, which was your assertion. EndOfLine

 

Spiner also had a semi re-occurring guest spot in Stewarts last show, Blunt Talk. I'm sure Stewart would love to have him pop up in this show.

 

Data did die. I saw it happen. don't tell me it didn't happen
Anyhow, what B4 is/would be/could be was going to be explored in movies past Nemesis. Well, that didn't happen. STP is not a sequel to Nemesis, nor is it a sequel to TNG. Do they need to continue any of the threads from TNG or TNG-movie era? No. Will they address some open questions or issues from that era? More likely than not. Do they need to explicitly say what happened with B4? Not at all.

 

Maybe not "zero TNG references and guest stars", but I don't think it needs to have too many references to TNG.

Put it this way, Picard almost certainly did a lot of previous things, and had a half a lifetime of past experiences, leading up to him being in a position to be the the captain of the Enterprise D. However, TNG only gave us a few details about his past; we got a little detail about the Stargazer, what led to his artificial heart, his estrangement from his brother, and maybe a few other minor details.

TNG was mostly about the present time in which TNG took place, and mostly (with a few exceptions) about the present state of the main characters.

So similarly, I don't think the Picard shows needs to refer back to TNG too much. A few references are inevitable, but I think the stories taking place in 80-year old Picard's present life should be mostly about his present life, not his past.

 

Since there is a lot of Data talk here - I have a burning question that either I am incorrect or don't understand why couldn't be a plot device.

Isn't Lore's body sitting in storage? Couldn't Data's programming be offloaded from the prototype B4 (who's less advanced matrix that isn't capable of handling data's advancements) and uploaded into the Lore body (giving him essentially a near identical positronic matrix and abilities as the original Data).

Am I incorrect in that the last we saw of Lore his body was stored?

 

It's not clear why they couldn't just use a 3-D printer/replicator to make a new Data body even without using the Lore body. But the aging issue for Data is an easy one as others have said. He just decided to add aging. Or he decided to complete the Borg Queens skin transfer idea and give himself living flesh.

 

CBS never officially commented this picture IIRC. The guy who took it said "Maybe they're not Klingons" later on, but that's it.