I think that there is something missing in this interpretation. The Data that we see in the recent episode was already incomplete in terms of consciousness. He was an imperfect recreation of Data based upon incomplete memories and available technology. The encounter allowed Picard to make peace with Data's death, but Data was already aware that he could not continue as he did at the time of his death.
It's explicitly said that "Data's entire code, even his memories, could be reconstituted from a single positronic neuron." The suicide pact is also phrased entirely in terms of being something Data asks for, not about Picard making peace.
Okay, my English is not perfect. Didn't they say something about that all the memories of Data could be (1st conversation with Jurati) and were (last episode) restored from the single neuron? With all due respect I also want to remind that human memory is very imperfect. We lose big parts of our memories everyday staying the same persons. I knew a man who was badly hurted in a road accident, he couldn't remember his own name and his family. Should doctors and family don't fight for his life and restoring of his memory? Edited: Thank you for the reference!
Data's memories were taken from B4 at the time they were downloaded. They were not complete to the time of his death, and arguably, they could not be complete because of B4's limitations. Then they were brought back to consciousness. Data's life was not complete nor continuous.
Arguably it was his lifelong wish. For Data to die it would mean he was finally human as he clearly expressed in Time's Arrow: I think this scene is a great prelude to the Picard Data scene in Et in Arcadia Ego 2
Data was as "dead" as Picard was. Which is to say, he was perfectly capable of walking out of there into a functional mortal body. He says right in that scene that realization of mortality is ONE STEP toward being human. By the time of "Ego," he'd taken that step long ago. You know, death isn't a uniquely human experience. Trillions and trillions of other things do it: Vulcans, cats, flowers, bacteria. I don't think dying has ever made anything human that wasn't already human. If Data had committed suicide by caving his own head in on Terlina, rather than by proxy in Ghulion, I have a hard time imagining Noonian clapping his hands and saying, "Finally! Fully human!"
Data in the simulation was missing some memories but so what? They were all missing weeks of memories from multiple episodes of TNG where they get memory wiped of certain events. It seems like people may be understandably uncomfortable with what happened so the interpretation becomes that it wasnt 100% Data that chose to die.
The big difference being that Data had been gone for 20 years. Also, there was some arguable discontinuity in his quantum afterlife. I was under the impression that his consciousness was effectively "revived" at some point by Maddox and Soong harvesting B4's neural net. We don't know that. You and some others are assuming that it would work like that.
I'm sure that if it's a big deal, some line of dialogue could be inserted down the road that says that the golem was only fit to operate with human neural inputs. Would that satisfy you?
To be honest, when I was a kid, I was attracted to the toys, cool looking ships, cool looking aliens and characters of Star Trek rather than some weird vision of hope for the future. I mean if you want, they're releasing a cartoon Trek.
Ditto. And i don't even know anyone who was into this "Optimistic utopian vision of Roddenberrys" They liked the great stories and characters. TOS Roddenberry and TNG Roddenberry are two completely different people. And his TNG vision sucked and hurt the show.
Edit: Oh and the Roddenberry between TOS and TNG? Made a number of interesting (to a 70s kid) sci-fi pilots but they were ultimately failures.
Hello there! Actually I never found it "utopian". The best thing they did was a try to show a new society where economics is working for interests of majority and the most rewarded career is to serve people. Actually every time when things go wrong in reality (I mean coronavirus that time), many people are starting to feel that this type of society has an advance in compare with modern. Maybe there is a point where I should stop. My opinion could be very irrelevant by reason I am actual Pavel Chekov compatriot.
When it comes to the swearing and the violence, I’m working with the premise that the Dominion War changed things. A lot. There’s even an embrace of money in Trek, that goes beyond gold pressed latinum. And I think that’s the point. Its supposed to be different from mid 24th century Trek utopia. Even Picard was remarking to Riker in Insurrection how they use to be explorers. And that was before Star Trek went off the air for over a decade. The utopia present from TOS to TNG isn’t around anymore, or at least has fallen on some hard times. And PIC is about getting back to that Star Trek.
I gave up on Star Trek as a Thing for the same reason I gave up on Marvel Comics about ten years ago: the people now in charge of it simply don't understand what it's supposed to be. Agree 100% with the OP. TOS, TAS, and TNG will always be great to go back to, but until someone who understands and loves the basic concept is back in charge, modern Trek is dead to me. Babylon 5 showed what could be done, as did (to a lesser extent) the SciFi Channel's version of Battlestar Galactica.
I am somewhat with the OP, although recognizing that tastes have changed. A revamped version of TNG would likely strike a modern audience as being hokey, like Boy Scouts. Which, by the way, filed for bankruptcy last month. What worries me is that Picard would seem to be the best hope for a lighter tone. Disco we already know about. A Georgiou show of course would be darker. Ditto for a Seven of Nine show, should it come to that. I mean, I am OK with dark and cynical, but I also like a change of flavors.