Any mention of Data in post-Nemesis novels?
- Thread starter Danoz
- Start date
Data is, of course, only referred to in the past tense in post-NEM novels. B-4 appears briefly in TNG: Resistance, in which he's shipped off to the Daystrom Institute for study, and is featured in a subplot in Articles of the Federation, in which the Federation Council rules on the question of his sentience. The latter is alluded to in TNG: Greater Than the Sum.
Will and Deanna talk about Data in the newest Titan book.
I just hope the don't pull the Countdown stunt and make Data come back through B4. Not only would it make his heroic sacrifice in Nemesis lose all value, but the moral complications of sacrificing one sentient being over another would be enormous. Even if he's "slow" by human standards, B4 is still a sentient being ,and should have the same rights Data had.
i don't. i liked him in the shows, but i got sick of his pursuit of humanity by NEM. he stopped being interesting after FC for me.
on screen.
he was okay in ATT.
on screen.
he was okay in ATT.
Well, the fact that both Insurrection and Nemesis sucked donkey balls probably had something to do with that.
I was going to comment on that, but then I thought about it in the context of a larger discussion of the Trek movies, so I ended up writing an essay on my blog.
Actually, in Insurrection, Data didn't take the emotion chip with him on the mission, but after they captured him, he clearly had it again, most obvious in the scene where Riker compares his shaved face to an Android's bottom, and Data touches his face, and shakes his head smiling.
^That's not a smile, it's an expression of skepticism -- "Nahh, I don't buy it."
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/insurrection/ch8/insurrection0427.jpg
And it's within the range of expressiveness Spiner always employed even when Data was supposed to be emotionless. He never played Data totally affectless, since that would've been dull.
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/insurrection/ch8/insurrection0427.jpg
And it's within the range of expressiveness Spiner always employed even when Data was supposed to be emotionless. He never played Data totally affectless, since that would've been dull.
I'm pretty certain that he surely would have never done such a thing in the show without the emotion chip. That's the kind of casual behavior he had since Generations.
He would have in the first two seasons, when he was much more expressive.
One can quibble about such incidental details, but the point I made in my essay was that the emotion chip as a device for character growth was abandoned by INS. If the question of Data's emotional awareness in that movie is reduced to analyzing the nuances of Brent Spiner's facial expressions -- and if there's no consensus among viewers about whether they represent emotion or not -- that in itself proves my point that the writers abandoned the emotion chip as a significant factor in Data's characterization.
But why else would he say: "Saddle up... LOCK AND LOAD!"
And speaking B4 elswhere in this thread...not sure if this would be better off in the Synthesis thread, but on this topic...
Am I the only one that read White-Blue's potential inclusion in the Titan crew an obvious hook for "fixing" B4 and having Data return Countdown-style?
I mean, seriously...White-Blue basically made the ship sentient...any takers on White-Blue being unable to "reprogram" B4 with Data's personality (ethical considerations aside obviously)?
I mean, seriously...White-Blue basically made the ship sentient...any takers on White-Blue being unable to "reprogram" B4 with Data's personality (ethical considerations aside obviously)?
Q&A makes references to Data...as does the book Resistance, I believe.
1. B-4 is presently on Galor IV in the custody of the Daystrom Institute. How on Earth could he be moved aboard the Titan, which is hundreds of light-years away deep in the Beta Quadrant in unexplored space?
2. The novels have made it clear that part of the problem with B-4 is that his hardware just isn't sophisticated enough to run the complex software that made up Data's mind. It would be like trying to run Snow Leonard on a Macintosh 128K.
3. WHY would they bring Data back? He's gone. If they had wanted to bring him back, they would have used the plot device that NEM gave them rather than nullifying that plot device.
2. The novels have made it clear that part of the problem with B-4 is that his hardware just isn't sophisticated enough to run the complex software that made up Data's mind. It would be like trying to run Snow Leonard on a Macintosh 128K.
3. WHY would they bring Data back? He's gone. If they had wanted to bring him back, they would have used the plot device that NEM gave them rather than nullifying that plot device.
Certainly not because he grew as a person.
In reality, because he's one of the most popular characters in the movies and so the filmmakers want to give him crowd-pleasing lines whether they make sense or not. In-universe, because Data never needed an emotion chip to engage in cutesy emulations of human idioms and quirks. It was just part of his attempt to imitate human behavior. He was always able to create the surface illusion of emotion even when he didn't feel it, as when he played Sherlock Holmes or Henry V, or in "Redemption" where he raised his voice to his first officer to get him to obey orders.
