All this stuff is easily looked up online. Producers have zero excuses nowadays not to keep some kind of consistency.
Data ages according to TNG "Inheritance "...episode
- Thread starter Dar70
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All this stuff is easily looked up online. Producers have zero excuses nowadays not to keep some kind of consistency.
It was a throwaway line that’s not even mentioned in the Memory Alpha article about the episode. Fans know far more about consistency than producers do.
Indeed. They can look it up... if it occurs to them. Someone won't look something up if it doesn't occur to them.
Those damn staff writers who were hired from the human race. What the Hell was HR thinking?
Furthermore: the idea that Data -- as an android -- could age was stupid. Certain things deserve to be ignored. It was just a way to rationalize Brent Spiner looking older because there was no way around it. Star Trek in the early-'90s was at the point where they thought suspending disbelief was too much to ask of the audience, so they had to come up with all kinds of bullshit explanations for everything.
When I re-watched TNG last year, I noticed how the technobabble multiplied during the sixth season and then exponentially so during the seventh (I could see the seeds of what would become VOY being planted right there). This was the time when they got carried away, and explaining away Brent Spiner's aging was a byproduct of that.
Even Brent Spiner knew this type of cop-out rationale was disingenuous and he didn't want to play an old-looking android. He already thought he looked too old by NEM. That's why he held the line when it came to PIC. He was willing to play another character, which is why we have Altan Soong now, but he didn't want Data to be revived in the "flesh", for lack of a better term.
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Right. It's not like they're on some sort of schedule or anything.
Just like him having functional junk is stupid. And hair growth. And him visibly breathing, and having a pulse. So stupid.
Not the same thing. In "A Matter of Time" Data was wondering if he would still be alive in the 26th Century. If he aged like a normal human, he wouldn't be wondering about that. He'd be dead. If Data aged, he wouldn't think about whether or not he would live forever like he wonders about it in "Time's Arrow, Part I". The entire point of the conversation he has with Geordi in Ten Forward is that he can now look forward to death. If he aged, he would know that he could look forward to death. "Inheritance" having him age is a retcon.
Data can try to approximate being human but he'll never get it 100%. He looks human. That's not the same as being human. Soong made him appear lifelike. But that doesn't mean he didn't make him better. That means stronger, faster, and living longer.
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Then a 200-year-old android who'd choose to look 200 would be interesting...
No, the point is not being misunderstood. There are only three options here:
1. Data ages like a human.
2. Data doesn’t age at all.
3. Data has a program that allows him to age if he so desires.
While option 3 isn’t out of the realm of possibility, the evidence throughout TNG and in real-life points to option 2 as the correct one. The only reason why option 1 is even being entertained is because of that one-off line of dialogue in ‘Inheritance.’
Who here is arguing for option 1?
Yeah, nobody said ‘ages like a human,’ but the whole point of the line is that Tainer ages like a human, and Data was used as an example of this happening. So you might need to be spoon-fed the context, but I don’t. What did you think the OP meant when he titled this thread “Data ages according to ‘Inheritance?”
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...? Neither of those supports your claim in any way.
"Aging like human" would be something Data would be very hard pressed to observe during the run of TNG anyway. Spiner doesn't age during TNG, about 0.47 wrinkles notwithstanding. And his character can be "supposed" to age like Spiner, or faster, or slower, as is usual for all Hollywood characters; Indiana Jones never aged during the first three films, either. Heroes in their prime just plain don't have their hairlines recede, no matter what the screen tells us; basically, then, they themselves should be unable to notice any aging going on, too.
Timo Saloniemi
"Aging like human" would be something Data would be very hard pressed to observe during the run of TNG anyway. Spiner doesn't age during TNG, about 0.47 wrinkles notwithstanding. And his character can be "supposed" to age like Spiner, or faster, or slower, as is usual for all Hollywood characters; Indiana Jones never aged during the first three films, either. Heroes in their prime just plain don't have their hairlines recede, no matter what the screen tells us; basically, then, they themselves should be unable to notice any aging going on, too.
Timo Saloniemi
Yes they do, but I’m not about to argue with a serial contrarian.
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