Spoilers Data's legacy: Picard S1 vs Cold Equations vs others

[F. King Daniel]

With season one of Picard all done and the dust settling, I'm curious what people think of it's treatment of Data post-Nemesis compared to how the Novelverse (specifically Cold Equations, Available Light etc), various comics (Countdown, Waypoint and Hive all bring back Data in various ways) things like Star Trek Online's The Needs of the Many?

Data 2.0 being reborn, having resurrected Lal and being involved with the alliance of AI's in the novelverse was fascinating. I really liked that he got as close to a happily ever after as anyone in the novelverse could. And I loved Waypoint #1's elseworld future story where LaForge commands the Enterprise with a crew of mostly holographic Datas. That said, I loved what Picard season one did too, and especially the final scene where Picard got to say goodbye to the dear friend (or rather, a copy of his memories existing in a simulated construct), and move on from the shadow that had hung over him for almost 2 decades.

How does everyone else think they all compare?

 

[Kilana2]

I prefer the novelverse future of Data. Didn't like the Picard future where AI's are prohibited. With all the Maddox stuff involved, killing off an important character with only little screen time.
I like the Cold Equations version of Data - not being in Staarfleet anymore but still friends with the Enterprise crew. It's a different Data and a different Picard who is still Captain of the Enterprise.

 

[Christopher]

I prefer the novelverse future of Data. Didn't like the Picard future where AI's are prohibited.

Spoiler: Picard finale

They aren't anymore.

 

[USS Firefly]

I like the new Trek shows DISC and Picard, but It dont stand a chance against the novels

 

[Kilana2]

Okay, they were prohibited. Picard had other stuff I liked, also things I disliked. It was said that Data is a litverse character who should be used carefully. I agree. Last time I read about Data it was in Section 31 - Control. I loved his interactions with Lal. I would like to see Lal in an encounter with Soji!

 

[Ronald Held]

Another vote for the novelverse Data.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

I honestly kinda liked Picard’s take better over the Litverse. I’m in general opposed to resurrection narratives - death is permanent, and it often feels like this allows people to “reset” the board, go back to the way things were, rather than allow the death of characters to have weight and significance. Picard showed Data’s death having weight and relevance for the characters and being a thing that is part of the human experience even with the whole element of the golem at the end of the season, they made a point that it wasn’t going to last forever, treating it more like a heart transplant for a fifty/sixty year old than a lasting stay of execution.

I’m glad the novels didn’t just snap Data back to Starfleet or something like that, but I like the Picard approach a little more.

 

[rfmcdpei]

My personal headcanon is that, since Trek has been explicitly established as a multiverse, televised Trek coexists with the litverse in said.

It is not begging the question, I think, to say that the different approaches each have their benefits. It was great to have Data back in the litverse, with Lal even; it was great for Picard to have one last reunion with his dear friend in Picard.

 

[rfmcdpei]

On reflection, what the two approaches had in common was their revisiting and partial revision of Data's end in Nemesis.

• In Picard, it was possible to restore Data from backup, but full restoration for whatever reason was not possible. He did stay around long enough to give a final goodbye to Picard.
• In Cold Equations, it was possible to fully restore Data from backup to a new physical form, if one that different enough from his old form to give him complicated questions of identity.

Thinking about what led to the divergences, it seems clear to me that they long predate 2381. B-4, simply put, seems to have been much less adequate as a storehouse of Data's memories in Picard than in Cold Equations, for reasons relating to his technology. Perhaps in the Litverse, B-4 was more advanced, better able to shelter Data's being for a time until a new body could be found for him.

I am also willing to bet that the Soong family evolved in very different directions, long before android building had begun. I expect Altan never existed in Cold Equations, and that Noonien Soong actually did die at the end of "Brothers". In the two different timelines, Altan and Noonien Soong did each try, as an outgrowth of their family's work on AI and androids and genetics, to develop technologies capable of copying consciousnesses from organic beings to androids. Was it a matter of Altan not being able to pick up directly on the work of Noonien?

 

[Christopher]

Thinking about what led to the divergences, it seems clear to me that they long predate 2381. B-4, simply put, seems to have been much less adequate as a storehouse of Data's memories in Picard than in Cold Equations, for reasons relating to his technology. Perhaps in the Litverse, B-4 was more advanced, better able to shelter Data's being for a time until a new body could be found for him.

No, not really. Picard explained that the breakthrough that enabled Data's restoration and reproduction was "fractal neuronic cloning," the ability to extrapolate Data's entire positronic net from a single neuron. (It might be more accurate to say the data was stored holographically, the whole in every single part, but that would've confused the audience because of the usual, completely inaccurate way that Trek uses the word "hologram.") So the difference isn't in B-4; the difference is that nobody in the novel timeline discovered FNC and realized there was a way to recover Data's memories from B-4. I think The Last Best Hope established that it was Jurati who first got Maddox thinking along those lines, and in the novels he never met Jurati, so there you go.

I am also willing to bet that the Soong family evolved in very different directions, long before android building had begun. I expect Altan never existed in Cold Equations, and that Noonien Soong actually did die at the end of "Brothers". In the two different timelines, Altan and Noonien Soong did each try, as an outgrowth of their family's work on AI and androids and genetics, to develop technologies capable of copying consciousnesses from organic beings to androids. Was it a matter of Altan not being able to pick up directly on the work of Noonien?

Ahh, Trek has already had so many surprise family members introduced out of nowhere (David, Sybok, Demora, Kurn, Juliana, etc.) that I can accept this easily enough. It didn't seem as if Altan and his father were at all close; Altan implied that Noonien cared more about his android "children" than his biological one. So estrangement between them could easily account for Altan's absence from the novels (assuming he wasn't killed in the Borg invasion) and their separate pursuit of parallel lines of research.

 

[rfmcdpei]

No, not really. Picard explained that the breakthrough that enabled Data's restoration and reproduction was "fractal neuronic cloning," the ability to extrapolate Data's entire positronic net from a single neuron. (It might be more accurate to say the data was stored holographically, the whole in every single part, but that would've confused the audience because of the usual, completely inaccurate way that Trek uses the word "hologram.") So the difference isn't in B-4; the difference is that nobody in the novel timeline discovered FNC and realized there was a way to recover Data's memories from B-4. I think The Last Best Hope established that it was Jurati who first got Maddox thinking along those lines, and in the novels he never met Jurati, so there you go.

My memories of Cold Equations is that B-4 was functional and that, although there were definitely time limits as to how long Data's memories without B-4 and those memories degrading, B-4 for able to hold it intact for a few years. Data's restoration was a simple matter of android Noonian transferring control of his body to Data.

That process seems fundamentally different from the practice of fractal neuronic cloning as it was described in Picard. That was a process of reconstruction, of building up from almost nothing a mind that had suffered grave decay. My headcanon is that this process created a substantially less robust version of Data's mind, one that simply could not be copied into a new android body.

Agreed that Jurati played a key role with Maddox.

Ahh, Trek has already had so many surprise family members introduced out of nowhere (David, Sybok, Demora, Kurn, Juliana, etc.) that I can accept this easily enough. It didn't seem as if Altan and his father were at all close; Altan implied that Noonien cared more about his android "children" than his biological one. So estrangement between them could easily account for Altan's absence from the novels (assuming he wasn't killed in the Borg invasion) and their separate pursuit of parallel lines of research.

Fair enough. Cold Equations never did exclude the possibility that Noonian might have had a son with someone.

I do think that we can guess that Altan, though a genius, was perhaps less expert than Cold Equations' Noonian. The former seems to have been just starting to experiment with copying mind over to android bodies in the late 2390s, while Litverse Noonian had done that with Juliana Tainer in 2338 and did that to himself three decades later. This would make sense if there was some rupture between the two, some critical knowledge that just did not get passed on.

Maybe the death of Saga, and the failure to resurrect her, might also be taken as a sign of Altan's lesser skill? Saga was surely more intact than Data, a better candidate for restoration than he was.

Further complicating things, it is not clear to me how much Soong-type androids necessarily resembled each other in the two timelines. Cold Equations Noonian seems to have been solely responsible for the construction of Soong-type androids until Data began work with Lal, and production never grew quickly. In Picard, Altan and Maddox (the latter with Jurati's inspiration) have been collaborating for years with the mass production of at least dozens of Soong-type androids. It is not clear to me how much Soong-type androids in the two timelines necessarily resemble each other. The human-passing bodies of Dahj and Soji and the others suggests to me that in at least some areas the duo may have been more advanced than Noonian.

 

[Christopher]

My memories of Cold Equations is that B-4 was functional and that, although there were definitely time limits as to how long Data's memories without B-4 and those memories degrading, B-4 for able to hold it intact for a few years. Data's restoration was a simple matter of android Noonian transferring control of his body to Data.

That process seems fundamentally different from the practice of fractal neuronic cloning as it was described in Picard. That was a process of reconstruction, of building up from almost nothing a mind that had suffered grave decay.

Different, yes, but not mutually incompatible. They thought that the only way to preserve the memories was to preserve the whole thing, because they hadn't discovered that the memories were also stored fractally, meaning that the whole pattern was duplicated on a smaller scale in its individual parts. The whole point of the concept is that it's a second, more unexpected way that the memories could be preserved and reconstructed, one that it took them decades to discover was possible. By its very nature, it has to be in addition to the more familiar means of memory storage, not instead of them.

Further complicating things, it is not clear to me how much Soong-type androids necessarily resembled each other in the two timelines. Cold Equations Noonian seems to have been solely responsible for the construction of Soong-type androids until Data began work with Lal, and production never grew quickly. In Picard, Altan and Maddox (the latter with Jurati's inspiration) have been collaborating for years with the mass production of at least dozens of Soong-type androids.

Soong and Maddox didn't pursue their efforts on Coppelius until 2385, after synths were outlawed in the Federation. We know from The Last Best Hope that the need for synth labor to build the evacuation fleet led to some major advances in Maddox's work, and his insight about fractal cloning is what made the creation of the Coppelian android community possible. Again, the FNC breakthrough alone is all that's needed to explain the difference between the two timelines' android development. A single breakthrough can make the difference between a technology remaining unchanged for generations and advancing rapidly.

It is not clear to me how much Soong-type androids in the two timelines necessarily resemble each other. The human-passing bodies of Dahj and Soji and the others suggests to me that in at least some areas the duo may have been more advanced than Noonian.

Oh, surface appearance is a trivial matter to change, as we saw with Lal (and in The Questor Tapes). Soong could easily have given Data, Lore, and the others a purely human appearance, but he chose not to hide their true nature (or perhaps he just wanted to make it easier for people to tell them apart from him). So that's got nothing to do with their relative advancement. Presumably the Coppelian androids who have Data's coloring were made that way to honor him, while others chose a more human appearance or were given one so they could blend in offworld.

The only respect in which the Coppelians are more advanced than Data is that they have humanlike emotional response and affect. But Soong's emotion chip was part of Data's neural matrix for several years, so presumably its programming was stored fractally in his neurons along with everything else; or perhaps Altan knew how to make one from his father's notes.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Different, yes, but not mutually incompatible. They thought that the only way to preserve the memories was to preserve the whole thing, because they hadn't discovered that the memories were also stored fractally, meaning that the whole pattern was duplicated on a smaller scale in its individual parts. The whole point of the concept is that it's a second, more unexpected way that the memories could be preserved and reconstructed, one that it took them decades to discover was possible. By its very nature, it has to be in addition to the more familiar means of memory storage, not instead of them.

True. My understanding of Cold Equations is that the revival of Data was a straightforward matter of copying him from B-4's storage to Android-Noonian's body, allowing for his very quick reawakening. Perhaps, among other things, the television universe waited too late; Cold Equations did establish that there was a limit to the amount of time that B-4 could hold Data's memories intact.

Soong and Maddox didn't pursue their efforts on Coppelius until 2385, after synths were outlawed in the Federation. We know from The Last Best Hope that the need for synth labor to build the evacuation fleet led to some major advances in Maddox's work, and his insight about fractal cloning is what made the creation of the Coppelian android community possible. Again, the FNC breakthrough alone is all that's needed to explain the difference between the two timelines' android development. A single breakthrough can make the difference between a technology remaining unchanged for generations and advancing rapidly.

Not necessarily. The synths that Maddox was building used not positronic matrixes but rather bioneural technology like that used by Voyager. If bioneural technology was at all involved in the Maddox-Altan generation of Soong androids, that might well produce a generation of Soong-type androids fundamentally different from the ones Noonian Soong was building by himself, or that he would have designed post-"Brothers".

The only respect in which the Coppelians are more advanced than Data is that they have humanlike emotional response and affect. But Soong's emotion chip was part of Data's neural matrix for several years, so presumably its programming was stored fractally in his neurons along with everything else; or perhaps Altan knew how to make one from his father's notes.

Dahj and Soji, and presumably the other Soong-type androids produced by Maddox and Altan, did seem to have substantially human physiologies, more so than Data. That suggests to me a certain skill in synthesizing the biological and the technological, as opposed to building a wholly artificial body, that I am not sure Noonian Soong ever did on his own.

 

[BillJ]

Neither. Data died doing the most human thing possible, saving his shipmates in Nemesis. That is where his story ended for me.

 

[Christopher]

Not necessarily. The synths that Maddox was building used not positronic matrixes but rather bioneural technology like that used by Voyager. If bioneural technology was at all involved in the Maddox-Altan generation of Soong androids, that might well produce a generation of Soong-type androids fundamentally different from the ones Noonian Soong was building by himself, or that he would have designed post-"Brothers".

That's certainly possible, but I don't know why you think it conflicts with what I said, since that innovation was also prompted by the need for synth labor for the evacuation fleet. My point is that there's no need to posit any earlier divergence in the timelines, because the supernova situation is enough by itself to explain the different development of androids/synths. (Except for whatever divergence would be necessary to explain the lack of an imminent supernova in one timeline and the lack of a Borg invasion in the other.)

Dahj and Soji, and presumably the other Soong-type androids produced by Maddox and Altan, did seem to have substantially human physiologies, more so than Data. That suggests to me a certain skill in synthesizing the biological and the technological, as opposed to building a wholly artificial body, that I am not sure Noonian Soong ever did on his own.

Oh, by "human-passing" I thought you were referring to their appearance. Yes, certainly there have been considerable advances, but they've been working on it for 14 years, plus the previous 4 years Maddox spent working on synths for Daystrom. Again, there's no need to postulate any earlier divergence.

 

[Ronald Held]

Strange that Noomian's transfer of Julianna's consciousness into a Soong Android was not taken into account?

 

[Markonian]

Strange that Noonien's transfer of Julianna's consciousness into a Soong Android was not taken into account?

Was her consciousness transferred? I am under the impression Noonien modelled Juliandroid's personality based on personal logs and what he knew Julianna was like.

 

[Brendan Moody]

The Soong hologram in the episode says “She was injured when the Crystalline Entity attacked. We made it as far as Terlina Three, but she slipped into a coma. When I realised nothing could be done for her, I built an android. I tried to perfect my synaptic scanning technique so that I could transfer Juliana's memories into a positronic matrix. I didn't know if it would work, but I had to try. I couldn't stand the thought of losing the only woman I ever loved. A few days after Juliana died, I activated the android.”

 

[Sci]

If we want to be really, really stubborn, I still think we could incorporate both Cold Equations and PIC by re-setting CE a year or two earlier, assuming that Picard thinks of Data 2.0 as a separate individual whom he cares about but who isn't Data, and then by assuming Data 2.0 and Lal skiddaddle out of Federation space before the Mars Attack.

 

[Markonian]

Good, so far we've compared but the PIC and the novel versions of Data 2.0.

There's still the comics, and Star Trek Online. Don't light up yer pitchforks, please.

My focus is on STO, and Countdown, which was integrated into the game's backstory.
In these, the B4 matrix sacrificed himself to force the Data matrix into accepting B4's body and step for the Federation in a time of need. I loved the little tidbit that Spock pointed out to Captain Data that they both had returned from the dead, in a fashion. Given that they are both the breakout characters of their respective shows, it's symmetry is fitting.

The Michael A. Martin novel The Needs of the Many goes into detail how Geordi La Forge worked on B4 and how reluctant both he and Data were about unlocking Data within B4's body. Because it presented an ethical conundrum: can't have Data take over B4's body without taking an innocent life.

Now, the result was a successful return of Data. He resumes his station in Starfleet and is immediately promoted to captain of the Enterprise-E, a post he retains until 2409. In the current STO continuity, he's alive. We last see him in 2410, showing the little hologram of Tasha Yar to her daughter Sela as he visits her in prison, and she asks him to tell her about her Human mother.

Side note: In the Waypoint comic, Data manages to sacrifice himself again, and Captain La Forge resigns from the Insignia-class Enterprise (letter suffix unknown, if any) to work with time-displaced Starfleet officers from uptime to try and rebuild Data.

My 2 cents now: Of the three versions of Data (ignoring the one-off stories Hive and Waypoint comics for the moment), I prefer the return we see in the Litverse. Brand-new body with new features. With Trek tech, and even seen in PIC, switching bodies if needed is the way of the future. Plus, he gets his daughter Lal back.

Next, my preference switches to STO because I prefer my heroes to be in a organisation for good, wearing a stylish uniform. Data Soong isn't wearing a uniform. And after decades of remaining in the same post, it is satisfying that STO-Data can progress career-wise, and I like that Starfleet would break new ground again by having its first android captain. The way Worf becomes the first Klingon Starfleet captain in Last Best Hope.

Now, in PIC, Data seemingly remains dead after NEM except for his matrix to reappear in the season finale, but being promptly shut off. A point is made that he doesn't want to live forever, itself tracing back to a TNG episode. This is where I bang my head, metaphorically. Yes, I can understand he wouldn't want to keeping making friends and outliving them, but come on! How can he sick of live after less than 100 years? I could see him getting sick of personal loss after maybe 300 years but he has/had so much potential to expand, like the Doctor did in Myriad Universes: "Places of Exile". He could start replacing his cybernetic components with organic parts, like Bicentennial Man. But nope, let's make a point that mortality is part of being Human and die young.

Obvs, this is my personal feeling and not a value judgement of the writing quality in any of the above stories. Like @rfmcdpei, I follow the idea that all of licenced Trek content exists in a shared multiverse.