Another angle to this is whether there's any reason to think Data actually died.
No, not a Trip Tucker -category denial movement or anything. Just an exercise in consistency. Why should we assume the events of ST:NEM would have been harmful to the health of the android, in light of what he and his brother had been through before?
Thalaron radiation never did any harm to machinery in the movie. It was not credited with the ability to do such harm, either. Sure, it was credited with the ability to penetrate machinery somehow, implicit in it being lethal to the E-E crew even though they sat inside a sealed pressure vessel. But Data isn't more susceptible to death inside than out.
Would a big explosion kill Data? We have seen soft Borg drones "survive" being thrown clear of an exploding spacecraft; Data is made of sterner stuff.
Vacuum exposure wouldn't even register, of course: Lore did just fine floating in space for ages, after supposedly having been beamed out through shields and all.
Of course, Lore's case also implies it's almost trivially easy for passersby to spot a floating android. And ST:NEM would seem to agree, with B-4 being visible across interstellar distances. But our heroes in "Datalore" failed to spot Lore's continuing existence, and Data has never been a dangerously bright beacon to enemy sensors. Perhaps a positronic radiation leak is something a Soongian android can regulate to a degree, and B-4 was set to fart real loud because Shinzon wanted Picard to find him, while Lore initially was lying low and then began attracting attention? Finally, the Bassen Rift might make it difficult to spot Data's survival post-ST:NEM.
So no, Data did not need to die when he pushed the trigger.
Timo Saloniemi
