Do you miss Data?
- Thread starter Kilana2
- Start date
No, 'cause he lives on in the Star Trek Novels.
This. Ditto Trip in ENT, they both died in the final installment.
And, as others have said, Data and the rest live on in the novelverse.
This is one of the things I dislike most about ST is that almost no one who is a main character who dies, ever stays dead.
Chekov was killed by the Earps but came back.
Spock died, but didn't. Even though it was supposed to be final but Nimoy had a change of heart. Tasha died, but Denise Crosby still came back several times. Dax died, but not totally since her inner creature survived to be transferred to a new host. Kirk dies at the beginning of Generations, but isn't dead. He dies at the end, but apparently comes back in some books with some weird Borg plot. Data dies, but they leave an obvious opening that he's still alive in B4. Scotty should have been dead in TNG but alive for 70 years in a transporter loop. Dislocated should be dead, but no one acts like he is.
Hell even the Enterprise didn't stay dead after it was destroyed in TSFS. The next film they just had another Constitution refit ready to go slapped the name and number with an "A" on it and they're back in business.
It's pretty anti climatic when so many people are killed but find ways to live on. Death is part of existence. Kill a character and say "That's it folks".
Welcome to how the soaps do things. Some characters get shot, blown up, die of a disease, fall down a bottomless pit, drown, or get killed by lots of other ways... and yet they still come back. Just last Thursday, one of the longtime characters on General Hospital was shot and died of his wound. Yet the fans are already speculating on when he'll be back, since hardly anyone on that show dies forever. It takes the actor's RL death to even begin to make it permanent, although of course TPTB can always recast. Or they can just do what Dallas did and have the character show up in the shower a year after he was run over and died, and his wife says, "Bobby, I had the strangest dream..." (and thus Dallas canceled out one of its best seasons plus messed with the storyline on Knots Landing and so the two shows that used to be connected ended up in different continuities). Or they go with the "identical twin/cousin" thing so the actor stays on.
So Spock dying in TWOK and coming back in the next movie is really not that much of a stretch. At least it had a semi-plausible in-universe reason for it to happen, plus a way to make it happen.
You are so right about the Soaps, Timewalker, which got me thinking about Star Trek as a Soap. But that is for another time and place. I also thought the whole B-4 thing was unnecessary, like Bry and Kor said, but, strangely, no one on the Writing Staff contacted me for my input! 
The Valjiir link in my sig leads to a Star Trek soap opera that's been going on for 30 years or so, since the stories were first published in the print 'zines. However, any characters in that series who die tend to stay dead unless it's clearly an event that happened in an alternate universe.
That's one of the things that I prefer about any fictional character I get attached to in some way, or a character that is central to the story. If they're going to die, it can't be some superficial cheat. Take nuKirk's death in the last Abrams movie. That was just a
moment instead of some shocking thing, since it was blindingly obvious that he wasn't going to stay dead.
^You're welcome.
Spock I actually didn't have that much of a problem with. It was plausible given the events of TWOK.
It was when it just went crazy from there.......Destroy the Refit Enterprise, bring the exact same model back in the next movie with an "A" slapped on it. Kill of Tasha because Denise "brilliant career move" Crosby wanted out after half a season.....But find ways to bring her back either as Tasha or as the Romulan commander. Kill of Data, but make it obvious that his android "Katra" I guess is alive in B4 so he could come back to life at any time.
Kill Kirk (albeit is a stupid way) but bring him back in some non canon book with some ridiculous story about the Borg assimilating him and he being able to come back somehow (I don't know the details of his revival. but all I'll say about that is the Borg have better gotten his body damn quick. Given the fact it was a desert environment and he was buried above ground, his body either decayed damn quickly or was found and eaten by some wild animals.
Just kill some main character for crying out loud and say he/she/it is gone. Period. End of story. No rebirth by some means, no being alive in another dimension, no offspring (who looks EXACTLY like the parent) or any other BS that keeps them alive.
Yeah soaps do it. But Dallas did it exactly ONCE in 12 seasons, and that was because, similar to Nimoy, Patrick Duffy decided he made a mistake leaving the show and he was the second most popular character so the show HAD to bend over backwards somehow to bring him back. When Jim Davis died IRL and was the 3rd most important character in the show in the early seasons, behind Hagman and Duffy, they didn't replace him with another actor or leave his fate unknown. He died (offscreen) on the show and Dallas figured out a way to move on without him.
In Star Trek you almost get the feeling that death is just some kind of minor inconvenience to the main characters, and they can fix the issue at any time.
And I meant to say Sisko was dead but the spellchecker turned it into disclocated was dead.
Totally forgot about NuKirk.....puke.
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The minute they introduced him I could tell they were going to some how kill Data in the film.
B-4 was such a blatant gimmick to kill Data but give the writers an out to bring him back- just like showing Spock's Torp-Coffin soft landed on Genesis.
B-4 was such a blatant gimmick to kill Data but give the writers an out to bring him back- just like showing Spock's Torp-Coffin soft landed on Genesis.
I miss Data along with all of the old prime universe. I understand over saturation and at the time Trek was an aging commodity, but I still would like it back.
If the novel writers didn't insist on following on from that idiotic death scene and further insist on useless and pointless "growth" and "change", as if those could ever possibly be good things, I'd agree. But until we start getting novels with Data (and everybody else) on the Enterprise-D again, I just can't.
That's the long winded way of saying yes, I miss Data.
As for the original question if I miss Data.
The TNG show data who was unable to feel, but could be deep and introspective. Who could at times be the show's strongest character in many respects and at other times could be the weakest one and who could, often unintentionally on his part, be very funny............Yes I miss that Data.
The Data from the TNG films where it was clear Spiner began to throw his weight around more to let him "explore" new ways of Data acting which resulted in many instances of Data being stupid or Spiner just chewing the scene and where it was clear he was Picard's sidekick on their wacky adventures.......No I don't miss that Data.
The TNG show data who was unable to feel, but could be deep and introspective. Who could at times be the show's strongest character in many respects and at other times could be the weakest one and who could, often unintentionally on his part, be very funny............Yes I miss that Data.
The Data from the TNG films where it was clear Spiner began to throw his weight around more to let him "explore" new ways of Data acting which resulted in many instances of Data being stupid or Spiner just chewing the scene and where it was clear he was Picard's sidekick on their wacky adventures.......No I don't miss that Data.
