How could Pran Tainer....?
- Thread starter mythme
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The original concept of Data, before they dumbed it down by making him look like he was a Ken doll with blinky lights inside, was that he was such a perfect simulation of a human that only a detailed medical examination could reveal he wasn't (much like a Cylon in the new BSG). You can see a hint of this in "The Naked Now" where he refers to his circulatory fluids and proves as vulnerable to the infection as any biological being.
So maybe Julianna was a few steps closer to that ideal than Data was.
So maybe Julianna was a few steps closer to that ideal than Data was.
...And of course, since the heads of even the most advanced Soongian androids still demonstrably are lined with metal and blinking lights just beneath the skin, Soong must have expended some effort in actively hiding such blatant facts from medical scanners. Not just putting fake skin over the metal, that is, but designing an elaborate jamming field that prevents the scanners from seeing the blinkies.
When such fields (or whatever) are on, all bets are off. It's highly unlikely that there would be revealing faults in Juliana's "defenses" when that much attention is paid to detail. One might well postulate that whenever some fault does manifest, Juliana's systems react and counteract that fault - perhaps she even carries a memory-altering chemical with her and unconsciously sprays or injects some of that to people who learn too much? Then again, an EM field capable of jamming sophisticated sensors might well also be tuned to dull the senses of people who get too close to the truth...
Timo Saloniemi
When such fields (or whatever) are on, all bets are off. It's highly unlikely that there would be revealing faults in Juliana's "defenses" when that much attention is paid to detail. One might well postulate that whenever some fault does manifest, Juliana's systems react and counteract that fault - perhaps she even carries a memory-altering chemical with her and unconsciously sprays or injects some of that to people who learn too much? Then again, an EM field capable of jamming sophisticated sensors might well also be tuned to dull the senses of people who get too close to the truth...
Timo Saloniemi
Also, doing convincing-looking androids wasn't his gig. There doesn't seem to be any special trick to that, since even back in the days of Kirk the Federation knew a thing or two about the art.
Soong's gig was positronic brains. Everybody considered those impossible, until Soong proved otherwise ("Datalore"). And apparently he chose to offer the proof in the form of an android, because that's where the best sides of positronic tech would be displayed in the most dramatic manner available. Clever computers capable of simulated sentience were a dime in a dozen at that time - every starship had one, it seems. But clever computers the size of a humanoid brain? What better way to demonstrate those than make one mimic humanoid brain inside a humanoid skull!
Turning a positron-brained android into a perfect human replica was probably just tinkering for Soong. But not even Data would necessarily have been Soong's definition of a successful project - otherwise, he might have been expected to submit Data for peer review much faster, before he was forced to leave Omicron Theta. And Soong could not afford to fail with his inaugural android, not with his "Often Wrong" reputation. So he probably accumulated a lot of extra experience and skill before deciding to go public with Data - so much extra that he was able to finish Juliana even when fleeing for his life.
Timo Saloniemi
Soong's gig was positronic brains. Everybody considered those impossible, until Soong proved otherwise ("Datalore"). And apparently he chose to offer the proof in the form of an android, because that's where the best sides of positronic tech would be displayed in the most dramatic manner available. Clever computers capable of simulated sentience were a dime in a dozen at that time - every starship had one, it seems. But clever computers the size of a humanoid brain? What better way to demonstrate those than make one mimic humanoid brain inside a humanoid skull!
Turning a positron-brained android into a perfect human replica was probably just tinkering for Soong. But not even Data would necessarily have been Soong's definition of a successful project - otherwise, he might have been expected to submit Data for peer review much faster, before he was forced to leave Omicron Theta. And Soong could not afford to fail with his inaugural android, not with his "Often Wrong" reputation. So he probably accumulated a lot of extra experience and skill before deciding to go public with Data - so much extra that he was able to finish Juliana even when fleeing for his life.
Timo Saloniemi
soong had a lot going on at the time you know, he was pretty busy. making datas.
Point being, if you were the greatest cyberneticist who ever breathed, with a recently deceased wife, & you wanted to put her essence into an android, so that you could delude yourself into thinking she was still your real wife, wouldn't you need to make her perfectly genuine enough to fool even yourself, who as mentioned, is the greatest cyberneticist who ever breathed?
What would be the point otherwise, if all you ended up seeing was some facsimile, a knock-off, who's flaws were maybe unnoticeable to a layman, but to you, the master artist & also the husband?
She had to be real enough to fool Noonien into denial, on a daily basis, & avoid the awkwardness of her being discovered by others, & she was. She was so perfect that she ended up reacting the way the real Julianna would have, & left him
What would be the point otherwise, if all you ended up seeing was some facsimile, a knock-off, who's flaws were maybe unnoticeable to a layman, but to you, the master artist & also the husband?
She had to be real enough to fool Noonien into denial, on a daily basis, & avoid the awkwardness of her being discovered by others, & she was. She was so perfect that she ended up reacting the way the real Julianna would have, & left him
Soong and Data's backstory are really logically and technologically unsalvagably implausible. Best to let it go.
Indeed. "Datalore" itself is a mess: why is this the first time anyone returned to Omicron Theta? And if Noonien Soong was well-known as an advocate of positronic robotics, why did nobody ever suspect that he was Data's creator until the Enterprise away team was standing in that lab? The problem was only compounded when "Brothers" cast Spiner as Soong, because how could nobody have suspected that Data was a Soong creation when he looked exactly like Soong??!!!
"Datalore" was also the beginning of the pattern of showing Data and Lore as being made up of mechanical-looking body parts with perfectly straight seams connecting them and hard interior materials and blinky lights inside -- which is totally nonsensical for a being who, when assembled, looks entirely humanlike right down to muscles and tendons shifting beneath the skin when he moves. It was a silly, cartoony way of depicting android anatomy, far dumber than the original conception I've mentioned of an android that would appear exactly human to anything short of a detailed medical examination -- meaning that a more basic medical examination, or just an up close and personal interaction like Tasha had with Data in "The Naked Now," would detect the appearance of muscles, bones, blood vessels, a heartbeat, etc., which is totally incompatible with the action-figure plastic-parts design used in "Datalore" and the rest of the series. Data should've been a perfect cellular-level simulation of a humanoid, a product of nanotechology, not a walking doll with detachable parts.
Heh, I think I started a topic about Data's skin, whether it's solid or flexible, and ultimately the answer amounted to "it's both", which I think is fair enough, given it's TeH FuT00rr and stuff. I don't think modular parts and a seemingly solid exterior necessarily make a human-looking thing impossible if his skin can change its flexibility as needed, but I agree the approach was confused from the off.
What I didn't understand from this particular episode when I last saw it was how did android Juliana have a holo-recording in her head of Dr. Soong saying she left him, if she must have left him after the recording was put in her head?
What I didn't understand from this particular episode when I last saw it was how did android Juliana have a holo-recording in her head of Dr. Soong saying she left him, if she must have left him after the recording was put in her head?
Skin alone wouldn't do it. If you look at a person closely, you can see the structure of their bones, the flexing of their muscles and tendons, the rise and fall of their chest or diaphragm as they breathe, etc. If you touch them, you can feel the internal structure of these things. There's just no way something with the internal construction Data was portrayed as having could be visually or tactilely convincing as a human upon close observation, no matter how flexible the skin was.
A sensible way to depict an android's innards would be something like a Terminator -- a full synthetic skeleton duplicating the construction of a human skeleton, covered in artificial muscle and tendons and ligaments and skin. If you want to duplicate the exterior appearance of a human in a dynamic, moving way rather than just as an inert sculpture, you need to get the interior right too.
Maybe not, all the movements you've described Christopher could be happening solely at the surface level. The play of the tendons and muscles under the skin might be manifested by the skin itself, the skin thickens, bulges and form ridges. When Data swallows it only the skin on the outside of his throat that actual moves. "Smart Skin." A similar process to when your skins shows goose pimples. Data's diaphragm would be a different story, while Data most likely doesn't need to breath (temperature regulation?), he does move air in and out.
Either that - or then the parts that Data consists of are in turn built to be muscles, bones and tendons. It's just that when Data is disassembled for storage, the muscles, bones and tendons freeze to a configuration resembling the sawed-off limbs of a mannequin.
It's not as if Data really were as coarse a tin man as the parts suggest - after all, each and every part of him, down to the humblest pair of buttocks, is a positronic miracle in itself, emitting the characteristic signature as in ST:NEM.
Also, the colony appeared to be pretty paranoid from the outset, capable of surprisingly quickly and completely disguising itself from the alien threat - and obviously a suitable hideout for the esoteric Soong. Probably Omicron Theta was way off the beaten path, a refuge for mad scientists of all sorts, and no real concern of the UFP.
That Data looked like Soong (or like the entire Soong bloodline for the past couple of hundred years, I guess) need not be proof of anything much. If you were to find a robot shaped like Albert Einstein, would you really suspect that old jokester of being the father? A robot made in the image of this famous failure of a cybernetist would probably initially be interpreted as the creation of Ira Graves, and all the more so when the Grand Old Grandpa vehemently denied it...
Timo Saloniemi
It's not as if Data really were as coarse a tin man as the parts suggest - after all, each and every part of him, down to the humblest pair of buttocks, is a positronic miracle in itself, emitting the characteristic signature as in ST:NEM.
Why return to a lost colony? As far as we know, Kirk never returned to any of those he helped evacuate, either. Nothing particularly unnatural was suspected to lie behind the loss at the time.
Also, the colony appeared to be pretty paranoid from the outset, capable of surprisingly quickly and completely disguising itself from the alien threat - and obviously a suitable hideout for the esoteric Soong. Probably Omicron Theta was way off the beaten path, a refuge for mad scientists of all sorts, and no real concern of the UFP.
The fact that Data was a positronic design might not have been obvious to anybody until "Datalore". If nobody knew how to build a positronic brain, it might well be that nobody knew how to read a positronic signature, either. Experts might have had real trouble even finding Data's supposed brain, if its positronic nature were as distributed as ST:NEM makes it sound. (Admittedly, the head was a major processing center capable of interesting feats even when detached, but apparently still not everything there was to this positronic brain thing.)
That Data looked like Soong (or like the entire Soong bloodline for the past couple of hundred years, I guess) need not be proof of anything much. If you were to find a robot shaped like Albert Einstein, would you really suspect that old jokester of being the father? A robot made in the image of this famous failure of a cybernetist would probably initially be interpreted as the creation of Ira Graves, and all the more so when the Grand Old Grandpa vehemently denied it...
Timo Saloniemi
Try something for me. Take hold of your wrist or forearm. Squeeze it a little, knead it with your fingers. It's very clear from feeling it that there's a lot of flexible, squishy stuff around a couple of bones and some hard stringy bits. Same if you try it with your hand, your jaw, your cheeks, your midsection -- it's easy to discern the bone structure underneath. You can't fake that with a flexible surface over a solid, rigid body like we were shown. Because with a real body there's clearly a lot of give below the skin. Like I said, the original concept of Data described in the first draft of the TNG series bible was that only a detailed medical exam could reveal he wasn't human. So it was meant to be a lot more than just faking the surface appearance.
Besides, Data or Lore couldn't even move like a human being if they were constructed the way we were shown, with just flat plates and blinky lights at the joints where the pieces went together. Where are the servos that take the place of muscles, the connective tendon or ligament equivalents that provide leverage, the bone equivalents for anchoring them? It doesn't make sense that a mobile being can be so easily taken apart with such simple seams right at the points where the most complicated mechanical stuff should be to allow movement.
Shown where?
As far as we can tell, Data's various body parts could merely have been in a state of temporary rigor mortis when separately handled. Come to think of it, that's probably what the body parts of Ralph Offenhouse looked like when he was a corpsicle, too. Despite them "really" being complex masses of soft organs and all.
But Juliana Tainer supposedly can fake her way through detailed medical exams, apparently better than the Ilia probe ever could. This despite her having the blinkies inside. So the entire issue can be sidestepped by saying that certain Soongian androids can fool examiners, and that their principal design characteristic is that ability, but that they don't do it by "being human". They do it like a magician does, with smoke and mirrors. Or with thoron fields and duranium shadows, as it may be.
Just assume that the seams were as flexible as any cross-section of a human arm, despite looking like flat, solid metal plates. A lot of flexible things today can look like flat, solid metal plates already.
I guess the interesting question here is why Data and Lore and B-4 (and possibly also Juliana) are modular at all. Is it a packaging issue? We never saw Soong pack his androids particularly tight - Lore's stowed components took up much more space than the assembled Lore. But Soong always did seem ready to pack his bags and escape to another hideout at the drop of a hat - perhaps the modularity was for facilitating that?
Or did Soong want standardized, interchangeable body parts? It would seem oddly coarse for him to want spare arms or legs for his series of identical androids, as the component he might really need to replace for maintenance or upgrading would probably be much smaller than an arm or a leg. And if the interchangeability was for mixing and matching to create variety, it looks like wasted potential since three of the androids were identical in shape anyway.
Could be that the modules were there because Soong was preparing for future variety. The demonstration model he wanted to introduce to the scientific community would be made in his image, yet built so that everybody would immediately recognize it for a cybernetic achievement. But he might always have had plans beyond that, plans that involved realistic-looking androids. This might have been achieved piecemeal, by giving Data various new arms, legs, buttocks and so forth. Sounds clumsy, though.
Perhaps the best rationalization for the modularity would concern production. Each body part would probably be crucial and equally difficult to build (all would have positronics). The manufacturing process for each might fail. Distributing the risk would help, all the more so when the first models would be of more or less standardized physical shape. A failed leg wouldn't condemn an entire android yet.
Timo Saloniemi
