How to save DATA and Mass Produce him?

[Kamen Rider Blade]

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Assuming StarFleet didn't intend on losing it's one and only Sentient & Sapient Android, would there have been a mission to time travel back and save DATA for the future?

I'm making several assumptions, that StarFleet from the future (Post Nemesis) would value DATA / Soong Type Androids and use the technological genius in his engineering design for good in the future?

Assuming StarFleet could time travel back to before DATA was destroyed, could they potentially transport DATA before the events of NEMESIS, scan him with the Transporter, and replicate him with an Industrial Replicator and scan him down to molecular levels to make a detailed schematic? They could of course return a clone of DATA programmed to do everything he was going to do in "ST: NEMESIS" and therefore not changing the timeline.

We know that most replicators can't replicate biological tissue / living cells. That episode of ENT: "Dead Stop" where the Alien Space Station tried to kidnap Mayweather and use him as a Biological Computer and faked his death with a replicated Corpse with proper damage marks. According to Memory Alpha, most normal replicators can't create actual living matter.

That being said, DATA isn't biological, he's completely Synthetic and Technological.

Wouldn't it stand to reason that DATA would be easily replicatable and you can literally mass produce him with a detailed scan from the Transporter and use the Industrial Replicator to mass produce him?

Imagine literally Millions of DATA like beings with Subspace connections to each other like the Borg Collective.

The benefits of Mass Produced "Soong Type Androids".

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Well, "The Measure of a Man" covered (but didn't answer) the ethics around the concept. In practice at least one egghead at the time suggested that he COULD replicate Data, but the real question was whether he SHOULD, or even whether he could legally compel Data to allow it to pass.

Mark

 

[BillJ]

VHS is the way to go!

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Well, "The Measure of a Man" covered (but didn't answer) the ethics around the concept. In practice at least one egghead at the time suggested that he COULD replicate Data, but the real question was whether he SHOULD, or even whether he could legally compel Data to allow it to pass.

Mark

Given his current fate to be "Star Dust" and StarFleet losing a very important potential and Unique asset, I think they'll make special exceptions and violate the "Temporal Prime Directive" and whatever laws they see fit to prevent DATA from being lost permanently.

 

[Mysterion]

I agree with the post up-thread that TNG pretty much established that it'd unethical for the Federation in general, or Starfleet in particular to mass-produce a race of sentient beings to do their bidding. And a plot to travel into the past to subvert history to make such a thing happen would likely be seen as even moreso. This is a non-starter, IMO.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

Well, there are a lot of unique individuals that Starfleet would probably rather not lose, but that's just how it goes. They don't go back in time and save those folks (unless their last name is Janeway). And cloning one sentient being (android) versus another (biological) has all of the same ethical considerations involved. Like cloning 1,000,000 Picards just because he's unique and it would be a terrible loss to Starfleet if he were to perish. But again, that's just how it goes.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

They don't go back in time and save those folks (unless their last name is Janeway)

They made one exception, I'm sure the case for "DATA's Sentience" isn't fully over in StarFleet's mind. I'm sure they'll twist the facts and make it happen.

Imagine all the good a 1,000,000 DATA's spread all over StarFleet / UFP could do.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Pretty sure Data's neural net has to be grown/developed organically and cannot be replicated. They're also very unstable while developing, just look at Lal and the first 3 Data/Lore prototypes.

Plus there's the whole moral issue. Pretty sure they did a whole episode about that

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Pretty sure Data's neural net has to be grown/developed organically and cannot be replicated. They're also very unstable while developing, just look at Lal and the first 3 Data/Lore prototypes.

Plus there's the whole moral issue. Pretty sure they did a whole episode about that

And we've seen StarFleet violate morality plenty of times.

Phase Cloak tech, rendering a planet entirely inhospitable to Humans, etc.

Janeway and her Time Traveling antics to help her ship get home earlier.

 

[BillJ]

And we've seen StarFleet violate morality plenty of times.

Phase Cloak tech, rendering a planet entirely inhospitable to Humans, etc.

Janeway and her Time Traveling antics to help her ship get home earlier.

I think creating a slave race takes it to another level.

 

[Timo]

Now that one was a straw man from the get-go. Starfleet already has slave armies, people who are under oath to die for the queen and the apple pie. Data would add nothing to that equation: he isn't any more "slavish" than the average trooper, and his hand-to-hand skills are mostly useless in Trek warfare, while his sharpshooting never seemed to surpass, say, Riker's.

Creating more Datas is apparently something nobody in Starfleet has any interest in doing - after all, it has not been done. Consequently, I don't think Starfleet would think it has lost much in losing Data, and attempts at resurrecting the machine would appear less appealing than, say, attempts at constructing far better machines. After all, while Soong himself may be unavailable, positronics are well-known by the time of DS9, and things like holograms seem to be doing much better than any of Soong's handiwork anyway.

As for replicating Data, all it supposedly takes is big and powerful enough a replicator. Even with damaged hardware, the EMH was able to resurrect people by replicating new neural tissue for them back in VOY "Emanations". Replication of tissue also seemed doable in TNG "Ethics". It would simply be a matter of dedicating the required (and apparently considerable) resources of a full-body rebirth, plus sorting out the ethics. And since replicators have existed for quite a while yet folks are not getting resurrected, it seems a safe bet that the ethics stand in the way of the procedure overall.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mysterion]

Now that one was a straw man from the get-go. Starfleet already has slave armies, people who are under oath to die for the queen and the apple pie.

What the hell are you talking about? I do not recall any evidence on-screen (or anywhere else for that matter) that anyone in Starfleet has been drafted or is otherwise serving under duress. Everyone we've seen seems to have volunteered and is serving under their own initiative.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

What the hell are you talking about? I do not recall any evidence on-screen (or anywhere else for that matter) that anyone in Starfleet has been drafted or is otherwise serving under duress. Everyone we've seen seems to have volunteered and is serving under their own initiative.

And Data had a very specific reason for joining Starfleet - one which his creator didn't even agree with. Not every "Data" would necessarily want to follow that path, unless they were deprived of their free will by Starfleet.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I think creating a slave race takes it to another level.

That's only if you think DATA is more than just a complicated computer hardware / program in a Humanoid package and is actually Sentient & Sapient.

Remember, when "The Doctor" had his trial for his "Holo-Novel"; they didn't answer the question of his rights as an individual.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

And Data had a very specific reason for joining Starfleet - one which his creator didn't even agree with. Not every "Data" would necessarily want to follow that path, unless they were deprived of their free will by Starfleet.

Or they can adjust DATA's programming and create a variation that lives for "StarFleet" and serves the "UFP"

 

[Mysterion]

Remember, when "The Doctor" had his trial for his "Holo-Novel"; they didn't answer the question of his rights as an individual.

But, Data's rights as a sentient and self-aware individual had been established in The Measure of a Man.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

But, Data's rights as a sentient and self-aware individual had been established in The Measure of a Man.

And they can literally Replicate DATA and return a exact clone of DATA to close the time line and have that DATA die as history records him. Then use the Original DATA and create not fully "Sentient & Sapient" versions of DATA with some software and hardware modifications and have them mass produced so that they don't run into your thorny "Creating a Slave Race" issue.

 

[urbandefault]

A mass-produced Data project would undoubtedly produce a few dysfunctional units, ala Lore. So do you scrap those, let them run rampant, or put them in android time-out?

If they're sentient, surely you can't just turn them off?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

A mass-produced Data project would undoubtedly produce a few dysfunctional units, ala Lore. So do you scrap those, let them run rampant, or put them in android time-out?

If they're sentient, surely you can't just turn them off?

You dissect the DysFunctional units, figure out what went wrong, implement safeguards / software & hardware updates through out the line to prevent that kind of issue in the future.

If you remove the "Sentience / Sapience" functionality in your new mass produced models, you wouldn't have ethical issues anymore IMO.

 

[NCC-73515]

Thousands of Datas... isn't that becoming... a race? won't we be judged by how we treat that race?
Such a good episode. You should watch it sometime