Nemesis (and now PIC) make it clear that B-4 was built by Soong, not by Romulans. If they want to retcon this now, fine. But at the time, that was the intent.
Spoilers It seems that Data's backstory might be retconned back to the original version...
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
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Nemesis (and now PIC) make it clear that B-4 was built by Soong, not by Romulans. If they want to retcon this now, fine. But at the time, that was the intent.
Might be that only B-4 was created by Soong alone. Data, Lore and Juliana Tainer might have been created by or with the help of the synths on the planet we'll see in "Et Arcadia Ego, Part 1".
Would explain why B-4 wasn't as advanced as the other Androids, Soong claimed to have created.
Even if Soong got his idea from visiting a planet full of androids, that doesn’t mean Data was built by aliens. It just means that’s where Soong got his idea to build his own androids from. Just like how Harry Mudd in the Discoverse got the idea to build his own androids in his likeness.
Dunno about intent, but what the movie makes clear is that Data does not recognize B4 or express awareness of his existence. This despite Data having shared memories with Juliana Tainer about Noonien's pre-Lore experiments. Quite possibly indication of something smelling of space-fish here.
But PIC is still at the stage of hinting, rather than establishing: the heroes have been wrong about a number of issues in the episodes so far, and are being corrected. Two episodes to go before we have all the facts... Especially regarding this whole business with Data's Daughters.
Timo Saloniemi
He recognizes B-4 just fine, since he looks just like him. Any confusion on Data's part about B-4's existence does not imply that B-4 was not built by Soong, only that Data wasn't aware of B-4's existence. Therefore, there are only two possibilities: B-4 was built by Soong, or he was built by someone else and was intentionally made to look like Data. Shinzon states that he found B-4, not that he or the Romulans built him to intentionally look like Data (although that would have made more sense story-wise).
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Tainer told Data there were three androids prior to Lore, and they "died" after only a few weeks each. After that, she begged Soong not to try again because it was like losing children to her.
B-4 might have been an intermediate step between them and Lore (making sense of the numbering) that Soong hid from her to spare her the pain.
Now, is anyone else wondering if the Zhat Vash might have guided the Crystalline Entity to Omicron Theta in the hopes of killing Soong? He did seem extremely paranoid in Brothers about not being found in his new home.
B-4 might have been an intermediate step between them and Lore (making sense of the numbering) that Soong hid from her to spare her the pain.
Now, is anyone else wondering if the Zhat Vash might have guided the Crystalline Entity to Omicron Theta in the hopes of killing Soong? He did seem extremely paranoid in Brothers about not being found in his new home.
There hasn't been any retcon, but we also don't know just what kind of other assistance or information Soong may have obtained from this synth planet.
Seriously...people need to stop using "RETCON!" as some sort of dog whistle for outrage when in reality it's not a RETCON!!! (PANIC!) but is in reality just an expansion of the story.
Seriously...people need to stop using "RETCON!" as some sort of dog whistle for outrage when in reality it's not a RETCON!!! (PANIC!) but is in reality just an expansion of the story.
Where did you got that idea from? I don't think anything of the sort was said. The Admonition is ancient, not the androids.
I doubt They are "rewriting" anything about Data.
They may be ADDING Info to his story that we are unaware of though.
That's rewriting his back story. Which this is a new version and that's fine. But people should be aware that is exactly what is going on.
If They are adding to his history, it is not a "rewrite".
There are a lot of unanswered question about both Data & Soong.
What we may have 'assumed' through the years being changed, is not a rewrite.
I'm not sure that this is what's going on. It could be, but I saw nothing in the episode that would indicate that. People seem to be misinterpreting things and confusing the android planet with the admonition planet or something... (Or I am myself confused, but I don't think so.)
Are there? I've never had any real questions about either, and I've been watching TNG since 1987.
And it is a rewrite, because you're changing the intent of the original creators of the character. At some point, the creators of the character decided that he was human designed and constructed, dropping the alien origin angle. So now the new writers (if that is what they are doing) are going against the explicit wishes of those who created the character.
Even secret Romulan organizations need to utilize stock images sometimes.
I see nothing wrong with ignoring the intent of an originating author. Trek is, if not the very definition of a team effort, then at least a long and unbroken chain of those definitions, and much of it is good only because later writers realized what a shitty job the original ones had done, and turned it into something much more interesting. Spock and Worf are good cases in point, rewritten a dozen times but never in a way that would actually contradict the earlier takes in specific.
Little about Data's background is truly explicit. His history has never been shown in flashbacks, so we don't even have to worry about our eyes being unreliable narrators. Rather, the parties doing such narrating on screen have been outright villains or folks being misled, so we actually have little reason to think we really know anything about Data's past. Far less of the backstory of, say, Picard or Kirk is in the category of likely lies.
Timo Saloniemi
Little about Data's background is truly explicit. His history has never been shown in flashbacks, so we don't even have to worry about our eyes being unreliable narrators. Rather, the parties doing such narrating on screen have been outright villains or folks being misled, so we actually have little reason to think we really know anything about Data's past. Far less of the backstory of, say, Picard or Kirk is in the category of likely lies.
Timo Saloniemi
I think part of it is because of what we've seen in next weeks episode trailer.
It seems fairly safe to say that Capalius (Sp?) didn't just pop up over night or even within the last 20 years of the story.
Data-like Androids have apparently been existing there for a very long time.
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