ST: Nemesis And Data's Demise

[Lorna]

It seems by the end of the film they were attempting to make us believe that B4 had obtained Data's memories and algorithms etc etc or whatever they are and I think they were using this as a possible way of bringing him back in some way in the future.

I was thinking though. Does anyone think Data might have survived the destruction of the Scimitar?

Sure, he shot a phaser almost point blank at the intermix chamber but does that necessarily mean he died from the resulting explosion?

He's mechanical and not biological meaning he's a lot tougher than a Human for example.
The immediate explosion of the intermix chamber could have created a shockwave and knocked Data backwards. As the ship then blew apart he could have been sucked out into the void of space.
Another possibility is that because Data is made up of separate parts (his arms and legs and head all connect to the torso) he could have been blown into his constituent parts and then they could have been blown out into space.

Sure he would be damaged but maybe not so severely that he cannot be repaired.

Does anyone else think it's possible that Data survived the Scimitars destruction?

Thinking about it further does it matter if his body survived? All that matters really is that Data's head survived, his head could be connected to B4's body or Starfleet could build Data a body. Starfleet does not have a problem with building android bodies, I mean they gave Nog in DS9 a robotic limb, it's the positronic net they can't build

 

[F. King Daniel]

No, he was atomized. I'm afraid an explosion that destroys a Reman warship isn't likely to leave surviors - much less a guy standing in the room the explosion originated from!

Unless of course the time police from Voyager beamed him out a millisecond before his death. Or, you know, whatever.

FWIW, I liked how Data was brought back in the novel The Needs of the Many. Nobody ever really dies in sci-fi.

 

[Mr Silver]

NEM was a terrible film by Trek Standards, It kind of ignored everything the Fans responded to and attempted to remake TWOK with TNG characters

If they wanted to bring Data back, without just getting rid of B-4, its quite simple, say Data is implanted in B-4's Positronic Matrix, all he would need to do, is go visit the Daystrom Insitute, take control of B-4 during work hours, while he builds a new Android Body, then transfer himself over when its complete

From a Production POV though, it was Brent Spiner's decision to kill off Data, he felt he was too old to continue to play an "Ageless Android" (even though it was established that Data had an ageing program built in)

 

[Tosk]

The real question is how the crew of the Enterprise survived the explosion. I'd have expected the thalaron radiation that had been building up for minutes on end to blow outwards from the explosion, killing everyone nearby.

 

[JarodRussell]

The real question is how the crew of the Enterprise survived the explosion. I'd have expected the thalaron radiation that had been building up for minutes on end to blow outwards from the explosion, killing everyone nearby.

It didn't even kill Picard or Shinzon who were at times only an inch away from it. I don't think the radiation was so dangerous after all.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, it might be that the radiation only has a "lethal radius" counted in millimeters. To get killed, you need to be covered in the radiating particles themselves - like when they rain down on the Senate and then slowly do their work.

Such a weapon could also plausibly kill most of Earth's population and other life, especially if the deadly effect lingers for several days (or even longer, assuming the Senate hall only became useable again thanks to exceptional clean-up measures). However, the radiating particles did zip to the Senate floor or furniture. How could they harm a starship, which would feature a hermetically sealed hull around all the vulnerable people?

As for Data surviving the explosion, that'd depend on its nature. Shinzon's bridge / thalaron chamber might have lain close to the outer hull of the ship, perhaps even with ceiling windows similar to the big and vulnerable one of his reception hall, and the explosion of the thalaron device might have been a relatively modest one, merely blowing Data out of the ship and to the safety of interstellar vacuum. Secondary explosions could then have destroyed the ship.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tosk]

Indeed, it might be that the radiation only has a "lethal radius" counted in millimeters. To get killed, you need to be covered in the radiating particles themselves - like when they rain down on the Senate and then slowly do their work.

Not from the way Beverly describes it...

"A microscopic amount could kill every living thing on this ship in a matter of seconds."

How could they harm a starship, which would feature a hermetically sealed hull around all the vulnerable people?

The Senate attack used a small handheld device, so the form of delivery might have been optimized for that. If the Scimitar could wipe out the population of Earth, surely the weapon would rely on more than 'drifting particles'.

Being airtight doesn't keep out radiation.

 

[Jochk]

Being airtight doesn't keep out radiation.

Im not an expert but sense radiation is alpha gamma and beta particles I'm relatively sure it does

 

[Trekker4747]

:Picard returns to Earth and talks to Starfleet:

Starfleet: So, you lost your First Officer, eh?

Picard: Yep.

Starfleet: And you've damaged our flagship... again?

Picard: Yep.

Starfleet: Hey, when the Romulan ship blew up with your First Officer supposedly on-board did you happen to scan the debris field to see if his nearly indestructible body survived?

Picard: .....

Starfleet: : peaks an eyebrow :

Picard: I'll be right back....

-------------

The kind of reaction that'd take place in an anti-matter explosion or any massive explosion would make short-work of Data's body. Also in the episode "The Most Toys" Data was, apparently, destroyed by a shuttle explosion while it was carrying a volatile substance and Picard and compnay easily bought the idea Data was destroyed in the explosion, esp after a scan of the debris field showed trace elements of Data's structure. I'd assume after seeing the Scimitar blow up that similar scans were made at some point and that Picard and co. easily could see and that buy that Data "died" in the explosion.

Also in the series Data did suffer "damage" from fairly minor-looking impacts. A 13th-century crossbow fired by Troi managed to penetrate Data and even cause him some (minor) damage. So, yeah, I'd say the Scimitar's explosion did the trick.

On the topic of the radiation not harming Picard, Shinzon or the Enterprise even when they were all close to it (or sprayed with it in the explosion) it's possible that isn't the case. It seemed that the Scimitar had to "warm up" the radiation for it to attack the Enterprise maybe it has a clear make/break point where on one side it's completely safe and the other it isn't and there's no "middle ground." And blowing the ship up before this point is reached results in a mostly "harmless" explosion.

So blowing up this radiation-generator and expecting the radiation be released and effect everyone is like thinking blowing up a nuclear bomb with other explosives will cause a nuclear detonation. This isn't the case, the nuclear detonation is a specific reaction that has to take place and while blowing up the bomb with other explosives will spread whatever radiation is already in the bomb in the first place it won't cause a nuclear detonation because that process didn't occur.

So blowing up the Scimitar prevented it from being able to fully create, and release, the whatever particles.

 

[Tosk]

Being airtight doesn't keep out radiation.

Im not an expert but sense radiation is alpha gamma and beta particles I'm relatively sure it does

I'm also a layman, but to use just the Trek universe as my example, what about in 'Final Mission', when the Enterprise had severe radiation exposure problems towing that barge?

...or to keep it simpler, why would the crew even worry about the Scimitar's weapon if they knew it couldn't affect them?

 

[Captain Rob]

I've got an even simpler question:
Instead of backing up. Why didn't they just move out of the damn way. The Scimitar's thayleron weapon only fires in one direction.

 

[Timo]

Then again, it would take more thruster action to fly an evasive curve away from the Scimitar than it would to turn the Scimitar around on the spot to keep track of the evading Enterprise... If one ship had thrusters remaining, the other probably would as well, and the flight would be for nought.

The problem with the shipborne thalaron weapon isn't that it would be implausible for it to kill starship crews. It's that it would be implausible for it to kill starship crews if it were based on the same apparent principles as the tabletop model. Why are the two sizes of the weapon so dissimilar? Why does one only affect people inside one room that isn't even airtight or anything, while the other can kill everybody inside a heavily protected, hermetically sealed volume?

Being airtight doesn't keep out radiation.

Being airtight keeps out radioactive particles, so that eliminates "alpha rays" and other such short range stuff. Also, being airtight is usually achieved by having walls more than a millimeter thick, so that tends to eliminate "beta rays" as well. But it won't help against gamma, or against really high energy particles. And whatever this delta radiation is that we find in Trek, it probably can penetrate through some defenses, including airtight radsuits (which is what Pike might well have been wearing in the incident that crippled him).

The issue here is that if the thalaron thing creates highly penetrating radiation, the assassin who planted the tabletop thalaron device would have died along with all the Senators, as the radiation would have caught up with her in the corridors. Yet she survives her deed. Again, that'd call for a fairly "customized" tabletop bomb, one quite different from the shipborne weapon, which is dramatically/aesthetically a bit unsatisfactory.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Rob]

^^ Both ships had thrusters remaining (except for the damaged sections) and more importantly they had impulse engines as well. It was the classic movie case of "Someone's shooting at me. I'll run away from him in a straight line." And they get shot in the back. Or my favorite: Someone is being chased by a car. They run down the street in a straight line and get run over. Next time get off the damned street!

 

[Timo]

"Someone's shooting at me. I'll run away from him in a straight line."

At short ranges, and if the assailant has a "scatter gun" (shotgun, automatic weapon), a straight line is probably the most effective way to run, because it turns the range from short to medium the fastest. No amount of dodging would make a difference if the enemy were spraying you with his scatter weapon, which he could easily aim left and right with much less muscular effort than it takes to run in erratic patterns.

If the E-E could run, the Scimitar could probably turn, and then fire this weapon that could supposedly cover entire planets. Not a good idea, probably.

However, if the E-E could run, why not run at the enemy? One ramming attempt had already been successful. Do it again, this time against the spindly and fragile-looking points of the enemy weapon, and hope that the weapon gets jammed in that process. Even "thruster speeds" might do damage against the weapon, especially if the first ramming had taken down (most of) the enemy shields, as Picard's ability to beam aboard would suggest.

Since neither side moves after the initial collision, it would be natural to conclude that the E-E had totally lost maneuvering power, including impulse and thrusters. Troi was ordered to "try and put some distance" between the ships, but she didn't appear to achieve anything of the sort. In contrast, nobody suggested to Shinzon that his orders to "kill everybody on the E-E and continue to Earth" would hit the snag of some drive system being down...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[PianoWizzy]

Another question would be what effect the radiation would have on things rather than life forms. Or what effect the radiation would have on Data, his 'skin', his mechanics, his positronic net. I think the reason the ship blew up when Data terminated the radiation ray was just because of the shockwave of the force and pressure he released. But considering that Data is reassemblable [if he was physically built like Lore or B4] AND his ability to withstand pressures and conditions most lifeforms can not, and that the explosion was indeed just a shockwave that sent him flying through space [with, note, no friction, so he's keep flying 'till he crashed into a planet or star or something with the inertia], he may have survived. Unfortunately, the point of the whole thing was to kill Data.

Also, while Data might have had an aging program, it's unlikely that Soong would have activated it for Data. He didn't create Data to die one day, he meant for Data to know about what he is/was. [And what I mean by that is that Soong didn't want his ex-wife to know that she had been transferred into an android body, so he constructed that aging program so that she could live out a human life. Data was intended as an android.] Data himself said that he didn't have a pre-determined time of death.

Also in the series Data did suffer "damage" from fairly minor-looking impacts. A 13th-century crossbow fired by Troi managed to penetrate Data and even cause him some (minor) damage. So, yeah, I'd say the Scimitar's explosion did the trick.

Forgive me, I just think that was purely a point of humor and nothing more than a writer's fluke, and there are many inconsistencies about the durability of Data's 'skin'. After all, in First Contact, he was being fired at with a machine gun and he turns the woman who was trying to kill him with, "Greetings." Then again in Time's Arrow, he showed apprehension at Mark Twain's [or whoever that guy was] simple gun. *shrug*

 

[Tosk]

Another question would be what effect the radiation would have on things rather than life forms.

Thalaron radiation only affects organic material.

 

[PianoWizzy]

Therefore something had to physically crush Data's brain to kill him.

 

[Zeppster]

The first 3 parts of Nemesis were pretty good. The last part of the movie falls apart for many reasons and a few of them are in this thread.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Nope. Data is dust. Seeing as how the Scimitar is completely destroyed, he isn't that tough.

As for B-4 remembering the song Data sang at the wedding, that was a blip caused by a power surge, which then completely fried his positronic brain. Data sacrificed himself for the good of the Enterprise and her (surviving) crew, but he will live on in the memories of his friends (and not by an infuriating plot twist that cheapened his death).

-Bry

 

[arch101]

Face it folks, the original Data is atoms. Gone. Done. Over. Now, that guy in the Countdown comics is a whole other matter, but whatever he is, B4, new construction, etc, he's NOT the original Data.