That dang emotion chip issue is sketchy

[Spectral]

Okay, here's my issue with Data's emotion chip. As far as I can tell, the chip was never in Data until he put it in himself in Generations. Lore took it in Brothers and ran off.

Then we get to Descent and Data out of no where experiences an intense emotion of rage when he kills the Borg. He felt strong emotion, but there was no chip implanted in him that was supposedly the key to being able to feel emotion at all. He hadn't even been in face to face contact with Lore at that point. That rage was simply what was being transmitted to him by Lore. As in, Lore was manipulating Data's already in place emotional functions with some means of remote control.

It happens again when Data talks to the Borg he and Geordi encountered toward the end of Descent I, The Borg activates some device on its own body and starts fast talking Data about emotions. Then the Borg and Data take off and that's when he actually meets up with Lore.

Lore does it again at the end of Descent II when Data is starting to have doubts about what they are doing. Lore gets him back in line by manipulating Data's ethics and emotions with a device he has under his fingernail. When Data destroys Lore and they end up back on the Enterprise with the chip that had been in Lore's body the whole time, he claims that is what holds his emotional ability, but he's afraid to try it again. Except, no it doesn't, you were feeling some pretty intense emotions just fine without the chip in you, they just happened to be awful ones because those are the ones Lore was amping up. Am I missing something?

 

[HIjol]

We know that Lore's brain was more powerful and more advanced than Data's. Perhaps he figured out how to access Data's emotions remotely?

 

[Spectral]

Do we know that? Soong stated specifically that Lore made that up and Data was not, in fact, less perfect than Lore. I have no doubt Lore figured out how to access Data's emotions remotely, just that he did all that without there actually being that "vital" chip ever actually in Data. That chip was baloney, is what I'm saying.

 

[Disco]

My understanding was the chip allowed him the feel emotions but some of the required software was already inside Data so Lore just had to send remote messages and tap into the existing software.

 

[SPCTRE]

Yeah, the emotion chip to me always appeared to be more of a key, a USB dongle if you will, to unlock Data's (pre-installed) emotion functionality.

It's a bit like on-disc DLC, only that Data didn't have to pay for the chip.

On Disc DLC refers to a type of downloadable content strategy in which the content the user pays for as a download is actually already on the game's disc. The download itself is nothing more than a "key" that unlocks the content.

 

[Timo]

We know from "Datalore" already that Soong realized that Lore was "too much" and scaled back Data accordingly. Yet Soong also swore Data was no lesser being. It does make sense to interpret this as Soong locking up most of Data's scarier skills and characteristics, and planning on unlocking them gradually and watching out for torches-and-pitchforks reactions from the crowd.

This explains why Data feels he cannot do humor or informal speech or good sneezes - he has been locked up with commands that make him feel uneasy about using contractions, jokes and expectoration and also hypercritical about everything he does in those fields of human study. Essentially, he has been raised up to be hypercorrect, except this has involved no interaction or other conventional education - it all works through simple mental blocks.

When Soong realized he couldn't finish his work at Omicron Theta, he installed all (?) of his planned upgrades on that single chip and planned on unlocking Data with that. Possibly this bit of pixie dust would unleash all of Data at once; possibly there would be built-in timers. And only when the chip was running would the locks stay open; removing it or turning it off would click the locks shut again, as in ST:FC.

Soong was a hopeless perfectionist who was unwilling to reveal Lore or Data to the greater public despite their decisive demonstrating of the workability of the famous Soongian positronic brain. Naturally, Soong would build his "sons" with the same sort of mental inhibitions, either consciously or not!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praxius]

Lore had the chip for a while and long enough to study it and compare it to what he had. With the same level of intelligence as Data, he no doubt figured out how to transmit what he wanted through the chip and onto a carrier wave to trigger into Data's head. Sort of a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth effect.... I use the app on my phone to connect to my PC and manipulate what I need without being directly connected through a physical sense.

The Borg who were nearby were merely carrier waves on a connecting hub to extend the signal.

The theory of the chip unlocking what's already inside data rather than storing the needed information/code is plausible as his dream sequences were activated at a certain time too.

But I personally think the chip was more of a chunk of RAM/Memory with existing stored information on it for Data's brain to connect to and use. Soong most likely took it out as a safety precaution in case Data came across it early on, activated it and risked ending up like Lore despite his additional moral programming.

 

[Mojochi]

It's clear that Data had existing programming locked away from him, which in some cases could become accessed with the addition of hardware, like the emotion chip, but also from the things we come to know in Birthright, some of it is time delay or leveling oriented, such as the dream program. Data accidentally unlocked his dream program prior to when it might have done so naturally.

It's no great leap from that to assume that Lore could have broke down the programming within the emotion chip, and likely using himself as a model, figured out how it would interact with Data, such that it probably filled in links to existing programming, links which Lore managed to break down into singular emotions, that he would then remote access.

Ultimately, he wasn't sending emotions to Data. With the chip, he was able to send data that unlocked isolated sections of Data's emotional programming, and when the chip was installed completely, all the blocks were removed

Personally, I much preferred the natural leveling process from Birthright. It hinted that Data had within him all he needed to become fully emotional, and would evolve to it though a natural progression. That character development would also explain away the fact that Data was already exhibiting signs of emerging emotional awareness the whole time

 

[Spectral]

Ah, those are great explanations and make a lot of sense. It' an issue that has always bothered me because, not only did it never make sense, the idea of the chip being the sole source of any of Data's emotion or character seemed to negate the character we actually watched. Particularly in the first three seasons.

When we got to season four, we had Brothers almost right away, and I could accept the chip, for whatever it was, in that episode, because it was left ambiguous enough.

Then a couple of episodes later, we had Legacy. That episode made it explicitly clear Data was struggling with some new emotions he had no idea what to do with. He was clearly, clearly, hurt by the way Ishara manipulated and betrayed him.

And that was the end of it. By the time we got to Data's Day which, sure, still had him struggling the concepts of human emotional connections, it was very much as someone on the outside looking in.

There was almost nothing pointing to Data's inherent ability towards deeper human feelings for the rest of the series, with just a handful of exceptions. Such as Birthright and Phantasms. It just felt like they undermined the character a little. Almost like at the end of season three, the writers were like, "Oops, we already developed Data's character a little too much and we've still got a lot of show left to do." So they pulled him back in and went a different route. Which, again, would have been fine if they'd handled it better.

 

[Silvercrest]

You know, the obvious question is: what did Lore himself get out of having the chip installed? If all it did was to unlock programming that he never had locked, I don't see why it would have ANY effect on him (unbalanced or otherwise).

Maybe it was wired into his emotional center but wasn't synced correctly. It could fire off emotional responses inappropriate to the situation at hand. Still, I don't see how that could be anything other than detrimental.

 

[Spectral]

I just remembering Soong saying something like, "No, it won't work, those circuits weren't meant for you."

 

[Silvercrest]

But as far as I recall, it did have some kind of effect-- am I right? Lore seemed to act differently after it was installed. I believe that's why he attacked Soong. I haven't seen the episode in a while, though.

Maybe he incorrectly thought it would unlock something and it took him a while to realize it was just messing him up.

 

[Mojochi]

Maybe he incorrectly thought it would unlock something and it took him a while to realize it was just messing him up.

Frankly, I got a similar impression. Ultimately, before he killed Soong I always felt like the problem with Lore wasn't that he had been designed with flaws, so much as he was designed too well. He had superior emotional states, just like he had superior physical and intellectual states. When he felt anger it was a more powerful anger than a normal Human. The jealousy was a more powerful jealousy. When Soong tells Lore he is dying, Lore almost immediately reacts with a heartbroken concern, and presumably other empathetic emotions, not the least of which is the hope that Data may someday come to understand his "Evil" brother. That was Lore's problem. Too much emotion

So integrating Data's emotion chip probably didn't give him more emotions, or worse emotions, but it did interfere with what was already what Soong called an "Unstable" mix of emotions. It was a real major glitch in the programming now, and the only use Lore ever really got out of it was an understanding of how to use it against Data

 

[Tosk]

But as far as I recall, it did have some kind of effect-- am I right? Lore seemed to act differently after it was installed.

"I don't know exactly what it's doing, but it's doing something." - Lore.

Retroactively, Lore may have attacked Soong due to the memories it purportedly contained (Descent pt 2). Maybe he learned a little too much of what Soong honestly thought of him and he didn't like it.

 

[Spectral]

I can see Lore having the impression that his fundamental problem was that he had too many emotions he just couldn't control. He knew something was wrong with him.

He did beg for Soong to fix him, too, not just to be concerned with his "precious Data." Maybe he believed the chip Soong made for Data contained only temperate emotions. Like it was going to work as some kind of android Lithium.

 

[Mytran]

Data having the ability to feel emotions (and use contractions) but with them locked away helps to make sense of his early season one oddities a lot, thanks!

 

[Timo]

Yeah, "locked away" should not be mistaken for "unable to make use of". Data in all the stages of his life has been able to emote and use whatever type of language he wanted to - the limiters appear to be "soft" ones, making him merely feel ill at ease about such things.

If there's a good reason, he will emote (to manipulate adversaries or make Jenna D'Sora happy). He will also lie, kill, steal, develop an accent, grow a beard, etc. But that's "not him": he will return back to normal as soon as he can, and apparently not simply out of his own conscious will. An inner devil installed by Soong must be at play, or else Data would not shirk back from having the emotion-filled life he so desires.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

Yeah, a more appropriate way of looking at it is like some psychological blocks put in, like the android programming equivalent of hypnotic suggestion or something

 

[Mytran]

Yeah, "locked away" should not be mistaken for "unable to make use of". Data in all the stages of his life has been able to emote and use whatever type of language he wanted to - the limiters appear to be "soft" ones, making him merely feel ill at ease about such things.

What I was thinking too, although I didn't express it quite so well! Whether deliberate or not on Data's behalf, in Season One there were quite a few instances of him using contractions, acting emotionally, even having a "slip of the tongue" with Geordi at once stage! (This is not surprising as Spiner was originally playing him as more childlike than emotionless)

I suspect that after the events in Datalore (and a glimpse at his darker mirror, of what unchecked emotion and behaviour can do) he instituted a greater degree of self discipline / programming to regulate his behaviour and interactions with other people.

The emotion chip allowed him to safely unlock and regulate those "locked out" sections of his psyche.

 

[FreddyE]

The emotion chip allowed him to safely unlock and regulate those "locked out" sections of his psyche.

I really wouldn´t call the emotional chaos scene in GEN a "safe unlock"