The Enterprise is in orbit around a planet experiencing the sudden cooling of its outer core, endangering the life on the planet; Data and Geordi work with seismologists from the planet in order to find a way to re-liquify the core in order to save the planet. One of the doctors is a human woman named Juliana who soon claims to have known Data's creator, Doctor Noonian Soong. She says that she was his wife making her, in effect, Data's mother.
Data is at first doubtful of her claims but finds evidence that backs up some of her story, though there's still holes in it; talking with Geordi he's told that he seems to be more looking for an excuse to not believe her as opposed to evidence to believe her. Since she hasn't anything to gain by lying Data accepts her as his mother.
He works closely with her over not just the project on the planet but in getting to know her and learn of her time on Omicron Theta (the planet Data was found on) as well as her relationship with Soong and the other androids he had built, including Lore. They also discuss the circumstances of Data being left behind when the surviving colonists fled the planet after an attack by The Crystalline Entity. She initially says there was no room on the escape pod but then confesses the truth, that she couldn't bare losing another android "son" if Data turned out like Lore and needed to be shut-down.
Complications on their work on the planet necessitate Data and Juliana to inspect the devices being installed during an earthquake/possible cave-in. as they're finishing up the find the route back to transport-out site unreachable due to a chasm, but Data convinced Juliana to jump with him down to the transport enhancers. They both survive the fall, though Juliana is knocked out and has her android arm detached.
As Geordi, Data and Dr. Crusher examine the unconscious Juliana back on the ship they find that she is a highly sophisticated Soong-Type Android, one that perfectly replicates a human to the point where its even able to fool sensors, medical scanners and transporters. They're not certain why she's not awake as she seems to be otherwise perfectly functional. Riker questions Data on how he knew she'd survive the fall and Data points out he began to pick up suspicions on Juliana's true nature based on tells she gave that she wasn't a biological being.
A small chip is found in Juliana's skull with a holographic interface, Data uses it in the holodeck to investigate the information on it. What's produced is holographic representation of a Noonian Soong in his late middle-ages, a built in program to answer any questions one might have about "Juliana" should her true nature be discovered, including a special program written for Data.
Data talks with Soong about Juliana's nature, Soong explains that as they left Omicron Theta Juliana was mortally wounded, as she held on Soong was able to scan her brain and implement it into a new type of android and positronic brain. Effectively "downloading" her thoughts and memories into the android body, as soon as the biological Juliana died the android one was activated being none the wiser, simply thinking she had recovered from her injuries. Soong programmed her to shut-down should she ever learned the truth, otherwise she's designed to live out a long life and to die of old-age at some point in the future. Soong says that during their remaining time together Juliana grew frustrated with Soong's preocupations with his work and she left him, Soong regretting never telling her his true feelings.
Data mulls over what to do with this information, whether to tell a re-activated Juliana the truth about her nature, discussing things with the senior staff. Ultimately he decides to send Juliana on her way, allowing her to believe she is human, so as to not deny her the experience he's sought all of his existence. He makes plans to keep in contact with his mother and to visit her.
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The Season Seven parade of "dealing with crew family members we've not touched on yet" continues, but this one is probably the better one of these outings, well, probably the best. There's some good moments here dealing with Data's coping with his mother and how to handle things with her true nature.
The actress who plays Juliana does a great job in her role, and Spiner does a great performance as the holographic middle-aged Soong; also some fantastic make-up work on him there.
That's about all I have on the episode's merits. It's a just a generally good episode. Nothing too exciting or thrilling, but some good emotions here and performances.
I did like the embarrassing "mother stories" Juliana had to tell about Data.
On the nitpicking front:
I openly admit to not being an expert when it comes to geology, volcanology, or such... But a planetary core cooling within a period of months seems pretty damn quick. Where is all of that energy going?! The Earth's core is said to be around 10,000* Fahrenheit, that's not a temperature that's just going to bleed away in a matter of years or even centuries. Our planet is going to be destroyed when the sun becomes a red-giant well before the core solidifies! So how is this planet's core going to do it in a very short amount of time?! We're also told that the core's cooling is impacting gravity on the planet. Which doesn't strike me as true either, since gravity is based on mass and whether the core is liquid or solid it's still the same mass and, thus, should have the same gravity.
It's really incredible the leaps on android-making Soong made between Data's and Juliana's models. Data is a pale-skinned android that reads as one under all instrumentation and Juliana for all intents and purposes is an an artificial human since she had to be physically examined in order to find her true nature.
It's not a nitpick, but this episode tries to back-door in an "aging program" for Data, likely to explain the change in his appearance not only over the course of this series but down the road as the cast makes the leap into movies.
All and all, a decent episode and we've got a couple more ahead of us before we get into the thick of it.
Hopefully with the Holidays out of the way and the personal life simmering down some, though SAD is starting to impact me, I can make these threads more consistent as we finish off the series.
