With what access... whose security codes?
Data is TNG's go-to man for security codes. Barring those, he could just push the door open with his superhuman strength. That's what
defines Data as a character. Providing him with a raygun to help him complete such a job is just icing on the cake.
It's an uphill battle for the writers, is all. If you want to trap Superman, you better be prepared to address every single complaint from the know-all audience, and not merely as regards his superpowers from Issue #232b, because everybody knows in advance that Superman always wins.
(Of course, feeble Wesley should always win, too, by Wheaton's contract, but then the writers would need to address the specifics of trapping Boy Genius.)
Data has no access to sensitive systems that we know about. He only escapes the room he's been held in through Varria's assistance, & now she's dead.
So he's loose both physically and figuratively. And we have seen what Data is capable of when let loose. Later on we will see how good he is at co-opting hostile hardware, to the extent that when he's a bit slow in turning the systems of a Romulan battleship against itself in ST:NEM, it's a cause for merriment.
He wasn't boxed in. He was stymied by human behavior, & he didn't beat an entire planet. He simply had to make a point in favor of evacuation that couldn't be refuted
And he's so good at
that, too, that inciting mutiny in Fajo's crew shouldn't be much of a chore. Those goons have lost already: they are facing a death machine while trapped inside a tin can that (barring James Bond villain tricks) can't exceed warp three. Fajo rules them through fear, so Data's combination of superior fear and promise of salvation should be irresistible.
Data cares about any loss of life that Fajo might enact in trying to possess him. Fajo knows this. THIS is Fajo's weapon, knowing that Data is a good person.
Indeed, and that's the whole point of Data's captivity. But that captivity is over now: Data is at liberty, and Fajo is at his mercy. And we know Data is the one for mercy - so him needlessly opting for something else is a dramatic twist where we learn more of the character of Data, not an inevitable move the simpleton machine logically has to make.
I mean, come on, it's the classic of action flicks: the villain thinks he has the hero cornered despite the hero holding a gun - but at the last moment the hero turns the gun and fires at an unexpected target (airlock controls, say) because he's
not the one cornered. It's the villain, because of his one-track mind and self-congratulatory planning that makes him blind to what he himself has wrought.
It's also what we should expect of other hero characters, and indeed we see both Riker and Picard do that exact thing in later adventures. Here we are at an embarrassing juncture in that Data shouldn't even need the gun to do the classic; our only excuse is that he is a machine, perhaps indeed rivaling the villain in the inability to think outside the box. But it appears that's the very thing the writers were
not trying to convey.
Ultimately, we should never make the mistake of assuming Data can't be beaten, least of all if his opponent is specifically applied to the task of beating him at any cost. TROI has beaten Data, ok? It's not out of the realm of possibility, is all I'm saying lol
The dramatic issue here is that Fajo already had his shot. Data's powers have been through the cinch point where the villain appears to be winning - something that usually happens because the hero is surprised and confused. But that will pass, and for Data, it has passed and a moment of clarity should restore his powers, not further limit them.
The "window of opportunity" stuff just doesn't work here. No clock is ticking, and even if one were, Data's clock speed is higher than Fajo's... Dramatically speaking, we already know Data is going to surprise not just Fajo but us. But it's a big surprise that the big surprise choice is an emotional rather than logical one.
Timo Saloniemi
