Why did Data lie in "The Most Toys"?

Data reasoned that he couldn't allow the situation with Fajo to continue, he had the moral obligation to prevent him from anymore murders. He had an opportunity to put the slimeball out of his misery and he took it. I say bravo Data.

 

Wow I did not realize this was so heavily debated

 

That's ok imho. It's hard after 25 years to find new topics to discuss. We come back to the same ones a lot, especially the controversial ones that deal with killing, lying, & gray areas, all of which this one touches on

The only reason I even drag myself into it now, is to defend Data against people claiming he should somehow be undefeatable here, when over the course of the show, we've seen him literally get bested in chess by Troi, outmaneuvered by addicts, & put down by primitive villagers with pitchforks. It's nearly impossible to fill in all the blanks this fan base picks at, to satiate their need for more explanation. I think this episode does a fine job of making clear the position Data was in, that required lethal force from him

We literally have nearly an identical debate about Riker Killing Yuta in The Vengeance Factor. It's a 42 minute teleplay. They are never going to spell out every possible contingency that someone could nit pick, & hold against the characters. I'm of the opinion that since we know these characters pretty well as ethical ones, then we should be fleshing out each episode to fortify that overall narrative, not to break it down in lieu of some other slant a fan might want to believe

 

Why? Because he wasn't toyin' around no more.

 

Before Fajo arrives in the shuttle bay, Data gets attacked by two of his cronies. One of them comes at Data with some kind of metal club-like object. Data of course takes care of him easily. When Fajo drops the disruptor after murdering Varia(sp?) Data could have quickly picked up the disruptor, then the club which could have been thrown at Fajo, incapacitating him. To suggest that his only option was to fire on Fajo is not true (however, that's the way it was written). And to suggest that Data would not have been capable of doing all that would also be untrue.

And let's face it, Monday morning quarterbacking with paragraphs of speculative nonsense and half baked theories based no doubt on overly fertile imaginations and/or hallucinatory substances is pretty much 90% of what we do here on TrekBBS.

 

Yeah, but people make more outlandish claims against Data here than any other subject I've seen, because they are invested in the baseless claim that he wanted to murder someone

Ultimately, in order to contradict what the characters, writers & whole production are saying the situation is, you must definitively know all of Fajo's capabilities, on that ship of his, that they're both on, which none of us know to a certainty. How can you know that Data has options to defeat this guy otherwise, if you don't know the extent of Fajo's capabilities?

We know Fajo has a force field Data can't penetrate. We know he has a starship capable of being used to abduct & imprison Data, and keep an entire crew in relative servitude. We know he dropped a weapon that's only description is lethal & vicious. We know he's willing and able to execute more people to further his goal of keeping Data in captivity... Because they are his people, on his ship of unknown capability

He could potentially give an immediate order to his computer to flood an area with toxic gases, killing someone, just to raise carnage as a punishment to Data. We & he both know Data doesn't want that. Data is strong, fast & an expert with tech, true, but that is demonstrated to not be enough under these circumstances, and there have been MANY other examples Data came up similarly short in, which people argue less.

But I'm feeling spunky today. So let me address any of the claims I've seen in this thread, that Data "should've" done instead

Fajo's protective shield deflects the thrown club object. Data accomplishes nothing. The same situation exists.

Like a ceiling fixture or something that might crash onto Fajo, right? Welp, you lose. The crashing object is deflected by Fajo's forcefield, accomplishing nothing. Fajo is angered that Data has damaged something, & orders the computer to release toxic gas into someone's quarters, & forces Data to listen to them gasp to death over the intercom.

"But we don't know Fajo's force field could protect him from that?" But we don't know it can't either. The burden of proof is upon you to prove that what you suggest, will work to a certainty, otherwise that weapon IS the solution. Sorry you want more exposition about Fajo's force field parameters. It's a 42 minute episode. You get what you got. Suck it up, Dude.

Data attempts to tamper with the airlock, or shuttle bay doors, or some other area he has no codes to access, because the only person who did, & was willing to help him, is now dead. Fajo begins slowly torturing someone with deadly temperature changes, in a random bathroom, until Data stops & returns to his chair, OR maybe Data's inability to gain access immediately zaps him unconscious somehow

"But we don't know Fajo's ship has that ability" But we don't know it hasn't either. Again, burden of proof isn't mine

I've heard that one a lot before too. So ok. Data shoots at Fajo's toe, but because the Varon T-Disruptor is described as lethal & vicious, enacting a death by molecular disintegration, that shot too eventually consumes all of Fajo, & kills him anyhow. It's called lethal, not lethal only if you aim it lethally

oh noes, but the only thing we know about the Varon T- Disruptor is that it is a molecular disintegrator meant for use on organisms. So when he shoots it at anything but an organism, it just scorches it a bit. Too bad. So sad.

Seriously, what else you got? Data can't manhandle him through the forcefield, nor chuck something at him. He can't hack anything or otherwise waste time doing things, without that Fajo could hurt more innocent people in the meantime, which Data doesn't want to happen. If someone has to die, then let it be Fajo, right then & there while he has the singular advantage

 

If I remember rightly, the particular weapon he was firing was illegal in the Federation, hence him admitting to firing it would be to admit breaking the law.

 

What is Data shot him in the foot?

 

It's not said that it would be illegal to use in a state of defense, if lives were on the line, and there were no other option. They're just banned, which means no one can own one legally, which Data does not

It's called lethal & vicious. It shoots someone & then tears them apart from the inside out, & disintegrates them. There's nothing to say that process would be any different no matter where he'd shot him

 

*sigh* Okay sure. Have it your way

 

Data is a like a by-the-book stoical cop who would never shoot a suspect without being sure it was the only way to save a life. Fajo is very dangerous. Data doesn't have backup or a choice of non-lethal weapons to use. It's debatable (as evidenced on threads like this) whether he really needed to shoot to minimize risk of Fajo continuing to enslave and murder people. Data finds Fajo so utterly contemptible that he weighs that in his decision. Fajo isn't an abused pauper lashing out or someone who for whom mental illness plays a role in his crimes. He's evil. Data decides with worthless piece of crap isn't worth even the tiniest risk of innocent life. Data kills him with a weapon that burns him alive. The ancient impulse of revengeful justice that's part of humankind is also part of Data's programming. On some level he thinks Fajo lived by the sword and should die by the sword.

Beyond the revenge impulse and Data finding Fajo contemptible, there is at least a very strong case that it was justified shooting. It's possible there might be a hearing where lawyers argue both sides of it, esp if Fajo had died.

When Riker asks him accusingly why such a horrible weapon was being fired in his hand. Data's like, "With all due respect Commander, having just escaped from a horrible murdered I'm in no mood for sanctimonious second guessing. You weren't there. You didn't see how evil he was. It was a clean shoot under the law, and morally the guy had it coming. There had better not be any board of inquiry of this, esp if he survived and will live the rest of his life comfortably in a beautiful Federation penal colony in some place like New Zealand. So I'm going to go calm down and then write and official report, with your permission, sir."

He said all that with one line. Something must have happened during transport. Riker understood the full message.

 

C'mon, like I'm the killjoy, because I'm supporting what the episode is upholding? I mean I'm as much for crackpot theorizing as the next Trek fan. I even have one about Soong deliberately programming Data to think he can't use contractions, as a way to address that elephant.

The obvious difference should be that our goal ought to be to find ways to have the show (Which clearly has flaws) make more sense, not less. However, if people want to come up with those nutso trains of thought, but their motivation is to undercut the production, or even worse, devise a completely paradoxical narrative (Like Data wants to murder & Starfleet loves murderers), then I don't think there's anything wrong with me coming to the show's defense a little bit, & pointing out that they did well enough

Fajo's got a force field. It happened. Do we need a syllabus on what it can & can't do, during our 42 minutes of drama, in order to back a character who's corner we ought to be in, as a default, because he's literally being victimized in this episode?

It's not nearly as egregious an oversight as a handful of Ferengi just suddenly commandeering the Enterprise, because they have a couple Klingon ships. There's plenty of reason to believe some unknown entity, with the right resources could box Data into a corner that's only solution is lethal force imho

 

Because he's a Marty Stu.

 

Data didn't lie.

He avoided directly answering Riker's question, but that is not a lie. At no point does Data actually say that he did NOT fire. Therefore, he never lied.

"Perhaps something occurred during transport"? Yes, that's being evasive, but technically speaking it's also TRUE. Something DID occur. Data just didn't say what that thing was.

Although Riker probably figured out the truth anyway. It just wasn't worth pursuing, because 1) Data would obviously have been completely justified in killing Fajo, and 2) even though that didn't actually happen, Fajo was going to be quickly caught anyway, so what's the point of forcing the issue? It's over, so Riker just let it drop.

 

This thread, like many of those that came before, sort of immediately homes in on what appears to have been the writer intent, and what certainly is the dramatic high point of the story: that Data had to make a choice, and was uncomfortable with it.

I still cannot see the point of the interpretation where Data truly is backed into a corner, as this simply makes "The Most Toys" the Episode Where Data Makes No Choice. Reducing him to an automaton who merely does the expected is the very take that necessarily prompts the thread question of why he subsequently lied. The writers specifically wrote that he lie; they weren't thinking of him having made no hard choices.

Any effort aimed at detracting from that just makes our Superman come off as cartoony, is all. We can debate the consequences of him pressing the trigger or failing to press it, but we really, really shouldn't be trying to take that debate away. Data must be left facing a tough choice here. And the one where he can do nothing but kill is not tough at all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Said only psychopaths imho