“The Measure of a Man”
Written by Melinda M. Snodgrass
Directed by Robert Scheerer
Season 2, Episode 9
Original air date: February 13, 1989
Star date: 42523.7
Mission summary
Data gets an important lesson in humanity when he joins O’Brien, LaForge, Riker, and Pulaski for a game of poker and loses to Riker’s bluff. (Which only worked because of the beard.) But life deals Data an even worse hand when Enterprise arrives at Starbase 173 and Commander Maddox comes aboard with orders to dismantle the android.
Maddox was the sole naysayer on the committee that evaluated Data for entrance to Starfleet Academy, maintaining that he was not sentient. Since then, he’s been studying Data and his creator’s work, and now he’s ready to reverse engineer the android to begin mass production. Data and Picard refuse to allow this delicate procedure, but Maddox has had Data transferred to his command—and orders him to report the next morning for disassembly.
Picard appeals to an old nemesis for help, Phillipa Louvois, the head of the Judge Advocate General office for the sector, who ten years before was the prosecutor in the Stargazer court martial. Despite her previous attempt to screw him over, she now seems just as interested in screwing him, but he would rather think about someone he actually likes: his second officer. Louvois doesn’t understand Picard’s “passion over a machine” instead of her, but she throws him a bone. The only way to protect Data is for him to resign from Starfleet.
Data tries to do just that, but Maddox cog blocks him by going to Louvois to argue his case.
MADDOX: Data must not be permitted to resign.
PICARD: Data is a Starfleet officer. He still has certain rights.
MADDOX: Rights! Rights! I’m sick to death of hearing about rights! What about my right not to have my life work subverted by blind ignorance?
LOUVOIS: We have rule of law in this Federation. You cannot simply seize people and experiment with them to prove your pet theories.
PICARD: Thank you.
MADDOX: Now you’re doing it. Data is an extraordinary piece of engineering, but it is a machine. If you permit it to resign it will destroy years of work in robotics. Starfleet does not have to allow the resignation.
PICARD: Commander, who do you think you’re working for? Starfleet is not an organization that ignores its own regulations when they become inconvenient. Whether you like it or not, Data does have rights.
MADDOX: Let me put it another way. Would you permit the computer of the Enterprise to refuse a refit?
LOUVOIS: That’s an interesting point. But the Enterprise computer is property. Is Data?
MADDOX: Of course.
PHILLIPA: There may be law to support this position.
She determines that the “Acts of Cumberland” establish precedent and rules Data the property of Starfleet. Picard challenges her decision and she agrees to convene a hearing, provided that Picard defend Data and Riker prosecutes the case, since the rest of her staff won’t arrive until Tuesday, and they’re the two highest ranking officers at the starbase.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have another thrilling episode of Law & Order: Starfleet.
Riker is conflicted by his assigned role in Data’s downfall, particularly when he studies his friend’s schematics and discovers a damning piece of evidence, which basically makes his case for him: Data is clearly a machine because he can be turned off. When Data takes the stand, he uses the super-secret insider knowledge about the android’s off switch to deactivate him: “Pinocchio is broken. Its strings have been cut.”
Picard calls a recess and drowns his sorrows in synthehol in Ten Forward, where Guinan offers a few sage words of advice and helps to crystallize the real issue.
GUINAN: Well, consider that in the history of many worlds there have always been disposable creatures. They do the dirty work. They do the work that no one else wants to do because it’s too difficult, or to hazardous. And an army of Datas, all disposable, you don’t have to think about their welfare, you don’t think about how they feel. Whole generations of disposable people.
PICARD: You’re talking about slavery.
GUINAN: I think that’s a little harsh.
PICARD: I don’t think that’s a little harsh. I think that’s the truth. But that’s a truth we have obscured behind a comfortable, easy euphemism. Property. But that’s not the issue at all, is it?
Court resumes and Picard calls Data to the stand and begins building a case around the personal effects Data has packed and his illogical, sentimental attachment to them: his Starfleet medals, a book that Picard gave him, and a hologram of Tasha Yar, his one-time lover. Picard then challenges Maddox to prove that the captain is sentient but Data is not. The captain proves that the android meets two criteria for sentience: he is intelligent and self-aware. It all comes down to one criterion: whether Data is conscious. And he argues that no one can know that answer for sure, so they can’t treat him as if he isn’t: “Are you prepared to condemn him and all who come after him to servitude and slavery?”
Louvois reluctantly admits that she isn’t qualified to answer “questions best left to saints and philosophers,” but someone’s gotta do it:
We have all been dancing around the basic issue. Does Data have a soul? I don’t know that he has. I don’t know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose.
Win!
Unsurprisingly, Data chooses to remain intact but encourages Maddox to keep working hard and one day, when he’s competent, maybe the android will cooperate with his research. Maddox finally accepts that Data is more than a machine, referring to him as “he” for the first time. Picard is so grateful to Louvois, he invites her to dinner. And Data consoles Riker for nearly getting him killed, because he did it for all the right reasons.
Analysis
This is the episode I used to get an ex-girlfriend interested in Star Trek, and it did the trick. (The other episode I showed her was “Arena,” when she wanted to see the inspiration for some jokes in Galaxy Quest.) I’ve always upheld “The Measure of a Man,” a title which perhaps sounds naughtier than it is, as one of the best the franchise has to offer. I’m pleased that after this re-watch, it I still think as highly of it.
I didn’t quote large chunks of dialogue in the recap above out of laziness; this is simply one of the best written episodes we’ve seen to date, and of the entire series, with a superb performance by Sir Patrick Stewart. Courtroom dramas keep cropping up on Star Trek, but this one sets the gold standard: It’s tight, compelling, well-paced, and thought-provoking, without getting too preachy.
This episode shows restraint that has been lacking in the series up until now, whenever the writers want to push a moral agenda. “The Measure of a Man” does raise some big human rights questions, but it also leaves them there, allowing Data and viewers to decide the answers for themselves. Louvois cleverly (or incompetently) doesn’t rule that Data is a sentient being, simply suggesting that he deserves to have free will. Data gets what most of us want out of life: the chance to grow as individuals, explore all the possibilities before us, and fulfill our potential.
“Starfleet was founded to seek out new life,” Picard reminds us. “Well, there it sits.” It’s incredible that a ship tasked with seeking out new life and civilizations already carries one of its most precious discoveries. Possibly my favorite moment of this episode is the one in which Data defends his decision to Maddox, not out of selfishness or even the understandable desire for self-preservation, but because he is unique:
I am the culmination of one man’s dream. This is not ego or vanity, but when Dr. Soong created me he added to the substance of the universe. If by your experiments I am destroyed, something unique, something wonderful will be lost. I cannot permit that, I must protect his dream.
Put this way, one wonders why Data puts himself in danger week after week, but if we extrapolate a bit, we’re all just as unique. We may not be the only remaining specimen of our kind like he is (barring a couple of prototypes still lingering about), but our personalities, thoughts, and contributions to the universe are just as important and irreplaceable.
I was similarly moved by the discussion of him being more than just his memories and knowledge, which really is getting into the distinctly metaphysical territory of what makes us who we are. I’m not sure how this holds up in light of the recent “The Schizoid Man,” in which Dr. Graves successfully downloaded himself into Data’s positronic net, not to mention Star Trek Nemesis (I really do have to stop mentioning it!), but as a question limited to just this episode, it’s ripe for debate.
I’ve always been a little confused and put off by the slavery defense, though, and find it curious that it only occurs to Picard when a black woman brings it to his attention. (Though slavery presumably was not something the El Aurians had to deal with.) The episode just shies away from drawing direct parallels to human history, but I think it muddies the issue.
Before you can argue that it’s wrong to treat people like property, you have to establish that Data is a person—which was the whole point of the court case. Picard jumps ahead a bit to warn of the implications farther down the line, but by suggesting this is the path they’re on and the burden of the court decision to the future, he may have freaked out Louvois enough for her to essentially default on her duty. I understand that slavery was justified by maintaining that slaves were not human, but it still seems like a tenuous connection to me. Am I wrong?
There are also some refrigerator door questions that I’m mostly willing to overlook. One would presume that Data was already ruled sentient years ago, when he was admitted to Starfleet. Or did they do the same thing they did here, say “Well, we don’t know, but he’ll probably make a good red shirt, so why not let him in?” And why would Starfleet authorize Maddox to disassemble their only android, even if they did think he’s only property?
There’s also the matter of Riker being able to access Data’s schematics. I look at this as the equivalent of him being able to look at another crew member’s personal medical history. And why the hell is Data’s off-switch, something he disclosed in strict confidence to Dr. Crusher, now a matter of public record? It kind of seems like he’s being treated like property already, yeah?
And I figure there are all sorts of conflicts of interest at work here: Having Riker take the prosecution, and presenting the case to a prejudiced judge who had already decided that Data is just a machine. Then there’s the fact that Louvois is attracted to Picard, and he takes her to dinner right after she finds in his favor…
But these minor issues don’t change the fact that this is a solid hour of television, and the first to really show us just how thoughtful the new Star Trek could be when it tries really hard. And there wasn’t even a single explosion or fancy special effects, just five people in a room, talking. Bravo. This episode leads the way to a brighter future for the series.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 6 (on a scale of 1-6)
Thread Alert: Nothing too embarrassing in this episode, since it’s mostly just Starfleet uniforms. I could talk about Guinan’s usual getup, but instead I’d like to point out a small bit of wardrobe, more of a prop, really: Data’s poker visor. This is the first appearance of the weekly crew poker game, which ends up becoming a regular feature of the series, as well as an occasional plot point, so it’s also the first appearance of his visor. Consequently, the prop became rather iconic, so much so that one of them went for $6,000 in the Christie’s auction six years ago. On a side note, I was surprised and pleased to see O’Brien playing poker with his commanding officers. I don’t remember how often this happens, but it usually seemed to be senior staff only, and Picard only ever joins the game once himself, in “All Good Things…”
Best Line: DATA: “With the application of a little care, Wes, the paper can be utilized again.”
Trivia/Other Notes: Twenty minutes of deleted scenes will be restored in an extended version of this episode for the Blu-ray “TNG remastered” season set.
The Regula I laboratory model from Star Trek II was repurposed as Starbase 173.
The Daystrom Institute is a reference to Richard Daystrom in the original series episode “The Ultimate Computer.”
This episode is almost universally praised from both crew and critics, cited as a favorite of Rick Berman’s and Michael Piller’s, ranked #6 on Entertainment Weekly‘s top 10 of TNG list, and garnering a Writer’s Guild nomination for “Best Episodic Drama.”
Previous episode: Season 2, Episode 8 – “A Matter of Honor.”
Next episode: Season 2, Episode 10 – “The Dauphin.”
I wonder if the title is a reference to Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man? (It’s a critique of “scientific racism” and a favorite book of mine.)
It’s a very, very good episode — probably the best of the first two seasons — but, for me, it is hampered slightly by the McGuffin. Not only as Eugene pointed out that Starfleet seems to have already decided this question by enrolling him in the Academy and making him an officer; they also promoted him. Twice. I suppose you could argue that Maddox was going somewhat off the reservation by planning to dismantle Data and that Starfleet wasn’t aware just how far he was planning to go in his “study”, but even just a transfer to Maddox’s command without previously informing his CO or providing a replacement feels off.
I’m not terribly convinced by Riker’s use of the off-switch. A Vulcan nerve pinch or a properly dosed hypospray could produce very similar results with an organic being.
For me the flaws to the set-up and the rather obvious callback to Kirk and Ariel Shaw keep this from being a full 6. Warp 5.
@1 Matt Stevens
Probably not Gould, as he was riffing on something else in his title. It sounds fairly poetic or proverbial, but a very quick search hasn’t turned up anything. However, among it’s many uses is the title of a book by Martin Luther King, Jr., which, given the less than subtle subtext from Guinan, may be relevant.
I always remember this episode quite fondly. It’s one of the moments where Data’s uniqueness really stands out. He’s not just an android that’s trying to be more human; he’s a thoughtful, reasoned person. Brent Spiner really brought him to life in this episode in a way that he hadn’t succeeded at before (imho).
I also thought that Riker’s anguish combined with his competence was well portrayed, even if his Pinocchio argument didn’t work for me either. Picard’s passion was inspiring.
I didn’t care for the relationship between Picard and Louvois and him taking her out for dinner after really is kind of weird.
Not sure what I think of the slavery thing. I think the point was valid but it also seemed a little overdone. Like Eugene says, it’s sort of sidestepping the issue at hand but I can see the relevance. But it was one of the more hamhanded aspects of the episode (even though Guinan was still pretty great in her scene).
The slavery analogy did make some sense to me. The justification for enslavement hinged on property law. Logically (and legally) It made perfectly sense to deny slaves rights and to own them in every way possible — since they were not human, but merely property, purchased and paid for. It wasn’t a question of owning other humans. Property arguments were always at the heart of it.
It always bothered me when, in his dramatic final defense of Data, Picard mutters/whispers some *very important* arguments under his breath at the beginning, almost as an aside (about “mega-strength” and Data’s construction not being persuasive arguments by the prosecution) before arriving at the arguments about sentience and slavery, which get a full-blown Shakespearean delivery. Those initial arguments were critical points in Data’s defense! The construction argument especially, since Data had just been *shut off* by the prosecution. I would have liked to have had them delivered with *some* gusto — not necessarily the impassioned speech of the later arguments, but not in the bored, whispered monotone that Patrick Stewart chose. It was good Shakespearean acting I suppose, but bad lawyering. After all, you never know which argument will sway a judge.
Classic episode nonetheless for all the reasons in Eugene’s review. Yep, warp 6.
Absolutely my favorite episode of the series — and, not very surprisingly, the favorite episode of a lawyer friend of mine (we were TNG fans together when it first aired). She especially liked it when Riker is told “When people of good conscience have an honest dispute, we must still sometimes resort to this kind of adversarial system” — because courtroom dramas were (and often still are) reduced to Good Lawyer vs. Evil Opposing Lawyer rather than two attorneys doing their jobs.
This is an excellent episode, excellently realized, dramatically presented, that is frankly on a subject that should have come up much earlier in the series (we’ve certainly debated it on these boards), the legal status of Data.
As noted, logically this would have come up and been resolved long before Starfleet ever granted Data a commission and allowed him to issue orders on a starship (it would have formed the basis for that decision)… so it is ironic that the solution offered to his predicament is to resign that commission. The commission is, in fact, Data’s best guarantee to be treated as a command rank officer rather than “a toaster.” I forgive this bit because the episode handles so complex topic in a mature way. Adding to the superior quality, no one here particularly comes off like a jerk—the scientific interests advanced by Maddox and the judicial detachment of Louvois are completely understandable.
Seems some definitions of what constitutes sentience and individuality, what separates life from unlife, would have been set down long before, giving Picard a bit more grist and case law for his defense. And it seems from everything we understand about Star Trek that those definitions would be liberal and expansive and err on the side of openmindedness and revision. OTOH, it does raise the question that, given Data is scientifically unique and technologically valuable, why he was assigned hazardous duty on a starship in the first place.
The last two episodes have been definite highs so far….
…
One thing that really jumps out at me is that, maybe for the very first time in the series so far, Picard uses his high-minded ethics to some practical end. For the most part, we’ve just seen him smug and loftily superior, even disgusted by inferiors, “Let’s not get our hands dirty, Number One.” Here, he’s actively engaged in the welfare of his crew; not distastefully annoyed with the doctor, not threatening their deaths to make some obscura to an alien douche, or haphazardly remembering to say “welcome back” to a returning away mission. In Season One, he lectured about the importance of Federation ideals, all the while they were being demonstrated as idiotic and malformed. Here, he is actually saying the values his organization holds have practical purpose.
We see that they do.
@2 DemetriosX
This is mere speculation, but I considered that if there were a change in leadership at Starfleet Command, perhaps Admiral Nakamura or someone else has stepped in with different plans for Data. Even if there’s precedence for treating Data as a person, if there isn’t anything on the books, that might give them enough leeway to bring the question up again and reverse the previous “decision.” Maybe all the personnel who supported Data were killed by alien parasites in season one.
I’m curious as to what’s in those 20+ minutes of deleted scenes. For all we know, many of our questions were originally addressed. I’m also fascinated that there could be 20 minutes of deleted scenes; I figure they’d make most of their cuts before filming, to save money. Sometimes the show runs over during editing, but you’d think they would have realized they had over an hour of show to fit into 47 minutes. I don’t think I’m going to repurchase this season, or any other on Blu-ray, but I’ll definitely rent it or invite myself over to a rich friend’s place to watch it.
Apropos of nothing, I just noticed some further continuity between the original series and TNG, in the courtroom props. They’ve updated the hand scanner from the one pictured in our re-watch of “Court Martial”:
this has always been on of my favorite episodes. I love big questions and what is a person is a very big question that we are going to be grappling with fairly soon. (We already are actually but I was thinking about computers and uplift.)
I wish the producers had really taken to heart the idea that you don’t have to threaten the ship for good drama.
As far as Starfleet and the commission, I suppose it could have been an admin call and never challenged in court, as such the issue would not be settled law until this case. (Though with the number of androids running around in the Trek ‘verse you woudl think someone somewhere would have had the forethought to tackle the issue.)
As far as the Chieft palying poker with the officers, well in a real military that’s a big no-no and it would be officers who got in the hot water.
When I was in the NAvy my brother-in-law was an officer in the USN. It was an accepted exception that *I* could visit my sister, but my enlisted friends could not, because that *might* prompt fraternazation between and officer and enlisted.
I’ve always loved this episode; it’s one of the first that comes to mind when asked to list good TNG episodes.
I am reluctant to say it, but I have to admit the slavery thing bothered me, really detracted from the ep for me on this rewatch. Having it delivered by a Black woman is just too heavy-handed, and as I think someone implied, it’s really putting the cart before the horse — “siippery-slope-to-slavery” doesn’t prevent them from building ships with computers on board, so it falls back on the question of whether Data is a machine or a man. The only way this decision really works is if it freaks out Louvois enough that she doesn’t want to make law, which doesn’t seem to fit her character as described (she’s all set to get cracking on some precedents) and makes you wonder why we even have a legal system, if judges don’t realize the importance of their decisions already, then balk in the face of responsibility when that importance is pointed out.
Moreover, like so much of early canon, it doesn’t seem to set a precedent that’s followed later on in the show (much like O’Brien fraternizing with the officers). From what I recall of Voyager, nobody blinks about the notion that the hologram doctor might be turned off; on the other hand, even though it is one of the great tragedies of the Trek universe that the existence of Vic Fontaine was tolerated for any period of time, DS9 does seem to be trying to argue through him that holograms have some form of sentience.
Also, I object to this nonsense Louvois goes off on about “does Data have a soul.” That’s theology, and irrelevant. The question they’re trying to answer is, does an irreducibly-complex ability to make decisions in regard to the disposition of one’s person entail the right to be permitted to make those decisions? Data can choose his fate. Should he be allowed to? That question has to have been settled by this point, unless we’re going to vote to revoke Riker’s self-determination in the near future… unless he has given up that self-determination by becoming a Starfleet officer.
On that…
[SPOILER ALERT: LATER TNG]
I also kind of question the basis for the idea that Data can resign his commission to get out of this. Troi’s command test establishes that a Starfleet officer can, and in some circumstances must, be ordered to do something suicidal, and must obey those orders. What Troi does to Geordi on the Holodeck is the same as what Maddox wants to do to Data: order an officer to risk death for the greater good. Why should Data be allowed to weasel out of it?
[END SPOILER ALERT]
Perhaps the difference is that Maddox intends to kill an entire species; but the fact that he’s experimenting on a living creature, human-like sentience or not, in a scientific research setting without its informed consent makes the entire enterprise very questionable. His reasons are garbage. Starfleet wouldn’t let him vivsect a cat on this basis; why would they ever consider letting him destroy Data?
Also, Riker’s argument that Data is inhuman because he can be turned off is nonsense. Anyone can be turned off. The difference is Data can be turned on again… and if Data is property, and not sentient, then he cannot be held morally or legally responsible for his actions. Had Louvois ruled for Maddox, Data could simply have fragged him and scarpered in a shuttlecraft or something, and it would be Starfleet that had the legal responsibility… obviously there are flaws with this plan, but my point is that laws or no, it’s really quite a tricky proposition to compel a being as powerful as Data to be a party to his own destruction against his will.
All that said, I still love the episode, even if I think it’s more flawed now than I realized growing up. It has a tremendous ambition beyond monster-of-the-week and has so much promise for what we’ll see later on in the show.
—
Unrelated note: human chattel slavery is a much broader legal tradition than in the American experience. I don’t really think we can argue that the institution of slavery makes a distinction between the slave and the human; even in law, I think in most of the historical perspective it was acknowledged that an enslaved person was not a piece of wood or a horse, but rather a human being with a special status that meant he or she was bound to service and commercially salable. Even the American legal tradition — more likely than other legal traditions to view enslaved persons as purely property — acknowledged this at the margins; enslaved persons would have been counted as “inhabitants” of the states (which horses surely would not), and the three-fifths compromise refers to enslaved persons as “all other persons” — suggesting personhood is not in doubt (whatever the other implications of the legal status). But that’s not Maddox’s argument; Maddox sincerely believes that Data is not a sentient being, and depends on this fact (unless those Articles Louvois talks about were actually endorsing some form of slavery).
I would venture that whatever rhetorical flourishes and legal arguments they may have made, no one in history who has practiced slavery has been long under the misapprehension that people, despite being treated as property, are not sentient or human.
@10 DeepThought
From what I recall of Voyager, nobody blinks about the notion that the hologram doctor might be turned off; on the other hand, even though it is one of the great tragedies of the Trek universe that the existence of Vic Fontaine was tolerated for any period of time, DS9 does seem to be trying to argue through him that holograms have some form of sentience.
You had to bring up Fontaine, didn’t you? At least in this instance, any revelations about holograms that the DS9 crew might have had wouldn’t have affected any of the events on VOY, since Voyager was essentially cut off from continuity in the main ST universe for most of its run and the ship sailed before Vic ever came on the scene.
On another note, I haven’t been attempting to flag spoilers for later in the series or on other ST shows. Should I?
Undoubtedly non-comm O’Brien fraternizing with comm officers has much to do with his uncertain status in early episodes, where he is directly referred to as a “lieutenant.”
The Star Trek Wiki has more http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Miles_O'Brien#Problematic_Rank_History
Some bright soul evidently tumbled to his status as a warrant officer much later in the series.
@Eugene re: spoilers
Good question. This is billed as a rewatch, and the source material’s been out for over ten years, so I think you’re probably good (unless you count Torie’s rule of “you reminded me of what happened in an episode I’d forgotten and therefore spoiled me!”) but I think it’s not so much use anyway unless you can implement spoiler tags on the website that actually shade over the text until click or mouseover. (TVTropes does something like that).
That said, those can be quite useful…
(As a side note, almost all Star Trek officers seem to be acting more in the mode of ‘warrant officers,’ in that they are highly trained technical specialists with their hands firmly on the controls. In standard militaries [as I think has been discussed before on these boards] command officers rarely get under the hood, are rarely dosed with grease, and frequently do not even have to possess technical expertise in the area of their command.
Picard and Riker seem to be the only officers on the Enterprise who operate as ‘officers’ in the modern sense.)
On the other question, folks probably should not be outraged when they stumble into spoilers on a labeled ‘Re-Watch’ blog. Almost by definition, it is a place where the subject matter is familiar and has been viewed before.
Actually, TNG had already dealt with the question of hologram sentience earlier this season in the person of Moriarty. They didn’t really come to any definite conclusions as I recall and anything they did decide would have been purely Picard’s command decision and recommendation rather than Starfleet policy. I still think that the decision had to have already been made since Data held command rank. If he had had a supernumerary position (like Troi, for instance), a better argument could be made that the question was still open.
@10 DeepThought
I think the primary difference between this and the scenario with Troi is that the latter represented an emergency situation, while this is really a matter of scientific curiosity. It’s like the difference between ordering soldiers to hold a position against impossible odds and ordering them to participate in medical experiments. (Not that hasn’t happened, but it’s morally very questionable and certainly doesn’t fit with the ethos of Starfleet and the Federation.)
@15 DemetriosX
Perhaps an analogous situation might be found among the soldiers who were assigned duty positions during atomic bomb tests. It was clearly hazardous duty by grunts in the name of scientific enquiry. Maybe these soldiers were all willing volunteers for the assignment, all sternly informed of the potential risks for which they signed waivers, although my sense of the era is they were just barked into foxholes at Ground Zero, where they chain-smoked cigarettes and looked at their watches from time to time wondering when the chow call would arrive. Almost certainly they received no special compensation or privilege for this duty.
But I think you’re right that compulsory hazard duty does not fit into what we understand is the ST ethos.
20 min of deleted scenes?
makes me wonder if they first planned this as a two parter.
Absolutely one of my all time favorites from this series. A true turning point in the writing. My biggest complaint had nothing to do with the ‘slavery’ discussion. The fact that it was a black woman hardly entered into the equation for me because it was a wonderfully played scene. We would see more of these little chats between Guinan and Picard and she became something of his sounding board. Someone he could discuss matters of import with rather than one of his officers… someone who was free to disagree with him with little fear of reprisal.
No, the part of the episode that didn’t ring quite true for me was the flirtation between Louvois and Picard. It seemed something of an afterthought and unnecessary ( also harkening too much back to Kirk’s romance with Areel Shaw. It just seemed awkward with Picard. I never really felt he was that interested in her and it was kind of uncomfortable to see her flirting so openly with him ( I suppose it made her seem a bit desperate ). Imagine if the Louvois character had been male and acting the same way. I can picture Picard reacting almost exactly the same as he does with Phillipa ( even her name – with a minor keystroke change – lends itself to this scenario ).
I just discovered this version of the screenplay which has some deleted scenes in it. I haven’t looked through the whole thing yet, but there’s a bit with Picard and Riker fencing and Picard asking Data for personal information. Nothing that wasn’t cut for a good reason, so far.
http://www.st-minutiae.com/academy/literature329/135.txt
I’m really curious (and surprised) about those 20 minutes of deleted scenes myself. By and large, I’ve found that most deleted scenes from tv and movies deserve to be deleted but since this is one of the first genuinely good TNG episodes I’m intrigued.
I’m not planning to buy the blu-rays either, though. Maybe if Amazon offers them for a ridiculously low price some black friday of the future.
I was so, so pleased that this episode held up on re-watch. Finally, a meaningful dispute, resolved with difficulty and with some discomfort and uncertainty, by people who have a lot invested in the outcome. Incredible it took so long to get here.
There are things that still bother me, of course. It’s clear that Starfleet thought he was sentient enough to enroll in Starfleet, after all, and the level of obvious bias and conflict of interest on the part of both the judge and the prosecutor are absurd. (The defense is literally in bed with the judge!) There’s also no clear format or procedure for this “hearing.” It feels like a haphazard drumhead court martial rather than anything really legitimate. I would have appreciated something more official-feeling to settle a question as substantial as this one.
Highlights: Riker’s range of emotion (the thrill of finding a point to make that may win, the despair that follows); Picard’s unbridled passion for the issues; Data’s heartbreaking arguments for his own life. Eugene has discussed this better than I can, but I’d just like to add a hearty “hear, hear.”
Warp 6, without question. One of the best of the series.
@ 2 DemetriosX
The off-switch doesn’t work for me as an argument, either. As DeepThought notes, we have off-switches, too. You just can’t turn us back on.
@ 5 David
You said exactly what I was going to say to Eugene about the slavery argument. This episode brilliantly masks the same argument in a cloak of “sentience.”
@ 6 Barbara Kasnoff
Interesting, given that there’s some really bad lawyering going on here! (And bad judging!) But yes, I take the point.
@ 7 Lemnoc
Amen. He’s practicing what he preaches.
@ 8 Eugene
Great catch. The extra 20 minutes thing is going to haunt me. That’s SO MUCH MATERIAL.
@ 9 bobsandiego
Interesting. I mean, ST obviously doesn’t really know what to do with its enlisted men…
@ 10 DeepThought
Yet it IS a slipperly slope. The Jews, Gypsies, Armenians, or Tutsis were legally human–for a while. But rhetorically they were rats, roaches, less than human, and ultimately the law caught up with the rhetoric, eliminating rights to property, work, food… Keep in mind that the 3/5 compromise only bestowed personhood because it was economically and politically advantageous. That was not the case in ANY other aspect of life or society, and the “historical perspective” easily jives with Picard’s plausible worst-case-scenario. What he envisions is haunting and absolutely believable given our own history.
@ 18 Dep1701
It’s just awkward and inappropriate all around.
–scenes, scenes, scenes. this episode is packed with great scenes—even the teaser is most compelling, including the short exchange between louvois and picard, fellow french perhaps?–really, is there much science fiction here?–this is drama–plain and simple– delivered by some very good actors, and it is all about the dignity of life–the high watermark of the series so far–
@ toryx–I didn’t care for the relationship between Picard and Louvois and him taking her out for dinner after really is kind of weird. —an opportunity to smooth the rough texture created by years of conflicted animosity?–maybe–closure perhaps–the respect and affection between these two is obvious—
@ David Mercurio Rivera—It was good Shakespearean acting I suppose, but bad lawyering–exactly–picard is not a lawyer–and didn’t know how to handle the situation until he got fixed by guinan
@ Lemnoc– As noted, logically this would have come up and been resolved long before Starfleet ever granted Data a commission and allowed him to issue orders on a starship–yep bothered me too–even in the 24th century we might get complacent and forget lessons learned–it is possible that this commander maddox had such a reputation with the brass and made a good case that they handed the keys over—and for your point about standard militaries and warrant officers being under the hood and not “line” officers–“journey to babel” comes to mind when kirk said: “star fleet force is used as a last resort, we are an instrument of civilization”–needing some of the disciplines of a military, but much more of a science organization–so there are informalities– and personally–i’d rather the principals of this series did the heavy lifting—
I for one felt that the slavery issue was at the center of the question. Maddox looks at Data as a tool, he’s not challenging Data to prove that he’s more than a machine but rather just approaching him as Star Fleet property. Given that attitude, what use could he have in mind for his assembly line copies of Data?
And Star Fleet’s line on slavery has been questionable from the very beginning. Remember the suggestion of Orion Slave Girls in The Cage? Was the scene with Pike based on a memory or a fantasy? I had the feeling that it was based on a memory of having been to such an establishment. Are the Orions part of the UFP? Probably not but Star Fleet and UFP dealings with them do seem to take place. Our own culture has a poor reputation on the issue – and I’m not talking about pre Civil War slavery. While supposedly not practiced within this country, prison labor and wage-slave labor are firmly established in our current economic system. We also continue variations of the concept of less than Human. These people cannot marry. These people cannot own guns. These people cannot go to parks or other public spaces. These people must not be permitted to express their points of view. We can give ‘good’ reasons to support these restrictions but if you step back from the emotional push-button issues you may find that we are still flirting with the concept of disposable people. So, if we, today, found the ability to create an army of Datas (an army of disposable people), would we? I believe we would. I believe another issues being discussed here supports my case. Officers and enlisted should not mix because doing so may risk losing a battle because a real military man has formed feelings for a disposable person or a group of disposable people. You can cite regulations and procedure as sound reasons for this but it is a throwback to old and long established class distinctions.
This is a good episode. My problem is that the writers and the team in the front office didn’t learn from it. Data continues to be an android trying to be Human rather than trying to be an Android.
I’m not touching the holodeck character discussion because if I did this posting would be at least doubled in length.
What I meant to say about Data was this. Data continues to be an android trying to be Human rather than being an Android.
A great episode; I haven’t seen it for a while but still do remember some of its most gripping scenes. I’m bummed that I wasn’t able to go to the movie theater event for the Season 2 BluRay. This was one that was supposed to be shown, including (according to the press release) 13 minutes of never-seen footage.
I do dispute one of the nitpicks, though, about the “off switch”. I think this was an excellent piece in Riker’s case for Data being non-human property*. Yes, in the Star Trek universe you can give someone a Vulcan neck pinch, hit them with a hypospray, etc etc. But in the case of Data, this argument in the case is about an ‘innate’ off switch. Humans have no such thing. Riker makes his statement and uses the switch, but afterward, Data does get reactivated.. he gets *switched on* again. There is no innate human equivalent. To say so would be like saying “I switched off this lamp” after you hit it with a sledgehammer for a couple minutes.
*Though I will say, I think Riker only made half of his excellent argument there. IIRC, he touches the switch, says the lines about Pinocchio, then is finished with Data as a witness. If this were a real legal case, I’d think the lawyer should then switch him on again, to prove the “no innate human equivalent” I mentioned above.
I suppose the reason for not doing that was to highlight Riker’s rock-and-a-hard-place situation. Wasn’t he kind of ‘threatened’ before the trial? That if he did not mount a strong and true prosecution, Data would just be summarily ruled property? Maybe also that he (Riker) would suffer consequences too? The way he plays that scene, hitting the switch and making the clever quip, lets him leave the scene on a high and tense note. I always felt there was a subtext that he was hinting: There.. I found the bombshell evidence and laid it out, and now I hate myself for it. Frak this, I’m done..
What on earth is a “refrigerator door question”?