My wife and I are rewatching The Next Generation and just finished Measure of a Man, the episode in season 2 in which Data’s personhood is legally debated and his life hangs in the balance.
I genuinely found this episode infuriating in its stupidity. It’s the first episode we skipped even a little bit. It was like nails on a chalkboard.
There is oodles of legal precedent that Data is a person. He was allowed to apply to Starfleet, graduated, became an officer and rose to the rank of Lt. Commander with all the responsibilities and privileges thereof.
Comparing him to a computer and the judge advocate general just shrugging and going to trial over it is completely idiotic. There are literal years and years of precedent that he’s an officer.
The problem is compounded because Picard can’t make the obvious legal argument and is therefore stuck philosophizing in a court room, which is all well and good, but it kind of comes down to whether or not Data has a soul? That’s not a legal argument.
The whole thing is so unbelievably ludicrous it just made me angrier and angrier. It wasn’t the high minded, humanistic future I’ve come to know and love, it was a kangaroo court where reason and precedent took a backseat to feeling and belief.
I genuinely hated it.
To my surprise, in looking it up, I discovered it’s considered one of the high water marks for the entire show. It feels like I’m taking crazy pills.
I mean… yeah, the episode isn’t as focused on procedural detail, and I do live for legal process minutia, but I can fill in the blanks just fine and suspend disbelief.
I mean, the question being raised is whether Data has been operating as a person willingly joined Starfleet or as salvaged equipment. If Data had been roaming around on his own and then applied to join Starfleet I’d be more nitpicky, but he was found and turned on by Starfleet and he seems to have been in the system since, so I can see the question of how to categorize him coming up retroactively. Especially in retrospect, since we eventually get undeniable confirmation that AGI is very much possible within their normal gear.
I mean, for the record, by the time Voyager comes around we know that they have protocols to use holographic AIs to substitute in for key personnel, so if you can have a “EMH” slot in for an officer you can have a piece of salvaged machinery operate with a rank and then reassign it to a different role… unless that entity has personhood. It IS a sci-fi as hell concept, but a valid one in-universe.
Me, I would have very much enjoyed Noonyien Soong arguing whether he still owns Data and learn what is legal salvage in Starfleet territory but for the sake of 90s network TV I can see “Is this android truly a life form” being the approach to a Trek episode. And thematically… well, I can’t get through the Goldberg and Stewart scene about slavery without tearing up. It isn’t just how good they both are, it’s the “oh, crap, they’re saying the thing” element to it, too.
Of course that means Starfleet straight up condoned slavery later, as per Star Trek Picard season 1. I would gladly remove all of Picard from lore at this point, but nope, officially Starfleet had legal proceedings to determine that Soong androids are people and to remove their autonomy is akin to slavery and then went ahead and did it anyway.
Picard sucks and is the worst Star Trek thing ever, is what I’m trying to say. Yes, way worse than anything in Discovery. Including season three.
So as someone who never watched Picard, its a skip?
Hmm for the sake of discussion, it could be such that that legal tribunal was calling into question all of that history. Just because a “crime” (in this case a misclassification) occured and was propagated for many years doesn’t mean it is correct tomorrow.
The point of the episode was the kangaroo court. It was that data had served as a valid, meaningful, human-like member of the staff for years, and all that was at risk. It does the very star trek thing of highlighting real world issues, in that people all over the world suffer from kangaroo court style judicial-injustice, and Picard’s achievement is that much more impressive given the hill to climb. (Corruption)
Even in a seemingly idealistic futurist-future, injustice can arise, and minorities can be swept up in the mess. The federation is not perfect, and this episode is a crystal clear example of it’s potential faults. (Executives with opinions trump up proceedings to bring about their own goals, essentially corrupt bureaucracy wrapped in judicial procedure)
With many of the recent supreme court rulings that have ignored or outright destroyed precedent, I could easily see a situation like you described. Somewhere offscreen a ruling had been made and this is the fallout.
Hot take. But put it in the context of the year it was aired, not today. Star Trek (and sci fi in general) was suffering from being perceived as “blue babes and laser guns”.
This episode was thoughtful if taken as standalone. And TNG really was about taking the episodes more or less independently. The season long story arcs and such didn’t exist. People weren’t binge watching. So the world building was less important than the specific hypothetical moral quandary of the week. Like, they are almost like Asimov short stories with a shared cast.
It wasn’t until a few years later that serialized TV even really became a thing – Twin Peaks probably was the first here, but Babylon 5 would have a good claim (and DS9, Buffy, and others were coming together then too). So the style of storytelling on TNG S2 is different.
Divorce the story from Star Trek and the setting and evaluate it as a sci fi ethical quandary. And in that framework, it is a remarkable episode.
Also, Brent Spiner played it well :)
I think that’s a terrific argument and it is always wise to contextualize it in history.
We have absolutely been binging which certainly gives it a different feel, but I would argue even as a standalone episode it was poorly written if superbly performed.
There are ideas that could have been played with in a way that respects the setting. Perhaps another computer attempting to join Starfleet, but it looks like a box rather than a person and asks Data to argue its personhood.
I don’t know. I’m not a writer and I’m just spitting an idea off the top of my head, but I think there’s a place for internal consistency within a narrative regardless of when it was written.
(This is vague enough that I don’t feel spoilers are necessary)
Perhaps another computer attempting to join Starfleet, but it looks like a box rather than a person and asks Data to argue its personhood.
They kind of had that exact opportunity in Discovery. But instead of an entire courtroom episode, it was more of a forced arbitration scene :(
I don’t mind spoilers—but use spoiler tags if necessary—what do you mean?
Discovery S2-5 Spoiler (Zora)
Discovery encounters an ancient, sentient sphere which uploads its 10,000 years or so of knowledge to the ship’s computer. The data eventually merges with the ship’s AI and becomes sentient. She names herself Zora and wants to join Starfleet.
Which would easily have led into an updated version of “Measure of a Man”, but the whole subplot was basically resolved in a scene and a half that basically amounted to an interview.
The only handwave is that they’re almost 1,000 years in the future at that point, so sapient AI rights may have advanced considerably in the interim and an interview may have been all that was necessary?
That’s too bad. Anything involving sentience and how we evaluate it is so fascinating and it absolutely could have been more interesting than that.
That was one of Discovery’s main problems. It was always on the cusp of doing/becoming something awesome, but could never, ever manage to stick the landing. Often cools ideas, terribly executed and/or realized. Very frustrating.
I’d also say none of that is legal precedent.
Just because you got away with breaking the law for decades, doesn’t mean you weren’t breaking the law and the law can’t be applied today.
The court was dealing with the legal question of Data’s personhood, within the framework of Star Fleet jurisprudence. Not whether society at large considered him a person.
It’s similar to some questions that have come before military courts, if I remember right.
Just because you got away with breaking the law for decades, doesn’t mean you weren’t breaking the law and the law can’t be applied today.
That notion is rather well addressed in Strange New Worlds s2e2 Ad Astra Per Aspera
And TNG really was about taking the episodes more or less independently.
This era was also the high water mark for syndicated TV which really drove the episodic format. Viewers couldn’t be guaranteed the show would air on the same channel or even the same timeslot. So long form serial TV were really rare.
It wasn’t until a few years later that serialized TV even really became a thing – Twin Peaks probably was the first here, but Babylon 5 would have a good claim (and DS9, Buffy, and others were coming together then too).
Soap operas were doing serialized storytelling for decades before your examples. Maybe not good serialized storytelling, but still.
Batman ended every episode with a cliff hanger. Sometimes literally hanging batman off a cliff. Then they’d resolve it within the first 10 seconds of the next episode.
Soap operas were incredibly addictive. Some of them have thousands of episodes.
You are not taking crazy pills, its premise does suffer when watched with a “critical eye” (i.e. thinking about it even a little).
The reason it’s remembered so fondly (imho) is two fold. It is one of the first “thought provoking” episodes. And the first couple of seasons were… not the best to put it mildly.
edit: admittedly, I do enjoy it, but I really have to turn my brain off to do so.
Honestly, the validation means the world to me. The performances were all top notch and I get the idea they’re going for, but how they went there was so painful and contrived.
lol, no kidding. Even watching it as a kid my first thought was, “the fate of Data’s rights can be determined in an impromptu court session with bridge crew acting as lawyers!? Shouldn’t they have… real courts for this?”. At the time I didn’t consider the limitations of the show of course, and I do think the willingness to tackle high concepts was what made the show so special. But damn did the limitations show in this one.
The existing legal precedent is absolutely ignored in lieu of courtroom spectacle. An excuse to have Picard wax poetic, which he does to great effect.
🥵
I think the concept is still high minded even if they ignored previous continuity for the sake of having the argument in the first place.
The antagonist is also a character that has little experience actually working with Data; so his ignorance is to be expected. I’m also not really sure how allowing him to be in Starfleet, hold ranks and what not means anything about his humanity.
I mean, even if they considered him to be nothing more than a machine, having him go through the academy and actually gain experience doing his job is a good test of the machine’s ability to pretend to be human. It doesn’t necessarily mean Starfleet wouldn’t do the same for something like a non-android, AI powered robot that nobody would consider to be human.
I don’t think the point even is “are androids human?” The point was “what makes a human human?” Our definition of it in reality is based more on emotion than rationality; there is a certain je ne sais quoi about what makes us different from other animals and opinions differ wildly about it.
All Johnny 5 had to do was laugh at a religious joke told by Steve Gottenburg. Guess the 80s were more advanced socially in that regard
They sure balanced out that social advancement with Fisher Stevens face painted to be an Indian engineer.
Nun soup?
In hindsight, there’s a book that sort of covers Data early career, or at least what he was doing when Picard met him. The main focus of the book is Picard’s time before the Enterprise. https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Buried_Age
Noone is sure what to make of Data at that point. He is doing some computer database management stuff at some remote location and is content to just do that. Picard shows him how to have aspirations for more.
Starfleet never really thought or cared about Data’s needs or wants, let alone sentience, until Maddox wanted to vivisect him
Having not seen it or any of TNG; is it perhaps supposed to be hated, an allusion to other (obvious) demands for human rights? To be deliberately infuriating that it’s even a question?
Its an allegory for the civil rights movement regarding race if I recall correctly, which I think people appreciate, and are just frustrated with certain details of how the story was contrived to express its ideas.
I remember liking it okay, but I frankly don’t remember it well, I mostly just remember sobbing a lot at the episode where data has a child because I love Data a whole bunch
Didn’t Legal Eagle on yt do a video about this ep?
