Smuggy smuggy smug.
The short recap:
Even in the 23rd century, we will tolerate creepy predatory behaviour from old men as long as they’re “brilliant”.
The long recap:
This episode starts off with a Pulaski log, which is weird given she plays very little role in its events. But they need the ship’s closest thing to a science officer to endorse Ira Graves, a genius in cybernetics who the Enterprise is rushing to help. On the way they get a call from a distressed ship carrying 2,000 colonists, and Pulaski insists that that’s probably a bigger priority for her medical expertise, to everyone’s shock.
In a wee bit of foreshadowing, Deanna and Geordi visit Data and discover he’s been growing a beard. Deanna finds this hilarious, which is ironic given the fuss she’ll make in Insurrection about kissing Riker with a beard.
Nom nom scenery, nom.
They beam down to Graves’ planet, and to the delight of nerds everywhere discover Ira Graves is being played by the incomparable W Morgan Sheppard, who eats all the scenery in a matter of minutes. He’s an utter lech, hitting creepily on both Deanna and Lieutenant Selar, refusing medical treatment and becoming entranced with Data, whom he christens his grandson – after all, Graves taught Data’s creator Dr Soong everything he knew. Selar gets sneaky with a tricorder and diagnoses a terminal illness; Graves huffs off with Data for some family bonding. They discuss experiencing pain and desire, which sounds way kinkier when it’s written down.
Just to hurry the plot along, Graves promptly reveals to Data that he plans to upload his consciousness into a computer before he dies, then subtly figures out where Data’s off switch is. The Enterprise arrives just in time for Data to appear and declare Graves has passed away; and all Starfleet mourns the loss of a man whose brilliance has never actually been shown on-screen.
Back aboard the ship Data promptly starts acting a lot like a brilliant lecherous scientist, waxing lyrical at Graves’ funeral and getting really snotty with Wesley. The only saving grace of this is that, much as in Datalore, Brent Spiner is obviously having a grand time being allowed to emote. Picard consults with the relevant senior officers – Geordi and Deanna – who both suggest Data is just having trouble processing the death of his “grandfather”. But when Data basically accuses Picard of trying to sleep with the pretty young Kareen, the captain takes action, first getting Geordi to run a diagnostic – which finds nothing – and Deanna to run a psychological test.
I am Kareen, and I will be your romantic MacGuffin this evening.
Deanna determines that there are two personalities vying for control of Data’s mind, and it takes not much time to figure out exactly who the other one is. Meanwhile Data has revealed his true identity to Kareen and offered to make her an android body so they can be together forever – an idea she’s not too keen on. He all but breaks her hand, heads to engineering, and knocks out poor Geordi and a few other technicians. There Picard confronts him, and makes him see – with a clever combination of logical argument and walking into Data/Graves’ fist – that he’s out of control and is only going to hurt people.
Data/Graves flees, and they find the android deactivated on the floor of his room. The Graves personality is gone, transferred into the ship’s computer. I personally like to retcon the line of dialogue which says he has “no consciousness, only knowledge”, because then I can imagine Graves and holodeck!Moriarty playing virtual chess and plotting galactic domination.
Everybody else lives happily ever after.
The weakness of the story is in the fact that, as we’ve seen with other episodes which basically deal with sexual harassment, nobody calls out inappropriate behaviour as inappropriate. Everyone, including Kareen, speaks of Graves’ creeptacular actions as being evidence of some romantic unrequited love, while Graves acts like a pissy little victim because Kareen “doesn’t like older men.” She was raised by you on a planet with no other people, dude. It was never going to work out.
Points scored:
- Deanna really excels this episode, by not only figuring out that the creepy old sleaze is attracted to his young assistant but also that Data is acting jealous.
- I think Geordi’s thing for his first season as chief engineer is going to be “gets to actually do sciencey stuff”, so 1 point for being the person scanning Data instead of Pulaski.
Additionally:
- What the heck is this retrograde trope about brilliant old male scientists living on remote planets with nobody but an innocent-but-babeing assistant?
- Much is made of the fact that Graves was Data’s “last living relative”, meaning the Enterprise crew have assumed Lore died after being beamed into space.
Ugh, halo scanner things are, like, so 1997.
MVP: Data
You can really see why the writers kept doing Data-heavy episodes, and it’s not just because everyone loves a sci-fi adaptation of Pinnochio. Brent Spiner makes even the most awkwardly obvious personality-swapping watchable, and is right up there with Spock in the rankings of Star-Trek-characters-who-struggle-with-their-innate-humanity (it’s a holy trinity when you add Odo, but other attempts, like literally every second character in Voyager, go less well.)
MVP would’ve been W Morgan Sheppard because he’s awesome, but ugh. That character!
