For the longest time I assumed after Data was found he just sorta kicked around Starfleet doing whatever they wanted him to, or that Picard or someone had “deputized” him in the field or something. Like he was considered found property and slowly and unofficially morphed into a valued crew member, so it was a horrible shock when an admiral comes wanting to ruin him to study him.
But I see from online sources he did in fact attend and graduate from Starfleet like any other cadet, um can anyone explain this? Did he attend under false pretenses or something? Or is Starfleet in the habit of letting non-sentient machines(or what they consider) attend SF and letting them get assigned to ships and have a long career before deciding oh hey you know thats just property so lets trash it! :dubious:
How does Measure Of A Man make any sense if SF knew about Data from day one and let him attend and graduate and even assigned him to a ship, the hell?
Its explained in Measure of a Man. IIRC, the guy trying to get Data impounded was against Data being allowed in SF in the first place. Apparently he was over-ruled at the time but has since gotten a promotion or sucked up to the right Admiral or whatever and is in a better position to make another go at it.
Thanks I had missed that he was originally against Data joining SF, but you would have thought all questions of Data’s right would have been decided right then and one admiral couldn’t over rule it.
An aside but a major plot point in MOAM is that should the study be successful SF will produce armies of Data clones to perform all sorts of functions, a “race” of slaves basically and Picard and others struggle with how immoral they consider this. Yet not even a decade later SF is using armies of sentient holograms as slave labor in mines :smack: And while it might be better then mining coal every SF ship has a “slave” doctor on board :smack: And they basically go through the whole MOAM thing again with the holograms, so I guess the Data precedent didn’t apply to software only AI.
In TNG, it was stated several times that Data is unique and SF has no way to duplicate his “positronic brain” or whatever technobabble they used. But it was widely recognized, especially after MOAM, that Data was a sentient individual.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched Voyager, but IIRC it wasn’t realized that the medical hologram could even be sentient - they were only used as “emergency backup” for a ship’s doctor. So the medical holograms weren’t used for long-term slavery - my impression was that they were only rarely turned on. And IIRC, the only reason the crew in Voyager realized that the medical hologram was sentient was because they had to continuously run his program for long periods of time without rebooting it. I think the “MOAM thing with the holograms” only occurred after the precedent of the doctor on Voyager being recognized as sentient?
There is an episode where the Doctor has to argue his sentience for some reason and he is making some kind of statement or speech that is broadcast in the media and right before the credits it cuts to what looks like a mine with dozens of medical holograms digging with pickaxes and they listen with interest to the broadcast. The implication seemed to be SF was using the holograms for slave labor.
But yes the Doctor seemed to be the force behind hologram rights.
I remember having the TNG Technical Manual back then and it stated that Data so closely resembled a biological being that he was never recognized as an android when he entered Star Fleet Academy. I don’t remember when he first admitted to being one, but I would imagine it was day one during introductions and he sighed and said “I wish to be a human.” Of course the canon-ocity of the Technical Manual is in question as well.
I could see Data fooling people at first. I mean, he is fully functional, in EVERY way (and in multiple techniques). I hear that fucker has pores and shit too.
Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if the relevant decisions were made on a piecemeal ad hoc basis, with no overriding precedent set until the events of “Measure of a Man”. That’s how law often works in the real world.
There’s an interesting bit in the paperback TNG novel ‘Metamorphosis,’ which starts with Data’s victory party after the episode “Measure of a man.” In it, Data talks to Wesley and Geordi about having been through legal hearings regarding his status as a person twice before - when he was first activated by Starfleet, and when he applied to join Starfleet Academy. (Presumably the second was the one where Maddox opposed him.)
And he notes that although he didn’t doubt the necessity to clarify his status the first two times, now it seems that he’ll have to face legal challenges for the rest of his existence, and one of them might end up overturning his personhood.
Since it’s a paperback, it’s not ‘canon’, but interesting.
That’s the one, thanks. I always thought that the emergence of AI needed more of a story arc, even a background one, in the ST universe rather than the spotty and inconsistent treatment it got - Data/Lore/Lal, the exocomps, Moriarty and the Doctor.
I don’t get why he attended Starfleet Academy, as opposed to just downloading the entire curriculum in a few minutes. It’s like he spent four years just learning socialization skills.
It seems to me that that is exactly why he attended Starfleet Academy. One also has to learn to work within a chain of command and to relate on a personal level with his fellow officers. Data wanted to be more than just a machine, and part of a being’s development is learning to deal with other sentient beings in appropriate ways. Encyclopedic knowledge by itself isn’t sufficient. For Data to use his knowledge effectively, he had to learn how and when to share that knowledge in a relevant manner. Even in the first seasons of TNG, Data still made social miscues, such as giving more information than was needed to the situation, making it necessary for Picard to cut him off with a “That will be all, Data.” Presumably attending the Academy was a way for Data to learn to function gracefully (or at least not awkwardly) in a more controlled environment than in society at large.
Well, then the problem was that he was still learning basic stuff decades later, and supposedly after he’d become second officer of a major vessel - not a posting I’d expect to be handed out to someone with socialization problems.
One recurring bit I found tiresome was how Data would describe compiling the collected works of Plato, Socrates, a few hundred other human and alien philosophers… and now he’s going to ask Riker for advice. I get that book-learning may not be enough, but geez… we’re talking hundreds of books, and the advice he invariably gets from Riker (or Picard, or Crusher, or Guinan, or whoever) is of the vague and useless “just be yourself” flavour.
Didn’t Data actually come up through the engineering branch? Not that engineers don’t need good social skills, but Data’s social weaknesses wouldn’t be nearly so glaring if he were focused on solving a technical problem. Leading a team of engineers requires the ability to solicit good ideas, critique bad ones without bruising egos, and so on - these are things that Data would naturally be quite good at. (Hard to think that your boss is being a jerk when you know he lacks the capacity to even want to mock you). Data’s promotion to ops officer is new, and may be at the very limits of his social skills.
(and in multiple techniques). I hear that fucker has pores and shit too.