This episode explored the idea of personhood, whether Commander Data, being an android who has thus far served as a Star Fleet officer, should be considered a sentient being with his own rights and desires, or the property of Star Fleet. During the episode, Bruce Maddox tries and fails to get Data declared the property of Star Fleet so he can shut him down and take him apart. Picard naturally objects, but finding an impasse, he requests a Starfleet Judge Advocate General to rule on whether or not Maddox can force Data to submit to the procedures.
What’s always bugged me about this episode is the flimsy excuse that the JAG orders Riker, one of Data’s friends, to act as an advocate for Maddox’s side. I feel that added tension to the episode to see the friends go against each other, which worked out fine, but still was a lousy excuse. Riker, to my knowledge, was not deemed especially noteworthy to represent Maddox, I don’t remember him having any future Star Trek law experience that qualified him over others. Wouldn’t the normal thing to do was to simply make Maddox represent his own side? Why did the JAG draft Riker into doing it? And fictional future laws notwithstanding, it seems illegal that the JAG said if Riker didn’t represent Maddox to the fullest of his ability, she’d automatically rule against Data. Seems like a cop out to me to create conflict where there normally wouldn’t be
Wouldn’t the normal procedure be assumed to be that both Picard and Maddox find legal representation for their sides, and then meet in some court? Or, failing that, the JAG should just tell Maddox to represent himself or find someone who would do that? I felt that episode wanted you to dislike the arguments Rikers was making, but since it was coming from a sympathetic character, force you to consider them rather than write them off as a douchebag argument if Maddox was the one making them
Hadn’t Data been in Starfleet for 15-20 years at that point? It struck me as absurdly late in the game to be raising questions like whether or not he was sentient or alive or whatever.
In “Court Martial” from ST:TOS Kirk was prosecuted by an old girlfriend. It seems that the concept of conflict of interest is dead in the future. And back then they didn’t have the “we’re all superior and moral” attitude they had in the TNG days.
Well, since as Q pointed out, after the nuclear war (whenever that happens, sometime this century) they DID kill all the lawyers, it has had a chilling effect on the recruiting of legal defenders out in the more distant worlds.
But yeah, YogSosoth, I agree with you: it was a device to make the arguments against Data come from a sympathetic character.
(And to make a secondary point, with the usual Trek subtlety, about how one should not hold it against someone’s designated advocate that he does advocate.)
And one question of course was left for us, treated as a throwaway line but more pointed than it seems: *would *we care so much if he *were *just a box on wheels?
I had always assumed (making us an ass or two) that Riker was chosen because, as his (Data’s) friend, he would have to make to sure he (Riker) did the best job possible so no retrial would ever be ordered.
Fan wank: this idea also serves the needs of Section 31 being able to deprogram individual Borg drones in order to gain intelligence. Or Sec 31’s plans to clone Dr Bashir and William Decker “joining” Ilia/V’Ger and Wesley’s AI nanobots entering into treaties with Delta Quadrant alien governments.
The real problem is that this is like asking Judge Roy Bean to rule on slavery. There should be some kind of recourse for Picard to ask that such an important matter be shelved until the matter can be properly taken up. And not by some JAG out in the boonies.
This is similar to the argument I make whenever people call Janeway a murderer in “Tuvix”:
“Tell me in all honesty that if your child were sucked into your PC and it started calling itself ‘Mary 3000’, a separate and new lifeform…you wouldn’t get your child back without hesitation?”
Of course we ARE talking about the same Captain (Janeway) who just let some aliens walk off with Neelix’s lungs…so she may not be the best judge here.
It seemed to me that they were acting like it was some sort of emergency, and it had to be done right there on the ship. As if, because of Maddox’s order, it had to be resolved right away.
That was the excuse in the “Managerie,” where it actually made more sense, since they couldn’t control the ship.
Except my daughter ISN’T ‘Mary 3000’. That’s the whole crux of Tuvix’s argument. That my daughter is dead and the only way to get her back is to kill this ‘lifeform’.
I think the reason given on the show was based on Riker’s position in the chain of command: Something like the commanding officer is automatically assigned one side, and the second-in-command is automatically assigned the other.
Yes, I hate this episode for its contrivances. The sequence where the computer is reading off Data’s list of medals and citations alone should have been enough to halt the proceeding. Just as Maddox says the Enterprise computer would not be able to refuse a refit, Picard should say, “Would Star Fleet award the Enterprise computer a medal for doing its job?” That Star Fleet gave such accolades to Data surely answers the question of his sentience and individual rights.
The story would have been improved greatly if Star Fleet/Maddox could prove that Dr. Soong was building his androids as part of a government contract, for which Star Fleet agreed to provide him with all of the materials needed in exchange for the “full rights” to the finished result. That might at least give them some true legal standing for what transpires, and would better parallel the historical property/slavery issue Picard brings up later.
What right does Starfleet have to claim ownership of Data in the first place? Perhaps Finders Keepers is the law in the 24th century? If anyone owns Data, shouldn’t it be his creator Dr Soong? Or rather his heirs, since he was believed dead at the time.
Yeah, I remember being bothered by that too, Peter.
Of course, it wasn’t clear at the time if Soong had any living heirs away from Omicron Theta, so there may well have been a viable legal claim under treasure trove or some other space bounty law, boiling down to ‘finders keepers.’ But Starfleet allowed him to enroll at the Academy as an autonomous being, instead of claiming him as property and issuing him to the Academy. Sigh…
This is one of my favorite episodes . . . in spite of the fact that its “meat” is about 5 minutes long, and the rest is filler. A sausage, if you will.
Isn’t this the episode wherein the one female office says something like “The question we’re all dancing around here is whether or not he(Data) has a soul.”?
