Entertainment
Star Trek’s Data Is Secretly A Cold-Blooded Killer, And It Wasn’t A Malfunction
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Stranger Things ended its fifth and final season with frustrating ambivalence, leaving it up to the audience to decide whether Eleven had heroically sacrificed herself to save her friends or whether she lived because her death was just a mental illusion. Some critics thought that this writing was overly modern, evocative of the “mystery box” storytelling pioneered by J.J. Abrams with Lost. However, this has been a genre staple for decades, as evidenced by a classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that left it up to audiences to decide whether their favorite hero had secretly attempted murder.
The episode in question is “The Most Toys,” which began with a provocative premise: a collector of the rarest items in the galaxy fakes Data’s death so he can make the android part of his collection. That collector, Kivas Fajo, is casually cruel, and he ends up brutally killing his assistant, Varria, for helping with Data’s escape attempt. Data then picks up a particularly nasty weapon (the Varon-T disruptor) and points it at the killer, but Kivas Fajo taunts the android, saying that his ethical subroutines would prevent him from committing cold-blooded murder.
Never Bet Against An Android When Life Is On The Line
Fajo eventually takes things too far by threatening Data, telling him that this woman’s death was on his artificial hands and that he will ultimately kill others if the android does not comply. Data begins to realize that he could proactively prevent his captor from killing anyone else and points the disruptor at Fajo right before the android is beamed aboard the Enterprise. There, transporter Chief O’Brien detects that a disruptor was being fired and disables it; when he and Riker ask Data about it, the android pauses and then suggests that the transporter must have caused the weapon to discharge.
Like the Stranger Things finale, this moment is clearly designed to create debate and speculation among fans. In the world of 24th-century technobabble, Data’s explanation is perfectly acceptable, and the transporter (which can clone people, send them to different dimensions, or just melt them on the spot) might have caused the disruptor to fire. Of course, the more tantalizing possibility is that Data overrode his ethical subroutines twice: first, to try to kill Fajo, and second, to lie to his commanding officer.
Death Becomes Her
Interestingly, this ambiguity about the character’s actions was effectively forced on the Star Trek: The Next Generation creative team by Paramount. According to “The Most Toys” writer Shari Goodhartz, she asked Data actor Brent Spiner “whether he thought Data purposefully pulled the trigger or not, and he was adamant that Data did fire the weapon.” She clarified that this was her intent with the scene, “but the powers-that-be wanted that kept ambiguous, so it was.”
Looking back at this fan-favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Goodhartz said, “If I had a chance to do it over, with all the experience I have behind me now, I would argue passionately for Data’s actions and their consequences to have been clearer, and hopefully more provocative.” Provocative is a good word for such a plot change, as it would confirm that, given the right motivation, Data is perfectly capable of cold-blooded murder.
The Good, The Bad, And The Positronic
That might horrify fans who love the character for his child-like nature. However, some fans might appreciate how this adds context to Data’s later betrayal of his crewmates in Season 6 after he hears a few honeyed words and receives a few negative emotions from his evil brother, Lore. That’s all it took for Data to suddenly be onboard with lobotomizing his best friend!
At any rate, both Spiner and Goodhartz’s reaction to Paramount’s script change reveals something that Netflix learned the hard way with Stranger Things: rather than making everyone happy, ambiguous endings annoy fans and creators alike. It’s far better to definitively do something bold and risky with your character rather than leave it up to the audience to decide what really happened. Sadly, those execs never learned that storytelling is a bit like being the captain of a starship: as Kirk once memorably put it, “Risk is part of the game if you want to sit in that chair.”