TNG Flashback: Datalore

The "evil twin" story is pretty much a staple of television science fiction. The original Star Trek tackled the plot just a few episodes into its first season, and The Next Generation didn't wait much longer in delivering its own episode, "Datalore."

The Enterprise visits the colony planet on which Data was found. The planet is now dead, all life on it somehow destroyed, but the away team find a hidden laboratory, containing the disassembled parts of Data's android "brother." Hoping to learn more of Data's origins, they reassemble the devious, sociopathic Lore, who quickly summons a giant, spaceborne crystalline entity -- the very creature that destroyed the colony -- to devour the life aboard the Enterprise.

I've read that this episode was actually not originally conceived as an "evil twin" episode. The writers first planned for the crew to find a female android that would have served as a potential love interest in the plot. But as they struggled to make that story work -- even delaying the episode in the production order (when it was supposed to have been filmed before "The Big Goodbye") -- Brent Spiner himself made the suggestion to go with evil twin.

So, Spiner gave himself something juicy to tackle on the show. Which you could possibly look at as totally the thing an actor would do. But he pulled it off incredibly well. Lore is a bit over the top, but certainly no more so than some of the other villains depicted on the series over the years. Certainly, Spiner created two distinctly different performances in Data and Lore, and masterfully met the technical challenges of playing both roles within the same scene.

Lore really is an interesting character. The moment he opens his eyes and says his first words, it's to lie about whether he or Data was built first. Starting on a lie, you really can't trust a word he says for the whole episode, or whether any of the back story he gives Data even in private is really true. And he seems to have no purpose in sacrificing humans to the crystalline entity other than the enjoyment it gives him. Lore's behavior seems to suggest that it was relatively easy for Dr. Noonien Soong to give an android emotions; what was harder to do was to give him morality. (Though I do have to wonder why a cyberneticist familiar with Isaac Asimov -- who is mentioned in the episode -- didn't at least toss Asimov's three Laws of Robotics in there as a "better than nothing" version of a conscience.)

Actually, it's just that sort of nitpick that makes me wonder if the script couldn't have used even a bit more time in prep. These sorts of holes abound once you start looking. For example, best not think too much about how inept the Starfleet crew who found Data was, in that they didn't find the secret lab that took our heroes seconds to locate. Even if you accept that they missed it for lack of a Geordi in their away team, you have to wonder why Starfleet never sent another ship to more thoroughly investigate the planet on which they found a fully functioning android!

The episode may be a good one for Data, but some of the other main characters suffer for it. Tasha, for example, brings up the question of whether Data can be trusted with his brother aboard the ship, and Picard even commends her thoughtfulness in the security matter. But in the end, she isn't part of the resolution of the story at all, so her suspicions are for nothing. I also believe this is the first of many episodes in which someone beats up Worf as a way of showing how strong they are (Lore in this case). Poor Worf. Also poor Troi, who isn't even in this episode. I do wonder if her psychology training would have given her an edge in telling Lore and Data apart.

But the real whipping boy of the episode is Wesley. This is the episode that gave angry fans their rallying cry for the rest of Wil Wheaton's run on the show: "Shut up, Wesley." Both Picard and Crusher say it. And this is after Riker disses him too; Riker specifically sends Wesley down to check on Lore/Data, only to completely disregard everything Wesley subsequently reports. Of course, the only reason Wesley is given this job is a narrative one, because if Riker assigned any other actual officer to make a report and then so casually dismissed that report, he'd look like a really big(ger) tool. I mean, even more than he does when he falls for Lore's stupidly simple ruse.

Then again, Wesley isn't up to his usual brightness in this episode either. When he and his mother go to Data's quarters, wake up Data, and confirm that it really is him and not Lore, do the three of them call security to request a whole squad to locate and capture Lore? No, they don't tell anyone and go after Lore on their own.

Nobody's as dumb as the crystalline entity, though. It's smart enough to communicate in English over a subspace channel with Lore... but too dumb to figure out how to kill the people on the ship that's right in front of it once Lore is no longer aboard?

Still, the overall impression of the episode is good despite the nitpicks. And there are a handful of very good moments to help balance out the awkward ones. There's a great scene where Picard tries to cut through the awkwardness of discussing Lore around Data, and another later scene where Data points out that even Picard is dehumanizing Data by referring to Lore as an "it" and not a "he."

Another highlight of the episode is the great score by composer Ron Jones. It's a moody tapestry that includes suspenseful passages when the away team explores the secret lab, phrases of wonder and discovery when they find Lore, drawn out moments of tension when Lore drugs Data, and amped up action music for their final confrontation. It's a full feast.

Other observations:

• Throughout the first season, you see a lot of background crew members wearing a mini-skirt version of the Starfleet uniform -- both male and female characters. I find it a bit awkward in either case, and I'm not sure this ever happened again from the second season on.

• It's interesting to me that Dr. Crusher is so involved in the assembly of Lore. It was probably just a writing choice to involve her more in the plot, though it implies that there's a fair amount to Data/Lore's construction that's at least as much biological as mechanical.

• Geordi slips into weird Air Force pilot lingo (or something) when he first detects the crystalline entity on his scanners: "I'm picking up a bogey coming in on a five o'clock tangent."

• Much is made in the episode of how Lore uses contractions and Data does not. This seemed unnecessary to me as a way to tell them apart, and was ultimately just fuel for nitpickers in every episode before and after this one where the writers messed up or Brent Spiner had a slip of the tongue.

This episode probably wouldn't have been very good without the talents of Brent Spiner. But it had them, and so it is. I give it a B.