Stardate: 41242.4
Original Air Date: January 16, 1988
Writers: Robert Lewin, Maurice Hurley, & Gene Roddenberry
Director: Rob Bowman
“Mr. Data, welcome home.”
The Enterprise’s last assignment has taken the crew into the remote Omicron Theta star system, the location of the home colony of crew member Lt. Commander Data. Picard decided to visit Data’s home planet in the hopes of unraveling some of the mystery behind Data’s origin. The principal purpose of this remote earth colony was to focus on science and farming, but now this is a completely dead world. What could have killed everything on this planet? For some reason, Data has the memories and knowledge of his fellow 411 colonists stored in his memory banks.
A landing party is formed consisting of Geordi, Data, Riker, and Tasha Yar. As they approach the exact spot where Data was found by the Tripoli landing party some 26 years ago, Geordi discovers a secret underground passage that leads to a large, hidden research laboratory where experiments were once conducted by Dr. Noonien Soong –“earth’s foremost robotics scientist… until he tried to make Asimov’s dream of a positronic brain come true.” They uncover a storage area containing parts of another android, starkly similar to Data, which is brought back aboard the Enterprise and reconstructed. This leads to a fascinating examination of Data’s interior.
Suddenly, Data’s duplicate awakens. He claims that Data is “imperfect,” and declares that his name is “Lore.” At first, he seems like a quirky character, but it quickly becomes apparent that he is a suspicious figure. Lore shares a crystalline entity which wiped out all life on the planet below, while he privately shares with Data his goal of becoming more fully human. Somehow, Lore manages to drug data with champagne and he confesses that he has managed to communicate with the crystal entity. He beckons it to the Enterprise-D which it quickly overtakes.
In the end, a showdown ensues in the transporter room as Lore attempts to import the crystal entity aboard the ship –Lore fires a phaser shot at Dr. Crusher’s arm, before Data beams him out into space. Have we seen the last of Lore?
My Thoughts on “Datalore”
Data stumbles upon his evil doppelgänger, perhaps not unlike Kirk in the TOS episode “The Enemy Within,” and we learn a bit more about Data’s origins. Unsurprisingly, Data’s twin “dear brother,” Lore, turns out to be a villain who nearly murders the whole crew. Indeed, Lore is portrayed as a bit of a comic book villain at certain points. For me, this episode stands head and shoulders above many other season one episodes thus far. However, the ridiculousness of Wesley Crusher’s character continues to baffle me –he seems to be flawlessly correct in his analysis of every situation, and yet he is also constantly scorned by senior members of the crew until it is too late (in this episode, many characters literally shout “shut up, Wesley!” at him while they stare down their own potential doom).
This is a fairly predictable episode –Lore’s ability to develop more “human” traits than Data exposes Data’s weakness– and despite some utterly laughable combat sequences (especially the fight between Lore and Worf in the ship’s lift, and the face-off between Lore and Dr. Crusher in the transporter room) this is still one of the best episodes in season one thus far in my view.
Writer/Director
Writers Robert Lewin and Maurice Hurley were constantly re-writing and revising this script, even after filming began (with the usual revisions by Gene Roddenberry). The original idea for this episode was to be a romance story between Data and a female android. Instead, Brent Spiner suggested introducing the “evil twin” motif.
Rob Bowman was given this episode to direct amidst a scramble and delays behind the scenes (the original director was supposed to be Joseph L. Scanlan).
Star Trek Trivia:
- This is the first episode in which Lore is introduced (both Lore and Data were played by Brent Spiner).
- Wesley Crusher mentions that humans can no longer catch a “cold” in this episode while Data fakes efforts at sneezing.
- Data holds the knowledge/memories of 411 colonists on his home planet.
- The Tripoli landing party was the group that rescued Data on his home planet.
- Both Data and Lore were apparently created by Dr. Noonien Soong, whose name is phonetically reminiscent of Khan Noonien Singh. Gene Roddenberry named both characters after his Second World War friend, Kim Noonien Singh.
- Data has a button in his side that turns him on/off.
- Lore has a facial tick in this episode and he uses contractions when speaking, like “can’t” instead of “cannot.”
- Apparently, the appearance of the crystalline entity were some of the CGI used in a television show.
- This episode marks the second and final appearance of Biff Yeager as Chief Engineer Argyle (Geordi La Forge takes over the position on the Enterprise in season two).
There were times when I didn’t quite like how Wesley was dramatized in TNG. Even though I liked Wil Wheaton in the role, having made a good first impression on me as Gordy in Stand By Me. The proper portrayal of youth on TV may have finally found the best footholds with shows like Beverly Hills 90210, Party Of Five and Dawson’s Creek. So it’s too bad that they may have missed the mark somewhat with Wesley. Thank you for your review and trivia.