Star Trek: Picard: What REALLY Happened to Data?
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 1, now streaming on CBS All Access.
Lieutenant Commander Data was a firm fan favorite on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And when he nobly gave his life to save the day from an evil Romulan Picard clone portrayed by Tom Hardy in the divisive Star Trek: Nemesis, it was one of many aspects of the film that caused dissension and debate.
But what really happened to Data? Could he even die in the traditional sense? Before his untimely demise, Data transferred his positronic brain's memories into his less advanced younger brother, B-4. But Star Trek: Nemesis's critical and commercial failure brought the Next Generation franchise to an abrupt halt, leaving fans hanging with B-4 humming Data's favorite song at the end of the movie, and a tantalizing hint that Data was coming back.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowHowever, the fate of B-4 and Data’s consciousness has now been revealed.
In Star Trek: Picard, an aged and retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard haunted by Data’s death as he and his new crew embark on a quest to save the last of the android’s mysterious offspring, Soji, from certain destruction by the Romulan Zhat Vash. So far, B-4 seems to have been relegated to being a red herring. Although B-4 successfully became a new Data in the theoretically canonical comic, Star Trek: Countdown,Star Trek:Picard reveals that B-4 never evolved into Data.
Still, it's clear that B-4's dismantled body is still around. Could Data's consciousness somehow still be lying dormant within it? Since Dr. Agnes Jurati makes it pretty clear that B-4 was an inferior copy whose brain simply lacked the capacity to revive Data as we knew him, that seems unlikely. Beyond that, though, it's also a possibility that this almost-throwaway explanation of B-4's fate was just a quick and easy way to tie up the B-4 loose end left after Nemesis. That would make sense following the movie's mixed critical reception, and it would leave a clean slate for the events of Picard to unfold independently.
When Bruce Maddox supposedly created Data's two "daughters," Soji and Dahj, he somehow made them far more human than Data ever was. In fact, they're so human in fact that neither of them seemed aware that they were synthetic life forms at all. So far, everyone assumes that Maddox used neuronic fractal cloning to create the two sisters using one of Data's neurons. That gives way to another theory in itself. Could another neuron be used to clone Data, too? Putting that aside for the moment, though, some fans are suggesting that Data may have had nothing to do with creating Soji and Dahj.
Data had an older "brother" with a positronic brain too, Lore. And he could potentially make things more interesting in Star Trek: Picard. Lore is an evil version of Data, who was created by Dr. Soong and become a recurring villain on Star Trek: The Next Generation. In many ways, Lore was more advanced than Data -- particularly on the emotional spectrum. For a show as focused on emotion as Star Trek: Picard, Lore could be an intriguing way to address
What if Dahj and Soji were created using Lore's consciousness? That could explain their advanced emotional depth, which was already present in Lore long before Data received his emotional upgrade. The alternative is that perhaps the twins were the product of both Data and Lore. Either scenario could make it more likely for one of them to be the "Destroyer" that the Zhat Vash are after.
Alternatively, could it be possible that Dahj contained the last semblance of Data and Soji is a product of Lore? If indeed that's the case, it could mean that Data really is no more following Dahj's apparent destruction. And if Soji is the offspring of Lore, rather than Data, when she's activated as her sister was, the Destroyer -- a true child of Lore -- will emerge through her.
After the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, there may be one question that fans are neglecting to ask: What exactly happened when Data stuck the emergency transport device onto Picard, sending him back to the Enterprise? Transporters effectively disassemble and reassemble a traveler's molecules from scratch. With that in mind, could it be possible that the Picard that was "reassembled" following his emergency transport was not quite the same as the one that left the Reman Bridge before Data made his ultimate sacrifice?
Could Data somehow have downloaded a part of himself into the transport device, merging an echo of his consciousness with Picard when he reconstituted on the Enterprise? Data's bond with technology is undeniable, so it's not entirely inconceivable that he could have made a connection with the transporter.
Perhaps Picard's visions of Data are actually evidence of the android's consciousness being stored organically within himself. Stranger things have certainly happened in the Star Trek canon. And if this is the case, there's a possibility that Data could ultimately be reformed using a more organic process, which would make it easier for showrunners to explain Brent Spiner's aging.
With only a handful of episodes remaining in Star Trek: Picard's first season, though, fans may have to wait a little longer than they'd hoped to discover Data's true fate.
Star Trek: Picard stars Patrick Stewart, Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Evan Evagora, Isa Briones, Santiago Cabrera, and Harry Treadaway. New episodes of the series premiere every Thursday on CBS All Access.
Source: www.cbr.com