Star Trek: 10 Things That Make No Sense About Data

Introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generationas the only android to serve in Starfleet, Data often faced challenges adapting to service aboard the Enterprise-D. Though he helped the crew with his astounding computational abilities and incredible strength, he knew he would never be exactly like them. This took him on a quest to pursue becoming as human-like as he possibly could.

At his core, however, he was a synthetic being, a machine that pursued love despite not being able to feel it emotionally, had a blinking program installed even though it wasn't necessary, and longed to require sleep so that he'd have the ability to dream. He was more than a walking computer - he was a beloved paradox that didn't always make sense.

10 BEING MADE TO BE FULLY FUNCTIONAL

In the very first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation we learn that Data is "fully functional" and capable of participating in acts of human intimacy (which he does with Tasha Yar). An ostensible reason Data would want to participate in acts of coitus relates to his continuous pursuit of understanding humans.

However, because Dr. Soong never implanted the emotion chip, Data is robbed of the emotional connection that can be created through the act, thus giving him no more insight into humankind's desire for sex than he'd get by observation alone.

9 EMULATING SHERLOCK HOLMES

In an effort to better understand humans, Data acquires several hobbies, one of which involves dressing up as Sherlock Holmes and solving crimes in the holodeck, with his faithful Dr. Watson (Geordi) at his side. Holmes' infamous derision for human failings as well as prodigious deductive powers makes Data feel a kinship.

In the Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the cold, calculating personality of Sherlock Holmes had to be humanized by Dr. Watson. Data identifying with the equivalent of a Victorian android, who also had a hard time understanding his fellow humans, is contrary to Data's mission of attempting the opposite.

8 CHOOSING A DOMINANT HAND

As an android who only resembles a human, Data made many adjustments to his physical form in order to not only blend in with humans but learn something about their habits by doing so. This ranged from deciding he needed a haircut (despite having no hair follicles that grew), to choosing a dominant hand.

While humans do tend to have a dominant hand, Data choosing to have one (in this case his left) seemed odd considering it served no purpose, and most humans would relish the chance at being ambidextrous anyway. Data's efficacy as a crewman, not simply an android, was put in jeopardy with his innocent choice.

7 CHOOSING TO PAINT

Over the course of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data set out to determine if he was capable of being "creative". This resulted in taking up the violin, singing, and painting, the latter artistic hobby being the one he continues to be most known for in Star Trek: Picard.

Despite the fact that the act of painting usually taps into a great emotional reservoir for most artists, Data wanted to determine if he could be creative due to his positronic brain disallowing the sort of random, uncalculated flourishes that can result in some of the best moments of creative expression.

6 OPERATING ANYTHING WITH HIS HANDS

Possessing the most impressive computational abilities of anyone aboard the Enterprise-D, Data was capable of 60 trillion operations per second. He was 60,000 times faster than the fastest computers in the '87, the year Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered.

Today, the fastest supercomputers in existence exceed Data's computational abilities 500 times over. Data shouldn't be "typing" anything on a screen - he should be accessing information wirelessly through some sort of Bluetooth technology by the 24th century.

5 INABILITY TO GET OUT OF A CHINESE FINGER TRAP

Data's ability to predict thousands of probabilities a second comes in handy when his shipmates are confounded during strategy sessions. Yet during one involving the Tkon Empire, his powers of computation are diverted to escaping a common Chinese finger trap instead of paying attention to the briefing.

Data, the smartest being in the room, with superior strength as well as superior intellect, cannot figure out how to get his fingers out of the puzzle. In an unintentionally hilarious way, he's helpless until Captain Picard comes to his rescue and shows him how the trap works.

4 GETTING SICK

One would think as a synthetic being composed of circuitry and software, that when Data got sick he'd report to Geordi down in engineering. Several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generationshowed Geordi doing repairs on Data, especially when he was damaged.

Yet when Data gets "sick" with a computer virus, which he equates to the common cold, he visits Dr. Beverly Crusher in sick-bay. As competent as Dr. Crusher is, she specializes in helping organic beings and can do little to heal Data of a mechanical ailment.

3 HIS APPEARANCE

Dr. Soong made Data the most advanced synthetic being ever created. He patterned his physical appearance after himself, hoping it would help the Federation become accustomed to androids. He gave Data many attributes to fit into human society, from hair follicles to a simulated "pulse".

Even with his many similarities to humans, his skin still had a metallic appearance, and his eyes were bright yellow. In the years that Data served aboard the Enterprise-D, why didn't he ever get upgraded components to truly fit in? After all, it was necessary to make him blink when he technically didn't need to.

2 WANTING TO AGE

With age comes wisdom, but in Data's case as an android, aging wouldn't necessarily gain him emotional maturity. His hardware could deteriorate, but that would decrease his efficacy as an android. It doesn't stop him from simulating aging, however, by installing a program that allows him to age like his human peers.

Data knew that remaining the same over decades, while his friends aged, would distance themselves emotionally from him, which would result in him being ostracized. It's curious that so much effort was spent making de-aging Data for Star Trek: Picard when it's not what the android would have wanted.

1 INCONSISTENCIES WITH EMOTIONS

Like The Great and Powerful Oz who never gave the Tin Man anything he didn't already have, Dr. Soong didn't need to give Data emotions because he apparently already had them. By developing sensory input patterns through mental pathways, he was able to bolster the efficacy of his positronic brain, therefore gaining the ability to process emotions once he received an emotion chip.

Data as expressed on numerous occasions a sense of loss, at both losing Tasha Yar in death and Lt. Ishara as a partner. But if the emotion chip simply allowed him to differentiate emotions from neural net phenomena, and bolster their signal, why introduce the emotion chip as a placebo? By the time of Star Trek: Insurrection, he removes it.

Source: screenrant.com