Or, Data could backup his mind every day on board the Enterprise. There are always ways to bring him back.

I would think it “harder” to bring him back if his body had been physically destroyed, but they kept a body preserved for him (B-4) so that isn’t a problem.

You know, about the same chance that I can swallow a Humpback Whale entirely whole. And come out the other end totally intact.

And about the same chance that all the matter exploded from the Big Bang, and now we randomly have people who can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Izbot & Closettrekker,
Thanks for the recommendations. Based on your comments, perhaps I have overlooked the best Trek films. I will have to see 1–4 (director’s cut of TMP of course).

I was always a TNG fan, although my appreciation for TOS has grown quite a bit this past few years, especially with TOS-R coming out, which I have been really excited about. The fact is, I didn’t arrive on earth until 1977, so to my eyes, TOS has always looked a little old fashioned and cheap. But after watching a lot of Trek, and seeing one or two of the spinoff series completely flop, I had started to appreciate the original for the great show that it was, despite the age of the production.

Then when TOS-R came along and brought it up to date, that was a tremendous thing for someone like me. I’m not nostalgic about grainy old film: I am strongly in favour of remastering and retouching of old things. As long as the aim is purely to enhance the original vision, compensating for the limitations of the original budget and technology — not to change the story or the style. (For this reason, I would imagine that I will like the director’s cut of Star Trek TMP.)

It’s strange how my description of Data’s return to duty was so similar to the corresponding scene in The Search For Spock. I cannot ever remember seeing that film, although maybe I saw it years ago on TV as a kid and I was tapping into my subconscious memory?

Or… perhaps a more plausible explanation is that I am trapped inside a loop of time — an earlier incarnation of myself at a later stage of the loop has determined the only way to break out of the loop and I have sent a message to myself, embedded in my subconscious, which is causing me to keeping thinking about The Search For Spock, which is, presumably, the key to breaking the loop?

I wasn’t kidding when I said I wish I could direct a film. The fact that I recreated a key scene from a popular film might suggest I think like a pro… or that my work would be highly derivative! Anyway, I’m a graphic designer and I live nowhere near a big city, so I guess I’m in the wrong career and the wrong place. Shame though. I have a really strong sense of the way I would shoot things.

Jamie :)

The thing about Data was he was supposed to ‘live forever’, that he could conceivably be around for hundreds if not thousands of years. His death in Nemesis should’ve been particularly painful given his unique potential. I didn’t get that from the film, instead he’s mourned just like any other dead human — mourned even less than short-timer Tasha Yar. I do believe that had Data lived a century or so and we were able to visit him in another Trek taking place in the 25th century or later (thanks a lot for ruining any chance of that happening, John Logan) we would’ve seen a much more humanlike Data along the lines he was progressing as proposed in “All Good Things”.

Killing him off because Spiner felt he was too old to play him much longer or just to add some emotional punch to Nemesis was just a poor decision. Motion-capture cgi and other existing technologies could easily allow Data to live on using Spiner’s voice only for many years to come. There was no good reason for killing him off in the first place. And even less sense in telling everyone it was going to happen before the movie even came out (just like they did with Kirk in Generations).

And regarding the emotion chip: It seems Moore and Braga intended for Data to evolve in the movies and that’s why they gave him emotions right away in Generations. However, writers of the subsequent films had either no interest in furthering this development or no ideas where to carry it which is really a shame. In the second film Data suddenly has the ability to turn his emotions on and off but in Insurrection it’s clear that backward-looking Michael Piller had no interest in dealing with its existence at all. The only mention of his emotion chip is in a throwaway line saying Data “didn’t bring it with him” on that mission — despite the fact Generations makes it explicit that the chip had fused with his software and could not be removed. By Nemesis all mention of the chip had disappeared.

It is the most thought-provoking of all the films, which appeals to me, but some people find it’s still a bit short on action. That, in contrast, is addressed in TWOK.