11 Amazing Times Actors Played Other Actors Playing Characters
4. Star Trek: The Next Generation
The Players: Brent Spiner playing William Morgan Sheppard playing Dr. Graves playing Data
Mode Of Body Swap: Human consciousness uploaded into positronic android brain
The first couple seasons of TNG are a little rough around piping on the edges of their Spandex onzies, but they do offer a few gems. Like “The Schizoid Man.” And man, is it schizoi?!.
Dr. Graves, an old egotistical scientist is on his deathbed. Data, the Enterprise’s friendly android, trying to relate to the very human fear of death, shows the dying man his off-button. Dr. Graves, who’s getting ready to upload his conciousness into a computer, realizes that Data is basically a computer with arms, legs, and as we learned in an earlier episode, a penis. So Dr. Graves shuts Data off using the off-switch Data just showed him and proceeds to get all up in his positronic brain.
In a classic Next Gen scene, we see Brent Spiner as Dr. Graves giving himself a eulogy– “To know him, was to love him. And to love him, was to know him.”– while looking at his own dead body. Honestly, the fact that the whole crew didn’t listen to this eulogy and immediately say “Alright kiddo, we’re taking you to engineering and doing ALL the diagnostics” is crazy.