10 Star Trek Quotes That Made Us Trekkies
7. "There It Sits!"
The rather middling to disastrous first and second seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation still managed to provide us with an episode that was a cut above the rest — The Measure of a Man — voted number one courtroom episode by TrekCulture and Seán Ferrick's parole officers. In it, we got the Picard speech to end all Picard speeches, although obviously there were quite a few more after. See, children! Shakespeare is useful after all.
Way back before Bruce Maddox was hitting up the clubs and being murdered, he was hopping aboard the Enterprise-D looking for an android to disassemble. Fortunately for Data, and much beyond the abilities of Maddox at the time, Captain Picard was there to back him up. A hearing is called, with poor Commander Riker shoehorned in to represent Maddox.
The debates over Data's personhood and freedom, whether he is a machine just like any other human, or simply just a machine, or if he has a "soul" like we don't know we do, are all summarised and put to rest by Picard's closing argument: "Your honour, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life: well, there it sits! Waiting." It doesn't matter what Data is, it matters that he is. What makes Starfleet Starfleet, and Trekkies Trekkies, is to embrace his existence.