Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Data

Brent Spiner's speech patterns as Data really help bring the character to life. He managed to make the character sound robotic and emotionless, but still approachable. You can pick up on the subtleties of Spiner's performance of Data when looking at the way he portrays his other characters like Lore or Dr Soong.

Despite his intelligence, Data struggles with a lot of seemingly simple idioms and phrases in language. Many fans also think he's unable to use contractions like ‘can't’ or ‘isn't’. Lore bragged to Data about how his mastery of contractions made him a superior android, and when Data's daughter Lal said ‘I've’ in Ten Forward, he said that the use of contractions was a skill his program never mastered and that Lal ‘exceeded his abilities’. However, if you go back and watch those scenes, it's never outright said that Data is unable to use contractions, just that he hasn't yet mastered them. This is why in later appearances Data can be heard using contractions and idioms more frequently as he gets more practice in.

In the third season of Star Trek: Picard, Data's new golem body incorporated traits from Altan Soong, B-4, and Lal, but primarily Data and Lore. Data eventually emerged as the dominant personality after a struggle with Lore, and all these memories combined to make this version of Data the most human-like so far, as well as a more natural speaker.