Star Trek: 10 Weirdest Holodeck Episodes

Technically speaking, Barclay plays a formative role in this episode too, although he never makes a physical appearance. The young Alexander tells his father that the lieutenant "helped a little [with his holo-program]." Originally called 'The Good, Bad and the Klingon', A Fistful of Datas is really a mad triumph of Brent Spiners.

There are two rules of '90s Star Trek. First rule: Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, especially during downtime. Second rule: Murphy's law loves the holodeck. More precisely, if you hook Data up to the ship's computers and start tinkering around, something's going to malfunction in the weirdest way.

A power surge in Data's positronic subprocessors sends ripples of the android throughout the ship, and onto the holodeck where Troi, Worf, and Alexander are playing their (Ancient) Western. There, Spiner runs the gamut of the weird and wonderful through Data's holographic doppelgängers.

The impetus is also reversed in that Data himself starts behaving at moments like he's Clint Eastwood — from his accidental southern drawl to his cowboy swagger and misuse of a plant pot in the observation lounge. Patrick Stewart also pulled double duty, as both actor in, and director of, this unorthodox but brilliant episode.