The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek: Insurrection

Expecting continuity between TNG and its movie follow-ups is a fool’s errand, but Data’s negative buoyancy in this movie lines up with a TNG episode. In “Descent, Part 2” it’s said that Data once tried to swim, sank straight to the bottom, had to walk over a kilometer to get to land, and it took almost two weeks to get the water out of his servos. This effectively made him the XR-1000 robot from Gilligan’s Island (S2 E21 “Gilligan’s Living Doll”), which was not buoyant and walked the ocean floor all the way back to Hawaii.

"Skipperrrrrr!"

Insurrection twice demonstrates Data isn’t buoyant. First, he walks into the lake and doesn’t float. Later, when Anij is in danger of drowning, Picard and Data jump into the lake and only Picard stays at the surface. Data vanishes into the depths.

All fine and good, but then he rises from the water to his shoulders and delivers the line “In the event of a water landing I have been designed to serve as a flotation device,” at which point he rises further so the water is at waist level. It was dumb enough to be parodied by Futurama (S2 E16 “The Deep South”) where Bender says “In the event of an emergency, my ass can be used as a flotation device.” This suggests below-the-belt features of Data’s anatomy inflating that I’d just as soon not picture.