5 Reasons To Re-Watch The Measure Of A Man Before The Next Episode Of Star Trek Picard
4. The Rights Of Androids
The message at the start of the episode is clear - Maddox and, by extension, those that he works for and with, do not consider Data to be a person. To them, Data is nothing more than a collection of pathways and neural nets. As in the above image, Data can be taken apart and studied, not unlike the initial forays into human anatomy in the dark ages.
Star Trek has always striven to tell a message with its stories. Sometimes, that message is lost in the spectacle of the show and sometimes it is delivered with too heavy a hand. In The Measure of a Man, Star Trek The Next Generation scored its first knock-out.
Data, the man who would be a machine in the eyes of those who do not know him, had earned his chance to defend his existence. Maddox is created as a perfect foil for this - he is so sure of his superior position that he is not evil, nor even is he acting in any particularly nasty way - he is simply a scientist trying to understand a problem. For Data to challenge him, he is challenging the notion of the science he practices.
Data's first real blow to Maddox comes in his attempted resignation from Starfleet. However, a bullish Maddox then informs Data that he does not have that right. Just as a replicator couldn't pull itself from the bulkhead of a starship, Data cannot resign as he is the property of Starfleet, not simply a member of it. He has no rights that are afforded to humankind.