5 Reasons To Re-Watch The Measure Of A Man Before The Next Episode Of Star Trek Picard

Star Trek is at its best when it teaches the viewer an important message. Here, the rights of those deemed different are touched upon for the first time in The Next Generation, though of course it would not be for the last time. In the episodes that followed, the ruling that Data is to be afforded the rights of any other member of the crew would be challenged in The Offspring, where Data creates his daughter Lal. A similar case is presented where Starfleet feels they can remove her from his care without his consent.

A spiritual sequel to the episode comes in Star Trek Voyager's seventh season, in the episode Author, Author. A show that begins as a comedy based on the Holographic Doctor's writing becomes a legal battle for the control of the Doctor's intellectual property. That episode ends with a more ambiguous message (the Doctor is not deemed a legal person, merely the owner of his artistic rights) that echoes something Guinan says to Picard in The Measure of a Man.

"...an army of Datas, all disposable? You don't have to think about their welfare; you don't think about how they feel. Whole generations of disposable people."

Author, Author ends with the depiction of a team of Emergency Medical Holograms, digging in the Federation's dilithium pits. The race may be different but the message proves that dark prediction did indeed come to pass.

With the destruction of the Mars shipyards and the rebellion of the synthetic workforce, all synthetic life is banned in the Federation. It is a landmark ruling that is crucial as a catalyst to Star Trek Picard. Maddox would now be a character devoid of meaning, reduced to theoretical practice.

Picard, the very man who defeated him all those years before, is now hunting for him to discover the mystery behind Dahj and Soji. It remains to be seen what kind of a welcome he will receive.