Star Trek: 10 Worst Things Data Has Ever Done

8. Lal

Star Trek data knife troi
CBS Media Ventures

There's a bit of a recurring theme here. Once again Data chooses to go about doing something that has serious, life-changing consequences without consulting a soul.

The Offspring is a superlative episode of The Next Generation. Yet, when you put it into the context of Data's decision-making and personal mental development, his thinking is untethered.

The creation of Lal is both brilliant and horrific at the same time. Mapped from Data's own positronic net, Lal soon begins to outgrow the original programming. Not just in the formation of contractions within her language but, later, the emergence of real emotion.

But the evolution beyond her original parameters goes beyond the capability of Lal's own build, leading to a cascade failure and deactivation.

The tragedy here is that the crew become emotionally attached to Lal as her journey of life progresses. When it comes to her death they are all utterly shell-shocked but yet, because of his inherent emotionless nature Data just carries on. Bizarrely he seems to have been affected more by the death of Tasha Yar less than a full season into TNG and this is almost a backward step in his adventure of life.

Contributor
Contributor

A Star Trek fan from birth, I love to dive into every aspect of the franchise in front and behind the screen. There's something here that's kept me interested for the best part of four decades! Now I'm getting back into writing and using Star Trek as my first line of literary attack. If I'm not here on WhatCulture then you're more than welcome to come and take a look at my blog, Some Kind of Star Trek at http://SKoST.co.uk or maybe follow me on Twitter as @TheWarpCore. Sometimes I force myself not to talk about Star Trek.