Star Trek: 10 Worst Things Data Has Ever Done

3. The Emotion Chip

Star Trek data knife troi
Paramount Pictures

Does this guy ever learn?

That's a genuinely good question considering that his journey on The Next Generation is all about his development towards becoming more human. He makes a ton of mistakes but one thing he keeps on avoiding is taking advice from Geordi or informing senior officers of his decisions.

Take the emotion chip for instance. While it's change in shape, size and functionality (it was broke!) might be contentious issues among Star Trek fans, the bigger one is that Data chooses to stick it in his head. Admittedly he's not to know they're heading into battle and the Enterprise-D's demise but it's a pretty flippant decision.

As you would expect there are side effects. Surely Geordi would have been a little more skeptical considering the last time Data played around with emotions he got tortured. Luckily this time he only gets captured and tortured thanks to his best friend. Why wouldn't you stay away from this guy???

Picard forces Data to keep the chip in and deal with it although by the time we get to First Contact he has the option to turn it off and on miraculously.

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.