Star Trek: 25 Greatest Next Generation Episodes

7. The Measure Of A Man

Paying homage to the famous U.S. Supreme Court case Dredd Scott v. Sandford, season 2's The Measure of a Man is considered by many Trekkies to be the first truly great episode of TNG.

Commander Bruce Maddox, an overzealous yet clumsy scientist who was the sole dissident in approving Data's entrance into Starfleet Academy, wishes to dismantle Data and study his inner workings in order to continue Dr. Noonien Soong's work as a cyberneticist to construct more units of Data for standard issue on Federation vessels.

Data, along with the Enterprise senior staff, believe that Maddox's scientific method is flawed and could very well be fatal to Data and he attempts to refuse the experiment; however, Starfleet has handed him over to Maddox for immediate testing. Picard immediately challenges the transfer order and a hearing is convened to determine Data's level of sentience: is he a person with equivalent rights to a human Starfleet officer or is he, as the judge puts it, a glorified toaster owned by Starfleet?

Short on staff, the JAG officer aboard the space station assigns Picard as Data's counsel and Riker as the prosecutor, a position where Riker must try and hand over his friend for the android equivalent of medical experimentation.