Though much too flawed to merit a third star, this is the best episode of the series thus far. Halfway through the season, the writers finally got around here to establishing a back story for Data and starting to figure out what kind of character to make him! Unfortunately, said back story has a few holes in it, and the characterization of Data remains uneven and leaves much to be desired. I would even say, in fact, that Data was probably more fun to watch in the previous episode than he is in this one. “Datalore,” however, has going for it precisely what “The Big Goodbye” conspicuously lacked: the “Data origin story” premise, and especially the introduction of Lore as a counterpart and foil for Data, make this episode one of the most important of the season.
To date, the show has never actually stated that Data has no emotions—nor will that premise become explicit for some while yet (which very much surprised me when I first realized it). At this point, he is presented as “wanting to be human” in a general sense, rather than wanting to experience and understand human emotion specifically. Still, the contrast between Data and Lore (nicely symbolized via their names) that this episode dramatizes gets a start at tacitly sketching the concept out, even though plenty of stuff that happens during the episode illustrates clearly that the writers haven’t actually settled upon the “no emotions” idea yet. The contrast between them is muddled, too, by some confusion over Lore’s attitude toward humans; he boasts about his human-like traits, but he also criticizes Data for wanting to be more like humans, and he speaks ill of humans when none of them are around to hear him. Some of these inconsistencies may have been intentional, but I don’t think it quite works overall. Still, Data comes to life as a unique and interesting character more here than in any other episode up to this point, and that’s worth a lot. Lore, for his part, turns out to be somewhat disappointingly two-dimensional in his villainy—but there are still some good concepts lurking here. I enjoy how Data sees right through Lore’s duplicitousness, for instance, and how Lore invents the idea of Data being “less perfect” than himself seemingly to compensate for his own jealousy over having been deactivated and replaced by Data. On the down side, this is the episode that saddles Data with the “can’t (cannot?) use contractions” rule—which makes absolutely no sense, and was also simply unnecessary; I understand the appeal of having him use language very “formally,” but why not establish merely that he doesn’t (does not?) normally use contractions, rather than saying that he “cannot” use them? Also, even putting aside the fundamental silliness of the latter idea, it’s all too obvious that both the contractions issue and Lore’s “facial tick” are gimmicks introduced purely to serve as “tells” that give Lore away when he is impersonating Data—even though the contractions thing actually fails as a clue, given that Data himself uses contractions at least twice in the episode (including one very prominent instance near the end)!
However imperfect its handling of Data and Lore, though, the episode’s major weaknesses revolve around Wesley. That he sort of intuitively senses that “Data” is really Lore is questionable, perhaps, but it doesn’t really bother me. That he’s shouted down and ignored whenever he tries to voice his suspicions, however, not only portrays the captain (as well as others) as a total asshole (he doesn’t even apologize when Wesley proves to have been right and saves the ship, for chrissake!), but is also just a really lame plot contrivance—and for both of these reasons, it’s totally unforgivable. I know that dyed-in-the-wool Wesley haters cherish Picard’s “Shut up, Wesley!” line in this episode on a sort of meta-level—but taken seriously, it reflects very poorly on our captain! Picard, in fact, is rather a mixed bag in this episode; I like how he confronts his (and others’) discomfort over the discovery of a disassembled duplicate of Data and reminds everyone that, after all, humans too are “machines” of a kind, but he’s way too much the first-season irritable, authoritarian, and unlikable version of himself here, both in his treatment of Wesley and at the end of the episode when he goes all stodgy-captain on Data and orders him to put on a proper uniform and get rid of Lore’s facial tick. But even aside from how it reflects on Picard, the Wesley material really hurts the episode plot-wise. This episode does avoid the meandering, structureless quality of too many early first-season episodes, but the writers really should have come up with a better idea for how to play out the “Lore impersonates Data” plot than to have Wesley figure out what’s going on right away, but not be listened to by anyone else.
The early part of the episode also needs to be called out as clunkily expository and all-too-obviously only there to get us to the discovery of Lore. The back story being established here never quite comes into clear focus, either; the colony of which Soong was a part was obliterated by the crystaline entity, and at some later point a Starfleet vessel checked out the scene and discovered Data, but no one ever looked into the matter of what happened to the colony? Why did said Starfleet vessel’s report supposedly mention farmland, since it was there after the crystaline entity killed everything on the planet? And why, exactly, are Data’s earliest memories so vague and impressionistic (more like a human’s than an android’s), such that nearly forgotten remnants can be stirred up by a mention or the sight of an object? Additionally, when Data’s memory produces the name “Soong,” why does this name seem to mean something to everyone on the away team except for Data himself? Surely Data, of all people, would have educated himself about the state of human knowledge concerning artificial intelligence! And for that matter, why—given Soong’s apparent fame—has no one, apparently, ever even speculated before this that he might have had a role in Data’s creation? Has no one ever even attempted, until now, to ascertain where Data came from and/or how he works? After all, the episode spells out (and it was implicitly established earlier as well) that Data has been in Starfleet for nearly two decades already (which is somewhat hard to credit in itself, given his seeming inexperience in interacting with humans—but also inescapable if he was to have the rank of Lt. Commander, I suppose). Also, even if no one else has bothered to think too much about Data’s origins, why hasn’t Data himself ever gone back to Omichron Theta before now? His line about having never imagined that he might actually discover another being like himself, and the importance that he attaches to the discovery of Lore, make it clear that he has been curious about his origins…!
Finally, it would be wrong to discuss this episode without calling it out for containing one of the dumbest and most out-of-place lines ever spoken by a Trek character: “Captain, I’ve got a bogey coming in on a five o’clock tangent!” What?! Never before or after this scene have Starfleet officers on bridge duty resorted to this sort of half-assed, outdated slang in reporting on incoming vessels! This line caused me to burst out laughing the first time I rewatched this episode as a non-adolescent. A “bogey,” Geordi? Really? And, to borrow from an earlier incarnation of Trek, doesn’t the notion of a “five o’clock tangent” rather suggest “two-dimensional thinking”…? I mean, seriously.
If I sound like I’m saying a lot of negative things about an episode that I’ve called the best one yet, it is perhaps because, since it actually tries to do something really interesting, I feel compelled to hold this one to a higher standard than an episode like “The Big Goodbye.” To be sure, though, Lore was a great idea, and the episode is memorable in a way that transcends its weaknesses. As a final comment that mixes criticism with praise, I definitely think that its ending is rushed, with not enough time being taken to pause and reflect on what amount to some very significant events and discoveries (especially for Data). Data himself gets no attention in this regard at all; instead, an attempt is made to put a cap on the episode via a final exchange between Picard and Riker about which android is truly the more “human.” Picard’s raising of the question is awkwardly handled and comes across as inauthentic, but—on the positive side—I do like Riker’s response, in which he comments that he wishes we all could be as “well-balanced” as Data is. That sentiment rings true, both to what the episode has shown us and as something that Riker might actually say.