{{Star Trek character|if=|Title = Data |bgcolor = #ccccff |Image = Data2.jpg |Caption = Data |Species = Android |Gender = Male |Hair color = Dark brown |Eye color = Yellow |Planet = Omicron_Theta |Affiliation = Starfleet |Posting = USS ''Enterprise''-D operations officer and second officer
USS ''Sutherland'' commanding officer (temporary)
USS ''Enterprise''-E operations officer and second officer |Rank = Lieutenant commander |Portrayed = Brent_Spiner }} '''Data''',In the episode "The Measure of a Man", Data's full Name—the sole word—is elaborated upon in an on-screen graphic with the Initialisms ''NFN'' and ''NMI'': ''N''o ''F''irst ''N''ame, ''N''o ''M''iddle ''I''nitial. portrayed by Brent_Spiner, is a character in the Star_Trek Fictional_universe. Designed by Doctor Noonien_Soong, Lieutenant CommanderIn the past timeline scenes in "All Good Things...", Data wears the insignia of a lieutenant junior grade, although Picard addresses him as "Commander." Data is an Android who serves as the second officer and chief operations officer aboard the Starships USS ''Enterprise''-D and USS ''Enterprise''-E. Data appears throughout the ''Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation'' (''TNG'') television series and in the films based on ''The Next Generation''. Data is a sentient artificial lifeform designed to resemble a Human. His Positronic_brain allows him impressive computational capabilities (''TNG'': "The Measure of a Man") and the ability to perform most human activities. However, he has ongoing difficulties understanding various aspects of Human_behavior and is unable to feel emotions (''TNG'': "Encounter at Farpoint") until he is provided with an "emotion chip" in ''Star_Trek:_Generations''. Dramatically, Data is a rough counterpart to Spock from ''Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series'' (''TOS'') in that he has a rational, analytical mind and finds humans hard to understand, and through his attempts to understand human behavior, the series' creators comment on certain aspects of humanity. Unlike Spock, however, he is drawn to the concept of humanity. Data's name is properly pronounced (in IPA) "/'deitə/" (or day-tah) as opposed to the alternate pronunciations "/'dα:tə/" or "/'dætə/" (dah-ta, datt-a). When Data corrects Dr. Katherine_Pulaski for using the latter pronunciation, Pulaski asks, "What's the difference?" Data replies, "One is my name, the other is not" (''TNG'': "The Child"). ==Overview== {{spoiler}} ===''Star Trek: The Next Generation''=== The cyberneticist Dr. Noonien Soong created Data on Omicron_Theta after eight previous models, the first seven of which were short-lived due to cascading neural failures (''TNG'': "Inheritance", though it was later revealed that one of these, B-4, persisted in salvagable condition in the movie Star_Trek:_Nemesis) and the eighth of which was Lore. Soong deactivated Data and erased most of his memories (although he retains the contents of the Omicron Theta colonists' journals) at some point prior to the Crystalline_Entity's attack on the colony. The creature destroyed almost all the life on the planet, and Data was found and reactivated by Starfleet officers (''TNG'': "Datalore_(TNG_episode)"). Data attended Starfleet_Academy over the objections of Bruce_Maddox and graduated with honors degrees in probability mechanics and Exobiology (''TNG'': "Encounter at Farpoint", "The Measure of a Man"), Data served aboard several starships before being assigned to the ''Enterprise''-D as the ship's chief operations officer in 2363. Image:DataLore.jpg]]When the ''Enterprise'' visits Omicron Theta, the crew finds the disassembled Lore. The crew reassembles the android, who comes to address Data as "brother" and soon acts as Data's "Evil_twin". Lore fills in several of Data's knowledge gaps about his background, but soon deactivates his "brother" and attempts to take over the ''Enterprise'' to offer its crew as nourishment to the Crystalline Entity. In 2365, cyberneticist Bruce Maddox obtains permission to have Data reassigned for "study," which would involve the android's deactivation, disassembly, and duplication (with his knowledge and memories dumped into a computer and thereafter transferred back), possibly destroying his personality and sentience in the process. Data refuses, but Maddox asserts that Data is Starfleet property and therefore unable to refuse the procedure. With Captain Jean-Luc_Picard as his advocate, Starfleet_Judge_Advocate_General asserts that Data is not property and therefore can refuse the procedure, which he does ("The Measure of a Man"). Image:DataLal.jpg, his short-lived android "daughter"]] Desiring to reproduce, Data creates an android "daughter", Lal, in 2366. She exceeds Data's abilities, using verbal contractions and feeling some emotions. She becomes scared when Starfleet scientists wanted to separate her from Data, and, overwhelmed, she suffers a cascade neural failure and "dies." She tells Data, "I love you, father," but Data is incapable of reciprocating. To preserve Lal's existence, Data transfers her memories into his own memory core (''TNG'': "The Offspring"). During his captivity at the hands of fraudulent antiquities dealer Kivas Fajo, Data makes clear his ability to kill "if necessary". The episode is ambiguous as to whether Data finds it necessary to kill Fajo to prevent Fajo from murdering other people: Data is beamed away at the moment of firing. Chief O'Brien detects that Data's weapon has discharged, but Data suggests that it was a malfunction (''TNG'': "The Most Toys"). During the Borg invasion of the Federation in 2366-7, Data successfully interfaces with Locutus_of_Borg (an assimilated Picard who is abducted then rescued), accesses the Borg collective consciousness, and introduces a command into a low-level program pathway that forces the Borg to regenerate. This action effectively "put them to sleep", halting their advance and causing the Borg ship's power systems to overload, destroying the vessel (''TNG'': "The Best of Both Worlds"). Image:DataSoongolder.jpg]] In 2367, Soong, intending to give Data a basic emotion chip, activates a homing signal that overrides Data's other programming. Unbeknownst to Soong, the beacon summons Lore as well. Lore fools Soong into giving him the chip, then kills his "father" and departs (''TNG'': "Brothers"). Data temporarily commands the USS ''Sutherland'' as part of Picard's blockade of the Klingon-Romulan border during the Klingon Civil War. Sela chooses Data's ship as the target for a scheme to interrupt the Starfleet force's tachyon net, which prevents the cloaked Romulan flotilla from crossing into Klingon space. Despite his crew's misgivings, Data identifies a failure in Sela's scheme and almost single-handedly exposes the Romulan ships (''TNG'': "Redemption, Part II"). In 2368, Data's head is discovered in an archeological site in San_Francisco. The ensuing investigation sends Data, followed by several senior ''Enterprise''-D officers, to late 19th century San Francisco. Data's presence sets up a number of temporal paradoxes involving Guinan, who is on Earth at that time, and the senior staff as they discover and deal with an alien presence on Earth. Data's head is blown off in the 19th century while his body travels back to the 24th century. Picard, left in the past, plants a message into the head; when it is reattached hundreds of years later, the message allows the crew to avoid a catastrophe and rescue Picard—who leaves Data's head behind to be rediscovered five centuries later (''TNG'': "Time's Arrow") Image:DataTainer.jpg]] In 2370, Lore kidnaps Data and coerces him, through Lore's manipulation of the emotion chip, into aiding an insurrection by the Borg. Data is forced to attack and disassemble his brother. The weapons blast that subdues Lore also damages the emotion chip (''TNG'': "Descent"). Later in 2370, Data meets a woman who appears to be and thinks she is Dr. Juliana_Tainer, the widow and collaborator of Dr. Soong; in a sense, Data's mother. However, she is an android constructed by Dr. Soong after the original Dr. Tainer died; unlike Data, she was built to be unaware of her artificial nature, and she eventually divorced Dr. Soong and remarried. When an accident incapacitates Tainer, Data discovers in her circuitry a message from Soong imploring him not to reveal to Tainer her true nature. Data respects Soong's wishes (''TNG'': "Inheritance"). In an alternate future created by Q, Data holds the Lucasian_professorship at Cambridge. Picard's actions at various points in the timeline, however, mean that this exact future will not come to pass (''TNG'': "All Good Things..."). ===Films=== Image:DataLaForgeemotionchip.jpg assists Data in installing the emotion chip Dr. Soong made for him]]In 2371, Data chooses to install the emotion chip he extracted from Lore. Despite initial difficulties in adaptation, Data successfully integrates the emotion chip (''Star_Trek:_Generations''). He is later able to deactivate the emotion chip at will (''Star_Trek:_First_Contact''). When the ''Enterprise''-E pursues a Borg sphere through a temporal warp to 2063, the Borg Queen takes Data captive and attempts to coerce him into allying with the Borg, reactivating his emotion chip to make Data easier to manipulate. She provides him the ability to feel tactile sensations as humans do by grafting functional organic flesh to portions of his body, and attempts to seduce him sexually. Although Data is tempted by the Queen's manipulations, his apparent actions to aid the Borg are a ruse; his actions are instrumental in averting the Borg's attempt to prevent humanity's first contact with Vulcans and assimilation of humanity in the 21st century (''Star_Trek:_First_Contact''). Damage caused by weapons fire on the Ba'ku homeworld leads to Data blacking out and his ethical programming taking control of his actions; as such, he exposes a Federation–Son'a plot to forcibly relocate the Ba'ku in order to collect potentially useful metagenic particles in the planet's rings (''Star_Trek:_Insurrection''). Image:DataB4hd.jpg, upon his discovery]] Shortly after William_Riker and Deanna_Troi's wedding, Data discovers a prototype version of himself, whom Dr. Soong had named B-4. Data copies his knowledge and memories to B-4's brain in the hopes that this would help B-4 learn and grow. Shortly thereafter, Data is killed when destroying a thalaron beam generator aboard the Reman ship ''Scimitar'' (''Star_Trek:_Nemesis''). When Picard attempts to explain to the simple B-4 that Data is dead, B-4 cannot quite grasp it. But then Picard overhears B-4 singing part of a song Data had been singing earlier, suggesting that Data is not necessarily gone forever. (However, it is somewhat unlikely Data will be resurrected in another film, as the ''The Next Generation'' is likely finished as a franchise for at least the near future, and Spiner has repeatedly said he is aged past the point of believably playing an android.) ===''Star Trek: Enterprise''=== In 2005, Spiner recorded a brief, uncredited voice-only cameo as Data for ''Star_Trek:_Enterprise'''s finale, "These Are the Voyages...": Data is heard speaking to Deanna_Troi over the intercom. The 24th century component of the episode takes place during the events in "The Pegasus". ==Relationships== Image:dataspot.jpg]]Data characterizes his ability to have friends as being based on his "mental pathways" becoming accustomed to certain people's "sensory inputs"; such inputs are "missed" when those people are gone (''TNG'': "Legacy"). Data is best friends with Geordi_La_Forge, and Data's pet cat is named Spot. Image:DataBorgQueen.jpg" with the Borg Queen in ''Star_Trek:_First_Contact'']]Data briefly has a sexual relationship with Lieutenant Tasha_Yar in 2364 (''TNG'': "The_Naked_Now") and he briefly pursues a romantic relationship with Lieutenant Junior Grade Jenna D'Sora in 2367 (''TNG'': "In Theory"). In 2373, Data has an intimate encounter with the Borg_Queen. Data had an affinity for other artificial lifeforms, both androids like him and less sophisticated machines like Exocomps (''TNG'': "The Quality of Life"). Data also seems to have an affinity with children, becoming close to them in several stories. Over the years, a strong relationship of loyalty, respect, and trust emerges between Picard and Data. Picard mentors Data in "the human condition", in particular with Holodeck recreations of Shakespearean works (''TNG'': "The Defector", "Emergence"). Although Data has the admiration and respect of his fellow shipmates, there are individuals who question his rights. Bruce Maddox asserted when Data applied to Starfleet Academy that he was not a sentient being, and refers to Data as "it" until the JAG decision that asserted Data's right to make his own decisions (''TNG'': "The Measure of a Man"). Afterward, Data sent several missives to Maddox to aid in the cyberneticists ongoing research. Vice Admiral Anthony Haftel tries to separate Data from Lal upon the latter's activation, predicating this desire on refusal to recognize Data as a "parent." (''TNG'': "The Offspring"). Data's first officer aboard the ''Sutherland'', Lieutenant Commander Christopher Hobson, requests a transfer because he does not believe an android would make a good commanding officer, although he comes to respect Data's abilities (''TNG'': "Redemption, Part II"). ==Specifications== Weighing 100 Kilograms (''TNG'': "Inheritance"), Data is composed of 24.6 kg of Tripolymer composites, 11.8 kg of Molybdenum–Cobalt alloys, and 1.3 kg of Bioplast sheeting (''TNG'': "The Most Toys"). Data's upper spinal support is a Polyalloy designed for extreme stress; his skull is composed of Cortenide and Duranium (''TNG'': "The Chase"). Data was built with an ultimate storage capacity of 800 quadrillion bits (approximately 88.8 Petabytes or 93 million Gigabytes). At the onset, Data was constructed with a total linear computational speed rated at 60 trillion operations per second (TFLOPS) (''TNG'': "The Measure of a Man"). However, through bidirectional sequencing (which compensates for signal degradation) and conversion of his main interlink sequencer to asynchronous operation, Data's computational speed was later no longer limited by the physical separation of his positronic links and, thus, became effectively unlimited (''TNG'': "The Quality of Life"). Data's storage capacity is at least 17 times that of Google circa 2005. After Data's specifications were initially noted on-screen, ''TNG'' began referring to fictional quads (and SI_prefix derivatives) as the basic units of computer storage capacity. As well, BlueGene/L, the world's fastest supercomputer, has a measured peak computational speed of approximately 280 TFLOPS, almost five times that of Data's initial computational speed. ==Inspiration== The character was inspired by a Made-for-TV_movie Gene_Roddenberry wrote in the 1970s entitled ''The_Questor_Tapes'',{{citation needed}} which was the pilot for a series that would have detailed the adventures of a lifelike android searching for the secret of being human. Roddenberry himself stated that Data was based on "The_Bicentennial_Man" created by Isaac_Asimov, as well as inspired by other "Positronic Androids" in various other stories by Asimov.{{citation needed}} == Brent Spiner on Data == Brent Spiner has noted that he has visibly aged out of the role and that it would be implausible for him to continue playing an android whose appearance should not change with time http://www.comingsoon.net/news/startreknews.php?id=16437 (although the seventh-season episode "Inheritance" establishes that Data has an aging program that can change his appearance). While Spiner has often expressed affection for Data and appreciation for his career within ''Star Trek'', he has also made it quite clear he is ready to move on. ==Key episodes and milestones== Notable moments in Data's life as shown on screen: * "Encounter at Farpoint" – character introduction * "The Naked Now" – becomes intoxicated due to a disease passing through the Enterprise; experiences sexuality, with Lt. Yar * "Datalore" – discovers brother, Lore * "The Measure of a Man" – legally declared an individual as opposed to property * "Déjà Q" – first experience of emotion * "The Offspring" – creates and loses daughter, Lal * "The Most Toys" – abducted as collector's item * "The Best of Both Worlds" – intervenes to put the Borg "to sleep" * "Brothers" – finds his creator, Dr. Soong; reunites with Lore * "Data's Day" – a day in the life of Data * "Clues" – lies to crew to protect them * "In Theory" – has romantic relationship with Lt. D'Sora * "Redemption, Part II" - first command of a starship * "Unification" – meets Spock on Romulus * "The Quality of Life" – advocates for sentient "tools" * "Birthright" – experiences dreams * "Hero Worship" – counsels a recently-orphaned boy * "Descent" – experiences "negative" emotions; reunites with and, afterward, disassembles Lore * "Phantasms" – experiences nightmares * "Inheritance" – finds his "mother," Dr. Tainer * "Thine Own Self" – loses his memory * ''Star_Trek:_Generations'' – installs emotion chip * ''Star_Trek:_First_Contact'' – rejects Borg Queen's offer, including skin graft; experiences sexuality with Borg Queen * ''Star_Trek:_Insurrection'' - exposes plot to relocate the Ba'ku * ''Star_Trek:_Nemesis'' – discovers brother, B-4; sacrifices himself to save USS Enterprise from total destruction by Reman ship Scimitar. == See also == * Man_vs._Machine == Footnotes== ==External links== * Data's biography at the official Star Trek website * {{memoryalpha article|Data|Data}} * Source for various images of Data on ''Ex_Astris_Scientia'' website {{Star Trek regulars}} Category:Fictional_commanders Category:Fictional_fathers Category:Fictional_robots_with_emotion Category:Fictional_scientists Category:Fictional_singers Category:Unemotional_fictional_characters Category:Fictional_violinists Category:Star_Trek_film_characters Category:Star_Trek_robots Category:Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_characters Category:Time_travelers_in_Star_Trek Cs:Dat Fr:Data It:Data_(Star_Trek) Nl:Data_(Star_Trek) Pl:Data_(Star_Trek) Pt:Data_(Star_Trek) Sk:Dat Fi:Data_(Star_Trek) Sv:Data_(Star_Trek)