[DISCUSSION] In TNG's "The Most Toys" (s3e22), did Data lie about firing the disruptor?
[DISCUSSION] In TNG's "The Most Toys" (s3e22), did Data lie about firing the disruptor?
Episode premise:
Kivas Fajo is determined to add the unique Data to his prized collection of one-of-a-kind artefacts and, staging Data's apparent death, he imprisons him aboard his ship.
We know that Data is later logically coerced to lie in "Clues" to protect the crew, but this appears to be a decision all his own. Or did he not in fact actually fire the weapon?
Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing in Data's programing that would prevent him from doing "bad" things like lying or killing. He has free will just as much as any other Starfleet officer.
Data is much more human than you might guess at first. He is more akin to a human on the autism spectrum than a robot with hard-coded programming.
Absolutely. Rewatching the series in full as an adult made it more apparent that Data was always closer to his goal than he could comprehend. Just had trouble adjusting to social "norms" more than others.
Yup exactly. He just lacked emotional subroutines (at first) and the hardware to process that. But he doesn't need emotions to kill. He is in fact capable of using lethal force (First Contact), he just has an ethical subroutine that prevents killing (Descent I, II) unless in defense of others, himself, or The Federation. Which would fall under his logical subroutines.
Similar in a way to Chief Engineer Hemmer who will not use violence (Memento Mori) unless in an act of preserving life. The means to defend is part of the training of a Starfleet officer.
This is honestly something that kind of annoys me about the show, data is pretty obviously human enough from the get-go, his journey is just about generally figuring things out and forming a proper personality.
Like the episode where they have to put his personhood to trial isn't that amazing, humans now overwhelmingly at least somewhat care about the well-being of actual cattle, how the fuck would a clearly human-looking android that's clearly capable of reasoning not be considered a person just like any other humanoid alien species?
It would have made sense if it took place in humanity's capitalist past, but the largely enlightened federation? come oooooooon
i like that The Orville has their obligatory digital lifeform be from a whole-ass race that considers themselves obviously superior to everyone else, and no one questions their personhood because how the fuck do you question the personhood of someone who is actively choosing not to pulverize you?
Data: "Perhaps something occurred during transport, Commander"
Riker: "Like what?"
Data: "Like I tried to shoot the motherfucker but you beamed me away too quick."
O'brien: "Bitches be crazy..."
"Deactivating it" meant he stored it in another pattern buffer for future use. Could always add it to a troublesome person's transporter beam...
Did he lie? Or did he give a vague statement that is necessarily true?
O'Brien deactivated the weapon, so something did happen during transport.
Yes. Perhaps it did.
The idea that Data completely lacks emotion was always hollow to me. People don't especially understand what emotions are or what it means to feel them. I think we lie to ourselves quite a lot that our decisions are "purely rational" even though everything in our environments influences those decisions.
Who hasn't made a bad call because they were: tired, hungry, over heated, angry, or otherwise being affected by emotions? Is hunger an emotion? When Data decides that he will practice music today, is that part of an elaborate schedule he has planned years in advance, or is that what he "felt like" doing that day? Perhaps a long string of logic could explain why today is a good day to Vi-olen, but how is that different from the rationale I could put together for why I made a decision?
So what I'm saying is: I blame the writers! I think by season 3 they'd explored a little of the possibilities with Data about what humanity is and what it means to work with an android, but I don't know that they ever really got a handle on what it would look like for a being of pure reason to emergently develop emotions.
Look at chatgpt and how readily it convinces people that there is a thinking being in there. When an LLM says "I'm happy to see you today, what can I do for you?" do we take that as a canned response with no real feeling behind it, or do we assume that because it can say it is happy, that it must be feeling happy?
Do we get much perspective on Data's interiority? Perhaps he experiences a world of emotions we can't even comprehend but has no understanding of how to express these things? His art work is called out as being soulless and copy-cat at various times. But also Data has a cat, and a daughter, and many friends. He tells bad jokes. It seems like there's some kind of feelings going on in there, even if it comes out in his actions and not in his art.
This is actually why I kinda liked Pulaski. When she first meets him, she calls bullshit on the idea that he has no emotions. She mispronounces his name, and when Data corrects her, she immediately hones in on that; why should you have a preference if you don't feel anything about it? But people keep telling her that he doesn't have emotions, so she's basically like, "Alright, fine, I'll treat him like a calculator." And honestly, why wouldn't you? If he doesn't have emotions, then why bother with pleasantries? It's not like he's going to get offended. She eventually does come around to him, but she does that by basically coming to the conclusion that he does care, given his actions during that episode with the children and the aging disease (I don't remember the name and I'm too lazy to look it up).
It was always very clear to me that Data had emotions. How could he not? He has desires, wants, preferences...you can't have those things without feeling something. It just seems like they're very distant, numb feelings, rather than strong sensations. And it kinda makes sense to build him that way; Lore was created with much more advanced emotions, and he's a little psychotic. It makes more sense to have his feelings be slightly out of reach and let them grow with his positronic brain, so he can learn to handle them over time.
I never liked the, "emotion chip," solution to Data's feelings. It seems like they never explored his emotional development because they didn't want to make any status quo changes on a mostly episode-of-the-week show. Then they created an emotion McGuffin they never intended to use and said, "fuck it, let's use it for the movie!" But in the end, I believe we were always meant to think the same thing about Data as we were about Spock: "I know this guy says he doesn't have emotions, but I think he's full of shit."
Basically the same thing with Vulcans. Vulcans show their emotions all the time, it's just almost always mild irritation and impatience.
In the end, human emotions are motivators. They decide our actions. If we're happy with something, we continue doing it, if it hurts, we stop it. Data clearly has a system in place that motivates him to do things.
These might be emotions, like you say, but this is not the only possibility. Can we really imagine what a motivator would be that is not an emotion? I don't think so. But I think this is what Data has. It's not emotions like we experience them, but it's something that causes him to do things/stop doing things. Now these motivators are just that, and thus act very similarly to our emotions. You might very well think he has emotions, but he hasn't, he has something else.
Everything makes sense if you think of it like this. Data behaves almost human, but not quite. The emotion chip actually has a huge effect. Lore is completely different. This all makes sense when you think of emotions as an actually new thing for Data, but something else still being there.
He didn't lie; he didn't answer the question.
Riker didn't actually ask a question, he just made a statement.
Oh, I was hoping this would have been posted later so I wouldn't have to reply from my phone, lol (was also going to throw this ep on after work and brush up).
I think, yes, data actually fired on Fajo. There was a write up in the meme post from @[email protected] which is very spot on, and I'm hopeful they'll be contributing that here (don't want to steal their thunder).
Data didn't actually, lie, though. At least not, IMO. "Perhaps something occurred during transport, Commander" is kind of dodging the question, but it's not a "lie" in the strictest sense (i.e. it's not necessarily going against any ethical subroutines).
Based on Riker and O'Brien's reactions, I liken it, almost, to when Worf told Picard at the end of Birthright "No, sir, there were no prison camps" and Picard hesitates a second and simply says "I understand".
The glancing look in question:
Data is typically straightforward and matter-of-fact with his responses. This one seems a little more "human" as it were. He'd rather redirect than answer.
Yeah, I don't have an explanation for the out-of-character-ness for that (at least that early in the series), but I would assume his report included all of the details as they occurred (including an official answer to the question posed here).
My theory is he did, indeed, intend to kill Fajo but the writers/executives wanted some wiggle room so we got that.
Summoned, I take the place that has been prepared for me.
My thoughts from the other thread:
He spent the entire episode of peacefully resisting but refusing to harm another sentient being, even to free himself. He values life to such an extent that he won't take it unless there is no other option, and he had all the time in the world to attempt to escape.
But Fajo changes the equation when he not only murders someone in cold blood, but makes clear that he will do it again and again if that's what it takes to get what he wants out of Data. In this situation, Data unemotionally, logically determines that the only moral course of action is to kill him. Not in the heat of the moment, not in immediate self defense, just gunning him down where he stands because he cannot be allowed to continue.
It's a chilling moment, and I love it. I just wish they hadn't felt the need to insert that line about the weapon going off by accident. It comes across as a lie, and I think it undermines the episode a little.
My understanding is that it was executive meddling. Apparently there was some disagreement about that scene and a producer insisted that Data wouldn’t kill someone like that, which sounds good in a vacuum but in context makes no sense. Data’s intentions are pretty clear right before he gets transported out, it’s hard to reconcile his actions leading up to the transport with the idea that he wasn’t willing to pull the trigger.
And it’s not like Data never kills people. He carries a phaser for a reason, it’s part of the job. He doesn’t like it (emotion chip shenanigans aside) but he will do what is necessary.
Which, to bring it back around, is part of why this is such an intense scene. A logical being guided by a moral framework that values life looked upon this man and determined that his death was necessary.
So, did Data lie?
Obviously the way he words his statement is vague enough that you can say it isn't a lie. But even so, I don't think you can take it at face value. He was clearly getting ready to fire, and the episode had made it abundantly clear why he needed to do it, why he was justified in doing it. It's a strange point for the script to get hung up on, because the difference between being interrupted before he can pull the trigger vs being interrupted as he is pulling the trigger is pretty much irrelevant.
While I'm fairly certain the original intent behind putting the line in the episode is to gloss over the fact that Data was going to kill someone, I don't think that's how it comes across. The performances in the scene make it clear that Data is not just flatly denying that he was firing the weapon, nor do Riker and O'Brien take it as a clear statement of fact.
While I'd rather they never put the line in to begin with, we got the episode that we got. And my interpretation would be that what occurred during transport wasn't a weapon malfunction,* but rather a change in the moral calculus. Fajo had to be stopped, and the only way Data could do that was to kill him while he had the chance. As soon as the Enterprise arrived and beamed him out, that all changed. Fajo would be captured and face trial, and Data would face him in the cell without hostility.
Riker asked about the weapon discharge with some concern. He and O'Brien don't know what happened, they don't have the context for the situation. Data knows they can't fully understand what happened based on a simple verbal exchange. I think you could almost take his reply as dismissive, a rejection of the line of thinking that's behind the question. Data will make a full report when the time comes, no need to talk through it all there, and no point in covering it in inadequate detail.
* I would hope that weapons don't just go off at random during transport. Given how often people beam up and down while wearing a holstered weapon that can potentially vaporize someone, I'd imagine that would cause some pretty nasty situations.
I'm sure Data subscribes to the Vulcan logical philosophy of the needs of the many over the few. Vulcans also abhor violence until it becomes a logical necessity, so this applies here. Fajo put Data into a corner where firing had become the only option left, with Data not knowing the Enterprise was coming.
I do wish they had written it differently, although I can't come up with a better line than to just admit his hand was forced. Or just omit him firing, but then it makes the buildup pointless as we never see Data pushed to the limit, or it's left assuming he would never fire. Along with some other things in the episode, it's why it's a middle grade one for me compared to so many others. Good, but not great.
We know he's figured out bloodlust by Generations.
Anyone who thinks he didn't fire with the intention to kill Fajo needs to go back to English class and learn how to read some basic literature. It's like the end of the Sopranos. People's wishes for happy endings and perfect Hollywood stories blind then to the work the writers went through to tell you (rather obviously, there isn't much room for debate among people who know how to interpret stories) that yes, Data can kill an unarmed man in the right circumstances, or yes, Tony Soprano's brains are splattered all over his family. It's not a happier story but it's a better one with actual meaning and has a more lasting impact.
I believe that Data has it in him to make that decision, I'm mostly calling out the ambiguity of the scene as it played out. And yeah, Tony met a gruesome but earned end.
It’s like the end of the Sopranos.
They ran out of film?
Lets face it, data was gonna cap him. The bad dude had killed someone just before.
Nope. Let's break it down.
"Perhaps something occurred during transport."
The opening word, "perhaps," instills ambiguity in whatever hypothesis follows it.
The next clause, "something occurred" is objectively true. The weapon was dematerialized, deactivated, and then rematerialized. That sequence of events is accurately describable as "something occurred," regardless of whether or not Data deliberately activated the firing mechanism of the weapon, or malfunction during transit, or something else happened to cause the gun to discharge.
"During transport" cannot be false, since we do not see any weapon discharge before or during Data's dematerialization.
Taken altogether, this sentence is true and therefore Data would be same to say it without lying.
Truth is a funny thing, and carefully selecting weird can allow someone to be deceptive or evasive by starting an absolute truth. And that's not even factoring in the subjectivity of truth, or any faults in the memory - synthetic, organic, or otherwise - of the individual. Objectivity can be frustratingly difficult to pin down.
Data's the science officer. He could probably build a phaser from scrap blindfolded. Him saying maybe "something" happened during transport is clearly a deflection. I bet he thought about this moment when he discovered Lore and all Lore had done.
Why did Fajo believe data couldn’t kill? We see data blasting baddies all the time
We see data blasting baddies all the time
Omg literally perfect
