Another satisfactory episode from the first season.
I realize that the "evil twin" thing couldn't be
more cliché, but it worked very well and they got some nice mileage out of it
It was Brent Spiner's idea for Lore to be an evil twin
brother. Lore was originally going to be
a female and potential love interest for Data.
She may have even been Minuet (who they ended up making a holodeck
fantasy girl for Riker instead of an android.)
But, I can't blame Spiner or anyone else for settling on this. It gave Spiner the ability to stretch his
acting ability since the role of Data, though wildly popular, was limiting for
the actor.
And this episodes helped the limits to be further worked
out. Data has the ability to emulate
human emotions - he acts, for example.
He can be stern when commanding.
But he doesn't actually feel any of these emotions. Up to this point he emulated human emotions a
lot in regular situations making a person feel like he had them. It's similar to the way Spock, though logical
through and through, at least had a personality. But with Data, he actually doesn't have a
personality, so when he seems excited at finding the deconstructed Lore on the
planet, one can assume it's emulation, but we all know it's not right. After he plays Lore, his Data starts to
become slowly more detached emotionally, and it works much better.
It's also a line in the sand for his contractions. They'd always intended that Data shouldn't be
able to make contractions but mistakes happen.
After Lore it was like the final decision was made to really
try harder to correct those mistakes. As
you see in the video, most of the mistakes happen in this very episodes. In all fairness though, I think many of the
"I'm" usages in this video are false. I don't think he used "I'm" as much
as the person who made this video does.
"I am" run together quickly sounds a lot like "I'm,"
hence the contraction.
First appearance of Crystalline Entity. I
don't think they had ever intended to use it again. When they do bring it back, it appears to be
more of a beast that responds to stimulus, like the vibrations they use to
communicate with it. In this episode, it
is more of a malevolent, thinking alien that Lore can communicate with
personally.
I don't know if anyone else notices that the Entity's motivation
seems to have been the genesis for the Borg.
The writers at the time don't seem to have been thinking of anything so
ambitious at the time and I've never known anyone else to make this comparison,
but it occurred to me the last time I watched it. But the Crystalline Entity is portrayed as
having a desire to consume as many life forms as possible. Lore implies that it'll be impressed with a
larger number of life forms to be consumed from this ship than there was on the
planet. Later on, they toy with Lore and
the Borg again, but the similarities are undeniable.
I must complain about the barren landscape planet again and
spartan set designs. I'm sorry, but
after things got better, it's still dreary to see these recycled, lifeless set
pieces and find them to be up to par.
It's just another mark of the worst parts of the first season.
Sigh... the woes of Wesley and how stupid everyone is
compared to him. I won't complain much,
only to restate that after he was made a bridge officer they should've taken
him a little more seriously and that a
chief engineer was desperately needed
at this point because Wesley, the boy genius who can out think the adults, was
starting to wear a little thin.
But the facial tick was a nice touch and a good part of the
mystery. One could even get
philosophical and state that Data not only lost his trusting innocence with the
appearance of Lore but that this event also sort of sparked his interest in the methodical mystery solving technique of Sherlock Holmes, even more so than the brief brush with it thus far in "The Lonely Among Us."
Still not good enough for five stars, but four for sure.
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