Not a bad episode, but not an overly good one either. This is actually the first of the three so-so episodes in a row. So-so for me. Others may like them more.
The introduction of Lore was successful, so they decide to bring more of Data's "relatives" out of the woodwork. In this case a Dr. Ira Graves who was supposed to have taught Dr. Soong everything he knew about cybernetics, making him Data's grandfather for all intents and purposes.
They start out with a distress call from Graves' assistant, Kareen. He's old and near death and had a bad episode.
Left alone with Data and knowing the end is near, Graves puts his mind and soul into Data so he can live forever. It kind of watered down the idea of Data's uniqueness to me. They legitimize it by writing in that Graves doesn't want to be told where Data's off switch is. So, when he guesses it, you know that he really did work closely with Soong. But it also felt like there was this one unique android that seemingly anyone could tweak and tinker on... just too much too soon after Lore. It also felt like a little too ready-made of a plot to me. It's kind of like Return to Tomorrow from TOS only it allowed them to skip the middle man as it were. The evil twin thing worked because it was relatively creative. This one suffers from more fear of trying to do something new and just finding different ways of reworking the old stories. It's not without it's good moments though.
Anytime Data got to have emotions it was usually good for humorous situations. Graves' eulogy over his own body through Data is a scream. It also displayed Spiner's vocal range a little better. When he did Lore, the voice tended to be nasally and a little annoying. It tended towards that every time he would act with anger actually. But in this episode we get to here him with a steady voice like Data, only full of emotions - boredom, admiration, irritation. I thought it was a better way of proving that he could act than Lore because there wasn't as much of the nasally quality to his voice.
This is the first time you see Susie Plakson who would later play Worf's mate, K'Ehleyr. I just think she's pretty and was a good choice for any kind of Star Trek alien. Her character's name, Lt. Selar, is often referred to again although they never bring her back. She's almost a novelty. There was very little Vulcan representation on TNG because of Roddenberry's hypocritical rules and it's a shame.
And, of course, this is the episode where Data is trying a beard in the opening throw away scene. It was hilarious and, I suppose, there to indicate the direction the show would be going in with Data becoming a different person.
I just want to point out that Schizophrenia is not having two or more personalities. Soap operas have been using that term for years whenever there was a split personality on a show, and it's wrong. A schizophrenic loses touch with reality. A person with a schizotypal personality disorder tends toward paranoia, coldness, and apathy. I read a trivia comment that the episode was titled due to the nature of Dr. Graves who exhibited these personality traits, but since they also do a split personality, I just thought it should be clear. It's a personal subject of interest to me.
Troi correctly diagnosis Data with multiple personality disorder though. You get to see her doing some actual medical work instead of just using her empathic abilities, which is a nice change. But, that part also adds to what bothered me the most about this episode. It took everyone way too long to figure out what was going on. Troi couldn't sense the same man she'd just met on the planet in Data? Picard had to tie it all together in that "star of the show" fashion that I'm uncomfortable with. This entire episode would've made a better subplot with characters too busy with something more pressing to notice Data being strange at first. Instead they spend the whole episode puzzling over him. I try to rationalize it by thinking that the characters just didn't know each other very well yet, but it's still hard to swallow. There's some back and forth about Data's rights as an individual, but it just wasn't the right setting for such a debate. This episode was just plain "off."
In the end Graves feels guilty about accidentally hurting Kareen who rejects his love and idea of an android body for her so they could live together forever. He also feels guilty for attacking crew members and Picard when he loses his temper about that rejection and he ends up transferring himself into the ship's computer, freeing Data. Which raises more questions... like what happened to him then? Did they just keep him on a flash drive? Did his assistant take him home with her? I guess because Data was back to normal we shouldn't worry about it, but that's kind of lazy writing.
All in all it's a watchable episode. Data episodes are always good to watch anyway. Definitely not one of my favorites, but it didn't totally suck, so I'll give it three stars.
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