[For my daily workout, I'm pedaling on a recumbent exercise bike while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm posting my reviews here.]
(201.4 pounds)
Why is it always an evil twin? Why not a sleazy one? Or a conscientious one? I mean, if we’re summing up our twin with a single descriptive word, you’d think there would be many more to choose from. “Oh, Lore: he’s just like Data, but he’s Christian.”
As evil twin stories go, I guess this could be worse. Probably the best part of the episode was the conversation between Data and Lore in which Lore claims that Data was built to be deliberately less human, implying a kind of slavery: they wanted him useful but not unpredictable. Which is, when you think about it, pretty scary for supposedly enlightened 24th century people. The word “robot” means “slave,” after all, and these are all issues that come up more deeply in “The Measure of a Man” episode.
There were nice moments, including several shouts of “Shut up, Wesley!” directed at the wunderkind (though I’ve got to admit that I like that character a lot more than, say, Troi). I also enjoyed the “nobody believes the kid” element of the story, though you’d think that the others would figure out the switcheroo pretty quick.
My grade: C-. It’s a pretty standard evil twin story, though it adds a little of Data’s backstory.
I automatically give a bump to data-centric episodes. Even though he’s a little goofy in the first season. I think they did a little bit of a different take when you find out that Data might actually be considered the ‘inferior’ twin, because of the lack of emotion subsystem.
Besides… don’t you mean quadruplets?