Okay, he did a lot of things wrong, but I still think Soong was kind of a dick to him. He basically deactivated his kid because of stupid scared humans and instead of helping him, he replaced him.
I think the reason Data was able to integrate with humans more effectively than Lore was that he was surrounded by a bunch of understanding humans who helped him work through any problems and misunderstandings that occurred from him being a new machine. As opposed to Lore who when he had trouble regulating his emotions and seeing humans as equals, Soong and the humans were just like "Welp, he's defective, better kill him and replace him with a better one." Failing to respect that Lore was a sentient being in the same way that the crew of the Enterprise respected Data as a sentient being.
Sorry, I'm finally finishing all of TNG for the first time so you'll have to bear with all these nerd posts.
Why don't we have a c/startrek?
My favourite horrifying goof from STTNG was in Datalore when Brent Spiner flubbed an end-of-episode line "I am fine" to "I'm fine". When the entire plot of the episode is that Lore impersonates Data for nefarious purposes, and Lore can use contractions and Data can't. If Lore had never made another appearance, the entire series could happen with viewers wondering if Data was floating helpless in space and Lore had successfully covertly taken Data's place in Starfleet.
The Picard series kept having Dr Soong's ancestors or alternate universe uncles or whatever show up so they could cast Brent Spiner, the silver lining is that it shows all Dr. Soongs are short sighted egotistical pricks
I agree, though obviously Lore did some bad shit, Soong and the rest of the colony don't treat him as having a right to life. There's a line in a Big Joel video where he talks about Ratatouille that I really like where he says, "[The protagonist] is [..] bound by a moral structure that he is not a subject within" and I think that applies also to Lore - and to an extent, Data. The androids are expected, by society at large, to honour the right of living beings to exist but their right to exist is considered negotiable, conditional. Certainly outside of the crew of the Enterprise.
I think part of the reason Data integrates better is that he is programmed to internalize that contradiction, he does not see his existence as inherently valuable in the same way the federation doesn't.
Outside of that I find Datalore to a pretty frustrating episode because the concept is so good but the execution verges on comically inept.
Agreed.
Data is often belittled by federation members that come aboard and will call him shit like "Robot, computer, it, tin can, etc" and he has to take it all in stride because, well, he isn't programmed to be offended by it.
As someone who is a little neurodivergent myself, it gave me vibes of when people use the r-slur and neurodivergent people feel they have to smile and nod in order to be accepted.
RE: ND people, that's an interesting and I think valid observation.
It's telling that even in a science fantasy, where all prejudice between living things has basically ended and rocks, and sentient tar pits are considered worthy of consideration, when faced with an unknown form of life in Data people still resort to denigrating him.
Okay, he did a lot of things wrong, but I still think Soong was kind of a dick to him. He basically deactivated his kid because of stupid scared humans and instead of helping him, he replaced him.
He was a legit sociopath who murdered hundreds of people. They were probably scared of him because they saw those tendencies. That's especially scary for an android. Like, Data is legitimately scary too, he takes over the whole ship.
As opposed to Lore who when he had trouble regulating his emotions and seeing humans as equals, Soong and the humans were just like "Welp, he's defective, better kill him and replace him with a better one."
Soong made it pretty clear he wanted to fix him later. Data was supposed to be the moral one, so he could use Data's performance to figure out what went wrong with Lore later on.
Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
