My wife and I are rewatching The Next Generation and just finished Measure of a Man, the episode in season 2 in which Data’s personhood is legally debated and his life hangs in the balance.
I genuinely found this episode infuriating in its stupidity. It’s the first episode we skipped even a little bit. It was like nails on a chalkboard.
There is oodles of legal precedent that Data is a person. He was allowed to apply to Starfleet, graduated, became an officer and rose to the rank of Lt. Commander with all the responsibilities and privileges thereof.
Comparing him to a computer and the judge advocate general just shrugging and going to trial over it is completely idiotic. There are literal years and years of precedent that he’s an officer.
The problem is compounded because Picard can’t make the obvious legal argument and is therefore stuck philosophizing in a court room, which is all well and good, but it kind of comes down to whether or not Data has a soul? That’s not a legal argument.
The whole thing is so unbelievably ludicrous it just made me angrier and angrier. It wasn’t the high minded, humanistic future I’ve come to know and love, it was a kangaroo court where reason and precedent took a backseat to feeling and belief.
I genuinely hated it.
To my surprise, in looking it up, I discovered it’s considered one of the high water marks for the entire show. It feels like I’m taking crazy pills.
Yeah they encountered something new in the universe and they had to decide on what to do. They decided to do the moral thing for moral reasons. Starfleet isn’t a utopia but it’s utopic because of instances like this where the right thing is done for the right reasons.
The fact they had a trial to determine data’s personhood and that it was agonizingly close, that they were actually considering denying it.
If they were truly moral, the question would have never come up; or Maddox and the general would have been slapped down with a scathing “don’t be evil”.
Also, at that point data was hardly new- he’s been in starfleet for 20+ years in which Data earned his place as a decorated Lt. Commander.
In any case, this isn’t even a question for a starfleet court - this would fall under civil purview, and even hearing the trial is a miscarriage. (Also the IFP courts probably have some sort of test that doesn’t require destructive testing. Details.)
Yeah sitting down and discussing all viewpoints before coming to consensus is clearly beneath Starfleet. They should just automatically know the right thing to do (which is obvs what I think is right) and clearly a interplanetary civilisation wouldn’t have any sort of conflict of interest/opinion.
Obviously the guy suing should understand data is clearly a person despite being a new ‘unique’ form of life in the universe that they have never interacted with before. Like come on are you telling me everyone in the federation hasn’t watched tng and become emotionally attached to the characters like I have.
Stoopid episode 0/10