Prompt 009.2 for lightyearsahead
2. What was the most terrible installment of your canon in your opinion? Why did you dislike it so much? Tell us what happened that you didn't approve of and what you would have done it better.
I started playing Data before the new Star Trek movie was announced, and I was skeptical but glad they were rebooting rather than roaming back into the territory of another terrible TNG flick. The only good one, in my opinion, had been First Contact.
As it was, as much as I love Roddenberry and it was TNG that introduced me to the franchise, I later realized that it seemed that he'd gone completely off course in his own universe in retrospect. They couldn't get away with rough and tumble cowboys in space like they originally had, so they filled in the gaps with pseudoscience and melodrama. Both I had already adapted to, and accepted the terrible inconsistencies involving the character I was playing because, well, his canon had passed.
Then the movie came out, and with it came a game and a prequel comic. Brent Spiner had explicitly stated he wanted Data dead. He would not reprise the character, he was too old to when the character supposedly wouldn't age, and it was time that he moved on. I agreed with this, and felt that it was respectful of the man who'd portrayed the man for fourteen years to allow his character to remain canonically in the grave.
But then this comic (and the game) brought him back. Not only that, they decided that somehow despite all these long term doubts involving artificial intelligences and his history with the Borg that vaguely reflected Picard's, he was going to be placed in charge of the Enterprise. An android at the helm of the flagship of the Federation in a very short period of time. Plus, the man who'd advocated the rights of even the simplest artificial intelligences, who preserved the memories of his daughter in his mind, had essentially killed his innocent brother to take over his body.
They changed his personality yet again to better suit the command of the vessel, and his interest in science wasn't quite as profound as it had been.
Like with Doctor Who, though, the canonicity of any non-theatrical/non-televised thing is open to interpretation. I decided to play Captain Data at crowdedhour for the challenge of playing him. But mostly I like to treat Data Version 2.0 as that. Another version of Data, like another version of Zev from Lex.
I wish that they would have opened the role for another actor, ala Lexx, Doctor Who, or even Deep Space Nine. It would have been simple to transfer Data's memories from B-4 into a new android, and if given the choice that's what I would have done instead of taking the route that they did. It just heightened comparisons between Spock and Data, who are superficially similar in the precise manner of their speech but very different in goals and personality. On the whole, the new movie is good but the back non!canon for it was so terrible it made me resentful.
I rather liked the alternate future of him becoming a professor, myself.
Character: Data
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Words: 498
I started playing Data before the new Star Trek movie was announced, and I was skeptical but glad they were rebooting rather than roaming back into the territory of another terrible TNG flick. The only good one, in my opinion, had been First Contact.
As it was, as much as I love Roddenberry and it was TNG that introduced me to the franchise, I later realized that it seemed that he'd gone completely off course in his own universe in retrospect. They couldn't get away with rough and tumble cowboys in space like they originally had, so they filled in the gaps with pseudoscience and melodrama. Both I had already adapted to, and accepted the terrible inconsistencies involving the character I was playing because, well, his canon had passed.
Then the movie came out, and with it came a game and a prequel comic. Brent Spiner had explicitly stated he wanted Data dead. He would not reprise the character, he was too old to when the character supposedly wouldn't age, and it was time that he moved on. I agreed with this, and felt that it was respectful of the man who'd portrayed the man for fourteen years to allow his character to remain canonically in the grave.
But then this comic (and the game) brought him back. Not only that, they decided that somehow despite all these long term doubts involving artificial intelligences and his history with the Borg that vaguely reflected Picard's, he was going to be placed in charge of the Enterprise. An android at the helm of the flagship of the Federation in a very short period of time. Plus, the man who'd advocated the rights of even the simplest artificial intelligences, who preserved the memories of his daughter in his mind, had essentially killed his innocent brother to take over his body.
They changed his personality yet again to better suit the command of the vessel, and his interest in science wasn't quite as profound as it had been.
Like with Doctor Who, though, the canonicity of any non-theatrical/non-televised thing is open to interpretation. I decided to play Captain Data at crowdedhour for the challenge of playing him. But mostly I like to treat Data Version 2.0 as that. Another version of Data, like another version of Zev from Lex.
I wish that they would have opened the role for another actor, ala Lexx, Doctor Who, or even Deep Space Nine. It would have been simple to transfer Data's memories from B-4 into a new android, and if given the choice that's what I would have done instead of taking the route that they did. It just heightened comparisons between Spock and Data, who are superficially similar in the precise manner of their speech but very different in goals and personality. On the whole, the new movie is good but the back non!canon for it was so terrible it made me resentful.
I rather liked the alternate future of him becoming a professor, myself.
Character: Data
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Words: 498