Data

You would think a blog post for this topic would be very broad and kind of vague. I mean after all, just how much data is in the world? How many giggaquads or whatever? But, no, to me this topic is easily narrowed down. Narrowed down so much in fact, that it refers to one character in particular.

Lieutenant Commander Data, the android Chief of Operations officer and third in command on board the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 D and the E, and he was the captain of the F at one point in time. At least according to Star Trek Online h was the captain of the Enterprise F. The one in charge of the ship until the Andorian captain Val'kel Shon took over due to a sitation totally outside of the capacity of a fictional universe to take care of.

For some reason, CBS won't release the rights for the Star Trek androids to be used in the MMORPG. This is something Cryptic and Perfect World (the developer of the game and the owners respectively) have been working to resolve since Star Trek Online first launched. This is also a topic I could really run off on a major tangent on, so I'm going to nip that in the bud right there.

So, what else is there to talk about?

Well, Data is technically the third of his kind, and is the most perfect of the three Soong androids. B-4 was the first and most imperfect android. B-4's only appearance was in Star Trek Nemesis, the last Next Generation movie and the last one before the Abrams reboot. He was basically a plot bunny placed in the movie to make it possible to revive Data in later films. It's like when Spock touched McCoy and said remember.

Where Spock passed his Katra (life force or something like that) on to Dr. McCoy, so that he could be revived when his body was basically cloned on the Genesis planet. Yeah, and that's a tangent all on it's own.

My brain stopped.

Anyway, Data's programming overrides B-4's and he takes over as the dominant personality in the body. And, with how primitive B-4's positronic network is, Data probably erases all traces of his “special” brother.

That being said. It could be entirely possible that none of this is accepted as canon.

Why?

Not because Disney just bought it and nixed the entirety of the extended universe. Nope, it's just because of how canon works with Star Trek.

With Star Wars the canon was pretty well open, seeing as there were only three movies out when the EU started, and those movies were rather vague on what took place before the movies and what would happen afterword. So, those creative individuals who were interested took up their pens and pencils and breathed life into the EU.

When it comes to Star Trek there have been 5 television series and 12 movies. There's plenty of “official” material that out weighs the other material produced. The novels and video games, the comic books, and all the other fan made products have no bearing whatsoever on what happens in upcoming Star Trek products.

This might change, however. Star Trek: Renegades is a fan produced pilot for a new television series set to air in the fall. It's hoped that the ratings and the turnout will be enough to move Paramount & CBS into picking up the show and making it a regular series. The next Star Trek series.

But, still, none of this points towards a canon conclusion of what happened with Data. GRAH!!!

Ryan

6-6-14

PS: I didn't realize how far off topic I went... but oh well. Maybe I'll cover the rest in a later post. Lol.