“Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.”
Another reeeeaaaally good episode from the cream of Next Gen‘s crop, “Data’s Day” does what it says on the tin: it spends a day with Data – who, surprising no one, does a lot of awesome shit in the course of the average day. And so does the Enterprise – like, for example, having an actual day/night cycle, which we’ve never seen before; Data, who never sleeps, gets the graveyard shift. It’s fun seeing the ship run like a ship – duty officers on and off, relief of command, using the logs as actual logs. Or in this case, as a running narration to Commander Maddox from “The Measure of a Man” – who Data, in true Data-like fashion, maintains friendly contact with, in spite of Maddox’s having attempted to declare Data a non-sentient piece of Starfleet property.
So let’s get into it: Data as Asperger’s poster boy. This is probably the flagship episode for that whole theory, as we spend the entirety of the show listening to Data internally processing his way around human colloquialism, irony, ridicule, and emotion in general, with a particularly well-scripted sense for how one would approach those concepts from the outside in, rather than the inside out. Little touches sell the effect marvelously – like Data’s cat, introduced in this episode, and named Spot for absolutely no reason other than the performative aspects of owning a cat; or Data trying to make O’Brien more comfortable when he visits Data’s quarters, to the point of obsession. What makes the episode kind instead of cruel is the basic premise that these concepts are learnable, in spite of a nearly scene-by-scene gag made of the incompleteness of Data’s learning thus far. He might grin like an idiot when learning to dance, but he is learning – and by the episode’s end, he can dance masterfully.
The dance school sequence, wherein I presume the series producers realized all at once that both Gates McFadden and Brent Spiner knew their way around a pair of tap shoes, is a grand piece of slapstick, not the sort of humour we normally associate with the show. (McFadden must also have been well into her second trimester when the episode was filmed – so double the kudos.) Data expounds nicely on how Crusher, and all of the principal cast for that matter, fit into his (emotionless) emotional map of the crew of the Enterprise – Riker’s use of humour to advance his sexual relationships; Worf as a kindred spirit to the android, an outsider looking in. There’s a nice scene between Data and Troi for a discussion of the nature of marriage, another pairing between the show’s two principal characters who (as admitted in this episode’s voiceover, no less) have the least in common with one another. As usual, this results in a neat emotional payoff as they once again find their way around one another.
On the subject of marriage, we meet Keiko (nee Ishikawa, shortly O’Brien), played by Rosalind Chao, who becomes one of the franchise’s major players once the O’Briens are shipped to DS9 in Season Six. On the 1550th day of the Enterprise‘s service, the couple gets married, four people celebrate a birthday, two are transferred, four are promoted, and Geordi gets a haircut from the Bolian barber, who would later become Mr. Mott. It’s a great “day in the life” structure from end to end, and would work just as well if nothing particularly important happened at all.
But we also get the minor back-and-forth with the Romulans to add a bit of tension, and the writers smartly play against expectations by having the Romulans win – without combat or casualty, of course, but outsmarting our heroes and getting away with it. Picard’s profound irritation as he spits out his “Engage” when the Enterprise flees before a superior Romulan force is nice – as is the subsequent scene, where he gets over his frustration by hanging out with a baby. A whole bunch of ovaries must have exploded all over the world as Stewart whispered “Welcome aboard” to the newborn child and went off to marry Keiko to Miles. Not a bad day for everyone, all around.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Four is in stores now.