“Felis catus, is your taxonomic nomenclature an endothermic quadroped, carnivorous by nature?”
We’re going to be called upon to ask what was in the water at the Star Trek: The Next Generation writers’ offices this month. Last week, the crew got turned into kids, and this week it’s a spaghetti western on the holodeck – where half the characters are incarnations of Data. (Next week, Data will adopt a bunch of robots. Yes he will.)
Fortunately, as with its predecessor “Rascals,” the batshit gamble in “A Fistful of Datas” pays off just fine, more or less. I liked this episode a lot when it first aired. It doesn’t hold up quite as well as it might have – it feels fairly slow now, and it’s the first of Patrick Stewart’s directorial efforts that I’d say is badly directed. Sequences are staged conventionally, split-screen visual effects are unimaginative, and the final gunfight – which should be the showpiece of the whole episode – never entirely clicks. But still, there’s a lot of fun to be had.
This is the only Alexander episode I actually like; the only time the miniature Klingon was ever “cute” was when he was dressed as a miniature Klingon gunslinger in his adorable little spats. And let’s face it, there’s something nicely honest about the plot setup here. If the original Star Trek had wanted to make use of some standing Western sets on the Paramount backlot, they would have invented some lunatic reason why the planet the Enterprise was visiting this week had evolved into a perfect recreation of 1800s America. On Next Gen, they just declare a ship-wide day off, and go into the holodeck for some father/son roleplay. It’s “Elementary, Dear Data” all over again.
Then Geordi plugs Data’s brain into the Enterprise’s computer – because how could that possibly go wrong – and before you can say “holodeck safety protocols,” the Data proliferation in the town of Deadwood begins. It’s not even like the Enterprise gets struck by lightning or anything; they just plug him in, and shit goes wrong, like that time I tried to sync my iPhone with my Samsung Android. Except, the episode doesn’t really go bananas with the concept until the final shootout – the Mexican pistolero version of Data is my favourite – when a lot more fun might have been had seeing Spiner play his half-dozen characters for the entire back half of the show.
In some way, the Worf/Deanna romance starts here, although nothing in that direction actually takes place. It’s just, there’s chemistry – chemistry that no one in the world probably saw coming and which, arguably, they might have done well to ignore. Nonetheless, I have to admit, whenever Worf calls her “Deanna” instead of “Counselor,” in that basso profundo voice of his, I get a little quiver.
The episode finds time for a bit of off-hours fun with the rest of the crew, too. Picard is still practicing his flute, and Beverly’s staging a new play – which she apparently wrote herself. Geordi is growing a beard, perhaps because he read my comments on his lack of an actual personality in the “Relics” writeup, and acted accordingly.
Blogging The Next Generation runs every Tuesday as I work my way through the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. Season Six is finally in stores.