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[Bud Brewster]

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TNG episode #13 - Datalore

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DATALORE episode #13, first season / Air Date: 1/18/88
written by Robert Lewin, Gene Roddenberry; Directed by Rob Bowman





Here was the first show-up of Lore (also played by Brent Spiner), the android built just before Data and physically identical to him (except for a facial twitch — I never did get this).

Because the Enterprise is in the vicinity of Omicron Theta, Picard decides to visit the planet where Data was built/born. The scientific colony which used to be there is gone and the planet has been devastated by what we would later learn is called The Crystalline Entity, a massive lifeform that flits through outer space.

Inside the deserted underground base, the landing party finds the parts which make up Lore. Of course, they decide to bring the parts back up to the ship and construct the android — with Data anxious to find out if he has a brother (anxious? An emotion?).

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This was a chance for Spiner to act out an evil twin (it was Spiner's idea also. The original story involved a female-shaped android). This worked to Spiner's benefit and to ours — he clearly enjoyed the opportunity to present a nasty version of an android. All his scenes as Lore are very entertaining — there's nothing deep here, no exploration as to why Lore is so different from Data, besides that elusive emotion chip — and there's some tension as we wait for Lore to make his move.

In the end, Spiner succeeds in creating a completely different persona as Lore — snide, duplicitous, over-confident and thoroughly unpleasant.

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As a result, there are quite a few memorable moments in this one. All the adults treat Wesley like a moron here, even as he's the one who first suspects Lore of not being on the up-&-up. This leads to Picard telling the kid to shut-up. As a drawback, however, the adults are kind of slow on the uptake in this one.

The sort-of-fight-scene in the turbolift with Lore and Worf is a kick — now we know how tough such an android really is. And the finale with Lore and Data is also rather high in the action quotient, more so than the usual first season episode.

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Yeah, it ends up a simple action thriller with contrived subplots (the face twitch, the whole thing with differing speech patterns for the androids, the cluelessness), geared towards kids maybe, but I still liked parts of it.

BoG's Score: 6 out of 10
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)