Okay, so, apparently the vast and mighty resources of a Federation vessel aren’t particularly needed, so in this episode, Picard decides to take everyone on a little field trip to the planet where Data was found.  Not much has actually been said about Data up to this point, we’ve just been expected to accept “super-strong, fully functional” (shudder) “android” with little question.  And that makes some sense, because theoretically, the crew of the Enterprise has been cruising around with him for a little while, so they either know what’s up, or they are too polite to ask questions about Data’s mysterious origins.

And mysterious they are.  Data was apparently found lying on a slab near a beacon at the bottom of some stone stairs on this planet of endless, endless death.  That is, there is zero life on the planet, up to and including bacterial life, which I guess explains why all the dead trees haven’t decayed even though it’s been years and years.  I doubt anyone actually thought it through that much, but it works.  And here’s a thing that bugs me.  The away team seems surprised that there isn’t any sign of life on Omicron Theta, but wouldn’t that have been in the report by the men of the Tripoli, back when they found Data?  Wouldn’t a good away team (let alone a curious person with access to the Federation computer library), you know, read that report first?  It’s not like the mass death happened between then and now.  Oh, yeah, and Data is a walking bank of memories of the dead colonists, though no one has ever mentioned that before (and part of me doubts it will ever come up again or be relevant in any way.)  And despite having these “memories,” every human experience is foreign to him, so I guess these colonists didn’t get out much.

This episode doesn’t bear much digging beneath the surface of the plot for things like, I don’t know, logic.  Geordi marvels at the skill of the colonists in hiding the entrance to their underground burrow, but finds the door switch in under two minutes.  Data doesn’t remember anything before being discovered by the away team from the Tripoli, except when he remembers the man who created him.  And for some reason there are multiple children’s drawings of the terrifying Crystalline Entity that killed them all posted up in the lab.  As if the children lived long enough to draw them, and that those were the only drawings anyone felt worthy of posting on the wall.  What.  Oh, and all Lore’s parts are kept in a glass-doored storage area full of smoke, and stored ass-outward.  Actually, I thought that was really funny.  That, and the absurdly ominous music when Riker assured Data that they could take the pieces back up to the Enterprise for reassembly.

I hadn’t thought of it myself, but my roommate, who watched this with me, noted that Crusher is actually pretty unnecessary for the reassembly of Lore.  She’s a doctor, damn it, not an engineer.  (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.)  Later, of course, I realized that she had to be there as a plot point so that she could help WESLEY SAVE THE DAY at the end.

A lot actually happens in this episode, and I don’t really want to go over everything in detail.  It’s nice to see Spiner play kind of an asshole in Lore, and some of the Data/Lore interactions are fantastic, and some of them are such bullshit.  And credit where credit is due, most of the fantasticness comes from Spiner’s acting and most of the bullshit comes from the dialogue.  Seriously?  I was kind of touched by Data and all he innocently yearns for when Lore was throwing his “humanity” in Data’s face.  “I can talk in contractions and you can’t, nyah nyah” is some of the idiotic part.  That, and some of Wesley’s “I’m suspicious!” lines are just so terrible.  Also, Lore can apparently take away his weird facial tick and give it to Data through judicious use of Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver.  And then there’s all the bridge crew yelling at Wesley (including Picard just outright shouting “SHUT UP, WESLEY!”) for daring to suspect that Data is actually Lore in disguise (which he is, as a matter of fact - “This is what you get when you put teenagers on your bridge crew,” I remarked to my roommate as Wesley threw a little hissy fit,) which is also badly written.  Has Wesley Crusher even had a good line so far in this show?

But the real shouting-at-the-TV is something from the middle that I saved until the end.  At some point, Lore had to incapacitate Data and take over his position.  And he couldn’t just sneak up behind his brother and hit the off switch he earlier swore the doctor to secrecy over.  Ha ha, that would make too much sense!  No.  Lore had to drug Data.  Yeah.  Drugs.  In an android.  Delivered in a glass of champagne.

Allow me to quote my roommate here:

Did it get absorbed into his bloodstream?  Did it poison his circuits?

Not only that, but it works INSTANTANEOUSLY.  I’m sure there’s some in-universe logic to this somewhere, but who writes a science fiction story where a ROBOT poisons another ROBOT?  (Yeah, yeah, android, not exactly the same thing, but he’s still inorganic and doesn’t digest food.)

Some other WTFery before I end for the night: Lore in Data disguise suggests beaming out a tree to the Crystalline Entity and then blowing it up with the phasers to scare it (?!) and Picard agrees that this is a good idea (!!?!?!!); Lore wants to lure it in to kill everyone on the ship because…. uh…. yeah, I don’t think they explained that at all; Lore speaks to the Crystalline Entity in English; and lastly, when Lore is beamed off the ship, this horrible thing that will kill them all just leaves.  And no one seems to  think that it’s odd for it to just… go.  Oh, yeah, and another thing no one asks about - where Wes beamed Lore to.  But hey, it’s just an insane, murderous android.  It doesn’t really matter where that goes.