Data's Day

This whole episode is done in the style of a flashback as Data writes to a fellow at the Denkstrom Institute his efforts to master more human emotions. A lot of humans can't master those, Nevertheless Data tries on.

Of primary concern is the impending wedding of Chief O'Brien and Keiko. In fact Brent Spiner is to be acting father of the bride. But Rosalind Chao gets a case of jitters and Data makes a mess of things with both.

The real mission of the Enterprise is to deliver a Vulcan ambassador to the Romulans for peace talks. When she seems to have met with an accident it is Data who assembles the facts and he truth.

With that deadpan delivery Brent Spiner in the narration makes this a most enjoyable story.

Dear Commander Maddox.

There was a time before Molly. A time when Keiko wasn't married. I sometimes forget that Chief O'Brian isn't a permanent member of the crew. It's only a couple of months since I sat through the entire DS9 back-catalogue, so I am still surprised that after four seasons of TNG, Colm Meany is only a guest-star.

This episode is like a day in the life of Data episode. A Light-hearted romp... Dr. Bev is something of a twinkle toes on the dance floor. Worf tends to regard drinking glasses as the ideal wedding gift. Deanna Troi has her cleavage on displayed within her teil dress this week, and a possibly untamed ornithoid is running around sick bay.

The Vulcan Ambassador is taking us close to the Neutral Zone???

The overall episode is a little light-weight and it certainly won't figure in any seasons best categories, but it is laying the seeds of future adventures.

No intense moral conundrums or highly involved technobabble in this one, but it's a good star trek episode nonetheless. Maybe I just have a soft spot for fish-out-of-water type characters, but seeing Data's reactions to human situations is always fun. B plot makes sense and holds your attention well enough. Any character development Data experiences is somewhat minor, but that seems to be his mo for a lot of the series, and it's reasonable. There are a couple contrivances (Data is a close friend of some woman, and she needs specifically HIS help to tell her fiancée to cancel the wedding?) but if you can turn up your suspension of disbelief meter a bit, it's one of the more entertaining episodes.

A day in the life of Lieutenant Data shows all events from his perspective.

This is an enjoyable episode with a good insight into how Data perceives everyone around him and social interactions.

The story is slightly offbeat as it come from a very subjective point of view, complete with voiceover. This style is good, but I found the subject matter to be a mixed bag of interest.

I like the Romulan plot which is full of great intrigue, but the Keiko/O'Brien relationship issues, albeit okay by the usual standard of Trek romance, is not particularly interesting.

The best aspect is that we spend lots of time with Data and learn more about his character. He is always good value for screen time and this episode is a good example. We see him interact with almost everybody and formulate calculations about their behaviour and emotional states. It ends with him making a profound observation on humanity which is quite memorable.

Visually it works pretty well with nothing out of the ordinary aside from a pretty fun dancing scene.

Brent Spiner carries the episode strongly and is supported well by other cast members. Colm Meaney has more purposeful screen time than previous episodes and he proves quite watchable. Rosalind Chao for me gives a mixed performance. I think her first scene is pretty awful as she sounds like someone reading lines, but she is good in the follow up scenes.

For me it is a 7.5/10 but I round upwards.

Data's Day has been one of my favourite TNG episodes for over 30 years for one very particular reason and it's to do with a peculiar quality that TNG holds above all other shows-the desire it creates within the minds of its audience to "be there". Many of us who grew up on the revamped version of the original series watched and rewatched these episodes (one 5pm episode a day repeated at 11pm if you were watching it on Sky) right throughout our late childhood and early adolescence. In that regard, the series occupies a very special part of our memories, one couched in a sense of comfort and easy living (who else gets to watch tv at 5pm but someone who has little else to worry about?) of having the family buzzing about the house, of well rounded contentment. Complementing this was something that TNG rarely gets credit for but every fan cherished-the set design and decor. Far from the gloomy dark sets of modern tv, TNG was warmly lit in a palette of late 80's/early 90's creams and beiges, filled with spatial rooms and corridors, tidy and clean with soft carpets and long awning windows and featuring an array of facilities we would get to visit and revisit again and again. To the kids who grew up with it, the Enterprise of this series was a plush and safe space and most importantly familiar. We longed to be there and now as adults revisiting it all for the first time in decades, the nostalgia for that sense of safe comfort is palpable.

It is this strange power which Data's Day taps into. As the titular character recounts his daily business both personal and official in a letter to Commander Maddox (he of Measure of a Man), the set-up requires us to follow the oft comical android around the ship. In doing so, the episode sends us closer to our coveted destination amid the stars of our mind than any other, filling the gaps in our own private mental maps of the ship. We visit nearly all of the secondary sets and even see a few new ones such as the hairdressers and the gift replicators. We see the main characters doing a little bit of what they do on their free time and get a sense of what it really was like to live aboard the Galaxy Class flag ship of Star Fleet. If that wasn't enough, and it could have been, threaded into the mix is a delicious b-plot that serves the primary drama brilliantly in that it justifies the retrospective narrative of Data's letter to Maddox as well as Data's wandering while adding a sense of excitement to the proceedings. (Of course, the convenient absence of Troi and her empathic sense from this b-story could count as a plot-hole of sorts and is the reason this episode rates a 9 and not a 10.)

Though such a premise could have leant itself to being nothing more than a tedious season filler, Data's Day instead seemed to bring the best out in cast and crew alike. The interactions between Spiner and Burton, the great Meaney and Chao, Sirtris and McFadden are fantastic and director Robert Wiemer assists them greatly with some inspired staging. It results in some of the funniest interchanges in the entire series with Spiner at the center of it all. Whether it be Data's delivery of the "good news" to the chief or the slow turning reveal of his fixed dancing smile, this show will have you howling with laughter no matter how many times you've seen it. In between will be the type of smiles that only the contentment of being in one of your favourite places can bring.