Masks

Brent Spiner (Data) is a great actor, that is not in doubt. Sometimes the writers rightly try to play to those strengths by allowing him emotion chips or having him play Lore or other characters with more range. In this case he's given a multiple personality disorder which could have worked had they gone to a set outside the ship and ultimately shown who was behind his personalities. As it was, it's just the core cast on the same old Enterprise sets and it played out like kabuki theater.

I agree with various points made from several reviewers.

Yes, Brent Spiner did a great job with this one.....but I still felt somewhat embarrassed for him as an actor----given the feeble script.

Yes, I would much rather watch "Spock's Brain" than this episode.

To my credit, I was able to watch it all the way through. But never again.

It just seemed to be embarrassingly bad.

I could not engage.

I noticed the low rating before watching it, and therefore was primed to skip to the next episode, but it held my interest all the way through.

Highlights for me were Brent Spiner's various characters; he is definitely the best actor in this series and I enjoyed watching him dip into his repertoire of faces and voices. Also, the conversation about symbols used by ancient civilizations I found interesting.

I understand that this isn't enough for a lot of people, and I don't imagine I'll ever watch it again. If you're not a big Data fan you might want to give it a miss.

This may not have been a ten out of ten plot/story-line, but it certainly was a engaging episode. The one thing I truly loved about this episode, was that it gave Brent Spiner the ability to truly demonstrate his acting ability.

Any actor that can portray multiple personalities, and do it in a way where you believe that each persona is a unique and different individual, truly is a great actor. The emotional struggle, between the competing personalities was also portrayed in a believable way.

It's been a while since I have watched this episode, so I can't go into more detail about the story-line... but reading the negative reviews, I felt I had to say something in its defense.

Spiner's performance in this episode has always stayed with me!

So, this episode is about some ancient probe or something transforming the Enterprise into some sort of temple? I don't really know what's going on there. But it is one of those episodes that I can just enjoy watching without thinking to hard.

The episode might be considered pointless. It does not contain any meaningful character development, it is not very interesting on a philosophical level and it is definitely not emotionally touching.

But it is highly entertaining. Even though it is often considered one of the weakest episodes of the series, I just love it for being absurd. It also contains some cool set design. I liked that.

So yeah, I would definitely recommend this episode, just because it will never leave you bored.