Brent Spiner credited as playing...
Lieutenant Commander Data
- Lt. Cmdr. Data: [of the "hole" in space] Sir, our sensors are showing this to be the absence of everything. It is a void without matter or energy of any kind.
- Commander William T. Riker: Yet this hole has a form, Data; it has height, width...
- Lt. Cmdr. Data: Perhaps. Perhaps not, sir.
- Capt. Picard: That's hardly a scientific observation, Commander.
- Lt. Cmdr. Data: Captain, the most elementary and valuable statement in science, the beginning of wisdom, is, "I do not know". I do not know what that is, sir.
- Lt. Cmdr. Data: I have a question, sir.
- Capt. Picard: Yes, Data, what is it?
- Lt. Cmdr. Data: What... is death?
- Capt. Picard: Oh, is that all? Well, Data, you're asking probably the most difficult of all questions. Some see it as a changing into an indestructible form, forever unchanging; they believe that the purpose of the entire universe is to then maintain that form in an earth-like garden, which will give delight and pleasure through all eternity. On the other hand, there are those who hold to the idea of our blinking into nothingness - with all of our experiences and hopes and dreams merely a delusion.
- Lt. Cmdr. Data: Which do you believe, sir?
- Capt. Picard: Considering the marvelous complexity of the universe, its... clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that, matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension - I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond Euclidean or other practical measuring systems, and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality.
- [on the viewscreen appears a distorted face]
- Nagilum: Why're you so alarmed when I've gone to such trouble to look just like you?
- Lt. Cmdr. Data: Captain, sensors show nothing out there - absolutely nothing.
- Lieutenant Geordi La Forge: Sure is a damned ugly nothing.
- Capt. Picard: Under the circumstances, I think there is only one decision. I will not stand by while half my crew is slaughtered.
- Lt. Cmdr. Data: Sir, I do not believe there is anything you can do to prevent it.
- Capt. Picard: Yes, there is.
- Dr. Kate Pulaski: What?
- Capt. Picard: Destroy the Enterprise.
- Dr. Kate Pulaski: Isn't that a little like curing the disease by killing the patient?