My wife and I are rewatching The Next Generation and just finished Measure of a Man, the episode in season 2 in which Data’s personhood is legally debated and his life hangs in the balance.
I genuinely found this episode infuriating in its stupidity. It’s the first episode we skipped even a little bit. It was like nails on a chalkboard.
There is oodles of legal precedent that Data is a person. He was allowed to apply to Starfleet, graduated, became an officer and rose to the rank of Lt. Commander with all the responsibilities and privileges thereof.
Comparing him to a computer and the judge advocate general just shrugging and going to trial over it is completely idiotic. There are literal years and years of precedent that he’s an officer.
The problem is compounded because Picard can’t make the obvious legal argument and is therefore stuck philosophizing in a court room, which is all well and good, but it kind of comes down to whether or not Data has a soul? That’s not a legal argument.
The whole thing is so unbelievably ludicrous it just made me angrier and angrier. It wasn’t the high minded, humanistic future I’ve come to know and love, it was a kangaroo court where reason and precedent took a backseat to feeling and belief.
I genuinely hated it.
To my surprise, in looking it up, I discovered it’s considered one of the high water marks for the entire show. It feels like I’m taking crazy pills.
I think it’s so funny that people are so pissed at her about Tuvix and just ignore the fact that she essentially tried to wipe out Species 8472. But that’s okay because they’re “the bad guys.” Every last one of the trillions of them.
As someone who grew up on TNG, and Picard, I just never found Janeway to embody any of the qualities of a Starfleet Captain, as they had been outlined. She lacked the essential intellectual curiosity that was supposed to be the bedrock of exploration.
So I can chalk it up to the writers, but that’s still an L for the series, as a whole.
I agree, janeway was straight up a bad captain. I can dismiss some of it as being stranded, but she barely towed the starfleet line.
*just fyi, the idiom is you toe a line, as in step up to the line.