Not gonna lie, I’ve read a lot about the series and heard many people talk about it, in particular Mike and Rich Evans at redlettermedia, and I am stunned to that I have never heard any reference to this. Made my day reading this, I should probably just bite the bullet and watch the whole series.
I learned to do this in job interviews. It works!
Still better human than Zuckerberg
He’s a better human than most.
Data is a mimic. Got it.
I always super identified with adata growing up, awkward social interaction, and I, myself did the mimicry thing, still catch myself doing it when meeting new people. I found out I’m autistic 3 years ago, and Data is a SUPER autistic coded character.
Yeah, all those episodes about how Data was awkward and stilted when trying to interact with humans, and he would have gotten along well with certain neurodivergent ones. Same applies to Vulcans, really - the ones that actually uphold the ideals of logic and aren’t all smarmy about it, at least.
I saw an interview a while back where Brent Spiner said he only found out that autistic people identified with Data years after the show was over. He said it was good he didn’t know at the time, because it might have ruined the performance if he were aware of it while doing it.
Brent Spiner might be a seriously underrated actor. My two fav Data episodes are ‘A Fistful of Datas’ where Spiner is playing as multiple holodeck characters at once, and (forgot ep name) where he’s taken over by an entire alien civilization and he’s rapidly switching between multiple alien personalities. Watching Brent Spiner perform Data’s complex roles is a friggin’ master class in acting. Watching Data “glitch” mid sentance for example. Spiner is just incredible
He actually thinks the masks episode was one of his weaker episodes because he had almost no prep time. It’s basically all personalities he made up on the spot. But thats why he’s so great, because I never would have known.
The other episode is Masks.
Masaka is waking!
Brent was even pretty great in Enterprise no? As
Tap for two-decade old spoiler
the incarcerated genius who “fathered” all the augment embryos
Not sure about that one film though
The first handful of episodes, you could tell that spiner was trying to figure out how to play data. There’s something just … Off about his portrayal of the Android… It’s hard to describe.
But, to be blunt, there were a lot of things that were “off” about season 1…
That’s weird. I’ve never really heard much criticism of season 1 before.
This may be a lie
Tasha Yar was pretty cool though
Yeah, that was pretty much everyone in Season 1. The whole show was trying to figure out how to be itself.
Im surprised he doesn’t take on accents, too. That’s something people do. I remember catching myself taking on a southern accent while talking to a lady from Tennessee while on a long flight and then getting all self conscious that she might think I was mocking her and I wasn’t even doing it on purpose. 😩
My wife does this. She technically has a southern accent, but since she lives near Philly she mostly has the standard mid Atlantic accent, sometimes a Philly accent, but she’s only the phone every day doing customer support and she’ll switch to British accents, Hispanic accents, Indian accents… she just does that. Over the phone not as awkward, but in person can be quite weird. Makes it extra fun when we play D&D though.
I used to do this unintentionally while working in a call center. We dealt with a lot of folks from the south who had similar accents. I’m Canadian, eh?
My coworkers used to say that when I’d show up to work, I was (my name), and by the time I be left, I was farmer (my name).
I honestly didn’t intend to do it. I’m just so used to mirroring the people around me.
I do the same. Three days in London and it’s “Pass me the ba’a mate!”
I have to stop myself doing this too, but more because I’m really bad at accents and they all come out like I’m taking the piss at the best of times.
Now I have to watch the whole series again lol
Yeah same 🤣. This is a great excuse to do so.
Is this canon or did the poster just cherry pick a few instances?
This might be legit. Brent Spiner said in interviews that he was consciously keeping track of Data’s growth during the series. He intentionally made him feel like a blank canvas that behaved in an uncanny way at first, and slowly introduced more and more human mannerisms and warmth to his character.
Without instruction, for seven years & four movies. He was probably doing the same thing during Picard.
I feel like the time(s?) he played future Data he “jumped ahead” on the mannerisms too.
Can I note that Data served many years in Starfleet prior to the start of TNG? He wasn’t activated the day before the Encounter at Farpoint mission started. He would have had years of experience working with humans by that point.
To be fair, did any of us have great social skills for the first decade or two after activation?
Fair point. Quite a few people never develop those skills.
Sure, but in an ensemble cast I doubt that he would have had an in-depth back story given him prior to the episode where they find Lore and reveal that Data has all the colonists’ memories, etc.
No you may not.
Damn.
Yes, but the crews didn’t accept him as much as enterprise crew did, making it hard for him ti experience and grow.
Agreed. I think Enterprise was the first time people collectively treated Data like anything other than a machine. A case of nurture when is came to the professional culture of Picard’s command.
Then Pulaski comes onboard from another ship and immediately regards him as a walking computer. This was probably the first time Data stood up for himself as well. Over time, Pulaski adopted the respect the rest of the crew had for him.
Just too bad she fell down that turbolift shaft.
Picard summarily dismissed the claims that Data pushed her.
Of course. We all know Data was merely holding the door for Picard.
I mean maybe not, but I find it hard to believe he’d get promoted to lieutenant commander if he couldn’t lead. So people had to have trusted him, like the guy eventually did in the episode where he had command of that ship.
heh. Pretty sure a rock with googly eyes would be a better leader than half the Admiralty. Just saying. plenty of turdlings getting promoted who shouldn’t have been. And plenty more were promoted merely on competence with little regard for leadership.
He also got plenty of awards for bravery and courage. There are tons of socially awkard leaders. Like Gen. Sherman (union army, civil war,) Brilliant tactician, socially worse than the average redditor.
(anybody else remember pet rocks from the 90’s? those were fun.)
Aren’t we talking about Star Trek? Most of the admirals are pretty competent in ST, when they aren’t being occupied by an invading force or something.
I mean, just as examples, we’re talking about an organization that put civilian families- including children- onto ships that are routinely attacked or otherwise facing casualties.
And let’s not talk about OSHA standards that clearly don’t exist. Virtually every non-combat casualty of been prevented with a modicum of regard for safety (wearing PPE, having a safety plan that includes questions like “what could go wrong”, and addresses them, etc)(let’s not talk about seatbelts and surge protectors,)
Or that JAG admiral who failed to even consider a legal test to determine data’s sentience- a legal test that not only would literally have to exist, but be taught to basically everyone in starfleet; because the prime directive requires that they not fuck with sentient life.
Imagine how awkward he must have been at the start.
That actually would have been a great flashback sequence that I’m sorry they never did.
Well he started with refusing to wear clothes so much Soong had to hardcode an anti nudity patch.
Thank you.
You’ll see him mimicking behavior throughout the series. One of my favorite examples is in Starship Mine aka “Star Trek does a Die Hard” with Data’s attempts at small talk.
I’m convinced that a lot of his footage in that episode was Spiner goofing off or intentionally blowing takes and they just used whatever they could.
There’s an outtake of the scene when he’s “being Hutchinson” to
TroiCrusher and Riker. In the episode it’s the same scene cut short because the extended scene quickly devolves into crude humor that couldn’t be aired on network TV at the time - both Frakes andSirtisMcFadden gasping at what Spiner said.Is this the clip you’re referring to?
lmao I love how it takes Frakes a second to register what Spiner just said before he just loses it
It would have totally been in-character for Riker to react the same way, too.
Thank you. It was McFadden, not Sirtis.
Frakes just lost it at the end.
Spiner is a wonderful human being. And so is Data.
Ironically sticking things up butts is a major part of being a doctor so she’s the one who’s done that the most.
I love seeing new trek that I never saw before. Thanks for linking that.
Humans do this unconsciously! I was on a first date and thinking, “Pretty sure this woman likes me.” So I mirrored her for a little bit then started purposefully changing my posture, and she went right along with me! Had to stop before I laughed out loud and had to explain myself.
I guess this is why they did it. A clumsy, overdone imitation of human behavior that reflects his ambition to appear as human as possible.
I do that too, it’s just (ez) masking, it makes others perceive me more human-like.
Which is absolutely necessary to ‘live in a society’ & not get constantly excluded.Sucks to have to work that hard just to hang out.
It’s not even to just hang out, it’s for normal opportunities (like getting a job, asking for some services from other humans, etc). Basically to at least not repel other humans (even showing constant kindness doesn’t help in some cases bcs simply “to weird/alien” & thus unpleasant, even without any accidental miscommunication, which happens with my body language all the time).
