2x06 The Schizoid Man

[4.3/10] Sometimes I wonder if there was something in the water in the Star Trek: The Next Generation writers’ room during the show’s early seasons. What is it about this collection of creatives that leads them to do good ideas badly? “Grand Theft Data” is a great idea for an episode. Exploring the desire to use technology to avoid death and the moral queasiness and futility of it is a sound thematic foundation. (Oddly enough, Star Trek: Picard would pick it up decades later.) There’s plenty of places to go with these as starting points.

But yet again, TNG makes a hash of it. The episode features a famed molecular/cybernetic genius, Ira Graves, evading his impending death from a terminal illness by uploading his consciousness to Data. The crew starts to notice Data’s suspicious, and in some cases outrageous behavior, as they try to figure out what’s wrong with our favorite android.

The problem is one that’s afflicted many an episode in TNG’s early going -- the audience already knows! There’s zero mystery here. Graves announces to Data that he’s perfected away to transmit his consciousness into machines in one scene. In the next, Data announces that Graves suddenly died. From then on, Data acts strangely, in the exact ways that Graves acted in our brief introduction to him. You’d have to be a moron not to follow it along from the jump.

To be fair, I’m not entirely sure the show intends for it to be a mystery, even if it seems to keep Data’s behavior theoretically explainable in the beginning while slowly ratcheting up his line-crossing as things progress. But supposing that’s the case, it doesn’t do a good job of making the crew unraveling what’s happened with Data interesting or plausible.

Data’s conduct is so far outside of his usual bearing that everyone should have caught on sooner. The episode at least has the smarts to throw in a scene early where Geordi says Data may be becoming human so fast they don’t even realize it, which works as a fig leaf. But his jealousy and sarcastic remarks and poetic speeches and general attitude are just so un-Data-like that it should have been plain something was wrong much earlier.

At the same time though, there’s no reason for Picard or anyone else to be able to figure out exactly what happened. They do a decent job of having him know the gist of Graves’s research and hear about the old codger’s personality from Troi and Lt. Selar. But the fact that he’s able to make the leap from those inputs to “It’s gotta be Graves inside Data” is a real stretch.

I can handle stretches on Star Trek, but the other major problem is that Graves just isn’t an interesting character, either before or after he possesses Data. His only real characteristics are that he’s a lech and an egotist, neither of which make him compelling as a character. There might be something there if the show actually addressed how scummy his behavior was, but all the women on the show brush it off, and it’s never really discussed.

Hell, half of the episode is Graves-qua-Data hitting on his young researcher, Kareen. She gets hardly any shading whatsoever, instead framed as just a wide-eyed naif whose scientific aptitude is mentioned but never really shown. She never addresses the creepiness of Graves’s affection, and is, if anything, wistful that their timing wasn’t right, only recoiling when she learns what he’s done with his body and expects her to do the same.

“The Schizoid Man” is also, I am sad to say, a weak outing for Brent Spiner. There’s usually a thrill when the normally subdued character gets to go a little wild. The Original Series understood this and would let Spock be hopped up on spores or possessed by an energy being for an episode to show off Leonard Nimoy’s range. But Spiner’s just too cartoonish here. We know he can pull of the smarmy trickster role, because he does it with Lore. His Graves just doesn’t click in the same way, and plays like a waste of breaking Spiner out of the character’s usual strictures.

It comes down to the fact that Graves is just kind of annoying. He’s supposed to be the bad guy, but there’s no real depth to him. He’s a self-absorbed and self-flattering, horny old man. He doesn’t want anything but to cheat death and chase women, and he accomplishes both within the first ten minutes of the episode. Graves ultimately just fails to be a villain worthy of supporting the hour, either before or after he dons his new cybernetic finery.

What’s especially frustrating is that, in one scene and one scene alone, “The Schizoid Man” has both power and depth. As usual, it’s channeled through Picard, who goes to confront Grave-as-Data once he’s ferreted out the truth. I’ll be candid; I expected Picard to trap him in a forcefield or have Geordi and/or Kareen trick Graves and use some technobabble solution to flush Graves out of Data.

What I didn’t expect was for Picard to reason with the guy. He comes to Graves in a posture of understanding, sympathizing with why someone would want to sidestep death. But he also makes the moral case for Data. This android may be different, but he is a no less valid form of life, as much entitled to his continued existence as anyone. Graves cannot just dismiss him as a machine and snuff out that life to prolong his own. Picard’s delivery and the rising tension of the score make this philosophical dressing down feel monumental in a way that nothing else does. It’s enough to make Graves relent.

There’s just two problems with the solution here. For one thing, the icing on the cake is that Graves-as-Data keeps hurting people physically, suggesting he doesn’t know his own strength. That seems to be what turns him, but that seems like the sort of thing Graves could figure out over time (and would have the ego to think he could master). For another, and the bigger flaw, we’ve never seen Graves show a conscience or anything in his character up to this point to show that he’d care or be receptive to this sort of moral argumentation, especially from someone like Picard whom he’s on record as hating.

Nothing in this episode adds up. The mystery is miscalibrated. The main character is a dud and a pest. The chance to see a more expressive version of Data is squandered. And the solution is strong on a moment to moment basis, but doesn’t click if you stop and think about it. One great scene does not a great episode make, and neither does a great idea done poorly. That’s an issue that arises all too often in TNG’s early going, one the series hopefully shakes off as its matures and comes into its own.