2x09 The Measure of a Man

[9.8/10] Picard says it in his big courtroom speech. He says it every week in the intro. “To seek out new life.” It’s one of the core tenets of Star Trek -- not just to juxtapose our very human heroes against the latest bumpy-foreheaded alien, but to cross them with sentient specks of rock and powerful demigods, to throw them against self-aware holograms and tinkerbelle sparks of light that live through the human experience in days. The crew of the Enterprise do seek out new life, but also new definitions of life, new understandings of what it can mean to be a sentient being with the rights to self-determination that undergird the Federation’s high-minded ideals.

“The Measure of a Man” is centered on the question of what constitutes sentient life, but more squarely on the question of how far those ideals will stretch, who our supposedly enlightened futuristic spacemen are willing to extend their benefits to, and what sort of openness and self-recognition is necessary to live up to them.

It’s also just a riveting hour of television, full of deep thought, great acting, and the most personal and yet far-reaching of stakes. Dr. Bruce Maddox, a Starfleet cyberneticist, wants to disassemble Data, in the hopes of being able to duplicate him. Data is reluctant to undergo the procedure, fearing that Maddox’s inability to match Dr. Soong’s work will make it difficult, if not impossible, to fully restore Data afterward.

From there, it’s a game of action and reaction. Data refuses and Picard supports the android’s decision, so Maddox has Data transferred to his command. Picard looks for a loophole in Starfleet protocol, but can’t find one, so Data resigns his commission rather than be forced to risk his life against his will. Maddox moves to have Data declared Starfleet property, thereby stripping him of his agency to refuse, so Picard petitions the nearest Starfleet Adjudicator to resolve the dispute and grant Data his rights as a sentient being.

That progression is an underrated part of “The Measure of a Man”. The philosophical questions that underlie Data’s existence are the meat of the episode. But the tet-a-tet between Picard and Maddox, with Data in the middle, creates a plausible situation for that to be a live issue. It adds stakes to what would otherwise be an academic question. And it gives Data, but also Picard, the chance to demonstrate their humanity in how they respond to this challenge long before either sets foot in the courtroom.

Don’t get me wrong, I ate up the scenes where Starfleet officers dramatically lob monologues on metaphysics at one another. But I also loved the smaller, more down-to-earth moments that do as much to confirm Data’s humanity to the audience as any speech. He has an emotional (by android and stuffy Starfleet standards) scene with Geordi where the two good friends say goodbye. He gets bluffed by Commander Riker at poker and learns from the experience. He hesitates to explain what happened with Tasha because it’s private. We see the ways in which Data has made connections that reveal the way he’s more than just a “box on wheels” as Maddox puts it.

But ironically, we also get to see Picard more open-hearted and human than the distinguished captain typically deigns to be. For one thing, I kind of love him with Captain Louvois. I’ll always be Team Beverly, and I laughed out loud when Philippa smirked and called Jean-Luc a “damn sexy man”, but the two captains have undeniable chemistry together. There’s a little of the 1980s tone deafness on gender relations at play, but Louvois is a strong personality, one unafraid to call Picard on his crap (including calling him a “pompous ass”) and stake her own position on the issues with her own principles and procedures.

It’s one of the things that connects this episode with its spiritual predecessor, “Court Martial” from The Original Series. That episode also featured a “man vs. machine” theme and the captain having a romantic past with the woman involved in the legal proceeding du jour. But seeing Picard have to challenge a peer, one who knows him socially and isn’t afraid of his rank or his bluster, makes the two characters a great match and makes the performers great scene partners.

That’s the other secret weapon of “The Measure of a Man”, it’s one of the best-acted episodes in all of The Next Generation. Picard is never more earnest and urgent than when he’s arguing for the sanctity of his second officer’s life. Guest performer Amanda McBroom does stellar work as Louvois, injecting personality and steel into the sure-footed yet playful JAG officer. And I love the moment of non-verbal acting from Jonathan Frakes when Riker discovers the silver bullet to challenging’s Data’s humanity and the joy of solving the puzzle spreads across his face, only for his expression to sink into sadness when he realizes what his success would mean.

Riker’s involvement is the most contrived part of the episode. As much as Louvois warning WIll not to sandbag lest she summarily rule against Data provides a fig leaf, it seems like a plain conflict of interest. Surely, there’s someone else on the starbase who could be called upon to fill the role of prosecutor, even Maddox himself. But it adds another emotional dimension to the episode, and a fair dealer to make the most compelling argument possible against Data’s personhood, even if he himself doesn’t believe it.

That argument comes down to a simple point, dramatized in various ways -- Data is a machine and, more to the point, unlike us. He was constructed, rather than born. His arm is detachable and full of circuits and gears, rather than muscle and blood. In the episode’s most dramatic moment, Riker even demonstrates that Data can be turned off (which honestly feels like a violation, given the lack of consent and Data’s previous conversation with Dr. Crusher about his off switch). In short, Riker zeroes in on the differences, the aspects of Data that make him unlike other known life, whatever seemingly human features he displays on the outside.

It’s enough to rattle Picard, who tried to play devil’s advocate himself earlier in the episode. But his turning point, and the thrust of the episode, comes in a brilliant scene with Guinan. As she so often does, Guinan threads her patron toward the right epiphany -- that we’re not just talking about Data here; we’re talking about whether Starfleet sanctions the existence of “disposable treatment” with all that implies. Whoopi Goldberg’s sly but serious delivery of the point gives it power, and there’s extra weight from the fact that it’s an African American woman delivering this message to an American audience.

Picard takes it to heart. He gives an impassioned defense, one where he puts a spotlight on all the ways that Data has surprised him, has grown as a person in his time on the Enterprise, all the ways in which he is like us that truly count. But he also presents it as a moral challenge to the Federation, asking Captain Louvois as adjudicator not just to consider what her ruling will mean to one individual, but to the prospect of thousands like him, made to do Starfleet’s dirty work. He posits, in some of the most stirringly written words ever committed to Trek, that it would be not only unconscionable, but against all that the Federation represents, to condemn a race of people to such a fate, let alone this one innocent being.

Captain Louvois frames it appropriately -- the true central question here is whether or not Data, and by extension anyone like him, has a soul. You can take that question literally or figuratively, but the central inquiry comes down to whether he possess that self-described ineffable quality that elevates a set of inputs and outputs and responses to stimuli above the metaphysical equivalent of a slot machine and turns them into something more sublime, more profound, more human, with all the rights and responsibilities that designation confers.

What is it, then, to have a soul? It is to want without reason. It is (as spiritual successor A.I. suggests) to love what is forever lost. It is to care for others. It is to seek to preserve not just the facts of your existence, but the “flavor” of the experience that cannot be flattened or exchanged so easily. It is to miss and hope and strive.

As we’ve seen in a season and a half of TNG, and in microcosm within this very episode, Data is all of these things, and aspires to more still. Picard establishes that. Louvois recognizes it and grants his right to self-determination, staving off the risk that he’ll be denied such freedoms under the conscience-assuaging euphemism of “property.”

When confronted by Dr. Maddox, Data tells his pursuer that his quest for self-preservation is not one of vanity. It’s to preserve a man’s dream, the living fruits of Dr. Soong’s labor, the spark of something new and brilliant brought into the world. It is, as his captain declares so sonorously, the new life that the Federation claims to value so deeply. It comes in a different form. It’s innards are made of gears and wires rather than flesh and bone. But it is no less real or worthy of respect and protection and agency than the forms we are used to.

But there’s something else that makes Data human in “The Measure of a Man” -- grace. He shows grace to the man who tried to legally de-person him, offering Dr. Maddox encouragement and future possibilities, even seeming to convince the man that this extraordinary android is a “he” not an “it.” He shows grace to Commander Riker, not only absolving Will of any guilt for leading the prosecution against him, but thanking him for doing so and sparing him a summary judgment, for in essence, helping to save his life. It's the episode’s warmest scene in an outing not short on them.

There is also grace in Picard’s quest here, in Louvois’s ruling, and in a vaunted institution choosing to recognize the rights of a nascent form of life no matter the reasons it might be convenient or practical to do otherwise. In asking Starfleet to recognize Data’s humanity, Picard is ostensibly asking the United Federation of Planets to do something simple -- live up to its ideals. But it’s when those ideals run aground on truly new life and new civilizations, that the mettle of our civilizations are tested. It’s then that we can prove our own humanity, in the poetic and the practical, by recognizing it in others, especially at the times it would be all too easy to ignore.