4x11 Data's Day

[8.4/10] “Data’s Day” is what Simpsons fans came to call a “format bender.” It’s exactly what you’d expect -- something that takes the show’s usual rhythms and structures and turns them on their ear. The most famous of them on Matt Groening’s show was “22 Short Films About Springfield” (source of the famed “Steamed Hams” sketch) which turned the show over to scads of short, vaguely-connected vignettes rather than sticking with the A-story/B-story framework. At worst, these sorts of outings are a monotony breaker, and at best, they help the audience to look at the characters, and the show, in a different light.

The latter is definitely true for “Data’s Day”. The episode functions as a low-key sequel to “The Measure of a Man”, with Data writing a letter to Commander Maddox describing his observations and experiences on an “average” day aboard the Enterprise. So rather than having a single crisis of the week that commands the hour and involves most of the crew, the episode gives us bits and pieces of challenges both life threatening and mundane, each of them filtered through Data’s aspirations and misunderstanding over the course of a single day.

It’s a high concept premise, and one that works well. Constraining all of the developments in the story to a single day creates its own sort of structure, while centering it on a single character gives the show the chance for some more slice of life storytelling than normally fits on the series. More than anything though, it gives us a chance to get a focused and committed look at what makes Data tick. We can take his temperature on his ongoing quest to become more human.

That involves rampant voiceover, in the form of Data dictating his letter to Maddox. Normally, I blanche at that sort of thing, because it tends to turn subtext into text and/or turn into an excuse for the writers to get overly flowery. But it works with Data. For one thing, his internal monologue doesn’t really lend itself to floweriness, which gives his observations a more matter-of-fact quality. And second, there’s rarely subtext to Data, because he’s not the type to think things he wouldn’t express. He’s too guileless for that, making him something of an unreliable narrator (or at least an incomplete one) so being let into his thought processes never feels like a cheat.

To the point, the episode gestures toward the types of problems that Data is good at solving and the ones he still struggles with. His dance lesson with Dr. Crusher presents this in a nutshell. When it comes to rote imitation and pure method, he’s a virtuoso. All he has to do is match Beveryl’s tap dance moves. But when it comes to ballroom dancing, something that relies on intuitively responding to a partner, he’s got two left feet (and a hilariously plastered-on smile to boot). The more improvisation, the more reading between the lines, the more of the human element is at play, the harder it is for Data to grasp.

That ties into the major threat of the episode, where Vulcan Ambassador T’Pel is seemingly killed in a transporter accident before an unprecedented summit with the Romulans. Data uses his Holmes-like deductive reasoning and scientific inquiry to discern that T’Pel did not die, but rather was beamed aboard the Romulan ship with her seeming remains beamed onto the Enterprise to create the ruse. It’s the type of mystery-solving that Data excels at -- one that simply requires him to look at the hard evidence and put all the pieces together.
But the irony is that he didn’t pick up on the bigger twist here -- that T’Pel was, in fact, a Romulan spy (“patriot” if you’re green-blooded) this whole time, and her mission was to gather info about the Federation and use this ruse as a means to get back to her people without detection. Earlier in the episode, when she suspiciously asks Data about the Enterprise’s defense capabilities, and comes up with an unconvincing excuse when he tells her he’d need to report her inquiry, Data thinks nothing of it. He doesn’t suspect her of any malfeasance or even find her behavior unusual enough to report to his superiors.

That’s because it requires intuition and a deeper understanding of psychology than Data can muster right now. It’s a recurring theme here -- that Data’s intentions are good, and he even has attachments and superficial understandings of the emotional complexities and subtext to various human interactions, but that there’s an organic sort of comprehension of emotions and customs and subtle social cues that are still beyond him.

(As an aside, how many high ranking Vulcans in the Federation turn out to be collaborating with the Romulans or secretly be Romulans themselves in all of Star Trek? I can think of at least four, and they stretch across different eras and projects. I guess it’s just a trope the franchise can’t resist for some reason.)

But that also manifests in fun ways, not just in cross-cultural espionage. There’s something amusing about Data trying to navigate, albeit indirectly, the numerous tangles of love. His inability to understand why Keiko would call off the wedding, why Chief O’Brien isn’t pleased that Keiko’s made a choice to increase her happiness, and why Keiko is so resistant to his efforts to have her reconsider is amusing in the poor android’s cluelessness. It’s sweet how innocent and naive he is about all these things, despite wanting the best for both spouses-to-be, and an amusing, low-stakes event to show the limitations of his emotional intelligence despite his vigorous efforts on that front.

(This is also an episode with a lot of TNG firsts. The first appearance of Keiko! The first time we see the ship’s arboretum as a setting -- possibly an homage to TOS! The first time Chief O’Brien gets a real story on the show! And most importantly, the first time we meet Spot!)

Apart from those telling, albeit not earth-shaking stories, some of the best parts of “Data’s Day” are just getting to watch the titular android have small, everyday interactions with his colleague, in a way that isn’t dependent on the crisis of the week.

As silly as it is to watch Data try and fail to use playful insults with Geordi in the barber’s chair, it’s heartwarming to hear Data call him his best friend. Picking out wedding gifts with Worf is a comical experience for sure (some great straight man acting from Michael Dorn), but at the same time it’s insightful to hear Data describe the two of them as kindred spirits. We get snippets of Riker telling an off-color joke while Data tries to ferret out the connection between humor and sex. We see Dr. Crusher express a willingness to help Data but only surreptitiously, so she doesn’t get tagged as the “dancing doctor” again. And we even hear Data express a desire to one day be married, with Counselor Troi agreeing that he has a lot to offer.
There’s not necessarily time for all of these little, prosaic moments in the average TNG episode. But “Data’s Day” makes time for them, which not only helps us understand Data better, but adds a humanizing gaze to all the other denizens of the Enterprise. Data still struggles to understand a lot of the customs and complex social dynamics at play, but he strives toward it, drifting in and out of crises grand and diplomatic as well as tiny and personal. Going inside his head helps us see the distance between where Data and emotional understanding, but also the low-burning attachments and affections he nonetheless possesses for his fellow cremwen.

It culminates in the beautiful wedding of Keiko and Chief O’Brien, a festive celebration separated from Romulan plots and ship-threatening quasars. And the episode closes with the birth of a child, one utterly unaware of the geo-political tensions that erupted during his arrival. That works with the bevy of life events Data rattles off before calling it an “average day.”

The central thesis of “22 Short Films about Springfield” was the notion that an average day in the Simpsons’ humble berg involved all sorts of unseen insanity, and that the secondary and tertiary characters on the show had plenty of bizarre escapades even when Our Favorite Family wasn’t with them.

“Data’s Day” seems conceived in the same spirit -- a reminder that even when going against villainous rivals in tense showdowns and escaping strange spatial phenomena, life goes on aboard the Enterprise. It’s a ship of more than a thousand people, and even though the focus is understandably on the senior staff, there’s a myriad of those small stories and interactions that go on every day. It’s a living, breathing place with joys and pains and connections that don’t always depend on the latest intergalactic catastrophe. Breaking from the show’s usual norms to give us a glimpse of that all-but-hidden world, and filtering it through Data’s unknowing experience, helps us to understand both of them better.

This was another highlight from Season 4 so far and one of my favourite episodes of the eleven from this season that I've seen so far.

Data and Dr. Crusher dancing in the holodeck was a great scene that the two shared together; I really like both characters and they come into their own here. This was a big Data-centric episode too as he learnt more about human wedding customs and the show reflected on the definition of what marriage was as a concept and what it meant to him. Brett Spiner knocked it out of the park - he was really born to play Data. I couldn't imagine anyone else in the role.

This feels like very classic Trek in all the best ways. Having seen Deep Space Nine Miles O'Brien is one of my favourite Trek supporting characters so he had that advantage coming in and it's great watching Colm Meaney grow into the character and get bigger and more important roles in episodes rather than just cameos as The Next Generation continues - and it was fascinating to meet Keiko for the first time here. Rosalind Chao was great too in her role, and she more than delivered.

I wasn't too much of a fan of the Vulcan/Romulan subplot but then the show has usually - at least so far - never really been able to balance two plots in one episode that well, with it feeling tacked on in comparison and lets anotherwise good episode down. But even so; it's not the weakest subplot that we've had.