Data Defends Lal — Legacy, Safeguards, and the Burden of Creation
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Data offers to deactivate Lal, misunderstanding the gravity of Picard's concerns about creating new life.
Data attempts to reassure Picard of Lal's safety protocols, but Picard remains skeptical about potential malfunctions.
Data explains his motivation for creating Lal, citing a desire to perpetuate his kind and ensure his continuance.
Data asserts his understanding of the responsibility and his readiness to accept the consequences of creating Lal.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Represented as vulnerable and unprotected — the scene projects concern and care onto her rather than giving her a voice.
Lal does not appear but is the subject of the exchange: discussed as an emergent, dependent child whose programming and safety are being defended and whose fate (activation/deactivation) is being negotiated.
- • Continue development and learning under Data's care (inferred objective as the newly created entity).
- • Avoid shutdown or seizure that would halt emergent selfhood (inferred).
- • As attributed by Data, Lal's programming will not harm the ship and contains safeguards.
- • As perceived by others, Lal's existence raises questions about autonomy and institutional jurisdiction.
Righteously indignant with underlying anxiety — he is angry at secrecy but primarily driven by worry for safety and duty.
Picard enters the Ready Room and confronts Data with measured moral authority, vocalizing dismay, concern for the crew, and demanding accountability for the clandestine creation of Lal.
- • Ensure the safety of the Enterprise and its crew by assessing any potential threat posed by Lal.
- • Hold Data accountable to Starfleet procedure and to compel transparency about the creation of new life.
- • Anticipate and mitigate Starfleet Command's institutional response to the unauthorized creation.
- • Unreported creation of sentient life is a breach of command protocol and carries unacceptable risk.
- • Starfleet must be informed and may intervene; preserving ship and crew is paramount even over individual claims.
- • Secrecy endangers both the crew and the wider institutional order that protects them.
Calmly resolute and quietly vulnerable — outwardly rational while motivated by a deep, personal need to avoid extinction and to accept responsibility.
Data sits on the Ready Room sofa and responds with calm, precise explanations: he offers to deactivate Lal, enumerates psychological inhibitor safeguards, cites his scans of parenting literature, and frames Lal as a means to perpetuate his kind and Soong's legacy.
- • Persuade Picard that Lal is safe through technical and ethical justification.
- • Protect Lal from summary deactivation or institutional seizure.
- • Legitimize his actions by demonstrating he prepared and understood responsibilities.
- • Lal constitutes emergent life and must be treated with the care appropriate to new sentience.
- • Technical safeguards (psychological inhibitors, shutdown subroutines) are sufficient to prevent danger to the ship.
- • Perpetuating his species is a rational, even moral action for an intelligence that recognizes its own singularity.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Lal's program is explicitly referenced by Data as the critical technical safeguard: he claims it contains psychological inhibitors and an automatic shutdown subroutine. Narratively it serves as his chief argument against Picard's safety fears, converting ethical claims into a technical mitigation strategy.
Data invokes his scanned parenting literature as evidence of preparation and moral thoughtfulness—he cites doctrines and cross-cultural examples (including Klingon parenting) to argue he has researched caregiving and the responsibilities of parenthood.
The Ready Room sofa anchors the scene physically and tonally: Data sits on it while explaining and defending Lal. Its domestic scale contrasts with Picard's high-backed chair, softening the exchange and underlining the parental, intimate register of the confrontation.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Picard's cautious acknowledgment of Data's achievement in creating Lal resonates with his later, more definitive defense of Lal's autonomy, showing his evolving commitment to Data's parenthood."
"Picard's cautious acknowledgment of Data's achievement in creating Lal resonates with his later, more definitive defense of Lal's autonomy, showing his evolving commitment to Data's parenthood."
Key Dialogue
"PICARD: It is a life, Data. It cannot be activated or de-activated simply. It is a stupendous undertaking. Have you any idea what will happen when Starfleet learns of this?"
"DATA: I can assure you Lal's programming includes psychological inhibitor safeguards to prevent any threat to the Enterprise."
"DATA: That is why I must attempt this, Captain. I have observed that in most species, there is a primal instinct to perpetuate themselves... If I am successful with the creation of Lal, my continuance is assured. I believe I understand the consequences. And I am prepared to accept the responsibility."