Picard Demands Data's Voice
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Picard opens the session, sitting with a PADD and demanding that Data tell him everything personally; Data defers to the Enterprise computer banks, signaling the scene's shift from recorded facts to an attempted face-to-face testimony.
Data launches into a precise, recorded biography—activation, Academy, postings—until Picard abruptly interrupts, insisting he wants Data to speak from himself rather than from the computer.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
N/A for the historical person; as invoked, Shakespeare's voice introduces wry detachment and intellectual provocation into the dialogue.
Not present physically but rhetorically invoked by Data through quotation; Shakespeare functions as a cultural shorthand that frames legal skepticism and the irony of attacking lawyers.
- • As a rhetorical device, to underline the absurdity and danger of relying solely on legalism.
- • Supply a concise cultural proverb that reframes the dispute about lawyers and law.
- • Legal institutions are both necessary and potentially corrupting (as implied by the quote).
- • Quotations can compress complex moral judgments into a memorable aphorism.
Weary and impatient on the surface, but determined and strategically focused—Picard channels frustration into a legal tactic rather than moralizing.
Seated with a PADD, Picard starts by soliciting Data's life-history, then grows impatient, rises, paces, fidgets with objects on the desk, and forcefully reframes the inquiry from facts to inner motive and legal strategy.
- • Elicit testimony that demonstrates interiority and agency in Data.
- • Secure a practical legal argument that can be used to obtain personhood recognition.
- • Reframe the crew's emotional investment into courtroom-usable evidence.
- • Law and precedent can be bent by carefully constructed arguments ('legal fictions').
- • Objective facts alone (computer records) won't win the case; testimony about desire and motive is necessary.
- • Institutional procedures are the proper arena to resolve moral claims.
Puzzled and resigned; displays intellectual curiosity but also literal acceptance of his own status, lacking the rhetorical tools to translate experience into persuasive personhood claims.
Sits calmly and answers Picard in exact, catalogued biography—dates, places, credentials—then, puzzled by the line of questioning, declares himself a machine and attempts to understand Picard's legal reasoning.
- • Provide accurate, complete information as requested.
- • Understand the purpose and rationale behind Picard's questioning.
- • Comply with what he perceives as a procedural interview.
- • His stored biography and operational logs constitute the totality of his identity.
- • Machinehood is an obvious, incontestable fact that argument cannot change.
- • Human legal and rhetorical constructs (like 'legal fiction') are curious but separate from objective truth.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Picard returns to and toys with objects in the travelcase on the desk, using the desk as a staging area. The desk anchors the scene physically and emotionally: the open travelcase on it suggests disrupted privacy and converts personal artifacts into potential evidence.
Picard holds a PADD at the start—an evidentiary tool for recording responses. It frames the encounter as an interview, formalizing Data's words into potential recordable testimony and reminding viewers this is data to be used in institutional argument.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Omicron Theta is referenced as Data's place of activation and origin—a distant, factual anchor in his biography that serves as potential corroborative evidence of his history and creation in legal argument.
Data's quarters function as an intimate but compromised space where personal history is interrogated. The room's domestic details (travelcase, personal artifacts) become evidentiary; privacy collapses into procedural necessity as Picard transforms a private conversation into legal reconnaissance.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
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Key Dialogue
"PICARD: "I need to know how you think, what you want, how you feel. What drives you, motivates you.""
"DATA: "But I am not. I am a machine.""
"PICARD: "We're searching for an argument which will legally deny that obvious fact.""